Angel's Ink (12 page)

I screamed, forcing my body to straighten as I lifted my head to look at Simon, standing over me. The warlock rested his fists on his hips as he stared down at me, a smile breaking over his face again. It was only through the overwhelming need to rip that smile from his smug face that I found the energy to move again. My eyes rolled up into the back of my head as I turned all of the energy swirling around me into wards. Pain sizzled through my frame as I sent energy surging through my body, seeking out and destroying the worms. I felt hollowed out, my organs reduced to little more than Swiss cheese, but I was still breathing.

“Your concern for them has always made you such an easy target,” Simon said. “They’re stupid, worthless bags of flesh.”

“It’s where we all start. Where you started,” I replied through clenched teeth as I tried to push past the pain.

“I rose above that dirty start. You were supposed to as well, but obviously you’ve got some unfortunate failings. The council should have killed you years ago so you wouldn’t have a chance to spread your weakness to others. I will correct that oversight now.”

Simon had taken me by surprise, which meant this bastard probably had a little more stored up his sleeve. He had let me walk away years ago because he hadn’t been sure that he could beat me. But he had continued to study magic, while I’d allowed my skills to stagnate. Simon came to me now because he was sure that he could take me out.

The nice thing was, there was one approach I could rely on that would always take a warlock by surprise: the direct one. Heaving myself back to my feet with a giant shove, I ignored my shaky legs and closed the distance between us. As he raised his hand, shock crossing his face, I slammed my fist into his nose. His head snapped back, causing him to stumble a couple of steps away from me as he covered his face.

“I’ve had enough of your shit. I didn’t come here to deal with you,” I said as I delivered another punch to his face followed by one to his gut that had him sucking in a harsh breath. “I came here to take care of other matters. I don’t care about you, the rest of your useless crowd, or what you want because I don’t want any part of it.”

“That’s too bad,” Simon said, leaning close while wiping his bleeding nose with the back of a shaking hand. “Because we need to be rid of you.”

I should have taken a step away. I should have turned my back and run. I should have learned my lesson years ago and started walking with an actual weapon at all times, but I thought I was skilled enough to keep myself safe with only magic.

Simon lunged a half step forward and slammed his fist against my breastbone; the impact was followed by a quick surge of power from whatever spell he had been weaving while I attacked him physically. It felt as if his fist kept going through my body until long, gnarly fingers wrapped around my soul. I gasped, my whole body going as stiff as a board as my hands latched onto his narrow shoulders for support. I had never read of this spell before, but Simon had discovered a way to not only grab my soul, but I could feel the bastard starting to pull it from my body.

Energy swirled around Simon and cut through me, entering my chest. Forcing my mind to move past the pain, I focused on the patterns I could see within the power rolling off the warlock. I had studied a great number of spells with Simon in this way. Many warlocks used the excuse of casting spells on their apprentices as a way of teaching them. If we managed to survive the encounter, then we were deemed worthy of continuing to study. The spell that was digging into my soul was similar to others that Simon had thrown at me in my younger years. It was familiar enough that I was able to unravel its secrets.

Raising my head so that my narrowed eyes met Simon’s triumphant look, I balled my right hand into a fist and slammed it into his chest in the same way he had with me. I shoved the energy through his body until the echo of my hand came across a wispy feeling deep within his body. It wasn’t as neat and tidy as his spell. In fact, it was downright ugly and sloppy, but it would get the job done.

“No!” he screamed as I wrapped my fingers tightly around his soul, locking us together. He knew that if he pulled on my soul in hopes of killing me, I would do the same with him.

The dark chuckle that escaped from me seemed to dance around the empty street. “It seems that we’ve hit a stalemate.”

“You’re not walking away from here!”

“Try to kill me and you know that I’m going to happily take you with me,” I warned. “Besides, right now, I’ve got death on my side.” Well, inasmuch as the fact that the grim reaper required me to undo a mess I’d made. Regardless, it was enough to unnerve Simon so that he loosened his grip the slightest bit, allowing me, with a fresh surge of power, to tighten my grip not only on his soul, but on my own soul as well.

We were stuck. If I pulled away now, Simon would come at me with yet another and then another spell until he succeeded in killing me. He would keep coming, destroying everything in his path, everything in my life, until he finally wore me down. I knew Simon—he was ruthless when it came to getting what he wanted. Hatred bubbled within me as I glared at the warlock. I was ready for this to be over.

With a feral scream, I pulled my hand away from Simon’s chest. My fingers ripped through his soul as I tried to pull it from his body. The spell I had tried to weave to match his was faulty and I couldn’t keep his soul together. The warlock moved at the same time, tearing something inside me. Simon’s scream matched my own as his fingers ripped through my soul, shredding it. There was no time to stop it or fight it. The energy surged out of us in a rush, like air surging forth to fill a vacuum. We were blown apart, thrown to opposite ends of the street. As the spell left my body, I could feel that a part of my soul was now missing. I had thought I had a strong enough hold on it that I could force him out, but I was wrong.

There was no time to think about it. I was weak, possibly dying from internal injuries. My insides were battered, bruised, and bleeding from the fight. I could barely raise my head from where I was lying in the middle of the street. A cough scraped along my throat as I tried to suck in a breath. The street was splattered with my blood. I needed to escape if I was going to have any chance at living for another day. More important, I needed to escape with the little wisp of energy that was tightly clasped in my right hand.

Simon lay in the street several yards down from me, groaning in pain. He was injured, but still dangerous. It would have been nice if one of the bystanders had come forward and chopped his head off, but everyone knew from experience that a conscious warlock was a deadly warlock. They wouldn’t take the chance.

With any luck, Simon would use what little strength he had left to take himself back to the Ivory Towers. He needed to heal. He wasn’t dying. Not yet, and I was in no shape to finish the fucker off.

Taking advantage of his injuries, I closed my eyes and focused all of my energy on the back room of the tattoo parlor. I didn’t like leaving the people here alone with Simon, but I was no good to them in my current state. In a flash, I was back at Asylum, lying in a huddled heap on the white wooden floor. My breathing labored, I lay limp, curled in a loose ball on the floor, staring at my clenched right hand. I couldn’t see anything, but I could feel the energy writhing there. I had a piece of Simon’s soul and I was going to find a way to put it to good use. Preferably before he found a use for the chunk of my soul in his possession.

Chapter 10

“G
age?” Trixie called in a concerned voice from the main room of the tattoo parlor. There had been no masking the heavy thud created when my body hit the wooden floor of the shop or the grunt of pain that escaped me. Her heels clicked across the floor as she rose from a chair and approached the back room, which, luckily, still had its door shut. I didn’t want her seeing me like this.

“I’ll be out in a minute,” I shouted back in a strained voice, struggling to sound as normal as possible despite the fact that I was curled up in the fetal position on the dusty floor, my body wracked with pain. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been convincing enough because the door swung open as I was pushing into a sitting position.

“Oh shit! What happened?” Trixie rushed toward me, her hand outstretched to help me.

“Don’t touch me. I’m fine.” I didn’t mean to snap at her, but I was holding on to the fragment of the powerful warlock’s soul, I was missing a bit of my own, and I didn’t trust Simon not to have potentially booby-trapped me as I made my escape. There was a chance that she could get hurt if she tried to help. My only option was to escape down to my private workshop in the basement and check over things.

“What happened?” she demanded a second time, still hovering close.

“Had a little run-in.” I pushed to my feet, squelching the groan that was rising from my chest. It felt as if all of my organs were leaking blood and my head had a marching band stomping my brain. Death was starting to sound attractive. It had to be less painful. “I’ll be fine. Could you go back out to the parlor and keep an eye on things for me for a little while longer? I need to get cleaned up and then I’ll be out.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” I wanted to smile to reassure her. I even tried, but my brain couldn’t locate the muscles in my face that made me smile. It just kind of flipped me the bird and went back to screaming at the marching band.

By the look on her face, I knew that she didn’t believe a single word I had uttered to her, but thankfully, she backed out of the room and closed the door behind her. With my fist still wrapped around Simon’s soul, I kicked aside my bag and pulled open the trapdoor in the floor with my free hand. Stumbling down the warped stairs, I immediately headed to the closest workbench where I yanked open the glass cabinets. Bottles clashed as I scrabbled for an empty vial with a cork. When I finally hit upon an ampoule and stopper, I closed my eyes and focused all my energy on the bit of wispy soul that was writhing in my hand. I forced it to slither into the glass ampoule and quickly lodged the stopper in. A couple of whispered words placed a charm on the glass, holding the soul in place while cloaking it from any prying eyes. Turning back to the cabinet, I wrapped a length of worn leather around the top of the glass container before tying the ends together. It was only when the glass container was hanging around my neck, the cold glass pressed against my skin, that I sank to the dirt floor and breathed a shaky sigh of relief. This shred of Simon’s soul would never leave my side, a bit of valuable leverage that could come in handy in an important moment. I’d find a good use for it. Simon certainly hadn’t.

Breathing heavily, I leaned against the front of the wooden workbench, my hands flat in the dirt floor as the pain flooded my mind. When I returned to the parlor, my only focus had been on getting Simon’s soul to a secure location before something happened that caused me to lose my newfound toy. Now, as I sat in the dirt in the nearly pitch-black room, all the pain came back with a new vengeance. The worms that had penetrated my body and bored holes through my bones represented a new spell. I hadn’t been expecting that from the old warlock and hadn’t been able to protect myself from it. I had a feeling it was only the beginning of what I faced when it came to Simon, particularly now that I had a bit of his soul.

Of course, he also had a bit of mine. Terrifying, but at least we were somewhat evenly screwed on that front. What had my attention was that he had chosen to attack me after several years of complete silence. He’d said he needed to be rid of me now, as if my presence in the warlock community had some kind of impact when I knew it had no bearing on anything whatsoever. I was a tattoo artist and a potion stirrer. We were beneath the notice of the warlocks and the witches who wove elaborate spells up in their Ivory Towers, changing the lives of helpless humans and other unknowing creatures lurking on the earth. I had suddenly become an important thorn in Simon’s side and I needed to know why he was so desperate to have me plucked out before he found something interesting to do with the fragment of my soul he held.

Above me, Trixie’s footsteps returned to the back room, but they remained in front of the cabinet containing potion ingredients. Based on the lack of other footsteps, I didn’t think a customer had arrived in the shop, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t remain seated in the dirt like a useless lump for much longer. I had to pull myself together and fucking locate Sparks. It was bad enough that Simon had picked this exact moment to reenter my busy life, but right now, I had to place my priorities on the grim reaper and his request for Tera’s soul.

Which gave me pause. If he couldn’t have Tera’s, would he accept most but not all now that Simon possessed a fragment? A derisive snort escaped me before I could push it back. The grim reaper was going to take my soul regardless of its condition, and not even Simon and his pack of warlock flunkies would be able to stop him. In three days, if Tera wasn’t mortal, my soul belonged to the reaper—not Simon. That at least seemed slightly comforting, but not much.

I was shaken from my grim thoughts by the sound of Trixie’s footsteps descending the wooden stairs. “Gage?” she called into the darkness. I hadn’t bothered to grab the pull-chain light when I came down the stairs, relying on the light from the opening in the ceiling and my own memory of the room.

Pushing off the workbench, I lurched violently to my feet and rushed across the room. “Stop! Don’t come down any farther!” I ran until I hit the opposite wall with the flats of my palms, my body resisting every movement. The energy from the pentagram painted on the wall surged through my arms, jarring me even more awake. The spell that I had set down in the basement protected against the entrance of anyone other than me. The items in my private room were too dangerous.

“I made you something for the pain. It’ll help you heal faster,” she replied, not moving from the third stair from the top. Glancing up, I could see her cupping a white bowl in both hands.