Bound by Ink (A Living Ink Novel) (17 page)

Energy crushed Isa to her knees. At least, she thought it did. It’s where she was when her vision cleared.

The agents stood frozen. Staring. Uncertainty stood out in their faces and in Lawrence’s white-knuckled grip on his phone.

She gasped, dropped her circle, and bolted to her feet. Again. Her knees ached. She wanted to run. She had to hobble. Another sledgehammer of power slammed her shield as she crossed the street without waiting for the light.

Car horns blared.

“Isa! Stop!”

They caught up on the other side of the street. Lawrence attempted to take her arm. To restrain her.

Stupid.

She was over full of ice and magic. Isa snarled at him, shoving shards of gold into his hand from the point of contact.

He yelped and snatched his hand away.

“Ink coming off,” she snapped. “Incredibly powerful. I can capture it for you if I get there in time. Keep up.”

“Live Ink?” Lawrence demanded, thorns in his tone as he paced her. “You can corral rogue Ink?”

Max hadn’t briefed them? Who was he trying to snow? Her or the agent twins? What else didn’t they know that she could use against them?

“Yes.” No need to mention that they’d never control a rogue tattoo. They didn’t have the power. She toyed briefly with the notion of feeding them to her stasis paper. Until another flash of magic struck her shield like lightning trying to split an oak. “Ow. I’m making the capture of rogue Ink my specialty. I’d be glad to show you.”

“The discussion about your compliance isn’t over,” Lawrence warned.

No. No, it wasn’t. They’d use George to force her to aid and abet their crimes. She had no doubt. She tucked the notebook into her coat pocket and ran the four blocks down Pike Street to the market.

Police cars lined the cobbled street in front of the closed sanitary market, lights still flashing and more sirens approaching in the distance.

Isa barreled through the gathered throng of spectators and beneath the Police Line tape being strung up by a young woman in uniform. She shouted.

Cops converged, yelling at her to halt.

“I work with Steve Corvane!” Isa hollered. “Your victim has Live Ink going critical.”

“Isa?” Officer Jackie Pattaja, Steve’s second-in-command for the Acts of Magic Unit, emerged from the crowd of uniforms, pale and harried-looking. “Jesus, you’re the answer to a prayer. Let her go. She’s cleared.”

Relief and an absurd sense of normalcy jolted Isa.

The officers boxing her in parted.

Jackie grabbed her wrist and dragged her into the market. “Holy crap, you’re freezing. What the hell have you been doing? What happened to your hands?”

Isa didn’t look back to see what had become of Dick and Lawrence. Isa tasted old copper. Blood. She stared at Jackie. Dark stains smeared her uniform.

“You okay?” Isa gasped.

“Not mine,” she said, glancing down. “This way.”

Isa had to jog to keep up as magic slammed her shield again. “Hurry.”

“Right.” Jackie led Isa past the empty, shadowed fish market, and the statue of the pig.

As they turned north into darkness, the hair at the back of Isa’s neck stirred.

She slowed, and glanced over her shoulder as if she could catch someone watching them from the locked and shuttered stalls. “What the hell is going on, Jackie?”

“I was going to ask the same of you.”

“Please tell me Steve is here.”

“That’s a no. Got himself put on leave when you vanished.”

Isa groaned. Even after acknowledging that she couldn’t drag Steve into her situation, she had secretly hoped he’d be here. Disappointment stung. “Just leave? Is that a good sign?”

“He has not yet torched his future with the police department,” Jackie said, leading her into the darkened square of empty stalls off the main thoroughfare of the market. They emerged into glaring lights and the reek of blood and terror. Uniforms and suits swarmed the scene as if the victim’s combat boots didn’t still twitch.

One of the suits glanced up. He and Isa gaped at one another. One of the AMBI agents who’d hauled her and Murmur to the camp.

“Pattaja!” he barked. “What the hell?”

“Your victim has Live Ink going critical,” Isa said again.

“Impossible! We’ve rounded up—”

“Grow up,” she snapped and elbowed him to one side. She hadn’t bothered to look back to see whether Lawrence and Dick had followed. Mainly because she didn’t care. It would be a boon if they ended up cuffed in the back of a patrol car. Which made it highly unlikely. Nothing was ever that easy. Ever.

She retrieved one of her last two pieces of stasis paper from her jeans pocket and went to her knees beside the dying man. “Gloves!”

A slight woman with long brown hair shoved a pair of latex gloves into her hand. Isa yanked them on.

“She shouldn’t be here!” the agent snarled above her head. “She’s wanted.”

“Shut up, Ogilvy,” Jackie ordered. “She may be your ticket to living through the night.”

“Jackie, I need four feet.” Isa yanked open the injured man’s shirt, following the line of magic emanating from him.

“Everybody back!” Jackie bellowed. “Give us a perimeter.”

Isa sent her shield out into the empty space that formed around them. Calling up more magic, she cast a circle, filling the interior with ice-cold gold thick enough to hold the tattoo if it came off before she could usher it to paper.

“Who are you?” Ogilvy demanded.

Isa glanced up.

Lawrence and Dick stood at the edge of the circle. So did Simon and a wan-faced George.

She gritted her teeth on an assurance that she wouldn’t let anyone hurt George. She had no such assurance.

The AMBI agent grunted. She’d missed hearing how Lawrence and Dick had responded to Ogilvy’s challenge.

While the man beneath her hands wasn’t dead yet, the bloody, fleshy mess of his throat made it clear where this was going. Only a Living Tattoo the size Murmur had been could heal that kind of damage, as she’d had reason to discover.

The chill in her core shifted on a surge of queasiness. Another wave of magic, weaker than the hits that had brought her running, washed the pool of congealing blood sticking her sneakers to the cement.

“Ms. Romanchzyk is with us,” Lawrence said.

Ogilvy grumbled.

Isa uncovered the tattoo.

A cougar. Stylized. Tribal. Beautiful. Frantic. Already, the skin around the tattoo tore.

Smoothing a piece of paper, she gathered magic, and then settled the sheet over the tattoo. She nudged the tattoo into the etheric with her.

The dying man came, too.

Unexpected, but if he had the strength to cross, she could try healing him. She knelt in the etheric to touch him.

His tattoo screamed—the cry of a hunting cat that raised gooseflesh on her arms and made the skin between her shoulder blades crawl.

“Help me!” she demanded, summoning yet more power to layer upon what had already built up within her.

The man’s lifeline snapped.

“No. Wait!” Isa reached for his already retreating spirit.

As if he hadn’t heard, he hurried away to whatever vision of afterlife or oblivion he preferred.

When her magic touched and slowed him, power flashed from his fingers. It exploded in her face, knocking her spinning. His tattoo caught her.

She’d take that as a “no.”

His life. His death. His choice.

It was her job to respect that choice. She whispered a blessing at his back. Turning her power on the big cat, she caught the creature’s anchor lines and attached them to the paper. “Go to the paper. You’ll live. You’ll be safe.”

For a little while
.

The cat’s squall of pain and rage cut off the moment its first line tied to the paper. In the etheric, the cat licked its whiskers in a nervous gesture. Claws flexing, it mrrped a question and vanished.

In her physical hands, the paper suddenly weighed heavy.

She pulled all evidence of her power back into herself and stepped into her body.

The man beneath her hands had gone still, his flesh cooling.

Her circle shimmered with her energy drifting through the air. It was like being inside a snow globe some demented child kept shaking. Isa shivered and frowned as she lifted the stasis paper and glanced over her shoulder.

“You have it?” Lawrence demanded. He sounded eager.

Her stomach turned. She exhaled a slow breath and lifted the paper to the light. The tattoo had been caught in midstride, as if it stalked down the face of an invisible boulder.

She took down her circle. No more need for that kind of containment.

Magic like a razor, black with dried blood, sliced her shield. Isa stiffened. She jerked her head around, trying to pinpoint the source.

It faded. As if she’d imagined it. As if someone knew she was searching for him. Or her.

“What’s wrong?” Jackie demanded. She’d come closer.

Lawrence and Dick hadn’t, making it clear that Jackie knew Isa had dismantled her circle. She could see Isa’s magic. The agent twins couldn’t.

The skin between her shoulder blades tightened again. She had to keep from peering over her shoulder.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I have the oddest feeling.”

“What?”

“We’re being stalked. Hunted.”

“It’s the tattoo. Isn’t it?”

Isa glanced at the paper in her hands. “I don’t think so.”

Jackie sighed. “Okay. Look. We were keeping this from the media because we weren’t sure what we’re dealing with, but you’re clearly picking up on what we didn’t want you to know.”

Isa met her gaze, waiting.

“We’ve got some kind of serial killer on the loose here. This is the third person in two weeks.”

“A serial killer with magic?”

“Maybe.”

“Using what? Razors?”

“Blades of some kind. Yes. Some of those Japanese swords could produce injuries like these.”

Isa shuddered. “He or she is still here. Watching us.”

“Is that possible?” Dick asked.

She glanced at him.

He’d crept closer, too, and crouched outside her shield, studying her. Doubt crinkled the skin between his brows. “With all the police present?”

Isa didn’t answer. What could she say? He’d believe her or he wouldn’t.

His frown deepened as he stared at her. “What are you sensing?”

“Someone with enough magic and training to know to hide from me,” Isa said. She glanced at George.

His gaze lost focus. His head tipped to one side. A faint ripple of his pink-purple magic touched her.

She knew the instant he caught the murderer’s signature.

George recoiled.

Simon’s hold on him tightened.

Isa’s lip curled when George grimaced in pain.

Jackie drew an audible breath and shouted, “Brown!”

Half a dozen cops jumped as if they’d been hit with the business end of a cattle prod.

“There’s this thing called a radio, Pattaja,” a thick man with bright red hair growled as he appeared in the pool of bloody light. “Maybe you’ve heard of it. What’s up?”

“Detective Brown, Isa Romanchzyk, our Live Ink consultant. She has a feeling our perp is still here, watching the proceedings,” Jackie said, her shoulders climbing. She straightened and pointedly did not look around. “I want your permission to go after him. Or her.”

Detective Brown turned bright blue eyes upon Isa. He studied her, then the agents at her back. He nodded once.

“What am I looking for?” Jackie asked, crouching beside Isa.

Isa met her eye and started. Jackie? A magic tracker? If she put Jackie on the trail, what would Lawrence and Dick do with her? Would they disappear a police officer? Could they?

Was there anyone Isa couldn’t destroy?

Rule fourteen: Magic is just as likely to cause problems as solve them.

“Got a color for me?” Jackie prodded as if discussing the weather. “An impression I can chase down?”

“Pure, insatiable bloodlust,” Isa said, matching Jackie’s muted tone. “So pure, it’s hard to get a color on it.”

She cast about, trying for a way to describe what she’d seen—that commingling of shadow and fresh blood. “Dried blood, maybe? Black tinged red. I can’t trace it. I lose it in the background noise.”

Jackie’s gaze on her face lost focus. She tipped her head to one side and shuddered. A blue roller, the color of her uniform, washed past Isa and dissipated. Jackie’s gaze slid into focus on Isa again.

“Got it, I think,” she said. Her voice wavered. “Disturbing and subtle.”

Isa glanced between Jackie and Detective Brown. “You can’t go alone.”

“If I’m tracking a magic-using serial killer, I’m the best one qualified,” Jackie said.

“You need the rest of the Acts of Magic Unit,” Isa grumbled.

“Most of the unit have their hands full chasing down unregistered Live Ink wearers. That tattoo you recovered is the only reason I was here,” she said. “It’s not my investigation. I can’t—”

“Can you follow it?” Dick asked, pinning an avid expression on Jackie.

Isa’s heart clenched. She’d exposed Jackie to these jackals.

“Let’s find out,” Jackie said, sounding pressed flat.

“Bullets can still stop magic users,” the redheaded detective noted, bending down as if looking at something Isa had pointed out on the body.

His investigation, Isa gathered as she glanced at Lawrence and Dick. She’d half expected them to take over the scene.

“Take a walk with me, Pattaja,” the detective said, his tone suddenly affable. Trying not to tip off whoever or whatever Isa sensed watching? He straightened.

Jackie shot a strained-looking grin at him. She rose. “Is this about that slot Silva left empty when he transferred to LA?”

“Could be. Could be,” the man acknowledged, buttoning his charcoal suit jacket as he strolled beside her. “Hear me out?”

Jackie’s eyes glassed over as, Isa assumed, she shifted her vision slightly out of this world.

Brown wasn’t going to let Jackie track a killer alone. Relief walked a crunchy path down Isa’s spine. Until she caught sight of Lawrence and Dick studying Jackie like snakes reared back and gauging the best time to strike.

Isa’s throat went dry.

Both officers, suited redhead and Jackie in her blood-smeared blue uniform, wandered up the corridor the way Jackie had led Isa in, the redhead’s voice dwindling to a murmur as they walked.

A sensation like ice trickled down her spine. Isa was glad she wasn’t the one chasing down a sword-and-magic-wielding whacko.

She turned her attention back to the cat tattoo. The transfer to the page had gone well. She had the Live Ink. She folded the stasis paper and tucked it into the inside pocket of her jacket. She’d have to find someone to put the cat on soon. Between the cat and the whirlwind, she’d started to amass the library of fiends she’d mentioned to Troy and Nathalie.

How long could she safely go on feeding tattoos before the paper would no longer hold the Ink? Something else she needed to ask her newest teacher. Isa hoped Master Masatoshi would have an answer. Or at least suggestions.

Assuming she ever got to talk to him again.

Hadn’t there been a story about a book that granted wishes, but that required blood in order to actually open and read it? If she accumulated any more tattoos on stasis paper, she’d be making that book. On so many levels.

Feeding Lawrence and Dick to her burgeoning collection of stasis-held Live Ink started to sound good. It would solve a multitude of problems. Save that it would turn her into something she feared.

No meeting evil with evil.

“Anything else I can do to assist here?” Isa asked.

The petite woman with long brown hair crouched beside her. She’d been the one to hand Isa the gloves she wore. “Why didn’t his Ink heal him?”

“It tried,” Isa said. “But that neck injury—”

“Severed most of his spinal cord,” she said. “At least that’s what it looks like without an autopsy.”

Isa swallowed, trying hard to keep her gaze from wandering back to the now crusty mess of flesh. “Between that and the blood loss . . .”

She nodded. “You’re saying he should have died instantly, and in this case, the Ink made him linger. Poor bastard.”

Isa nodded as she stripped messy gloves from her hands.

A wave of bloody, shadowed malevolence brought Isa to her feet, swaying.

“Isa?” Lawrence said.

A woman screamed. Her cry rolled along the concrete hallway.

Jackie.

Isa sprinted the direction Jackie and the other cop had gone, into the main market, and down the stairs to the lower level.

Voices, sharp with fear, grabbed at her from behind.

She couldn’t let them stop her. She’d discovered that the fear of a friend being hurt outweighed her fear of whoever loitered in the market preying on people.

Footsteps pounded in Isa’s wake, but it was as if the initial pulse of magic had struck everyone else with paralysis. From the sound of the shoes on the concrete behind her, Isa led the pack by several seconds.

She burst onto a landing overlooking Elliot Bay. Buskers favored the acoustics of the spot during the day. A pair of feet encased in men’s dress shoes poked out of an alcove. Blood, orange in the mercury light, ran in rivulets across the walkway to spill over the edge of the stairwell.

Glass and splintered wood from the shattered door across from Isa littered the floor.

Jackie, her boots just on Isa’s side of the threshold, sprawled in the debris. Her breath came in audible, rasping sobs.

Over her, frozen, head cocked to stare at Isa with fierce yellow eyes, crouched a griffin the size of a pony. It gleamed black and gold, each razor-edged feather a gleaming paean to bloodshed. Claws the size of large daggers dripped blood. So did its jagged, carved beak.

Isa hesitated, caught by the penetrating gaze. A questioning tendril of dried blood magic tasted her skin. She couldn’t get her breath. Liquid, gold magic sloshed around her insides.

Ink. Their serial killer was a rogue tattoo.

A faint echo of black stirred deep within the void Murmur had left in her soul when he’d left. Isa started.

The griffin leaped over Jackie’s supine body and rushed Isa.

“Isa!” George bellowed.

“Stay back!” she shrilled and slammed a shield up. She blocked the door that would let the officers into the landing behind, then she threw a bubble around herself.

The creature impacted her shield with a
thunk
that rattled Isa’s bones. Roaring in frustration, it reached for her, bloody claws outstretched.

Voices, swearing and shouting, piled up behind her.

The griffin’s head swiveled as it studied first Isa and then the people in the doorway behind her.

“Keep them quiet,” Isa quavered, trusting Lawrence or Dick or Simon were close enough to hear. “I can’t shield all of you, myself, and Jackie at the same time.”

“Where’s Brown?” Lawrence asked.

Isa assumed he meant the redheaded cop. She glanced at the bloody loafers poking out of the alcove. “Down.”

Lawrence swore, then Isa gathered he turned away. He raised his voice, but she couldn’t decipher what he said.