Poison Ink (27 page)

17

S
ammi clutched her hands to the sides of her head, wishing she could alleviate the pressure. She choked on the blood running down the back of her throat.
Is that from my brain? Is it bleeding?
Her nostrils were flooded with blood, making it harder to breathe. She drew her sleeve across her nose, soaking the fabric red.

She blinked, blood sticking to her eyelashes, gumming them up, covering her eyes with a scarlet webbing. Sammi peered at the window, where Dante traced a labyrinthine circle in his own blood. A dabbler. He couldn’t shoot fire out of his hands or anything like that. He wasn’t Merlin. Those symbols—they were his magic. That and more. But he could be fought. He could bleed.

If she could ever get to him. The hex he’d put on them with the blood on the window would kill her before she got the chance. Unless she did something about it.

Katsuko cried out and fell to the floor, curled into a fetal ball. Zak railed against Dante, fury and pain merging on his face, trying to get up and stagger to the window—to attack him—only to fall again with a new burst of pain that sent blood spurting from his nose. T.Q. lay on her side on the padded table, bleeding and moaning. Rachael sat on the floor wiping at the blood on her face over and over and screaming.

Only Sammi was close enough.

She let the pain take her down to the floor, tumbling backward and turning onto her side. The pressure radiated down her shoulders now, and when she looked at her hands through the veil of blood over her eyes, she saw that fresh crimson had begun to leak out from beneath her fingernails. They couldn’t be losing this much blood. But magic thrived on the impossible.

With a shout of pain she thrust out her right arm and grabbed the shovel she had dropped. Dragging it toward her, she drove herself along the floor, sliding on the wood, until she bumped against the wall underneath the plate-glass window.

Seething with pain, breath coming in ragged gasps, she forced herself to stand. A fresh burst of agony struck her, clamping around her skull and squeezing. Sammi screamed.

She cocked the shovel back awkwardly, the unbroken fingers of her left hand barely able to grip the wood, and swung it as hard as she could.

At the last instant, Dante’s eyes widened.

The glass shattered, tiny shards raining down and enormous guillotines collapsing out onto the sidewalk.

The pain ceased. Rage burned its way up through Sammi, and she wiped as much of the blood from her eyes as she could. Behind her she heard Katsuko and Rachael muttering their relief. Zak choked a moment, spat a huge clot of blood onto the floor, and started for the window, staring at Dante.

“You’re dead, asshole.”

Dante had never stopped smiling. “Letty. Caryn. Kill them.”

“No!” Sammi shouted.

She cocked the shovel back again, ready to cave in Dante’s face. But Letty and Caryn were fast. Brandishing those gleaming kitchen knives, they rushed past the tattooist and leaped in through the shattered window. One hanging, jagged triangle of glass raked Letty’s shoulder and she didn’t even flinch. Whatever kind of awareness they’d had while they were on Dante’s leash, it had been taken away. He was in complete control now.

Grinning, Letty ran at Zak. He lunged for her at the same time. She swung the knife, slashing his left hand, but he grabbed her around the throat and they went down in a tangle on the floor, and Sammi saw no more. All of that she had caught in only a glimpse.

Caryn came at her. Sammi stood her ground, shovel in both hands. Instead of swinging it, she drove the handle into Caryn’s gut. The attack staggered the girl and Caryn slipped in the blood that coated the floor—Sammi’s blood—and went down.

“I’m sorry,” Sammi said, only loud enough to hear it herself.

Behind her, Rachael screamed, but Sammi couldn’t afford any distraction. Katsuko and Zak were there. They would have to fend for themselves.

She brought the shovel down on Caryn’s wrist. With a grunt, she dropped the knife. Sammi let the shovel fall, dived for the knife, and scrambled onto Caryn’s back.

Caryn tried to escape her, tried to throw her off just as Katsuko had done. But Sammi knew that the cost of losing this fight would be her own life, as well as the lives of all of her friends. If Sammi let Caryn win, it would kill them both.

She slammed Caryn’s face against the bloody floor, dazing her. Gripping the knife, she slit the back of Caryn’s shirt and tore it open. The black tendrils of the tattoo writhed and twisted on the girl’s deep brown skin. Like the others, they had no substance. The tattoos did not come off Caryn’s body or even seem to be moving beneath her skin, but instead glided over her flesh in almost hallucinatory fashion.

Sammi pushed the tip of the knife into the skin of Caryn’s shoulder blade. Blood welled up and ran down the center of her back. Entranced by Dante’s control, Caryn did not even cry out. Sammi bent the knife and began to slice.

Dante screamed a torrent of filth at her, but Sammi didn’t even look at him. She worked fast, slicing into Caryn’s skin as though she were peeling an apple. When the girl bucked, Sammi pressed her cast against the back of her head and slammed her skull against the floor again. With the working fingers of her left hand she pulled up the flap of skin she’d already sliced off, then slid the knife through and cut the original tattoo away completely.

Only then did Caryn scream in pain. Blood flowed, but she was free. Sammi scrambled back away from her, knife in hand, and Caryn rose, sobbing in anguish, saying over and over that she was sorry.

“Zak!” Rachael cried.

From the corner of her eye, Sammi saw that Dante had not moved. Then she turned with Caryn—whose shirt hung in rags from one shoulder—and they both saw Rachael leap up onto Letty’s back.

Zak lay at Letty’s feet clutching a stab wound in his abdomen. His hands were bloody, but there was no telling whose blood it was and how much came from him.

“Letty, stop!” Katsuko shouted. “It’s him, not you! Think! I know you’re in there!”

As Rachael choked her, Letty seemed about to reach back with the knife and stab her. Katsuko tried to rush at Letty then, but she slashed the blade through the air, keeping Katsuko back, then let Rachael drag her backward until she crashed into the wall, slamming Rachael into the wood and forcing her to let go.

Rachael fell in a sprawl on the floor.

“Samantha Holland,” Dante called from beyond that shattered window, his voice low and insinuating.

Letty went after T.Q. The redhead had managed to get to her feet, leaning against the padded table, but still in the depths of her Percocet stupor, she would have no chance to defend herself. Just staying conscious was effort enough.

Katsuko grabbed Letty’s wrist and they struggled, keeping the knife away from T.Q.

Caryn moved silently, adrenaline and fury canceling out the pain of the wound Sammi had sliced into her back. She slammed into Letty, knocking Katsuko aside and driving Letty right over the top of the padded table. In a twist of limbs they spilled over the table and onto the ground on the other side.

“Sammi,” Dante said.

And only then did Sammi wonder if anyone else could hear him. She turned and looked at the tattooist, at the son of a bitch who had torn her life apart, and still he wore that smile.

“You ruined all my fun,” Dante said. “I’ll go soon. But not until you’ve suffered enough.”

He produced a piece of blue chalk and then dropped out of sight. She could hear the sound of the chalk on the sidewalk, and knew he had begun some new magic, some hex that would cost them all even more blood and pain and other precious things.

Sammi tossed her sweaty, blood-streaked hair from her eyes. “I haven’t suffered enough?”

Something snapped inside her. She moved with a swiftness she had never known she possessed, dropping down to pick up the long garden shovel. Dante barely had time to look up from his blue-chalk scrawl before she swung the shovel. The square metal blade hit him in the side of the head with a crack that only made her want to hurt him more. Whatever pain her fractured ribs and cheek might cause her, she could feel none of it now, taken over by terror and rage.

Scrambling away, he tried to rise.

Sammi stepped out through the window and swung the shovel again. Dante turned and took the blow against his back, but he reached out and grasped the base of the handle, and with a sneer he tore the shovel from her hands.

“You hurt me!”

He jumped on her, drove her down to the sidewalk with the wooden handle across her throat. Sammi hit her head on the concrete. The wood pressed down on her, and she had to use both good hand and cast to keep him from crushing her windpipe with it. But Dante had weight and muscle on her.

He would kill her.

“That’s not the way it works,” he whispered, lowering his head so he could whisper in her ear. He pulled back and looked into her eyes. “I’m the one who does the hurting. It’s my show. All the girls perform for me, Samantha.”

She spat in his face.

He reared back and slapped her, then grabbed the shovel again before she could try to get up. Dante came in close again and whispered in revolting intimacy.

“Show some respect, bitch, or I’ll change my mind. I won’t kill you. And trust me, for an uptight little thing like you, living would be much worse. You’d be just as much a slut as the rest of them. Peel back the layers on you girls and that’s what you find inside, the sweet candy surprise underneath the good girl—”

Sammi drove her head up, slamming her forehead into his nose.

Dante went off balance, and she pushed the shovel handle away with both hands, driving him back. He sat too far forward on her torso, which left her legs free. She threw both legs up, wrapped them around his head, and pulled him off her. Using that momentum, she scrambled to get on top of him.

He punched her in the chest. A spike of pain shot through her from her fractured ribs.

Sammi grabbed him by the throat, dug in her fingernails, and ripped furrows in his flesh. If she could have torn his throat out with her bare hands, she would have. Dante screamed like a little girl, and Sammi liked that sound very much. He deserved that kind of pain, and far worse.

Another scream rose above his, a keening wail of total anguish and horror that made Sammi freeze with dread. A terrible certainty struck her, but she would not acknowledge it.

She sprang off Dante, picked up the shovel, and swung it at his head again. The edge of the blade tore his cheek, and he slumped to the pavement.

Sammi stepped back into the shop.

The scene she found there made her knees weaken. She began to shake her head slowly back and forth, and for a moment her mind would not function, her lips could not speak words. Dante had destroyed her life, but she had meant to take it back, to rebuild it and to save the girls—these girls she loved—from the abhorrent things he had done to them. Sammi had told herself that she could undo the damage.

No more.

At the back of the shop, Letty stood behind Caryn with the bloody knife in her hand. The blade was slick with blood. Caryn’s head lolled back, revealing a wide, grinning slash in her throat. Blood streamed down her chest.

Katsuko stood half a dozen feet away, one hand clamped over a hideous gash on her chest. Her face had gone slack and tears streaked the blood on her face.

Zak lay on the floor near the reception desk, Rachael pressing both hands to a stab wound in his stomach. Both of them stared in shock at Letty, even as Caryn slid to the ground, dying in front of their eyes.

Propped on the floor, disoriented and swaying, T.Q. stared at them, murmuring, “No, no, no” over and over.

Dante’s voice carried through the room, a gleeful whisper.

“Well done, Letty,” the magician said. “Now it’s time for the knife to find your heart.”

Sammi spun to see him standing silhouetted against the lantern light out on the street, framed in the jagged jaws of the broken window. His face had become a mask of blood.

Then the words sank in.

“No!” Sammi shouted, running toward Letty.

Katsuko moved quicker. She grabbed hold of Letty’s arm, but the petite girl did not have the strength to stop her. Letty plunged the knife into her own chest, pulled it out and tried again to stab it into her heart. Sammi reached her, then, and as Letty fell to the floor, she and Katsuko wrested the knife away from her.

“Oh no,” T.Q. said, sobbing. “Oh no, Letty. Caryn. No, no.”

Sammi stared at Caryn’s dull, lifeless eyes. Her cheek lay in a widening pool of blood that soaked and matted her hair.

Katsuko bent over Letty’s twitching body, weeping from somewhere deep in her soul, and pressed both hands against the wound in her chest. Sammi pulled Letty’s head into her lap and stroked her face.

She glanced toward the window, but Dante had vanished.

Outside, a motorcycle engine roared to life, then began to diminish into the distance.

Sammi slipped her cell phone from her pocket. This time, when she flipped it open, she had service again. She dialed 911, and as she lifted the phone to her ear, she began to shake uncontrollably. The stink of blood filled the shop, and somehow she knew it would linger always in her mind.