Bound by Ink (A Living Ink Novel) (12 page)

Behind the barracks, a coyote sang a song of loneliness and longing.

“Hello, Joseph.”

Delicate, barely audible claws scraped the metal behind her head.

“Henry.”

Isa lifted an eyebrow, waiting for the final shoe to drop.

Raven cackle-coughed outside the door.

“Ruth. How am I supposed to go to Navajo land,” Isa muttered, flopping back into bed and hauling pitiful blankets up over her shoulder, “while I’m trapped in this frozen containment camp?”

Silence settled on the barracks, drifting against her back like a blanket of snow.

She’d always heard that it was dangerous to fall asleep in the snow—that the cold would steal away body heat until you didn’t feel the cold anymore. You’d feel warm and heavy and sleepy. And if you succumbed to that false siren song of wonderful, druggy warmth, you’d lie down in the snow to sleep and never wake up.

If that held true, she was perfectly safe. Her fingers cracked and popped when she bent them. So did her toes. Based on the constant pain in them, she’d taken to examining them for the pasty white evidence of frostbite each morning.

Her blankets might have had more effect if she’d had any body heat for them to insulate. As it was, as far as Isa could tell, they only radiated chill back to her.

Either she slept and dreamed, or she slid beneath the frozen crust of vision.

She stood on the desert sand surrounded by sage and pinyon. Save that the plants were twisted in thick, impenetrable ice. Hoar frost crackled beneath her shifting weight. Even the rocks wore growing coats of ice. Like a time-lapse film recording the onset of winter in the Arctic, ice climbed the brush and the trees as Isa watched, entombing the limbs.

A rangy jackrabbit, back legs still half coiled in the act of springing away, flash-froze into a feature-perfect ice sculpture.

Before her, beneath a foot of solid ice shot through with white inclusions, a fawn lay, her spots smeared with blood and gore, her stomach ripped open, and partially eaten. The single brown eye Isa could see was wide. So was her mouth. Frozen in terror-stricken death throes.

Isa’s breath, when she finally got it, sobbed into her chest. The cold plunged knives into her body from inside her lungs.

Too late, she noticed the ice had claimed her feet and ankles in hard-cased shackles. Freezing tendrils reached up her legs and torso, climbing inexorably for her heart.

Lifting her face, Isa sucked in the breath to scream.

Ice drove down her throat.

Above, the constellation of Orion twinkled in the black winter sky.

A tsunami of fresh green leaves slammed her out of nightmare. Out of bed entirely.

Isa hit damp concrete, still tangled in her blankets, breathing as if she’d only just remembered she ought to be.

On the far side of the barracks, someone groaned.

Apparently, she wasn’t the only one suffering bad dreams.

She sat up and fought off the useless wool encasing her.

Another surge of green rolled over and through her. A desperate, nails on a chalkboard scream of sandy beige power followed.

The two energy streams, one green, one the color of beach sand, lodged in her gut clinging in alien terror to her viscera, afraid to let go.

Magic.

Isa gasped.

More than magic. Live Ink going critical.

She leaped to frozen feet, spent a precious second retrieving the two pieces of stasis paper she’d been allowed to keep because no one knew what they were, and bolted out the door, following the line of pain and sorrow wrapping twin fists around her organs.

She emerged into the lavender light of early morning. The soldier who usually stood guard on the barracks sprinted toward the line of buildings beside the gate.

Quarantine.

Isa followed.

Even in full body armor, and weighed down by a rifle, the soldier ran faster than Isa did. Isa plowed through the door of the quarantine building to shouts of “Halt!” and slid to a stop facing three wide-eyed soldiers staring from her to the barred metal containment door.

“Open it!” Isa ordered. “I can stop what’s happening!”

Inside the barred room, someone screamed.

The two men and one woman stared at her, no comprehension in their faces. One of the young men hefted his weapon higher.

“Open the damned door!”

A cacophony of color and panic-stricken magic erupted from behind the door. It drove her to one knee.

The sandy beige thread of magic lost its grip on her gut. It flickered out.

Choking on horror, Isa forced herself to her feet and threw herself at the containment door. She’d expected to be intercepted and thrown back. Instead, she hit the door and heaved on the bar blocking it.

It was padlocked in place.

“They’re dying!”

“Step away from that door! That’s an order!”

“They’re dying!” Isa snarled into the face of the nearest soldier. “Needlessly! I can stop it! Open the fucking door!”

One of the young men grabbed her arm and pulled her bodily away.

She landed in the middle of the concrete, already gathering determination for another round.

He pointed his rifle at her face.

Sobbing, she clapped her hands over her ears as if that could block out the screams of terror and the fountains of panicked magic ripping through her.

The door to the quarantine center, the same one she’d come through, burst open on a roar of rage that echoed the one shrieking in her heart.

Shouted warnings to stop, calm down, broke off in cries of pain, and the rattling thud of soldiers in armor hitting the ground.

“Open the door.
Now!
” The bellow was pure Murmur. No hint of Daniel’s physicality hampered the command.

“Stand down!” a younger man’s voice countered, shaking. “Stand down or we’ll shoot!”

Murmur roared.

Terror poured into the empty space inside Isa. She rocketed to her feet before she realized she intended to interfere.

Pure, black rage pounded out of him in waves strong enough to rock her on her heels. Four soldiers, thin, reedy-looking striplings, clung to Murmur. He snarled. His eyes glowed emerald. Darkness poured from his fingers, pooling around his feet, swarming up his legs as if hell itself were rising to reclaim him. Shadowed
wings
enshrouded the body Murmur wore
.

Isa gasped. It was Murmur’s true form emerging from Daniel’s body. Why? Was he losing his grip on the body? Or would his magic always follow the pathway of his original shape?

Multiple voices shouted at Murmur to freeze. As the voices grew shriller, one of the soldiers beside her shouldered the butt of his rifle.

“
No!
” Isa threw herself at Murmur.

Tan-and-khaki uniforms flew across the room. The building shuddered with the impact as the soldiers who’d been attempting to restrain Murmur hit the metal walls.

She wrapped around the body he inhabited. “Stop. Stop it. Please.”

Murmur stumbled. Seething, choking magic twined around her chest and throat. For a split second, it tried to fling her away, too.

He growled.

Isa tightened her grip and breathed in the superheated ebony. Where it belonged. Motes of gold exploded like fireworks within her core, celebrating the return of his dark magic.

She sent the sparks out through her hands, into him.

His breath caught. He faltered. Arms, human arms without talons or webbed wings, circled her, and he shuddered.

“Stop,” Isa begged. “Please, stop.”

Shaking, he dropped to his knees in the middle of the floor with her still clinging to him. He settled back to sit on his heels, hauling her tight against him so that she straddled his lap.

It had to look indecent.

She didn’t care. She wrapped her legs around him, too. Anything to make the soldiers think twice about shooting either or both of them. If they even gave a damn.

“They’re dying,” he spat.

“I know,” she said. “These people don’t care.”

“Then they die, too.”

His ink black magic surged. Outraged golden light erupted inside her in answer to his anger.

He’d taught her to heal.

Isa did not want to know he could teach her to kill. She’d done enough of that already in her life.

Someone chambered a round.

The metallic sound pierced her already trembling heart.

“Stop it!” she shrilled at the soldiers. “I’ve got him. I’ve got him.”

She released him long enough to cup his face in shaking hands so she could meet those eyes where rage and magic boiled, building pressure like lava in a magma chamber.

Her ears popped as she dropped beneath the surface of his gaze. Weight settled on her ribs and a deep, bass rumble filled her ears.

“If they shoot you,” Isa murmured to him, “in this form, you’ll die.”

He stared at her.

The sense of pressure increased.

Isa couldn’t breathe.

“There will be a time and a place to avenge them,” she wheezed. “This isn’t it.”

He sagged and closed his eyes.

Air slammed into her cold lungs. She gulped in a deliberate breath and held it, hoping to ease the painful thunder of her heartbeat.

He touched his forehead to hers.

“One day,” he murmured, “you will test me and I will fail.”

He wasn’t talking about nearly getting himself killed.

“I can survive your rage.”

“You know nothing of my rage.”

“Murmur,” Isa whispered for his ears only, “you were turning.”

He froze.

“Ma’am? Sir? You’re under arrest,” one of the soldiers said. “Any further, unauthorized use of magic will result in the use of deadly force.”

Isa swiped moisture from her cheeks by rubbing her face against either sleeve of her dusty coat. It only smeared.

Whatever had happened in quarantine, it was over.

Only damning silence met her magical—no. Not quite silence. Isa sighed.

“The rogue Ink is dead,” she said. Her voice sounded dull. Flat. Accusing. “And you have a survivor.”

The death rattle of another round being chambered beside Isa’s ear brought her hands up in a gesture of surrender.

“It isn’t magic! It’s—another sense. I can’t shut it off! And your containment unit doesn’t contain.”

Murmur cleared his throat and looked at the soldier.

The muzzle of the rifle wavered.

“May we ground? It will reduce the stray energy running around the room,” he said. “Your weapons are far less likely to malfunction.”

The comment kicked her in the gut. Did he have that power? To make their weapons misfire? Force bullets astray? Had Isa mistakenly, in her desperation to protect him, doomed the people, and the tattoos, in quarantine to a messy death?

Fragile emotional equilibrium shattered. She covered her face with her hands and broke down crying like she hadn’t since childhood. Like she’d gone to great lengths to assure she’d never, ever cry again.

Murmur wrapped a hand in her greasy, knotted hair, and drew her into his chest.

She assumed the soldier answered in the affirmative, though she couldn’t hear him above the noise of her own guilt and grief.

Murmur set light fingertips against the scar on her throat. Magic twined into her.

It settled into the scar on her psyche. Warm. Welcome. The first tender shoots of spring flowers heralding the end of an ice age. It did more to soothe the sorrow wracking her than any words of comfort could have.

Rule eleven: Never assume you know everything about how magic works.

Her breath settled into a hiccoughing shudder. She slumped, spent, and dropped her hands from her swollen face.

“Ground,” he murmured at her ear.

She didn’t want to. Not if it meant losing that sense of him inside.

“Isa.”

The word resonated. It sounded like more than Murmur’s voice. Was that the caw of a distant crow? Or a raven.

Fine.

Closing her eyes, she drew every mote of golden fire into her core.

Even though he wasn’t a part of her anymore, Murmur’s power flowed around her, past her, caressing as it went as he pulled his power into his center.

The sense of him inside her being remained strong. Isa drew a breath deep into her lungs. It tasted faintly sweet. A little like hope.

“Now,” he said.

She exhaled magic down, through the base of her spine, into the earth.

He did the same.

“Wow,” a woman’s voice muttered.

“You can feel that?” one of the men demanded, a blade of accusation tucked into the question.

“Can’t you, Tulsca? Or too brain dead?” the woman said. “Sensing stuff isn’t a crime, asshole.”

“When it is, I hope I’m your assigned to your arrest detail, bitch.”

“As you were!” another soldier snapped.

Isa opened scratchy eyes. Her right cheek rested against Murmur’s chest. Khaki camo and boots filled her field of vision.

“All right,” the owner of those boots said. “On your feet.”

When he marched them out of the building, Isa lifted her face to the cold touch of early morning sunlight. The sun had crested the rolling expanse of frosty desert east of camp. Heavy frost glittered on a spiderweb strung between the wire mesh covering one of the windows and a rickety, makeshift light pole.

Isa caught sight of it out of the corner of her eye as she and Murmur passed. Her heart squeezed. Frowning, she turned her attention to the web and the spotted brown spider hanging head down in her home.

The breath left Isa’s lungs in a visible rush of steam.

Mountains. The web had been woven in a pattern Isa recognized from childhood. Sparkling frost outlined the familiar zigzag pattern the Navajo weavers used to signify the mountains that bordered the sacred land of the people.

Of course it was a message. She couldn’t work out how Ruth, Joseph, and Henry had influenced the black-and-tan banded-legged spider to weave their “there’s no place like home” image into her web.

The soldier marching them to the administration building strode through the frost-bejeweled work of art. He crushed the spider between glove and body armor.

The world lurched sideways beneath Isa’s feet.

Nausea sloshed in her stomach.

She gasped and stumbled.

Murmur closed a hand around her upper arm, holding her upright without apparent effort. Not a mote of power communicated from his touch.

Shivering, Isa swallowed hard. The only heat in her body gathered behind her swollen eyes.

Why were her spiritual guides so intent on sending her to a place she’d been thrown out of? And how could these people surrounding her be so callous about the needless destruction of innocent life?

Spider belonged to the Holy Ones.

And the man had so casually destroyed her.

Isa prayed for her. And for herself.

The soldier herding them pulled open the admin building door, then stood to one side as Murmur and Isa trooped into the dingy aluminum and gray panel erector set building. A kerosene heater in one corner attempted to take the chill off, but Isa could see the young receptionist’s breath as well as her own.

The young man nodded at the corporal huddled at the desk and went straight for the commander’s door. He knocked once and opened the door.

He gestured them in with a nod, rifle at the ready.

Murmur, his hand still on her arm, angled her in before him.

Her body seemed to be learning and accepting that even though it was Daniel’s body hanging on to her, he wasn’t a threat. Not anymore.

The thin-faced colonel stared at them, as if he’d already heard everything they’d done in the quarantine building or said to one another while trying to avoid being shot. He had someone else in the office, lounging in the sole folding chair in front of his desk.

The dark suit unfolded, and turned to glance at them.

“Mr. Delmedico,” Isa said.

“Ms. Romanchzyk. Mr. Alvarez,” the lawyer said. He smirked.

The “Mr. Alvarez” bumped her. She glanced at Murmur.

He straightened and released her.

“Lieutenant?” the colonel said. “Report.”

The click and rattle of the young man coming to attention sounded above the hum of the heater that seemed to take a much bigger bite out of the cold in this little office.

No one’s breath fogged as they spoke. It made no difference to the chill wracking her.

“The detainees attempted to breach quarantine, sir.”

“We attempted to save lives,” Isa said.

“You have the right to remain silent, Ms. Romanchzyk,” Delmedico noted. “I suggest you make use of it. Consider the tip my pro bono for the month.”

“How many innocent men, women,” she snapped, “and their tattoos died for nothing? We could have prevented it.”

She didn’t know what Murmur saw in the faces around them. She detected nothing but contempt.

He wrapped his grip around her arm again. This time, he squeezed.

She subsided.

“The rules regarding quarantine are clear,” the colonel said, his tone rigid. “So are the punishments for anyone who interferes with—”

“My client is no longer subject to your rules,” Delmedico said.

“He broke—”

“This piece of paper, signed by the governor, says otherwise.”

The colonel braced his hands on the desk and rose. “You are in my containment camp, Counselor. You, like your client, are subject to . . .”

Daniel’s lawyer had tossed the paper on the desk and pulled out his cell phone. He unlocked his keypad and pressed a button. “Shelly! Would you put me through to Cam? She’s expecting this call. Thanks.”

Cam?

The colonel froze.

“Camren?” Delmedico said into his phone. “I appreciate your time. Yes. Yes, I am. It’s going exactly the way you said it would.”

He chuckled. “Absolutely. I see why you put the colonel in charge here. Tough, thankless job. He’s playing by the book. Yes. Thank you, General.”

Ah.

Delmedico hung up and looked at the colonel.

The man’s lips thinned. “You’re bluffing.”

The phone on his desk buzzed.

Baring his teeth, he punched a button. “What?”

“General Micek, Colonel. Line one.”

He straightened. The glare he threw at Delmedico should have ignited the man’s suit. Even it couldn’t penetrate the cold.

“You’re a son of a bitch,” he snarled.

“Yes, sir,” the lawyer agreed. “I love my work.”

Nostrils pinched as the colonel sucked in an audible breath, he picked up the phone. “General. Yes, ma’am. They’re in my office right now. Yes. I have the document in question. Ma’am, the person in question was involved in a disturb—ma’am?”

His grip on the phone tightened until Isa could see the bones bulging against the tight skin of his hands.

“Yes, ma’am,” he gritted. He put the phone down in slow motion, appearing to mull over his options. When he looked up, only Murmur’s continued grip on her arm kept Isa from backing away.

“You have sixty seconds to get out the front gate,” he said. “After that, I’ll make you disappear where not even my general will find you.”

“Right. Mr. Alvarez? If you’ll come with me?”

Murmur didn’t respond immediately.

“Go,” Isa said.

He turned, her arm still in his grasp.

“She stays,” the colonel barked.

“No,” Murmur said.

Delmedico came instantly to Murmur’s side. “We need to go—now. You cannot help her, if that’s what you want, while you’re in here. I have to point out she accused you of kidnapping and torturing her.”

“She’s right,” Murmur snapped. “He did.”

Isa’s heart lurched.

“He, who?” the lawyer sounded confounded.

“His tattoo. The one that came off,” Isa said in a rush.

Delmedico frowned. His brow creased as calculation ran across his expression. He nodded. “We have to go, Mr. Alvarez.”

“Get her out,” Murmur commanded.

“We’ll discuss it,” the lawyer said.

“Go while you still can!” Isa shook off Murmur’s grasp.

Growling, he spun on his heel, and stalked away. His footsteps rattled the entire building.

She assumed the lieutenant either opened the door for them or had to leap out of Murmur’s path.

The rumble of him stomping his rage into the floor didn’t pause. The sympathetic ripples dwindled until they died away.

Leaving her bereft. All traces of him gone from within.

“Solitary,” the colonel snapped. The air around him shimmered silver. “And throw away the damned key.”