Wicked Ink

by Simon, Misty

  Securing the equipment to the top of the balcony, he climbed over the railing and rappelled down the side of the building, trying hard to keep to the shadows. He certainly didn’t want to scare any of his neighbors by flashing past them as they sat watching television. But it couldn’t be helped. The two thugs below him held a cloth over the woman’s mouth. By the time he dropped the three stories to the ground, she had gone limp.

  Recognition flashed through him as he approached the woman and her attackers. Marta Handel was an attorney who painted and listened to classical music in the evenings. Garrett often heard it as he ran up and down the stairs past her apartment in 2A to stay in shape. He liked to keep tabs on the people living around him, and he wasn’t big on gyms, where most of the guys on the weight machines were brimming over with inner darkness.

  Now these assholes were dragging her down the alley like she was a rag doll. His conversation with Dory flashed into his mind, how the violence in their neighborhood had made her afraid of being outside after dark. He knew Marta and Dory talked often. Sometimes they’d wave to him as his did his exercises. Dory would be devastated if something happened to Marta.

  Garrett didn’t bother to land quietly. He wanted them to know he was there, and he wanted them to be scared. The shadows were already working inside him when he tapped into the evil in the two men’s hearts, using it to power up for what must be done.

  One of the men laughed as Garrett came in at a full run. But his laughter was choked off when Garrett circled his neck with a black rope fueled by hate and anger. Garrett rode the man down to the ground like he was a pony and Garrett the circus ringmaster.

  He did not want the man’s blood on his hands, so he left him on the ground after he went limp from lack of oxygen. Which left one more asshole to take down.

  “You think you’re going to get this one, pretty boy? You think you’re going to save her like you did the others? Well, think again. This one is mine.” The menacingly soft voice didn’t seem to fit the guy who could blot out the sun with his back, but Garrett didn’t let that put a hitch in his stride.

  “Just give her to me and get the hell out of here. Don’t come back.” He struggled to get the words out. All Garrett really wanted to do was take the guy apart limb by limb, mangling him so badly that even his dental work wouldn’t help identify him. The blackness swelled inside him with each passing minute. He fought with everything he had to keep it stored away for making more weapons. If he let it leak out, he would no longer be in control.

  “You think this is over? We’re just getting started, my man. Why don’t you just walk away, and we’ll see if we see you another day?”

  Garrett barely had a chance to will a new weapon into being before the large gargoyle on his back contorted as if coming to life and ran straight to his hand. The huge sword emerged with little thought on his part. It shot into his hand and rang like a chime as he banged it against the brick wall. A shower of sparks streamed through the air. It should have scared Marta’s attacker senseless. Instead, the man stood his ground with a smile that would have put him first in line for a long stay in a mental institution.

  “You think that fancy metal is going to make me run, Superboy? I know all about you. I know where your power comes from and I know you won’t kill me. A few scratches here and there aren’t going to bring me down a notch in Andraste’s eyes. Take a poke. Let’s see what happens.”

  Garrett hesitated, and it cost him. The second guy had recovered from his near asphyxiation enough to take Marta from the man who was taunting Garrett. His concentration split between the two of them, Garrett pulled in more darkness to strengthen his sword, willing to take both of their lives to save the woman who was still hanging like a limp puppet from the second man’s dirty hands.

  “Bring it, big man. Show me what your blade can do.”

  Garrett rushed the guy, allowing himself to feel the euphoria of letting loose. Blood lust sang through his veins, making his own smile just a little too maniacal as it stretched his face to its limit. “Gladly, douche bag.”

  The wind whistled as the black blade cut through the air on a direct path to the man’s chest. A second before he would have made contact, the man pulled out a sword of his own. The clang of the long pieces of metal crashing together rang through the air, reverberating against the brick and bouncing back to fill the alley. He expected people to come crashing out of their apartments or to hear the blare of cop sirens. Neither happened as he and his opponent continued to hack away at each other. There was no finesse here, only a killing urge.

  Garrett watched helplessly as the other man hauled the woman off to the end of the alleyway, throwing her into a waiting car. Fury rose up inside him, along with a dark miasma that claimed his vision. Growling, he thrust his sword into his opponent, welcoming the pain when the man managed to land a blow just above his heart.

  His tattoos coalesced into a solid mass around the blade, holding it in his skin, which gave him the advantage of keeping the man’s sword prisoner while he redoubled his attack.

  His opponent went down with the word Andraste and a cackle on his lips—not dead, but unconscious from the blow Garrett had dealt to his head with a black mallet that had formed in his other hand.

  Garrett removed the man’s sword from his own chest and threw it down next to his body. He would have to call his friend Jackson to come clean up after him. He hated to do it, but there was no way he would be able to get rid of this trash without going crazy. Garrett owed Jackson for a ton of things, but nothing more than the day he’d taken him off the streets as a favor to Lissa.

  Fortunately he felt the weight of his cell phone in his back pocket. Taking it out, he growled instructions to Jackson, then limped toward the end of the alley. He had no idea how he was going to find the kidnapped woman. He might not interact with many people, but he knew their habits, the intricacies of their lives. He was a watcher. Marta was a lawyer who had three grandchildren from her only son. They all came to dinner on Saturdays, never missing a week. He had to find her.

  He set out with the intention of searching every nook and cranny of the city, every single place he could think of where a prisoner might be stashed. But there was too much ground to cover, and the craving for chaos and oblivion was overwhelming. Two hours after the fight, when the sun began to peek over the range of mountains to his left, he decided to call it quits. It went against his every impulse, but he couldn’t fight the darkness and the craving much longer.

  At the last minute he stopped, remembering to pick up the couple of shards of glass from earlier in the evening. Once he reached the area beneath his balcony, he used the grappling hook to pull himself back up the side of the building to avoid showing himself in the hallways. His chest ached enough to keep him conscious. The tattoos wouldn’t be able to hold back the blood flow from the injury much longer. He had to get to the chair quickly and then find some medical supplies.

  Failure rode on his shoulders the whole way up to his balcony. He climbed hand over hand, hoping the exertion would help clear his mind, but it wasn’t working. The scream of police sirens down below did nothing for him, either. He hoped Jackson had had enough time to set things right.

  When Garrett entered his apartment, it was to the sound of knocking. His breath came in sharp gasps and he felt like Mr. Hyde without a Dr. Jekyll in his near future.

  He could ignore the sound, but the thought didn’t sit well with him. Jackson might need assistance, not that Garrett could provide it, or the police might be on the other side of the door with questions for him. They’d be willing to break down the door if he didn’t get there fast enough.

  Fortunately, he’d been smart enough to keep his exposure as a person with weird abilities to a minimum. He’d never been caught in the act, although a few local newspapers had run articles about a mysterious man who helped poor schmucks who had gotten themselves into trouble.

  Taking a moment, he calmed his breathing and ran a hand over his shor
t hair. He had no idea who was on the other side of the door, and since he didn’t have X-ray vision like his favorite little-known comic-book hero Booster Gold, staring at the wood wasn’t going to do anything for him.

  He opened the door to what he could have sworn was a ball of energy.

  “Oh my God, Garrett, did you see what’s going on downstairs? There was another attack and they’re saying Mrs. Handel is missing! Do you think it’s the same people who attacked the others? Oh my God!” Her face was drained of color.

  He stepped out of the door. He didn’t want her inside his apartment, but he was well aware that this wasn’t a conversation he should have while leaning against the door frame. Maybe she had information he could use? After all, she was friends with Marta. If only he’d had time to purge before talking with her. His head was muddled and his control was on the verge of cracking.

  “Just be careful.”

  “I am, but who knew this kind of thing would happen in our neighborhood? I’ve lived here for almost five years, and I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m scared. I don’t know why someone would target our building, but I can’t think of any other explanation.”

  For the first time he took in what she was wearing. A pair of drawstring sweatpants hung from her lush hips, and a large T-shirt crept off the jut of her creamy shoulder. This was not the Dory he was used to seeing. Normal Dory was buttoned up to the top of her neck and decked out like the accountant she was. Beautiful, untouchable by the likes of him. This Dory was softer somehow, with curves and dips he had never noticed before. Ugly lust rose in him. He wanted to drop her to the floor and take her then and there, releasing all the pent-up rage inside him. He took an involuntary step back, breaking his eye contact with her body. It was disgusting of him to even be thinking things like that. Where was his decency? He needed the chair and the purge more than ever after two hours of running around with his body supercharged on all things dark and evil.

  “Garrett?”

  Blood blossomed on his shirt as the tattoos surrounding the wound in his chest gave out. The last thing he saw before the darkness finally claimed him was a pair of bright blue eyes widening in horror.

  * * *

  It was not easy to kick open Garrett’s door and drag him through it. Dory had never been inside his apartment. Since he was always so private, she was tempted to look around, but the deadweight in her arms was not going to go away, so she’d just have to stay curious a little longer.

  He had fallen forward as a huge splotch of blood came gushing out of his chest right above his heart. She could have sworn something black had swirled beneath his white T-shirt, but it had disappeared too quickly for her to be sure.

  The nearest piece of furniture was a black leather couch. She aimed for it, figuring she would drag him the last two feet by the hair if she had to. But they made it right before her legs gave out under her, thank God.

  Arranging him as best she could on the sofa, she swung his legs up on to the long expanse of leather. All six foot plus of him didn’t completely fit, but it was the best she could do, since she didn’t want to tend to his wound while he was lying on the floor.

  Running to the kitchen, she snagged a pair of kitchen scissors from a wooden knife block and quickly tore through three drawers until she found a handful of small towels. Surprisingly they all had flowers on them, but it didn’t matter…they would soon be covered in blood. She could replace them with new ones when she was done.

  She headed back to the couch, thinking she could find bandages later. Maybe he had a first-aid kit in the bathroom or something. She had one in the living-room closet of her apartment, but she didn’t want to leave him alone until she was sure he was going to make it.

  “Don’t you dare die on me,” she said fiercely as she cut away his T-shirt and unstuck the fabric from the long slit in his otherwise perfect skin. Blood seeped out of the cut, which looked like a stab wound. She gagged but got down to business without thinking too much about what she was doing.

  He mumbled something and grabbed her around the waist. In his weakened state, pushing him away was akin to shaking a small kitten off her foot, but his hands kept coming for her. She ended up kneeling by the couch to make herself a smaller target. He was probably delirious. He kept muttering the words “Need chair” between guttural growls.

  “You need to calm down or I’m not going to be able to do anything for you.” She ran a hand over his brow, trying her best to soothe him as her mother had done for her when she was a young girl. Pressing the small hand towel to his wound, she tried to stanch the blood. She’d never seen blood so dark before, but she chalked it up to the fact that she hadn’t seen much blood at all over the past seven years. She made a point not to be anywhere near it, but this was a special circumstance. She was willing to put her fears aside for this man who had been nothing but kind to her when kindness was sometimes hard to find.

  Once the wound stopped gushing blood, she popped up and fetched a bowl full of water from the kitchen, along with the one remaining hand towel.

  She sponged the cut, careful not to rub against the raw edges and make it worse. He was going to need stitches. It would be a shame for his beautiful chest to be marked by scars, but it was probably inevitable. At least he had enough darkly inked tattoos to make it less noticeable.

  After she cleaned the cut, she grabbed a bottle of whiskey she had found in the cupboard above the refrigerator and poured it into the wound while trying to soothe him with words.

  He shot up off the couch and nearly took her out with a fist, but she still had catlike reflexes from all those years of ducking hits. She grabbed his arm and pinned it between the couch and her body to keep him still. She didn’t want a black eye for her efforts, thank you very much.

  Laying her hands on his ribs, she willed him to settle down. It was something she’d learned during her time in rehab. While it didn’t always work, it was worth a try.

  He came off the couch in a rigid arc, his head pressed into the cushions and his heels digging into the arm of the couch. She tried again, having seen someone who was coming down off drugs do the same thing long ago. At the thought of drugs, she got sick to her stomach again. It would be a huge shame if he were a drug addict or a dealer. He always seemed like such a good guy—hardworking and friendly. But appearances couldn’t always be trusted.

  Memories tried to assail her, eating at the edges of her mind, but she thrust them away. She would not go back down that dark hole where she’d lost control of herself after her mother’s death. She had turned to someone whom she’d thought had her best interests at heart, but instead he’d consumed her soul. He’d hooked her with drugs, then kept her by his side by making her believe she wasn’t worth more than a dime bag.

  She was different now. Better. Clean. There was no need to go back to the ugly times when they were behind her.

  Regardless of what Garrett might or might not have done, he was a human being. She was not going to let someone else die again while she stood by and fluttered her hands like some too-stupid-to-live heroine in an old romance novel.

  At the second touch of her hands, the breath rushed out of him, and he clenched his jaw so hard she could hear his teeth grinding together.

  Then he relaxed, his brow unfurrowing, his arm going limp against her body, his back sagging against the leather cushions. She stroked his forehead, murmuring soft, nonsensical things—things that might not mean anything but seemed to calm him nonetheless. She was certain the storm had passed for the moment, which was why he caught her so totally off guard. One minute he was relaxed, and the next his hard lips were fastened to her as if he were drawing her very soul from her.

  His previously limp hand caged her neck as he deepened the kiss. Her mouth opened without her express permission, and she rode the tide of the feelings surging in her chest.

  His lips were hard, his kiss demanding. He explored her mouth with his eyes closed. She should have closed her eyes, too, to better revel
in the feel of him, but she couldn’t seem to stop staring at his divine face…and she was powerless to make herself pull away. Sure, she knew in her heart that he was far, far out of her league. But who could blame her for sinking into the sensation of being held by Garrett?

  As quickly as the kiss had started, it stopped, and he sank back against the couch again without ever opening his eyes.

  She slumped back on her heels, stunned. What on earth had just happened? Would he even remember the kiss? She should just forget it. Chalk it up to a moment out of time. Yes, that’s what she’d do. She was only happy that he had fallen unconscious in front of her rather than alone in his apartment.

  Once she calmed her racing breath and rubbed at her tingling lips, she returned to reality. She listened to his breathing, grateful that it was smooth and regular. She took a small step away from the couch, but kept glancing back at him even as she let her gaze run over the apartment. Somehow she had to distract herself from the incredible feeling of his lips on hers, the way his hand had cradled her head and sent something akin to electricity charging though her entire body.

  Three unusual photographs decorated the wall. They were black and white and stark, but each was punctuated with one punch of color. One showed a red cardinal sitting on a tree bare of leaves, another a bush with a handful of orange leaves, one of them drifting toward the ground. In a third, pink flowers glowed against a black-and-white spring setting.

  The rest of the apartment was equally stark—the furniture was all black, and the walls where bright white. She didn’t want to leave until he came to, so she stayed where she was, even though this might be her only chance to get a glimpse of the rest of the apartment.

  She did glance into the bathroom. It too was filled with black and white, from the towels to the toothbrush holder with its lone toothbrush and the shower curtain. And there wasn’t a first-aid kit in sight.