Nightmare Ink

by Marcella Burnard

  When she began biting the teeth of the comb, Isa knew she’d had enough.

  “May we get some sleep, now?”

  Kneading her paws, Ikylla blinked permission.

  “So kind.”

  Ikylla jumped off the counter and led the way into the bedroom. She flowed up onto the bed, watching from her nest in the covers while Isa tugged on clean underwear and an old T-shirt.

  Isa climbed into bed. Before turning out the bedside lamp, she opened the drawer of her nightstand and picked up the black feather she kept there. It glinted, as shiny and smooth as the day she’d found it a decade ago.

  Magic tingled from the feather to her fingers, like the caress of a fond parent. Reassurance? Encouragement?

  Isa snorted. Wishful thinking, more like. She set the feather back in the drawer and closed it. She switched off the lamp. Climbing in under the covers, she shifted to the center of the mattress.

  Gus leaped up and began rooting in the covers, arranging his spot to his liking before he turned a series of circles. He flopped against her right side.

  “Oof.”

  He heaved a great doggy sigh as she petted his ears.

  Ikylla allowed a couple of strokes of her short, silky fur before she snuggled between Isa’s left arm and rib cage.

  Surrounded by the warmth of her animal family, Isa slept.

  ***

  Gus twitching in his dreams pulled her from the depths of slumber. He whimpered.

  Still groggy, Isa fought to open her eyes so she could nudge him. It hit her in that instant. Ikylla was gone from her spot. The cat’s body heat evaporating from Isa’s skin made her shiver.

  Gus shuddered.

  Isa drew breath to say his name. He bolted to his feet and howled. Her heart jolted.

  Something thudded against the building. Jagged yellow/red magic slammed through her chest. The bed quivered from the impact. Downstairs, barely audible, glass crashed.

  Isa froze for the elongated split-second it took for the alarm in the store downstairs to begin shrieking. She sat bolt upright.

  Her cell phone started ringing, barely audible over the alarm. She grabbed it from the bedside table and hit ANSWER. “Hello?”

  The dog fled.

  “Ms. Romanchzyk, this is Jet City Protection. We have an active alarm at—”

  “Someone just smashed the window!” Isa shouted as she rolled out of the bed. She had to unplug the phone before she could stand upright.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ve alerted the police, Ms. Romanchzyk. They’re on their way. I’d like you to remain on the line until they arrive.”

  “Setting the phone down long enough to put on a pair of pants,” she countered. “I’m not facing a smash and grab and endless police reports in my pajamas.”

  “The police won’t care, Ms.—”

  “I care. One sec.” She yanked on a pair of jeans, pulled off the ratty Weird Ink T-shirt she slept in, put on a bra, a long-sleeve tee, and the first sweatshirt that came to hand.

  Muffled thumps had started to come from the other tenants in the building, audible even above the shrill of the alarm. She expected half of them to end up pounding on her door as if she hadn’t been ripped out of sleep by the same thing they had.

  She snatched up the phone and headed for the door as she said, “Back.”

  “The police report they are on scene.”

  “Okay. Headed down to secure the alarm before my neighbors lynch me.”

  “Don’t hang up, Ms. Romanchzyk,” the guy on the other end said.

  The rain must have let up. The streetlights lit up the front room well enough that she didn’t need to switch on a light. She stuffed her feet into a shabby pair of cowboy boots that she should have discarded long ago and grabbed her jacket, patting the right-hand pocket to be sure the shop keys were still there. If they jingled, she couldn’t hear them over the obnoxious alarm, but the bulk and heft of them reassured her.

  She’d clattered three steps down the stairs when the alarm died.

  A ragged cheer went up from the neighbors. The newborn in unit 205 wailed.

  Isa cringed.

  “Was that an earthquake?” the woman from the unit next to Isa’s asked.

  “Don’t think so,” the guy from across the hall said. “Only one shop alarm. Ms. Romanchzyk, let me walk down with you.”

  “No need,” she called over her shoulder. “Alarm company’s on the phone, and the police are already on-site, but thanks! Sorry about the alarm!”

  Doors closed behind her.

  “Ms. Romanchzyk?” the guy on the other end of the phone said. “Did you secure the alarm?”

  “No,” she said. “Still in the stairwell. Must have been the police.”

  The phone line popped and crackled.

  “Could be,” he said. “But I’m reading a fault in the system . . .”

  She lost whatever he said after that to the noise on the line. She pushed out the door at the bottom of the stairs hoping for clearer reception on the street.

  “Sorry, what?”

  “. . . sure it’s nothing. Your system lost power. We . . .”

  Three loud beeps made her yank the phone away from her ear, swearing. Of course the call would drop.

  Isa jogged the half block to Nightmare Ink. The alarm company would certainly call back.

  At the bus stop, she slowed, and then stopped.

  No flashing red and blue lights. No police cruisers. The curb in front of the shop was empty.

  Her hand tightened on the phone. Shards of glass littering the sidewalk in front of her store gleamed, reflecting the yellow and green neon from the kitschy consignment furniture shop one door up from hers.

  Isa dialed 911.

  Nothing happened. The call wouldn’t ring out. She hung up and tried again. Same thing.

  She stared at the screen. No bars. Useless damned piece of crap. She’d have to call from the landline in the shop. Surely the alarm company had notified the police when they’d been cut off.

  She edged closer to Nightmare Ink, listening intently.

  Not a sound.

  The window smasher hadn’t hung around it seemed. To be certain, Isa paused and opened to magic.

  Gray fading to black silhouettes and golden puddles dotting the pavement beneath the streetlights shimmered with a faint overlay of color—the energetic signatures of everything in the street, animate and inanimate.

  The faintest echo of another magical presence stirred the background energy of the street.

  Her palms tingled.

  Whoever had smashed the window had magic. The signature felt familiar somehow; predatory, elusive, but it wasn’t Daniel’s. Entirely. His magical fingerprint she would have recognized. The residue she sensed seemed confused. The dragon?

  She’d never heard of rogue Ink returning to the scene of its escape, but Live Ink had so few data points to go by. Who knew what to expect of Ink that killed its host and achieved a semblance of life?

  The only thing she knew for certain was that the dragon would be hungry. The police weren’t equipped to handle an attack from a creature they wouldn’t even be able to see.

  She’d have to deal with the creature herself.

  Her left quad twitched.

  She strode to her shop door.

  It seemed ridiculous to have to unlock the glass and varnished wood front door when her plate glass display window had been reduced to crystalline shards and glinting dust. Her neon OPEN sign dangled from one chain.

  The breeze out of the south subsided.

  A sour, metallic scent bit the back of her throat. Then the wind stirred again, carrying it away.

  She turned the key in the lock, yanked her sweatshirt sleeve over her fingers so she wouldn’t
print the handle. Isa wavered, hand on the knob. Her senses strained, grasping for something just out of reach. Warning thrummed in her ears like drums pulsing in the distance.

  She pulled the door open and stepped into her violated shop.

  Unlocking and opening the door was an action she repeated day in and out. She’d never thought of the warning beep of the alarm waiting for her to cross the shop and enter the “all’s well” code as companionable until its absence.

  Her pulse sped.

  Out of reflex more than out of any expectation that it would work, she flicked on the light switch beside the door. The lights aimed at the front of the reception desk flashed on.

  She squinted at the gold oak, chest-high counter. She’d put a welcome sign there, and Troy had nailed up three showcase pieces of artwork. Something pale obscured them. Her brain couldn’t make sense of the sight. She looked away, giving her eyes a minute to adjust.

  On the floor beneath the shattered window, a recognizably humanoid figure sprawled, faceup amid so much broken glass that it looked like the corpse rested on bloodstained snow.

  A queasy sense of displacement rocked her.

  She had no doubt the man was dead. Inside the shop, the sharp, metallic smell overwhelmed her. Blood and death.

  The corpse had been skinned. He was a mass of vivid red muscle and white sinew. There were gaping twin holes where his nose should be. And without lips, he grinned a death’s-head rictus at the shop ceiling. And her living room floor. It suddenly struck her as stupid to live above the shop.

  Isa glanced at the reception desk because she couldn’t bear to go on looking at him.

  Her brain registered what her eyes had tried to show it before.

  The breath wheezed out of her chest.

  Zoog.

  It was Zoog who’d been thrown through her window.

  She knew because it was his tattooed skin nailed to her reception desk. In its entirety. Scalp and hair. Legs. Arms. Every single digit, carefully split and peeled as if from bloody twigs.

  Pressure built behind Isa’s solar plexus. Horror pounded in her head. Nausea surged. She swallowed it down.

  That broke her paralysis. Breath coming in sobs, Isa bolted for the phone on the desk.

  Dead.

  She slammed the handset down and remembered. Nathalie had unplugged it.

  She shoved the chair aside, scrambled under the desk, and fumbled the plug into place. Shaking, unable to get enough air, she struggled out from under the desk and, without bothering to stand, grabbed the phone.

  Dial tone.

  With quaking fingers, Isa dialed 911.

  A hand and cold cloth clamped over her nose and mouth from behind. She fell against a hard, denim-clad leg.

  “You were told not to interfere,” a male voice growled.

  Some hyperaware portion of her brain recognized that voice and the sly, predatory taste of his magic. Bishop. Patty’s apprentice—no. Daniel’s spy.

  He wrapped his other arm around her throat and hauled her upright.

  She shrieked into the sweet with the stink of chemicals cloth, and twisted, struggling to win free.

  From far away, Isa heard a female voice say, “Nine-one-one. What is the nature of your emergency?”

  Buzzing filled her brain and ears. It rose and fell almost like a healing chant she remembered from childhood. Her resolve melted into mist and dissipated. The phone slipped from her fingers. She never heard it hit.

  Chapter Seven

  Pain brought Isa to consciousness. Ice picks stabbed her head in time with her pulse. Burning claws raked the back of her throat. She swallowed to ease the discomfort. It didn’t help. Had she fallen asleep with metal in her mouth? If she had, it was gone now, but the taste lingered. A roll of nausea accompanied a lightning strike in her brain.

  She had to get up. Didn’t she?

  Frowning, she struggled to remember why.

  Gus howling. The crash of glass. The shop alarm.

  Her breath caught. Had she dreamed that? Her heart flip-flopped, amplifying the pounding in her skull.

  No. She hadn’t.

  The memory of Zoog’s dead body and his tattooed skin nailed to her reception desk played against the inside of her eyelids. Why? Because she’d helped him? Had she gotten both Zoog and his tattoo killed?

  Get up, Isa.

  Bonus points. She was up already.

  Her arms stretched painfully above her head. She tried to put them down. Something wrapped tight around her wrists prevented it. Hurt lanced through her shoulders. She might be upright, but she wasn’t on her feet. Her arms and shoulders held her entire body weight.

  What the hell?

  She tried to stand. The signal between her splitting head and her feet seemed confused. She fumbled the job. It took straining her aching arm and shoulder muscles further to leverage her feet beneath her to take the load off of her screaming joints.

  “Ah, the lamb awakes,” a fluid, warm baritone murmured.

  Awareness fizzed through sluggish blood.

  Daniel.

  Fabric rustled and a chair creaked as if someone rose.

  Her eyelids flew open. She gasped at the agony stabbing through her head as light pierced her sight.

  Squinting against the light, she studied Daniel. He was dressed in form-hugging black jeans and a crisp white button-down. Though he stood in front of her, he didn’t meet her gaze. His eyes roamed her body. Anticipation showed in the satisfied curve of his lips.

  Fear, late to the party, chilled her.

  She’d been trussed up in a tiny cinder block room that had been painted gray. Recently. Oily, cloying paint fumes lingered.

  Tipping her head back for a quick glance up stirred nausea. She dropped her chin back to her chest and took slow, deep breaths to dispel the queasiness.

  She’d been suspended from the ceiling by a pair of leather manacles. Her breath rasped in her throat as adrenaline set her pulse racing. The headache receded.

  “You’ll be mine. One way or another.” Memory provided his promise from the police station. It resonated inside her head, then down into her racing heart.

  “Daniel. Let me go,” Isa managed to squeak. She sounded craven. “Before you do something you’ll regret.”

  He turned away as if he hadn’t heard a word, and sauntered to a corner beside the narrow, battleship gray door, his back to her.

  He had a work cart stored there. Shielded by his body, he picked up something and turned to face her.

  Simple fear matured to terror, rending her ability to think. She strained back, away from Daniel and from the filleting knife in his hand.

  Joseph used to have one like it. He’d used it to dress out deer in hunting season.

  A vision sloshed around her mind of the last bloody carcass she’d helped Joseph dress out. Ribs gleamed white through the deep red muscle tissue as he’d painstakingly peeled back skin and muscle, one stroke of his knife at a time.

  Imagination substituted Zoog for the deer and Daniel for Joseph.

  She whimpered and pulled against her bonds until the bones in her wrists creaked and pain snaked down her forearms.

  Light winked across Daniel’s blade. He smirked as if he could hear the shrill of panic ringing through her skull. He closed the distance in one stride.

  With detached, surgical precision, he cut away her clothes.

  “Beautiful,” Daniel breathed. He rolled his cart beside her where Isa couldn’t get a clear glimpse of the top.

  It didn’t matter.

  He settled into a ritual she knew well because she’d watched him do it throughout their apprenticeship. Casting a circle. Power rose steadily in the room, scraping her nerves. His magic pulsed up over her head, until she breathed the sinuous, barbed energy. She choked, drowning in Daniel.

 
; The unmistakable buzz of a tattoo machine started.

  Daniel eased closer, wrinkles of concentration between his brows. The faraway look in his pale eyes said he no longer saw her. The artwork had taken him over.

  At the first touch of the tattoo needle and stab of his magic, pain spiked. His power magnified the tiny hurt of her physical body until it consumed her on the astral and resonated through to the most secret and sacred parts of her.

  Without conscious summons, her amber power boiled up and solidified, shouldering him out of her skin.

  He set down his machine, stepped around her, and drove a fist into her back below her ribs. Breath wheezed out of her lungs, and she sagged against her bonds, unable to keep her feet. Without a word, Daniel picked up his tattoo machine and went back to work. He renewed his magical assault on her interior landscape where she couldn’t abide having him.

  Power rolled within her before she could assess the wisdom of opposing him again. Shimmering gold erased the slashes of his magic from inside her skin.

  He didn’t even shut off the machine. Expression never changing, he reached up and snapped the little finger of her left hand.

  Shock and agony strangled her scream.

  His message was clear. Fighting him meant punishment. Isa didn’t know whether there was a point past which she dared not push him if she hoped to survive at all. How long could a canvas be recalcitrant before you simply disposed of it?

  She didn’t know how many hours passed while Daniel worked Live Ink into her skin and soul. It cost her two more broken fingers.

  When the tattoo machine finally shut off, Daniel unlocked something above her head. Her arms fell, deadweights. Her manacled wrists were chained together, and the broken fingers jutted out at impossible angles. The sight made her heart quiver. Blood rushed into her arms and hands, pounding agony with every surge of her pulse.

  Daniel shoved her. Weak and shuddering, she fell prone onto a cot. He grabbed the chain and hauled her arms over her head again. Another sinister snick of a key in a lock.