“I’ll pass, but thanks for caring so much about my well-being.” I felt for the bones to see if they were still hanging around my neck. They were, but lighter feeling than before when I thought a ship’s anchor had been dropped over my shoulders. Bone warfare, I thought, remembering the charm Davina had given me, the one I stuffed inside my bra minutes before the police came knocking on my door. That little trick I adopted when she pulled it out of her own bosom the night she gave it to me, because I knew it was the perfect place to retrieve it in a pinch. Today’s quandary definitively qualified as a pinch. If he could sense it, he wasn’t letting on. I suspected the bones around my neck were too powerful to let a little hyena bone stand out.
He clasped his hands behind his back and began to stroll in a wide circle around me as I remained on the floor. “Did you know that this mill was built over the very spot where I was tricked into that grimoire, Katie?” he stopped and regarded me with a raised brow. “You don’t mind if I call you Katie, do you? Miss Bishop is so cold and formal, and I think our relationship has earned us a first name basis, yes?”
“What do I call you?” I asked in return, banking on a little friendly psychology to defuse the situation. Humanize the victim, the experts say. I guess it couldn’t hurt to humanize the predator, too, even though there was nothing human about a wayward god whose purpose was to flood the earth with evil for the sake of power.
He seemed amused by the question, shaking his head stiffly as if the obvious had been lost to my thick brain. “Call me Master.”
So much for informality.
A loud noise echoed through the place. It sounded like a metal bucket had been kicked across the room, or one of those metal ceiling flaps had fallen to the floor. Legvu’s eyes darted toward a door on the far end of the mill. “Shut up!” he shouted. “Or I’ll slit your fucking throat!”
I gasped. “Sugar?”
He turned back to me and scoffed. “This is your fault. If you’d done your job and given me that fucking tattoo, your friend in there wouldn’t be hanging from a rafter like a side of meat.” Suddenly his sneer turned to amusement. “Shall we go see?” He yanked me off the floor and practically dragged me down the long room toward the door. My heart sank when we turned the corner. Sugar was dangling from a beam, her feet thrashing wildly about a foot off the floor. The duct tape wrapped around her mouth looked tight. I could see a spot of blood where it had worn her skin away around the edge of her lip, probably from stretching her mouth to try to scream.
I shook my head discreetly as she began to get more agitated at the sight of me, trying to get her to shut up for her own good. “Get that damn bucket back under her feet,” I demanded, spotting the source of the loud noise on the other side of the room. She must have kicked it out from under her feet. To the left of Sugar’s dangling form were two tables, the smaller one covered with an assortment of tools that I assumed were meant for me. Next to a box of plastic gloves and a few jars of ink, there were several bamboo sticks that looked like thick paint brushes. No tattoo machine. No power source.
“Is that what I think it is?” I motioned to the table with a flick of my head.
Legvu grabbed the bucket and took his time walking back to where Sugar was dangling painfully from the rope around her wrists. He slid it back under her feet. “Do that again and I’ll let gravity have its way with you. Then I’ll disembowel you in front of your friend.”
Not stupid and not wishing for death, Sugar’s feet found the top of the bucket and went still, her eyes bulging and frantic—or was that a look of seething hatred she was sending him? Good thing her mouth was taped, because I had no doubt she’d get herself killed if she had the use of her wicked tongue.
The Japanese art of tebori tattooing wasn’t for the faint of heart—or the untrained. It was a traditional form of hand tattooing that I wasn’t qualified to do, especially when a single mistake could cost me my life, not to mention Sugar’s.
The look on his face answered the question. “Are you out of your mind?” I spat. “I don’t know how to do that. What you’re asking me to do is suicide.”
He glanced around the room and circled back to meet my incredulous stare. “Do you see a power source around here? I’m afraid this is the best I can do under the circumstances. You’ll just have to be careful.”
Legvu walked over to the longer table next to the tools and removed his shirt. I was surprised to see the unfinished tattoo I’d started on the female host earlier that day now on his back. “Shall we begin, Katie?” He held out a copy of the design and waited for me to comply. I considered refusing, but he’d kill us both and find some other oblivious tattoo artist unless I picked up that bamboo stick with the row of fine needles at the end and began puncturing the ink into his flesh. The technique involved dipping the row of needles into the ink and jabbing his skin in successive movements. Not unlike a machine, but with less control and a hell of a lot slower, which increased the likelihood of error but bought me more time. One wrong jab and Sugar and I were dead.
He lifted himself onto the table, face down. I gazed at the tattoo I’d started on the woman, but now I could see the one from Victor Tuse’s back underneath it. It wasn’t actually under the latest one, but a part of it. Separately, it was impossible to see how they complimented each other, the second one an extension of the first. Where the lines of one ended, the other seemed to organically pick up. I was building a master design. One that would open the prison gates and allow Legvu to shed his earthly chains and walk free.
“Stop wasting time!” he demanded.
With a deep breath, I slipped on a pair of gloves and picked up the tool with the thinnest set of needles along the edge. I figured less needles meant less ink to botch. Then I dipped the tip into the blue ink and held it just above his skin. I’d seen the technique performed a couple of times, but until I’d actually done it myself there was no way to know how much force was necessary to puncture his skin. In his case, I didn’t give a shit about minimizing the pain. In fact, I hoped it hurt like hell.
“Do it!” he growled, startling me and sending the bamboo stick sailing to the floor.
I growled back, “Yell at me again and I swear I’ll stab that thing in your carotid artery!” It wasn’t a bad idea, just a stupid one.
He relaxed back into the table and waited. I picked up a new tool and got down to business, testing the technique in the center of a large section where I couldn’t make a mistake. Awkward at first, the pressure and rhythm required to apply the ink got easier as I worked. But I made sure it didn’t get too easy, because time was money, and I still had no idea how to get that bone inside of him.
Sugar’s eyes were beginning to look weak when I glanced up at her. The stress of being strung up like slaughtered livestock with only a wobbly bucket to support her weight was starting to take its toll on her body and mind. Hold on, I mouthed to her. But I could see it in her eyes, the white flag she was waving in the back of her head, the surrender to her maker she was willing to concede.
Without my phone I had no idea of the time, but I guesstimated that I’d been working on the tattoo for about an hour before I finally decided I needed a break, if for nothing else but to stall for more time and see about getting Sugar untied from that rafter. It was a reasonable request.
“What are you doing?” he asked as I put the bamboo stick down and stood up.
“I need a break.”
He pushed up from the table to looked at me and shook his head. “No breaks.”
“You want it done right?” I asked. “Because my hand is sore from jabbing your skin, and nothing more is going to happen until I get the circulation back in my limbs.” It wasn’t a lie. My right hand was starting to go numb from the repetitive motion. “It was your idea to do this in an abandoned building without power,” I reminded him.
“Very well,” he conceded. “Five minutes.”
“Fifteen,” I countered.
He sneered. “Ten.”
“Twenty. We can do this all day,” I threatened. “Do you want me to fuck up that tattoo? Because that will just put you back to square one, stuck inside that host indefinitely while you look for another patsy who can survive finishing it.” I was beginning to lose some of the fear and garner more of the power I had in this little scenario because he needed me.
“Twenty,” he agreed.
I motioned to Sugar. “She needs a break, too. Cut her down until we get started again.”
“No.” He sat up and went to the window. I started to argue but he cut me off. “If you push me another inch, I’ll start to disassemble that thing hanging from the rope, piece by piece.” That nervous habit with his leg started up again, and the look in his eyes as he turned around to face me sent a chill up my spine. “Trust me on this. You don’t want to see what I’m capable of to persuade you, Katie.”
He made it brutally clear that there wouldn’t be another warning. Sugar would have to muster every ounce of strength she had to endure the torturous hanging, while I took my time finishing that tattoo on his back. The only thing that would save us was a miracle.
25
JACKSON HUNTER: WEDNESDAY, 5:56 P.M.
The minute Jackson walked into MagicInk, three sets of eyes focused on him as he searched the shop for Katie. His eyes traveled to the flash art framed on the right wall, all the work they’d done since opening the shop, and some that was still waiting to find a spot of someone’s skin.
“Where is she?” he asked Sea Bass, who was glaring at him suspiciously. “She’s not answering her phone. I checked her house. She’s not there.”
Sea Bass tried to stand eye to eye with him, but it was difficult for the average person to measure up to Jackson’s considerable height, even those considered gifted by stature. “I was about to ask you the same thing,” he replied, bobbing his head in a cocky display of bravado. “You know anything about that?”
Jackson glanced at Abel and then back at Sea Bass. “About what?” A sickening feeling fell over him as the question left his mouth. His trip to Atlanta had been cut short with a nagging feeling that something was wrong, bringing him back a day early to find out his instincts were right. He’d called her a dozen times the night before, but every one of those calls had gone to voicemail. When he rode into town late that afternoon his gut feeling sent him straight to her house, only compounding his fear by the sight of Jet sitting outside on the patio table. Katie never left her cat outside, and after easily popping the sliding door open—without the metal rod installed—his fear had escalated.
They all stood there staring at him, mute and accusatory. “Someone needs to tell me what the hell is going on.”
“She’s missing,” Abel finally said, strolling up to Jackson to glare at him side by side with Sea Bass. “When’s the last time you saw her?” Ingrained habits were hard to break, and Abel’s former cop was resurfacing in droves. “You said you checked her house? How did you do that? Break a window?”
“Wow!” Jackson said, throwing up his hands in surrender, realizing he was a suspect in the eyes of the people standing in the room. “You’re way off base, man.” He couldn’t blame them. If he were in their shoes he’d think the same thing. But he also knew that something was after her. Some spirit with a hard-on for a particular tattoo. She’s told him everything the night before the barbeque at Cairo’s. Without knowing how much of her secrets the rest of them were privy to, he tiptoed around the subject. “I saw her Monday morning, just before I left for Atlanta.”
“Atlanta?” Sea Bass repeated, squinting his eyes. “What were you doing in Atlanta?”
“Nothing you need to concern yourself with.” He left it at that and carefully broached the subject of the spirit. “She told me something’s been following her.”
“You mean the spirit?” Mouse said, quickly covering her mouth with both hands as her eyes bugged wide. “I–I mean—”
“It’s okay,” Jackson said, putting her out of her misery. “She told me about this Legma or Larma something.”
“That would be Legvu,” Fin corrected as he walked through the front door. “And you are the distraction that’s had her so preoccupied and careless lately.” Jackson refused to take the bait and stood silent as Fin examined him, eyeing his considerable height before settling his gaze on the fresh tattoo Katie recently put on his arm. “Nothing to say about that? Mr. Hunter, is it?”
Jackson nodded slightly. “And you are?”
“My name is Fin Cooper.” He extended his hand. Jackson took it.
“Mr. Cooper owns half the town,” Abel said. “I’m surprised his name wasn’t engraved on your welcome package when you moved here. You’re a big deal around here, aren’t you, Fin?” He made no attempt to hide his distaste for Finley Cooper.
Fin scoffed. “Abel and I go way back to the days when he wore a uniform and a badge.” He walked up to Abel, stopping uncomfortably close to the ex-cop. “But you don’t wear that badge anymore, do you?”
“All right!” Sea Bass interjected. “We got more important things to worry about than a pissing contest.” He shook his head and pulled his lips tight. “What do you know, Fin?”
Fin inhaled sharply and continued. “She was taken in for questioning last night by the police.”
“Questioning?” Jackson said. “About what?”
“Apparently, there’s been some misunderstanding about her involvement in the disappearance of an acquaintance,” Fin said. “Someone called in an anonymous tip putting her at the scene of his last known whereabouts on the night he disappeared, at MacPherson’s Pub on the twentieth.”
Jackson tried to hide his shock. Katie had mentioned Christopher Sullivan. She described him as an ex, and said the spirit had possessed him in an attempt to get to her. It was meant to be a warning, but she’d failed to mention the fact that Sullivan had gone missing. His mind went back to the night of the brawl at MacPherson’s. Reconciling the date, it was the twentieth, the same night Katie showed up in the middle of the fight and ended up showing him her claws in the parking lot. He considered stepping forward as her alibi, even if he’d only seen her earlier in the evening. The cops didn’t know that, though, so it would be his word against an anonymous tip.
“Mr. Hunter? Mr. Hunter?” Fin repeated, trying to pull Jackson back to the here and now.
“Did they arrest her?” Jackson asked.
“Now that’s where the story gets real interesting,” Fin continued. “A man showed up out of the blue and claimed to be her lawyer. I suspect she thought I sent him. He seemed to know a bit about the law, though, because he managed to get her out of there. Then the two of them disappeared. Got camera footage from the parking lot behind the station showing her getting into a car, but if you ask me it looked more like she was dumped into that car. Plates are registered to a Thomas Frazier, but I suspect that man posing as her lawyer was in fact Legvu’s latest host.”
A walk-in customer entered the shop. The woman looked at the five of them congregated in the center of the room and waited for someone to acknowledge her. “Are you open?” she asked. When no one answered, she pointed toward the sign hanging on the door. “The sign says you are.”
“Mouse, why don’t you—” Sea Bass motioned toward the woman and Mouse took her cue, steering the woman to her station across the room.
Sea Bass and Fin kept glancing back and forth at each other, having some silent conversation. “Mr. Hunter,” Fin finally said, “may we have a word?” He looked at Abel. “In private.” Jackson followed Sea Bass and Fin out the back door. “How do I put this?” Fin said, exhaling with a heavy sign as he studied the ground. He looked back up at Jackson and proceeded. “How much do you know about Miss Bishop? I mean, her talents?”
Trying not to divulge more than he should he scrutinized Fin, working just as hard to dance around the question. “You mean her . . .” His hand waved in a circular motion, trying to move the conversation along and coax Fin into giving up more information before he answ
ered.
“Well, yes,” Fin acknowledged. “I think we’re alluding to the same thing.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Sea Bass spat. “We ain’t got time for this. The goddamn dragon! Do you know about the dragon?”
Fin rubbed his forehead. “Well, he does now.”
“About her being a shifter?” Jackson asked, for lack of a better way to describe it.
Sea Bass rolled his eyes. “Thank you, Jesus!”
“Well, there you go,” Fin said. “Now we can cut to the chase and get past all this sidestepping shit.” He proceeded to relay the events of the previous day, starting with the spirit walking into the shop and the fire department showing up, and ending with the phone conversation instructing Katie to stay put until he got to her house. “Here’s what we know. The police must have shown up shortly after we ended the call, because I went straight over after hanging up. Couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes, tops.”
Jackson listened until Fin finished. Then he turned to go back inside and out the front door to his bike parked on the street. “Where the hell are you going?” Fin called after him.
“To her house.”
Fin followed Jackson back to Katie’s house. “I don’t know what you think you’re gonna find in there,” he said as Jackson performed the maneuver of lifting and opening the patio door. Good thing he didn’t put that metal rod in the track when he showed up earlier, because he didn’t relish the idea of breaking one of her windows.
“Why?” Jackson asked. “You know where she is?” He slid the door open, catching Jet before he could slip outside again. After tossing the cat on the couch he started turning the place over, careful not to destroy anything as he looked for clues of what might have happened in the house before the cops showed up. It may not have had any bearing on what happened later at the police station, but it bothered him that she’d left Jet outside on her way out. In the confusion of having the police haul her out of her own house, she probably didn’t even realize he’d gotten out, just like she’d forgotten to secure the useless patio door with that metal bar. Regardless of the reasons for either, it got his hunches stirred up and he intended to find out why.
Crossroads of Bones (A Katie Bishop Novel Book 1) Page 22
