Inked

by Karen Chance

  “Bad news,” Zee rasped, licking his claws. “Gave our old mother a hard run.”

  “And that’s the reason three people associated with this woman have been murdered?”

  Zee lowered his hand, sharing a long look with the others, who stopped eating. “Price to pay. No good road from that hunt. Bleed for darkness and darkness gets a taste.”

  Winifred was going to wonder why her bathroom smelled like fried chicken and beer. “Why? Was she a demon?”

  Zee sighed, resting his chin upon my knee. Hair spikes flexed, and his red eyes narrowed with memory as his claws gently tapped the tile floor. “Almost.”

  “Almost. What does that mean?”

  “Means almost.” Zee scrunched up his face. “Blood never lies, Maxine.”

  I gave him a long look, suspicions and theories rumbling through my head. But before I could ask, Dek lifted his head and froze. All the boys did, staring at the door.

  I was up in moments, out of the bathroom, running down the hall. Grant and Winifred were still seated in the living room, talking softly, but they stopped when they saw me. Grant did not need to hear my warning. He braced himself on his cane and rose in one smooth movement, knuckles white around the carved oak handle.

  “Winifred,” he rumbled quietly, still staring into my eyes. “You need to come with us now.”

  The old woman paled. No arguments, though. She stood, swaying, and Grant steadied her with his free hand. I moved ahead of them, Dek and Mal settling heavily in my hair. Red eyes winked at me from the shadows of the long hall. I listened hard, heard nothing.

  The door loomed. Grant and Winifred lingered behind me. I held out my hand, gesturing for them to wait as I crept forward. From the shadows of the closet, Zee whispered, “Clear.”

  And it was, when I opened the door. Nothing there.

  We left the apartment without incident, and took the elevator down to the first floor. Winifred watched me the entire time, with such intensity my skin crawled. So many stories in her eyes, so much she knew that had not been spoken. I hated secrets. I hated the mysteries in the past that no one, even if they tried, would ever be able to explain. To understand something you had to live it—or live something so close that the empathy was second hand. What this woman had gone through—the events chasing her now—was beyond me. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try.

  As the elevator doors opened I said, “You have ten seconds to tell me why you’re being hunted. No riddles. I want answers.”

  “We were children,” Winifred said tightly, still evading my question. “We didn’t know what we were doing.”

  I noticed she clenched that tightly folded square of linen in her hands, a hint of human leather peeking out from beneath the edge of cloth. I stuck my foot in the elevator door, holding it open. “Right. Because taking that from a dead woman is morally ambiguous. Try another one, Ms. Cohen.”

  Winifred gave me a haunted look. “She wasn’t dead when we took it.”

  And then, almost at a run, she rushed past me into the lobby. Grant began to follow, and stumbled. I grabbed his elbow, clinging tight, feeling as though he was holding me up just as much as I was holding him. I stared at the old woman’s rounded shoulders and whispered, “What is this?”

  “Something worth killing over,” he replied, voice strained. “She wouldn’t say much to me, but whatever happened when she was a child left a black stain in her aura. Almost like a…handprint. I saw something similar in Ernie, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. He was dying. He might have shot someone. Any of that would cause a shadow.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences,” I muttered, and let go of him to hurry after Winifred, who had stopped by the glass entrance and was looking back at us with those old dark eyes. We were alone. No one around to hear more confessions. I reached for the old woman, intending comfort, strength—something, anything, that would reassure her that it was safe to tell me the truth.

  Before I could reach her, the glass in the door shattered. Winifred staggered into my arms, collapsing against me. I gasped, stunned, falling down with her—and my fingers touched wet heat. Came away red. She had been shot in the back.

  A roar filled my ears, deafening and cold. Grant began talking into his cell phone. I hardly heard him. Winifred was still breathing. I slid out from under her, trying to keep my hand on her wound. Pressing down with all my strength.

  Save them.

  Blood seeped past my fingers. Winifred’s breathing was rough, little more than a strangled hiss—but except for that and the quiet persistence of Grant’s voice, silence seemed to press around us. Such terrible silence, as though what little sounds we were making meant nothing to the crush of empty air surrounding our bodies.

  A strong hand covered mine. Grant whispered, “Go. Find who did this.”

  I shook my head. “Not safe for you.”

  His lips brushed my ear. “Justice, Maxine.”

  I tore my gaze from the blood spreading through Winifred’s clothing and gave him a sharp look. Found nothing in his eyes but that old grim determination; and deeper yet, anger.

  I stood, and his hands replaced mine, pressing down on the wound. My fingers snapped at Raw, who was peering at us from around the ruined remains of the door.

  “Protect them,” I snarled.

  And then I was gone, kicking out the remains of the glass to run into the street, searching for a shooter.

  It was a cool Sunday night in New York City, and while this particular street was quiet, I heard the growling hum of cars and people rumbling through the night. No screams, though. No fingers pointing. Just me, and windows across the street, a mixture of light and dark. I stared, searching for movement, anyone watching—but found nothing except for a handful of people strolling across the intersection toward me. No sign that any of them knew what had just happened. I heard their careless laughter.

  I began walking in the opposite direction. Zee flitted through the shadows, appearing briefly in nooks between brownstone stairs and garbage cans; leaping from the branches of slender shade trees and then reappearing moments later in the darkness beneath parked cars. I kept waiting for him to say something, but all he did was give me brief, uneasy glances that made my stomach hurt.

  “What,” I finally asked,” did you find?”

  “Nothing,” he rasped. “Gone.”

  “You can find the shooter. Don’t play dumb.”

  Zee fell backward into the shadows. I kept walking, scanning the street. Trying to let my instincts do what my demons would not. But ten minutes later, I had no answers. Nothing. Nothing, anywhere. Winifred’s attacker had escaped. I had known it the moment I stepped free of her apartment building.

  Zee peered at me from beneath another parked car. I gave him a long hard look. He ducked his head, fading away. But not far. Close as my own skin, if anyone threatened me. The boys felt those things. My life was sacred. They would have known a gunman was close. They had known. But the threat had not been for me, or Grant—who they protected almost as carefully. And so they had let the bullet go.

  But that failed to explain why they did not want the killer found.

  Winifred was being loaded into an ambulance when I returned to the apartment building. A crowd had finally gathered. I was trying to push through them when my cell phone rang.

  “Stay where you are,” Grant said, as soon as I answered. I found him by the ambulance, staring at me.

  I stayed. I lingered, watching like everyone else. Grant was helped into the ambulance with Winifred, and when they left, I walked away, rounded the corner, and headed toward Central Park. Headlights dashed through my vision, warm fetid scents blowing over me, briefly. It was easy to get lost, to feel lost, to lose my thoughts to bullets and demons, and question what the hell I was good for if I could not protect one old woman.

  I’d been having that conversation a lot with myself over the past several months. People always seemed to get hurt around me. It was why I had been rai
sed to be a nomad, to never linger in one spot for long; to avoid making ties, roots, relationships that mattered.

  I was such a bad daughter.

  I walked for a good twenty minutes until my phone rang again.

  “We’re at St. Luke’s. Tenth and Fifty-ninth,” Grant murmured, and in the background I heard voices chattering, shouts, metallic clangs. “Police coming to question me. Winifred’s in surgery.”

  And then he hung up again.

  I flagged down a cab and headed for the hospital. Took me another twenty minutes to reach the ER entrance, but I did not go inside. I circled the hospital until I found a small stone wall to sit on, and perched there in the shadows, watching cars and people. A homeless man slept on a slab of cardboard some ten feet away, and beyond him a young woman crouched with a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of Gatorade in the other. She was humming to herself. No one paid attention to me. I sent a text to Grant’s phone. Five minutes later, I received a reply.

  STAY AWAY. GOT IT COVERED.

  Which was the best I could hope for, though it bothered me that I was not in there with him. Where there was one bullet, there would be another. The killer would want to make sure the deed had been done. Unfortunately, until the police left it was best I keep out of sight. I could not afford for my name—alias or otherwise—to show up on another report. If word got back to Suwani and McCowan, and I had to assume it would, more questions would follow. Grant’s mojo wouldn’t be able to save me forever, and I was unprepared to move on.

  I’m not ready, Winifred had said.

  There was a small garden behind the wall I perched on. I glanced over my shoulder at a pair of sharp red eyes. “You did that on purpose. You deliberately allowed that woman to be shot.”

  Zee gave me an inscrutable look. “Debts paid in full, Maxine.”

  “Winifred is still alive,” I snapped. “The killer will try again. I need to know who is doing this.”

  Still, he hesitated—and something broke inside me. I turned, grabbing his shoulder. Shaking him, or trying to; he dug in his heels and wrapped his claws around my arm. Both of us, pushing against the other. Pretending to, anyway.

  I knew his strength. He could crush my bones with the slightest pinch, or flay me in strips with one judicious swipe. But I was not afraid. I had never been afraid of Zee, or the others. We were family. But family could be a pain in the ass sometimes.

  Dek and Mal poked free of my hair. Raw and Aaz crept close, eyes huge.

  “I am sick,” I whispered, “of never hearing the simple truth.”

  “Truths never simple,” Zee rasped. “Only death, simple. Only birth, simple. Between, threads and hearts and lies, and we are not interpreters. We are not you.”

  His grip relaxed. So did mine, but we did not stop holding each other. Zee whispered, “Past and present always tangled. Too many mysteries.” He touched his chest. “Only truth is yours. Only truth that matters. What you see matters. Not what we see. Not what we tell you.”

  I closed my eyes. “Zee. I need help.”

  “We help,” he whispered, pressing his warm sharp cheek against my arm. “But no answers here. Never were. Just shadows. Memories.”

  “You could have told me that,” I said, all my anger slipping into weariness. “So if not here, then where?”

  Again, that odd hesitancy. “Got to travel, Maxine. Far away.”

  “You promise there will be answers?”

  “Promise enough,” he replied.

  “Grant and Winifred need to be protected.”

  “Time will protect them.” Zee grabbed my right hand. His words echoed in my head—time, time, time—and terrible instinct made my heart tighten with fear. I opened my mouth to protest, but it was too late. Raw and Aaz wrapped their arms around Zee, and the armor on my right hand, hidden beneath my glove, began to tingle and burn.

  My muscles turned to liquid around my bones, and every soft organ in my body seemed to shrivel and lurch. Darkness swallowed me.

  Always, darkness.

  5

  IT was hot when I started breathing again. A sick slick heat that plugged my nostrils with slugs of air so pungent that breathing was almost like drinking rotten wine; I could taste the individual notes of urine and feces, along with garlic and smoke.

  I rolled over on my side, head pounding, and gagged into a puddle that smelled worse than what I had been breathing. The back of my head was wet with the stuff. My stomach heaved again, pain sparking behind my eyes. Small hands touched me.

  “Where?” I rasped, coughing. I dug my fist into concrete, pushing hard. Arms hooked around mine, tugging me up on my knees.

  But those arms did not belong to a demon.

  I froze, turning my head slowly to gaze at the small pale face pressed close to mine in the shadows. It was night, but my sight was good enough to see the dark glitter of concerned eyes.

  I knew those eyes. And the recognition was so startling, so violent, my gut seized up as though punched. I bent over again, aching.

  Ernie. Ernie Bernstein.

  “Come on,” said the boy, with an unnerving amount of compassion and maturity. “Hurry.”

  He grunted as he helped me stand, and when I touched his shoulder I felt only bone. He was gaunt, little more than a stick figure beneath the oversized button-up and shorts hanging on his frame. He grabbed my hand, grip tight and sweaty. I had no choice but to follow. Dazed, riding the moment. Dreaming, I thought. My life was nothing but a twisting dream.

  He hauled me down a narrow concrete lane that curled like the gut of a snake; a suffocating space crowded with laundry lines, and open doors where men hunched in boneless exhaustion with their eyes closed. Faint lights burned behind them, revealing glimpses of movement; skirts and bare arms, and glass glinting, fleeting as ghosts. I heard pots banging, babies wailing; shouts, followed by the low throaty grunts of sex; and as I pressed my palm against my aching head I saw red eyes in the shadows, steady as stone and fire.

  I could make no sense of the maze that Ernie led me down, and finally blocked out everything but the need to stay on my feet and breathe. It was so hard to breathe the air, which was unrelenting in its heat. Sweat poured down my body. My jeans and turtleneck felt like a burning coffin against my skin.

  A breeze finally cut against me. Faint, but the movement of air felt like a splash of cold water against my face. I tilted my head, inhaling, and moments later found myself discharged from the narrow alley. Expelled in a rush, like something hard and dirty that had passed for days through some sweaty bowel. I stood on a wide avenue where the buildings, at first glance, resembled some mask of European charm; but then Chinese men, nearly naked and glistening with sweat, ran past me with their heads down, hauling empty rickshaws behind them.

  Thunder rolled in the distance; man-made or a storm, I could not tell. I glanced at Ernie, who still held my hand. He was staring at my clothes.

  “Hey,” I whispered, afraid of my own voice. Afraid of him, this place, everything around me. I was not supposed to be here. No one, I thought, should have that power.

  His head jerked up, but there was nothing startled or young in his gaze. His eyes were old, far too old.

  “Your head,” Ernie said. “He hit you.”

  “He,” I echoed. My head ached. I was still touching it lightly. “No. I was…sick.”

  He did not believe me. Just a glint in his eye, a thinning of his mouth, but that little shift in his expression made me feel small and cut. Like I had violated some trust between us that I had never known existed. That never had.

  “But you ran from him,” Ernie said, his English heavily accented. German in origin, I thought. Or Polish.

  I hesitated, needing to sit down—feeling exposed on the sidewalk, far too vulnerable. “Run?”

  Ernie frowned impatiently. “You only dress like a man during the day. Did you steal his clothes because you were in a hurry?”

  He thought I was Jean. My grandmother. I took a moment, unsure how to resp
ond. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  Disappointment, even hurt, flashed across his face, but he nodded stiffly and gestured down the street, which seemed filled with sluggish activity; a quietness to each slow movement that made the night feel deep and old. “I can’t walk you home. I have to go. Mutter does not know I slipped out.” He released my hand, and teetered backward, still studying me. “You seem different.”

  No shit. “How did you know where to find me?”

  Finally, Ernie looked uncomfortable. “You always see the baojia unit leader on Thursdays. But he drinks,” blurted out the boy, and then stared hard at his shoes, which had holes where his big toes should be. “He’s mean when he drinks. We all know that.”

  I thought of the hotel clerk, smiling as she talked about old man Ernie. And here, the boy, still a champion of women. I felt a howl swell in my throat, but swallowing it down only made my eyes burn with tears.

  Here’s your chance, I thought. Ask him about the Black Cat. Don’t waste time.

  But when I opened my mouth, all I said was, “Go on home, Ernie. Thanks for helping me.”

  Nothing else to say. Nothing. He was just a kid, and I was the grown-up here. Whatever was happening now was bad news, and would get him killed in sixty years. If I could take care of it without getting him involved more than he already was, if I could do this without upsetting time more than it already would be—then I had to try. I had to keep him, and his friends, safe.

  Which meant talking to—and finding—someone else.

  Ernie nodded, but still lingered—like there was more he wanted to say. He rubbed his wrist as though it hurt.

  “What is it?” I asked, as gently as I could. “Ernie, you can tell me.”

  He ducked his head, fingers going still around his wrist. I glimpsed a mark there, half-hidden beneath his thumb. Reached for him without thinking. He flinched, taking a step back—and shot me a haunted look that cut me to the core. I had seen those eyes before, on other kids, and it was a bad look. Kids were not supposed to grow up that fast.