Inked Destiny

by Strong, Jory

  Before your birth. Even in paradise there are politics. Some pairings are a threat to those in power.

  “Do you know where she is?”

  I could find her if I desire. But the answer to your question will cost your human’s life. Time passes and you are unaware of its consequences. You are still changeling, as easy to kill as he is, though the magic will sustain your physical body a little longer.

  Fear almost started her heart. “Cathal’s heart stopped too?”

  Of course. Do you not understand what you did when you claimed him with your ink? Your bond is new enough that he can die and no harm will come to you. The same is not true of the reverse. Go. I will not hold you here any longer. But neither will I help you find your way back.

  The Dragon opened its mouth, this time sending a burst of blue fire, the flames an ice-cold magic that slammed into Etaín, knocking her into the bright white of a nothingness followed by inky darkness.

  Six

  Liam appeared in the room, his inexplicable arrival unnoticed in the fury of activity. Medical alarms screamed. A doctor and several nurses worked to restart the heart of the human lying on the bed. They used electrical shock while the detective used manual compression on Cathal, and Etaín’s father did the same to her.

  Liam knelt next to his future Lady. The silence in her chest was deafening, like being immersed in deep water. He could start a heart with his magic, just as he could stop one.

  Suppressing all fear of what a changeling seidic’s touch might do if she grabbed him, he reached out to touch her, halting inches from contact at hearing Cathal’s moan, followed by, “Shit,” then a panicked, “Etaín.”

  She gasped, the hungry inhalation of one starved for breath. A heartbeat accompanied the sound, strong and steady, though unlike Cathal she did not regain consciousness.

  Activity ceased at the bedside of the human. Liam heard the doctor call time of death but it held no relevance to him. Only the seidic changeling did.

  Cathal lifted Etaín into his arms despite the angry protests of her father, voice urgent as he asked Liam, “Why isn’t she waking up?”

  “Take her, they will be able to do nothing for her here.”

  He turned the gaze of an assassin on the captain. “You understood this could be dangerous for her. Don’t ask anything of her again.”

  It was the only warning he intended to give. It was enough to get them out of the room and then out of the hospital without hindrance.

  * * *

  Cathal stopped next to his car, torn as to what to do next. Go back to Eamon’s, where the chance of escaping again seemed slim, or take her to his place.

  He closed his eyes, pressing his cheek to hers, breathing in the scent of the shampoo he’d lathered in his hands as the three of them stood in the shower. “I can’t lose you, Etaín.”

  Not to death. Not to Eamon. Not to this supernatural shit that had him fighting constantly not to give in to fear.

  “Come back, Etaín,” he whispered, because this time he couldn’t follow her, he couldn’t find her, not in the physical sense. “Come back,” he repeated, unashamed of pouring desperation and longing and need into the bond he had proof existed between them.

  He imagined himself grasping it, tugging as if the vines on her arms and the ink she’d put on his were connected and he could reel her in that way.

  She stirred, a reward for his efforts.

  He continued them.

  Her eyelashes fluttered open after what seemed like an eternity.

  “Fuck, Etaín, you scared me.”

  “Yeah, let’s not do that again.”

  Her lips sought his and he loosened his grip, allowing her to slide from his arms and onto her feet so he could feel the press of her body to his as the kiss deepened, turning into a prelude to something they were in the wrong place for.

  He pulled away, but only far enough so he could meet her eyes. “You okay?”

  “I’m good. Kelvin?”

  “No. They stopped trying to revive him right about the time your heart started beating again.”

  He leaned in, touching his forehead to hers. “You want to go to Eamon’s place?”

  “No. Nothing’s changed.”

  “Etaín—”

  “Do you want to go back there?”

  “No.”

  “Then let’s stick to the plan. I need to draw.”

  “You draw. I’ll get the pictures to the police, deal?”

  “Afraid of letting me go out in public?” She sounded more tired than defiant.

  “And if I admit I am?”

  She sighed. “At least for what’s left of tonight, I wouldn’t blame you. I’m surprised Eamon hasn’t shown up.”

  “Liam did.”

  She shivered. “Did he do anything?”

  “Other than warning your father not to ask anything else of you, no.” Cathal kissed his way to her ear. “He’s a killer, Etaín, and it was a threat. I’ve seen enough of them—hell, I grew up knowing that’s what my father and uncle are—to recognize one. It just took a while to notice it in him.”

  “Understandable given the whole gorgeous Elf thing he’s got going on. But you’re not wrong about him.”

  Etaín shivered again. In Cathal’s arms, surrounded by all the trappings of an ordinary world, the Dragon, the voice, even Eamon’s revelation seemed more exotic dream than reality.

  Cathal captured her earlobe, giving it a quick suck then releasing it. “You’re cold. Let’s get home. I think I can find a way to warm you up. How long will the drawing take?” How much terror did you live?

  Sadness rushed in with the return of Kelvin’s memories, a nearly overwhelming sense of loss. A life wasted because he was trying to help his brother get to the same place he was.

  His death wasn’t on her, if anything Kelvin had very nearly taken her with him. But Vontae’s death…She couldn’t shake the guilt, the sense of having been responsible, because her gift was changing.

  “It won’t take me long to draw.” She wondered if she could get word to Melinda, that Kelvin’s last thoughts were of his wife and daughter, then fisted the fabric of Cathal’s shirt as it occurred to her that in the moment she’d brought Kelvin to the point of death in his memories, she’d caused his heart to stop.

  “Did she blame me?”

  “Who?”

  “Melinda?”

  Cathal sighed. She heard his regret at not being able to offer her the comfort she desperately wanted. “I don’t know, Etaín. No one expected him to survive, not even her, given what she said when we walked in. Would he have wanted to, like that?”

  “No.”

  “Let it go. There’s no point in playing the blame game. All I can tell you is that one minute I was standing there watching you do your thing, the next it felt like my heart exploded in my chest. I don’t know how long I was down and out, only that when I came to it was with Detective Ordoñes doing CPR.”

  “He’s a good-looking man. Too bad I missed seeing the mouth-to-mouth part,” she joked, escaping the serious.

  He bit her earlobe. “Funny. Some of your fantasies I’m game for, not that one.”

  “And especially not with Eamon.”

  “He’s not my favorite person at the moment.”

  With a final kiss he disengaged long enough to open the car door for her, closing it afterward to go around and get in the driver’s seat. He took her hand as they headed toward San Francisco. She couldn’t stop herself from saying, “I could ask Eamon to start looking for a way to break the bond. Free you from this…weirdness. You could have died back there, because of me.”

  “Leave it alone, Etaín.” He carried her hand to his thigh. “How about we just pretend we’re a normal couple for a little while?”

  She hesitated, torn between an aversion to lying and the need she sensed in him, finally saying, “For a little while.”

  They made a quick stop at Stylin’ Ink to collect her tattoo kit and a change of clothes. Then Cath
al ushered her into his house, his hand warm against her back. “Where do you want to do this thing?”

  “How about the TV room?” She didn’t need total silence to draw.

  “Sound’s good. I’ve got some demos to listen to, including one Salina sent me of Lady Steel.”

  Etaín laughed, turning into him and wrapping her arms around his waist. “Are you mentioning that because you’re hoping to get lucky in exchange for launching Salina’s band into stardom?”

  “I do seem to remember having some mind-blowing sex because of Lady Steel playing at Saoirse. I wouldn’t mind an encore performance.”

  His eyes went hot and dark, creating a liquid pool of need low in her belly. She touched her mouth to his, teasing along the seam of his lips with her tongue, seeking comfort and escape.

  He opened for her, his tongue tangling with hers, his hands sliding upward, cupping her head and holding her in place as he deepened the kiss, turning it into a carnal promise for later, because guilt and duty wouldn’t allow for this until she was done keeping her promise.

  He released her reluctantly and she stepped away from temptation, wheeling her kit over to the coffee table while he went to the sound system, electing to use headphones though he settled behind her on the couch, legs stretched on either side of her as she sat on the floor to draw.

  It didn’t take long, less than an album’s worth of time for her to capture in detail the relevant images. Kelvin hadn’t seen much, one man wearing a black ski mask and black clothing, firing bullets into Toney while another, unseen assailant went for a head shot, his death and his brother’s probably the first two casualties of the invasion that followed.

  She tore the pages from the sketchpad. Before Eamon, she would have rushed to the bathroom and puked her guts out after touching a victim and stealing their memories. She would have needed sleep for those same memories to surface in a nightmare that would once again send her running to hug the toilet bowl before she could draw. And afterward…

  She understood now it was magic that helped her push those memories behind a mental barrier and keep them there, completely separate from her own life, though that barrier had become thin, fragile. Because she was changeling? Or because there were so many horrifying images behind it, years and years of touching the victims of violent crime, people left so damaged and traumatized they could barely function.

  Those had been the only types of cases her father and brother had ever asked for her help on, because what she learned couldn’t be used in court and once she had the memories, the victim was free of them.

  Kelvin’s memories weren’t a burden she couldn’t carry. Weren’t a reality she intended to distance herself from. She wasn’t absolutely sure she could, given everything else: the events she and Cathal had witnessed while locked in a dream, her heart stopping at the hospital, and Cathal’s. The voice she’d started hearing. The primordial forest and emerald-green lake. The Dragon she wasn’t positive had been real. Because what, in the end had she learned from the conversation?

  Nothing. Nothing at all, except hope exposed, that one day she would find her mother and be able to ask, Why did you abandon me?

  She leaned back, smiling when Cathal pulled off his headphones and leaned forward, arms draping over her shoulders, lips brushing against hers in an upside down kiss. “Taking a break?”

  “Finished.”

  He was quiet for a long, very noticeable minute, no doubt wrestling with his own stated desire to pretend they were a normal couple. Finally he said, “What about the other scenes?”

  In the past, she would have drawn what she and Cathal witnessed in the dream that wasn’t a dream and handed it off to the captain. But not now, not when things were so unsettled with Eamon, not with Liam’s threat.

  “I’ll pass them on to the captain after I’ve had a chance to do a little asking around, to give him a place to suggest the cops start looking.”

  Cathal understood the why of it immediately. “Fuck Eamon.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s what got me into my current mess,” she joked. And to be fair, “Maybe without him, maybe without you both, I’d be dead at the hands of the Harlequin Rapist, or wishing I was, and all this would be moot.”

  Cathal sighed. “I don’t have to like this, right? You don’t expect me to.”

  She shrugged, but doubt reached into her chest and grasped her heart, squeezing it just enough to make her vulnerable, so she asked, “Having regrets?”

  “Ask that one more time and I’m not going to be responsible for what happens next.” There was a distinct growl in his voice.

  It chased away the doubt. “I need to get the drawings to Detective Ordoñes.”

  “I’ll do it while you draw the rest of it.”

  “You could pass them off to the captain instead of going back to Oakland. He’s on this side of the bay. I could call ahead.”

  “Works for me.” He gave her another upside-down kiss then straightened.

  She tore a sheet from her tablet and wrote down the address of a house she hadn’t entered in years, though once she’d called it home. After taking Cathal’s offered cellphone, she punched in the captain’s number.

  “Chevenier,” he answered.

  “Cathal’s bringing the drawings over now. You can hand them off to Ordoñes.”

  “Bring them yourself. I want you to stay here for a while.”

  Oh yeah, that’d go over well with the captain’s wife. The results of the paternity test Laura had insisted on all those years ago hadn’t diminished the animosity. If anything, it’d increased it, because the captain refused to let it be known that he didn’t have a bastard child after all.

  “I’m good where I am.” The traitorous part of her that still believed reconciliation was possible added, “But I appreciate the offer.”

  “Etaín—”

  “Captain—”

  “He was giving you CPR when I came to,” Cathal said from above her, sidetracking her, stalling out an argument that was sure to come around to her choice of men and the captain’s lack of approval.

  “I guess I owe you thanks, for what you did at the hospital.” She cringed at how that came out but forged ahead. “A lot has happened today. I just want to curl up on the couch and chill. Is it okay if Cathal brings the drawings over? I’m not sure they’ll be useful, Kelvin was outside behind the bar, but I figure Ordoñes still wants them as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll get them to him.”

  “Thanks, Captain.”

  There was a long silence. Her pain. His. It was there, shimmering between them, constricting her throat and turning her fingers white as they tightened on the phone and she fought against speaking again just to call him Dad.

  He broke first. “You need to take a step away from your current situation, Etaín, so you can see it more clearly. Stay with Parker if you don’t want to stay here, or better yet, get out of the city for a while.”

  She nearly laughed but she was afraid it’d sound hysterical rather than amused. Knowing the captain, he’d have her locked up for her own good if she started talking about magic and Elves and the gift she was losing control of.

  “You’ve made your point. I’m hanging up now.”

  She handed the phone to Cathal, following it by gathering up the sketches and rolling them, using a rubber band to keep them that way. She rose to her feet and Cathal did the same behind her, his arms going around her waist, holding her to his body.

  Wonderful lips found her neck, making pleasure shiver through her with soft kisses and small, sucking bites. “Think about me while I’m off being your errand boy?”

  She tilted her head to give him better access. “Errand boy? I’ve got you starring in the role of well-hung cabana boy.”

  Heat coiled in her belly as she remembered the last time she’d been here, and just what he’d done to and for her during a late night session in the hot tub. Her nipples went hard and tight, ache spreading outward from those center points of desire
when he pulled her shirt from the waistband of her jeans then pushed beneath it, firm possessive hands stroking her abdomen before moving upward, forcing her bra ahead of them so he could cup naked flesh.

  She needed this. She wanted to lose herself in him, in what they’d found together despite the reason for his first seeking her out.

  She moaned and felt his smile against her neck. “I think I can do cabana boy to your sex goddess.”

  “Sex goddess. I like the sound of that. Bring on the worshipers.”

  That gained her the sharp, quick feel of teeth. “One worshiper, Etaín.”

  “At the risk of ruining the mood…”

  “Don’t say his name.”

  “We’re still pretending we’re a normal couple?”

  Seven

  Cathal grimaced at the irony of the pretense a short while later as he handed the drawings to Etaín’s father, knowing he’d pay a visit to his own before returning home.

  “She should see a doctor to make sure there’s no damage,” the captain said, both hands on the rolled sketches, as if keeping them there was necessary to his self-control.

  “I’ll mention it to her.” And then, because he knew the estrangement hurt her, and her involvement with him only added to it he said, “I’m not my father or uncle.”

  “You made my daughter an accessory to murder.”

  It would always come back to that, though he wasn’t foolish enough to respond and incriminate himself, his family, or her.

  “Good night,” he said, turning away.

  “If you really love her, you’d get out of her life and stay out of it.”

  “That’s not possible.” He didn’t slow or look back, and in his car, he called ahead, to let his father know he intended to visit.

  When he arrived, they went to his father’s office, the only place in the house where his father would speak freely.

  “What brings you here? I’m surprised you’re not with Etaín.” His father poured himself a drink. Cathal declined the silent offer of one.

  “She’s at my place. You’ve heard about what happened in Oakland?”