Ink Witch (Kat Dubois Chronicles Book 1)

by Lindsey Fairleigh

  Harbor Island was a funny place—I’d been here once on a field trip for my high school economics class. We were supposed to see international commerce at work on the enormous man-made island, but we really just ended up watching an hour-long safety movie about container ships and shipyard hazards, listening to a rep from the company that runs Terminal 18—the shipping container facility taking up the northeast quadrant of Harbor Island—explain pretty much everything there was to know about containers. It was disappointing, especially since many of us had been fantasizing about climbing all over the neat stacks of thousands of containers we were only allowed to view through a razor wire–topped chain-link fence.

  I reached said chain-link fence, specifically the portion blocking off the south side of the industrial part of Harbor Island, and drew my sword. One of my favorite things about Mercy was that her At blade could cut through pretty much anything, and the wire making up a chain-link fence was about as resistant to my sword as chilled butter to a table knife; cutting through wasn’t effortless, but it didn’t make me sweat, either. Within five minutes, I’d cut an opening about four feet high—tall enough for me to squeeze through without resorting to crawling.

  I’d taken three cautious steps onto the parking lot of Harley Marine Services when a motion-activated floodlight winked on.

  “Shit,” I hissed, slinking another dozen steps to crouch between two large white service trucks. I waited for a minute or two, listening for footsteps and engines. Hearing none, I straightened a little and made my way across the lot, moving in the shadows between vehicles whenever possible.

  The next lot had to belong to an auto shipping company, because it basically looked like the lot of a car dealership. And a damn fancy one. It worked perfectly for my purposes. I managed to cross to the north end of the lot without tripping any more motion sensors.

  After that, the east half of the man-made island was all Terminal 18. I stood at the edge of the packed car lot between two sedans, their black paint gleaming like oil in the dim moonlight. There was a fairly large open stretch of asphalt before the never-ending rows of red, blue, green, and orange shipping containers started, some stacked four or five high. On the far right, following the island’s artificial shoreline, clusters of cranes in twos and threes stood sentinel, burnt-orange behemoths watching over everything.

  I snuck to the water’s edge, hoping any motion sensors for floodlights or cameras wouldn’t reach that far since the movement of the water would be constantly setting them off. Keeping low and moving slowly, I made my way further into Terminal 18.

  Mari’s text from that morning had mentioned that the Ouroboros containers belonging to the illicit shipment would be stored between slots A-27 and A-30. According to the satellite maps I’d scoured online, row A was nearest to the water. Meaning it should be just straight ahead.

  I squinted as I neared the first stack of containers—a stack of two, both green and both painted with the John Deere logo on the side. They were in spot A-13. The next stack, three containers in spot A-17—two orange, one red—were unlabeled, so far as I could see, besides a series of nonsensical numbers and letters on the door side.

  I scanned the white numbers painted on the asphalt ahead. Sure enough, ten spots down, I found A-27. A stack of three containers piled one atop the other, all blue, called me onward, followed immediately by a stack of four. I jogged ahead, heart pounding and blood a raging river in my ears.

  “Alright, you shitstains,” I said under my breath as I reached the supposed Ouroboros containers. “What are you hiding?” I stopped beside the stack of three, surveilling the long sides facing me. There was nothing to identify them as actually belonging to Ouroboros, so I moved around to the water side, where the container’s doors might give me some hint that I was in the right spot.

  They didn’t—like so many of the containers filling the yard, they were labeled only with a series of letters and numbers, none of which made sense to me.

  I took a step backward, peering at all four stacks of solid blue containers. I placed my hands on my hips and chewed on my bottom lip. They were right where Mari had said they would be, but there was only one way to find out if these were the right containers—the same way I would find out what the hell Ouroboros was up to. I had to break into them.

  Drawing my sword slowly enough that the ring of At on steel was minimal, I approached the first stack. The lock on the bottom container looked complex and heavy duty, and there was no way for me to tell whether or not it was rigged with some kind of an alarm. But who says I have to go through the lock to get into the container? It would take some time and a fair amount of elbow grease, but Mercy was more than capable of cutting through the thick sheet of steel.

  The tip of my sword was inches from the container’s door when I heard the creak of metal on metal. I froze, sword gripped in both hands and breath held, and scanned the containers around me.

  The door of the second container in a stack of five in slot A-30 inched open.

  I pulled back Mercy and raised my elbows, settling into a ready stance.

  Something tumbled out of the container, falling at least eight feet to the pavement. It landed with an oomph and a groan. Not a something; a someone.

  “Kat? Is that you?” It was Mari—the someone. She pushed herself off the ground a few inches and raised her head. There was barely a crescent of a moon high overhead, and across the water, Seattle far outshone the stars, but my eyes were good enough to see the lab coat she was wearing. And the bloodstains marring the fabric and the dark bruises on her face and neck. She looked like hell beaten over.

  My palm itched, and I rubbed it against my jeans. “What the hell are you doing here, Mars?”

  Mari coughed a laugh, spitting up something that looked suspiciously like blood. “Your concern is underwhelming, as usual.”

  Hesitantly, I sheathed my sword and approached, offering her a hand up. Someone must’ve caught her poking around, but that didn’t explain how she’d ended up in one of the containers she’d all but sent me here to find.

  She accepted my outstretched hand, pulling herself up to a sitting position but not even attempting to stand. She coughed weakly and clutched one side like the action hurt her ribs. “I need a minute . . .”

  I nodded, still rubbing my palm against my jeans. “Is anything broken?” Because if she had any broken bones, I had no doubt she’d prefer for me to set them now rather than wait until they’d healed so much that they’d have to be re-broken to heal properly.

  She shook her head, her dark bob matted in chunks. “Not for me. I don’t know about Dom . . .”

  “What do you mean—Dom?” I scanned the area, searching for his lanky form but finding no sign of him. “Is he here? Where? What happened?”

  “We snuck out together.” She pointed up to the partially open container with her chin. “He’s up there. He’s in pretty bad shape, though.”

  Before she’d finished speaking, I’d launched myself at the container, grabbing hold of the lip. My feet scrabbled for purchase on the vertically ribbed face of the bottom container. The toe of my boot found the boxed lock, and I used that to leverage myself the rest of the way up.

  It was even darker inside the container, the sliver of light spilling in through the opening barely enough to allow even my heightened Nejeret vision to make out the interior.

  But I could see Dom, lying on the floor a couple yards in. Pallets laden with boxes filled the space beyond him, their shrink-wrap gleaming dully in the barely there light.

  “Dom,” I said, rushing forward and dropping to my knees beside him. I turned his head so I could see his face. “Dom, are you alright?”

  No response.

  My heart turned to lead.

  I pressed my fingers to his neck in search of a pulse, letting out a relieved breath when I found it, faint but steady enough for now. So long as his heart was beating, propelling his Nejeret blood through his body, and so long as his injuries weren’t immedi
ately fatal, he’d be able to regenerate.

  I shook him by the shoulder. “Dom, can you hear me?”

  But still, he said nothing. He did nothing. He was out cold. But I could see him; I could touch him. It was a far cry from the position I’d been in an hour ago, and I couldn’t ignore the burst of euphoria that sprouted in my chest. The hard part was over. I’d found him. It would all be downhill from here.

  13

  The first time I met Mari, she almost killed me. In her defense, I was trying to kill her. She’s the opposite of Nik, able to pull a far more dangerous and volatile universal energy into this realm, give it form, and shape it to her will. It was with that energy that she nearly killed not only my body, but also my eternal soul.

  The universe was created by the old gods, Re and Apep, around a principle of absolute, ultimate balance known as ma’at. If At is the principle element of creation, then anti-At is its inverse—destruction. It binds to At, binds to every aspect of creation, moving it, changing it, keeping the universe from growing stagnant. We are, all of us, objects of creation, of At. Nejerets carry a little piece of At within us, in the form of our ba—our soul. Should we come into physical contact with anti-At, we’ll change. The anti-At particles, torn from their usual plane of existence, become ravenous in their need to destroy, binding with anything and everything. Binding with us, consuming our ba, until we no longer exist. Until we never existed at all. If we come into contact with anti-At, we’ll be unmade.

  Which is precisely what almost happened to me, a long time ago, when Mari nearly killed me. Nik and I had fought, much like this morning, and I’d run off, dead set on avenging my mother’s death. I’d attacked Mari, mistakenly believing she was responsible, and she’d stabbed me. With a gleaming black dagger made of pure anti-At. Only Nik arriving seconds later and extracting all of the otherworldly poison from my body by binding every molecule of anti-At with its one true mate, At, had allowed me to survive. Not unscathed—my ba had been damaged and would forever bear the scars—but I hadn’t been unmade, either.

  Mari had gone from my enemy to my ally in a matter of minutes. We’d been through hell together, and she was like a sister to me, even if we hadn’t spoken in years. There weren’t many people I’d trust with my life, but if push came to shove, I’d trust Mari.

  “Mars,” I called through the container door. “Can you give me a hand?” I dragged Dom to the door by his armpits. “We need to get him out of here.” He wasn’t wearing anything substantial, just a pair of sweatpants and a white T-shirt—both torn and covered with bloodstains that looked black in the dim light—and he felt far too cold for my liking.

  “I’m still too weak,” Mari said from outside. “I’ll just end up dropping him. Where’s Nik? He could help you.”

  I frowned, my hand burning. “He’s not here.” I set Dom down a half-dozen inches from the edge and poked my head out through the opening. “How long until you’re strong enough? We need to get him out of here before anyone notices we’re here.” A thought struck me, and I realized we might be under a far greater time crunch than I’d previously thought. “Do they know this is how you escaped? Will they come looking for you here?”

  Mari was still sitting on the ground, legs folded beneath her, back hunched, and hands in her lap. She shook her head. “I should be mostly recovered in fifteen minutes or so. They worked me over pretty good. Do you have anything to eat? That’d speed it up . . .”

  I reached into the right zippered pocket of my leather jacket and pulled out the protein bar I’d stashed there before leaving my apartment. Never leave home without one. “What happened, anyway?” I asked, tossing the bar to Mari.

  She tore into the wrapper with gusto. “They caught me nosing around in a restricted lab over there,” she said, nodding back toward the rest of SoDo sprawling behind her. “I found the missing Nejerets, but I was only able to get Dom out. He didn’t look too hot when I found him, but he was still able to help me fight our way out.” She stuffed the last piece of the protein bar into her mouth, balled up the wrapper, and threw it on the ground a few feet away. “We should find Nik and go back for the others.”

  I glanced down at my palm. It burned something fierce now, like I held a handful of stinging nettles. My eyebrows drew together. Despite the very real and very uncomfortable sensation, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with the skin of my palm. It wasn’t red or swollen, and the Eye of Horus looked the same, gleaming in the subdued evening light.

  “Where is Nik, anyway?” Mari asked. “I thought he’d be with you.”

  “Don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “Don’t care.” Why was she obsessing about him all of a sudden? They’d never been close, and her fixation on him was setting off alarm bells in my mind.

  “Damn it, Kat. You couldn’t make this easy for once, could you?” Mari reached into the pocket of her bloodied lab coat and pulled out a black sphere about the size of a baseball. “I can’t go back there without him, and I really didn’t want to have to resort to this, but I swear I don’t have a choice.” She lobbed the black orb up to me, saying, “Catch!”

  I reacted instinctively, reaching out to catch the thing with my right hand even as my mind screamed, NO! Because the orb was made of anti-At.

  “No . . .” I gaped down at my hand, paralyzed by mind-numbing horror. Any second now, the anti-At would start soaking into my skin with a sickening tingling sensation.

  Fuck. I’d gone and done it again. I just killed myself with my own stupidity and caught the damn orb of death. And thanks to me, Nik was nowhere in sight. This time, death—unmaking—would stick. And the damage to the timeline would be astronomical, because I’d been involved, however accidental or unwilling, in a lot of important, world-forming shit. If I disappeared from existence, everything I’d done since the day I was born would be undone.

  “Where’s Nik?” Mari asked, on her feet now, fists on her hips and stare intense. “Call him. He’ll drop whatever he’s doing and come running to save you.”

  “What?” I stared at the black orb, horrified and disgusted with myself, then gaped at Mari. “Why, Mars?” I looked at her, eyes stinging. “Why?” We hadn’t been close in years, but we’d been inseparable once. She was like a sister to me. I’d trusted her.

  “Please, Kat.” She wrung her hands. “Call Nik. He’ll fix this.”

  I blinked away tears, the chaos that had clouded my mind finally clearing enough that coherency returned, at least a little. “You need him.” I cleared my throat, eyes narrowing. “That’s what this has all been about. Your questions about me and him and the Senate . . . you telling me—us—to come check out this shipment . . .” I shook my head slowly. “God, I really am an idiot.”

  “Your words . . .”

  I glanced down at my hand. Why wasn’t it tingling? Last time, when her anti-At blade had been buried deep in my side, I’d felt the particles working through me like tiny, soul-consuming insects. But this time, I felt nothing but the slightly warm surface of the orb against my shimmering skin.

  My eyes widened as I registered what I was seeing. The ancient goddess tattoo in my skin—she’d extended one of her wings, the iridescent feathers extending onto my palm, an unbroken barrier of At between myself and the anti-At orb. She was protecting me.

  I looked at Mari, my lips curving into a grin. A low, deep laugh spilled forth. “Would you look at that . . .”

  Mari stared at my hand, disbelief written all over her face.

  “Not today, bitch,” I hissed, then chucked the orb into the water. It was relatively harmless out there, and I hoped the Puget Sound’s current would carry it away to unknown depths where, in all likelihood, it would never have the chance to unmake anyone’s soul again.

  A slow, wicked smile spread across Mari’s face. She looked better now, like she’d healed some—or maybe she just hadn’t been that injured to begin with. Dom was still unconscious . . . still badly wounded. I frowned. He should’ve been regenerating. He sho
uld look better, too. But he didn’t.

  “Do you have any idea what you just—”

  “Oh, shut up already,” I spat, cutting Mari off as I drew my sword. Mercy sang out, a clear, pristine sound as her solidified At blade slid free of its steel sheath. It glimmered, almost glowing in the faint moonlight. I jumped down from the container, rolling on my landing and immediately settling into a defensive crouch a dozen feet from Mari. I didn’t know why she’d betrayed me, but I knew how she would pay.

  Mari stood with her feet shoulder width apart, twin black daggers as long as her forearms gripped in either hand. They appeared out of nowhere. “I don’t want to fight you, Kat.”

  “Then don’t,” I said, lunging at her.

  She raised her daggers, crossing them to block my sword. Her shorter blades met mine in a shower of glittering sparks of every conceivable color. The only thing as strong as At was anti-At. Our blades were evenly matched, even if we weren’t. I’d always been the better fighter.

  “I said I didn’t want to fight you,” Mari said through gritted teeth. “Not that I won’t.”

  14

  I was beating her. With every strike and parry, Mari weakened, and I drew closer to landing a lethal blow. She had to have known that if it came down to the two of us fighting, this was how it would end. So why set up some elaborate trap—and a shoddy one, at that—just to get to Nik? What did she need from him?

  I blocked both of Mari’s blades with my sword, twisting my own blade so hers tangled. She cried out, dropping one. I kicked her in the abdomen, launching her back a solid six feet. She skidded on her ass and dropped her other dagger, freeing up both hands to catch herself.

  I stalked toward her, stopping just beyond her feet. I wasn’t dumb enough to stand over her—not when she could materialize a new anti-At weapon in the blink of an eye. “Tell me why you’re doing this,” I said, staring down at her, sword at the ready should she try to lash out. “Why are you helping them? Did you really get caught, or was that all a lie, too?” For all I knew, she was the one responsible for Dom’s current condition.