Wicked Ink

by Simon, Misty

  Well, if he thought he was getting rid of her, he was in for quite a surprise. He couldn’t just up and leave now that he’d shared his story with her.

  She toweled off her hair as she walked out into her living room. Knickknacks abounded; books lined the walls. She had a couch and two chairs, along with an entertainment center and a few potted plants in here. So different from Garrett’s basic setup. It made her sad to think that other than the art, he had nothing personal in either of his spaces.

  Darn it, she’d forgotten to give him the very plain peanut butter and grape jelly she’d made with the pita from his bread box. She’d just go right back over there to make sure he ate something. Creating weapons and using them, even if they came from his body, had to be hungry work. At least she could do something about that.

  She stepped into a pair of sneakers to go with her ratty pajamas and figured there was no need to try impressing him anymore. He was so far out of her league it was funny. She pulled her wet hair into a sloppy ponytail and called herself done.

  Opening her door to the hallway, she saw a brief shadow out of the corner of her eye before something dark descended over her head. Her entire world went black as her body arched at the feeling of a needle being stuck into her arm.

  * * *

  Slamming his fist into the wall did not help Garrett’s mood at all. In fact, it only made it fouler because now his hand hurt. He went looking for something to eat and found almost nothing in the refrigerator. He guessed he could brave something from the freezer, though his stomach rebelled at the thought.

  But when he pulled the door open, he saw that the whole thing was empty. Well, damn. She must have found everything in there and taken it out. Now she knew what a liar he was. She already knew, but this felt worse somehow, no matter how ridiculous that was. He shook his head, his gaze landing on a pita puffed up with…something. Peeling the edges apart he saw that it was peanut butter and grape jelly. What were the chances she hadn’t added hot sauce to it? Or sprinkled it with garlic powder?

  He took a bite and found it as plain as plain could get. He devoured the whole thing and then peeled an orange. So Dory was capable of making palatable food. Somehow that set him back on his heels.

  At least now there was no need to save her feelings anymore by pretending to eat her food. He’d already done far more damage by insulting her when she had only been trying to help.

  “Shit.” He placed his palms on the wall that connected their apartments, leaning his forehead against the paint. Her touch had healed him again, without any need for the chair. Then, like an ass, he’d kicked her out as if she was some kind of irritating groupie.

  He should strap himself into the chair for that alone. He had sat up there for the past hour, staying close to it in case the darkness reared its head. But nothing had happened. No rage, no blood lust, no craving for chaos. He’d used the time to try to make links between himself and someone who wanted him badly enough to traumatize others to get him. For some reason, the warehouse where he’d found Marta kept coming to mind, so he’d decided to find any info he could about it. The only thing he’d come up with was the name of the corporation that owned the building and the fact that it wasn’t for sale like everything else in the area. People wanted that portion of the city revamped or at least torn down. But that one warehouse wasn’t on any market.

  It was owned by a bogus company that was owned by another bogus company. As the sun had sunk in the sky, he’d followed the trail on his computer until it had petered out into nothing but a listing for something called Macha’s Antiquities. But that, too, had been a dead end. The phone number for the company was disconnected with no forwarding number. But when he pulled up the name in a search engine, he found that it was yet another Celtic goddess of war.

  There had to be a connection, some way to preemptively strike. He just had to find it. This was so much more involved than his norm. On an average day, he went out, fought evil and called it done. This was different and not in a good way. He tried to shunt his guilt about Dory aside to concentrate, but he wasn’t getting anywhere.

  What had Dory done to him? Why was her touch enough to be as effective as what could only be described as self-torture? He was afraid to ask her, and he hadn’t been afraid of much since he’d turned himself around. Since Morgan had died.

  Thinking of her made him want to see her face again. She was the reason he’d learned the purge, the reason he fought crime instead of committing it.

  In a small chest deep in his closet he found the one picture he had of his friend from his rougher days. She’d been a dark-eyed, dark-haired beauty, and he had gotten her killed because he couldn’t control himself. He had thought he was above being harmed or having the one person he’d let into his life be harmed. He’d been wrong.

  At sixteen to his seventeen, she’d been as wild as him if not wilder, urging him on to bigger and bigger adventures—gang wars, stealing, breaking the law at every turn. She wanted to see what he could do and had pushed him to do more, to test the limits of his powers, to get more tattoos to see if he could do more with them. She’d been talking drug trafficking in the weeks before her death.

  In no way was she blameless in their escapades, but she hadn’t deserved to die. He’d often thought he might have been able to turn her around if he’d had the chance.

  Why was she haunting him now?

  He returned the picture to the box and put it back on the shelf. He would find out who was doing this and take them down. He protected men, as well as women, but his main goal had always been to make sure no other woman died the way Morgan had. He stalked out of his bedroom, ready to go back upstairs and try a new angle when his phone rang.

  Almost no one had this number. Even fewer used it. It had better not be a telemarketer trying to sell him a new vacuum cleaner.

  “What?”

  “Don’t you want to come and get your little morsel, Garrett? We’re having fun with her, but there’s always room for one more at a party.” The voice was raspy enough that he couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.

  “Who is this?” He gripped the phone so hard his previously abused knuckles bled.

  “That’s not as important as what you’ll lose if you don’t come quick. There’s just enough left of her to play with, Garrett. Come and get it.”

  A click followed and his head rang with panic.

  He was banging on Dory’s door a split second later. “Open up, Dory. Open this damn door!”

  There was no need to pull in dark energy from outside sources—he had enough rage in his own body for his tribal tattoo to zoom down his arm and become a key he unapologetically used on her door. It wasn’t breaking and entering if he had a key and her best interests at heart.

  As soon as he stepped foot into the apartment, he knew it was empty. She was gone.

  A small table where Dory kept several pictures of herself and her friends had been disturbed enough for the pictures to have fallen down, but that was the only sign of any kind of struggle. Which either meant that there hadn’t been a struggle at all or she had left willingly.

  Her words about not saving her whispered in his ears. There was no way he was going to listen to her. If whoever had been menacing the building had finally called him out, he was not going to step down from the challenge. And there was no way he’d let someone so pure go unsaved.

  But where to start looking?

  The logical choice was to go back to the warehouse. Probably no one would be stupid enough to use the same place twice, but he couldn’t discount the possibility. Besides, it was logical to start with the one place he knew had a connection to his adversary.

  Downstairs, he uncovered his car in the back lot. He almost never drove, since the majority of his time was spent in this small community, but he did take it for a spin once a month to keep it running in case of emergencies. Like this one. He had no one to visit outside the city limits. But he hadn’t been able to get rid of the car since it was t
he first place he’d lived after breaking away from his mother’s control.

  The vintage Fiat fired right up after he had contorted himself into the small but fast car. He didn’t pay attention to speed-limit signs and only a handful of the traffic signals. Thankfully there were few people out on the street.

  He whipped into a parking spot about two blocks from the warehouse, then just sat for a moment to get his equilibrium in check. Going in there like a kamikaze was not going to help anyone, Dory especially, and he had to find her. He would save her if it was the last thing he ever did. Though it nearly killed him, he took a moment to meditate.

  With her sweet face in the forefront of his mind, he crept along the dark street, made darker by the new moon and the broken streetlights. He started gathering power into himself with every step he took. He didn’t shy away from the thought of how bad this could get after his job was done. He also ignored Dory’s request not to help her if it would hurt him. It would hurt him a hell of a lot more to know he hadn’t saved her from a fate that could very well be worse than death if her captors knew what they were doing.

  Finally he made it to the corner of the warehouse. There was one light on in the loft where he had found Marta. Had they tied Dory up there, too? Would he find her bound and beaten? The caller had said there was only enough of her left to play with, but that could have just been goading to get him to make good time.

  At least he had the right building—or thought he did. If he was wrong, he would just have to move on to the next and the next and the next. He refused to leave Dory out here defenseless. He wouldn’t leave her behind, even if all he could do was carry her lifeless body back home for a decent burial. He’d never been able to give Morgan a proper burial, and that had haunted him for years. He wouldn’t let it happen again.

  Fury and vengeance coursed through him like a swiftly moving current. His original plan had consisted of casing the joint to see where everyone was positioned, but his blood pressure was too high for subtlety at this point.

  He kicked down the outer door with a metal pipe made from the single black rose on the right side of his ribs. His entrance went unnoticed except by the rats that scurried around near his feet. He didn’t feel or smell a single thing in the obviously vacant building.

  He bounded up the stairs to the loft, skipping the broken one.

  Nothing.

  “Fuck!” He yelled it even as the rage boiled in his blood and his lust for destruction crested on a wave he wasn’t sure he could contain.

  But he’d been wrong. There was something—or someone—in the building. At the sound of a gasping cough, he jerked his head to the left and zeroed in on Bert, or what looked like Bert. He had been badly beaten, his face a near pulp in the harsh light. Why hadn’t he smelled his evil? Maybe it had to do with how close to death he was.

  “She knew you’d come. She always seems to know.” Bert gasped again, his shirt bleeding red from a wound Garrett couldn’t see. “She has your girl. She promised me a piece of your powers, you bastard. She’s a bitch. A lying, conniving bitch, who deserves to die.” He coughed again, blood dribbling down his chin. “Go get her, Wonder Boy. She’s at some old convenience store on Fifth and Market. Kill her, and fast, or there’ll be nothing left of that little mousey lady.” One last rattling wheeze and Bert slumped over. Dead.

  Shit.

  He searched the corpse for any kind of identifying information, something that would tell him more about this woman who had just killed one of her own men as a fatal message to Garrett. The woman who wanted him dead and was handing out pieces of him before it happened. Not that he expected Bert to be carrying some kind of bad-guy business card stating “Will kill for money. Contact this number for my boss.”

  When he rolled the man over, though, he immediately identified the wound. A long stiletto was embedded through the man’s back and the tip stuck out of his chest. He’d been skewered straight through. Something at the top of the weapon caught Garrett’s eye and he came as close to throwing up as he had in a long, long time.

  As it was, he raced out of the warehouse and screamed his way in the Fiat to the convenience store he knew well. It had been abandoned years ago in a run-down section of town. It was where he’d last seen Morgan. Morgan, who had carried a stiletto around with her initials engraved in the handle. Morgan, who shared a name with another Celtic war goddess, Morgana.

  Morgan, who might still be alive. Was she being held as the ultimate way to get back to him? Had someone saved her from that gutter all those years ago and kept her alive, learning about him, stalking him, only to destroy him?

  Had they broken her for all the information they seemed to have on him? She might have been a tough cookie when they were younger, but a lot of it had been for show. She’d balked at doing any of the actual dirty work, preferring to send him in once she came up with some new, scandalous idea for testing his limits.

  The darkest depths of hell would have nothing on his wrath if he found both Morgan and Dory captured.

  Again he parked a couple of blocks away from the location. He had no need to grab any more darkness. He was consumed by all that he’d already gathered, and his own white-hot rage.

  He slunk down the alley, watching and waiting. There was a door from the place to the right that led directly into a back storage area of the convenience store. Both were abandoned and it would give him the element of surprise.

  He busted through the door, anger and violence filling him until he thought his skin would burst. Before he could move more than an inch, a thin strand of wire was wrapped around his neck, cutting off his air. And in front of him, a deadly smile on her face, was someone who looked remarkably like the Morgan he knew from the days when he’d reveled in chaos.

  * * *

  “No!” Dory yelled, watching in horror as her female captor had one of her lackeys bring Garrett to his knees with a length of piano wire. They’d shown her the garrote earlier while they talked about their plans to kill Garrett, and she’d prayed and prayed he wouldn’t come.

  She’d also heard the whole story about Garrett’s violent past and the way he had gotten Morgan Sellers killed in the middle of a gang war. Or at least that’s what he’d thought. Morgan was the reason they were here now. She’d abandoned everything that made a person human to become a drug runner and an assassin, and she’d recruited the five men in the room with the promise that she’d slice off pieces of Garrett’s tattoos and divvy them up for the others to absorb his powers. Dory had no idea if it worked that way, but obviously Morgan’s underlings believed it. They talked in breathless voices about what they would do when they could conjure up any weapon or key at will. They would rule the streets, the world.

  They had trussed Dory up, letting her hang from the ceiling by her elbows and her waist like a puppet with no strings as they argued and talked about how this was the final showdown. The one Garrett would not walk away from.

  And the whole time she had been praying he wouldn’t come to save her because the cost would be too high.

  They hadn’t hurt her yet, saying they’d prefer to leave that for when Garrett was watching. Several of the men had tried, but Morgan had backhanded one and punched the other in the stomach. No one else had tried after that.

  “Ah, little bitch wants to save the poor hero, doesn’t she? What do you think you can do for him that he can’t do for himself? That he hasn’t done for himself while I’ve supposedly been rotting in my grave?” Morgan’s voice was shrill, and she was breathing heavily. From past experience, Dory knew that if you pushed someone who was unhinged over into madness, you might be able to save yourself…just as she had done with her drug-pusher ex. It was at least worth a shot.

  “I want to get him away from your dirty hands, you slime. He’s worth more than you any day. Let him go.”

  Morgan circled her with a crowbar in her hands. Dory didn’t want to think about what that crowbar would feel like if it made impact with her body, but she figured she
would go with the movement if need be. Past experience had also taught her that it was so much worse if you fought someone who was hitting you. Bunching up did nothing but make the pain worse. She’d been strong enough to make it out of that ordeal. She’d be stronger after this one as long as she wasn’t dead instead.

  Raising the crowbar, Morgan feinted at taking a chunk out of Dory’s knee. Despite her resolve, Dory flinched. Morgan laughed.

  “Yeah, you’re not nearly as tough as you think you want to be.” Morgan turned to Garrett and tapped the crowbar to her chin. “Now, this one. He thinks he’s got it all figured out. He left me to die in the gutter like a rat, and then he went out and tried to better himself, like he hadn’t been down there with the rest of us.” She whipped back to look at Dory. “He ever tell you about the time he curb stomped a guy? Broke his jaw clean in half and then we went out and had a beer. You don’t get to walk away from something like that without paying some serious dues. I’m here to take them out of his back after I dig them off his skin.”

  Dory shuddered at all the images her mind was conjuring. She searched out Garrett’s eyes as he continued to kneel on the floor, but his gaze was concentrated on the concrete. He couldn’t have done that. Wouldn’t have. But even if it was true, he’d surely made up for it by now.

  “Let him go,” Morgan called to her lackey, and laughed when Garrett fell face forward on the dirty concrete.

  Morgan toed him in the ribs with her wicked-looking chunky black boots. “Let’s see which tattoo I should carve out of you first. Maybe the Celtic knot? Or how about the gargoyle? Oh no! I know. I’ll take the rose. Isn’t that the one you got for me? Poor Garrett thought his sins were dead all these years, but they were just waiting for the right time to kick him in the teeth.” She lifted her foot and aimed for his mouth, but then stopped herself at the last minute. “It won’t be nearly as much fun if I can’t make out your cursing because you can’t form words.”