Inked Magic

by Jory Strong

  “Always been a real popular brother. Ladies first.”

  She fouled out after sinking the first three balls but came back to win when he missed a shot and she pocketed the nine ball.

  “Not bad for a white girl, only now I’m done fooling around.”

  Anton was up five games to Etaín’s four when a tingling sensation raced along the vines on her forearms. She made her shot, watching as the cue ball kissed the low five, knocking it into the nine and dropping it into a pocket for another win.

  She looked up and around because instead of going away, the sensation grew strong. Magic. She had a name for the phenomenon even if she didn’t have a full understanding of what it meant with respect to her.

  As soon as she saw the man leaning casually against the wall a few pool cues length away, she had a source for the sensation crawling along her arms—and a suspicion as to why he was there. Neither his skin color nor the hair worn in a multitude of long braids set him apart from the other black men in the bar, but his sheer beauty did. And though she hadn’t seen him at Aesirs, she knew he easily belonged there. Even dressed in the jeans and ribbed tank he had on, if he walked through the restaurant, the diners would view him as a visual treat served up for their enjoyment.

  She met his eyes and found nothing in them. They were flat and dark, empty of recognition or acknowledgment.

  A shiver of fear slid through her at the possibility she was wrong about Eamon being responsible for this man’s presence here. When it came to her gift and the world of magic her mother must have been a part of, slowly, she was beginning to realize how running might be easier and safer than staying in place.

  She forced her attention back to Anton and watched as the cue ball touched the three before hitting the low two, creating a foul. “I’m done fooling around now,” she joked, tossing his words back at him though she was serious about finishing her business and putting distance between herself and the deadly stranger with vibes of magic.

  “Fine with me if you win the round.” Anton held his arms wide. “’Cause I’m in the mood for a little dancing, a nice slow song with a sweet, willing woman.”

  She let him play for his audience without denying his claim, calculating her shots, lining them up in her mind first.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  The nine-ball dropped with a soft thud. “Let’s dance,” she said, putting the cue back in the rack and feeling an icy burn along the forearms when doing it took her closer to the stranger.

  A fast rap song moved into a slow, dirty bump-and-grind beat almost as soon as they stepped onto the dance floor. Anton’s hands settled on her hips. “Your doing?” she asked.

  “Think I was gonna miss this opportunity to show you what you’ve been turning down?”

  She put her hands on his chest, as much to keep some distance between them as to keep her palms from touching bare skin. “Like I can’t see that massive piece of hardware you’re toting around at the front of your pants?”

  He laughed hard, eyes shining with amusement. “That’s right, girl. Stroke my ego if you ain’t gonna stroke nothing else. You’re lucky I got too much pride to take an unwilling woman else you’d be at the top of the list.”

  She shuddered, her thoughts returning to Tyra in the hospital. Then to Brianna curled in a fetal ball, heavily sedated to keep her from insanity and suicide.

  Anton’s forehead touched hers. “You scared of somebody? Or remembering something bad was done to you? Give me a name. I’ll take care of it.”

  This close and touching, she was hyperaware of the ink she’d put on him. It made her wonder if his offer came as much from that connection as a desire to get in her pants.

  Use it, a voice whispered. And she wasn’t sure whether it was the magic talking, or her desire to see the Harlequin Rapist stopped.

  “Just show Deon the picture. Press him to tell you what he knows about the guy wearing his art. If he can be found, there are other people lined up to take care of him.”

  Whatever Anton might have answered, it was aborted when fingers encircled her upper arm, burning her with familiar flame and abruptly ending the dance with a sharp jerk away from Anton.

  “I think I warned you I’d accept Cathal, but no one else, Etaín.”

  If Cathal’s voice had been ice earlier in the day then Eamon’s was fire, a raging storm of it looking for an excuse to obliterate. One he got when Anton said, “Who the fuck you think you are?” and followed the question with his fists.

  Eamon moved like smooth liquid, pushing Etaín away from him and using Anton’s momentum against him. Flipping and sending him flying into patch-wearing bikers who’d stopped dancing at the prospect of trouble.

  Anton got to his feet. He charged and was sent flying again.

  “Liam, take her outside while I finish this,” Eamon said, and the stranger was instantly there, taking her arm.

  “Fuck that,” said the guy who’d tried to claim her when she entered the bar, jumping into the fight, his action pulling others into it with him.

  It should have been a beat down ending in homicide. It would have been except for the magic.

  Trapped between Eamon’s back and Liam’s, their fighting looked like martial arts training but Etaín knew there was more to it. She felt them draw on something outside themselves. Magic rushed over the ink on her skin, accompanying the sound of flesh hitting flesh and bodies striking chairs and tables and walls.

  Glass shattered. Bottles falling to the floor and broken against edges to become weapons.

  More men joined the fight while women cheered them on.

  Knives came out.

  Etaín’s adrenaline surged.

  A shot was fired and suddenly it seemed as though every hand held a gun.

  “Enough!” a voice bellowed.

  Etaín found the man responsible and saw the family resemblance to Anton. He pointed the gun at Eamon and Liam. “You two motherfuckers. Get the fuck out of here. Anton, you want her to stay?”

  Her eyes met Anton’s. He touched a hand to the pocket holding the drawing and winked. “We gonna hook up later. She go willingly, I’m fine as long as they pay for the damage done to your place.”

  Eamon paid, pulling her against him roughly once they left the bar and slamming his mouth down on hers. Fury and lust poured into her with the hot, raw sweep of his tongue. Naked aggression and primitive possession that she answered in kind in the aftermath of violence coupled with magic.

  Her cunt clenched and unclenched. Desire rode her, a need to be filled by him. It eradicated logical thought, blurred everything that had happened since leaving Aesirs that morning.

  The kiss ended with both of them breathing raggedly, their bodies pressed tight, his cock hard and ready between them. She started to suggest they go to her apartment since it was closer, opened her mouth to say it, but he spoke first.

  “I’ve been patient, Etaín, foolish even, in allowing you the amount of freedom I have. Another wouldn’t tolerate your doing as you please and involving yourself in unwise, dangerous activities. I’ve done so because I thought you needed time. No more.”

  She jerked out of his arms, fury engulfing her as his arrogant tone and arrogant words touched the very place where pain over her estrangement with the captain and rocky relationship with Parker lived. “Allow? Tolerate? Who the fuck do you think you are in my life?”

  A muscle spasmed in his cheek. His eyes were molten with anger. “You will learn the full truth of that soon enough, though I had thought this morning’s lessons would have demonstrated how much you need me if you’re to survive your gift and the magic it’s tied to.”

  She clamped her jaws against responding to his claim in the heat of anger, some tiny, rational instinct for self-preservation advising against it, even as the urge to escape welled up inside her and her mother’s voice whispered run. “You’ve had me followed.”

  “Of course.”

  Her fury went white-hot, a nov
a exploding into silence in her head. “I’m going home.”

  He reached for her and instinctively she put her hand up to ward him off, only it felt as though an electric current pulsed through the vines on her arm, turning the eye on her palm into a lethal weapon, a tool to drain reality away with a touch.

  She saw by his expression he felt the charge of magic. And also that it pleased him rather than frightened him. Stepping sideways, to her bike, she straddled it.

  “This isn’t finished, Etaín,” he said, promise in his voice.

  She said nothing. Putting on the helmet and riding away.

  Clapping marked Etaín’s departure and Eamon sent a censorious glare in his third’s direction. It had no effect. As Etaín’s ignorance of her heritage freed them both from constraint and artifice, his deep friendship with Liam and Rhys allowed for a level of familiarity and oftentimes brutal honesty that others would never dare.

  “Well done,” Liam said, “if your intention was to further develop her gift.”

  Not his intention, but he’d found a measure of calm in knowing she could protect herself—at least against humans and lower-born Elves. “Follow her.”

  The command was met with a mocking bow. “Of course, Lord. I live to serve you as well you know. But might I make an observation before I rush after your future wife?”

  “There’s no stopping you from it.”

  “True.” Liam’s smile widened. “If what I just witnessed is a demonstration of how you intend to guide her actions at the fund-raiser, then I’d advise you to send Rhys in your stead.”

  Twenty-four

  He drove by her apartment. It was still dark.

  Slut. Filthy whore. He’d seen her with two different men but there was no way to know which one of them she was with now.

  She was like his mother. Disappearing. Coming back smelling like men’s cologne and sweat. Disappearing again. Sometimes bringing strangers to the house. Men who touched him and Kevin after she’d passed out, forgetting them. She was always forgetting them.

  He wouldn’t let that happen to him again. He refused to be forgotten ever again.

  He looked at her apartment in the side-view mirror before turning the corner. He couldn’t wait for things to be perfect anymore, the way he’d had to since coming to San Francisco.

  A little thrill swept into him with the decision. The same way it had when he decided to go into the tattoo shop.

  He liked choosing which one would be next, and then waiting inside for her to come home. He liked laying out the things he would need so they’d be ready when she got there.

  He liked touching her things, holding her clothes against his face. He liked eating the food she’d bought and cooked.

  Before coming to San Francisco that’s the way he’d always been with them. He’d never taken any of them away from where they lived. He’d wanted them to remember him there.

  He licked his lips, thinking about the darkened apartment and the news reports. It would be too risky to stay in her apartment for long. But after he gagged her, there would be time to have her once, just once, before taking her to their special place.

  Imagining it excited him. His heart sped up, leaving him feeling jittery, scared but happy, too. This would be like combining the old way with the new way.

  He’d take her tonight. No one would be expecting it.

  They didn’t think the Harlequin Rapist would strike before next Monday. Kevin had even told him about a news reporter saying the next woman might be black instead of white.

  He smiled, thinking about the black girl she’d been tattooing, and how when he squinted, he could see a golden thread touching both of them, connecting them so she had to be a choice, too.

  Tonight, he told himself again. He didn’t want to wait any longer.

  Queasiness rippled through his stomach with the decision. He dropped what was left of the red licorice vine he’d been sucking onto a pile of candy in the passenger seat.

  He still didn’t believe in psychics, but what if the news reporters were working with the police? What if the story was all made up, so he’d know about her, and want her? What if this was a trap?

  He pulled over so he could think. It felt like the wind was howling inside his chest.

  If he went back to Kevin’s apartment, the fear of getting caught might take hold. He might be forced to make another choice.

  He couldn’t give her up. All day long, she was all he thought about. He even dreamed about her, something he’d never done with the others until after he’d been with them.

  The snake between his legs started to wake up as he remembered all the times he’d gotten close to her without her noticing him, when he’d passed her on the street as she visited tattoo shops. He wouldn’t give her up. He couldn’t.

  If there were policemen watching her apartment or her, he would have seen them by now. Besides, all the others had been taken close to where they worked and no one expected him to take her yet.

  The wind howling inside him went quiet. He licked his lips and reached for the red vine, seeing the black sleeve of his jacket and thinking about the mask and gloves he’d bought today to replace the ones that got bloody last time.

  They were still in their separate bags underneath his seat. They were right next to the Taser he shouldn’t have in the car, but did.

  It was a sign. He was meant to take her tonight. He would go inside and wait for her there like he did in New York.

  The queasiness returned as he thought about her bringing one of the men home with her. Angry pounding started in his chest, raging until an idea came.

  He’d be ready, just in case. He’d do what he hadn’t been able to do when he was younger.

  If she brought someone home with her, he’d make them both sorry. He’d make her watch as he cut off the thing between the other man’s legs.

  A giggle escaped. He almost hoped she did bring one of the two men home.

  Pulling away from the curb he started cruising, looking for a car exactly like his. He’d figured this out for himself after choosing the very first one in New York. Most people didn’t know what their license plate numbers were, or didn’t notice the difference as long as the plates looked normal.

  If he’d known ahead of time that tonight was the night he would take her, he would have planned a little better. But he didn’t dare drive on her street another time or park close to her apartment without changing out the plates again.

  It took him a while to find them. He checked the list he kept so he could be sure he wasn’t stealing plates he’d already used. When he saw they were different, he swapped them out, his mouth going dry and his heart beating fast as he got back in the car and headed toward her apartment.

  Denis pressed his eye to the scope and the world narrowed to the front window of a house in the Sunset District. A teenage girl passed through his sight. A heavyset woman. Another teen, this one a boy but not the right one.

  In the darkness of the car, Denis shifted the barrel of the assault rifle silenced for sniper work to focus on the front door. He didn’t want any innocent victims here. So far there hadn’t been any.

  Only with the first, Adam, had he taken care of things up close. The diplomat’s son he’d hit at the beach, using a long-range weapon, and the boy, Carter, with a shot through a bedroom window.

  The door opened and the target stepped outside, ball glove in hand, uniform crisp white. The woman joined him there, giving him a hug then remaining there, watching as the boy headed toward a car parked on the street.

  Through the scope Denis followed him, giving the woman a chance to get back inside. Sparing her from witnessing the boy’s death, self-preservation and altruism both factoring into his reason for waiting.

  He hadn’t remembered it at first, but later, after he started gathering information, it came back to him. Brian saying his friend’s tag-along brother played baseball and football. Telling him the kid was good enough at both to have scouts already sniffing around a
fter him.

  Owen, that was the boy’s name. He was almost to his car before the woman stepped into the house and closed the door. It was a clear shot. An easy one.

  Denis took it. Watching the boy drop, the back of his head gone, leaving no possibility of survival.

  Four dead. One to go.

  Etaín rounded the corner, slow and cautious. Ready to spin the Harley around in case she was wrong about reporters being able to find her apartment.

  The street was quiet and clear. Tension left her in a rush, a testament that emotions suppressed didn’t mean turmoil gone.

  She pulled into the driveway and parked the bike in the garage, then took the steps two at a time to her apartment. At the doorway she remembered the last time she’d been home, when Cathal had been with her, angry because of Eamon, a jealousy leading to amazing sex and intense feelings of intimacy.

  Inside the apartment she purposely avoided looking at the mattress on the floor. The day had definitely turned into a bust when it came to men.

  She checked her phone, realizing it was still off. She’d powered it down as she made her way to the church and never turned it on again.

  A check of messages showed Cathal had called more than once since she’d left him with his uncle. Distance is better, she told herself, even if this time her gift wasn’t the reason for it. Hadn’t she seen the mess love made out of people’s lives?

  Draping her jacket over the back of a chair, she sat at her desk, opening a tablet and selecting a pencil in the hopes of losing herself in her art.

  The only image to come was the design she’d worked on before, honeysuckle and thorn laid onto Cathal’s skin. Coming with a little more detail, as if the full truth of it was being rationed out in ink.

  She set the pencil down and closed her eyes. Elbows on the desk, she pressed her eyes to those on her palms, willing the tattoos to go away. She didn’t want to think about men or magic.

  Leave, her mother’s voice whispered through her. A new city, a new name. Run and keep running. Hide and keep hiding.

  A part of her was tempted by the ease of it, more than she’d ever been before. But it wasn’t a soul-deep longing. She knew she would never outdistance herself or her gift. Or a truth that would have seemed unfathomable days ago. Eamon and Cathal had become important to her, necessary enough she had to see whatever this was with them through to the end, even if anger dominated her feelings when it came to one of them, and frustration when it came to the other.