“Hello?” Rachael said, voice full of hope. Then she frowned. “Hello?” She dropped the phone into the cradle and turned to stare at Zak, only at Zak. For the first time, Sammi really saw the love between them—in their fear for one another.
“The line went dead,” Rachael said.
Sammi pulled out her cell phone and flipped it open. “I’ve got no service.”
“What, he cut the line?” Zak asked.
“And blocked the cell signal? I don’t think so,” Katsuko said, voice full of loathing. “It’s nothing like that.”
“Magic,” T.Q. muttered from the table. “It’s magic.”
The shop seemed to shrink around them. Sammi felt as if the air had been sucked out of the place. They all stared at each other, trying to figure out what to do next.
“We should get the hell out of here,” Zak said, crossing to Rachael and taking her hand.
Sammi shook her head. “It’s too late for that.”
Zak spun on her. “He’s just one guy!”
“He won’t be alone,” Katsuko said.
Dread scurried like spiders down Sammi’s spine. No, Dante wouldn’t be alone. But what kind of magic might he really be capable of? So far it had all had to do with the tattoos, with symbols. Even in the Polaroids she’d seen at his studio, his dabbling in the occult all seemed to revolve around designs or runes or whatever the hell they were. He wasn’t some immortal sorcerer, just a sick bastard with a fetish for humiliating teenage girls. If Sammi had to bet on it—and she did—she’d be willing to wager that Dante could bleed.
Gripping the shovel, she turned to Zak.
“Okay, you’re right. Let’s go. If we have to fight, better off in the street. Someone will hear. A car will go by. Someone will call the cops.”
Katsuko went to the padded table. She shook T.Q., whose eyes opened blearily.
“Hey. We’ve got to move, T. Can you get up?” T.Q. took a deep breath. “I don’t know.”
Katsuko whispered, “Dante’s here.”
The words made T.Q. flinch, but the redhead started trying to push herself up into a sitting position. Katsuko helped her.
“I just want to go back,” T.Q. mumbled. “Back to before.”
We all do, Sammi thought. We all do. T.Q. started to slump against Katsuko, who gave her a sharp slap to her face. For a few seconds, T.Q.’s gaze became perfectly clear. She slid off the table. Katsuko shot Sammi an expectant look.
Taking the cue, Sammi started for the front door.
Then faltered.
She’d heard a noise, a kind of squeak against the plate-glass window at the front of the shop. The heavy drapes hid the window from them, but the sound continued, increasing in volume and speed. Something dragged wetly on the glass, as though someone were cleaning it.
“He’s just a guy,” Katsuko spat. “Just a guy with a few nasty tricks. He’s not some friggin’ master sorcerer. He’s a sleazy son of a bitch who found a new way to get what he wanted.”
But they all stared at the drapes, listening to that scraping, squeaking noise, and no one took another step.
The tattoo machine died. The lightbulb in an antique lamp popped, startling them all. One by one, the lights went out, all except for the crystal fixture hanging from the ceiling, throwing its shadows around. When Sammi spun to look at Rachael and Zak, she thought what she saw on Rachael’s face was just another shadow.
She wished it were shadow.
Blood dripped from Rachael’s nostrils. As Sammi stared at her, and as Rachael reached up to touch the warm red on her lips, blood began to slip from the corners of her eyes like scarlet tears.
Rachael screamed.
“Rach!” Zak yelled. “Oh my God, Rach!”
But even as Zak reached for her, he froze, then touched one hand to his right ear, fingers coming away covered in his own blood. Sammi watched as streaks of blood began to run from his eyes and nostrils as well. She glanced over at Katsuko and T.Q. and they were bleeding, too, faces striped crimson.
Then Sammi tasted the copper tang of blood on her own lips.
“What’s he doing to us?” Rachael cried. T.Q. slid to the floor. Katsuko shouted in pain and reached up to clutch both sides of her head. Sammi felt it a moment later, a skull-crushing migraine that staggered her and made her drop the shovel to the floor with a clang. Rachael and Zak leaned on one another.
“We’ve gotta get out of here!” Zak groaned, fighting the pain that afflicted them all.
But Katsuko tried to pull T.Q. up and could not, bent over with pain herself. Rachael began to wipe her hands all over her clothes, smearing her own blood on her shirt and pants, whispering what might have been prayers.
The squeaking against the glass continued.
Sammi knew she would collapse in a moment. With the strength going out of her legs, she staggered to the front of the shop and managed to bunch up the drapes in her fists.
She threw the drapes open.
Dante stood grinning at her on the other side of the plate-glass window. With his bare hands, he continued painting an intricate design on the window with numbers and arcane symbols surrounding it.
His palms were bleeding. He drew the hex upon the glass in his own blood.
Behind him, on the sidewalk, Letty and Caryn stood with lifeless, doll faces and dull, blank eyes, each with a long carving knife in one hand. The blades glinted in the light from the lantern in front of the shop.
Sammi fell to her knees in front of the window, stomach convulsing, and threw up blood.
Dante could not control her.
So he was killing her.
17
S ammi clutched her hands to the sides of her head, wishing she could alleviate the pressure. She choked on the blood running down the back of her throat. Is that from my brain? Is it bleeding? Her nostrils were flooded with blood, making it harder to breathe. She drew her sleeve across her nose, soaking the fabric red.
She blinked, blood sticking to her eyelashes, gumming them up, covering her eyes with a scarlet webbing. Sammi peered at the window, where Dante traced a labyrinthine circle in his own blood. A dabbler. He couldn’t shoot fire out of his hands or anything like that. He wasn’t Merlin. Those symbols—they were his magic. That and more. But he could be fought. He could bleed.
If she could ever get to him. The hex he’d put on them with the blood on the window would kill her before she got the chance. Unless she did something about it.
Katsuko cried out and fell to the floor, curled into a fetal ball. Zak railed against Dante, fury and pain merging on his face, trying to get up and stagger to the window—to attack him—only to fall again with a new burst of pain that sent blood spurting from his nose. T.Q. lay on her side on the padded table, bleeding and moaning. Rachael sat on the floor wiping at the blood on her face over and over and screaming.
Only Sammi was close enough.
She let the pain take her down to the floor, tumbling backward and turning onto her side. The pressure radiated down her shoulders now, and when she looked at her hands through the veil of blood over her eyes, she saw that fresh crimson had begun to leak out from beneath her fingernails. They couldn’t be losing this much blood. But magic thrived on the impossible.
With a shout of pain she thrust out her right arm and grabbed the shovel she had dropped. Dragging it toward her, she drove herself along the floor, sliding on the wood, until she bumped against the wall underneath the plate-glass window.
Seething with pain, breath coming in ragged gasps, she forced herself to stand. A fresh burst of agony struck her, clamping around her skull and squeezing. Sammi screamed.
She cocked the shovel back awkwardly, the unbroken fingers of her left hand barely able to grip the wood, and swung it as hard as she could.
At the last instant, Dante’s eyes widened.
The glass shattered, tiny shards raining down and enormous guillotines collapsing out onto the sidewalk.
The pain ceased. Rage burned its way up
through Sammi, and she wiped as much of the blood from her eyes as she could. Behind her she heard Katsuko and Rachael muttering their relief. Zak choked a moment, spat a huge clot of blood onto the floor, and started for the window, staring at Dante.
“You’re dead, asshole.”
Dante had never stopped smiling. “Letty. Caryn. Kill them.”
“No!” Sammi shouted.
She cocked the shovel back again, ready to cave in Dante’s face. But Letty and Caryn were fast. Brandishing those gleaming kitchen knives, they rushed past the tattooist and leaped in through the shattered window. One hanging, jagged triangle of glass raked Letty’s shoulder and she didn’t even flinch. Whatever kind of awareness they’d had while they were on Dante’s leash, it had been taken away. He was in complete control now.
Grinning, Letty ran at Zak. He lunged for her at the same time. She swung the knife, slashing his left hand, but he grabbed her around the throat and they went down in a tangle on the floor, and Sammi saw no more. All of that she had caught in only a glimpse.
Caryn came at her. Sammi stood her ground, shovel in both hands. Instead of swinging it, she drove the handle into Caryn’s gut. The attack staggered the girl and Caryn slipped in the blood that coated the floor—Sammi’s blood—and went down.
“I’m sorry,” Sammi said, only loud enough to hear it herself.
Behind her, Rachael screamed, but Sammi couldn’t afford any distraction. Katsuko and Zak were there. They would have to fend for themselves.
She brought the shovel down on Caryn’s wrist. With a grunt, she dropped the knife. Sammi let the shovel fall, dived for the knife, and scrambled onto Caryn’s back.
Caryn tried to escape her, tried to throw her off just as Katsuko had done. But Sammi knew that the cost of losing this fight would be her own life, as well as the lives of all of her friends. If Sammi let Caryn win, it would kill them both.
She slammed Caryn’s face against the bloody floor, dazing her. Gripping the knife, she slit the back of Caryn’s shirt and tore it open. The black tendrils of the tattoo writhed and twisted on the girl’s deep brown skin. Like the others, they had no substance. The tattoos did not come off Caryn’s body or even seem to be moving beneath her skin, but instead glided over her flesh in almost hallucinatory fashion.
Sammi pushed the tip of the knife into the skin of Caryn’s shoulder blade. Blood welled up and ran down the center of her back. Entranced by Dante’s control, Caryn did not even cry out. Sammi bent the knife and began to slice.
Dante screamed a torrent of filth at her, but Sammi didn’t even look at him. She worked fast, slicing into Caryn’s skin as though she were peeling an apple. When the girl bucked, Sammi pressed her cast against the back of her head and slammed her skull against the floor again. With the working fingers of her left hand she pulled up the flap of skin she’d already sliced off, then slid the knife through and cut the original tattoo away completely.
Only then did Caryn scream in pain. Blood flowed, but she was free. Sammi scrambled back away from her, knife in hand, and Caryn rose, sobbing in anguish, saying over and over that she was sorry.
“Zak!” Rachael cried.
From the corner of her eye, Sammi saw that Dante had not moved. Then she turned with Caryn—whose shirt hung in rags from one shoulder—and they both saw Rachael leap up onto Letty’s back.
Zak lay at Letty’s feet clutching a stab wound in his abdomen. His hands were bloody, but there was no telling whose blood it was and how much came from him.
“Letty, stop!” Katsuko shouted. “It’s him, not you! Think! I know you’re in there!”
As Rachael choked her, Letty seemed about to reach back with the knife and stab her. Katsuko tried to rush at Letty then, but she slashed the blade through the air, keeping Katsuko back, then let Rachael drag her backward until she crashed into the wall, slamming Rachael into the wood and forcing her to let go.
Rachael fell in a sprawl on the floor.
“Samantha Holland,” Dante called from beyond that shattered window, his voice low and insinuating.
Letty went after T.Q. The redhead had managed to get to her feet, leaning against the padded table, but still in the depths of her Percocet stupor, she would have no chance to defend herself. Just staying conscious was effort enough.
Katsuko grabbed Letty’s wrist and they struggled, keeping the knife away from T.Q.
Caryn moved silently, adrenaline and fury canceling out the pain of the wound Sammi had sliced into her back. She slammed into Letty, knocking Katsuko aside and driving Letty right over the top of the padded table. In a twist of limbs they spilled over the table and onto the ground on the other side.
“Sammi,” Dante said.
And only then did Sammi wonder if anyone else could hear him. She turned and looked at the tattooist, at the son of a bitch who had torn her life apart, and still he wore that smile.
“You ruined all my fun,” Dante said. “I’ll go soon. But not until you’ve suffered enough.”
He produced a piece of blue chalk and then dropped out of sight. She could hear the sound of the chalk on the sidewalk, and knew he had begun some new magic, some hex that would cost them all even more blood and pain and other precious things.
Sammi tossed her sweaty, blood-streaked hair from her eyes. “I haven’t suffered enough?”
Something snapped inside her. She moved with a swiftness she had never known she possessed, dropping down to pick up the long garden shovel. Dante barely had time to look up from his blue-chalk scrawl before she swung the shovel. The square metal blade hit him in the side of the head with a crack that only made her want to hurt him more. Whatever pain her fractured ribs and cheek might cause her, she could feel none of it now, taken over by terror and rage.
Scrambling away, he tried to rise.
Sammi stepped out through the window and swung the shovel again. Dante turned and took the blow against his back, but he reached out and grasped the base of the handle, and with a sneer he tore the shovel from her hands.
“You hurt me!”
He jumped on her, drove her down to the sidewalk with the wooden handle across her throat. Sammi hit her head on the concrete. The wood pressed down on her, and she had to use both good hand and cast to keep him from crushing her windpipe with it. But Dante had weight and muscle on her.
He would kill her.
“That’s not the way it works,” he whispered, lowering his head so he could whisper in her ear. He pulled back and looked into her eyes. “I’m the one who does the hurting. It’s my show. All the girls perform for me, Samantha.”
She spat in his face.
He reared back and slapped her, then grabbed the shovel again before she could try to get up. Dante came in close again and whispered in revolting intimacy.
“Show some respect, bitch, or I’ll change my mind. I won’t kill you. And trust me, for an uptight little thing like you, living would be much worse. You’d be just as much a slut as the rest of them. Peel back the layers on you girls and that’s what you find inside, the sweet candy surprise underneath the good girl—”
Sammi drove her head up, slamming her forehead into his nose.
Dante went off balance, and she pushed the shovel handle away with both hands, driving him back. He sat too far forward on her torso, which left her legs free. She threw both legs up, wrapped them around his head, and pulled him off her. Using that momentum, she scrambled to get on top of him.
He punched her in the chest. A spike of pain shot through her from her fractured ribs.
Sammi grabbed him by the throat, dug in her fingernails, and ripped furrows in his flesh. If she could have torn his throat out with her bare hands, she would have. Dante screamed like a little girl, and Sammi liked that sound very much. He deserved that kind of pain, and far worse.
Another scream rose above his, a keening wail of total anguish and horror that made Sammi freeze with dread. A terrible certainty struck her, but she would not acknowledge it.
She sprang off Dante, picked up the shovel, and swung it at his head again. The edge of the blade tore his cheek, and he slumped to the pavement.
Sammi stepped back into the shop.
The scene she found there made her knees weaken. She began to shake her head slowly back and forth, and for a moment her mind would not function, her lips could not speak words. Dante had destroyed her life, but she had meant to take it back, to rebuild it and to save the girls—these girls she loved—from the abhorrent things he had done to them. Sammi had told herself that she could undo the damage.
No more.
At the back of the shop, Letty stood behind Caryn with the bloody knife in her hand. The blade was slick with blood. Caryn’s head lolled back, revealing a wide, grinning slash in her throat. Blood streamed down her chest.
Katsuko stood half a dozen feet away, one hand clamped over a hideous gash on her chest. Her face had gone slack and tears streaked the blood on her face.
Zak lay on the floor near the reception desk, Rachael pressing both hands to a stab wound in his stomach. Both of them stared in shock at Letty, even as Caryn slid to the ground, dying in front of their eyes.
Propped on the floor, disoriented and swaying, T.Q. stared at them, murmuring, “No, no, no” over and over.
Dante’s voice carried through the room, a gleeful whisper.
“Well done, Letty,” the magician said. “Now it’s time for the knife to find your heart.”
Sammi spun to see him standing silhouetted against the lantern light out on the street, framed in the jagged jaws of the broken window. His face had become a mask of blood.
Then the words sank in.
“No!” Sammi shouted, running toward Letty.
Katsuko moved quicker. She grabbed hold of Letty’s arm, but the petite girl did not have the strength to stop her. Letty plunged the knife into her own chest, pulled it out and tried again to stab it into her heart. Sammi reached her, then, and as Letty fell to the floor, she and Katsuko wrested the knife away from her.
Poison Ink Page 20
