Angel's Ink

by Jocelynn Drake

  “Yes, but then so is leaving you an immortal.”

  “I understand.” She sighed.

  I dropped my hands and stared at her in surprise. I hadn’t actually expected her to understand. And for a moment, I wasn’t sure if that made my job easier or harder. “You do?”

  “Please,” she scoffed. “I’m in no rush to die, but then I’ve been living with the idea of dying young for a long time. Even if I hadn’t had this stupid disease, I wouldn’t want to live forever.”

  “You’re very wise,” I said, which earned me a derisive snort.

  “Nah, just not crazy. Should we get started? I’m beginning to get a little cold.”

  Pushing to my feet, I shuffled over to the wall and flicked on the bright overhead light, leaving us both squinting and blinking for several seconds. I settled on the stool beside the table and moved the foot pedal underneath the toe of my sneaker as I pulled on latex gloves and took up the tattooing machine in my right hand. After spreading down some petroleum jelly over the area near her shoulder blades that I planned to start with, I gently set the side of my hand against her back and paused when a thought suddenly occurred to me.

  “When we first met, you mentioned that someone had recommended me to you. Do you remember who?” I asked, holding my hand still on her back with the needle hovering an inch above her flesh.

  This time, Tera paused for a long moment. I had started to lean down so that I could look at her face when she finally spoke.

  “His name’s Atticus Sparks.”

  I drew my hand away from her as my heart skipped once in my chest. Why had my former mentor sent her in my direction? I didn’t like this.

  “He doesn’t have the best or cleanest setup,” she continued, unaware of my growing unease. “But a friend said that he works for cheap. I told Atticus Sparks about my situation and he sent me to you, saying that you could help.”

  “He said I could help? What did he mean by help?”

  “I’m not exactly sure and he refused to explain. I kind of thought you might be able to do something about the cancer, but I wasn’t about to get my hopes up. The doctors proved to be useless and I knew that it was just as useless to go begging a witch or a warlock for an easy fix. I had never heard of a tattoo artist curing a disease with some ink, but then this Sparks guy seemed pretty confident about your work. I guess he was right about you.”

  Yeah, Sparks did prove to be right and it was more than a little disturbing. Why had Sparks sent her to me? I trusted Sparks. He knew my secrets, and had never done anything to make me doubt him. But as I sat on the stool with Tera taped down to the table before me, I had a sick feeling that I had been set up.

  Closing my eyes for a second, I pressed my foot down on the pedal a couple of times, listening to the distinct sound of the buzz of the machine surge through the room like a bolt of wild electricity searching for an outlet. The sound eased some of the tension from my shoulders, placing me back into a comfort zone in which I could work. It wasn’t quite eleven. I had plenty of time to tattoo Tera and then head over to Sparks’s for a quick, informative visit.

  A feeling of control crept into my frame and I opened my eyes. I was back in the driver’s seat of my life and I was ready to move forward. Lowering my right hand onto her back again, I pressed down the foot pedal and drew my first line along the black line I had drawn only a few days earlier. Beneath my hand, I could feel Tera flinch and her muscles jump as I tore at her skin. She didn’t make a sound, but I knew it hurt. There was nothing I could do to ease the pain short of knocking her out again.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmured as I continued down her back. “I’ll try to work quickly. I don’t need to go over the entire tattoo again. I’m just adding some highlights.”

  “It’s okay,” she said in a fractured voice that cut through me.

  I worked without speaking. The only sounds in the room were the buzz of the tattooing machine and the occasional creak from my stool as I shifted my position. It was one of the fastest tattoos I had ever done. I completed one side of her back and then pulled all my equipment around to the other side so that I could reach the far side of the table. A part of my mind kept anticipating her request that I remove the tape around her wrists, but she never did. For that I was grateful since I wasn’t sure that I would be willing to remove it. Everything she said indicated she wanted me to tattoo her, but I didn’t want her to risk trying to run. I would have to stop her with magic, and I knew there would be no gentle way to do that.

  Less than an hour ticked by before I finally pulled my hand away and sat back on the stool to look over my canvas. I carefully inspected the lines and looked at the tattoo from several different angles, taking in the effect the red ink was having against the black lines of the wings. The whole tone of the tattoo had changed with the addition of the red lines and I frowned. For its simplicity, the tattoo was still beautiful, but it now had a demonic feel. I had moved Tera from Archangel to Fallen Angel. Keeping my thoughts to myself, I put the tattooing machine on the table beside me and carefully wiped off her back, removing the excess ink, jelly, and blood.

  “I’m done. Would you like to see it?” I asked, inwardly dreading her answer. She had just suffered in silence for nearly an hour so that I could put her back in the clutches of the grim reaper. I doubted that she really cared what the tattoo looked like.

  “Of course!” she replied with a little laugh that surprised me.

  Grabbing a pair of scissors from where I had left them by the sink on the opposite wall, I knelt under the table and carefully cut her hands free. I turned and replaced the scissors as she sat up on the table with a loud groan. I could imagine that her arms and shoulders were sore from where they had been trapped under the table for an extended period. As I turned back, she was holding her unclasped bra to her chest as she moved to the floor-to-ceiling mirror that covered a section of the wall nearest her. Holding up a hand mirror in front of her, she looked into its reflection so that she could see her back in the large mirror. To my shock, a slow smile formed on her lips before she looked over at me.

  “I liked the original tattoo, but I have to admit that this one looks good as well and it seems more . . . fitting. You do some fantastic work.”

  I lowered the hand mirror and returned it to where it had been on the sketch table, dropping my eyes from her face. “Thanks. How do you feel?”

  “Sore,” she said with a little groan.

  “Sorry. It should pass in a couple of days,” I said absently, then inwardly winced as I wondered if she even had a couple of days. I turned back to my table of supplies and began the process of bandaging her and cleaning up my workspace. Tera silently watched me work while sitting on the stool that I had used while tattooing her.

  When everything was finally put away and there was nothing left that I could busy myself with, I turned to face her. She flashed me a weak little smile. In her hands, she tightly clutched her bra. She hadn’t wanted to put it back on, as the straps would dig into her tattooed back and shoulders. Instead, I had politely averted my eyes as I helped her with her button-up blouse.

  “What should I do now?” she asked in a soft voice.

  “Live. Live as fully as you can.”

  She smiled at me and I tried to smile back. “You feel guilty, don’t you?” Tera cocked her head slightly to the side as her gaze slid over my face. “I’m still alive. So I’m going to die young. That was going to happen before I met you. Nothing you did tonight changed that inevitable outcome. I got exactly what I came in here for: a kick-ass tattoo. Thank you.”

  “I got your hopes up for nothing,” I murmured, shaking my head.

  She gave a little snort, bringing my eyes back up to hers. “Hope isn’t a bad thing.”

  “I’ll try to remember that.” I didn’t quite feel better about anything that had happened, but it was nice to know she didn’t think I was an insensitive, evil asshole. She was actually a lot more understanding about it all than I would have ex
pected from anyone. I leaned in and carefully wrapped one arm around her neck, hugging her. To my surprise, Tera wrapped both her arms around my waist and hugged me tightly.

  “I really appreciate you trying to help. It means a lot, especially since I’m a total stranger,” she whispered.

  “I just wish it had worked out better.”

  She pulled away and smiled. “Doesn’t matter. You get points for effort.”

  “If you want to wait outside, I’ll go around back and get my car so I can drive you home.”

  Tera shook her head, her smile not wavering. “Don’t worry about it. There’s a taxi stand that starts about this time each night to handle the people coming out of the bars. I’ll grab a cab.”

  “You sure? It’s not a problem.”

  “Yeah, I kinda want to be alone right now. Besides, I’ve always wanted to take a taxi. Can’t imagine that I’m going to get many more chances,” she said, but her positive mood never wavered despite talking about her own coming demise.

  I let the offer drop and walked her to the front door. Our footsteps were nearly silent until we reached the creaky wooden floor in the lobby. I couldn’t blame her, as I was probably the last person she wanted to spend more time with. Unlatching the dead bolt, I pulled open the old wood-and-glass door so that she could exit. She hopped down the three cracked concrete steps and paused to look back at me over her shoulder. Tera gave me a little wave, a smile still lifting the corners of her mouth.

  I smiled back. Staring at her, I knew that I wouldn’t see her alive again. A small part of me wished that I hadn’t succeeded, while another part secretly wished I had.

  In the end, so much was centered on the life and death of a single girl. She wasn’t a world leader, an influential activist, or a powerful magic weaver. If I had never gotten involved, she would have died without a problem and the world would never have missed a beat. But in my stupidity, I tore the tender fabric of the world, shifted the balance so that everything ran screaming toward chaos.

  I fixed my mistake and centered the scales once again, but the damage had been done. There were now three people who knew immortality was possible and how to achieve it. It was knowledge that should have stayed tucked away, hidden from the world. While I didn’t think we three would ever reveal what we knew, it was like opening Pandora’s damn box. Once the knowledge was out there, it was only a matter of time before someone else discovered it.

  The world seemed a slightly darker place now, as if there was a new edge that hadn’t been there before. The slant of light that shot through the city dimmed and the shadows deepened. Children clung a little tighter to their mothers and lovers huddled together a little closer against the bite of some unknown threat that had come one step closer.

  I left the Ivory Towers wanting to take control of my life, but I never thought that maybe if I had stayed in the Towers, the world would have been better protected from me.

  Chapter 30

  Closing the door and setting the dead bolt back in place, I reached for the light switch next to the door frame as I turned into the lobby. My heart lurched when my eyes fell on the grim reaper standing a few feet away, wrapped in the shadows. No. I jerked my gaze across the room to the old clock hanging on the wall to find that it was roughly seven minutes after midnight, marking the third day. My deadline. The evening had slipped away from me. I had stalled, cleaning up the back room with Tera watching me as I tried to find something helpful or even consoling to say.

  “No!” I shouted, pointing one finger at him. “You can’t! Not yet!”

  I didn’t give him a chance to respond, I was already spinning back toward the door. My fingers fumbled with the dead bolt, but it was too late. The sound of screeching tires on asphalt screamed through the night, followed by the horrible thud of something heavy hitting a metal surface. My stomach clenched and I gritted my teeth against the bile that rose in the back of my throat. Muscles tensed and refused to move as my fingers gripped the cold metal lock in one hand. No, not like this.

  Only a couple of seconds passed, but it felt like an eternity before I managed to unlock the door and surge out of the tattoo parlor. I paused on the sidewalk, eyes darting up and down the street until they focused on a late-model Chevy sitting at the intersection just a few buildings up from my shop. The driver had jumped out of the car and approached a dark lump lying in the middle of the street.

  With jerky, stumbling steps, I ran toward the car and the body in the middle of the street. Sliding to a stop, I knelt next to Tera’s limp body. Blood was spreading across her forehead and down the side of her face. Her breathing was light and feathery as she gasped a couple of times before she stopped breathing completely.

  “No! Tera!” I shouted, grasping her shoulders.

  “You know she must go. Let her,” urged a gentle voice. My head popped up and I looked over my shoulder to find the grim reaper standing a short distance away, his clipboard resting on his hip. Behind him, people were running up the street from the nearby bars, attracted by the noise. But I was the only one who could see him.

  Glaring at the warden of death, I raised my voice. “Call 911!” He was right. Tera was gone and wouldn’t be retrieved from the gates of the underworld because of anything I had managed to do. Her time had been preordained before she walked into my parlor a few days ago. All the same, I had to go through the motions as if I didn’t already know the outcome.

  “You bastard! She was coming from your shop! You killed her!” proclaimed an angry voice that grated against my ears.

  Lifting my narrowed gaze from Tera’s inert body, I found Russell Dalton kneeling near her feet. It had been his car. He had been driving when he struck Tera, killing her. Obviously, the bad luck tattooed into his skin was still having a strong effect on his miserable life.

  My hand shot out toward him and clenched into a fist several inches from his face while power surged through my shaking frame. Russell slammed backward into the door of the car as he scratched at his throat. He made a gasping, choking noise while his feet scraped on the ground as he attempted to get some kind of leverage to push away from me, but I held him tight. My eyes never left his struggling form.

  “Is he on your list too?” I whispered through clenched teeth. It didn’t matter if the people who were starting to gather around us could hear me. I knew that the reaper could and he was the one I was talking to.

  “I can’t tell you that,” the grim reaper replied in an even tone. There was nothing in his voice to indicate whether he cared if this worm lived or died.

  I stared at Russell as his face became a splotchy red and white in the darkness. Tears ran from his eyes as he watched me. I tightened my hold on his neck. With just a little twist of my wrist, I could snap his neck and end it quickly. Or I could continue to hold him like this, crushing his windpipe so that he slowly suffocated to death. The people around me wouldn’t do anything to stop me. I was using magic, and humans had learned years ago to not involve themselves in a matter where a human was using magic. It meant only one thing to them: warlock. And it was the job of the warlock to keep the scum in line.

  Russell needed to die. He was walking scum. Days ago, he had tried to convince me to work a potion that would have had a negative effect on his wife. He’d threatened me and tried to kill me. He was a bully, walking over those who surrounded him. He had killed Tera. Dalton needed to be wiped clean from the earth.

  The small thump on the car hood drew my attention. I looked up to see Sofie sitting on the edge of the car, just above Russell’s head. I didn’t ask how she had gotten out of the apartment or even how she knew what was going on. She was a witch. Sofie just sat there, staring at me with her wide yellow eyes.

  “She’s gone,” I choked out as if it was an excuse.

  Sofie stared at me, waiting. I looked back down at Russell, still hating him with every fiber of my being, but some of the fire had died. If I killed him this way, with magic, I would lose one year of my own life. I would die at
some point and would remain dead for one full year, hurting my friends and family and leaving everyone vulnerable.

  And deep down, I knew that Russell was not really responsible for Tera’s death. He may have hit her with his car, but she was dead before she stepped out of the shop. If he hadn’t hit her, then she would have died in a car crash on her way to her apartment, or choked to death alone while eating a midnight snack. She would have died in her sleep from a heart attack or cancer. The list was endless. Death had finally caught up with her.

  Drawing in a steadying breath, I slowly opened my hand and dropped it back down to my side. At the same time, Russell slumped against the car, sucking in large gulps of air while gingerly rubbing his throat. His eyes were wary as they watched me, as if he was waiting for me to strike again.

  Barely resisting the urge to growl at him, I turned my gaze down to Tera. I shoved my hand in my pocket and pulled out some change, which I put into the right-front pocket of her jeans. I hoped she got it in time to give it to the ferryman. Rising to my feet, I turned and walked through the crowd, which soundlessly parted as I neared.

  “Make sure she gets that,” I murmured to the grim reaper as I passed.

  “I will,” he replied, but I was the only one who heard him.

  In the distance, I could hear the approach of sirens from the ambulance that was racing toward this spot. With my head down, I trudged back to the shop to wait. Sofie padded along beside me, occasionally brushing against the pants leg of my jeans. I held the front door open for her before following her into the shop. Closing the door, I sat in the darkness of the lobby and waited.

  As I had expected, the ambulance was accompanied by a set of police squad cars. The sea of people once again parted to let the ambulance through, while the police rushed forward to keep the crowd back and to take statements. Fifteen minutes after their arrival, a pair of cops came up the stairs of the parlor and rapped on the door. Pushing off the bench I had been sitting on, I crossed the room and motioned for them to enter.