Bound by Ink (A Living Ink Novel)

by Marcella Burnard

  “A door has opened between worlds,” Isa said. “One that has the potential to destroy the Sixth Age.”

  “Kukulcan,” Vucub-Came sneered. “A strutting toucan who squawks too much.”

  “We know this door.”

  “I’ve been told that the door requires blood and magic to close and lock it,” she said. “The spell that created the portal is not mine.”

  “Your blood opened it,” Hun-Came said.

  “The magic we hemorrhaged when my Living Tattoo came off unlocked the door,” Isa said. “Daniel’s blood opened it. I closed it.”

  “Then failed to lock it.”

  “I seek to remedy that,” she said, “but my soul is torn and my magic is freezing.”

  “You must heal.”

  “I would like to.”

  “What would you have of us?”

  “How do I stop Uriel? If that means healing first, how do I do that?”

  Hun-Came picked up his skull goblet and took a long drink. Clotted blood plopped down his throat, splashing off the exposed bones of his spine.

  Isa looked away, blowing out a measured breath to quell nausea. She had nothing left to throw up.

  “What will you give us in exchange for the information you seek?”

  “The two agents that died last night,” she began.

  “No!” Vucub-Came said, faded feathers shaking when she glanced at him. His petulant tone rattled her teeth.

  “You bargained once before with that which we already possess,” he accused. “No more.”

  “All that remains then, Lord, is this.” She lifted her hands. “Brilliant blue pigment to dye the feathers in your crowns into something that not even Kukulcan will be able to look upon without envy.”

  “What of your life? Will you not bargain with it?” Hun-Came asked, leaning forward.

  “I will die in my time,” she said. “If I must trade my life to lock the portal, it isn’t mine to bargain. But I would trade it to preserve the Sixth Age and your court.”

  “No,” Vucub-Came snapped. “Your death is not enough. Not when in your life you send so many dead into our realm. Keep your life, priestess. Give back that which is ours.”

  His worm-ridden hand reached out, clawlike, as if scooping something away from her.

  “If it is yours,” she said, “I yield it.”

  Hun-Came bellowed a laugh that made her shudder. What had she just promised? “We have your answer. Let us show you ours.”

  “One last question, Lords,” she said. “Why the House of Cold? Don’t the trials begin with the House of Dark?”

  “Bah,” Vucub-Came growled. “You know the dark.”

  Murmur. Isa smiled. Yes, she did. He’d shown her that there were no monsters in the darkness. She carried her monsters inside her.

  “There is no sport where there is no fear. Be gone.”

  The court of the Dark Gods vanished.

  Isa lay upon a stone altar, naked save for a headdress and a skirt of beads and feathers. Her face was lifted to the sky—the sky she could not see. She was underground. Firelight flickered, throwing shadows across uneven rock walls. Daggers of stone stabbed up from the floor. Blades like teeth bit down from the roof. Sweet, spicy incense filled her nose. Smoke clouded her vision. Men’s voices chanted, rising with the smoke, pulsing with the thud of her heart. With the double time thumping of the heart of the perfect, golden angel standing over her, a brilliant, silver knife in his hand.

  Uriel.

  He slid the blade between her ribs and sawed a gaping portal into her chest. Centered on her still beating heart.

  Blood and torment darkened her sight.

  Firelight flared. Sparks rose and she stood. Whole. Arms and face lifted. Her priests stretched Uriel upon her altar. His curling, pure white hair brushed the tops of her bare feet. The priests stretched his limbs away from the center of his body.

  Elation sped her blood and her prayers to the gods to accept the offering of this creature’s blood. His heart. His evil.

  She drove the obsidian blade in her hand into his perfect golden chest.

  He screamed, his back arching into the agony of her obsidian knife.

  Part of her faltered. The part Ruth, Joseph, and Henry had taught. That part of her shrilled a denial and sought the magic to change the outcome of having plunged a knife into an enemy’s chest.

  Her life, she’d forfeit. Fighting evil with evil? She refused.

  “That which is gladly given is no sacrifice,” Hun-Came’s disembodied voice said, the flapping of his cankered, putrid lips punctuating his words.

  As if the blade of volcanic glass dissolved in Uriel’s blood, a black stain spread from the point of penetration. Uriel’s scream died on a rasping, pained breath.

  It was Murmur beneath her hands. It was his blood surging out around the obsidian blade buried between his ribs. His emerald gaze met hers. A single tear tracked out of the corner of his eye.

  Agony twisted Isa’s breast. Horror rose on a golden tide. Choking her. Her hand spasmed on the knife.

  No.

  Terror shattered the ice dam hemming in her power. Gold drove down her arms into the knife. Into Murmur’s heart. Into the heart of her vision of the Mayan underworld. The vision answering the question of what it would take to heal her and lock Uriel’s door.

  She wouldn’t be healed. Not like this. Not at the cost of destroying someone she—Not at the cost of destroying Murmur.

  Xibalba blew apart in a haze of ice and limp, rotting feathers.

  “She’s having a seizure!” a male voice shouted.

  No rotting meat slap of lips. No resonating, head-aching thunder indicating a god speaking in a voice no human was meant to hear.

  “Stop!” another commanded. “Do not touch her. With the magic she’s throwing, she’ll kill you. Mind your shields. All of you.”

  She was back. In her own cinderblock hell rather than in the Mayan one. Was she throwing magic? Tremors wracked her body to the point that she couldn’t get her breath.

  “She needs medical attention,” the first male voice growled. Steve.

  “No physician in this world can cure her,” Jaiden said. “This is her journey. She has the power to control this. It’s up to her to remember that.”

  Thanks for the vote of confidence, cousin.

  She was freezing. She could see her bloodstained breath. Again. Still. Ah, good. Eyes open, then. Why did firelight still dance against stalactites? Why did she smell Hun-Came and Vucub-Came? The sickly, sweet scent of rot competed with the tang of copper on her swollen, aching tongue.

  In the distance, metal scraped against stone.

  The silhouettes—priests? her friends?—spun, crouching as if waiting to face a threat she couldn’t rally her body to face. The puffs of their breaths hung in the cold air along with hers.

  Loud, rushed footsteps approached as the tremors in her limbs subsided.

  Steve swore and went for the gun he kept holstered in the small of his back.

  Jaiden launched to his feet. As the light caught his worry-lined face, Isa caught a glimpse of blood staining his upper lip.

  Nathalie and Troy threw themselves at Steve, restraining him, holding him.

  “Take it easy!” Troy shouted. “Stop it, man!”

  “It’s not what you think! It’s not what . . .”

  Sweet, smoky caramel overpowered the taste of blood in Isa’s mouth.

  Murmur.

  He strode into the room dressed in dark jeans that hugged his thighs, a button-down, and a leather motorcycle jacket. He barreled past the tableau of Isa’s cousin and her friends, through the tattered remnants of Jaiden’s circle, and into direct contact with the flood of magic she didn’t have the strength to contain.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Steve growle
d. “Get away from her!”

  “Wait!” Jaiden ordered, reaching as if he could stop Murmur.

  Murmur crouched beside her and put a palm against the center of her chest. The same spot where, in the vision, she’d plunged a knife into his chest. Her chest. Uriel’s chest. Which had then become Murmur’s chest.

  Isa shook her head in denial. Her head rolled once.

  Murmur’s dark magic sank into her, seeping into the cold, fighting back the lethargy left by the vision. By the seizures.

  “Ground,” he ordered.

  He fed more power into her. Rags of her energy followed his, drawn as if even her power craved him as badly as she did. She swallowed every fragment of gold shrapnel she’d sprayed around the room. She could breathe again. One deep breath in. On the exhale, she sent magic down, out through her contact with the mattress and blanket beneath her.

  “Again,” he said.

  “What is he doing?” Steve said.

  “Helping her,” Jaiden said. “I don’t know how he could get inside my circle, but he is helping.”

  Anything to keep Murmur’s energy mingled with hers. Isa obeyed.

  He let out an audible breath and took his hand away.

  She croaked a protest. A string dragged on her lips. Sticky. Damp. Without thinking, she brushed it away.

  “Wait!” Nathalie cried.

  The string tugged Isa’s tongue with tearing pain. The twine broke free, pulling through the hole Nathalie had pierced in Isa’s tongue.

  Isa shuddered.

  Fresh blood tainted the taste of Murmur’s presence. At least she couldn’t smell incense or charcoal burning any longer.

  Murmur sat, back against the wall, and gathered her into his arms. He drew her so her upper body rested across his thighs, her head cradled in the crook of his arm.

  From that vantage point, she could see her friends staring.

  Worry creased Troy’s forehead.

  Nathalie hugged her arms hard around her ribs. Drying tears streaked her face.

  The rage twisting Steve’s features smoothed out, calculation taking over.

  Jaiden was pale, his fists clenched tight.

  Every single one of them bore traces of blood beneath their noses.

  “I’m sorry,” Isa said. It came out a rasp. The hole in her tongue resented movement.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Steve demanded. He met her eye. “That looks an awful lot like Daniel Alvarez, but—”

  “He’s dead,” Murmur said. “He no longer needed this body. I did.”

  Steve reared back. “Murmur.”

  Jaiden’s head jerked up. He stared. “Her tattoo? The last time you two met, you tried to kill her.”

  “No,” Murmur said, then hesitated. “Yes. I might have. It would have destroyed me. And this world.”

  “And yours,” Isa whispered.

  “No.”

  “All right,” Jaiden said. “Unless your vision said otherwise, Irene, you still need healing.”

  She shook her head. It went better this time. “Nothing we can use. Can’t stay here. Need containment.”

  “We can’t take you to Nightmare Ink,” Troy said. He glanced at Steve. “No offense, but the cops are like leeches. All over the neighborhood.”

  “I could have killed you,” she said. As she spoke, it got easier, as if muscles merely needed loosening. Maybe after a seizure, they did. “I think I’m losing control.”

  “My containment studio,” Murmur said.

  Silence settled heavy against her bones. Isa opened her eyes.

  “Daniel’s containment,” he amended. “There’s a car.”

  “It’ll have been seen,” Steve said.

  “My—Daniel’s lawyer is adept at keeping the AMBI at bay,” Murmur said.

  “Why do you care what happens to Isa?” Steve demanded.

  Murmur brushed her hair from her forehead as if unaware that he did so.

  “We have work left unfinished,” she said when she met Murmur’s gaze and saw him struggling to respond. “It will take both of us to lock Uriel out of this world.”

  Steve straightened. His gaze flicked between the two of them. Doubt creased the corners of his mouth when his gaze rested on Murmur. He met her eye. The nascent jealousy pinching his expression died, though the glimmer of hurt in his gray eyes remained. He frowned.

  “She needs rest. I need twenty-four hours to prepare,” Jaiden said.

  Murmur nodded.

  “Don’t pretend this is about her safety,” Steve shot. “You’ve never done anything that wasn’t self-serving.”

  He had, but there wasn’t any way Isa could explain that to Steve that wouldn’t leave him even angrier. Especially when her safety was Murmur’s priority only to the point that he could use her to take revenge on Uriel.

  The Mayan gods had laid out her choices. Be sacrificed, or sacrifice Murmur. They’d finally found a test she couldn’t pass. She’d never know whether there’d been another option. She’d blown their vision apart too soon. Too bad. She’d turn her obsidian blade against herself before she’d willingly go back into Xibalba. Or destroy Murmur.

  Isa shivered, and for a moment, her breath clouded out of her mouth. Just hers. Everyone else seemed to have warmed up.

  Murmur glanced down. His brows lowered. He eased a tendril of heat into her body. The cold backed down.

  “I have no choice. I need containment,” Isa said to Steve. “I won’t put you at risk again. Not any of you.”

  She looked up and met Murmur’s emerald gaze. For a breathtaking moment, it jolted her back into a fire-lit cave.

  “Please,” she said. “Containment.”

  He nodded.

  “I’m going,” Steve said.

  “So are we!” Nathalie said, her voice catching.

  “No,” Jaiden answered.

  “He’s right,” Steve said. “If you and Troy don’t open Nightmare Ink, it’ll be a red flag.”

  “Fuck,” Troy grumbled. “We’re already late by a couple of hours.”

  “Jaiden is too polite to say so,” Isa said, “but the healing ceremony isn’t a spectator sport. It’s . . . sacred and secret. It’s like some of the magic goes out of it when it’s not guarded.”

  “Weird,” Nathalie muttered. “But hey, you’re going to need all the magic you can get to fix this, right? So okay. It’s kind of like not being allowed to watch the surgeons operate on you.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “Good analogy,” Jaiden said. “Mind if I steal that?”

  Nat’s smile wobbled.

  “At least you aren’t blue anymore,” Troy said, his voice shaking.

  Isa lifted a hand. Brown. Olive. Whichever color she wanted to use to describe her normal skin tone. It was back. Hers. Even her palms. Albeit scraped and bloody.

  “Bastards,” she muttered. “Had to have the skin as well as the pigment, didn’t you?”

  For a moment, laughter like bones rattling clattered inside her mind. She shivered.

  Murmur did, too.

  Jaiden busied himself taking down the circle Murmur had plowed through. Troy and Nathalie turned away, folding up the blankets they’d used to ward off her chill. Steve paced back and forth collecting trash.

  None of them would meet her eye. The glimpses she caught of their pallid, set expressions suggested they were struggling not to remember. She frowned. What had they seen or heard?

  Murmur tugged her blanket up around her, rose to kneeling, and tucked his arms beneath her.

  “I can . . .”

  He stood.

  She settled against his chest, head spinning. Maybe she couldn’t stand. Much less walk. “My knife. My pack.”

  “I have them,” Jaiden said.

  “Nat and I are going to do an initial pa
ss,” Troy said. “Make sure the obvious DNA samples are gone.”

  “Good,” Steve said.

  “Tell Gus and Ikylla I love them?” Isa asked. Her voice broke. She closed her aching eyes.

  “Course,” Nathalie said.

  Isa opened her eyes.

  Steve led the parade to the door. Jaiden followed Murmur and Isa. Steve put up a hand. Murmur stepped out of line of sight of the door. Steve opened the door and froze.

  “Oh. Hey,” a young woman’s voice said. “I had a message from a mutual friend. He asked me to come here.”

  “Which mutual friend?” Steve demanded. “No one I know would send a news truck . . .”

  “Emanuel,” she said in a rush. “He said that someone here had a story to tell, a story that might stop the riots before too many people get hurt.”

  “He did not tell you to blow the cover he built for this place with a news truck,” Steve said.

  “Shit,” the woman said. “Look. We’re not supposed to be here at all. We’re supposed to be in the middle of the marches. It was the best I could do. He said it was important.”

  “I’m going to kill him.”

  Isa frowned. Emanuel had to be talking about her. She just didn’t know what he imagined she’d say.

  “Put me down?” she whispered to Murmur.

  Scowling, he glanced at her, already shaking his head. He stilled, and then lowered her feet to the floor.

  Wrapped in the blanket, Isa shuffled to the doorway.

  “Get back,” Steve ordered.

  “I’m the one Emanuel sent you to talk to,” Isa said, squinting against the bright afternoon sunshine.

  “Whoa,” the young woman breathed. “You’re—no wonder your friend is so prickly. You’re wanted. I get it. But I protect my sources. Give me an interview and I’ll get my AD’s ears on the police scanners. How about if we film on the side of the building away from the street?”

  “No,” Steve, Murmur, and Jaiden all said at once.

  Isa grimaced. “Yes. There are lives at stake.”

  Steve closed a hand on her arm, desperation in the uncomfortable pressure. “Yes. Your life.”

  “Five minutes,” she said.

  “Damn it, Isa.” His grip loosened.