Bound by Ink (A Living Ink Novel) Read online

  His expensive-looking black suit was rumpled and stained. He’d torn out one knee. The sterling silver clip that usually kept his shoulder-length black hair contained at the nape of his neck had disappeared. He supported a shaggy, semiconscious man.

  “Son of a bitch,” Troy growled, stomping around the reception desk. “Nathalie! Call the cops!”

  “Stop it!” Isa commanded, glaring at Troy before peering at Murmur. “What’s wrong?”

  “The man who had you kidnapped and who forced a Live Tattoo on you is standing in your doorway,” Troy snapped. “That’s what’s wrong.”

  “Help,” Murmur said, staring at her, desperation in his green eyes.

  He looked like hell. Smelled like it, too. Something she didn’t recall from the hospital. Heart in her throat, she stepped around the reception desk.

  “Isa!” Troy barked in warning. “Get away from him.”

  “Help them,” Murmur said.

  Isa examined the man he supported.

  He was dressed in layers of ragged clothing so worn they’d lost their color. Caked, filthy hair covered his head and his face.

  Blood covered his hands.

  Murmur’s hands, too.

  “Save them,” he repeated.

  Them? Isa started, already nodding. “Downstairs.”

  “You can’t be serious!” Nathalie screeched. “Isa, he tried to kill you.”

  She shook her head. “This isn’t what you think.”

  “You’re seriously going to trot out that shit?” the piercing artist demanded. “He tortured you for six weeks. You still have the hots for him? You’re more fucked up than I thought.”

  “Believe what you want,” Isa snapped. “In the meantime, there’s a man bleeding all over the floor.”

  “He needs an ambulance, not you,” Troy said.

  “He said ‘save them,’” she countered. “He has Live Ink.”

  Troy flung a gesture at Daniel. “You keep saying he’s the best Live Ink artist in four states. Let him fix it!”

  “I can’t,” Murmur growled. “And they’re dying.”

  Humble words from Daniel’s mouth. Isa shuddered.

  It should have tipped Troy and Nathalie off right away. This wasn’t Daniel.

  Would she ever get used to hearing Daniel’s voice while knowing it wasn’t Daniel and never would be again? Her biology remembered the man who’d lived in that body hurting her for six interminable weeks. Muscles tightened. Her pulse hammered in her ears.

  Knowing intellectually that man had died didn’t make it any easier to draw breath that didn’t tremble.

  “Damn it,” Troy said. “I’m going with you.”

  “Got your cell? I may need a 911 call,” Isa said, sidling up to the other side of the bleeding man. She pulled his limp arm around her shoulder. The stench of old sweat, long fear, and feces made her eyes water.

  The wounded man flinched and groaned. “Save her.”

  “Just a little farther,” she coaxed. She looked over the top of his head and met emerald green eyes.

  The tight spot of fear between her shoulder blades eased. She could do this. Even if she and Murmur weren’t sharing the same body and psyche anymore.

  Isa nodded.

  Troy opened the basement door.

  She and Murmur guided the half-conscious man down the stairs and into her containment studio.

  “Troy? Plastic and paper drapes in that cabinet. Would you be so kind?”

  Her burly business partner reconfigured the recliner into a table, spread the protective sheet over it, then laid the paper drape on top.

  “What happened?” Isa asked.

  It took all three of them to lift the man onto the table.

  “They were stabbed,” Murmur said, backing off until his back hit the black basalt stone of the containment studio.

  “You do it?” Troy shot.

  Isa spun on him.

  He wasn’t looking at her. The bristling, protective man stared at Daniel, rage in his clenched fists, and the first hint of doubt clouding his features.

  “Had I, there’d be nothing left to save,” Murmur rumbled in a voice that resonated straight through Isa’s chest.

  The edge of threat in his tone stirred a tendril of black deep within her psyche. For that brief moment, the aching emptiness inside vanished.

  Lips outlined in white, Murmur slid to the floor.

  Isa stumbled over sudden fear. Her throat went dry. “Are you hurt?”

  He shook his head. Shadows of exhaustion smudged his eyes and put ebony shadows in the hollows of his cheeks.

  “What the hell is wrong with . . . Holy shit,” Troy said. “That’s not Daniel. Murmur?”

  Isa breathed a laugh. “Wondered how long it would take you.”

  “My God. Daniel’s eyes weren’t that color of green, where they?” Troy demanded.

  “No. They were blue,” she said.

  “Your Live Tattoo came off of you and took over Daniel? No wonder you didn’t freak,” Troy said.

  “He tore my throat out. I died. He took over Daniel’s body, healed it, then healed me,” Isa said. She pulled on a pair of gloves, grabbed her scissors, and began cutting away the wounded man’s filthy clothing. “Believe me. I freaked. Troy. I need the first aid kit.”

  “No,” Murmur in Daniel’s body said. “Heal them both at the same time. It’s the only way.”

  She sucked in an unsteady breath and tossed Troy a glance.

  He backed for the containment studio door, and shook his head. “I feel so weird leaving you in here with him. Either him. One tried to kill you. The other succeeded.”

  “I have my freedom,” Murmur growled. “I have no further need for her life yet.”

  Isa flinched. Story of her life, right? No one had much interest in her unless they had use for her. She shook off the sting in her eyes and reminded herself it wasn’t what he’d said last night. He’d promised to sacrifice her.

  Oh yeah. That made her feel much better.

  “This man is bleeding to death,” she said.

  “I’ll be right outside,” Troy said.

  Isa wanted to tell him no video or audio. She didn’t. It would be the fastest way to call attention to what she didn’t want anyone else knowing—that Daniel Alvarez had walked back into her life and she’d welcomed him. Or would, given half a chance.

  She’d play out the same unhealthy pattern she had with Daniel. After working to get rid of a Live Ink parasite sucking the life out of her, she spent all her time longing to have him back in possession of her.

  Isa sighed.

  She hated being so fundamentally broken.

  The door to the containment studio closed and latched with a clang.

  “Will you be able to help me?” She didn’t want to sound like she was begging, but she did. She knew the answer as soon as she asked the question.

  He shook his head, weariness dragging him closer to the floor as if the strength bled from his body the way the man on her table bled.

  Isa summoned power. Liquid gold rose through her core. Wasting no time on candles, she cast a hurried circle around the room.

  “In or out?” she asked when she came to Murmur.

  “I need to feel you,” he rasped.

  He meant magic. But the naked desire in his voice kicked her in the gut. Her outstretched hand shook.

  “In, then.” Isa completed the circle with him contained inside with her. She went back to the table and gently lifted the ruined clothes out of the sticky blood.

  The man opened his eyes. Tears tracked his cheeks. “Save her.”

  “I’m going to do my best for you both,” she assured him, changing out gloves. “What’s your name?”

  “Elliot.”

  “I’m going to put my hand
on your arm, Elliot,” she said.

  He shifted, rolling his head. Fear pinched his craggy features. He caught in a sharp breath.

  “Easy,” she urged, sliding a hand onto his wrist.

  He jumped and groaned.

  “You’re safe here,” she said, letting magic rise. “Come with me.”

  She nudged cool, sage-scented magic into his body.

  They shifted to the etheric.

  Did violence have a color? If it did, it defined Elliot’s magic. In the etheric, the wound in his abdomen hemorrhaged magic as well as blood. At his feet, a rabbit curled, twitching, her soft fur matted with blood and green-brown magic.

  Elliot sobbed, something Isa heard in both worlds.

  She’d never healed two entities at once before. She didn’t know whether she could.

  “They’re integrated.” Murmur’s voice came as if from far away, even though he sat propped not four feet from her physical body.

  Even in the etheric, his regard and his presence assuaged the gaping emptiness where he’d once been.

  And where she wished he still was.

  Elliot and his tattoo were integrated. When Isa put Live Ink on someone, she acted as a conduit between the spirit enlivening the Ink and the host. Could she do the same thing in reverse, channeling healing energy into each of them at the same time?

  She put up a shield in the etheric that encompassed the three of them, her, man, and tattoo. Then Isa crouched and brushed the rabbit’s fur with the fingertips of her free hand. Elliot’s magic shot into her through her hand on his wrist. The rabbit’s gentler, skittish power edged, twitching and cautious into the open space inside Isa.

  She started at the sensation of someone else’s magic rattling around inside the cage of her bones. Her gut twisted. Not like a demon poking her, but not at all comfortable.

  “Defend yourself,” Murmur said, his hushed command rippling through the worlds.

  It steadied her. Closing her eyes, she gathered power and intention until they gleamed like a miniature winter sun behind her solar plexus, then she drove the combination through the rabbit’s and Elliot’s magic into their bodies.

  Elliot cried out, more from shock, Isa hoped, than from the pain of having his wounds closed in a flash.

  The rabbit convulsed beneath Isa’s etheric fingers. A bolt of pure terror not her own struck her heart. The rabbit twisted and vanished from Isa’s grasp.

  She fell out of the etheric and landed in her physical body with a bump. Opening her eyes, Isa drew a hissing breath in between clenched teeth, pulse thundering in her ears.

  Elliot’s brown eyes were wide. Tears had dried on his cheeks. His gaze flicked away when she glanced into his face.

  Isa took her hand from his wrist, and pulled her work cart closer.

  She glanced at Murmur in Daniel’s body.

  He’d tipped his head back, his eyes closed, and his features smooth and relaxed. A sensual half smile played over those perfect lips.

  Awareness jolted her nerves, followed a split second later by confusion.

  He looked like a man who’d found safety.

  Was that her? Or was it her magic and her blood? Habituation? The fact that he’d been yanked from his world into this one against his will and attuned to her because he’d had no more choice than she’d had?

  Was it small of her to want to take advantage? Isa had never been her own sanctuary, much less anyone else’s.

  Of all the stupid things to want.

  She forced her attention to the man on her table. Opening a sterile scrub pack, she said, “I need to clean up the blood.”

  He flinched, wariness digging deep furrows into his brow.

  “I need to make sure your tattoo is okay,” Isa said. “I can’t see her under the blood. I’d like to make sure she doesn’t need more help to stay healthy. If she does, I can get out the Live Ink and fix her. Can you let me look, for her sake?”

  Lips trembling, Elliot straightened out on the table and nodded.

  He had flat ink on one forearm—a Marine Corps bulldog—and several fine scars running in crisscrosses over his chest. One thick, ropy scar ran up the inside of his right arm.

  She wiped blood away from his skin and from the tattoo living on the left half of his abdomen.

  The wound had closed without a trace.

  The rabbit that he’d cradled as if it were a child looked whole. Flawless.

  She thought she saw the rabbit’s ears twitch.

  A marine with a rabbit tattoo. It seemed incongruous.

  “I see you thinking it,” he whispered.

  “Thinking what?”

  “What’s a guy like me doing with a rabbit for Live Ink.”

  “I don’t mean to pry,” Isa said, trading out scrub pads. “It’s none of my business.”

  “It’s because I’m a guy like me that I need the rabbit,” he said as if she hadn’t said anything at all. “You see the Marine Corps tat.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was in a war. A horrible war.”

  She cocked her head and met his eye for a moment.

  Something in the depths of his brown gaze walked prickles down her spine. “Are there wars that aren’t horrible?”

  He snorted and corrected, “Some are more horrible than others. They turn men into monsters. That happened to me. When I came back, I hated myself. Hated what I had become, but I couldn’t find a way out that didn’t include a body count.”

  “You’d become a predator,” Isa said, suddenly recognizing what she’d seen in the depths of his gaze. “The rabbit mitigates the violence?”

  “Picking a prey animal for a Live Tat blunted me.”

  “Rabbit isn’t just prey,” she countered. “Rabbit symbolizes necessary fear, the survival instinct. In some traditions, the rabbit carries the messages of the gods.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “Why don’t you ask her?”

  Hope and delight lit his face for a split second, then his gaze turned inward. He sighed, focused on her, and nodded. “You did it. I can’t . . .”

  He sat up so suddenly, so much threat in so simple a move, that Isa slid her work stool back.

  When she conquered the impulse to retreat, she’d rolled halfway across the room. Flushing, she scooted close again and peeled off her gloves. “I’m sorry I had to destroy your clothes. I know I can’t give you new ones, but if we could scrounge up some replacements that weren’t too fancy, would you wear them?”

  “I don’t need you taking care of me,” he growled, shoving himself to his feet. He grimaced and hunched his shoulders, breathing hard. “What did you do? We can’t control the monster. Get out. Get out!”

  Isa stumbled to her feet.

  There was the aggression.

  Movement in her peripheral vision drew her eye. Murmur.

  He’d straightened and opened his eyes. He stared at Elliot, tension in his lowered brows. “They’re out of balance.”

  “Why?” Isa asked. “Did I do that? How do I . . .”

  Elliot shrank in on himself and cast a furtive glance around the studio, as if looking for a place to hide.

  There was the prey animal Inked on his skin. Isa sagged.

  “Let me go,” he whispered.

  “I will. If you’ll take a blanket,” Isa said. “I didn’t fix the two of you so you could go out and get cold and wet.”

  Audible breath hissed in between his clenched teeth, he nodded.

  She took down her circle, pulled a fleece blanket out of her cupboard, and set it on the table beside him.

  He clutched it to his chest.

  She opened the studio door.

  Elliot approached the sole exit in fits and starts.

  Isa retreated into the larger basement, giving him—and her—space.

&
nbsp; Troy put a hand on her arm.

  Isa glanced at him.

  “You okay?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “Hey, man,” Troy said as Elliot eased out the studio door. “I poked a hole in this shirt this morning when I was putting my tattoo machine together. Wife’s been after me to pitch it, what with all the ink stains on it. I’m thinking you could use it. Don’t want the blood on your stuff to draw predators, right?”

  Elliot studied Troy, his eyes lingering on the brown plaid flannel that would be a good two sizes too big for him. He nodded.

  Brilliant. How did Troy know so instinctively how to speak Elliot’s language?

  “You hungry, Ice?” Troy asked as he pulled off the shirt. He wore a tee shirt his wife had designed for Nathalie’s girl band.

  “I haven’t eaten all day,” she said. Her stomach shored up her declaration with a loud complaint. “I’m starving.”

  “I got that client in the chair upstairs,” he said.

  “And I have a client coming in, crap, he’s probably already waiting upstairs,” Isa lied, marveling at Troy’s easy manipulation of the homeless man.

  “Stop it,” Elliot said.

  Troy grinned. “Stop what? You and that Ink had a rough day. You need to eat. So do we. You know Okari Sushi?”

  The furtive look returned to Elliot’s eye. He nodded.

  “If we give you the cash and our order, would you bring our food back to us and get something for yourself and that Live Ink while you’re at it?” Isa said.

  “We’re healed,” he said.

  “Some of the power for that came from the two of you,” she answered. “You’re both going to need your strength.”

  His gaze turned inward again. He nodded.

  “Troy?”

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said. He glanced at the open studio door. “You going to be okay?”

  Isa followed his gaze, but couldn’t see her Living Tattoo in her former lover’s body from where she stood. “Never better.”

  Troy snorted and nodded at Elliot. “Come on upstairs. I’ll get you set up with some cash and our sushi order.”

  Troy pounded up the stairs, leaving Elliot to follow at his own, cautious pace.

  Isa bolted into the studio.

  Murmur sat where he’d slid down the wall. He stared into space. The muscles of his jaw flexed.