Wicked Ink (6 page)

Grabbing Bert in a headlock, he realized he had forgotten about the man’s knife when it slid into his side, right above his hipbone, dead center of the tattoo that had become the pike. That one would have to be replaced. Rage boiled through him, making him pant and curse as he wrestled with Bert, trying to get him to submit. But the other man fought like hell was on his heels.

Finally Garrett had to let go. Bert had managed to start twisting the knife in his side and even though the tattoos had swarmed the wound to stop the forward movement of the blade, they hadn’t been strong enough to actually stop the pain this time. Agony screamed up through his body as he tried to put weight on the leg on that side of his body.

“Not so powerful now, are you?” Bert swiped at his bloody face with the back of his hand. That was
his
blood, Garrett thought, preparing himself to make one more assault.

Bert was fast even with that broken leg. He made it to Marta’s side in record time and yanked her head back by her limp gray hair. “Don’t come any closer, you jackass. I can kill her in a second, and you’ll never get here fast enough. Now, back away.”

Garrett did as he was told, his mind working furiously all the while. If he could time it right and angle it right, the pike might be his very best idea yet.

Ten paces back, he brought the pike up as if in surrender. And then threw it right into Bert’s left shoulder with enough punch to send the man reeling backward. Garrett relished the sound of the man’s head bashing against the hard floor. He wasn’t getting up from that anytime soon.

After making sure Marta was okay and still unconscious, he stood over Bert. The urge to kill this despicable animal was nearly overpowering. He made sure to twist the spiked head of the pike in Bert’s shoulder before yanking it out with a very satisfying squelching noise.

“Do it,” Bert said with the same smile he’d seen on the man who had fought him in the alley the previous night. “She’s going to kill me if you don’t. Finish it.”

“No. I won’t let your death be on my hands. I want you alive so you can tell this Andraste to back off or it will be the biggest miscalculation of her life. You got that, Bert? I take care of what’s mine, and she can come for me herself if she wants me so bad.”

A car pulled up outside and Garrett could hear Jackson calling his name. Not a moment too soon. He absorbed the pike back into his hand, the tattoo returning to its rightful place, a little mangled now. He would definitely have to go see Lissa, and she was not going to be happy. His mom had first taken him to see her almost twenty years ago for his first tattoo because of her unique abilities and beliefs. Like Margery, she bought into the ancient traditions that dated back centuries in Garrett’s family. He’d never gone anywhere else for a tattoo. He couldn’t. But that didn’t mean he liked her grumbling and the way she poked into his life. Before Margery’s death, she’d thought of herself as his protector against the woman who’d birthed him and then tried to destroy him. When he hadn’t gone along with his mother’s plan to be her money machine and monkey rolled into one, she’d done everything she could to persuade him. When that hadn’t worked, she’d gone after him with a vengeance until he’d cut ties with her, moving out of her sphere of influence.

“Garrett, where are you, guy?”

“In here,” Garrett answered. His mind clouded over with a lust for death and destruction. But this time he pulled up the only good he could think of, focusing on Dory as Jackson hustled him and Marta out of the warehouse.

Chapter Five

When Garrett didn’t show up right at four o’clock, Dory was disappointed. Maybe he had gotten the hint that she didn’t need a protector. She chose to think that instead of worrying.

She hopped on her scooter, put her helmet on and started the tiny engine. It was a handful of blocks home, no big deal. Still, she did look over her shoulder several times just in case she wasn’t as safe as she had professed to be.

When she pulled up in front of her building, she was concerned to find a group of people gathered on the sidewalk—several policemen and Marta’s family. Had they found her? Could she be dead? Marta was such a sweet woman. She’d helped Dory several times right after her last arrest, as well as when she was going through accounting school. With her gentle persuasion and tough love, she had helped Dory find a new path and a new way of doing things. She’d even helped her find a place in this apartment building.

Heat and tears welled in her eyes as she noticed the way Marta’s son’s eyes were glistening. No way would this be good news. Greg was a strong man—a happy man—and she had never seen him cry.

She stowed her gear and ran over to them, wrapping Greg and his wife, Claire, in a tight hug before offering words of comfort. Nothing could truly be comforting, but she would try anyway. For Marta.

“Dory, oh, Dory.” Greg ran a hand down the back of her hair, smoothing what she was sure was total helmet head.

“Greg, I’m so sorry!”

“Why, honey?” He held her at arm’s length, and she finally got a good look at him without the bias of her own feelings. “They found her, honey. She’s going to be okay.”

Relief flooded through Dory, making her weak-kneed. They’d found her? “Who’s
they?”

“I don’t know, but some guy dropped her off at the hospital. He said that he found her walking around the old business district. Jackson something or other. They said he wasn’t involved at all, and Mom is talking her head off about all the things she remembers.”

“Did they hurt her?”

“She has some cuts and bruises, a few bumps, several broken bones. I haven’t been able to see her yet, but I’m told she’s going to be fine. All of this is hard to swallow, but I’m trying to remember she’s a tough old broad.” Greg held her hands, which were icy from the shock of thinking Marta was gone. Slowly she warmed up, and a smile bloomed on her face.

“Well, when you do see her, tell her I’m thinking about her and hoping for her speedy recovery.”

“Will do. Now, I’d better get back to the police officers to see when we can get into the hospital. You take care of yourself. Be careful.” Greg walked back over to Marta’s apartment and then let himself in the front door.

His words so closely echoed Garrett’s that it brought the man front and center in her brain. Where had he been? Was he home now?

Taking the stairs as quickly as she dared in her low heels, she made it to the third floor in record time. No one was on the landing, and Garrett’s door was closed. She didn’t think he’d be waiting for her in the hallway, but there was a part of her that wished she at least had his phone number so she could make sure he was all right. He wasn’t the only one who was allowed to worry. And just because the only other man in the building hadn’t been attacked didn’t mean the bad guys couldn’t change things up in an instant if they wanted.

She’d just knock on his door to see if he was home.

But when she knocked, the door creaked open under her fist. She had never known Garrett to leave his apartment open. He’d told her once that he was all about locks, warning her to get into the habit of locking her door behind her even if she only had to run a quick errand.

Curiosity and a sense of impending doom propelled her over the threshold and into his home for the second time in a little over twelve hours. She searched the rooms, calling out his name, her voice soft. If he had come home to sleep off their lunch and heal his wounds from this morning, she didn’t want to be the one to wake him. But he wasn’t on the leather couch, and he wasn’t in the kitchen. The bathroom door was partially open, so she peered in. Empty. His bedroom was last. She really didn’t want to intrude, but the thought of finding his body half-naked again was not exactly unappealing. She’d been crushing on the dark-haired man ever since he moved into the building. But she’d admired him only from afar. That glimpse of his chest this morning had set something off in her girly bits that she was having a hard time tamping back down. The kiss had only added fuel to that fire.

Very carefully, she opened the bedroom door with just the tips of her fingers. But it was obvious within seconds that the bed was perfectly made and no one was lurking in the closet.

That word,
closet,
rang in her head for a moment before she remembered the odd staircase in the closet of the main room. Did he have access to the apartment upstairs? Did he rent both units? The landlord had told her the place was being remodeled when she had asked about having it rented out to a friend at work, but she’d never heard any kind of construction noise from up there. Which didn’t necessarily mean much, since she wasn’t home during the day. But she’d never even seen any workers going up and down the stairs.

A sense of foreboding hit her in the chest as she took careful steps toward the closet door. What if it was his private sanctuary? What if it was where he truly lived instead of this sparsely furnished space that looked more like a decorator’s half-baked attempt at furnishing? What if he did wild, kinky stuff up there that she did not want to know about?

She laughed softly to herself as she pulled the door toward her. She highly doubted Garrett was into kink—or that he would rent a separate apartment as his sex den. Not that she knew anything about that kind of stuff, but she would trust herself to know a deviant when she saw one. She had enough past experience to trust her instincts.

She was wasting time by hanging around at the bottom tread of the tight spiral staircase. She wouldn’t get any answers standing down here and wondering. Whatever he had up there, she could handle.

* * *

“Please, Jackson, I don’t know if I can make myself turn the electricity on this time, but I need it. Whatever happened last time was an aberration. I have to be cleansed, or I’ll never be fit for society. Please.” Garrett clenched his hands and his teeth around the words. It had been both a blessing and a curse that he hadn’t needed to use the machine the previous night, because it had made him hope, just for a second, that he could use his powers without having to pay for being a good guy. But that wasn’t the way the world worked, and he knew it.

“Man, I just don’t think I can. Get that Dory girl to come over. I don’t know what she did to you, but I can’t sit here and watch you fry for the thousandth time if it’s not necessary. There’s got to be a different way. I know this works, but why not try something else?”

“There isn’t anything else, goddammit! You think I would do this to myself if I thought there was another way? I’m not a masochist. Just flip the fucking switch!” Garrett shut his eyes and clenched his jaw until his teeth ground together, bracing himself for the current to start running through his body, burning all the darkness and evil out of his system so he could breathe and behave like a normal human being again.

He was still bracing himself when a woman’s scream split the air.

“What are you doing?” the woman sobbed, yanking at the bonds that secured his hands to the chair and hyperventilating at the same time.

He opened his eyes when he recognized Dory’s voice and the feel of her soft touch. “Get out of here!” he yelled. “Leave that alone! This has to be done or I’ll rip everything around me to pieces.”

“No, you won’t. No, you won’t. No, you won’t.” She loosed the bindings on his wrists.

His mind started to swirl with images of stabbing someone in the heart, running down the street with a torch of fire and touching everything in his path, breaking glass, and stealing things. His head felt like it was going to explode, and it would in a moment if she didn’t let him complete the purging.

“Jackson,” he screamed, his head thrown back, grinding against the wooden supports that were supposed to keep him safe. But he wasn’t safe right now and neither was anyone in the room with him.

Chapter Six

“I have to get him out of here. Have to.” Dory knew some part of her had gone off the deep end. She could hear Garrett yelling at her, but couldn’t understand what he was saying in her blind need to get those bonds off him.

Somewhere in the room another man stood in silence. She should be worried about him, her mind told her, but helping Garrett seemed so much more important than anything else at that precise moment.

Finally the last piece of leather came free in her fumbling fingers, and Garrett shot out of the chair like a man possessed. He knocked her over because she couldn’t scramble out of the way fast enough, but when he looked down at her on the bare floor, she could feel hate and rage radiating from him like they were living things.

She whispered his name, finally becoming aware of the fact that this space was even less furnished than the one downstairs. At least he had something to sit on in the other apartment. Here there was only that ugly, heinous chair, with its leather straps and wires hanging in disuse, and a table with a laptop in the corner.

No matter what happened next, she would not regret saving him, even if only for the moment.

His chest rising and falling, Garrett hovered over her like an avenging angel. His shirt was off and his hair was wild. He barely resembled the man who had eaten lunch with her this afternoon, but she knew the real Garrett resided in there somewhere. If only she could reach him.

She caught movement out of the corner of her eye. She hoped to God her life wasn’t going to end this way after she’d struggled so hard to do the right thing and make something of herself over the past seven years. But if it did, then at least she’d had a good ride. And had come out a lot cleaner and happier than she’d ever thought possible when the cocaine had gripped her mind and body like a vice.

“Ma’am. I’m going to need you to very slowly and very carefully back up. Just scoot away on your bottom if you can.”

She lifted a hand to Garrett, but made no effort to move away from him.

“No, don’t touch him, just move away. We’ll get him under control, and then we’ll all talk about this, okay? Can you please just move?”

“You make him sound like an animal,” she murmured, making contact with the skin of his stomach. Moving her hand up past his abs, she smoothed her fingers along his rib cage and over his chest until his heart was beating hard against her palm.