Nightmare Ink

Nightmare Ink

Marcella Burnard

INTERMIX BOOKS, NEW YORK

I
NTERMIX BOOKS

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

NIGHTMARE INK

An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author

PUBLISHING HISTORY

InterMix eBook edition / April 2014

Copyright © 2014 by Marcella Burnard.

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eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-63022-8

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To my beloved husband, Keith, whose patience, faith and support know no bounds.

To Officer Louie J. Luiz Jr. (ret) for answering questions I hope few police officers get asked.

To Alison Myrabo for information and for laughter.

To Emily Ria Olesin, Alden Denny, and especially to Riley–the goofy and adorable inspiration for Augustus.

To James Ray Tuck Jr of Family Tradition Tattoo for being so generous with his professional knowledge –any errors in tattooing details (or lack of appropriate details) are entirely mine.

To Laura Bickle, Carolyn Crane and Jeffe Kennedy for helping keep me on track.

To my family for rooting for me, for talking up my books at every turn, and for not disowning me over that far away look I’d get in my eye whenever a story started playing in my head.

To Dawn Calvert, Darcy Carson, Connie Colman, Carol Dunford, DeeAnna Galbraith, Melinda Rucker Haynes and Lisa Wanttaja- a great group of writers, mentors and, best of all, friends.

To my editor Leis Pederson for helping me tell a better story.

To the members of Feline-L whose wide-ranging backgrounds and interests allowed me to ask the most obscure questions and receive cogent answers.

Last but certainly not least, my sincere thanks to Eratosthenes, Autolycus, Cuillean and Hatshepsut, my feline snoopervisors, lap warmers, keyboard walkers, and reminders that no matter how large looms the deadline, there’s always time to play.

Funny how longing for something you can’t have gets blown away in the first swirl of snowflakes heralding an oncoming blizzard. Or by something as innocuous as a cell phone buzzing in a pocket, like Isa Romanchzyk’s was doing as she stared at the thin strip of slate-colored sky above the brick and sandstone buildings outside of her tattoo shop.

She retrieved the phone.

Caller ID said “Corvane.” Detective Steve Corvane. Seattle Police Department.

“Steve. Please tell me this is a social call.”

“Sorry, Isa,” Steve said. He sounded strained. “Are you at the shop?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sending a case your way. The guards are en route. I am, too.”

Uh-oh.
“What have we got?”

“Live Ink going rogue on a two-hundred-eighty-pound lifer.”

Steve’s way of saying he’d sent a hardened criminal being driven insane by his Live Ink into the shop for evaluation and an involuntary bind of said Ink.

“Okay.” She locked the front door, flipped the
OPEN
sign to
CLOSED
at midday, and turned off the neon
OPEN
sign.

“They’ll bring him to the basement door in the back alley,” Steve said. “He’s in a bad way. I put in a call to the paramedics.”

Misgiving drove a chill through her.

“I appreciate that. Headed downstairs,” she said, pausing in the threshold of the scratched, black metal door that separated the basement from the light and day-to-day life of the upper world.

Her piercing artist, Nathalie, had plastered the shop side of the door with fliers for indie bands Isa had never heard of until she’d hired the younger woman. The riot of color and block print had started peeling.

She clattered down the narrow concrete steps and into the brick and cement basement, where she’d built a room specifically for containing and grounding magic work.

“I’m ready,” she said into the cell phone.

“Thanks,” Steve said, relief in his raspy, outdoorsman’s voice. “I owe you.”

The line went dead.

Isa pocketed the phone, then unlocked and lifted the metal bar from the steel door set in the far basement wall. Once upon a time, it might have been a coal chute or a supply door of some kind. When she’d leased the place, the management company had said the door had been enlarged to accommodate fire codes during an earthquake retrofit. The entire building had the exposed steel I-beams to prove it had been updated to earthquake standards.

A strong gust of icy wind nudged the dull gray door. It creaked open on the grimy alley. Dark clouds turned the day to twilight at noon. Wind rattled in the open door. She shivered. A plastic water bottle clattered down the broken, pitted concrete.

She switched on the computer standing outside the thick, nonconductive metal door of the containment studio. Poking her head in through the open doorway, she checked the three security cameras bolted into the metal-lined ceiling. Ready lights winked as the system came online.

She’d searched long and hard to find a storefront with a basement that allowed for a huge metal cage that could be anchored into the earth. Then she’d brought nonreactive basalt blocks in to line the outside of the cage. Nathalie called the stone and metal room the “Magic Microwave.” It was a good concept, though the room contained and concentrated magic rather than ultra-short wave radiation.

Engines grumbling, the crunch of tires in potholes, and muffled screaming announced the prisoner’s arrival.

Isa flicked on the studio’s overhead lights, arranged the recliner bolted into the basalt blocks of the floor into a flat table, and swept a drape over it.

Footsteps pounded into the basement.

“Ms. Romanchzyk?” a male voice bellowed.

“In here.”

A man with thinning blond hair, hazel eyes, and a patch of freckles across his nose filled the doorway of the studio. He gripped his still holstered gun hard enough to turn his knuckles white. “Victor Talles from the Federal Detention Center. Detective Steve Corvane sent us.”

“He called,” she said, nodding. “He’s on his way, but I’m ready if you’re comfortable getting started.”

“I think we’d better.” He withdrew and said, “Bring him.”

Hard soles clattered on stone. A car door opened.

The muffled screams grew louder and shriller.

From the rattle of metal and the skid of rubber soles on concrete, it sounded like they had to drag the prisoner into the building. His cries, contained by the rock walls, resolved into a hoarse blend of pain and terror.

A sick shiver traced up her esophagus. She swallowed hard.

Two burly officers, one of them Victor, wrestled the handcuffed and shackled man into the studio.

Catching a glimpse of his face, Isa gasped. Her heart tripped into staccato triple time.

Red-tinged foam formed on the man’s lips. His eyes rolled back into his head. Only the bloodshot whites showed. Over his ribs on the left side, the prisoner’s orange jumpsuit bore a dark, wet stain.

His escort forced him to the table and clipped his steel manacle wires into the eyebolts embedded in the basalt floor. They tied down his legs in a similar fashion before they stepped back, breathing hard and wiping sweat from their faces. Their uniforms bore the stains of the prisoner’s blood.

The reek of his acrid terror and metallic blood tasted sharp on her tongue. She’d never seen, much less treated, someone so strung out on Ink.

A quiver of panic pinched her breath. “I need those paramedics.”

The door to the alley thudded closed.

“ETA five minutes,” Detective Corvane replied from the doorway. He had to yell to be heard above the shrieks reverberating around the room.

Warm relief spilled into her. Steve had recruited her to be his Live Ink consultant two years ago. She knew how he worked. She could count on him. The panic riding her diminished.

“Talles,” Steve said, gesturing at the studio door. “The monitor right outside the door is set up for live feed.”

The big guys backed out of the room as one.

“Steve, the tattoo’s already bleeding. Can you help me get this jumpsuit cut open?” she jerked her chin at the thrashing prisoner.

Steve tossed her a surprised look.

She’d never asked for help before.

He leaped into action, brandishing his pocketknife.

Isa grabbed a pair of gloves then tossed the box to him.

He caught it with one hand and fumbled for a pair of gloves.

She pulled on hers and grabbed her obsidian knife from her altar. Pulse fluttering in her veins, she mentally begged her long-gone teachers’ forgiveness for using a ritual knife for something as mundane as cutting fabric. She prayed she wouldn’t snap the volcanic glass blade.

The prisoner moaned. His body arched as if he sought to throw himself from the table.

Taking hold of his collar, she sliced through the fabric underneath, baring most of his torso.

Steve sawed open the arms, then went to work on the left waistband to give her better access.

“Damned glad to see you,” she told him. “Not happy about the circumstances.”

“Right there with you,” he grunted, affording her a brief, lopsided smile.

Isa focused on the prisoner.

Blood welled up in a pink froth from a hole in his left side. The wound exposed two red-smeared ribs. A whiff of charred meat hit her. As she watched, the flesh around the wound bubbled and cracked as if being burned. A green, gold, and red Ink dragon bared its sharp, gore-caked teeth and turned its head from where it had been tattooed across the man’s lower rib cage.

The tattoo looked her in the eye.

Seething rage slammed into her.

She rocked back on her heels and smelled her hair burning.

She looked up at Steve’s pale, pinched expression as he stared without comprehension at the man’s wounds.

“Go!” she bellowed, summoning power to shield. The man’s Live Ink was killing him—draining him of life and chewing its way free of his body as it did so. “It’s going critical!”

Even she heard the shrill note of terror in her voice. She’d never dealt with anything like this. Until now, she’d only heard about the possibility of Live Ink consuming its host.

Steve hesitated, concern in the frown he turned upon her.

“I can’t shield us both,” she said.

His gray eyes widened. He found his feet then and scrambled out, pulling the heavy metal door closed behind him.

The toneless
clang
of its closing reverberated around and around the stone studio.

Everyone outside would be safe.

Turning back, she reached deep within, tapping the core of magic that ran through her like a fathomless, shimmering river. Golden warmth and the scent of sage washed away the stench of blood and fear.

She raced for her equipment, sloshing binding ink onto her jeans in her haste to begin destroying the creature of magic and Ink tattooed across the man’s diaphragm.

On the heels of a rattling wheeze of a shriek, he suddenly fell silent.

Isa spun to stare at him.

He convulsed and then arched so hard against his bonds, she heard the dry-twig
snap
of bone breaking.

Her nerveless fingers opened. The crystal bottle of binding ink shattered at her feet.

The man’s tattoo ripped free of his body.

Hot droplets stinking of copper pennies and old meat slapped her face.

The magic-enlivened Ink resolved into a stylized Asian dragon. Needle-sharp teeth and claws. No wings. Hot, fetid breath.

Her patient’s body slumped lifeless to the table. Blood and binding ink mingled in puddles on the floor.

The dragon charged.

She’d shielded. Within the confines of a containment cage, no one’s stray magical construct should be able to touch her.

The thing breathed fire.

Isa smelled her cotton sweater scorching, but her shield shunted most of the assault harmlessly into the basalt floor. And while her attention focused on the breath attack, the creature hooked its claws deep into her thigh.

Isa screamed.

Desolation cascaded through her.

It wasn’t hers. It made her heart hurt nevertheless. She gasped at the dual pain of magic talons embedded in her leg and the creature’s sorrow shredding her heart.

For a long second, Isa stared into the dragon’s glittering gold eyes, stunned by the sheer beauty of the creature.

The gold dulled as the dragon absorbed the magic and life force that had gone into its creation.

Isa expected it to feed on her blood and life force then.

The dragon flexed its claws in her flesh as if preparing to do just that.

They shrieked in unison.

Inexplicably, the creature retracted its claws and let go.

Her shield collapsed. The power she’d used to form it snapped back at her like a stretched rubber band, bruising, stinging on more than a physical level. Her vision went fuzzy. She fell.

Clang
.

The noise rolled around inside her head as if waiting for her to place it, but for two long seconds, the ring of metal on metal made no sense.

Then it hit her.

The door.

Someone was breaching containment.

Panic shoved adrenaline through shock. She propped herself up on one forearm and reached as if she could bar the door from where she lay.

“No!” she shouted. “Don’t open the door!”

“Isa!” Steve roared. He bolted into the studio.

The dragon issued a cry.

Isa clapped her hands to her head to keep her skull from splintering.

The Ink of the dragon’s making, sucked dry of magic and life energy, exploded in a glittering rainbow of dust. Invisible now to anyone but another magic user, the dragon swarmed past Steve and out the door.

A frigid blast of dry air suggested that someone had opened the basement door again. The dragon was free.

Blanching, Steve stopped dead.

Even if he could no longer see the dragon, he’d clearly felt the magic brush past his definition of reality.

He glanced over his shoulder at the open door. When he turned his gray eyes back to her, dread colored his scowl.

“Something bad just happened, didn’t it?”

Isa closed her eyes at his understatement and dropped her head to rest on her forearm.

“Pattaja!” he hollered out the door. “Get the paramedics in here!”

His footsteps approached. She heard the
shoosh
of fabric as he crouched beside her. The heat of his hand hovered above her shoulder. Before he could touch her, the remnants of magic in her system arced between them. He pulled back and cleared his throat. “Are you okay?”

She lifted her head to meet his gaze. “I will be.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“Yes.”

He looked around, his eyes wild until they settled on the dead man on the table. “What happened?”

“His Ink killed him and then came for me.”

A pair of paramedics, snow melting on their coats, rushed into the studio, medical equipment Isa couldn’t identify in their hands. They went for to the man on her table, slowing as they ascertained that the corpse was beyond help.

They turned then to her.

Staring, Steve’s jaw flexed as if he’d braced himself. “A bit of magical Ink poked bloody holes in your leg?”

“It did.”

“And?”

“It’s out there now. In the world.”

“Because I opened the door?”

“Yes.”

“I heard you scream and saw you go down. I thought—” He broke off and blew out a shallow breath.

“Can you get the department’s magic trackers out after it? While the trail is fresh?”

“Good idea.” Steve nodded. “What happens if we don’t find it?”

“If I can’t find it and bind it, people die.”