Bound by Ink (A Living Ink Novel) (5 page)

“Now.” Who’d said it? Isa? Murmur?

A tsunami of energy driven by intention crashed through her tiny physical shell, a violent, unstoppable monster, momentarily splintering her sanity. Agony lapped in around the ragged edges of the power coursing through her. Consuming her.

Murmur’s fingers on her face trembled. He uttered a wordless sound of anguish.

Wave after wave of power slowed, then drained away. Breath trickled into lungs abruptly greedy for air.

Isa gulped as if she had almost drowned. Discomfort tugged on her leg.

Murmur touched her hand.

She flexed the toes of her left foot, and when they moved, she breathed out a laugh. She wrapped her fingers around his. Levering herself to one elbow, she fumbled to unwrap bandages from her left arm. “There’s a splint on my leg. Would you mind?”

He moved down the bed, flipped the blanket up, and went to work freeing her. “What happened?”

Isa closed her eyes because she couldn’t close her memory’s ears to the hydra’s final cry. She flung gauze away and opened her eyes. “I killed a tattoo.”

He stilled.

“What happened?” he repeated, anger tight in his voice.

“A Live Tattoo came off a bus driver in the middle of the afternoon commute,” she said. “You might have felt that. I did. Even miles away.”

“Yes.”

“The bus driver died at the wheel. The bus flipped. Big pileup of cars and people. The tattoo gorged on magic and blood, feeding on people trapped by the accident. It was near overload when I got there. Stasis paper would never have contained it.”

“It didn’t occur to you to bleed the excess magic off?” he said, jerking the leg splint free.

Isa sat up. At least her physical body didn’t hurt anymore. She drew the blankets around her, even knowing they couldn’t shield or cushion her, and crossed her arms against the chill seeping out from behind her heart.

“Bleed it where?” she demanded. “And how was I supposed to do that while it was trying to make a snack pack of me?”

He blew out a breath that sounded like a curse.

The night sky curtain of their shield collapsed to the floor, where it glistened like frost, fading slowly into the linoleum.

“How did you get in here?” Isa asked.

“This face opens many doors.”

She didn’t want to know what kind of doors he meant.

“I cannot stay,” he said.

“Understood.”

“I wonder.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? You wanted your freedom. You have it.”

“It hurts.”

Her gaze jerked to his face, save she couldn’t see anything but shadow. Discontent rolled her like the tidal wave of magic had moments ago. How was she supposed to be happy with a situation she’d never before heard of?

The man who’d kidnapped her was dead and her Live Tattoo had his body. She’d given a demon from another plane the freedom of this world. What did that make her? She shouldn’t be surprised he found freedom painful. Her world wasn’t always kind to those who’d been born to it. What kind of sense would it make to someone like Murmur?

“I’m sorry,” she said, then sighed. “There’s more to the story.”

He stilled, not even breathing from what she could hear.

“Before I killed it, the hydra showed me someone cutting it from its host with magic.”

Murmur hissed.

She tightened her arms, pressing her blankets hard against her ribs.

“The magic was pure, cold silver. I saw it earlier today, on a Magic Eater that attacked one of Ria’s gang. I’d assumed the creature had gotten trapped here, left over from Daniel and his Live Ink. Now I’m not so sure.”

“What?”

Isa frowned at the flat, dead question. “What the hell is happening?”

“You can’t have fought a Magic Eater,” he growled.

“I did.”

“It isn’t possible.”

“Bind ink sure as hell slowed it down,” she said, unwilling to disclose how much luck had been involved both in the Magic Eater’s and the hydra’s deaths. “And I didn’t kill it. Ria did. I couldn’t even heal, Murmur. I did what you showed me. It didn’t work. Why?”

“Who?”

“Walter. The man the Magic Eater attacked.”

Fabric rustled as Murmur shifted. “Not enough magic.”

His echo of one of Daniel’s old accusations stopped her breath.

“The Magic Eater took his power,” Murmur said. Memory, sodden and weighted with old blood, trembled in his voice. “There was nothing to guide you. Nothing to meet you halfway. You would not help your friend Ria, either, I think.”

“Because he has no magic.”

“Yes.”

She sagged. He hadn’t been saying she didn’t have enough power. It wasn’t her fault. Not her failing. Entirely.

“Also. You were right. The Magic Eater wouldn’t have been ‘left over.’ It wouldn’t have survived the past three weeks without feeding. There would have been attacks.”

“How did it get here, then? Daniel is dead. He didn’t pull that Magic Eater through or yank the hydra tattoo off of that bus driver.”

“No,” Murmur said. “Uriel did.”

“Who?”

“Daniel’s Live Ink.”

Isa shivered.

Murmur’s nemesis. The gorgeous, perfect angel, golden curls, sculpted features, snow-white robes, wings to match, and the foulest, most horrifying heart she’d ever encountered. He’d murdered Murmur’s infant son.

It shook her to discover something that evil had something mundane as a name.

“How? He got sucked through the portal back to your world,” she said. She hated the tremor in her voice. “I closed the door behind him. How could he possibly?”

“The portal.”

“I closed it.”

“You didn’t lock it. He’s reaching through,” he said. “Seeking a means to pry it open again.”

“To come after us.”

“Yes.”

No accusation of arrogance for thinking Uriel counted her enough of a threat to pursue. No assurance that the monster would leave her alone in favor of tormenting Murmur.

“What now?” Isa asked.

“The portal must be sealed.”

She reeled. She’d thought they were done. That she’d sacrificed her life for the purpose of protecting her world and Murmur’s all at the same time. Except that, apparently, she hadn’t.

“The spell Daniel and Uriel were performing. It broke the seal and . . .” he began.

“How do we lock it?” She. How did
she
lock it?

Fabric rustled and his silhouette grew taller at the grim note in her voice. “Blood. And life.”

Isa clenched her fists. “A sacrifice.”

“A sacrifice.”

He didn’t have to say it.

She heard it in the vulture of silence circling the room.

Him.

Or her.

“Why us?”

“We were the key that unlocked the door.”

She shook her head. “Daniel and Uriel were.”

“Their lives threw the portal wide, yes, but it was our sundering that unlocked it.”

Breath stabbed into her chest. “Locking the portal will cut off Uriel’s access to this world?”

“Yes.”

“Is that enough for you?”

Silence stretched long and sticky tendrils in the dim room. Finally, he shifted. “Trapping Uriel on that side, when he wants to be here, will not be as good as killing him. But it will be vengeance enough.”

She nodded. Exiling Uriel on his side of the door would strand him. He’d never be the commander in the hell he wanted to make of this world. Sounded good to her.

“Better, maybe,” she said. Was a lifetime of frustrated ambition sufficient punishment? Only one problem.

“I won’t sacrifice you,” she said.

Murmur squared Daniel’s shoulders. “Then you give me no choice. I will sacrifice you.”

“You threatening my life? Now everything’s back to normal,” Isa said.

Murmur snorted and stroked the back of her hand.

“Teach me how to do what you said about shunting power away from someone overloading on magic,” she said.

“How do you have the power you do and not know what to do with it?”

“Everything you’ve shown me,” she said, bristling, “is supposed to be impossible in this world.”

“Just as fighting a Magic Eater is impossible in mine?” he said, his voice muted as he considered.

She nodded. Not that he could see in the dark. “Of course. We’re each of us bound by our expectations and what we assume to be true.”
Rule eight?

A single tap sounded on the door, startling her. The containment lock clicked.

“I have to go,” he said.

“I—” Words piled up in her throat, choking her silent. So much she couldn’t say.
I need you. Don’t leave me. Take me with you.
Prisons. All of them. She’d helped him achieve freedom. She refused to be the one to steal it from him again.

She cleared cold weight out of her throat. “Thank you. I would have spent days in pain waiting for the drugs to clear my system.”

“I know,” he said, moving to the door. “Your pain was mine.”

She frowned. “What?”

He shrugged, the motion visible against the light filtering through the curtain on the door. “The price of attaining freedom through you.”

He slid the door open, slipped through the opening, and then closed it behind him.

A chill sliced her body. It landed on the internal scar of his leaving as if Murmur walking away ripped him out of her psyche all over again.

The door opened.

Light from the hallway stabbed into the room. A figure, too small to be Murmur, poked her head in.

Nurse.

Funny thing about healing with magic—something she’d learned a month or so ago. With enough applied power, and for some reason, in combination with Murmur she’d had plenty, she’d healed like nothing ever happened. Yet anyone who’d seen the original injuries had to come to terms with the fact that they’d vanished.

Isa braced to face hours of surprise and incredulity from the medical staff and from her friends as if they didn’t inflict invisible wounds with every disbelieving exclamation.

***

Steve showed up in time to hear the doctor discharge her. He drove her home, shaking his head.

“I’ll walk you up,” he said, pulling up to the curb in front of her apartment building.

“No need,” Isa said.

“Humor me. You shattered a leg,” he said. “I’m still processing . . .”

“What? The fact that you think I shouldn’t be walking within sixteen hours of having shattered the bone?” she demanded as she climbed the stairs to the second floor without so much as a twinge of discomfort. Bless Murmur’s self-interested heart.

“This is tough stuff,” he said. “You’re defying what most of us believe is possible.”

She flinched and paused in unlocking her front door. So she could do a few things that defied expectation. When would she know enough to stop murdering creatures because she didn’t know what else was possible?

Dog tags jingled on the other side of the door.

Shaking her head, she opened the apartment.

Bouncing, puffing air in short huffs out through his open mouth, her dog plowed into her newly solid legs.

“Oof! Morning, Gus,” Isa said. “Nathalie? Are you still here?”

“She came over and took care of them,” Steve said. “But I think she went home to pack so she could move in until you were released from the hospital.”

The spot warmed where Murmur’s fingers had rested against her cheek as he’d helped her heal. Her shoulders eased lower. She smiled at her whining, three-legged dog.

Her brown tabby and white cat sauntered out of the bedroom, her tail curved high in the air. She sneered as she passed the enthusiastic, wagging dog.

“Good morning, Ikylla.” Isa offered up her hands for feline inspection.

Whiskers tickled Isa’s blue palms as she sniffed and then glanced up to meet her gaze. Her golden eyes half closed. She presented her back.

Isa obliged and stroked the cat as she walked out from under Isa’s hand.

Casting another half-lidded look over her shoulder, Ikylla padded toward the kitchen.

“You’re only good for one thing,” Steve noted, humor in his tone.

“Opening her cat food can,” Isa agreed. “At least Gus loves me for my access to his leash and w-a-l-k-s. Come on, silly dog. Breakfast. Come on in, Steve. Can I offer you coffee?”

“I wish,” Steve said. “I thought I’d be stopping by the hospital long enough to catch you between morphine doses. I didn’t expect . . . I’m glad I could bring you home.”

“I am, too, but you have to go?” she finished for him.

“The investigation is going to take days,” he said. “They’re still recovering victims. When you’re up to it, I need a statement. The AMBI may be involved.”

Bracing her hands on the kitchen counter, Isa blew out a slow breath. “Any estimated death toll?”

“Forty-eight confirmed dead. A hundred and three still missing.”

“Damn.”

“Not all of them were the Ink.”

“I know. You and I both know there were too many people in the lake.”

“We have divers in the water,” he said. “But yeah. I know what you’re getting at. Not many of us are thinking in terms of rescue, either.”

Corpse recovery.

“I wish . . .” She broke off. What? That she’d known what the hell she was doing out there? That it could have ended differently?

It hadn’t. What good was magic, what good was she, in the face of that kind of death toll? She’d believed she’d trained hard most of her life to handle magic and there was still so much she didn’t know.

“Yeah,” Steve said.

Slowly, methodically, her hands shaking, Isa started coffee, then fed Ikylla and Gus.

Despite his declaration that he had to go, she and Steve stood on opposite sides of the kitchen, arms crossed, watching the dog and the cat, listening to the hiss and spit of the coffeemaker.

“You’re taking a thermos with you. I’ll write up what happened from my end,” she said, rummaging in the cupboards for the aged metal cylinder. “But you know I’ll answer questions anytime. For this, I swear I’ll even play nice with the Acts of Magic Bureau of Investigation agents. I’m also going to suggest that you might benefit from expanding your stable of Live Ink consultants.”

“With who, Ice? Daniel Alvarez? This wasn’t your fault. You didn’t do that bus driver’s Live Ink, did you?”

“No.”

“You took out that thing on the bridge. I don’t know how you did it and I don’t care. Maybe I should, but I don’t. I’m grateful. Both that you did the job and that you survived it. One hundred percent selfish and puerile motive on that last one, I admit.”

An ache she hadn’t realized was there eased around her heart. “I’m glad. On all counts. This is going to have repercussions. The release of so much magic—I’m not entirely sure what to expect.”

“I do,” Steve said. “Marches and protests started last night after the candlelight memorial. I’m hearing some disturbing rumblings about disqualifying people with Live Ink from jobs like public transportation, emergency services, teaching, and daycare.”

She jerked her gaze up to stare at him. “Discrimination?”

He shrugged. “It’s just talk at this point. And it’s being framed as protecting the lives of everyone without Living Tattoos. You know how any tragedy plays out. People die. Fingers get pointed.”

She did know. And she knew exactly where the fingers needed to be pointed. At Uriel. And by extension, at her, for failing to lock Uriel out of this world. But the only other person on earth who knew that didn’t belong to this earth.

Isa wasn’t sure anyone on this earth would feel better knowing where to lay the blame. She didn’t.

Creases lined Steve’s forehead. His shoulders slumped and he wouldn’t meet her eye.

It would have been easy to stay where she was and let him deal with his worries. Easy, but cowardly. She filled the thermos, capped it, and set it on the table beside him. She uncrossed his arms and put them around her.

He smiled, but the worry didn’t dissipate.

“Thank you for bringing me home.”

He nodded. “My pleasure. I don’t know when I’ll see you.”

“I understand. Call when you can. All I want is to know you’re okay. If you need me, for anything, don’t hesitate.”

His smile flashed into a grin, then died. “As soon as I can. In the meantime, I need you to be careful.”

“Of course.”

“What I’m saying,” Steve said, “is that you might want to think twice about doing Live Ink for a little while.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. It hadn’t crossed her mind. She nodded. “Excellent advice.”

That she ultimately couldn’t take.

***

She hadn’t been inside Nightmare Ink ten minutes after opening the shop at noon when a crash outside the door brought her to her feet. A compact woman with short-cropped silver hair stumbled into the plate glass window next to the door, shaking soil and pansies from one of her shoes.

Beyond her, the tree on the corner waved fuzzy with new growth branches against the blue-and-white mottled mid-April sky.

The woman straightened and yanked open the door. The bell on the door jangled. She lurched into the shop. Her face stretched long, as if she had weights hooked into her bones and muscles.

Isa frowned and stepped up to the reception desk. The woman looked familiar, but she couldn’t place her.

“Something’s wrong,” she blurted out, reaching inside her rain jacket.

Her voice reinforced Isa’s impression that she should know who she was.

The woman pulled out a piece of carefully folded paper and set it on the counter.

The cogs aligned in Isa’s brain with a clunk. Where she hadn’t recognized the woman, Isa definitely recognized the sheet of stasis paper she’d made and used to rescue the woman and her Live Ink three weeks ago. “You’re the one with the mermaid tattoo. From the hospital. Helen, wasn’t it?”

In Isa’s defense, the woman had been facedown on the blood-smeared floor of her hospital room when last they’d met.

Nodding, the woman met Isa’s gaze, her brown eyes filling. “She’s sick.” She pressed her lips so tight, they disappeared.

Isa realized then that the sag in her features was terrible fear. She reached for the paper, then hesitated before touching it. The unnatural blue of her stained palms seemed to glow in the momentary spring sunshine slanting in the window. “May I?”

Helen’s head jerked assent.

Isa unfolded the paper and caught her breath.

Surely the tattoo had been brighter than the pale creature supine on the rocks. The stasis paper she’d made should have preserved her perfectly.

Isa’s heart bumped into faster rhythm.

Something
was
wrong.

Nathalie entered the shop. “Holy crap, Ice! Glad to see you. How’re you feeling? What happened out front?”

Helen’s shoulders drooped.

“It’s nothing. I’ll take care of it,” Isa said. “We’re headed downstairs. Can we talk later?”

“Of course,” Nathalie said, grinning and nodding at Helen. “Welcome. Can I bring you some coffee?”

Isa’s piercing artist had revamped her spiky black and purple-tipped hair for spring. She’d grown her shorn locks an inch longer and colored the curls robin’s egg blue. It turned her fair complexion translucent. In a nod to her underlying Goth sensibility, she’d traded her metallic facial piercings for all black jewelry.

“No, thank you,” Helen said as she followed on Isa’s heels to the basement door.

Isa no longer locked the door to the basement. Since she’d survived having Murmur crammed into her internal landscape and then his subsequent exit, nothing about the magic she worked downstairs frightened her any longer. It couldn’t rise up to swallow her any more than her Live Tattoo had. Score one for having some kind of demon Inked to her skin and crowded in to share her psyche. Maybe she’d learned another layer of control.

Of magic, anyway.

“I’m Isa,” she said.

“I know,” the woman replied, following as if afraid to let the mermaid out of her sight. “What happened to your hands?”

Isa snorted as she led the way down the narrow concrete steps into the basement. “Paint.”

Helen would have trod on Isa’s heels had she not been a step below her.

Someone, Isa suspected Troy, had put her blue canvas against the wall and covered it. A blank canvas stood on the easel, inviting her to fill it.

Turning her back, Isa switched on the computer outside the containment studio and activated the monitoring equipment.

In the dim studio, red lights winked near the juncture of wall and ceiling.

Helen paused. “What is that? Cameras?”

“The Acts of Magic laws require that certified Live Tattoo artists record everything that goes on inside a containment studio,” Isa said. “For your protection and for mine.”

“Nothing like having ‘cover your ass’ codified into law,” Helen said, then snorted. “Especially now.”

Isa ushered her into the metal and black basalt studio, nodding at the recliner bolted to the floor in the middle of the room. “Have a seat. Will you hold her paper for me? I need to seal the room.”

Helen lowered herself into the chair, flinching as her left arm bent in easing her weight into the recliner. When she took the paper, it trembled.

“We’ll figure this out,” Isa promised. “Even if I have to put her back on you right now in order to save her, I won’t let her die.”

A tear spilled over, but Helen’s lips reappeared in a tremulous smile. She nodded.

No pressure, Ice.

She shut and locked the heavy metal door. She called golden energy. It concentrated at her core, a pillar of sage-and-pinyon-scented magic flowing through her, slower and colder than she’d become accustomed to while Murmur’s magic had augmented hers. They’d been stronger together. She was smaller now. Diminished. Was he?

Sending energy through her right palm, she cast a circle within the room, walling maudlin conjecture off outside the circle. Save a life first. Miss her tattoo and count her deficiencies later.