Bound by Ink (A Living Ink Novel)

by Marcella Burnard

  She’d been so sure she’d find him when she found Uriel.

  White, orange-eyed Magic Eaters fluttered, diving, as if trying to trick her into looking at them.

  “Is this what you seek?” Uriel inquired. He gestured.

  Murmur rose from the gravel and dust, wings limp. His true form jutted from Daniel’s body as if Murmur could no longer be contained by the smaller, human body. Or as if Daniel’s corpse rejected Murmur’s invasion. Thick, black liquid dripped from his dangling feet.

  Catching in a breath, her gaze locked on Murmur, she stumbled a step toward him before checking the impulse.

  Uriel held Murmur in the tight fist of his power. His creatures soared lower. Screeching and hooting, they circled Murmur, forcing Isa to turn her eyes away.

  She sucked in a rasping breath, wanting to shout at Murmur to close his eyes. He wouldn’t. Not her arrogant demon. Not when his emerald gaze touched her like a heated caress.

  “Fear not for my old adversary. He sheds a little blood. A minor thing. He deserves so much more torment,” Uriel said, his smile unctuous. “But today, he is little more than bait. By all means, come closer. Much closer.”

  In the shine of Uriel’s magic and ego, Isa caught sight of the dribbles of binding ink fading from her sweatshirt and jeans. The moisture hadn’t evaporated. It spread still, creeping through the fibers of her clothing. Dampening her skin. Or was that fear sweat?

  “Poor Murmur,” Uriel crooned. “Always the means to my end.”

  “Your end,” Isa said, “is my intent.”

  He laughed.

  Isa had to swallow the urge to spit.

  “You are mine. You always have been. Everything I’ve done since you killed the original owner of this body”—he shook Murmur like a rag doll—“has brought you to heel. Now. You will be my door.”

  “No,” Murmur snarled. Magic seethed from him, swarming over the ground, knocking Magic Eaters tumbling and shrieking. Inky power swept up her legs to kiss her skin and linger at the scar on her throat.

  Uriel snorted and clenched a fist.

  Something popped. A hoarse cry broke from Murmur’s throat. Shadowed magic collapsed.

  Isa staggered. “Let him go.”

  Uriel’s gaze fastened on her. Cold. Inhuman.

  “Let him go and I’ll surrender,” she amended, voice shaking.

  His fingers of silver magic loosened.

  Murmur groaned.

  “You are mine already,” Uriel said. “But to have your surrender . . . Yes.”

  She popped the top from her ink vial.

  “Come,” he ordered, tightening his fist again. “Or I crush your filthy demon.”

  “Don’t,” she pleaded. “I’m yours. To do with as you please.”

  Uriel’s nose wrinkled in disgust before calculation smoothed the crinkles from his perfect face. “You’ll betray your lover’s trust. With me. Just like his last female did.”

  So that’s what had happened. Taking shallow sips of air so she wouldn’t give in to the urge to vomit, Isa inclined her head. “Yes.”

  Murmur howled. Magic boiled out of him.

  Uriel took his eyes from her. He laughed, strode to the rim of the crater, and dangled Murmur above what looked like a sarcophagus of golden stone. He threw Murmur into the box.

  Arms, wings, legs, and talons overflowed the impossibly tiny stone construct.

  The bottom dropped out of Isa’s stomach.

  “Don’t,” she breathed. “Don’t close him in there. Not again. Please, it hurts.” Stupid thing to say. Stupid to thing to do, appealing to a monster.

  “Of course it’s going to hurt.” Uriel smirked and slammed the lid, purposefully askew, grinding Murmur’s wings. Shattering the bones in Daniel’s legs.

  Cackling Magic Eaters dove, making a game out of tagging Daniel’s twitching boots with clawed wingtips while Uriel chuckled.

  Gasping, heart in her throat, Isa poured binding ink over her head, then on unreasoning impulse, put the bottle to her lips and tipped the last dregs of herbs, alcohol, pigment, and magic into her mouth. She dropped the vial and swiped the back of her hand across her lips. No telltale trace of black.

  Uriel turned his attention to her. “Have no fear. I won’t seal him in. Not yet. I want him to savor your screams.”

  Heart pounding, her breath shallow, Isa forced herself to take a step in his direction.

  Murmur roared.

  Tears that wouldn’t fall flooded her eyes. The moisture fractured her vision until she stared at multiple images of Uriel. It was an echo of Xibalba and the court of the gods of the dead. Which one was real? Which one was she supposed to surrender to? What kind of punishment would he visit upon Murmur when she guessed wrong?

  What did it say that at this late date, she realized she preferred the cruel gods of Xibalba to Uriel? They were straightforward in their greed for blood and emotional sustenance from their followers.

  Uriel had taken purity to a horrifying, heartless extreme. He’d twisted good into something that crossed the line into unspeakable evil.

  “Crawl, filth,” Uriel commanded, returning to center of the crater and his spotlight.

  A flash swept her from her feet, crushed her to the burning, sulfurous grit. She crawled down the hill. Inside the crater where Uriel stood, the soil turned to mud.

  From blood?

  She inched closer.

  “So slow,” Uriel taunted. “Frightened, filth? Or do you not care for your beloved demon, after all?”

  Murmur wheezed.

  It sounded so much like the sound of pain he’d made in her vision that she had to bite back a scream of protest. She writhed closer. Despair ate holes in every last scrap of her resolve.

  Too slowly, too soon, Isa groveled at Uriel’s pristine bare feet. They didn’t touch the mud. He wanted her subjugated? Fine. She twisted her neck to lay her cheek against the top of his foot.

  He sidestepped with a sound of disgust.

  She landed in the mud.

  Magic jerked her upright. Mud slid down her clothing, landing in grotesque plops beneath her feet. Uriel scrunched his nose in disgust.

  “I refuse to sully myself with you.”

  The tattered, sagging rag of hope lifted in her breast.

  “Save that violating you torments him and that is my only savor.”

  Murmur’s inarticulate growl reverberated inside the stone coffin.

  Uriel gestured. Light and energy not meant for human eyes sluiced mud from her body in an obscene caress touching every part of her. Inhuman. Uncaring. Revolting. Her stomach turned.

  She preferred the mud to the touch of Uriel’s magic.

  “What is this?” Uriel demanded. His magic paused, fumbled with her jeans pockets.

  Her heart kicked.

  The tattoos.

  With his power, Uriel flipped them out, and shook the pages open for his inspection. He sneered. “Useless motes of life essence. Meaningless and unworthy.”

  He reached physically for the pages.

  She’d see him rip up her charges over her dead body. Power seethed. She hadn’t called it. Terror for the helpless tattoos acted like a magnifying glass to the blinding sunlight of her magic. It burned through her sternum. Blinding gold light burst from her, batting the pages from his reach.

  Isa threw her awareness down the line of her magic into first one stasis page and then the other, kicking their anchor points free. The stasis pages fluttered as if straining against the glare of her power. Shaking, heart hammering, she urged the tattoos to freedom. To life in this broken world that had the free-roaming magic to feed them.

  Growling, Uriel grabbed the whirlwind’s page and tore it, top to bottom.

  In the first moment the fibers at the top of the page parted, the heavy air stirred against he
r. The whirlwind burst from the stasis paper, and fell to the ground, tiny at first. It grew rapidly, flinging grit, chunks of glowing stone, and squawking Magic Eaters.

  Uriel grunted. A smudge of black charcoal marred one perfect cheekbone.

  On an ear-splitting, avian shriek, the griffin tore free of his stasis paper. Brought back to his native world, he ballooned from canary-sized to the size of a small car in the space of a breath.

  Isa’s heart lifted. She had allies.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Shrilling in challenge, Magic Eaters swarmed into the crater.

  Isa shielded the griffin. Snapping at Uriel, the creature surged into the sky, riding the whirlwind’s updraft. He tore a Magic Eater from the air with one clack of his beak.

  Smoking blood, reeking of burned rubber, rained to the ground.

  Above Murmur’s prison, the griffin’s wings faltered. The griffin screamed. Wings laboring, the gleaming creature climbed the sky and fled.

  The whirlwind spun the circumference of the crater, throwing debris at Uriel and tossing Magic Eaters out of the sky. Uriel uttered a word in a language that curdled Isa’s nerves.

  The tattoo shrilled.

  Silver slashed the vortex of wind and charred material.

  No.

  Uriel gestured. And ripped Isa’s rescued whirlwind asunder. The tattoo’s death cry swirled past her.

  Isa’s breath went out in an agonized rush that left her eyes stinging. Her magic boiled, climbing the column of her spine. Mercury rising in the heat of her rage.

  Uriel strode to her, his expression twisted with righteous indignation. Locking a fist in her hair, he yanked her into contact with him, her face millimeters from his.

  “Your soldiers are cowards,” he said, “You have earned your torment. And his.”

  He locked lips on hers, painful as the slap she’d expected.

  Finally.

  Shuddering with revulsion, Isa threaded her fingers into his silken hair, opened her lips, and exhaled her mouthful of binding ink into him.

  He tried to jerk away.

  She held tight, and shoved the rising storm of her power down his throat. Bolstered by that tiny success, she shaped her magic into a proper binding spell.

  Uriel wrenched free.

  Silver exploded in her face, blowing her back a foot, maybe two. She lost the threads of her binding spell in the rip current of her power. It cushioned her as she landed. She kept her feet.

  Every part of Uriel’s radiant white robes and alabaster skin she’d touched were stained black. The stain spread around his mouth as if a kind of rot had taken hold.

  Uttering a cry of disgust, Uriel batted at his robe with shaking, blackened hands.

  Isa summoned power. It exploded into her body, threatening to take off the top of her skull. She aimed it at the lid of the box holding Murmur and heaved it off him.

  The lid fell to the ground with a deep, bone-shaking thud.

  Isa rushed Uriel. Planting her feet, Isa swung with all her might.

  Contact.

  Uriel staggered.

  “You don’t touch my family,” she said. “Or my world.”

  He straightened, pressed the back of his hand to the corner of his mouth, and then started at the sight of the blood smeared there. He looked at Murmur’s prison on the rim of the crater behind her.

  She dared not follow his gaze.

  “Him?” He sounded incredulous. “You claim him as family? He’s a monster.”

  “So am I,” Isa snapped.

  “So be it.” Uriel shouted a command in his nerve-shredding language.

  She threw a torrent of molten gold power into Uriel’s face.

  His robe caught fire. He poured cold silver upon the flames. They spread. He yelped.

  Tucking a bolt of magic into her fist, she punched again, aiming for the nose he so loved to look down.

  He summoned a shield to deflect her.

  It slowed her fist slightly but that was all. She connected.

  Uriel grunted. Blood spilled from his nose.

  She released the bolt into his head.

  With a flare of silver light, he shoved the bolt away. It exploded in his face.

  Snarling, he drove a fist into her diaphragm.

  The blow doubled her over. She backpedaled and collapsed into the mud.

  Magic Eaters attacked. Hooting, they dove for her exposed face.

  Gasping for air, Isa rolled, achieved her feet, and scrambled close to Uriel again. The Magic Eaters would destroy her in a single touch. Uriel, poisoned by her binding ink, was the least deadly option available to her.

  He came at her again. His nose was a crooked, bloody mess. Red burns on his skin marked the path of her exploding bolt. She’d scorched his eyebrows right off and singed his perfect, curling hair.

  Score one for the filthy human.

  He rounded in to hit her again, catching her with a glancing blow to her jaw.

  Bright stars lit up her sight. Tasting blood, she hauled herself up from the mud. Again. Faking a jab, she kicked high and hard. Did self-righteous pricks have gonads?

  He wheezed and fell to his knees.

  The stink of burning feathers warned her. Magic Eater attacking. Isa flung herself to the mud, her head pounding, and rolled for Uriel, struggling to his feet. She couldn’t keep this up. Couldn’t craft a binding spell that would tie Uriel in any meaningful way while she grappled with him.

  He jumped her, landing a blow beneath her ribs that sliced the marrow out of her bones. He drove her to the ground, grabbed her hair, and slammed her face into the mud.

  Ears ringing, she spit the taste of oily blood and rancid grit.

  Uriel staggered upright, dragging her by her braid.

  Croaking a protest, desperate to escape the tearing pain, she clawed at his hands. Her fingernails came away wet.

  She sobbed and the breath she drew stank of dung and dead things. The smell stung her eyes and burned her throat. Familiar.

  Dirty brown power slammed her.

  Uriel lost his hold on her. He growled a word in his language. Silver lit the mud and dirt around her.

  She forced her aching body to roll away from him. A solid rock surface at her back stopped her.

  Creatures from her nightmares spilled from the ruins around her. Chittering, high-pitched giggles curdled the blood in her veins. She remembered that sound, could suddenly place the stink and the oddly twiglike, disjointed gait of the razor-fingered monsters zeroing in on Uriel.

  Infernals. An army of them, despite what Murmur had once told her, that Infernals couldn’t coexist.

  Smoky caramel smoothed the stench of the creatures from her senses. It came from the stone at her back. She was leaning against Murmur’s prison.

  Isa closed her eyes. “Murmur. Hang on. Please, hang on.”

  He groaned. From the stone behind her, still trapped she gathered, even though she’d opened the box Uriel had stuffed him into.

  Shaking, bloody, she heaved herself to sitting. Supported by the warm stone at her back, she called up power to heal herself.

  Magic Eaters cried overhead.

  She opened her eyes, her vision colored by the pulse and beat of her magic washing away her wounds.

  Uriel stumbled down the hill into the crater, into the winking, stuttering shine of his spotlight. His minions circled him, as if shielding him.

  Infernals galloped in his wake.

  Isa diverted the flow of her magic, feeding healing energy along the thin, trembling line of smoke and caramel back to Murmur.

  “Isa,” he croaked, his voice muted by stone and by pain. “Escape.”

  “No.”

  “You’re no match.”

  She flinched. That stab hit home. Clenching her fists, she nodded. So she
wasn’t enough. Good enough. Powerful enough. Just. Enough. Not news.

  “I came for you,” she said. “I’m not leaving without you. We live together or we die together. Take what I’m shunting to you. Heal. I need you.”

  An eagle’s piercing hunting cry tipped her gaze skyward.

  The griffin. He soared low, skimming the rubble with brilliant wing tips. Landing?

  Manic, shrill Infernal laughter drew her gaze to the center of the crater.

  Uriel was under siege by knee-high demons. His pillar of wavering silver kept their claws and teeth at bay. He’d lifted his face to the sky.

  Bind ink smeared his wings.

  Blood stained what remained of his burned clothing.

  He began chanting.

  Isa’s stomach turned.

  Magic Eaters dipped and fluttered, then one broke formation and dove into the throng of Infernals. It struck.

  Puce blood and green slime sprayed. The army of Infernals swarmed the Magic Eater. Flailing white wings, the thing tried to lift. Hundreds of serrated talons ripped it to bloody shreds.

  Wind swept debris in vortices around her, blowing her hair that had escaped the braid into her face.

  The griffin landed atop the sarcophagus.

  Rising, Isa spat chalky dirt from her mouth and turned to peer into the open box at Murmur. She couldn’t see him beneath a sheet of glimmering silver power.

  The griffin chittered and pecked the magic. No effect.

  “I know,” she said to the yellow eyes studying her. Their only hope—her only hope—was a bind, something that would hamper Uriel. “I want him free, too. Let’s do this.”

  The griffin ruffled a wisp of her hair.

  She afforded him a glance.

  “Ride,” Murmur said. He sounded stronger. “Use my army.”

  “What army?”

  “Infernals.”

  “Infernals?” she squeaked. “The little bastards are yours? How . . .”

  Magic Eaters spilled from the sky, charging her.

  Uttering a shriek that pierced her skull, the griffin swiped a paw at her.

  She heaved herself up to the broad edge of the sarcophagus and flattened against the spot where the griffin’s glossy feathers gave way to tawny fur.