Wicked Ink

by Simon, Misty

  Garrett closed his eyes. This had to be a dream…or maybe a nightmare. How on earth was he going to explain what he was and what he could do to someone as innocent and pure as his neighbor? Only Jackson and Lissa knew the truth about his abilities now. The other two people who had known were dead. There were plenty of people who knew enough to be scared, but they didn’t know the full story. He worked in the night, staying away from the light of streetlamps, and made a point of never getting caught on film. And Jackson was certainly the only person who had ever been up here. For that matter, this was only his friend’s second time in what Garrett secretly thought of as his lair. He hadn’t needed his friend’s help since figuring out the exact voltage he could take.

  And now he had towered over Dory, probably scared her to death.

  He looked around the room, trying to see it with her eyes. She would never talk to him again. She would probably call the cops on him. Who had an electric chair in their apartment and used it?

  “I can’t go down there,” Garrett said through his raw throat. “I can’t let her see me like this.”

  “She just saw you looking a hell of a lot worse, and she held on like you were the life raft in her sea. Don’t start going all namby-pamby on me now. Get yourself clean in the shower up here, and then meet Dory and me downstairs. Don’t even think about jumping out the window, either, because I’ll come find you and drag your ass back in chains. I’m not kidding.”

  Since the idea of leaving had occurred to him, Garrett just shrugged, wiping the sweat from his face as he headed for the shower. There was no way he was going to be able to explain himself, particularly not to someone who had probably never seen anything worse than a bad movie.

  God, he was screwed.

  After soaking himself in the hottest water he could get through the old pipes, he grabbed a spare pair of sweats from the linen closet in the bathroom and made his way down the stairs like a prisoner going to his execution. He hadn’t even been able to tell Dory he didn’t like her food, so how the hell was he going to tell her he was some kind of superhuman who had to electrocute himself to get rid of the darkness after using it to make weapons out of his tattoos? Fuck, when he said it like that, it sounded loony even to him.

  The smell of her perfume lingered on the third step from the bottom in the closet, catching him off guard. He couldn’t stop himself from inhaling it one more time.

  Chapter Seven

  Pacing around the living room was not helping her disposition any. Dory made the next circuit anyway, keeping an eye on the closet and waiting impatiently for Garrett to come through the door. He had quite a bit of explaining to do. She was not leaving until at least some of this was clearer to her.

  God, seeing him in that chair! The image would never leave her for as long as she lived. Nor would the thought of what would have happened if she hadn’t shown up. There had to be a reason for the chair, she just couldn’t come up with anything rational.

  The other man who had been upstairs watched her from the couch. He hadn’t introduced himself, and she hadn’t stopped flying around the room long enough to ask for his name.

  “Who are you?” She stopped in front of him with her hands on her hips and, she was sure, murder in her eyes. How could he have stood there with his hand on the switch, knowing Garrett couldn’t possibly survive what would happen next?

  “My name is Jackson.”

  The name was familiar, but with everything that had transpired in the past thirty minutes, it took her a moment to piece it together.

  “Wait a minute,” she finally said, “you’re the one who took Marta to the hospital. How do you fit into this mess? Isn’t it a little convenient that you were the one to find the woman who went missing from our building? And then you came back here to hurt Garrett?” Her brain seized in its thought pattern, hung up on trying to process too many things at once. “Oh my God, Garrett isn’t responsible for all this, is he? He’s not the one who’s been mugging and taking people?”

  Acid and bile rose in her throat as Jackson pulled himself from the couch. No, no, no. There was no way Garrett was a bad guy. Not the Garrett who smiled at her and made her promise to stay safe on the way to work. The man she’d had lunch with today could not have abducted their neighbor and then sat down with Dory as if nothing had happened.

  With her hand over her mouth to keep the scream from coming out, she began backing toward the door. She couldn’t stay here another minute.

  Jackson might have been big, but he was also superfast. He got to the door before she did, blocking her exit.

  “Get out of my way.”

  “No, Dory, you have to stay. There are things I hope Garrett will tell you. But I can assure you of one thing—he hasn’t harmed anyone in this building, and he never would. He was actually the one who found Marta, but I took her to the hospital for him so no one would jump to the wrong conclusion, like you just did.”

  “I…I…I don’t believe you.” And it was tearing her up inside.

  “Jackson wouldn’t lie to you. He’s one of my oldest friends, and he’s the one who got me pointed in the right direction.” Garrett’s deep voice came from the closet with the staircase, directly across from where she stood. Now she was neatly boxed in between the two of them with nowhere to run and nothing to do but pray they wouldn’t hurt her. How had she gotten this far into something so bad? She wasn’t a novice when it came to the darker side of life, so she should have known better. Maybe her gut instincts weren’t as good as she had thought.

  She watched warily as Garrett took a step out into the living room. “I’m not sure what to say, Dory, but I didn’t hurt Marta or any of our neighbors. I never would.” He ran his hand over the back of his head, then looked at the floor with his palm clapped to the back of his neck. His dejected stance broke something in her. It was all she could do not to go to him and hold him.

  She stopped herself just in time, determined not to fall for whatever it was he was trying to sell her. She knew nothing about him, she realized. He had never even told her why his shoulder had bloomed with blood so suddenly in the hallway, and she hadn’t asked because, at the time, she had been too intent on keeping him alive. Now she wondered how she could have been so stupid and naive.

  “Tell me what’s going on. Now.”

  He opened his mouth, but she raised her hand before he could say anything. “Don’t even think about lying to me. If you’re going to lie, at least tell me that you’d rather not tell me, and I’ll just leave.”

  He peered at her as he walked over to the couch, taking the side opposite Jackson, who was once again sitting. He sat on the very edge, as if spikes were embedded in the back of the cushion. “You’d really walk out right now without an explanation?”

  “Not going to happen, man,” Jackson cut in before Dory could. “You have to tell this lady after all she did for you. And if I’m not mistaken, she resolved your little issue for you today without the chair. I think that’s worth a hell of a lot more than an explanation. You ought to buy her a ring.” He slapped Garrett’s leg as he got up off the couch. “I’m going to head out. I don’t need to be here for this.”

  He turned to Dory, giving her a smile that creased the corners of his bright green eyes. “You make sure to listen, now. This man won’t lie to you, but it’s a bitch getting the full truth out of him sometimes. Don’t leave even if he tries to force you. I think you’re made of much sterner stuff than he realizes.” He brushed his hand down her arm, brought her hand up to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “He’s an idiot, but not a bad one.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Jackson.” Garrett came off the couch, looking ready to pounce.

  One glance from Dory, though, and he sat right back down. “Start talking,” she said as Jackson left the apartment, closing the door behind him.

  His hand made a track down his face. “I really don’t know how to start.”

  “I’m not going to say at the beginning, because I don’t think that
’s really what is important. Start with the chair and everything I saw up there and move backward.”

  He blew out a breath. “You’re not asking for a lot.”

  “Yes, I am, but I expect you to give it to me.” She fisted her hands on her hips to keep herself from wrapping them around her ribs. She wanted to project a no-nonsense attitude, not fright.

  “Can you at least sit down? I can’t do this with you towering over me.”

  “At a whopping five foot five, I hardly think I’m towering over you.”

  “Please, Dory. This is hard enough. Just sit.”

  After their gazes locked together for a brief yet intense moment—he looked away first—she stalked over to the small table tucked into the kitchen and brought the lone chair out into the living room. She was so not sitting on the couch with him.

  “Now, talk.”

  “I know this is going to sound weird.”

  “No weirder than seeing you strapped into a chair that was going to electrocute you.”

  “Point for you. I can’t start at the chair, though, because nothing will make any sense if I tell it backward.” He sucked in a deep breath. “I have the ability to soak in darkness and evil from the people around me and use it to make weapons from my tattoos. When I’m done with the darkness, the only way I can purge it is by electrocuting it out of my body. Fighting dark with light.”

  Her mind spun, and she was pretty sure she was about to topple out of the chair despite her death grip on the seat.

  * * *

  “I don’t know how it works precisely, but the tattoos are made from real ink, and they coalesce in my hands to be whatever I need them to be. The weapons all come out black, and they’re as real as anything tangible. I have to absorb them back into myself when I’m done or the tattoo gets ruined. Same thing happens if the tattoo is mangled on my skin. When that happens, I have to go see Lissa, who is not always very nice about having to fix me up, and she has to re-ink the tattoos so I can use them again. But it all comes with a price…” He trailed off when he saw the way she was sitting in the chair, her back ramrod straight. He’d been babbling in his desire to get it all out. The last thing he wanted was to see disgust and pain in her eyes when she looked at him. Who in the hell would believe him? Certainly not her.

  “So when you’re done electrocuting yourself, all this darkness is out of your body and you can function again?” He cringed as her frank gaze assessed him.

  “On the most basic of levels, yes. It’s something I’ve been able to do for years, but electricity is the only antidote I’ve found that reliably saves me from sinking into the darkness and exalting in it. I have a cop to thank for accidentally hitting me with a stun gun, or else I never would have known.”

  “You’ve exalted in it before, haven’t you?”

  He had really hoped she wouldn’t ask him that. Of course, it was the first real question to come popping out of her pretty mouth. Her hair was up in a soft ponytail, and she had changed from the business suit she’d been wearing earlier into soft jeans and a T-shirt. Until this morning, he’d never seen her in anything but the suit. He liked all of her looks, but this was the most appealing. And he was stalling if he was thinking about her fashion choices instead of looking into her eyes and answering a question he knew the answer to better than he knew himself.

  “Yes.” He folded his hands around each other, only to watch them twitch in his lap. He would never be able to face her again. He’d have to leave this building and start over somewhere else. He’d done it more than once, but he’d hoped this would be the last time. He might not have made friends of the real variety, but he liked the people in this building. They were easy to get along with, and they stayed out of his business. Well, everyone except for the beautiful woman sitting across from him.

  But it just wasn’t meant to be. And though that didn’t surprise him, it did sadden him.

  “How long have you not been exalting in it?”

  The question took him off guard. Why wasn’t she asking what bad things he’d done? Surely she’d want to know more about the monster he’d become before changing into something better but not good? “Almost eighteen years.”

  She sat and stared at him until he became more uncomfortable than he already was.

  “So how old are you? Don’t tell me you’re really three hundred years old and immortal… I don’t think I could take that kind of info.”

  She startled a laugh out of him at the weirdest moment. “No, I’m thirty-five.”

  “So you couldn’t have been truly evil when you were a little kid, and you changed yourself around at seventeen. You’ve been good longer than bad?”

  “I’ve never truly been good, Dory. I don’t know how to be. I can’t give you any more answers right now. I’m doing my best to look out for the tenants of this building. I’ll continue to do that for a little while longer, but then I’m going to have to leave. And you need to go back to your apartment now. There are things I need to do.” He searched his body and soul for any trace of darkness and found nothing, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t lurking.

  “I’m not leaving if you’re going to go back and strap yourself into that chair again.”

  He struggled not to lose his temper. He wanted to be sure, goddammit! But Dory didn’t need to be yelled at. It wasn’t her fault he was a mess. He could promise her this, at least. “No, I won’t strap myself into the chair again tonight. You have my word.”

  “And we’ll talk more later?”

  He wouldn’t lie to her. “I doubt it. Now, I really have to go. You know the way out.”

  She didn’t move from her spot. She sat staring at him, again, until he thought she might have fallen into some kind of trance. He was able to do that when he was meditating—it was another method he used to gain control of himself.

  “Dory.”

  Nothing.

  “Dory? You have to go. I can’t have you here.”

  She still didn’t even blink an eyelash. “Did you find Marta?”

  He sighed. So she was going to keep asking and he was going to have to keep answering, if for no other reason than that she’d saved him from the chair for the second time. He still didn’t get what it was about her that eliminated the need for him to jolt an electrical current through his every cell, but he owed her a debt of gratitude nonetheless.

  “Yes, I found her today, that’s why I wasn’t able to jog home next to you on your way back from work. I wanted to, but I was in a bad place after I saved Marta from the warehouse where they were keeping her.”

  “And did you kill anyone there? Did you hurt them for taking someone who was important to you?” Her eyes narrowed.

  What was he supposed to say to that? He’d hurt Bert, and he’d enjoyed it more than he should have. But he’d do it all over again with Marta’s sobs ringing in his ears and her hands gripping him hard enough to make him wince. “Yes, okay? I hurt the guy. I broke a couple of bones and left him to the mercy of whoever paid him to draw me out. I don’t know who’s targeting the people around me, but it has to be because of me. They know my name, something about what I can do. So I promise I’ll stay around long enough to figure it out and stop them. But then I’ll disappear. I won’t make you all suffer.”

  “And what about me?” she whispered. “I’m the only woman left in the building who hasn’t been taken or hurt. What are you going to do about that?”

  Her whisper hit him in places he shouldn’t think about, not when he was planning on leaving this place. His gut tensed as he wished things were different. How he would love to just sit here with this beautiful woman, enjoying her fragrance, the way her soft hair looked, thinking about something other than death and destruction. But there was no arguing with reality, and the faster he got her out of here, the faster he could go back to bringing about justice and moving on.

  “I’m going to watch over you and track down the people who are after me. Then I’m going to make them stop. Now, please leave, Dory. I
can’t do this while you’re sitting there like a visitor at the zoo, staring at a new exhibit.”

  He knew the second his words hit her like a slap. When she got up and went to the door, her arms were wrapped tightly around her ribs, her whole body seeming to collapse around itself like a protective shell. “I don’t need your protection, Garrett. Now that I know what these people want, I know to be even more careful. I can take care of myself. I’m not being stupid or stubborn, but I will not let you save me if it means you have to electrocute yourself again.”

  Chapter Eight

  Dory stood under the spray of the shower long after the water turned cold. Her thoughts were chaotic as she tried to process the fact that, for all intents and purposes, she lived next to a superhero. She’d read all the comics when she was younger, devouring the stories about a way of life that was good and pure, where the bad guys always lost and good guys always came out ahead.

  She’d already washed her hair and her body, but still she stood there in the streaming water. How could this be possible? How could she live next to a superhero and not know?

  Eventually she shut off the water when her skin turned pruny and her teeth started chattering. She didn’t need to get sick right now. Tax season would be upon her before she knew it, and sick days were not a luxury she could afford.

  But an honest to God superhero. Crazy! And yet, so very cool. She had a crush on a superhero. It was like she was Mary Jane and Lois Lane all wrapped up in one.

  And now she was giddy. This was serious stuff. Superman had never felt the need to almost kill himself every time he helped someone. No matter what Garrett said, there was no way the electricity running through his body was not hurting him in some way on a permanent basis. She might not know anything about medicine, but she knew enough to know he was killing himself, no matter how he saw it.