Dead Ink (Karma #4)

by Donna Augustine

  Lars moved to open the door but Cutty put his hand up quickly to block him. “Try to keep it down when you see it,” Cutty said.

  Lars nodded. He was still buzzing at Cutty’s need to give him a warning like that when he swung open the door.

  On the ceiling, the words “You’re Mine,” were written in blood, blood that was still dripping down and forming puddles on the floor and bed.

  Cutty’s words made sense now, because he might have yelled in outrage if he hadn’t been forewarned. The idea of some sick bastard doing this, right above her head while she lay there sleeping, made his muscles tense and his jaw clench. He crossed his arms in front of his chest to keep them from ripping into the ceiling and tearing the sheet rock down just to get rid of the sight of it.

  “She woke up to this?” Lars eyed up the top pillow at the head of the bed. There was more blood on the edges than the center, where her head must have been. Her wet hair suddenly made sense. She’d been covered in blood.

  “Yes.”

  Cutty and Lars both stepped into the room but stayed to the perimeter to avoid where the blood was still dripping.

  Cutty stopped moving, his hands shoved in his pockets. “We were downstairs and there was this inhuman howl that made us all jump from our seats. We didn’t know where to turn first, because it seemed to be coming from everywhere. Shattered the glasses we had on the table and busted my TV. And then we heard Faith’s scream.” Cutty waved his hand toward the ceiling. “You can figure that part out. We were lucky that the locals went home early, their wives nervous about them being out too late considering how ugly things are getting.”

  “Did she see anyone?” Lars asked, looking around the room.

  “She said she woke up and it was there.”

  “How did they get in here? Don’t you have this place protected?”

  “They didn’t get in. I don’t know how that was managed.” Cutty shook his head, clearly as befuddled as he was.

  “You’ve always been sloppy with your wards.” Lars shook his head, aggravated. “If you weren’t, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “Not all of us have the same flair for the dark arts you do.” Cutty moved back, closer to the door where he was less likely to get dripped upon, and leaned a palm against the wall. “Nor do I have the desire to learn.”

  “And Angus couldn’t have? You’re telling me all the time he spends here, he couldn’t have done something to secure this place better?”

  Cutty straightened and waved the hand he’d just had on the wall. “I thought it was secure. Do you think I wanted this?”

  Cutty let out another long sigh, and Lars shook his head but dropped the issue.

  “Can you tell anything about the blood?” Cutty asked.

  Lars walked over to the tall dresser and an especially large puddle of blood and breathed in deeply. “Young human male, twenties. Healthy.” One of the perks of being Death was that he had a heightened sensitivity to the smell of blood from all the exposure he’d had. He could roughly estimate the age and sex of the person whose blood he was smelling.

  “Or he used to be. Probably dead now,” Cutty said, looking around at the amount of blood present, just as Lars did. No single human could sustain this kind of loss and live.

  “If you had heard that scream…” Cutty started shaking his head. “Lars, this isn’t just business. Or gathering assets. This isn’t anything like what happened with Karma, where she was wanted for solely what she could do. This feels personal.”

  “You think Malokin wants her?” Lars asked.

  “I’m not so sure this was Malokin. He’s cold and calculating. This feels too personal for him. I think it’s someone else.” Cutty rubbed a hand over his short-cropped hair as he tried to get a read on the situation. “Definitely someone high up, though.”

  Lars looked up at the ceiling again. “You think she was romantically involved with whoever it was?” Lars had a hard time picturing Faith with anyone that was involved with Malokin and then had to remind himself that he didn’t know who Faith really was. He was being naive to think he did.

  “If she was, she didn’t want to be. That I’d guarantee.” Cutty crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Are you guessing or do you know? I understand that you like her but shoot it straight.”

  Cutty hesitated, as if he wished he could confirm it without having to lie. “I’m guessing.”

  “She was from Seattle,” Lars said. “You still got connections over there?”

  Cutty nodded. “I did. Not sure if I’ll be able to get in touch with them right now, with the way things are.”

  “Try. See what you can dig up.”

  Cutty paused and then let out a barely audible uh huh. “I think you’re wrong not to trust her.”

  “Just do it,” Lars snapped, and then tried to soften his words. “It’s not going to hurt anything to dig around.”

  “I know.”

  Lars looked at the bed again, covered in blood, and left before he snapped. Cutty followed him out and shut the door, but they didn’t move any farther away, both knowing there was more to discuss before they rejoined the others.

  Lars knew Faith couldn’t continue to stay here. It would take several weeks at the minimum to get the wards in place to a standard where he’d feel comfortable. Fate’s place was secure from the outside but there was still the Karma problem. There was only one option left he felt comfortable with, even though it had been something he’d been trying to avoid. “I’m going to take her to my place.”

  “That’s not a bad idea. He’ll never get past the sidewalk over there.”

  “After I get her home and settled, get hold of Fate. He should know about this too. Then you guys meet me at the shop in forty-five.”

  Cutty nodded.

  Lars shook his head and hoped he wasn’t making a huge mistake as he headed back toward the living room.

  Chapter 11

  Faith had been thrown off-kilter when she’d seen Lars walk in. Obviously, Cutty would have told him but she didn’t think he’d be here tonight. When she’d watched him follow Cutty to the room she’d been sleeping in, she felt like she was going from off kilter to completely out of orbit.

  What Keith had done looked bad, really bad. Maybe she should’ve told them everything from the beginning, but these guys didn’t run long on trust. She’d been a hair away from getting booted out, or maybe even killed, with the way that guy, Fate, had been acting. The bloody love letter painted on the ceiling was damning and might be the final straw with them.

  Stay calm, don’t act like there’s a problem and maybe they’d pretend everything was okay too. That was her plan, no matter how stupid it seemed at the moment.

  She cut herself a little slack. It was a last minute plan. They’d come barging into her room while she had still been screaming her head off. She’d only had a minute or so of barely rational thinking in which to decide on how to proceed, and the screaming hadn’t really gotten her off to a good start.

  And now Lars was here. He made her nervous. Cutty was in her corner. She wasn’t worried about Bic and Angus. But Lars… Him she felt unsettled around.

  He’d walked into Cutty’s without a word and barely a gesture of acknowledgment. Now he was walking back into the living room and he looked even worse, like someone had stolen his lunch money, or taken a big bite out of his only cookie.

  He headed over toward where she was, beside Bic and Angus, and she had no idea what was coming. Would he call her a liar? Accuse her of holding out on them before tossing her on the street?

  She got to her feet before he made it across the room, preparing herself for whatever was to come.

  “Get your bags,” he said curtly.

  Her stomach fluttered and her knees wanted to give out on her, but she refused to let them. He’d just handed her a ticket to hell. She couldn’t keep that lunatic away from her here and now she was getting kicked out. She swallowed, but had nothing to say. At least he didn’t
want to kill her. She took a step forward and Lars’ arm shot out and blocked her way. “On second thought, let Bic go grab your stuff.”

  “Okay,” she said, taking a step back. She guessed he didn’t trust her enough to give her free reign of the house anymore. At least he was letting her keep the clothes.

  He looked down at her. He was containing it but he was boiling with anger, and the tendons in his neck were straining. She looked away and wondered if it was even worth waiting to get her clothes. She should get out while she still could. “You’ll be better off at my place. Safer.”

  What? He wasn’t killing her or kicking her out? “Okay.” Okay seemed to be the entirety of her vocabulary right now but if it kept her alive, that was okay by her.

  She was packed and tucked into Lars’ car within minutes, even before she got over the shock that her plan had worked. They weren’t kicking her out and no one was killing her?

  She was so relieved that even the tension pouring off Lars while he drove didn’t bother her. She didn’t know what he was in a snit about but the silence was better anyway. She had her own thoughts to contend with.

  Cutty’s words kept playing in her head. If she could just get past this phase, she could start over. The guys were searching for Malokin and she was sure it had nothing to do with sitting down for a nice discussion of their differences over brunch. Keith was Malokin’s second in command. There was no way they’d let him walk away. They’d kill him too, and she’d be free.

  Once they were eliminated she could regain control of her life. There would be no one telling her to stay here or do this. No, don’t do that. Come. Stay. She’d be her own person again, whoever that was going to be.

  She’d get through this. Even if the situation really sucked, she wasn’t a quitter. And the way she figured it, you never really knew what you were capable of until you were tested, although this was turning out to be one hell of a test. And she’d thought the SATs had sucked.

  She wasn’t naive about the guys either. Yes, they were helping her but theories on why they might not be kicking her to the curb were clicking into place in her mind. In her panic, she’d foolishly thought that they might kick her out. That’s what she got for making decisions when she wasn’t thinking right. They wanted Malokin. They knew Malokin and his people wanted her. They’d never kick her out now.

  They were playing the game and she was a pawn to be moved. As long as that movement was towards safety and bought her time to figure this mess out, she’d let them push and prod her across the board as they wished.

  Currently, it looked like she was getting pushed back to the tattoo shop. Lars parked his black Audi in front of a steel door at the back of the strip mall that held Dead Ink. He got out of the car and motioned for her to follow him. She did, because again, right now she didn’t have a choice. And she didn’t really care where she slept as long as she was out of Keith’s grasp. Sleeping at the shop was still a step up from a bed of dirt and dead leaves.

  He grabbed the borrowed bag full of her clothes from his trunk. He walked to the metal door he’d parked in front of and opened it. He waited as she got out of the car and then her body decided it didn’t want to go any farther.

  “Don’t you lock it?” The thought of anyone being able to stroll over and open it was unsettling considering what was going on. It wasn’t time to let the fresh air in and love thy neighbor. It was buy an extra deadbolt and stock up on ammo.

  “I don’t need to,” he said. “No sane person would attack here even if they could.”

  “You have noticed the world is going a bit crazy, right? Sanity is a scarce commodity at the moment, so if you wouldn’t mind?” she asked, deciding that no lock on the door was definitely not a push toward safety in her opinion. Plus, she had this strange feeling of wanting to stall, now that she realized it wasn’t the door to Dead Ink, but the one beside it.

  He nodded, as if pondering her request. “No one that means harm is getting close to this place, sane or crazy. But if it makes you feel better, it’s not a problem,” he said and there seemed to be a slight softening, as if it finally dawned on him that tonight had been a really crappy one for her.

  She hesitated before taking a step toward where he was standing but then shrugged off the hesitation. She didn’t have a long list of choices. This was it, at least for now. But still, staying here seemed more dangerous than Cutty’s, and she didn’t know why she felt so vulnerable.

  Telling herself she was being ridiculous, she walked past him to just inside the door and saw a set of stairs. She wasn’t sure exactly what she expected to see at the top but at least it wasn’t the tiled floor of the shop. Maybe there were wood floors up there? She could do wood. Maybe she’d luck out and it was pine and not one of the harder oak varieties.

  With heavy steps, she climbed the flight to the door on top.

  “Go in,” he said from not far behind her.

  The second she stepped inside she knew this was his lair. She could have come here alone, without any idea who the owner was, and she would’ve still known it was his. It smelled like him, a mixture of cardamom and vanilla that somehow reminded her of strength and virility.

  His place was one large room. A king bed sat at the farthest end, and couches dominated the middle of the area where a TV screen took up a large chunk of exposed brick wall. The kitchen area and a dining set sat just beyond the door. The only privacy to be had looked like it would be the bathroom.

  There was nothing frilly or feminine about the place and she wouldn’t have expected it. It was all hard edges and rough textures, with an occasional smooth spot or soft place that broke up the harshness. It was exactly like him.

  “This takes up the entire second floor of the strip mall?” she asked, looking around at everything but the enormous bed that was piled high with pillows.

  He nodded. “I had the walls torn down after I bought the building. I like open space.” He crossed the room and dropped her bag on the single dresser. “You take the bed.”

  “I can’t do that,” she said. What she didn’t say was she wasn’t planning on sharing it either.

  He walked back over to her and stopped a little too close. “Yeah, you can.”

  She started shaking her head, getting ready to argue.

  “You’re taking it.”

  She paused but then relented with a short nod, just to not belabor the point. The truth was the idea of sleeping in his bed, even alone, was unnerving. She didn’t want to argue if it meant staying this close to him.

  The instinct that had made her hesitate coming in here was now very clear. Whatever tension she felt between them in the shop seemed wholly magnified now that they were alone in his place. The hunger she’d sensed in him during their very first meeting magnified.

  Standing this close to him, she felt a tremble go through her that had nothing to do with fear. Her breathing accelerated and she saw something trigger in his eyes, like a lion on the Serengeti, deciding on whether to take down its prey.

  It was that look that jolted her out of whatever was happening between them. She wasn’t going to be anyone’s prey, not even a hunter as glorious as him. She stiffened and took a step away, not caring that her retreat might mark her as weak. Survive first—worry about the particulars later; that was her new motto.

  As if her movement snapped something within him, he said, “Go, get some sleep.” The look in his eyes seemed to fade slightly, as if he’d decided she wouldn’t be that tasty anyway.

  She moved over to where he’d placed her bag. Once he stepped away she had and idiotic desire to follow him and tell him that yes, she was tasty. Instead, she focused herself on the much more sane desire of crawling into a clean bed and getting some sleep.

  Then she remembered her pajamas, covered in blood, were sitting in Cutty’s garbage. She shuffled through the contents of her things, looking for anything that would work. She pulled out a pair of shorts that didn’t look too fitting for bed.

  “Need so
mething to sleep in?” he asked, from behind her but keeping his distance now.

  “If you’ve got something you can lend me.”

  He nodded and walked over to a drawer, and then handed her a t-shirt. She ducked into the bathroom and was relieved when it came down to her mid-thighs.

  When she came out several minutes later, she bee-lined it to the bed. It was such an odd feeling, to be crawling under his blankets with him so close by. She hadn’t just slept in a room with a man since she was a child and it didn’t help dispel any of the tension she felt.

  She tried to sleep but she kept peeking glances at him from behind her eyelashes as he walked around the large room. He stopped and flipped through some papers he had piled on the kitchen counter before he opened the fridge and grabbed a bottle of water. She wasn’t sure if he was trying to be quiet for her or if he was just naturally this silent.

  He took another swig from the bottle before he walked toward the door and looked at her, as if he knew she was not only awake but had been watching him. “I’ve got to run down to the shop for a couple.”

  “Okay,” she replied but then found herself clutching the covers.

  He paused, looking like he thought he should say something more. Then he left without another word.

  She watched the door close behind him and hoped he’d come back soon. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, for some crazy reason she felt better when he was around.

  Chapter 12

  The five guys sat in silence in the darkly lit shop. Bic, normally the quietest of the five was the one who spoke first. “So, who wrote the shit on the ceiling?”

  “We aren’t exactly sure,” Cutty said. “But I’ve got a hunch it wasn’t Malokin but somebody close to him.”

  “So was she this guy’s girlfriend or some shit? Or did he just want her to be his girlfriend?” He ran a hand over his shaved head. “Can someone tell me what the status is?”

  “So, we’ve got one of Malokin’s guys’ girlfriend?” Angus let out a low whistle from where he leaned on the counter. “This shit just keeps getting crazier and crazier.”