by Holly Evans
Scott looked down at his drink for a long moment. Elona had slipped away somewhere. It was just me, him, and the increasing silence that grew between us. Even the barman had scurried off to the far end of the far. It wasn’t looking all that great. What was I supposed to do if he told me to go fuck myself?
“We suspected this time would come. Luckily for you, we’ve dug into your background and you fit the bill of someone we might want around. Tonight. Ten o’clock. I’ll show you around,” Scott said with a small smile.
I hoped that meant that Fein had created a suitable background for me, not that I had any idea what suitable looked like. My real background surely wouldn’t have passed, they’d want someone with some experience selling drugs at the very least, wouldn’t they? Fuck. The entire situation was getting incredibly complicated. I noted that Scott was very tense and gripping his drink that little bit too tightly. I was clearly not being told everything, and that worried me. Had I just gotten myself invited into some form of a trap? There was only one way to find out.
“And the address?” I asked.
“We’ll send a car,” he said finally, looking away and taking a long drink.
The change in his body language was dramatic. I got the distinct impression that someone higher up had forced his hand. It couldn’t have been Fein, that was far too blatant and the risk was too great. It was another thing to add to the very long list of things I didn’t know, and probably didn’t want to know.
“It can pick me up here,” I said.
There was no way in the world I wanted them to know my address.
His smile took on sharp edges. “Be here at nine-forty, then.”
“I look forward to exploring some new business avenues,” I said and held up my glass for a toast.
What the fuck had I gotten myself into this time?
23
The cougars gave me a big talk about how I needed to get much information as possible, names, locations, details on everything.
“Be charming, don’t be an asshole,” Luka said.
“Don’t bring your distaste into this, think of it like trying to pick a hot guy up,” Shadow added.
“And don’t be too blatant, don’t interrogate them,” Luka said.
“You’re trying to become their business partner; be enthusiastic without being desperate. Don’t forget to tell them what value to bring to their operation. You’re trying to get in on their profit, here,” Shadow said.
“Don’t try to beat the information out of them, you’re not good enough for that yet,” Caiden helpfully added.
I ignored him. Firstly, that wasn’t my style. Secondly, there was nothing wrong with my fighting ability.
I held up my hands.
“Enough. We’re going,” I said.
“Text us the address as soon as you can so we can act as your backup,” Luka said.
“And don’t get hurt,” Keirn said softly before he pulled me into his arms and kissed my throat.
I pressed my cheek to his.
“I’ll do my best,” I said.
My heart was pounding on the walk over to the club. It was ridiculous. I was going to a nightclub, and yet you’d think I was walking into a drake nest. Tala was quiet. He’d shoved his hands into the pockets of pants and stared straight ahead.
“I’d leave you at home if I could,” I said.
He smirked at me.
“You need me,” he said.
He was probably right. He had far more of an idea about what I was getting into than I did. Scott and a black car were waiting for me at the club. He greeted me with a broad toothy smile and a firm handshake.
“This will be the best night of your life,” he said as he gestured for me to get into the back of the car.
He wasted no time in getting his night started, although I suspected from the silvery glow to his eyes he’d started long before I got there. He dropped what appeared to be a small scale of some form on his tongue before he threw his head back and grinned.
“Have you tried moonlight? It’s the best high there is. I can feel everything. The magic is right there at my fingertips. The whole world is far more alive,” he said, giving me a manic grin.
I’d tried it. It sounded a lot like when the ink network rode me, and that was something I had no intentions of indulging in willingly again. His enjoyment of the sensations was understandable, but the idea of taking one of those scales and trying it myself made me recoil in fear.
“Not my style. I prefer not to indulge in the products I intend on selling,” I said calmly.
Fuck, was that too much? I was completely lost in that situation. Drugs had never been my thing, I had no idea how I was supposed to handle the situation.
He laughed manically.
“I knew it was the right decision to bring you in. Elona wanted to kick you out of the club, she thought you were too pushy. She just hates that you’ve done so well with that feral. She’d expected it to tear you apart,” he said, laughing again.
“You’re going to love the club, Dacian, we have everything. We’ve been looking for some fresh blood to join our ranks. It’s becoming difficult to meet the growing demand. There are so many addicts banging down our door,” he said before he knocked back a drink of something pale pink that smelled like wood smoke. He shook his head and his eyes rolled back for half a second before he fixed me with a rictus grin, his eyes shining silver in the darkness.
The idea of spending a night surrounded by people like him, with that rictus grin, sent a shiver down my spine. I was pretty sure his face was going to haunt my nightmares. The way the soft light from his pupils shone against his pallid skin was bad enough. The toothy grin that flared from the darkness surrounded by the hollows of his cheeks, that was the stuff of true nightmares.
“Have you ever done blood tattoos, Dacian? Or used a bone needle?” he said, unblinking, the grin frozen on his face.
I couldn’t look away. I desperately wanted to, but I was transfixed.
“No, I can’t say as I’ve been given the opportunity,” I said.
I hadn’t done them because they were incredibly illegal and morally reprehensible. Blood tattoos gave people a temporary high. They mixed in the blood of various beings, depending on the purpose of the tattoo. Some gave the recipient the strength and senses of the animal being tattooed for a set period of time, ranging from an hour to forty-eight hours. Others gave them minor magical abilities associated with the animal, for example a drake tattoo gave them some weak fire-breathing ability for a short period. Not only was the use of other beings’ blood wrong, but it meant risking the life of the recipient by dragging through a temporary tattoo that wasn’t meant for them. I made a mental note to interrogate the ink network about why it allowed the practise to continue.
The bone needles were made from the bones of (hopefully) dead tattooists. They formed a bond with the recipient that allowed the tattooist to drain some of their life energy into themselves. The recipient was left with a nagging need to return to the tattooist and have the tattoo re-done at increasingly regular times as the tattooist slowly drained them of life. The very idea of using such things turned my stomach. I reminded myself that I wasn’t going to do it. I was just there to get information that would save lives.
“You’re in my luck, my boy.” Scott sat, slapping my knee far harder than was necessary. “Because we’ve lined up some blood ink addicts for you tonight, to give you a taste. We’ll take a seventy-percent cut of the fee, just for tonight. If you prove good enough, we’ll accept a fifty-fifty split,” he said with that awful grin plastered on his face.
He knocked back another drink. The glow in his eyes spread and intensified, making him look like a twisted beast in the gloom of the night. How incredibly fitting.
24
The club was out in the warehouse district near the river. On the outside, it looked like the other warehouses nearby. That was, if you ignored the very expensive cars lined up on the cracked concrete outside the r
olled-up doors. Lights pulsed within the building and a heavy beat filled the air. Scott led the way between the cars towards the crowded space. My chest grew tight as I looked at the mass of people. It wasn’t the people per se, it was the glows that they emitted, the frozen twisted expressions on their faces, and the horrifying laughter that cut through the intense dance music.
Scott paused and closed his eyes, breathing deep through his nose. His hands moved as though he were playing a piano, in quick sharp movements.
“The magic feels phenomenal tonight, you picked the perfect night for it,” he said to me.
I gave him a tight smile and followed him through the crowd to the bar at the far end. Tala remained close through the packed bodies. His eyes were amber, and the tips of his teeth were clearly on show. He wasn’t the submissive slave here, and I was thankful for it. Someone pressed a clear bag with three tablets in it into my palm. A woman with a wide staring expression and flickering flames running over her hair whispered something frantically at me before she vanished. I slipped the tablets into my pocket with the intention of handing it to Fein as evidence.
Scott leaned over the bar and waved over a broad young man with scars running across his left cheek and long dark hair.
“Get Chris out here, Dacian’s rocked up and is ready to get working,” Scott said.
He was beginning to slur his words, not that that stopped him from stealing the bottle of something violet from the counter behind the bar. He drank deeply from the bottle and grabbed onto the edge of the bar as he began to sway.
“You need to try this shit. I can see everything,” he said, the rictus grin giving away to a wide-mouthed expression of awe.
He thrust the bottle at me.
“Drink, drink, it’s the best shit,” he said while he felt around for a spare stool.
I placed the bottle back behind the bar and gave him a smile.
“I prefer to do business sober,” I said.
“Yes! Business! The best fucking business in town!” he said while swaying in an odd circular motion that caused his stool to wobble.
A draconic woman emerged from behind the bar. Her slitted pupils gave her a predatory look that matched the razor smile she gave me. The faint outline of golden and bronze scales ran up the edge of her throat and along her wide jaw. I hated draconics. They were pure businessmen, cold-hearted and quite happy to make ‘cut-throat business’ literal.
“You must be Dacian,” she said, her unblinking gaze fixed on me and my false smile.
“The one and only,” I said.
“Have you done blood tattoos before?” she asked.
“As I said to Scott, here, I haven’t been given the chance before.”
“And what made you push for a chance here, exactly?”
I leaned forward a little and widened my smile.
“I’m tired of tattooing the same shit for pompous jack-asses. I want more from life,” I said.
Her smile widened far more than other humanoids would have been able to manage. It made her look more reptilian.
“Come with me. We have a client lined up for you. He’s a regular, so he’ll be easy to work with. You’ll be bringing through a Dobhar Chu,” she said.
“Lead the way,” I replied.
Why the fuck would he want a Dobhar Chu? They were vicious water creatures, somewhere between a hound and an otter. They were rare due to being hunted almost to extinction. Their penchant for magician flesh made them far too dangerous. They would emerge from the rivers and lakes, usually late at night, and feast on anyone they could sink their teeth into within a mile’s radius. There were plenty of other options if he wanted strength - a bear was the obvious choice.
Chris led me around the bar and out through the narrow door at the back of the warehouse. We emerged in a courtyard area lit by trapped will-o’-the-wisps. The wisps flickered and hummed, a soft distress call that was hard to ignore, not that anyone else seemed to notice it. Two tattoo magicians were already set up at rough-hewn wooden tables with very relaxed clients before them. Chris pointed me towards the final table, where a scrawny young man sat fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. His foot was tapping a rapid staccato beat that put me on edge. Sweat ran down his face and had already drenched his hair despite the coolness of the night air. He swallowed hard when he saw me.
“This him? The new guy? He’s good, right? He can, he can do it, right, Chris?” he said.
The draconic smiled and blinked slowly. “Yes.”
“Everything you need is there on the table. I’ll see you inside once you’re done,” she said before she turned on her exceptionally expensive high heels and headed back inside.
Tala stood guard over me as I looked the ink and needles over. The blood ink was more viscous that I was used to. It clung to the outside of the small glass bottle.
“I have places to be. I need my tattoo. Need it,” the client said while his leg bobbed in time with the quick blinks of his small eyes.
I swallowed down my fear and anger and called upon the ink network. If I wanted to save the slaves, I needed to go against my morals. I had to use blood ink.
25
I opened my mind up to the ink network and mentally approached it while I set up the tattooing gun. There would be no painting the tattoo on; we knew what it was going to be.
The ink network appeared in the vague shape of a woman, swirling blacks over greys with a clear sense of impatience.
“Why do you allow the blood inks and bone needles?” I demanded.
I didn’t have the luxury of time to chat.
I swear it rolled its eyes at me. I couldn’t be sure, given it was effectively a silhouette, but the feeling of it remained. It formed images of tattoos to my left, with small threads running to each animal. A segment of the thread was cut and wrapped around the tattoo.
“So each tattoo takes something of you?”
Everything around me flashed brightly, which I took as a yes.
Blood red dripped onto the animal tattoo, and a piece of red slowly flowed back towards the main network.
“The blood ink and bone tattoos return some of you, back to you?” I asked.
Again it flashed brightly.
“So you allow it because it returns some of your essence back to you?”
Once more with the bright flashes.
“But you choose how many and which tattoos come through. There’s no risk of you losing too much. Why can’t you just wait for the recipient to die and the tattoo to return to you, then?”
It sighed heavily and nudged me away towards my client. I tried to dig in my heels, but it flowed into my hands and drove me back to begin the tattoo. I needed a way to pin it down and get answers. Until then, I’d have to work with what I had.
Tala stood near my back, ramrod straight, glaring at anyone who dared think about coming near us. The client couldn’t stay still. He’d torn off his thin t-shirt and turned his back to me, but his leg kept bouncing, and his hands weren’t much better.
“Sit still,” I snapped.
He froze, eyes straight ahead, hand mid-motion.
“Stay that way,” I said.
I was very careful to keep my blood out of the mix as the ink magic flowed down my hands and began calling the Dobhar Chu forward. The sensation was very different than a normal tattoo. I didn’t have the usual feeling of stepping into the client’s energies and being. I remained grounded in the physical world. The Dobhar Chu charged forward and threw itself at the boundaries formed by the tattoo. Its head, covered in dense brown waterproof fur with the heartless eyes of a hungry hound, came a little too close to my hands. The world around me began to spin a little. The cracked concrete merged with the brick wall. My mind wasn’t used to having the tattoo blurring with the physical world. Taking a deep breath, I steadied myself, blocked out the world around me, and focused on bringing through the heavy rudder tail of the Dobhar Chu.
It was like looking through the client’s skin into a deep pool where th
e beast slowly became clearer with each stroke of the tattoo gun. Its sharp teeth snapped shut on thin air not far from my fingertips. It began to thrash and claw at the invisible barrier between us. I didn’t know how it worked, but the blood ink stopped it from coming through into our world entirely. Once it realised that, right as I was tattooing its thick black claws, it calmed and took on a vague transparency. The client took a deep breath and a husky growl rumbled in his throat. He was gaining the instincts of the beast. No good would come from that.
I stepped back and dropped the tattoo gun on the wooden table the moment the last whisker had been inked. The client grinned at me, a malicious grin that made guilt curl in my stomach. He took off across the courtyard and scrambled up over the wall into the night. I squeezed my eyes shut and pushed the guilt aside. I needed to make the night worth it. I needed knowledge and information.
Chris had been difficult to track down. I’d almost gotten into two fights thanks to people groping me and Tala by the time I found her lounging in the corner, watching her kingdom.
“I trust you saw that your guy was satisfied with my work,” I said to her.
A forked tongue tasted the air around her before she smiled.
“Yes, I saw your work. You can come and work here on Saturday nights, fifty-fifty split.”
“And what about the drugs?” I asked with smile.
“You push very hard.”
I looked out into the crowd, where Scott was pawing at some poor blonde woman in what may have passed for a dress, at least before Scott had tugged at it.
“It looks to me like you have an opening in your business,” I said.
She looked to Scott before she smiled at me.
