Stiff shoulders made her roll them back to ease the buildup of tension. Her black leather jacket creaked as she took stock of her surroundings.
The tat parlor was uncommonly tidy for such a dark, rather seedy, less than desirable location on the London outskirts. A metal counter ran the length of the store on one side. Several cheap chairs crowded the room. Pinned to the milky-blue walls were hundreds of photos of tattoo art, hanging in fairly neat, symmetrical rows.
Bad luck, though. She wasn’t the only customer.
In the center of the small space, a padded chair that had been patched one too many times was occupied by another client. Still, it could have been worse. The occupant of that chair was a young girl probably no more than sixteen years old.
Tears of discomfort dripped from the girl’s big brown eyes. Her thin hands white-knuckled the seat. No doubt this teen had snuck in here while in the midst of a rebellious streak with her allowance money. A sixteen-year-old’s tat of choice? Winnie-the-Pooh.
Avery didn’t bother to check the place for tidiness or proper hygiene since those things didn’t matter to her. The guy in the faded black T-shirt who was working on the girl’s ankle was her target. Rumor had it he was good at cover-ups, with a talent for making things look like something else. He was a fixer credited with being discreet.
“What are you in for?” he asked, addressing Avery without looking up from his work, and waving a small instrument that looked either like a miniature throwback to dark days in medieval dungeons or a super-sized electric toothbrush.
“Tattoo,” she said drily.
He did a double take once he’d focused on who had entered. Used to stares, Avery didn’t take this personally. She knew she presented a strange picture with her hood pulled up around her face and her mirrored sunglasses reflecting the neon signage...especially since it was after 9:00 p.m.
Snow-white hair, mostly hidden behind the black hood, didn’t often stay put. Several pale strands drifted now in the stale-smelling breeze from the open doorway. The sunglasses protecting her sensitive eyes from the lights, as well as the sneak peek of pale skin around them, had to seem freakish in a healthy blond and brunette world, even in the sun-challenged UK.
All in all, though, she fit in better here than she would have in Florida.
“Take a chair by the desk if you want to wait. Feel free to peruse the art on the walls,” the guy said. “Maybe you’d like to choose one of those designs.”
Peruse. Such a strange word for a century like this one, and odd when spoken with a Cockney accent.
Avery checked out the girl in the chair. The honey-colored bear on the girl’s left ankle was a decent rendering of the cartoon and almost finished. She wouldn’t have to wait long for a turn with the whirring needles. Still, she was antsy, and anxiously tossed another glance at the street through the front window, half expecting to see someone standing there.
No one was.
Short on square footage, the shop made her feel claustrophobic. Enclosed spaces didn’t suit her. Patience had never been her forte, which was odd since she’d had such a long time to try to perfect that skill. Because her energy was untrustworthy and came in wayward steaks and flashes, sitting down to wait her turn was out of the question.
For those reasons and more, it was never sensible to remain in any one place for too long. Nor was it smart to give anyone a good long look at her. Definitely no close-up.
Since she had picked the guy in this shop for his talent and stellar reputation, however, quelling her anxiety was paramount. So was maintaining her human-like persona for a while longer.
With that in mind, Avery headed for the counter.
As he got back to work, the artist barked, “More pictures are in the book on the desk.”
When she didn’t open the three-ring binder next to her, he looked up a third time. “Ah. The lady already knows what she wants.”
Seconds later, he added, “Five more minutes here, tops. There’s beer in the cooler.”
The girl in the chair spoke up. “You didn’t offer me a beer.”
Artist guy laughed. “Yeah. Right.”
Avery wasn’t up for polite banter or alcohol, or for reminding the young girl in that chair, who seemed to be missing parental guidance, about the dangers of being out alone, past her bedtime in a city full of shadows. Nowadays, she wasn’t anybody’s conscience. Those days were far behind her.
As for the room...
A more thorough scan showed closeable blinds on the front windows and an interior door leading to an adjacent private room, probably used for etching tattoos on a person’s backside. She perceived no heartbeats beyond those of the two people in front of her. Those beats were steady and rhythmic.
Just a normal night in the life of a tattoo parlor.
But hell...her shoulder blades were already aching more than usual, as if they knew what she was going to do and also that there would be pain involved. Muscles often retained memories of what had happened to them in the past, especially after experiencing the extremes of agony. And although pain was nothing new to her, Avery always dreaded having more of it voluntarily.
“Take a chair,” the artist suggested. “They’re more comfortable than they look.”
She didn’t heed his advice. The lingering odor of hot flesh was cloying. The ink used for the tattoos offered up another distinct scent that tripped more old memories best forgotten.
Nerves bristling, Avery glanced again to the front door, nixing the return of a hazy belief that someone was out there. Anxiousness was likely the cause of her nervousness. An artist in a rundown ink shop was going to see her scars. He was going to touch them—a crime so heinous that no one had ever managed it.
Hadn’t she dispensed with the last person who tried?
In order to provide this guy with his next canvas she’d have to take off her shirt. Predicting his reaction to the sight of the multitude of scars covering her body was a no-brainer. Very little space wasn’t crowded by the grid of crisscrossed white raised lines. Tat Guy would be fascinated by the old wounds and he’d be nosey, but the stories those grids told were none of his business or anyone else’s.
She wished they weren’t hers.
“Almost there,” he said to her while dabbing at the girl’s ankle with a cloth—a benign little bear on a girl’s youthful, otherwise unblemished skin.
What would this pubescent girl say if she were to witness Avery’s roadmap of scar tissue and the two deep six-inch grooves edging her spine? Humans were squeamish about marred flesh. Other species reacted differently. Werewolves, in particular, got turned on by battle scars and displayed them like jewelry.
So, if exhibiting or touching her old wounds was blasphemy of the highest order and against the rules, why was she chancing this?
She was here because it was her one shot, a last-ditch effort, at soul healing. If this artist could cover the two large wounds on her back with a design that would make her feel like her old self, maybe she’d regain some semblance of balance and a small modicum of peace.
That ever-elusive peace...
The transformation of something ugly into something better, at least superficially, would be an accomplishment terribly long overdue, and one less freakish thing to contend with in the long stretch of unending years to come...if she didn’t find what she had come to London to find.
“You still there?” the guy asked, speaking to her.
There was no need to answer him. He was acutely aware of her. She could feel how badly he wanted to take a closer look. The air between them vibrated with that need. He was struggling to keep his attention on the ankle in front of him, and eagerly awaiting the girl’s departure.
This was the reason she had to be so bloody careful. The uncanny attraction all humans felt when they saw her was due to the light of the D
ivine still being there...in her face, her body and her hair. Though the light had dimmed considerably over the years, there was no way to mask what was left of it completely. Throughout time, mortals had been mesmerized by its vibrant energy and lingering afterglow.
“Calm the hell down,” she silently sent to the guy to dim his growing interest. He obeyed that directive the way most humans did when she messed with their minds. She’d have to erase this guy’s thoughts completely once they were done.
Running a hand along the edge of the sleek metal counter’s iron and tin compounds served to sharpen her focus by making her fingertips burn. She blew on them, more for sport than comfort, long practiced in dealing with forbidden metals.
“Two minutes,” the artist announced.
Two minutes, and then what? Avery asked herself. Peace actually would descend? Did she actually expect that kind of outcome?
Sound...
Jolted by a sudden lash of nerve burn that instantly heated her face, Avery turned to the door.
“I will wait.”
A voice had seeped under the crack.
“I will be waiting for you.”
“Son of a...” Striding to the door, Avery rested her hand on the wood. She had been right. Someone was out there. Not just anyone, either. Somebody powerful enough to reach her with a threatening call.
All she had to do was open this door to find out who it was.
Or not.
The flush of volcanic heat and the staccato uptick in her pulse that followed that call paved the way for a streak of fiery intuition. Only one kind of presence in the world had the ability to affect her like this. Seven things, actually...which meant that one of Castle Broceliande’s Blood Knights was somewhere nearby. And he had found her.
Fired-up nerve endings were tingling en masse. Avery stifled wicked four-letter oaths. Imagining she could stride through the shadows of this city undetected had been foolish. London had always been overrun by monsters. At least one of those Knights could potentially have been on guard, protecting the city’s humans from things that went bump in the night.
While she...
She was a sitting duck in this small enclosed space, if she had indeed been made by one of them.
Damn Blood Knights.
Guardians. Overseers. Monster killers. That’s what the dangerous Seven had become. Seven physically perfect specimens of immortal manhood had been created to be as much like her as possible, and their Makers had outdone themselves. Due to their skill with alchemic machinations, the Blood Knights existed unchallenged to this day by any who stood against them—immortals unable to die by any normal means. Immortals unknowingly built on a foundation of pain.
Still, despite the agony the creation of the Knights had caused her, Avery yearned for their company with every fiber of her being, and always had. They alone, out of anyone on Earth, would come the closest to understanding her, and yet could never be allowed to. Misplaced longings for them were never to be addressed. Urges like want and need had to remain tucked inside her. Only when her mission had been fulfilled would she be strong enough to get what she required from them.
“I know you’re there, Knight. Leave here. Leave me. Honor my wishes.”
“What did you say?” The tattoo artist asked.
Hell, had she spoken those words aloud?
“Have you changed your mind?” he queried.
“No change,” Avery replied.
“Good. All done here.” To the girl in the chair, he said, “You remember what I told you about how to take care of this, right?”
The girl nodded and slid to her feet, careful to avoid putting too much pressure on her foot right away. She winced as she rolled down the hem of her jeans. After pulling on her jacket, she headed for the door without looking back.
“Will you look at that. No thank you at all,” the artist muttered. “Good thing she paid up front, but what’s the world coming to?”
Standing, he turned, careful to avoid meeting Avery’s eyes. “Now, what do you have in mind?”
“Wings,” she said.
Speaking the word produced a flutter deep inside her chest.
The guy nodded. He would have noted the husky voice she had taken decades to perfect and the slim, leather-encased body only partially hidden by the black leather hoodie. He had to be wondering about the sunglasses.
To his credit, he merely said, “Wings are popular.”
His eyes roamed over her—not in a sexual way, but as a painter might look for the best angle with which to fully see a model’s potential. Almost strictly business now that her silent directive had calmed him down.
“Lower back?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Upper.”
That disclosure interested him. His eyebrows quirked. “Shoulders?”
“A full span.”
His gaze shifted to the counter. “I can do up a design for you or show you some pictures so I can see what you have in mind.”
“No need. I can sketch what I’m looking for if you have a pencil and paper handy.”
Avery wasn’t sure which of the two beings in this room would be affected the most when she bared her skin for the needles. Her nerves were like white-hot pulses whispering along over-strung wires.
There was also the question of whether that Blood Knight outside would leave her alone, and if the ward she had set up at the door would protect her.
“Here.” She was handed paper and a blue felt-tipped pen. “Have a go at what you mean.”
Pen in hand, she began to draw from memory a rendering of the tattoo she wanted. Tonight’s session would actually be an act of camouflage, using art and color to disguise the ridges left over from where the real pair of wings had been cruelly cut from her back.
She was going to replace one set of wings with another.
Each stroke of her pen across the paper intensified the chest flutter. Tension balled in her stomach. How long would the Knight give her before figuring those protective wards out?
The artist nodded at the image she had drawn. “I can do this. When would you like to start?”
“Now.”
His shaggy-haired head shook. “This will take a long time. Two or three sessions, at least.”
Avery pulled out a wad of folded one-hundred dollar bills and laid them on the counter. “Now,” she repeated.
He looked at the money and back to her. “No one can handle all this ink at one time, not to mention the discomfort of so much coverage. That design will reach from shoulder to shoulder?”
“All the way across. And I’ll manage.”
He shook his head again. “I’m sorry...”
His voice trailed off because she had removed the sunglasses and lowered her hood...to give him a first look, a glimpse, a mere inkling of what one of God’s angels who had fallen to the Earth centuries ago, and stayed, looked like.
The poor sod’s wheeze of surprise was audible, but he quickly got hold of himself with a little mental nudge from her bag of tricks. He hadn’t asked any of the questions that had been crowding the tip of his tongue. She also had put a damper on that.
Following him to the back room of the shop, Avery glanced twice more at the front door. Wary, dealing with the craziness of being trapped, she knew that she had only postponed getting caught with her pants down by one of the only beings on Earth who knew what to do about it.
That damn Blood Knight.
Whichever one it turned out to be.
Chapter 3
Rhys’s anticipation had spread like wildfire. Nevertheless, he had to be careful.
At this late hour, people were coming and going, passing the entrance to the alley where he now stood. Predators of the horror movie kind hadn’t yet made an appearance, but for them the night
was young.
It was 2:00 a.m.
She hadn’t come out of the tattoo parlor.
He couldn’t imagine what she was doing in there. To be touched by needles would mean exposure. An immortal’s blood would be a hefty giveaway of details no immortal could afford to let slip. His blood was black. Possibly hers was, too.
Rhys pushed off the wall he’d been leaning against, patience wearing thin.
“Time’s up,” he announced.
Three strides brought him close enough to the shop’s front door to feel the buzz of electricity outlining it. The trespassing vixen had set up a defensive ward.
“You did hear me, then,” he muttered.
Lips moving with a silent incantation, Rhys shattered the barrier she’d set in place and yanked the door open.
“Nice try,” he said aloud. “But I’m no amateur.”
Inside the shop, he waved off the burly man coming toward him from a back room with a muttered command. The female he sought wasn’t anywhere in sight, and yet her scent, already embedded in his lungs, led him to where she hid.
All those plans about what he would say to her fizzled when he stopped in the doorway of that back room. As if he’d been slammed by a battering ram, his breath hitched.
She was there, sitting on a cot with her back to him, naked from the waist up. Never once had he witnessed anything quite like this. Like her.
The woman on that bench was completely colorless. Pale to the point of being ghostly. White skin. Hair the color of freshly fallen snow. She was painfully thin, but also incredibly graceful in the way her angles converged. Slender shoulders sloped toward a spine where each bone stood out from the lean muscles surrounding it, as if they were pearls on a string.
Ethereal was the word that came to Rhys with that first glance. And breathtaking. She was also flawed. Damaged. That, too, was startling. Whitened scars covered her back and arms. Old scars, and plenty of them, proved that she had suffered abuse and had been hurt badly in the past.
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