Nightmare Ink (28 page)

“Reports of casualties incoming,” Steve said as they plowed through the doors to the garage. “Officers on-site. Two down.”

Murmur’s wings flexed. Flying would be faster. Except that it wouldn’t be them anymore. It would be him. And her dead body.

Breath hissed in between her teeth.

No,
he gritted inside her head
. I will not.

“Get in!” Anne yelled as if Isa couldn’t tell what an open door on a car meant.

She piled into the backseat. Steve took shotgun. Anne hit the lights and sirens and peeled out. As they exited the garage, a huge bird swooped in front of the car in a flash of snowy white wings.

Both Steve and Anne swore.

Isa stared as the bird wheeled around, following them. A barn owl. It dove past her window, its baleful orange gaze meeting hers. What the hell was it doing out in the daytime? Owls didn’t hunt . . .

Murmur exploded into her awareness. He slammed her back against the seat, breaking her eye contact with it. Adrenaline burned into her gut at his sense of urgency and alarm.

That’s not an owl!

Her breath went shallow. Was that
fear
in his growl and crawling through her belly?

“Something from your world?” Isa gasped.

He nodded her head.
Deadly.

“So was the Infernal, you said.”

Not like this.

“What is it?”

A Magic Eater.

What she wouldn’t have given for one of those when she was young.

Murmur grimaced and shoved a snippet of his memory at her. She stared at what he had once surveyed, a battlefield littered with shattered, vacant-eyed men, every ounce of their vital essence, the stuff that had made them
them
, sucked out until only a hollow, brittle shell remained.

Horror snaked up from the depths of Isa’s amber river, clogging her throat and deadening the beat of her heart.

“How do I fight it?”

You don’t.

“You said that about the Infernal. It’s dead. This can be killed, too.”

Only by one such as the AMBI agent.

Isa frowned.

Someone with no magic at all.

Was that Anne’s problem?

Never look a Magic Eater in the eye,
Murmur went on
. Never let it out of your sight.

“That makes no sense.”

It is true nonetheless. Its touch is death to magic. And to us.

Isa risked a glance out the window.

Above the buildings, white wings beat the sky, following the car as they neared the hospital.

“Shields!” Isa said.

Murmur shuddered and growled as if fighting his urge to snap his wings open and lift off to rip the Magic Eater from the air. Cold power exploded through her core and cascaded through her skin like shards of black ice. He settled on her skin.

Well?
he snarled.

She scrambled for the faint glimmer of gold nearly smothered by his darkness. Motes of energy answered the summons of her inadequate will.

Enough.
It sounded like her voice inside her head. Not his. But given the ground he’d gained, how could she know? Did she care? Maybe she couldn’t save herself from Murmur, but she’d be damned if she’d let Daniel win.

Determination sang through her blood. Sage- and pinyon-scented sunlight coalesced within her soul in answer. It lit and warmed the cold night wrapped around her spirit.

She channeled it into their shield. Murmur’s power entwined her amber bubble like an ebony spider web glistening and inescapable. They didn’t bother to ground.

Anne brought the car to a screeching stop that Isa heard above the blaring siren. Cop cars lined the drive in front of Harborview. Hospital staff and patients streamed out into the gray early morning chill.

Isa’s palms tingled. Magic moved somewhere in the depths of the building.

Steve bolted out of the car and opened her door. They tore after Anne, against the flow of people out the doors. The tingle sharpened to stabs.

Murmur growled again.

“What floor?” Isa yelled.

“Emergency Department!” Steve said.

Inside the hospital, security guards paused in directing evacuation traffic to point as the group barreled past.

Outside of the emergency department they found the first body, a security guard, blood on his lips and his eyes bulging. His chest looked unnaturally small compared to the breadth of his shoulders.

Look.
Murmur opened her magical eye.

A sly, predatory trail of olive green wrapped the guard’s chest. He’d been crushed.

Isa stopped and spun.

Traces of the same magic climbed an exposed pipe and vanished into an HVAC vent.

“We’re too late,” she said. “Bishop’s dead. His Ink escaped.”

Daniel,
Murmur snarled again.

“What?” Anne demanded. She had a gun in her hand. So did Steve.

Pain stabbed Isa’s palms, spurring her through the doors of the emergency department into a war zone. Somewhere in there, someone else’s Ink was going critical.

“Wait!” Steve commanded.

She ignored him. Following the tug of active, unshielded magic, she circled a nurse sprawled in a pool of blood. Her chest had been ripped open. Neither Isa nor Murmur could help her.

Shouts and screams drew Isa around a corner and down another hallway. Her coat flapping around her, she leaped the corpse of an SPD officer,. From the sickly sweet reek of the corpse, she didn’t want to register how he’d died. Police and bodies in hospital scrubs gathered behind one of the nursing stations.

Orders to stop trailed her as she ran for the door of one of the rooms. They’d sealed it.

“Open the door!” Murmur and Isa bellowed in one voice. “I can help!”

“Do it!” She heard Anne say. Her voice shook.

A beep sounded. The lock released.

Isa’s palms throbbed in response to the waves of power cresting and breaking inside. She entered the room and shut the door behind her. As if ballistic glass had a hope in hell of stopping a rogue tattoo.

A woman in a gray hoodie and blue jeans curled on the floor in the far corner, weeping like a broken-hearted child. Blood smeared the floor.

Shaking, her pulse knocking in her ears, Isa grounded, then drew on the pillar of shadowed gold at her center.

What are you doing?

“Learning from my mistakes.” She cast a circle.

The woman on the floor moaned. Squatting before her, Isa said, “I’m here to help. Putting my hand on your wrist. Hang in there. Ground if you can.”

“No,” she gasped, flinching away. “Don’t kill her. I know about you. I’d rather die. Please, don’t kill her.”

“I’m in no position to kill anyone or anything,” Isa countered, discomfited by the woman’s cringing fear. “Someone is trying to take your tattoo from you. I’ve got to stop him. Will you let me try? I need to see your Ink.”

Groaning, the woman shifted away from the wall. Blood stained the back of her sweatshirt. With shaking hands, Isa lifted the fabric.

A mermaid clung to seaweed-strewn rocks, her eyes wide and her mouth open in a scream Isa couldn’t hear. A silver-tipped hook of yellow-red had pierced the scales of her tail. It pulled, ripping the mermaid free of the woman’s body and soul.

Murmur growled.

Isa and Murmur stepped out of body and into the etheric. She ended up standing on the mermaid’s rock. Here, she saw the threads of the mermaid’s making. They were pulling loose.

Beneath the surface of the rocks and the inked ocean waves, those filaments of magic strained, pulled taut. Several had already snapped. Two more gave as Isa got her bearings. The tattoo’s wail of anguish rang in her etheric ears. Waves of blue-green power crashed on the rocks, shaking her.

Daniel had accused her of destroying tattoos as if saving a life was somehow unworthy, and then he resorted to this callous destruction?

Anger handed her an amber blade. She sliced Daniel’s fishing line.

The mermaid’s shriek pitched up in surprise, then died. Her blue-green body slumped to the rocks as the line went slack. Isa scrambled to her side and extracted the hook.

Murmur channeled black power shot through with fireflies of her energy. He stanched the flow of the mermaid’s blood and magic. The wound from the hook closed.

“You’re all right,” Isa told her.

No. She’s not.

The mermaid lifted her head and turned jewel-toned green eyes upon Isa. Tears tracked her pallid face. Her lips trembled. “Too late,” she rasped. “I am torn free of my mooring. Destroy me. I cannot bear to be the cause of Helen’s death.”

Isa started.

They were willing to die for one another. Why hadn’t it occurred to her that host and Ink might love one another totally and completely? Like the dragon, waiting for her to explain that Kelli Solvang wouldn’t be coming back for him. Her breath went out, and her eyes stung.

Murmur shrank back, flinching.

“I can’t do anything,” Isa bit out, loathing the helplessness battering her. “I have nothing—”

You do.

Murmur tipped her into her physical body and clapped a hand to her coat pocket.

Of course. She didn’t have binding ink, but she did have four sheets of untested paper. It might destroy the tattoo. It might not. But doing nothing would destroy both Ink and host.

Isa retrieved one sheet, smoothed it flat, and laid it atop the mermaid tattoo.

Drawing a bracing breath, she stepped into the etheric at the mermaid’s side. Shadow lay over the rocks and darkened the sea. Motes of gold sparkled around them. A whiff of sage brushed past.

She crouched beside the mermaid.

“What have you done?” the mermaid demanded, eyeing the shadowed etheric sky.

“I don’t want either of you to die,” Isa said. “If you’re coming off anyway, I’m asking you to expend some magic. Step off your person and into the shadow above us.”

She flopped to her side to stare up. “What is it?”

“Something I hope will keep you alive and well nourished until we can tattoo you back onto your host,” Isa said.

“You hope?”

“It hasn’t been tested beyond proving it could support Live Ink,” Isa confessed. “It’s a slim chance, I admit. It’s the only way I have to save even one of you.”

The mermaid’s gaze turned inward. She nodded once. Certain. “Save Helen.”

Leather wings rustled as Murmur shifted.

“Okay,” Isa breathed around the painful, blocky lump rising through her chest. “We have to unravel the spell that wove you into Helen and then anchor it to the page.”

It sounded easy. She’d never done it. Binding operated by tying down Live Ink, by strangling the magic and the life out of it.

“You were right,” she said into the silence inside her skull. “I was a murderer. I don’t want to be that.”

Murmur held completely still for several seconds, then finally muttered,
Do your job.

A cold, dreary weight settled around her shoulders. She didn’t have any right to hope he’d ever tell her it was all okay—that she’d done what she’d had to do. Binding Live Ink was all she’d known to do. When all you know how to do isn’t the right thing to do, then what? Did it matter that she wouldn’t willingly do a bind again?

Picking up the broken threads of magic securing the mermaid to her host, Isa tied each of them to the golden motes floating in the etheric around them. The scent of warm sage enveloped her as she worked.

A thread broke behind her with a minor-chord
ping
. Murmur grabbed hold of it and, following her lead, started tying down loose filaments.

A wave of blue-green magic rose to augment their efforts. The mermaid, committing herself to being Isa’s test case.

She heard the mermaid’s breath shuddering, saw her glittering tears fall as the final threads linking her to the woman unraveled.

“Helen,” she sobbed. And vanished. No rocks. No ocean. Just the formless, colorless energy of the etheric plane, ready and waiting to take whatever imprint Isa’s will twisted into being.

Murmur urged her back into her body.

“You took her,” the woman on the floor sobbed. “You took her. I don’t want to live without her. I can’t.”

Heart trembling, Isa lifted the paper from Helen’s bleeding back. Tears weighed heavy on Isa’s lashes. She didn’t know who they were for.

In the center of the page, a blue-green mermaid sat combing her seashell-studded hair while waves broke on the rocks behind her. She looked serene. Content.

Isa slumped. One relieved tear spilled over. “She’s not gone, Helen. She’s right here. She wanted me to save you.”

The woman moaned when Isa showed her. “You killed her.”

“No. She’s alive. Look with magic when you aren’t in shock. She’s alive, I swear. Keep her with you. I’m going to get the doctors so they can take care of you, okay? When you heal, take this to any Live Ink artist you trust,” she said, putting the paper into the woman’s hands.

Helen clutched it to her chest.

“They’ll be able to use that to put her back,” Isa said.

Her cell phone beeped. She fished the phone from one of her coat pockets. A text message from a number she didn’t recognize. An address in Ballard. Little more than a mile from Nightmare Ink.

Ria had found Daniel.

She caught in a breath, put the phone into her pocket, and zipped it shut.

Isa opened her circle and then the door.

Steve, blood smearing his clothes, his face ashen, rounded the nursing station. His gaze searched her face.

“All clear,” Isa said. “Your patient is bleeding.”

Medical staff emerged from cover and converged on the room. She stepped aside.

“The kid you fingered for kidnapping you is dead,” Steve said, “along with half a dozen other people.”

And just like Zoog’s those deaths were all on her.

They count on Daniel’s tally. Not yours.

“He’s doing this because of me.”

Murmur snorted.
Are all your kind this arrogant?

Steve handed her a credit card. She frowned at him.

“We’ll be here for days,” he said. “I can’t take you home, and I can’t spare anyone. Not now. Call a cab. On the Seattle Police.”

“It’s not a coincidence that this woman’s Ink went bad at the same time Bishop’s did,” Isa said.

“You want me to believe it’s Daniel’s fault when you won’t trust me with who you are? Any other surprises besides murder and abandonment I should know about?”

Her blood rushed straight for her toes, and Isa swayed from the impact of that hit.

Murmur flashed into the forefront of her awareness, his rage simmering in her gut. He snarled in Steve’s face.

She didn’t try to stop him.

She flipped the credit card at Steve’s chest. It hooked harmlessly to the floor. “You have perfectly good magic sensitives in your unit, Detective. I’m sure they’ll be able to tell you everything you need to know about who’s responsible here.”

Murmur barked a derisive laugh.

She shoved her hands in her coat pockets and strode out of the hospital the way she’d come in.

A team of medical staff and police officers worked on the body of the cop she’d jumped over. They eyed her without comment as she edged past.

Someone had covered the dead nurse with a sheet. Not that it helped erase her image from Isa’s mind. A dark, wet stain pulled the fabric into her gaping chest wound.

The flow of staff and patients out of the hospital had slowed to a trickle. Isa joined their ranks and shuffled out into the bright light of a sunny morning.

She started walking. No one tried to stop her. Steve hadn’t followed.

She’d known there’d be a price for trying to protect herself from the past. She hadn’t expected Steve to be the one to pay it. Her heart slid sideways in her chest.

“Murmur.”

He lifted one of her eyebrows.

“Do you have a physical body to return to?”

He hesitated as if he couldn’t comprehend why she’d ask the question.

Not likely
.

She frowned. That complicated matters. Even assuming he’d agree to go back where he came from. “Did you have a family?”

What?
he asked.

Thick, wooly derision clogged her airway. She yanked it out and shoved it back at him.

You expect Hell to have happy little love matches? Wives and demonic little kiddies skipping through eternal fire?
His mocking anger clawed through her gut.
Be glad you have no analogue in your pretty, safe little world for me.

She flinched.

He hadn’t answered, which meant that in a way, he had.

“We have an option for you now,” she said. “A way to preserve you while I work out how to get you back . . .”

No.
His voice, when he murmured into her brain had lowered into a deadly rumble.
Leave it.

“Like you’ve left me alone when I’ve asked?” she retorted.

His ire spiked, twisted by what felt like a thread of panic.
I will not walk willingly into your prison.

Roiling, black rage shoved her straight out of awareness. Her spirit tumbled before the burst of black flame. She landed on her butt in the desert sand. The sky above seethed and twisted. Dark on ink flames consumed the sky.

Isa stared.

He’d invaded even here, turning her sun-bleached sky black. The stain of him had spread into the last, best part of her. Her breath caught on a sob.

His anger heated the atmosphere. A flicker of black lightning touched a pinyon pine beside her. The tree burst into black flame. The sand underneath the tree wavered and melted. Fear sucked the air from her chest. She scrambled backward, away from that intense heat. Another bolt of Murmur’s rage struck the ground near her right hand. Heat seared her fingertips. She yanked the hand to her chest. Her hair crackled. Sand fused instantly to glass. It smelled like wet, rusting iron.

Heart pounding in terror, she scrambled to her feet and ran blindly through the sage. Bolts of Murmur’s fury dogged her footsteps as she dodged the brush and rocks.

Ragged sage scratched her. Malicious claws of pinyon tore her skin. She left darker blotches on the pink sandstone she stumbled into.

Isa faltered.

Another bolt struck in the depths of her psyche, the heat so intense the skin of her face blistered. Too late, she shied away and fell, sobbing against a sharp-edged sandstone outcrop.

Was that blood or tears trickling down her cheeks?

In the distance, a pleading howl filled with fright sliced through her chest. That wail had haunted her every day of her life since she’d heard it as a child.

Her eyes snapped open.

She was in a different desert, one that was sere and yellow and malevolent. Tumbleweed and scraggly, sparse sage clung to the earth like bleached bones. She stood up.

She was tiny, filthy, and dressed in rags. Her black hair hung in dusty, snarled mats.

No.