Bound by Ink (A Living Ink Novel) (29 page)

Murmur’s inarticulate growl reverberated inside the stone coffin.

Uriel gestured. Light and energy not meant for human eyes sluiced mud from her body in an obscene caress touching every part of her. Inhuman. Uncaring. Revolting. Her stomach turned.

She preferred the mud to the touch of Uriel’s magic.

“What is this?” Uriel demanded. His magic paused, fumbled with her jeans pockets.

Her heart kicked.

The tattoos.

With his power, Uriel flipped them out, and shook the pages open for his inspection. He sneered. “Useless motes of life essence. Meaningless and unworthy.”

He reached physically for the pages.

She’d see him rip up her charges over her dead body. Power seethed. She hadn’t called it. Terror for the helpless tattoos acted like a magnifying glass to the blinding sunlight of her magic. It burned through her sternum. Blinding gold light burst from her, batting the pages from his reach.

Isa threw her awareness down the line of her magic into first one stasis page and then the other, kicking their anchor points free. The stasis pages fluttered as if straining against the glare of her power. Shaking, heart hammering, she urged the tattoos to freedom. To life in this broken world that had the free-roaming magic to feed them.

Growling, Uriel grabbed the whirlwind’s page and tore it, top to bottom.

In the first moment the fibers at the top of the page parted, the heavy air stirred against her. The whirlwind burst from the stasis paper, and fell to the ground, tiny at first. It grew rapidly, flinging grit, chunks of glowing stone, and squawking Magic Eaters.

Uriel grunted. A smudge of black charcoal marred one perfect cheekbone.

On an ear-splitting, avian shriek, the griffin tore free of his stasis paper. Brought back to his native world, he ballooned from canary-sized to the size of a small car in the space of a breath.

Isa’s heart lifted. She had allies.

Shrilling in challenge, Magic Eaters swarmed into the crater.

Isa shielded the griffin. Snapping at Uriel, the creature surged into the sky, riding the whirlwind’s updraft. He tore a Magic Eater from the air with one clack of his beak.

Smoking blood, reeking of burned rubber, rained to the ground.

Above Murmur’s prison, the griffin’s wings faltered. The griffin screamed. Wings laboring, the gleaming creature climbed the sky and fled.

The whirlwind spun the circumference of the crater, throwing debris at Uriel and tossing Magic Eaters out of the sky. Uriel uttered a word in a language that curdled Isa’s nerves.

The tattoo shrilled.

Silver slashed the vortex of wind and charred material.

No
.

Uriel gestured. And ripped Isa’s rescued whirlwind asunder. The tattoo’s death cry swirled past her.

Isa’s breath went out in an agonized rush that left her eyes stinging. Her magic boiled, climbing the column of her spine. Mercury rising in the heat of her rage.

Uriel strode to her, his expression twisted with righteous indignation. Locking a fist in her hair, he yanked her into contact with him, her face millimeters from his.

“Your soldiers are cowards,” he said, “You have earned your torment. And his.”

He locked lips on hers, painful as the slap she’d expected.

Finally.

Shuddering with revulsion, Isa threaded her fingers into his silken hair, opened her lips, and exhaled her mouthful of binding ink into him.

He tried to jerk away.

She held tight, and shoved the rising storm of her power down his throat. Bolstered by that tiny success, she shaped her magic into a proper binding spell.

Uriel wrenched free.

Silver exploded in her face, blowing her back a foot, maybe two. She lost the threads of her binding spell in the rip current of her power. It cushioned her as she landed. She kept her feet.

Every part of Uriel’s radiant white robes and alabaster skin she’d touched were stained black. The stain spread around his mouth as if a kind of rot had taken hold.

Uttering a cry of disgust, Uriel batted at his robe with shaking, blackened hands.

Isa summoned power. It exploded into her body, threatening to take off the top of her skull. She aimed it at the lid of the box holding Murmur and heaved it off him.

The lid fell to the ground with a deep, bone-shaking thud.

Isa rushed Uriel. Planting her feet, Isa swung with all her might.

Contact.

Uriel staggered.

“You don’t touch my family,” she said. “Or my world.”

He straightened, pressed the back of his hand to the corner of his mouth, and then started at the sight of the blood smeared there. He looked at Murmur’s prison on the rim of the crater behind her.

She dared not follow his gaze.

“Him?” He sounded incredulous. “You claim
him
as family? He’s a monster.”

“So am I,” Isa snapped.

“So be it.” Uriel shouted a command in his nerve-shredding language.

She threw a torrent of molten gold power into Uriel’s face.

His robe caught fire. He poured cold silver upon the flames. They spread. He yelped.

Tucking a bolt of magic into her fist, she punched again, aiming for the nose he so loved to look down.

He summoned a shield to deflect her.

It slowed her fist slightly but that was all. She connected.

Uriel grunted. Blood spilled from his nose.

She released the bolt into his head.

With a flare of silver light, he shoved the bolt away. It exploded in his face.

Snarling, he drove a fist into her diaphragm.

The blow doubled her over. She backpedaled and collapsed into the mud.

Magic Eaters attacked. Hooting, they dove for her exposed face.

Gasping for air, Isa rolled, achieved her feet, and scrambled close to Uriel again. The Magic Eaters would destroy her in a single touch. Uriel, poisoned by her binding ink, was the least deadly option available to her.

He came at her again. His nose was a crooked, bloody mess. Red burns on his skin marked the path of her exploding bolt. She’d scorched his eyebrows right off and singed his perfect, curling hair.

Score one for the filthy human.

He rounded in to hit her again, catching her with a glancing blow to her jaw.

Bright stars lit up her sight. Tasting blood, she hauled herself up from the mud. Again. Faking a jab, she kicked high and hard. Did self-righteous pricks have gonads?

He wheezed and fell to his knees.

The stink of burning feathers warned her. Magic Eater attacking. Isa flung herself to the mud, her head pounding, and rolled for Uriel, struggling to his feet. She couldn’t keep this up. Couldn’t craft a binding spell that would tie Uriel in any meaningful way while she grappled with him.

He jumped her, landing a blow beneath her ribs that sliced the marrow out of her bones. He drove her to the ground, grabbed her hair, and slammed her face into the mud.

Ears ringing, she spit the taste of oily blood and rancid grit.

Uriel staggered upright, dragging her by her braid.

Croaking a protest, desperate to escape the tearing pain, she clawed at his hands. Her fingernails came away wet.

She sobbed and the breath she drew stank of dung and dead things. The smell stung her eyes and burned her throat.
Familiar.

Dirty brown power slammed her.

Uriel lost his hold on her. He growled a word in his language. Silver lit the mud and dirt around her.

She forced her aching body to roll away from him. A solid rock surface at her back stopped her.

Creatures from her nightmares spilled from the ruins around her. Chittering, high-pitched giggles curdled the blood in her veins. She remembered that sound, could suddenly place the stink and the oddly twiglike, disjointed gait of the razor-fingered monsters zeroing in on Uriel.

Infernals. An army of them, despite what Murmur had once told her, that Infernals couldn’t coexist.

Smoky caramel smoothed the stench of the creatures from her senses. It came from the stone at her back. She was leaning against Murmur’s prison.

Isa closed her eyes. “Murmur. Hang on. Please, hang on.”

He groaned. From the stone behind her, still trapped she gathered, even though she’d opened the box Uriel had stuffed him into.

Shaking, bloody, she heaved herself to sitting. Supported by the warm stone at her back, she called up power to heal herself.

Magic Eaters cried overhead.

She opened her eyes, her vision colored by the pulse and beat of her magic washing away her wounds.

Uriel stumbled down the hill into the crater, into the winking, stuttering shine of his spotlight. His minions circled him, as if shielding him.

Infernals galloped in his wake.

Isa diverted the flow of her magic, feeding healing energy along the thin, trembling line of smoke and caramel back to Murmur.

“Isa,” he croaked, his voice muted by stone and by pain. “Escape.”

“No.”

“You’re no match.”

She flinched. That stab hit home. Clenching her fists, she nodded. So she wasn’t enough. Good enough. Powerful enough. Just. Enough. Not news.

“I came for you,” she said. “I’m not leaving without you. We live together or we die together. Take what I’m shunting to you. Heal. I need you.”

An eagle’s piercing hunting cry tipped her gaze skyward.

The griffin. He soared low, skimming the rubble with brilliant wing tips. Landing?

Manic, shrill Infernal laughter drew her gaze to the center of the crater.

Uriel was under siege by knee-high demons. His pillar of wavering silver kept their claws and teeth at bay. He’d lifted his face to the sky.

Bind ink smeared his wings.

Blood stained what remained of his burned clothing.

He began chanting.

Isa’s stomach turned.

Magic Eaters dipped and fluttered, then one broke formation and dove into the throng of Infernals. It struck.

Puce blood and green slime sprayed. The army of Infernals swarmed the Magic Eater. Flailing white wings, the thing tried to lift. Hundreds of serrated talons ripped it to bloody shreds.

Wind swept debris in vortices around her, blowing her hair that had escaped the braid into her face.

The griffin landed atop the sarcophagus.

Rising, Isa spat chalky dirt from her mouth and turned to peer into the open box at Murmur. She couldn’t see him beneath a sheet of glimmering silver power.

The griffin chittered and pecked the magic. No effect.

“I know,” she said to the yellow eyes studying her. Their only hope—her only hope—was a bind, something that would hamper Uriel. “I want him free, too. Let’s do this.”

The griffin ruffled a wisp of her hair.

She afforded him a glance.

“Ride,” Murmur said. He sounded stronger. “Use my army.”

“What army?”

“Infernals.”

“Infernals?” she squeaked. “The little bastards are
yours
?
How . . .”

Magic Eaters spilled from the sky, charging her.

Uttering a shriek that pierced her skull, the griffin swiped a paw at her.

She heaved herself up to the broad edge of the sarcophagus and flattened against the spot where the griffin’s glossy feathers gave way to tawny fur.

Wind buffeted her, but the Magic Eaters did not strike.

She risked a glance.

They wheeled away for another pass.

Isa scrambled to the griffin’s back. She hadn’t ridden a horse in years, but her muscles remembered. She found her seat. Her knees gripped beneath the griffin’s wings.

He launched into the sky.

Squeaking in surprise and dismay, she slid. Clamping her knees on surging muscles kept her seated. She scooted back into position.

He swept them into the cloud of Magic Eaters and began snagging Uriel’s minions out of the air with his claws, ripping them open with his beak, and swallowing their hearts.

She suppressed the urge to protect him. This was his world. What she knew about magic applied only in her world.
Another rule for her rule book?
Later. She concentrated instead on staying seated, on learning to anticipate the heave and surge and dive of flight. As she started to get the hang of keeping her balance, she surveyed the battlefield below.

Uriel’s silver power pulsed, calling Magic Eaters out of the ruins. Infernal corpses littered the ground outside Uriel’s shield.

Isa gasped. Finding out the Infernals belonged to Murmur hadn’t softened her heart toward the manic little abominations. Only weeks ago, Daniel and Uriel had sent one of the creatures into her apartment, where it had tried to take everyone and everything apart. Yet here in Murmur’s world, they’d focused their murderous bent solely upon Uriel.

She needed the foul creatures, and from her point of view, they desperately needed to learn guerrilla warfare.

Murmur had told her to use his army. How was she supposed to communicate with them, much less command them?

“Can we help them?” she asked the griffin.

He chirruped.

A hint of caramel eased the bitter taste of smoke in her mouth. Ah. She wouldn’t command anything. Murmur would. Through her.

“Get out of the open,” she said, floating the words on her magic combined with that hint of Murmur’s. The griffin’s razor-edged power picked up her intent. Translating it into something Infernals could understand? “Lead them into the rubble. Ambush them from the rocks. Divide and conquer.”

The taste of caramel strengthened; so did the draw on her power.

The churn of Infernals battering themselves against Uriel’s shield scattered into the rubble surrounding the cratered open space.

Uriel barked a triumphant laugh.

Magic Eaters harried the Infernals, pulling up at the edge of the rubble field.

Isa’s mount cackled and plucked two more of them out of the sky. White feathers puffed and spiraled to the ground. The discarded corpses followed.

Below them, an Infernal clambered to the top of a wall, dancing, grinning a toothy smile.

A Magic Eater took the bait.

Shrieking with maniacal glee, the Infernal threw itself flat. A pair of its compatriots jumped the ill-fated Magic Eater, ripping with clawed hands before it ever hit the ground.

More corpses fell from the griffin’s claws.

Malicious, bloodthirsty magic surged beneath her knees. He was consuming magic with every heart he snapped up. Overloading.

“Wait,” she said.

He chuckled and snapped up another heart.

Isa clenched sweaty fists against the gleaming feathers. She had to silence Uriel’s call for reinforcements. A strangle bind went together easily. Dealing with the energy flooding her in Murmur’s world, she desperately needed a mundane image—a noose—to anchor her binding spell. She’d always needed ordinary references to allow her to shape tenuous energy into something that could have an effect in her world, like the spear she’d used to destroy the hydra.

She’d consider adding it to the rule book—
magic is limited by the bounds of what humans can know
—but as far as she knew, that was her experience of power. Not anyone else’s.

Isa braided her spell together with the energy of her binding ink. Power spilled into her grasp despite the burgeoning tug on her. Murmur’s army, if that’s what the griffin and Infernals were, accustomed to feeding on his smoldering dark magic, seemed to be developing a taste for hers.

Dizziness rocked her.

She leaned forward against the griffin’s neck and attempted to control the wide-open channels routing energy through her system. She’d feed Murmur’s army. She’d feed him. But if she wanted to save any of them, she needed some of her power for herself. The buzzing in her head diminished. She straightened.

Infernals rampaged through the ruins, taking her initial suggestion of ambush to heart and being endlessly inventive at luring Magic Eaters to their doom. The twiggy, disjointed-looking creatures scuttling like rats, baiting Uriel’s army, and mowing them down in a flurry of blood and feathers. Uriel stood, vile, twisted words crawling from his ink-stained lips, summoning more of the winged creatures.