Inked Magic (37 page)

She wanted to deny the change in herself. Questioned in that instant if this was the reason her mother ran, because getting involved
made it too easy to step on a dark path. To be consumed by the gift—the magic—rather than remain in control of it.

“Let me worry about the men in my life,” she said, pressing her palms against the wet chill of the beer bottle. “Are you willing to connect me with Deon for some fresh ink?”

Her conscience whispered,
say yes, say yes, say yes
. Because she didn’t think she could accept
no
.

“Most I’m going to do is pass this picture on and say what you want. Tell Deon you an artist too and real tight with Jamaal.”

She pulled a pencil from a pocket and wrote her cell number on one corner of the paper. “Long as you let me know one way or another, we’d be good.”

He picked up the drawing and folded it. “Be better if the two of us play some pool. Then dance a song so nobody thinks I don’t know what to do with a beautiful woman before she leaves.”

“I’m good with that.”

He slipped the drawing into his pocket, then left the booth. She polished off the beer and followed.

A table cleared as soon as Anton stopped next to it, one of the men at it saying, “Go ahead, all yours.”

Etaín selected a cue and chalked the tip. “Nine-ball? Eight? Or straight?”

Anton picked up a couple of cues before deciding on one. “Nine. First one to seven wins the round.”

Another man stepped forward, racking the balls without a word from Anton. “I’m impressed,” she said. “Always been like this? Or just since you rode back into town?”

“Always been a real popular brother. Ladies first.”

She fouled out after sinking the first three balls but came back to win when he missed a shot and she pocketed the nine ball.

“Not bad for a white girl, only now I’m done fooling around.”

Anton was up five games to Etaín’s four when a tingling sensation
raced along the vines on her forearms. She made her shot, watching as the cue ball kissed the low five, knocking it into the nine and dropping it into a pocket for another win.

She looked up and around because instead of going away, the sensation grew strong.
Magic
. She had a name for the phenomenon even if she didn’t have a full understanding of what it meant with respect to her.

As soon as she saw the man leaning casually against the wall a few pool cues length away, she had a source for the sensation crawling along her arms—and a suspicion as to why he was there. Neither his skin color nor the hair worn in a multitude of long braids set him apart from the other black men in the bar, but his sheer beauty did. And though she hadn’t seen him at Aesirs, she knew he easily belonged there. Even dressed in the jeans and ribbed tank he had on, if he walked through the restaurant, the diners would view him as a visual treat served up for their enjoyment.

She met his eyes and found nothing in them. They were flat and dark, empty of recognition or acknowledgment.

A shiver of fear slid through her at the possibility she was wrong about Eamon being responsible for this man’s presence here. When it came to her gift and the world of magic her mother must have been a part of, slowly, she was beginning to realize how running might be easier and safer than staying in place.

She forced her attention back to Anton and watched as the cue ball touched the three before hitting the low two, creating a foul. “I’m done fooling around now,” she joked, tossing his words back at him though she was serious about finishing her business and putting distance between herself and the deadly stranger with vibes of magic.

“Fine with me if you win the round.” Anton held his arms wide. “’Cause I’m in the mood for a little dancing, a nice slow song with a sweet, willing woman.”

She let him play for his audience without denying his claim, calculating her shots, lining them up in her mind first.

One.

Two.

Three.

The nine-ball dropped with a soft thud. “Let’s dance,” she said, putting the cue back in the rack and feeling an icy burn along the forearms when doing it took her closer to the stranger.

A fast rap song moved into a slow, dirty bump-and-grind beat almost as soon as they stepped onto the dance floor. Anton’s hands settled on her hips. “Your doing?” she asked.

“Think I was gonna miss this opportunity to show you what you’ve been turning down?”

She put her hands on his chest, as much to keep some distance between them as to keep her palms from touching bare skin. “Like I can’t see that massive piece of hardware you’re toting around at the front of your pants?”

He laughed hard, eyes shining with amusement. “That’s right, girl. Stroke my ego if you ain’t gonna stroke nothing else. You’re lucky I got too much pride to take an unwilling woman else you’d be at the top of the list.”

She shuddered, her thoughts returning to Tyra in the hospital. Then to Brianna curled in a fetal ball, heavily sedated to keep her from insanity and suicide.

Anton’s forehead touched hers. “You scared of somebody? Or remembering something bad was done to you? Give me a name. I’ll take care of it.”

This close and touching, she was hyperaware of the ink she’d put on him. It made her wonder if his offer came as much from that connection as a desire to get in her pants.

Use it
, a voice whispered. And she wasn’t sure whether it was the magic talking, or her desire to see the Harlequin Rapist stopped.

“Just show Deon the picture. Press him to tell you what he knows about the guy wearing his art. If he can be found, there are other people lined up to take care of him.”

Whatever Anton might have answered, it was aborted when fingers encircled her upper arm, burning her with familiar flame and abruptly ending the dance with a sharp jerk away from Anton.

“I think I warned you I’d accept Cathal, but no one else, Etaín.”

If Cathal’s voice had been ice earlier in the day then Eamon’s was fire, a raging storm of it looking for an excuse to obliterate. One he got when Anton said, “Who the fuck you think you are?” and followed the question with his fists.

Eamon moved like smooth liquid, pushing Etaín away from him and using Anton’s momentum against him. Flipping and sending him flying into patch-wearing bikers who’d stopped dancing at the prospect of trouble.

Anton got to his feet. He charged and was sent flying again.

“Liam, take her outside while I finish this,” Eamon said, and the stranger was instantly there, taking her arm.

“Fuck that,” said the guy who’d tried to claim her when she entered the bar, jumping into the fight, his action pulling others into it with him.

It should have been a beat down ending in homicide. It would have been except for the magic.

Trapped between Eamon’s back and Liam’s, their fighting looked like martial arts training but Etaín knew there was more to it. She felt them draw on something outside themselves. Magic rushed over the ink on her skin, accompanying the sound of flesh hitting flesh and bodies striking chairs and tables and walls.

Glass shattered. Bottles falling to the floor and broken against edges to become weapons.

More men joined the fight while women cheered them on.

Knives came out.

Etaín’s adrenaline surged.

A shot was fired and suddenly it seemed as though every hand held a gun.

“Enough!” a voice bellowed.

Etaín found the man responsible and saw the family resemblance to Anton. He pointed the gun at Eamon and Liam. “You two motherfuckers. Get the fuck out of here. Anton, you want her to stay?”

Her eyes met Anton’s. He touched a hand to the pocket holding the drawing and winked. “We gonna hook up later. She go willingly, I’m fine as long as they pay for the damage done to your place.”

Eamon paid, pulling her against him roughly once they left the bar and slamming his mouth down on hers. Fury and lust poured into her with the hot, raw sweep of his tongue. Naked aggression and primitive possession that she answered in kind in the aftermath of violence coupled with magic.

Her cunt clenched and unclenched. Desire rode her, a need to be filled by him. It eradicated logical thought, blurred everything that had happened since leaving Aesirs that morning.

The kiss ended with both of them breathing raggedly, their bodies pressed tight, his cock hard and ready between them. She started to suggest they go to her apartment since it was closer, opened her mouth to say it, but he spoke first.

“I’ve been patient, Etaín, foolish even, in allowing you the amount of freedom I have. Another wouldn’t tolerate your doing as you please and involving yourself in unwise, dangerous activities. I’ve done so because I thought you needed time. No more.”

She jerked out of his arms, fury engulfing her as his arrogant tone and arrogant words touched the very place where pain over her estrangement with the captain and rocky relationship with Parker lived. “Allow? Tolerate? Who the fuck do you think you are in my life?”

A muscle spasmed in his cheek. His eyes were molten with anger. “You will learn the full truth of that soon enough, though I had thought this morning’s lessons would have demonstrated how much you need me if you’re to survive your gift and the magic it’s tied to.”

She clamped her jaws against responding to his claim in the heat of
anger, some tiny, rational instinct for self-preservation advising against it, even as the urge to escape welled up inside her and her mother’s voice whispered
run
. “You’ve had me followed.”

“Of course.”

Her fury went white-hot, a nova exploding into silence in her head. “I’m going home.”

He reached for her and instinctively she put her hand up to ward him off, only it felt as though an electric current pulsed through the vines on her arm, turning the eye on her palm into a lethal weapon, a tool to drain reality away with a touch.

She saw by his expression he felt the charge of magic. And also that it pleased him rather than frightened him. Stepping sideways, to her bike, she straddled it.

“This isn’t finished, Etaín,” he said, promise in his voice.

She said nothing. Putting on the helmet and riding away.

Clapping marked Etaín’s departure and Eamon sent a censorious glare in his third’s direction. It had no effect. As Etaín’s ignorance of her heritage freed them both from constraint and artifice, his deep friendship with Liam and Rhys allowed for a level of familiarity and oftentimes brutal honesty that others would never dare.

“Well done,” Liam said, “if your intention was to further develop her gift.”

Not his intention, but he’d found a measure of calm in knowing she could protect herself—at least against humans and lower-born Elves. “Follow her.”

The command was met with a mocking bow. “Of course, Lord. I live to serve you as well you know. But might I make an observation before I rush after your future wife?”

“There’s no stopping you from it.”

“True.” Liam’s smile widened. “If what I just witnessed is a demonstration of how you intend to
guide her actions
at the fund-raiser, then I’d advise you to send Rhys in your stead.”

H
e drove by her apartment. It was still dark.

Slut. Filthy whore. He’d seen her with two different men but there was no way to know which one of them she was with
now.

She was like his mother. Disappearing. Coming back smelling like men’s cologne and sweat. Disappearing again. Sometimes bringing strangers to the house. Men who touched him and Kevin after she’d passed out, forgetting them. She was always forgetting them.

He wouldn’t let that happen to him again. He refused to be forgotten ever again.

He looked at her apartment in the side-view mirror before turning the corner. He couldn’t wait for things to be perfect anymore, the way he’d had to since coming to San Francisco.

A little thrill swept into him with the decision. The same way it had when he decided to go into the tattoo shop.

He
liked
choosing which one would be next, and then waiting
inside
for
her
to come home. He liked laying out the things he would need so they’d be ready when she got there.

He liked touching her things, holding her clothes against his face. He liked eating the food she’d bought and cooked.

Before coming to San Francisco that’s the way he’d always been with them. He’d never taken any of them away from where they lived. He’d wanted them to remember him there.

He licked his lips, thinking about the darkened apartment and the
news reports. It would be too risky to stay in her apartment for long. But after he gagged her, there would be time to have her once, just once, before taking her to their special place.

Imagining it excited him. His heart sped up, leaving him feeling jittery, scared but happy, too. This would be like combining the old way with the new
way.

He’d take her tonight. No one would be expecting
it.

They didn’t think the Harlequin Rapist would strike before next Monday. Kevin had even told him about a news reporter saying the next woman might be black instead of white.