Inked

by Karen Chance

  “Not unless you want to go by yourself. I’m not supposed to be here, remember?”

  My eyes were already starting to water. What the hell was that? “And the dwarves don’t come this way?”

  “Nobody comes this way since they moved in the bonnacon.”

  He nodded at a huge shaggy animal with small curled horns pacing back and forth in a nearby pen. Unlike the other large animals, this one wasn’t in a barbed wire cage. Instead, pieces of corrugated aluminum had been nailed haphazardly to the sides of a wooden frame, creating a pen that was almost six feet high. Maybe the height was to help block the smell, but if so, it wasn’t working. I’d encountered poison gas that didn’t reek like that.

  “Do I want to know?”

  “You really don’t,” Dieter said as we edged around.

  A large black nose with a ring through it poked over the top of the pen as we passed, and a low, menacing sound issued from behind the metal. “I don’t think he likes you,” Dieter observed.

  I would have made a comment about that making us even, but it would have required taking a breath.

  We finally emerged into (relatively) fresh air beside a packed bar. It was outlined with a row of lanterns made out of green and amber beer bottles. They swayed cheerfully on their wires, splashing moving colors on the floor below. Behind the counter, vegetables were being stir-fried in huge, shallow pans, sending clouds of fragrant steam skyward. My stomach reminded me that I’d skipped lunch, but we didn’t stop there.

  A couple streets over was an even more impressive establishment, in a tent formed out of army blankets. Over the entrance, someone had rigged an old Vegas sign: cocktails was spelled out in fat, fifties-era orange bulbs. Inside, hot dogs sizzled on a cinderblock grill next to the bar and every folding card table had its own flickering candle. They weren’t needed for lighting, but added to the unexpectedly inviting atmosphere.

  We didn’t stop there, either.

  We did stop at the entrance to a small dark cave, sitting all on its own at the end of a side street. Once my eyes adjusted, I understood the reason for the lousy lighting—and why the place made no effort to advertise. The smugglers, assassins, illegal arms dealers and narcotic pushers that made up 90 percent of its clientele probably preferred their privacy. I recognized half a dozen wanted criminals slouched at tables in the shadows. One must have recognized me, too, or maybe just what I was. He raised a glass in a mock salute. He knew I wouldn’t take him in—not when he’d be back on the street in an hour.

  “Stop looking like that!” Dieter said, sounding a little stressed.

  “Like what?”

  “Like you want a fight!”

  I realized that my hand had automatically gone to my potion belt. I slowly removed it, and the shadowy shapes on either side of the door relaxed slightly. We threaded our way through the crowd to a slab of plywood raised on sawhorses—the bar, I assumed. The tables were packed, but the area around the bar was empty. That probably had something to do with the presence of a large, reeking Awsang behind the counter.

  “That’s Tilda,” Dieter said, appearing unfazed by the smell. I found that I wasn’t that bothered myself. I had new standards now, excitingly.

  I perched on a stool and summoned up a smile. It was a little hard to tell if Tilda smiled back. She was busy slurping something from a plastic Burger King cup through her hairy proboscis. Since Aswangs are carrion-eaters, I was just as glad I couldn’t see what half-rotten delicacy lay inside.

  “Beer in a bottle?” I asked hopefully.

  The slurping continued. Guess that meant no.

  “I’m looking for a friend,” I told her, figuring it was worth a shot. I reached for my wallet intending to show her Cyrus’s photo, but found that it was gone. And a moment later, so was the stool. I hit the floor and a giggling kobald scurried out from under me, heading for the door as fast as his childlike legs could carry him.

  My lasso caught him around one chubby foot before he could make his escape. He tried to shake it off, but I strengthened the spell and started dragging him back, ignoring the stream of profanity I couldn’t understand anyway. He wiggled and squirmed and left furrows in the dirt floor with his fingernails, but I wrestled him closer. Until he shape-shifted again, into a column of fire, which the lasso couldn’t hold.

  He flew out of the door on a wash of sparks, but with no hands he’d been forced to drop my wallet. It hit the floor with a thud and a sizzle, so I lassoed it instead, put out the flames and pulled out Cyrus’s photo. There was no visible reaction from the barmaid to any of this.

  I added a twenty to the picture, and the bill disappeared faster than I could blink. But Tilda only shook her head. “She doesn’t know him,” Dieter translated unnecessarily.

  “He might have been in Were form—”

  I was going to describe his markings, but never got the chance. Tilda spat a great wad of brown-tinted yuck on the floor. “She doesn’t serve Weres,” Dieter interpreted.

  “Why not?”

  “Since you guys left, the gangs have turned into a major pain in the ass. They’re all bad, but the Weres are the worst. Like this morning, a bunch of them burnt out the settlement where I was staying. I lost everything.”

  “That sucks. So do you see him?”

  Dieter put his head down on the bar. “I lose my entire stash, get caught by that fucking bounty hunter and meet you—all in the same day. My life more than sucks. Sucking would be a step up.”

  “Yeah. So do you see him?” I repeated.

  “See who?”

  “You said there was a wardsmith here,” I reminded him, striving for patience.

  Dieter’s eyes flitted around the bar, or at least as much of it as he could see without actually sitting up. “Guess he’s not here today. He don’t come in all the time.”

  If he’d had any hair left, I’d have pulled it. “Do you know where he is when he’s not here?”

  Dieter gave a horizontal type of shrug. Then he seemed to find an idea worth getting vertical. “You know, if you bought me a drink, it might—” I slammed a knife down, catching his collar and pinning his head back to the bar. “You could have just said no,” he told me irritably.

  “Answer the question!”

  He rolled his eyes up at Tilda. “That ward guy been in here lately?” She made some odd noises that in no way resembled speech, but Dieter seemed to understand. “She said he’s got a shop around the corner, only he likes to drink so he’s usually here. But she hasn’t seen him today.”

  “What’s the name of the shop?”

  “They don’t have names. But you’ll know it.”

  “How?”

  “Well, a little clue would be that it has ‘wards’ over the door,” he said, pretty sarcastically for a guy with a knife millimeters from his jugular. But then, considering his personality, it probably wasn’t all that unusual for him. “Can I get up now?” he whined.

  I pulled out the knife and manhandled him out of the bar. Around the corner, we came across a support column that seemed to serve as a sort of community message board. Up close, it was obviously dwarf-made, smooth and organic-looking, like wind-sculpted rock. Only the wind wasn’t responsible: the minerals needed to form it had been magicked from the surrounding soil.

  We found an ad for “wards and charms” and directions to a shop near the end of the path, in a primo location where three trails merged. It was the usual tent made of army blankets and two-by-fours, but was bigger than most and had a plank with a hand-painted thunderbird above the entrance. It didn’t actually say “wards,” but around here, a pictogram was probably better anyway. I pushed back the blanket serving as the door and we went in.

  The tent appeared to have several rooms, with the outer fixed up as a showroom. A lantern swung overhead, casting golden light over a couple chairs, a tattered Navajo rug, a floor-length mirror and a glass showcase. There didn’t appear to be anybody here.

  I walked over to the showcase. Two glasses stoo
d on the counter, the light through their contents casting a pink stain over the case. I bent over and sniffed the nearest one—and almost passed out.

  “Is this what I think it is?” I held it out to Dieter.

  He snatched it and took a long breath. “Whoa. No wonder he stopped buying from me!”

  “The wardsmith was a customer?” Dieter suddenly looked shifty. “I won’t turn you in,” I told him impatiently. “I’m after a killer, not a drug user.”

  “A killer?” His expression veered into panic.

  “No one you need to worry about. Now answer the question!”

  “He bought pretty regular,” Dieter admitted, his eyes on the bright swirl of ruby liquid. “That’s how I knew him.”

  “But you didn’t sell him this?”

  “Are you kidding? That’s Fey wine!”

  “Isn’t that your stock in trade?”

  He rolled his eyes. “I sell punch, okay?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  He picked up the glass and held it next to the other. “That.” The contents of the second glass were pale pink, the color of rosé. The liquid in the one I’d handed him was a deep bloodred.

  “Punch is cut,” I guessed. A lot, judging by the color.

  “Hell, yeah. Full strength, that shit’ll make a vamp drunk!”

  “What would it do to a human?”

  Dieter shrugged. “Depends how long he’s been using. You build up a tolerance after a while. But I don’t know any human who uses it straight. By the time you get that far in, you’re usually gone.”

  “Gone?”

  He made the circle around his temple that was the universal sign for crazy. Great. The guy I needed to question might be passed out somewhere, or worse.

  I tipped the contents of the uncut glass onto the dirt floor and scraped my boot across it. Dieter’s face fell. “Aw, man! Do you know what that was worth?”

  “About ten years, assuming you don’t have any priors. You need to find a new line of work.”

  “Maybe I should start making wards,” he said sullenly. “This guy must be doing okay to afford the pure stuff.”

  I followed his gaze downward, to the case the glass had been sitting on. It was full of small gold wards. Nice ones.

  A chill ran up my back.

  Dieter slid open the back of the case and picked one up. It was more like a chain than a charm, consisting of six ants linked together in a golden line. “Hey, what do you think this one does?”

  “I don’t know.” I was more concerned about why the case hadn’t been spelled shut.

  The blanket covering the door into the next room fluttered slightly. I pulled a gun, moved carefully around the case and snatched it open. “Auggh!” Dieter let out a screech, and I almost shot him.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Look!” He stuck out his right hand. The ants had done what they were designed to do and melted into his skin. They were roaming around, checking out the territory, crawling over his fingers and down to his wrist.

  “You shouldn’t pick up powerful wards without knowing what they do.”

  “Now you tell me?” He started jumping around, shaking his hand uselessly. The ants ignored him. So did I.

  A walk-through of the next room yielded nothing of interest, except that a cabinet full of expensive supplies was unlocked and unspelled. Yet there was no sign of a struggle. There was also no third room where the wardsmith might be taking an ill-advised nap. He was simply missing.

  I went back into the front and found Dieter half naked. He’d torn his shirt off and was slapping at his chest. The ants had crawled up his arm to his torso, where they were roaming around like dogs on a scent.

  I felt around in my pocket for the numb stick, and looked up to find Dieter glaring at me. “Do something! You got me into this, you crazy bitch!”

  “That’s witch,” I said mildly, and left the numb stick where it was.

  The glass case contained a few dozen wards, mostly smaller ones that you could buy in any shop. But a few were outstanding, including a large elk, a popular Native American totem for stamina. I shielded my hand and picked it up. A smooth, steady energy throbbed under my fingertips.

  I couldn’t figure out what a wardsmith this good was doing in Tartarus. Even with a drinking problem, most shops would take him on, or at least buy his work—and for more than he was likely to get here. Wards like this were worth their weight in gold these days, and those that could be used as weapons were even more—

  Dieter suddenly thrust a long, pale foot onto the display case. He was down to a pair of faded blue briefs, so the movement gave me more of a view than I liked. “Look! Look what they’re doing!”

  The ants had congregated around a bruise on his ankle and appeared to be nibbling away at it. Every time one of them took a bite, a tiny piece of the bruise disappeared, replaced with unblemished skin. “Cool.”

  “They’re eating me!”

  “They’re healing you,” I told him. “Shut up.”

  I glanced down at the case, and noticed something strange. All the wards were totems associated with things like healing, stamina or defense. I knelt and checked out the under stock, and it was the same story. Not a single one was for combat, despite the fact that those were the ones bringing the most money these days.

  I stared down at the gleaming menagerie and it stared back, unable to tell me if I was onto something or if I’d started off on a wild-goose chase. I was beginning to think the latter sounded the most likely. All I had for a day’s work were some expensive wards and a missing wardsmith, neither of which might have anything to do with Cyrus.

  It wasn’t unusual for a bunch of outcasts to stockpile weapons. The war had a lot of people paranoid, and vargulfs had no clan to back them up if they got into trouble. And a bunch of Weres might prefer those weapons in the form of wolves.

  As for the wardsmith, he was probably passed out somewhere, courtesy of too much wine. Waiting for him to wake up and stumble back wasn’t too appealing when he might not have anything useful to tell me. Barring more clues from Cyrus, my best option was old-fashioned police work. I needed to know where he’d been seen last, who he’d talked to, who had been with him. I could circle back and question the wardsmith later, assuming he ever showed up.

  “Get dressed,” I told Dieter. “We’re out of here.”

  I checked my phone, having some questions for Jamie or Caleb, but I didn’t have any bars. And then I didn’t have a phone, either, because one of Dieter’s flailing arms ripped it out of my hand. He was dancing around again because the ants were on the move. They’d finished with the ankle, leaving only pale skin and coarse black hair behind, and were crawling up the inside of his leg.

  He brushed at them frantically until they disappeared beneath the edge of his boxers. And then he lost it. He tore the shorts off, slapping at his butt and various other things while I went for my phone. And found something a lot more interesting.

  Dieter’s dance had disturbed the rug, revealing a line in the sand covering the floor. I retrieved my phone, tossed the rug back and found a trapdoor. And a second later, I found the wardsmith.

  8

  HE’D been folded double and wedged into the small space so tightly that it took me several minutes to get him out. But it was obvious from the start that there was no real rush. A cigarette still dangled from his lips, but there were no lungs left to smoke it with. They’d been torn out along with the rest of his chest.

  It had been a Were attack. The claw marks were clearly visible, but I didn’t really need them. Few things kill a man so fast that he doesn’t even have time to look afraid.

  I heard an odd, choking sound, and looked up in time to see Dieter’s bare ass heading out the door. I threw a lasso spell after him, but only got it around one leg. He went down, scrabbling for purchase in the dust. A few people stuck their heads out of nearby tents, attracted by the noise, and wasn’t that just all I needed.

&nb
sp; “Cut it out!” I told him, irritably, but he either didn’t hear or didn’t care. He turned over onto his back and started kicking his leg, trying to shake the spell off, but only succeeded in tightening it further. “He can’t hurt you,” I pointed out, reeling him in.

  “It’s not him I’m worried about!” He leaned back, trying to use his weight against the spell, but that just resulted in him getting yanked down the street in little hops, one leg stuck out straight in front of him. I gave a final heave and he fell through the door, his nose landing maybe a foot from the corpse. “Auggh!”

  “Just tell me what you know,” I said, because something had really spooked him. I couldn’t believe that this was the first dead body he’d seen—he lived in Tartarus after all.

  “That’s the Predators’ mark!” He pointed a shaking finger at the deep wounds on the man’s chest. “They always leave the body carved up like that. It’s like their signature or something.”

  “The Predators?”

  “A Were gang. One of the worst!” He took off again and this time, I let him go. Things were starting to get a little dangerous for a bystander, even a not-entirely innocent one.

  I bent over the wardsmith again. He had a bent back, a scraggly beard, pouchy cheeks and was wearing an old pair of jeans and a faded sweatshirt. He looked like a street person, but the Thunderbird tat on his arm was a stunner. I’d never seen one like it, and it practically screamed quality. It was also a talisman, or it would have fallen free of the body when he died and his magic failed.

  I brought out the three wards I’d found in the sofa and compared them. Each wardsmith has his or her own personal style, sort of a signature on their pieces. An expert could probably have told at a glance whether the same hand had made these. Unfortunately, I wasn’t one. But there was something in the rounded, almost abstract quality of the pieces that looked awfully—

  The attack came so fast that I never even heard it—at least consciously. But my shields slammed into place right before a blow landed across my chest, jarring through my bones into my teeth. If I hadn’t had shields, it would have killed me. As it was, I went skidding on my back through the side of the tent and across the road, before rolling into the open side of a used-clothes shop.