Angel's Ink (36 page)

Forcing a smile on my face, I turned off the light and moved toward the front door where Tera was waiting. I had the acting job of a lifetime before me. I had to pretend to be excited and happy while planning to steal a young girl’s life away. I was a monster.

Chapter 29

T
era’s soft moan brought my gaze up to where she lay on her stomach, tied down to the table. Everything was going according to plan, except for me. Actually, it had started out better than I’d planned. Tera realized as we walked down to a bar close to the shop that she had forgotten her ID, so we quickly popped by her apartment. While there I convinced her to have a celebratory drink with me to christen our night. She missed me dropping the strong sedative I had crushed up into her beer bottle. The sleeping pill mixed with the alcohol took quick effect once we had returned to my car. By the time we had gotten back to the shop, she was out. Parking behind the parlor, I entered through the back door. Quickly removing her shirt, I laid her gently on the padded surface and taped her hands together under the table.

I had gotten the red ink and Styx water mixed, as well as the needles placed in the tattooing machine, before reality started to set in again.

Now I sat on the floor against the cabinet in the dark, listening to Tera’s slow breathing and my own erratic heart rate. I didn’t need to retattoo her entire back. I planned on adding a few red highlights to her existing tattoo by using the red ink mixed with the underworld river water. But now that I was faced with her limp body, I couldn’t do it.

My own will to live easily conjured up the argument that I was returning things to their natural order. Humans weren’t meant to be immortal. It was as simple as that. I was correcting a mistake I’d made and I couldn’t take the chance of Tera fighting me on this matter, so I had to tattoo her while she was unconscious.

But that argument tasted like ash on my tongue when I thought about the fact that she was facing an almost immediate death should I succeed at my task. Was my problem that I was still determined to cheat death? Was I really so cocky that I thought I could save her when the grim reaper had already laid claim to her soul? I wanted it to be, because she seemed like a nice person and I didn’t want a nice person to die when there was so much evil in the world. I wasn’t sure. Maybe I didn’t want the guilt of being linked to her eventual death in any way because the guilt would be suffocating.

Tera groaned as the sound of tape stretching and scraping the underside of the table ripped through the silence. My muscles tensed as my eyes lifted to her face, waiting for her to fully awaken. She gave a soft grunt in the back of her throat as her struggles with the tape on her wrists became more pronounced. I hadn’t wanted to do this while she was awake. Not only would she then know that I was robbing her of her life, but the still-healing skin on her back would be extremely tender and sore as I laid the tattooing needle down for a second trip. She didn’t deserve the extra helping of pain to go along with the death that loomed.

As she woke, I knew that my conscience would only allow me to proceed if she realized what the situation was. I’d been afraid that if I’d told her sooner, she would have run. Even now, knowing that I was going to tell her the truth, I was unwilling to release her. I couldn’t take the chance. My life was on the line too.

“What’s going on?” Tera demanded in a rough, groggy voice. She lifted her head, her eyes blinking against the thick, inky darkness that filled the room. I doubted that she could see anything. I had been sitting in the dark for nearly an hour and could make out only shapes in the blackness. I could hear her struggling to free her hands again as her breathing started to become heavier. “Help! Help! Please, someone—”

“It’s okay, Tera,” I interrupted in a low voice. “I’m not going to hurt you.” It had been on the tip of my tongue to say that she was safe, but I swallowed those bitter words. She wasn’t safe. Not from me. Not from death.

Staring at her in the darkness, my will hardened. As distasteful as I found it, I knew that I was going to do this. It had come down to either me or her. If that was all that was at stake, I think I would have at least considered trading places with her. But it wasn’t. If I died, Trixie would be left to fend for herself. Bronx would be stuck with Reave because of me. And if the world found out there was an immortal walking the earth, there would be a war, resulting in the death of many, many more. Sure, I had made certain there were contingencies in place that could head off those problems for the most part, but so much could be solved it I simply let Tera die.

Her head whipped around to look in the direction from where my voice had originated. “Gage?”

“Yes.” It looked as if a lock of hair had fallen in front of her eyes and I resisted the urge to move over and brush it out of her face.

“Wh-where am I? Why am I tied down to this table? What’s going on?” Her tone grew angrier as she spoke now that she realized that she was alone with me. She had trusted me, was starting to count me as a friend, and I was going to betray that.

“You’re at the tattoo parlor,” I replied and then paused, my mind struggling for a way to launch into this ugly topic. “There’s something that we need to talk about.”

“Okay, fine, but why am I tied to this table and why are we in the dark?”

“Because I can’t take the chance of you running.”

“Running? What’s going on?”

I drew in a deep breath and slowly released it. Pulling my legs up toward my chest, I rested my elbows on my bent knees and dropped my head into my hands. “Do you remember when you came in and said that I had done something to your tattoo?”

“Yes, but you said you didn’t,” she replied softly.

“I lied. I did.” I paused and licked my lips as I searched for a good explanation. “After you left following our initial talk, I started thinking about what you had told me. I wondered if I could come up with some way to heal you. I didn’t want to tell you because I wasn’t sure that I could actually succeed and I didn’t want you to get your hopes up for nothing.”

“But you did succeed,” Tera argued. “I’m cured. The doctors said all the cancer is gone.”

“No, I didn’t!” I countered more sharply than I had meant to. I was angry at myself, not her, and I didn’t need to take it out on Tera.

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t cure your cancer. I made you immortal.”

I waited, letting the information sink in. The only response I received was the sound of duct tape stretching and scraping.

“I don’t understand. If I’m immortal, why can’t I break out of this tape?”

A fraction of a smile tweaked one corner of my mouth. “I said I made you immortal, not superhuman.”

Tera stopped struggling with the tape and looked back over at where I sat on the floor against the cabinet of potion ingredients. “Immortal? So I can’t die?”

“No, you can’t die.”

The soft “Oh” that followed my confirmation was somewhat reassuring, as she apparently didn’t seem overjoyed by the prospect of being immortal. While most people were afraid of death and sought to avoid it at all costs, few truly considered the overwhelming idea of forever while you watched everyone around you die. I was in no hurry to go rushing off to my own death, particularly considering that I still had so much that needed to be done, but I had no desire to live beyond the normal human life span.

“But there’s a problem.”

“Besides being immortal?” she snapped.

“No, it’s about being immortal. The grim reaper had already scheduled your death and he can no longer reap your soul because of what I’ve done. He’s informed me that if I don’t return your mortality so that he can do his job, then he will take my soul in your place.”

“Wait! He can do that? He can kill you instead of me?”

Threading the fingers of my left hand through my hair, I glanced up at her. “I don’t know if it’s particularly legal, but the grim reaper isn’t the type of guy I want to get into an argument with about his job.”

“Did he tell you when I was scheduled to die?” she asked in a small voice that shot straight through my chest.

I closed my eyes and for a brief moment I considered lying, but quickly pushed the temptation aside. Lying was what had gotten me into this mess. “He didn’t give any exact figures, but I got the impression that it was soon.”

“Well, that would be in keeping with what the doctors were saying,” she mumbled, talking mostly to herself. Pressing her forehead against the padded table under her, Tera heaved a heavy sigh. “I’m assuming that you’ve got me taped down to this table because you’ve got a plan for undoing this.”

“I was going to retattoo you with a different potion.”

“Will it kill me?”

“Honestly, I don’t know,” I admitted in a rough voice. “I am hoping that it simply counters the ingredients of the first tattoo, returning your mortality. With both the first tattoo and the one I want to do tonight, I am working with materials I don’t know the effects of.”

Her head popped up so that she could glare at me. “How can you use materials when you don’t know how they’re going to work?”

“Because the items are extremely rare and no one has ever used them,” I admitted. I gave a little snort. “I even had to die to get one of them,” I added under my breath.

“What do you mean you had to die?” she asked, her tone losing some of its earlier venom.

“It’s nothing.” I shook my head, not wanting any sympathy. She was the victim here.

“No, you said you died, but how? Are you dead . . . now?”

“No,” I replied, unable to stop the smile at her tense question. I wasn’t a zombie, ghoul, or member of the undead. “A friend revived me before it was too late. There was one ingredient I had to travel to the underworld to get.”

“Wasn’t that dangerous?”

“Yes, but then so is leaving you an immortal.”

“I understand.” She sighed.

I dropped my hands and stared at her in surprise. I hadn’t actually expected her to understand. And for a moment, I wasn’t sure if that made my job easier or harder. “You do?”

“Please,” she scoffed. “I’m in no rush to die, but then I’ve been living with the idea of dying young for a long time. Even if I hadn’t had this stupid disease, I wouldn’t want to live forever.”

“You’re very wise,” I said, which earned me a derisive snort.

“Nah, just not crazy. Should we get started? I’m beginning to get a little cold.”

Pushing to my feet, I shuffled over to the wall and flicked on the bright overhead light, leaving us both squinting and blinking for several seconds. I settled on the stool beside the table and moved the foot pedal underneath the toe of my sneaker as I pulled on latex gloves and took up the tattooing machine in my right hand. After spreading down some petroleum jelly over the area near her shoulder blades that I planned to start with, I gently set the side of my hand against her back and paused when a thought suddenly occurred to me.

“When we first met, you mentioned that someone had recommended me to you. Do you remember who?” I asked, holding my hand still on her back with the needle hovering an inch above her flesh.

This time, Tera paused for a long moment. I had started to lean down so that I could look at her face when she finally spoke.

“His name’s Atticus Sparks.”

I drew my hand away from her as my heart skipped once in my chest. Why had my former mentor sent her in my direction? I didn’t like this.

“He doesn’t have the best or cleanest setup,” she continued, unaware of my growing unease. “But a friend said that he works for cheap. I told Atticus Sparks about my situation and he sent me to you, saying that you could help.”

“He said I could help? What did he mean by help?”

“I’m not exactly sure and he refused to explain. I kind of thought you might be able to do something about the cancer, but I wasn’t about to get my hopes up. The doctors proved to be useless and I knew that it was just as useless to go begging a witch or a warlock for an easy fix. I had never heard of a tattoo artist curing a disease with some ink, but then this Sparks guy seemed pretty confident about your work. I guess he was right about you.”

Yeah, Sparks did prove to be right and it was more than a little disturbing. Why had Sparks sent her to me? I trusted Sparks. He knew my secrets, and had never done anything to make me doubt him. But as I sat on the stool with Tera taped down to the table before me, I had a sick feeling that I had been set up.

Closing my eyes for a second, I pressed my foot down on the pedal a couple of times, listening to the distinct sound of the buzz of the machine surge through the room like a bolt of wild electricity searching for an outlet. The sound eased some of the tension from my shoulders, placing me back into a comfort zone in which I could work. It wasn’t quite eleven. I had plenty of time to tattoo Tera and then head over to Sparks’s for a quick, informative visit.

A feeling of control crept into my frame and I opened my eyes. I was back in the driver’s seat of my life and I was ready to move forward. Lowering my right hand onto her back again, I pressed down the foot pedal and drew my first line along the black line I had drawn only a few days earlier. Beneath my hand, I could feel Tera flinch and her muscles jump as I tore at her skin. She didn’t make a sound, but I knew it hurt. There was nothing I could do to ease the pain short of knocking her out again.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured as I continued down her back. “I’ll try to work quickly. I don’t need to go over the entire tattoo again. I’m just adding some highlights.”

“It’s okay,” she said in a fractured voice that cut through me.

I worked without speaking. The only sounds in the room were the buzz of the tattooing machine and the occasional creak from my stool as I shifted my position. It was one of the fastest tattoos I had ever done. I completed one side of her back and then pulled all my equipment around to the other side so that I could reach the far side of the table. A part of my mind kept anticipating her request that I remove the tape around her wrists, but she never did. For that I was grateful since I wasn’t sure that I would be willing to remove it. Everything she said indicated she wanted me to tattoo her, but I didn’t want her to risk trying to run. I would have to stop her with magic, and I knew there would be no gentle way to do that.