Fated: Karma Series, Book Three (21 page)

My eyes shot to the clock on the side table. Four a.m.; I’d only been asleep for an hour but I knew I wasn’t the only one having trouble sleeping after watching the houses around us burn to the ground. After Fate had lectured the Jinxes for over an hour about getting drunk on the job, we’d all sat around the living room scrambling for a new plan. No one had come up with one. It hadn’t been a good night by any standard.

Now here I was with clammy skin, throbbing pain and still no plan. The pain, which had started at the tattoo and worked its way down my leg, was now climbing through my chest until I feared I was having a heart attack, except that was supposed to be impossible.

I tried to keep my body still so I wouldn’t have to answer any questions from Fate, who lay beside me. I must have finally fallen asleep last night while he was showering because I didn’t remember him getting into bed. Any talk of separate rooms, along with further mention of the Knox incident, was as gone as the houses that had burned down. Still, he was way over on the other side and the gap between us felt a lot larger than a few feet.

“Karma?”

I should’ve known he’d wake up just when I wanted him to sleep. I answered the question I knew was inevitable. “It’s the tattoo.”

There was pause a before he spoke again and I could imagine the pieces falling into place in his head, like they had for me. He had less information but he had more knowledge. This wasn’t just the tattoo and it wasn’t getting better.

“How often is this happening?”

I tried to think back to when it had first started. It was hard to pin down time and frequency on something so sporadic. Falling short of a concrete answer, I came up with the next best thing I could. “I guess you could say just enough to remind me there’s something wrong whenever I start to forget.”

“Show me,” he said as he moved over to my side of the bed and started tugging the covers out of the way.

I pushed down the shorts I sometimes wore to sleep, knowing exactly what he’d find, and what Lars had found as well. “It looks the same. It always looks the same.” I didn’t need to look at it to know.

“What’s it feel like?” he asked, prodding the area that now lit up the bedroom with a warm glow.

“Most of the time? Normal.”

“And the
not
normal times?” he asked, leaning too close to me with a too knowing stare.

“A stabbing pain that radiates.”

“So badly that you can’t walk,” he said, obviously remembering the time he’d witnessed it act up.

Fate rose abruptly, startling me with the burst of action. He was on his feet throwing on pants as I still lay abed. “We’re getting it out.”

It wasn’t a question or a suggestion.

“We don’t know if it’s doing anything bad,” I said, rolling onto my side and watching him.

“It radiates pain that is getting progressively worse. Sounds perfectly healthy to me.” He threw me a look that said
don’t act stupid
before the shirt he was putting on covered his face. He moved next to open one of the drawers I’d taken over and tossed a shirt and a pair of jeans at me. “Get dressed.”

I propped myself up on one arm, thinking of the merits of removing it and the main reason I didn’t want to. It was the sticking point that made me hope that every time it hurt, it would end up working out. “I don’t want to be cut off. I don’t want to think that this is it for me.
I don’t want to walk this Earth forever.
”

“Is this existence that bad?” he asked.

I sensed he was taking it as a personal insult. It was a ridiculous notion since I’d be walking this Earth alone. Not once in all the time we’d been together had he mentioned deeper emotions and it wasn’t for lack of opportunity.

“Forget it,” he said with an edge in his voice. “It doesn’t matter. It’s got to come out. Cutty will do it.”

I gathered my hair up into a ponytail, realizing I wasn’t going to be adding any hours to the sleep count tonight. He wasn’t going to let this go. “Cutty does stitches. How the hell is he going to handle this? It’s a little different.”

“He’ll know.”

My stall tactic not working, I realized I was going to have to keep pursuing my true argument and probably the real reason I never wanted anyone to know it was a problem. I didn’t want this to be it. “I still haven’t agreed to do it.”

“I’m with Fate,” an old gravelly voice declared.

I snapped my head towards Paddy, who was standing in the middle of the room.

Fate turned his full attention to him, both fists clenched as if he were struggling to maintain his temper. “Popping into my bedroom is off limits.”

“Fine,” Paddy said, all of a sudden making use of his cane as if he were too weak to stand on his own.

“Were you spying on us?” I asked, finding the timing to be a bit more than coincidental.

“Absolutely not!” He lifted and banged his cane to the ground before quickly moving back to the subject of the tattoo, or more accurately, the piece of him that resided there. “But it has to come out. I fear it was a grave mistake and I need it back.”

“Can you take it back?” Fate asked.

“And will I be cut off forever when you do?” I added.

He shrugged and looked at both of us. “I don’t know.” He walked over to the opposite edge of the bed I was sitting on and looked like the old man he appeared to be for a minute. “When I gave you a piece of me, I did it in part thinking it would make you stronger, more able to help with this Malokin situation. It was never supposed to grow.”

Paddy rolled up his sleeve to the place he’d pull off the chunk of himself he’d donated to me. It had been a pinch, unnoticeable after he’d done it and his skin had sealed back up. Now, a large chunk of flesh was missing, like he’d suffered some accident and lost part of the muscle from his arm.

“This is the thing of it, what I am, what I’m comprised of, likes to stay together in one unit. This I knew. It’s the same with the four. We like to be close, or used to, but we wouldn’t drain each other.

“What I didn’t realize was how strong you would be. I figured if there were a pull, it would be exerted from me and I could control it. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, you pulling from me. I didn’t even believe it was happening at first. I thought it was Malokin somehow, but then…” His eyes went to mine and I knew he was thinking back to the day at Kitty’s. “I realized it was you,” he finished, cutting off what I believed he’d meant to say.

He slowly got to his feet again and this time I almost believed he did need the cane. “If we leave it in you, I’m not sure what will happen.”

“Can you get it out?” I asked, feeling like I was quickly losing any other options.

“I don’t think I should,” Paddy said.

“Why? You put it there, just suck it back out somehow. Do whatever it is you can do?” If it was going to happen, I wanted it done as quickly as possible so I didn’t have any time to dwell on the implications of the loss.

“If you’re already draining me from a distance. It’s not wise.” He stood and moved across the room, putting some distance between us, as if the thought of me having such power unnerved him.

Fate stepped forward, blocking my view of Paddy. “I won’t have one of your three do it,” Fate said, talking about Fia, Fith and Farrah.

“Surely you’d feel comfortable with Fith?”

“Why would I possibly trust him?”

“Well, considering—”

“No. Cutty will have to do it.” He turned to me again. “Get dressed.”

I didn’t bother arguing. I already had my clothes in hand and was already heading to the bathroom.

An hour later, we walked into Lars’s closed tattoo shop, Fate’s hand firmly wrapped around mine. I’d given up on my rule to keep all affection to a minimum once I realized I was not only possibly dying, I was killing Paddy along with me. It didn’t matter that he’d been the catalyst. I was sucking him dry and it was a hard thing to live with. Hurting Paddy was unintended, but so were lots of other things, like giving someone the flu. It still felt like shit.

“Hey,” Lars said as we walked in. I smiled even as I noticed he seemed more uptight than he had been the other night. Cutty was there as well. Paddy, who had said he’d meet us here, was flipping through tattoo books as if he were contemplating getting a piece done. I wouldn’t have been surprised by anything he did.

Then I saw her—Lars’s
guest
—the one they called Faith. I wouldn’t have missed her. She still had patches of her human karma clinging to her new form. It was as if the brightest sunlight I’d ever seen was filtering through the leaves of a tree while she sat under it on a spring day. I’d never seen anything like it. And the smell. I breathed deep and started walking towards her, before Lars stepped in my way aggressively and pissed me off. All I wanted to do right now was get near some good karma. It was like a steak dinner complete with a chocolate cake desert when I hadn’t eaten in weeks.

“You can’t hurt her.” He was deadly serious. I could see it in the set of his mouth, the way his eyes stared me down. He’d take me out before he’d let me touch her.

I looked over at Fate, not from fear but annoyance. I didn’t fear any of his men because I trusted Fate to always have my back. Still, it would’ve been nice to get some help to move the hulking form out of my way.

Fate shrugged a silent response I read to mean
yeah, I know he’s all out of whack but just let him get it out of his system.

I shook my head, patience wearing thin tonight.

“I don’t want to hurt her. I just want to say hello and introduce myself.” And maybe stand close enough to get the stench of the bad karma I’m surrounded by constantly off of me, even if it was only for a precious few minutes. I needed this before they started digging into me.

“Just remember, I was the grim reaper and I was fucking good at it.”

I looked over at Fate again, trying to not roll my eyes.
Really? How long am I supposed to do this?

I interpreted Fate’s shrug and bounce of his head to mean,
I think he’s almost done.

“Lars, I promise, I will not touch your pretty princess.” I withheld
now get the hell out of my way
but with major strain.

“Are you giving me your word?”

“Yes. Now step aside. I feel like you’re a dark cloud hovering over me.”

Finally he stepped aside.

I couldn’t breathe deep enough as I got close. I felt like I was getting almost high off just the remnants of her aura. Holy shit, when she’d still been human, she must have been glorious. And her face was perfection. Between her karma and her angelic looks, she was downright ethereal.

She looked nervous as I approached her and I could understand. Being introduced to this world by Malokin when you weren’t of his ilk must have been jarring to say the least. I held out my hand, trying to reassure her I wasn’t looking to kill her. “I’m Karma.”

“Faith,” she said, as she tentatively took my offering. Her eyes darted to the men behind us, watching. “Can they hear us?”

“Probably. But I think the office is sound proofed,” I offered, seeing how she clearly didn’t want to be overheard.

There was a tiny single nod to her head as her eyes darted to Lars and back to me. She headed toward the back but before we could enter the office, Lars was blocking our way.

“Where are you going?”

I looked to Faith, expecting her to take the lead but she didn’t. So I stepped up.

“We want a minute to talk without all of you guys hovering.”

When he didn’t budge, it hit me like a sledgehammer to the back of the head. He’s totally into this girl. This wasn’t just a crush. This was a killing blow. Wow, how the mighty have fallen.

“We’re fine. Get out of the way,” I said, waving my hands and demonstrating I wanted a clear path with him out of it.

His overprotective ways might have pissed me off if I didn’t understand. I could see it in his eyes, if I harmed this girl even an iota, he’d rip me apart. Why? Because Lars was utterly in love with her to the point of absurdity. Or maybe there was nothing absurd about it. Maybe it was beautiful.

Why couldn’t Fate be a little more like that? I knew he had my back, but this was
I’ll tear you piece by piece because the sun rises with this girl in the morning and my life would be perpetual darkness without her
.

“We’re fine,” I repeated, giving him some slack since he was new to the whole caring-about-someone-other-than-himself phenomenon.

Finally, he nodded back and stepped out of our way.

Faith stepped into the office and I followed, closing the door behind us.

“How are you doing?” I asked, even though I could see the answer clearly in the drawn look about her eyes.

“Getting by. I’d heard you were human first.”

I nodded but remained silent, hoping to encourage her to speak what was bothering her.

“Does it get better? I mean, it’s not bad, I just feel…”

“Lost?”

“Kind of.”

It was obvious she wasn’t a natural complainer. I liked her already. I knew from personal experience how lousy the last few weeks must have been but she wasn’t going to cry the blues. It was a good thing too. In our situation, you needed to be able to suck it up or you’d crumble under the pressure. All she was looking for was answers.

“It gets a lot easier.” I nodded a head towards the door that closed us off from the rest of them. “I’m not sure if they start seeming less crazy or we get more so, but you’ll adjust.” And then I couldn’t stop myself from digging for some dirt. Maybe I was getting more like my coworkers. “You two involved?” I asked when it was so clear something was going on with them.

“I don’t know what you’d call it,” she answered, somewhat evasively.

“He’s very protective of you. I’ve never seen him act like that.”

“He also thinks I might have been the scum of the Earth in my mortal life so I’m not exactly sure why.” She said it somewhat jokingly but there was an edge to her voice that made it very obvious how much it hurt her, at least to someone who was listening.

I leaned against the wall and crossed my arms. “There’s an easy fix to that.”

She sank into his office chair, defeat written all over her as her shoulders slumped. I came around and perched my hip on it.

“I know what you do. And I know if you told him I wasn’t a bad person, he’d believe you. But do you know how that feels? That he needs to hear it from someone else?”

“Why make this difficult? I can tell you care about him and that he cares about you. A handful of words from me and you two can get a—maybe not a fresh start but something better than the place you’re in now.”

“And be with a man that can’t take my word? Can’t believe I’m a decent person unless someone else tells him so?” She shook her head.

There was a knock on the door before Fate yelled, “You almost done?”

Faith stood. “I’d appreciate it if you refrained from telling him anything.”

I nodded, even though I had my doubts. It would be so much easier to set this right but I respected what she said. And to hell with it, I had my own issues. If she didn’t want me butting into hers, I should be happy to leave it alone.

I opened the door to Lars looming close by and Fate looking inpatient. Faith followed me out, walking right past Lars without a word, his eyes following her as she moved across the room. Yep, that relationship was seriously hitting the skids.

Lars moved in closer to me. “Well?” The one word asking for information he desperately wanted and only I could give.

A huge part of me felt for the big stupid jerk but my eyes met Faith’s. I got it. If Fate had to go around asking people if I was a good person, I’d be pretty teed off too.

“I couldn’t get a read on her,” I lied.

The disappointment in his face made me want to smack him upside the head.

“Nothing?”

“Yes.” I was short with him and walked away abruptly. I couldn’t help it. If he was going to be this stupid, maybe he deserved to lose her.

Fate was back at my side, his hand wrapping around mine.

I looked to the table that had been set up in the middle of the room. A line of instruments sat next to it, a scalpel among them. Oh goodie.

I let go of Fate’s hand to lie down on the spot so clearly meant for me and unzipped the jeans I wore. I glanced over to make sure the shades were drawn before I tugged them down and took off the wrapping I kept over it.

Fate pulled a chair up close and grabbed my hand again but my eyes were only on the tray and Cutty.

“Karma, I’m going to give you a shot of something to numb up the area,” Cutty said as he moved into place.

I nodded. “Good idea.”

“Don’t look at them,” Fate said by my side, drawing my attention back to him. “Look at me.”

I did. He was sitting there, a smile I know he didn’t feel on his face. Both hands now wrapped around the one of mine and my breathing grew ragged.

“Don’t be scared.” One hand reached forward to brush the hair from my eyes and then cupped my cheek. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

Suddenly I was scared to death, and it had nothing to do with Cutty or the fact that they were going to slice into me at any moment.

I looked at his dark hair waving back from his face, the light green flecks in his eyes, which, when he stared at me like he was right now, seemed to glow. The way his hand grasped mine with such confidence, like he wouldn’t ever let go, and there was no denying it anymore.

I loved him. And it didn’t seem to matter how
he
felt or what
I
wanted to feel. It just was.

“If you don’t stop looking at me like you’re completely freaking out, I’m going to make them stop,” he said. If he hadn’t been smiling, I might have believed him, but he was clearly teasing me.

“I’m okay.” More accurately, I was okay with what Cutty was about to do. It was the love that scared me to pieces. How had this snuck up on me? I’d thought I’d been doing such a good job keeping my emotional distance.

“Close your eyes and I’ll tell you a secret,” he said as I felt the needle entering an area near my tattoo.

Listening to him speak softly to me, it was as if we were the only ones in the room. I closed my eyes, my face still turned toward him and took the excuse to break eye contact and retreat, at least visually, into my own head, to try and come to terms with the overwhelming feelings hitting me.

“The first time I met you was approximately seven hundred years ago. The Black Plague struck a little town in France you were living in. You were fourteen at the time. Your father was dead and your mother was recently struck down by the disease. You had five younger siblings you were caring for when you got sick. But you were supposed to make it. I came to your bedside, ready to intervene if necessary. As soon as I saw you, I knew I wouldn’t have to. Even then, ravaged with sickness, you were the most beautiful mortal I’d ever seen.

“I still remember you turning to one of your younger sisters who was petrified to leave your side, fearing her last caretaker would die if she so much as stepped a foot away, and telling her you weren’t leaving her. And I knew you weren’t going to need me. You’d make it all on your own.

“Three hundred years ago, you were a girl of twenty on a ship sailing off the Massachusetts coast during a storm. The boat smashed into the rocks. Every passenger, even the hardest sailors, all died except for you. Waves pounding your body, over and over again, taking you under until I thought you couldn’t possibly make it. Just when I thought I’d need to intervene, I saw you break the surface. You never quit. As others tired and lost their strength to go on, you kept fighting. You fought for hours, longer than I thought a person could even will their body to swim in such frigid waters, but you did it.

“The fight in you, the pure essence, was like nothing I’d encountered. Not in a human, ever. Not before and not since. I was captivated.”

“It’s not going to work,” Cutty said, interrupting the moment and I felt Fate’s hand tighten on mine.

“You didn’t even try yet.” I hadn’t felt the scalpel on my skin.

I opened my eyes and sat up partially to get a view of the area myself. I was as unmarred as I’d expected.

Cutty tossed down the scalpel onto the tray as if annoyed with the item. “I can’t get through the skin.”

“Try farther away from it,” I said, wanting this to be over if it was what needed to be done.

I looked about the room at the other people gathered who’d been watching, and I could see the answer on their faces before Cutty said anything.