Jory Strong: Inked Destiny

Cathal lay insensate next to her, his proximity making him a victim to a spell aimed but not limited to a specific person. Just as well, Eamon thought, rubbing his chest where his heart still pounded, a hammer beat of fear, not only of her, but for her.

She was changeling, not yet able to control magic and gift. And he was lord, whose duty it would be to kill her if she couldn’t.

“Sleep,” he said, expanding the defensive action in the lilting tones of a language born in another realm, one created to harness magic and feed it into spells either written or spoken.

It would hold them, at least for a little while, and when they woke, it would be to a new reality. The time for ignorance had passed.

He crossed to the dresser, calling a fine mist to wash away the scent of sex, and then air warmed by fire to dry his skin before opening a sigil carved box and retrieving a small silver dagger. Returning to the bed, he cut a length of Etaín’s hair where its loss wouldn’t be noticed.

He didn’t intend for her to leave the estate, but from the very beginning she’d managed to evade his vision of what the future held, and she still had far too many dangerous ties to the human world. His gaze dropped to the exposed eye on one of her palms, a weapon now to be wielded against Elf or human if she felt threatened.

“You may come to hate me, for a time, because of it. But I will do what I must to keep you safe, from others as well as yourself.”

Etaín burned but there was no escaping the heat. It consumed her, traveling through the ink she wore, radiating inward like fire turned against itself, flame reaching into her very core.

She struggled against it but there was no respite until finally she dreamed, aware she was dreaming. Magic she thought and heard its voice say yesss , sibilant like a snake’s hiss as coils encased her, pulling her downward into an ocean of blackness where images from the last week, both real and imagined, played across the screen of her mind.

That first glimpse of Cathal as he stood outside Stylin’ Ink.

Passing through the wards at Aesirs. Recognizing the symbols carved into the doorway without understanding their meaning.

Eamon’s approach, the tattoos on her forearms writhing and rippling as if soaking in his presence, raging fire and stormy seas, the call of like to like.

A hospital room with her brother Parker and his partner Trent at her back. Stealing memories from a victim of the Harlequin Rapist.

Then stealing additional memories, this time from Cathal’s cousin Brianna.

Cathal’s father and uncle, envisioned, imagined as they delivered vengeance, the deadly justice of men whose code and livelihood were bordered by violence—aiming, firing, the recoil from their weapons pulsing through Etaín like a shockwave, plummeting her stomach as the all-too-real repercussions of their actions made her chest tighten.

The police arriving at her apartment and taking her to the floor. Cuffing her. Incarcerating her in a windowless interrogation room. Photographs of four murdered boys. The barriers falling, sending her into the loop of Brianna’s relived memories. The pain slashing, clawing through her heart as the suspicion that Cathal’s campaign of seduction had been about getting her to use her gift firmed, and then was confirmed with the touch of her palms to his skin.

Images fast-forwarded to those moments of peace and connection after her reconciliation with Cathal. A day of lovemaking interspersed with working ink into his arms.

I ssseee, the voice said, coils tightening mercilessly as she fought to wake, panicked in a blackness that was the absence of color, the roar in her head getting louder and louder as fire returned, burning in her chest, hotter and hotter, pressure building, building until reality became a hundred thin highways writ in gold.

Slowly they winked out, all but one of them. Then it too faded, becoming a dream where she sat in a moving car.

Through the window she recognized an Oakland street she’d driven the Harley down only days ago. She turned, heartbeat ratcheting up when she saw her companions wearing ski masks, then felt the same against her face and glanced down to find black gloves on her hands.

The coiled constriction was no longer present. She renewed her struggles, trying to surface from what she knew was the beginning of a nightmare, but against the backs of her eyelids she could see sigils writ in red twined with blue and understood they were Eamon’s, a magical command like a wave holding her beneath it, making escape impossible.

The bar where the Curs hung out came into sight. She counted seven motorcycles and feared what would come next in the dream, this splintered reality, the aftereffects of the last couple of days when the barriers she’d erected against all the memories she’d stolen from those who’d survived horrendous, brutal crimes, had begun tumbling down.

Days ago she’d come to this bar in an effort to help the police identify the Harlequin Rapist. She’d been hunting…and in turn was being hunted.

For an instant the interior of the car blurred, becoming the metal cell of a shipping container filled with terror. Her own. That of other victims of rape and torture.

She shivered and whimpered, once again trying to escape the dream, once again failing. This time looking down to find a gun in her hand, made longer and more terrifying by the silencer attached to it.

The car stopped a few feet away from where she’d parked the Harley when she went there to talk to Anton, a few feet from where she and Eamon had fought a little while later.

She was first out of the car. Her companions followed, four others, all of them moving with purpose toward the bar.

Lifting the gun, she waved the barrel in a silent order. Two of the four peeled away, hurrying down the sides of the building toward the back.

She and the remaining two took up positions on either side of the front door. A moment later the phone in her back pocket vibrated.

She gave a thumbs-up, going in first.

Aiming.

Firing.

Curs. Their women. Their hangers-on. The trigger pulls fast, the weight of a second gun there at the center of her back, jammed beneath the waistband of jeans.

The club wannabe who’d tried to claim her when she went to see Anton fell from a bullet she fired. Movement, and she locked onto the guy who’d racked the pool balls when she and Anton played.

He went down, somebody else’s bullet adding to the carnage. Everywhere there were bodies. Most were still but a few moved, bleeding and crying, though there was only silence in her head as another bullet ensured their deaths.

She took care of one section of the room as her companions handled others. Swapped out guns when she’d emptied the weapon she came in with, everything methodical, planned, as though it were a military exercise, timed so that an internal clock went off and she motioned toward the door.

The two black-masked figures went ahead of her. She followed.

Steps away from the entrance she felt the burn at her wrists, a tight circle of it that climbed upward into the vines on her arms, searing heat and an awareness that someone nearby wore her ink. Spinning, she saw a hand reaching for a gun that one of those already dead had never drawn. A face lifted, and she renewed her struggle to wake at recognizing Vontae.

No! A silent scream and there was hesitation in her nightmare self. Then the gun in her hand barked, jerked, the pull of the trigger and the horror of seeing blood coat Vontae’s face in an explosion of red finally enough to free her from the dream.