Inked Magic (25 page)

“Justine said when you’ve given other people tattoos like this, it
made a difference. She said they were able to make a break from their past.”

“They still had to work at it. And keep wanting it. But yeah, the changes stuck.”

“I want my son back. I want to be a good mother to Lothar.”

“Think about that while you’re getting the tattoo. Picture the life you want with him.” It was as far as Etaín felt comfortable going with the mystical stuff. Any further and she’d freak herself out.

Teresa had dressed in a tank top with spaghetti straps. A few swipes of the razor, followed by a smear of Vaseline, and the small area above her left breast was ready for the tattoo.

“Go ahead and lie down.”

Habit made Etaín open the sketch pad to the image of Lothar with its embedded sigils, but the memory of it was in her hands. When she looked at the place where the tattoo would go, she saw it in an inner eye as though it were already inked into Teresa’s skin.

Picking up a short hand-needle, she dipped it into a cap of ink. “Ready?”

Teresa didn’t ask about the lack of stencil, just said yes, the faith she put in Etaín enough to unnerve her if she let herself think too much about it. She took a deep breath, clearing her mind. Emptying it of everything and giving herself over to the physical act of turning the dream image into a reality.

It took concentration to work the needle in a steady rhythm. It required strength of will as well as physical stamina and control to push the needle through skin by hand and put the ink in at a consistent depth.

Outline first. Then shading. And at the very end, weaving the hidden sigils in.

Until Eamon she’d always thought of the sigils in terms of Jung, as symbols of a collective unconscious giving power to belief and triggered by pain. She’d never seriously considered the existence of some
external magic that could be captured and manipulated. And in turn, might manipulate its user.

Fear skittered through her at where changes in her gift might lead. She shivered, pushing worry aside because there was nothing she could do about it.

She made sure the tattoo on Teresa’s skin matched the one she’d seen in her dream before saying, “It’s done.”

Teresa sat and Etaín handed her a small mirror she kept in her kit. With shaky fingers Teresa positioned it so she could see the tattoo. A small intake of breath was followed by the flow of tears.

Her fingertip went unerringly to Lothar’s hair and the sigil there. “I’m going to get you back,” she whispered.

She touched the ones woven into his mouth. “I’m going to be the best mother in the world for you.”

Etaín didn’t know whether Teresa was consciously aware of the hidden symbols or not. She didn’t think it mattered.

She went over the aftercare instructions, placing a printed copy of them on the mat for Teresa before taking the mirror back and covering the tattoo with ointment and a bandage.

Teresa grabbed Etaín’s hand. Gratitude poured into her along with fierce determination. “Thank you. What you’ve done for me I’ll never forget.”

She left and Etaín cleaned up, repacking the kit then folding the mat and placing it on a shelf before putting the incense out and doing the same with it. It was a relief to escape the room.

Surprise came at finding Cathal waiting in the hallway for her. Pleasure, but dismay, too. She needed to retrieve her bike and show a few more artists the Harlequin Rapist’s distinctive tats.

“I told you I was fine with catching a cab.”

“And I stayed because I wanted to give you a ride home. It’ll be your choice when we get there whether you grab your bike and bolt or invite me in.”

His smile had heat blossoming in her belly and remembered pleasure tightening her nipples. She didn’t think she’d be able to let him go without having him inside her one more time. A quickie, she promised herself. Just a quickie.

“Okay then, let’s go.”

T
he scent of roses drifted past Denis as he stepped into the backyard. The need for solace drew him to a pink-streaked flower in an extensive garden of them.

He forgot the name of it though he remembered it had cost him a small fortune to acquire. There were more like it. And others he’d imported for Margo in those last few months when they’d both stopped pretending she was going to beat the cancer.

He reached out, stroking a soft petal. Remembering how he’d compared the flowers to her skin every time they’d come outside together. Remembering when they’d been young and newly married and he still sent her roses any time business took him away from her.

“I need you,” he whispered. “Brianna’s all that’s left of us and I’ve already failed with her. I didn’t keep her safe.”

The failure tore at him, striking at the very core of who he was. He touched his lips to the silky petal of the rose. “I don’t know how to break through, Margo. I don’t know if I can ever bring her back.”

He closed his eyes. Hoping for a sense of the wife he’d loved since the moment he first laid eyes on her, for the peace her presence always brought him.

He didn’t find the first. But the second came slowly, among the flowers that had always given her pleasure.

He walked on, moving along a pathway through the well-tended bushes, stopping occasionally to bend over and inhale deeply.

His thoughts returned to breakfast at Aesirs and he felt better about holding off, giving Cathal breathing room to step up and do the right thing.

It was important to Niall for his son do this. It was important to him as well.

This was about family. Not business.

The scene around him disappeared as another took its place. The day he’d stood with Niall in the maternity ward, looking through the glass at Cathal, both of them in agreement that it was fine for a son to make his own choice whether or not to follow in his father’s footsteps. Then the day Niall had stood with him, looking at Brian.

Pain pulled Denis into the present, a fist gripping his heart with thoughts of his son. He rubbed his chest but the ache wasn’t something that could be massaged away.

The rose garden ended, opening up into the pool area. He stepped forward, closing himself off from thoughts of the dead.

The water in the pool sparkled. Chairs and tables were set up steps away from it, an invitation to enjoy the sunshine and fresh air.

Maybe this was what Brianna needed, he thought, taking out his cell phone and calling inside. He spoke with the cook first, telling her that he and Brianna would take lunch at poolside. Then to the nurse, ordering her to bring Brianna out.

Closing his phone, he placed it on a table, a gesture from the old days, when he’d made a show of shutting out the other aspects of his life in order to be fully there with his family. He retrieved cushions for the heavy wrought-iron chairs, finding pleasure in action as he set things up to enjoy lunch with his daughter.

The door opened and she was led outside in a bathrobe, the belt pulled tight, emphasizing her rail-thin body. Pain returned with the sight of her, a savage, raw clawing in his chest. He’d put the animals responsible for this down like the rabid dogs they were.

His hands gripped the back of a chair as she was brought forward, her eyes dulled by sedation. He should have had her dressed in a shirt and shorts.

The nurse guided Brianna into a chair and Denis pushed it forward. “It’s too beautiful to be inside,” he said. “I thought we’d have lunch out here. The food will be out in a few minutes. You hungry?”

She didn’t answer, nor would she eat. Starving herself was another way of trying to die, an attempt he thwarted by forced feedings.

His stomach cramped, his appetite gone though he’d finish what he’d started.

“You can leave us,” he told the nurse, not wanting her to witness his painful attempts to communicate with his daughter.

Lunch was brought out and served, the cook fussing over Brianna, pretending everything was normal. When she was gone he picked up his fork, stabbing it into the potato salad.

“I saw Cathal this morning,” he said, starting a one-sided conversation with Brianna that lasted through the meal and then petered out in a silence filled by sounds from the past, from better times.

Squeals and splashes.

The spring and bounce of the diving board.

Watch me, Daddy! Watch this!

Brianna tan and healthy and smiling.

Brian doing flips and diving into the water with barely a ripple. Jumping from the side, arms around his knees, a human cannonball showering his parents and sister when he struck water.

Tears came and Denis couldn’t stop them. He stood and took several steps away from the table, turning his back on the pool and the past, on the emptiness of his present.

Grant me strength, God
, he prayed, even as he did it, knowing he would get through this. The pain would fade, maybe one day to the point he would consider taking another wife and trying for a son with her.

A splash had raw fear gripping him as he spun around. Terror bursting through him at seeing Brianna in the deep end of the pool.

He raced to the edge and dived into the water, frantically kicking, barely able to accept what he saw.

She’d managed to use the belt of her bathrobe to tie herself to the heavy wrought-iron chair. And against all instinct to survive, she’d willfully inhaled water in the seconds it took him to reach her.

There was no struggle in her. No life.

She was facedown, the chair pinning her to the bottom of the pool.

He wrenched it to the side, fumbling with the knots. Ripping at them as his heart thundered in his ears and his lungs burned, his mind screaming.

It took minutes to free them. A living hell of horror and desperation.

Grabbing her, he pushed off the bottom, kicking furiously to the surface and getting her out of the pool. He yelled at the top of his lungs, bellowing for help before administering first aid.

A frantic eternity passed before Brianna vomited water and began breathing. She curled in a ball, silent, defeated, unresponsive to his fury or his pain as he spoke her name over and over again, unable to stop the torrent of it.

His entire body shook. His hands trembled in the aftermath of what had nearly happened.

No one had heard him yelling. No one had come.

He wanted to rail at Brianna. To plead with her.

Emotion howled through him. A wild storm he rode until his hands were steady and he’d gotten himself back under control.

Keeping an eye on her, he retrieved his phone and called the nurse, decision crystallizing in him. As soon as Brianna was seen to and he got to his study, the next call would be to Cathal.

Killing Brianna’s rapists might not be therapy for her, but it would be for him. He was done waiting. Cathal would bring Etaín here by the end of the day, or he’d see to it himself.

Y
ou coming up?” Etaín asked as Cathal pulled into the driveway.

He turned off the engine. “What do you think?

She glanced down at where his cock made a hard, desperate plea against the fabric of his pants, then up at his face, her smile sexual invitation and the promise of carnal sin.

Without a word she got out of the car.

He followed her up the flight of stairs, managing to keep his hands off her until she stopped in front of the door, but then he wrapped his arms around her waist and touched his mouth to the place where her shoulder met her neck.

Satisfaction surged through him at the subtle melting of her body against his. “It feels like it’s been hours since we were with each other,” he murmured.

“That’s because it has been. At least in the way you mean.”

The huskiness in her voice had his hands moving up to cover her breasts. “Did you think about this when we were apart?” he asked, rubbing his palms over hardened nipples and reveling in the small sound of need he elicited from her.

“Do you really need to hear me say yes?”

“I’m a man.” He bit the soft skin of her neck, following it with a quick suck. “What do you think?”

“That I want you again.”

There might as well have been a hot wire from her mouth to his dick. His hips jerked. Fuck. In another minute she’d have him humping against her where they stood.

His hand left her breast and went to the front of her jeans. She didn’t protest when he unsnapped them, pushing his way underneath the waistband of her panties to verify the truth of her statement.

His moan echoed hers as he found wet heat and a stiffened clit. “Open the door, Etaín, or I’m going to take you right here.”

He barely recognized himself in the threat-rough voice and raw
command. In how little he cared about privacy or public decency or the possibility of getting arrested over the lack of it.

“Do it,” she dared, her clit a hot throb against his palm.

Make me
, came instantly.

He opened his mouth to say the words but they clung to his tongue, held there by some small measure of sanity and self-control. He wasn’t sure if she was serious or not, but a shudder went through him with the silent acknowledgment that she had the power to make him. And if he wasn’t careful, he’d get to the point where he was happy she did.