BROKEN BLADE

by J. C. Daniels

  And damn if she didn’t try. Try hard. But I’d run away from her, managed to build a life.

  You face down everything that scares you.

  But right now, everything scared me. Life. Leaving the safety of TJ’s bar. And facing the woman in the mirror. It was a damned hard thing to do and for the past four months, I’d avoided it as much as I possibly could. As often as I could, because looking at myself was just too hard.

  But today, I made myself look anyway.

  It was almost a shock, the woman I saw staring back at me.

  Leaner. Harder. Sadder.

  The scars had paled. My neck was a mess of them. The ones on the left side of my neck were neat, a small circle of them, placed there back when I’d still mattered to somebody. When I’d still mattered, period.

  No, we don’t think about that… Immediately my brain started to skitter away even as memories danced closer.

  Did you really think I wasn’t coming for you? Damon’s voice, raw and broken.

  Tears burned inside me, but I swallowed them back. I couldn’t handle that and this. Not now. So instead of looking at the mark he’d given me, I looked at the uglier scars. The ones that marked my ruin. My destruction.

  The mess on the right side of my neck was what bothered me, the ones that told the awful, sickening story of what had been done to me.

  The vampire’s voice was a nasty mockery in the back of my mind. Every time one of my kind sees the marks on you, they will think, and wonder.

  They’d see me as a toy.

  It pissed me off because that was what I’d been.

  I touched them, made myself do it even though I flinched. I memorized the feel of them.

  Jude could have healed them after he’d fed, but he’d chosen not to. He’d wanted to mark me and he hadn’t been neat about it. I’d fought, long and hard. Sometimes he’d almost let me get away, so there weren’t just puncture wounds. Some of them were long slices down my neck from where his fangs had torn me. They started just below my ear and disappeared under the collar of my shirt. There was no hiding them, not unless I just started walking around in hooded cloaks.

  I needed to make them part of me, somehow.

  A voice, the one that now made me want to cry when I thought of it, murmured from the back of my mind.

  It’s the story of me...what put me on the road that made me what I am...

  Damon had marked himself. Tattoos with charmed ink, etched onto his skin, back when he’d just been a kid, before he’d hit the spike—the period of change when a person with shifter blood went through that change prior to their first shift. The charmed ink, having it done before the first shift—those were the only ways a shapeshifter could probably keep a tattoo, otherwise the body would just absorb the marks as they were laid on him.

  I didn’t heal as fast as a shifter did, but I did heal fast.

  Still, if charmed ink had been used on him then, why not on me now?

  The story of me…

  I stared at the scars a moment longer and then left the bathroom. On the way to my bed, I grabbed a notebook and pencil. If I was going to draw a story of me, I had to know what I was now.

  The sheathed sword lay on my bed, a sad mockery of what I’d once been and I knew the answer.

  I was a broken blade. A broken warrior.

  That was the first thing I drew. A sword, with the blade shattered into pieces. A leopard, stalking along the ground. A vampire’s fang. A giant python, his body curved into a coil. And a spear...my grandmother had always loved the spear.

  I started to sketch a rat, but in the end, I didn’t bother. The rat pack hadn’t ever freaked me out that badly, and dreams about them didn’t haunt my sleep.

  Everything here, though...

  Touching the tip of my finger to the leopard, I bit back a sigh. Maybe the dreams about him weren’t exactly nightmares, but this was still something that had broken me.

  It was time to start trying to put the pieces of myself back together.

  * * * *

  I let TJ handle the initial phone calls.

  No point doing this if it wouldn’t work. I’d hoped for a few days to prepare myself after I’d asked her, but I didn’t have even have half an hour.

  Twenty-six minutes after I’d explained to her what I needed, she pushed an address in my hand.

  “This...” I licked my lips and said, “This is here in Wolf Haven.”

  “Yes. Next street over,” TJ replied, stroking a hand down her ever-present crossbow. She clung to that thing the way I’d once clung to my blade. Absently, I flexed my hand and made myself look away.

  “So. Are you going to go see her?”

  I looked down at the notebook I’d brought down with me. If I did this, it was a start. The first step, at least.

  “This doesn’t mean I’m quitting here,” I said softly. “I’m not. I’m not what I used to be and...” I closed my eyes. What in the hell did I even say to her? I’m not strong enough to walk away from here? I’m not who I used to be and I’m not able to do what I need to do?

  “You just take your time, Kit.” The wheels of her chair squeaked as she moved over to me and I felt her pat my arm. “Why don’t you come in and work half the day? Later in the afternoon? You can head over now. She’s usually not that busy this time of day.”

  Then I was left alone with my thoughts.

  Chapter Three

  It was almost painful leaving the bar.

  Four months have passed since Goliath guided me through those doors. Once I came inside, I hadn’t left, not even for a minute. I’d stayed inside, either working in the bar, or hiding away in my room.

  Hiding…

  I wanted to slam my fist against the dull concrete wall. Did I really want to spend the rest of my life doing that?

  Logically, I knew it hadn’t really been that long, but if I didn’t force myself outside now, then when would I? In fifty years, when they let Jude out of that box?

  The thought of it was enough to make me want to run back inside but instead I squared my shoulders and forced myself to move away from the bar. The bright light of the sun burned my eyes and I squinted against it as I took another slow, reluctant step.

  A cool wind whipped down the street and I absently thought about going back inside to find something with long sleeves. I didn’t have a jacket. But if I let myself go back in for anything, I wouldn’t come back out.

  It was edging up on the last few days of January and a cold front had blown through, leaving the temperature hovering in the low thirties. The chilly wind that came dancing down the street teased my flesh and made me think of things I’d rather forget, of that cold fortress in the mountains, snow stinging my flesh.

  Swallowing the knot in my throat, I glanced down at the notebook and then looked up at the road. I could do this.

  “You want me to come with, Kitty?” Goliath asked.

  “No,” I said and then I had to clear my throat and try again. I could fucking walk around the corner on my own. “I got this.”

  As I started down the corner, I saw something just ahead of me. I misstepped and almost tripped over my own feet but when I looked again, the puma was gone. All I saw was the black tip of its tail before it disappeared.

  But it hadn’t gone far. I could feel the heated presence of shifters, crowding all around me.

  “Goliath?” I said quietly.

  “‘S’okay, Kit. Just some new cats been hanging around lately,” he said, and his voice sounded tired. “But they won’t bother you. You got my word.”

  If it had come from anybody else, I wouldn’t have trusted it. But Goliath, I trusted him. Still, nerves chased me as I took the first step, then another and another, too painfully aware of the heated presence of were against my skin. Watching me. Why were they watching me?

  Something in the back of my mind whispered the answer but I shoved it aside. That was something I didn’t think about. Definitely not something I could think about now.

&nbs
p; It was everything I could do just to walk. One step after the other until I made it to the tattoo parlor around the corner.

  It was all of fifty yards from TJ’s place, I realized. Fifty yards. It didn’t have a name. There was no sign in the window and when I pushed inside, not a damn customer was waiting.

  It was just me. Only me. And I needed to decide now if I was going to do this.

  * * * *

  The tattoo artist was more than just an artist.

  She was a witch, too, and as planned, she’d use charmed inks.

  Her name was Paulie and she warned me, even before she started, that it would hurt. I could handle that.

  I had a harder time with everything else.

  As she pushed her magic into my body, it combined with everything else…all the memories. Awful, awful memories. I tried to fight them as she went to work and I could hear her voice.

  “If you can just accept them and deal with them, it will make it easier,” Paulie murmured as she bent over me. “They’ve become a poison inside you and we must deal with it.”

  Deal with it?

  I clenched my teeth and swallowed the scream rising in me. It was like she was etching acid on my skin.

  Baby girl…

  Her magic danced inside me and the memories I tried so hard to forget edged closer and closer, while the pain grew.

  “The pain works with the memories,” she murmured some time later. I’d bitten my cheek bloody. “The harder you fight it…”

  But I couldn’t ignore it anymore.

  Something about her magic changed and those memories screamed louder. Longer. And I heard his voice.

  And I was caught, caught back in a web of those memories.

  * * * *

  “I don’t believe this,” he muttered, turning away. He braced his hands on my desk, the muscles in his back bunching and moving under his shirt. “Fuck—everything I’ve...shit. No.”

  The disjointed ramble of words bothered me as much as the pain I saw in his eyes as he turned back around to glare at me. “A job, right? Fine,” he bit off. “Day’s done. Come home. With me now.”

  I opened my mouth to answer. Yes. Please. Just yes...

  And my fucking phone rang.

  Justin...I could hear the muffled ringtone of the Imperial March coming from the garbage can and I wanted to scream. “I have to talk to him right now,” I whispered stiltedly. “I have the information I need to close this case and then I’m done. I just need—”

  “I need you,” he roared. “Now. Come with me now.”

  The phone rang again and anxiety rose to a wail in my mind as my office phone started to echo it as well. Calling both lines—not good.

  And clear as crystal, I could see him speeding away from Assemblyman Marlowe’s house.

  Shit. I opened my mouth... I have to tell them you were doing it for me—

  That was all I had to say. That was all.

  But the binding spell kept the words locked inside me.

  “Damon. It’s two hours,” I whispered.

  “No.” He shook his head. “It’s more than that. Good-bye, Kit.”

  My heart cracked down the middle. “What?”

  He backed away from me. “You don’t trust me. Right now, you’re half sick with fear and I can’t get you to come with me when I need you like I need air. It’s done.”

  * * * *

  “It’s done, Kit.”

  I didn’t even know how much time had passed when I surfaced from that well of pain. The memories that had consumed me were just…gone. Instead of being caught in them, consumed by them, they were tucked back inside my head and I felt like the ground had been jerked out from under me.

  Shoving upright off the chair, I stumbled away from Paulie on shaky legs.

  “Wuh…” I swallowed and my throat was so tight, even that hurt. Trying again, I glared at her. “What the hell was that?”

  The witch had a troubled look on her face and sighed, looking away. “You have poison in you,” she said quietly. “Just as I said. All of it is trying to come out through the memories. I warned you it would hurt.”

  Hurt? I glared at her.

  Physical pain was one thing, but that…okay, yeah. She’d mentioned emotional pain, but I hadn’t been expecting that. Passing the back of my hand over my mouth, I turned away and waited until I knew my voice would be level before I asked the next question. “Did you see anything? Feel anything while you were doing that? Are you…”

  “I’m no healer. I have no empathic magic in me,” she said.

  I shot her a dark look.

  She shrugged and rose from her chair to pace the small room. “I have an affinity for earth magics and small spells. But I see nothing when I do these things. And I’m grateful for that.”

  Silence lapsed and I ignored her for a moment as I tried to process what had happened. Memories, right? They were just memories. And I had them anyway. When I was asleep, they came out and taunted me and made merry with my sanity. During the day, I tried to ignore them, but no matter what, the memories were there and they were mine.

  “You can’t purge poison by ignoring it,” Paulie said quietly.

  Her words were a simple, brutal truth.

  Slowly, I lifted my head and turned around to stare at her. Then I crossed over to stand in front the mirror.

  Clad in just a bandeau bra, I stared at the leopard. He was frozen on my skin, muscles coiled, head down low and his body hid the worst of my scars. I’d never had time for whimsy in my life but maybe, if I hadn’t been so broken inside, I might have thought there was something…protective about the way she’d drawn the leopard, stretching across the upper part of my chest, from my shoulder, down across my breastbone, spreading across the tops of my breasts.

  Paulie had taken my sketch and made it into a tattoo that looked incredibly lifelike. She’d worked the design so that the scars were hidden in the curves and lines of the leopard’s muscled body, in the dark shadows of the spots that darkened his pelt.

  The color of his fur was a dusky stain against the pale ivory of my skin and I had to admit, it was beautiful work.

  Beautiful. He looked like he was going to leap from my flesh, snarling into life in front of me. Swallowing, I turned away and found her standing there.

  Waiting.

  “If you were completely human, that would have taken a few trips to get all the color done.”

  I touched my hand to my skin and grimaced at the feel of how hot it was.

  “It’s going to take a while for the pain to fade,” Paulie said, understanding flashing in her eyes. “We heal quicker than mortals do, but I explained how I made the inks last on your skin.”

  Copper.

  She used copper inks on me. It was the only thing that would make sure the tattoo actually took. It would poison mortals, the way she used it on me, but with my makeup, it served to bind the tattoo to me.

  Her assistant approached, lifting her hands. I eyed the compress and then angled my head, letting her place it on my flesh. I hissed—cooling, tingling magic exploded over my skin at the very first contact.

  “It will help speed the healing.” Her eyes caught and held mine. “Paulie says you wanted this done quickly.”

  I didn’t say anything. She seemed to get the point. Talking wasn’t anything I had in me just then.

  It’s done…

  “Can I be alone?” I asked woodenly.

  Once they left, I stumbled over to the chair and sank down on it.

  Pain tore at me as I let the barest edge of those memories come out to taunt me. Poison… she wasn’t wrong there. Yes, I had poison in me and she’d just cut me open.

  Now I had to deal with all of the memories that were going to come creeping out.

  * * * *

  I was nearly at the bar when I felt something—the warning prickle on my back made me tense.

  What the hell…?

  Hadn’t I been through enough today?

  If I’d had my
sword, I would have drawn it. Instead, I sped up my pace, staring at the man standing guard at the door just a few yards ahead of me. Goliath. Once I got past him, I was in the clear.

  His pale, watery gaze was focused on something…somebody…behind me.

  I didn’t dare turn to look.

  My breath hitched in my lungs and I moved faster, all but running now. I knew that feeling, recognized the charge in the air and even if I didn’t, I would have recognized the way my body reacted. Heart racing, breathing sped up and my skin felt flushed.

  Stupid, stupid body, reacting that way.

  Stupid, stupid heart.

  I sped around Goliath as the heat of the presence at my back started to spread along my skin. From the corner of my eye, I saw his shadow and damn it, part of me wanted to stop.

  It’s done…

  Instead, I ducked under the arm Goliath had spread across the door.

  A low, furious snarl echoed around me and I heard my name.

  “Kit.”

  That voice… I knew that voice.

  But I wasn’t ready to think about him anymore today. I couldn’t. What in the hell was he doing here now, anyway?

  The wards drifted across my skin, warm, soothing and gentle, the protections closing around me even as something else tried to shove inside. I heard Goliath’s voice, a deep, bass rumble as he growled at somebody.

  I ignored everything else from there on out.

  Inside the bar, I found Gio cleaning down the tables and TJ working the bar with one of the other girls. Gio shot me a quick look; his eyes, all but colorless, bounced from my face to the tables, back to me, back to the tables, over and over, damned near making me motion sick.

  Shoving him from my mind, I focused on TJ. Her gaze dropped to my neck, although she wouldn’t be able to see anything more than the top edge of the leopard’s body. I hunched my shoulders and made for the back door.

  Hide—have to hide—

  Then I stopped and squared my shoulders. No. No more hiding. Maybe I’d just run the hell away from somebody, but this was different. I wasn’t ready to face him—I didn’t think I’d ever be ready for that.