Wicked Ink (7 page)

“Please,” the other man said.

“Garrett, can you hear me?”

He growled low in his throat, and she immediately started mouthing positive thoughts to keep herself sane.

“It will be okay. You are not going to hurt me.” She knew deep down she was telling the truth as she recited the mantra her psychiatrist had given her when times were too tough to handle. “You will be okay. Let that light come through you and return you to peace. Let it cleanse you. Let it live in you. Let yourself go.”

Something snapped through the air, clouding her vision and making her see colors where there were none. Her fingertips felt singed, but she didn’t move them from Garrett’s chest.

And then he collapsed on the hardwood floor next to her and stopped breathing.

“Oh, please, help me. Help him,” she cried to the man who still stood in the shadows in the corner of the room, not moving. He looked shocked. “Snap out of it! He’s not breathing.”

Whoever the man was, he got right to work, turning Garrett onto his back, then placing his big hands on his chest to begin compressions. Before the first push, Garrett turned onto his side, curling up into a ball and coughing as if his lungs wanted to come up out of his throat.

“He’ll be fine. He always is.” The man sat back on his haunches, shaking his head, and murmuring to himself as if she wasn’t sitting right there. “It’s always best to give him a moment. When he purges himself in the chair, he’s always sitting upright. I wonder if that makes a difference.”

“You mean, you’ve done this before?” Dory cut in, horror racing through her. How many times had Garrett sat in that chair? “What the hell is this?”

“That’s not my story to tell.” The man laid his hand on Garrett’s shoulder. “Something’s different this time.
You
made it different. Why is that?” He peered at her through narrowed eyes as if trying to puzzle her out.

“What did I do?” She backed away in trepidation, but the other man gripped her hand and put it on Garrett’s shoulder blade, right over a tattoo that looked like a menacing gargoyle. She had never seen this one before, since she was used to seeing him with a shirt on, but it was impressive and scary at the same time.

“Talk to him again,” the man said, holding her wrist steady so that she didn’t jerk away. She’d already hurt Garrett somehow and didn’t want to do it again. “Talk to him, please. I’ll explain later.”

So she did, asking any celestial beings who might be listening to help her help this man.

Repeating the same things she had told him before over and over again, she kept a hand on his back, adding the other to his opposite shoulder blade. He twitched under her palms but then uncurled, his breaths evening out. She sighed a breath of relief for the first time since seeing him strapped into that monstrosity.

Now, if only her legs would stop shaking, she might actually be able to function again in spite of the emotions storming through her. She needed a few minutes alone to just breathe.

Rising from the floor, she looked at Garrett, prone on the floor as if taking a nap, and the stranger, who was rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “You both have some serious explaining to do,” she said. “I’ll see you down in the kitchen.”

The stairs seemed twice as long going down as they had coming up. Her knees wobbled on the third from the bottom, so she sat down for a second to catch her breath. But she firmed her resolve and made it down the last three treads. She had never faced something like this before, something that defied rational explanation. It certainly frightened her, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t handle it. Being an accountant wasn’t the whole of her existence. She’d just have to dig deep to find the strength to face this situation. In the meantime, she could do the one thing she had absolute control over.

Heading straight for the kitchen, she opened the refrigerator and found the barest of necessities. A jug of milk and a bottle of ketchup sat in the door. A couple of shriveled oranges lined the bottom shelf and a block of cheese sat on the middle one. The bowl of stew she had brought him yesterday sat square in the middle of the top shelf. Pulling off the plastic wrap that covered it, she eyed the contents. He had barely touched it.

Maybe the freezer had more to offer. Pulling the door open, she gasped. The whole thing was jam-packed with pretty much everything she had ever brought over. He’d returned her Tupperware over the past two months, but he must have bought stock in sandwich baggies, because there was the oriental chicken she’d spiced up just last week. The chickpea soup with an extra dash of garlic and balsamic vinegar sat next to it, along with the steak marinated in cayenne pepper, cumin and a jolt of jalapeño.

She pulled out bag after bag of all the things she’d shared with him, all the extras she’d made thinking she was feeding him well. They all went into the trash she found under the sink. “Ungrateful! He could have just told me he didn’t like my cooking. He wouldn’t know good food if it sat up and bit him in the damn ass.”

A part of her knew she was focusing so hard on the food because it kept her from thinking about the chair and everything that had happened upstairs, but it felt too good to stop. Marta had often told her she liked her food a tad spicier and zestier than most, but it wasn’t bad. Several of their neighbors in the building liked it just fine. Two weeks ago, the college student upstairs had asked her for the recipe for the red pepper chicken with new potatoes Dory had made in her trusty Crock-Pot.

Why on earth hadn’t he just told her he didn’t want to eat her food? She would have taken that much better than realizing she’d been a fool these past months.

She threw the last bag in the trash with relish, then turned to open the cabinets. Maybe he had some peanut butter and jelly. She’d make him a plain old sandwich that he would actually eat.

* * *

Garrett had never felt worse in his life. His head hurt, and his heart hurt. Hell, even his hair hurt.

“Come on, man, you have to get up. I can’t get you all the way down those stairs by myself, and there’s a little lady down there who’s waiting for some answers.”

“What?” His ears were ringing, although everything else seemed to be subsiding a bit. At least his breathing sounded less like a freight train and more like a hybrid car. “What did you say? Who’s waiting?”

“You heard me. This woman comes streaking in here like her pretty honey-blond hair is on fire, and she damn near rips you out of the chair just as I was about to hit the switch. Then she starts laying her hands on you and chanting. She was hysterical, and you were standing over her like you were some kind of fiend. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, but you collapsed on the ground at her feet. I’ve never seen anything like it before, and after meeting you, I’ve seen a lot of shit, my friend.”

Garrett closed his eyes. This had to be a dream…or maybe a nightmare. How on earth was he going to explain what he was and what he could do to someone as innocent and pure as his neighbor? Only Jackson and Lissa knew the truth about his abilities now. The other two people who had known were dead. There were plenty of people who knew enough to be scared, but they didn’t know the full story. He worked in the night, staying away from the light of streetlamps, and made a point of never getting caught on film. And Jackson was certainly the only person who had ever been up here. For that matter, this was only his friend’s second time in what Garrett secretly thought of as his lair. He hadn’t needed his friend’s help since figuring out the exact voltage he could take.

And now he had towered over Dory, probably scared her to death.

He looked around the room, trying to see it with her eyes. She would never talk to him again. She would probably call the cops on him. Who had an electric chair in their apartment and used it?

“I can’t go down there,” Garrett said through his raw throat. “I can’t let her see me like this.”

“She just saw you looking a hell of a lot worse, and she held on like you were the life raft in her sea. Don’t start going all namby-pamby on me now. Get yourself clean in the shower up here, and then meet Dory and me downstairs. Don’t even think about jumping out the window, either, because I’ll come find you and drag your ass back in chains. I’m not kidding.”

Since the idea of leaving had occurred to him, Garrett just shrugged, wiping the sweat from his face as he headed for the shower. There was no way he was going to be able to explain himself, particularly not to someone who had probably never seen anything worse than a bad movie.

God, he was screwed.

After soaking himself in the hottest water he could get through the old pipes, he grabbed a spare pair of sweats from the linen closet in the bathroom and made his way down the stairs like a prisoner going to his execution. He hadn’t even been able to tell Dory he didn’t like her food, so how the hell was he going to tell her he was some kind of superhuman who had to electrocute himself to get rid of the darkness after using it to make weapons out of his tattoos? Fuck, when he said it like that, it sounded loony even to him.

The smell of her perfume lingered on the third step from the bottom in the closet, catching him off guard. He couldn’t stop himself from inhaling it one more time.

Chapter Seven

Pacing around the living room was not helping her disposition any. Dory made the next circuit anyway, keeping an eye on the closet and waiting impatiently for Garrett to come through the door. He had quite a bit of explaining to do. She was not leaving until at least some of this was clearer to her.

God, seeing him in that chair! The image would never leave her for as long as she lived. Nor would the thought of what would have happened if she hadn’t shown up. There had to be a reason for the chair, she just couldn’t come up with anything rational.

The other man who had been upstairs watched her from the couch. He hadn’t introduced himself, and she hadn’t stopped flying around the room long enough to ask for his name.

“Who are you?” She stopped in front of him with her hands on her hips and, she was sure, murder in her eyes. How could he have stood there with his hand on the switch, knowing Garrett couldn’t possibly survive what would happen next?

“My name is Jackson.”

The name was familiar, but with everything that had transpired in the past thirty minutes, it took her a moment to piece it together.

“Wait a minute,” she finally said, “you’re the one who took Marta to the hospital. How do you fit into this mess? Isn’t it a little convenient that you were the one to find the woman who went missing from our building? And then you came back here to hurt Garrett?” Her brain seized in its thought pattern, hung up on trying to process too many things at once. “Oh my God, Garrett isn’t responsible for all this, is he? He’s not the one who’s been mugging and taking people?”

Acid and bile rose in her throat as Jackson pulled himself from the couch. No, no, no. There was no way Garrett was a bad guy. Not the Garrett who smiled at her and made her promise to stay safe on the way to work. The man she’d had lunch with today could not have abducted their neighbor and then sat down with Dory as if nothing had happened.

With her hand over her mouth to keep the scream from coming out, she began backing toward the door. She couldn’t stay here another minute.

Jackson might have been big, but he was also superfast. He got to the door before she did, blocking her exit.

“Get out of my way.”

“No, Dory, you have to stay. There are things I hope Garrett will tell you. But I can assure you of one thing—he hasn’t harmed anyone in this building, and he never would. He was actually the one who found Marta, but I took her to the hospital for him so no one would jump to the wrong conclusion, like you just did.”

“I…I…I don’t believe you.” And it was tearing her up inside.

“Jackson wouldn’t lie to you. He’s one of my oldest friends, and he’s the one who got me pointed in the right direction.” Garrett’s deep voice came from the closet with the staircase, directly across from where she stood. Now she was neatly boxed in between the two of them with nowhere to run and nothing to do but pray they wouldn’t hurt her. How had she gotten this far into something so bad? She wasn’t a novice when it came to the darker side of life, so she should have known better. Maybe her gut instincts weren’t as good as she had thought.

She watched warily as Garrett took a step out into the living room. “I’m not sure what to say, Dory, but I didn’t hurt Marta or any of our neighbors. I never would.” He ran his hand over the back of his head, then looked at the floor with his palm clapped to the back of his neck. His dejected stance broke something in her. It was all she could do not to go to him and hold him.

She stopped herself just in time, determined not to fall for whatever it was he was trying to sell her. She knew nothing about him, she realized. He had never even told her why his shoulder had bloomed with blood so suddenly in the hallway, and she hadn’t asked because, at the time, she had been too intent on keeping him alive. Now she wondered how she could have been so stupid and naive.

“Tell me what’s going on. Now.”

He opened his mouth, but she raised her hand before he could say anything. “Don’t even think about lying to me. If you’re going to lie, at least tell me that you’d rather not tell me, and I’ll just leave.”

He peered at her as he walked over to the couch, taking the side opposite Jackson, who was once again sitting. He sat on the very edge, as if spikes were embedded in the back of the cushion. “You’d really walk out right now without an explanation?”

“Not going to happen, man,” Jackson cut in before Dory could. “You have to tell this lady after all she did for you. And if I’m not mistaken, she resolved your little issue for you today without the chair. I think that’s worth a hell of a lot more than an explanation. You ought to buy her a ring.” He slapped Garrett’s leg as he got up off the couch. “I’m going to head out. I don’t need to be here for this.”

He turned to Dory, giving her a smile that creased the corners of his bright green eyes. “You make sure to listen, now. This man won’t lie to you, but it’s a bitch getting the full truth out of him sometimes. Don’t leave even if he tries to force you. I think you’re made of much sterner stuff than he realizes.” He brushed his hand down her arm, brought her hand up to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “He’s an idiot, but not a bad one.”