Ink Magic (Ink Sorceress Chronicles) (8 page)

“
Stay here,” he said, before floating gently to the ground.

I didn’t really have much choice in the matter. The building was two stories high and my powers were completely silent. I couldn’t move if I wanted to.

Daniel returned minutes later.

“
He’s alive,” he said. “The air bag cushioned the blow, but the back of the car has him pinned.”

“
Do you think he’ll live?”

“
He’s got a heart beat, but I don’t think he’s breathing.”

I grabbed the sleeve of his shirt. “I can heal him.”

“
No.” He didn’t even have to think about it.

“
Why not, I want to find out who he is. Why he did it.”

“
More than likely it’s the Ink Sorcerer who’s going around mesmerizing people,” Daniel said.

“
Exactly, so he might remember them.”

Daniel frowned. He knew I was right. If I could save the guy, we could question him and find out who put him up to this. Still, he hesitated. It stung. Despite the fact he no longer believed I was the one trying to kill people, he still didn’t trust me.

“
Alright,” he said, finally, sweeping me into his arms.

Daniel didn’t recognize the driver as an Ink Mage, which meant the person who turned him into a killer puppet was willing to kill people outside of the group now.

I reached out with my hand, touching the guy’s face. Already he felt deathly cold. Ice prickled down my arm, spreading out my fingers. Ink raced across the dying man’s face, it poured down his open mouth like liquid. The tattoo shone brilliant blue, filling his eyes, making them glow.

His entire body was covered in spidery, blue tattoos. The light coming off him blinded me, and I heard Daniel gasp somewhere behind me.

The man’s eyes flickered open and closed and I didn’t know if it was the magic until he gasped. He took in big gulps of air, gasping and spluttering.

He grabbed hold of my hand as my tattoo snaked away from his glowing skin. “It was him,” he said. “He’s back.”

“
Who?” I asked.

“
Markus Bint.”

Daniel gasped. “That’s impossible. Markus Bint is dead.”

“
He’s not, I swear. He put me under some kind of trance. He touched me and his tattoo . . . it moved across my skin. Just like hers did. Oh my god. You’re just like him.” He backed away suddenly afraid.

“
Hello?” I said. “I’m the girl who just saved your life.”

“
But your tattoo. It came alive just like his did.” The guy back peddled, struggling to get as far away from me as possible.

“
Keep still,” I said. “You nearly died. You should get to a hospital.” I had no idea how much I’d healed him. He could still have internal injuries.

I tried to stop him and he lashed out at me. I easily managed to dodge his feeble punches, and I noticed his face bathed in sweat. He swayed on his feet, proving I was right about his not being quite healed.

I was about to try and heal him again when Daniel stepped in my way. “You’re frightening him. Let me try and calm him down. Make yourself useful and call an ambulance.”

Like saving a guy’s life wasn’t useful enough. I punched the number for emergency into my phone and listened to Daniel trying to comfort the guy.

“
What’s your name?” he asked gently.

“
Fred Williams,” he said, still keeping a close eye on me.

“
Are you sure it was him?”

“
I know that face, I remember him from the newspaper. He killed all those people and buried them in his basement.”

I hadn’t heard about this. The idea of someone burying people in their basement made my skin crawl. Worst of all, people thought I was just like him.

Daniel nodded.

“
Should I call the police?” I asked.

Daniel shook his head. “There’s nothing they can do.”

When the ambulance arrived, Fred didn’t want me along for the ride. By that stage he was falling in and out of consciousness. Daniel didn’t want to leave me alone, not with some serial killing Ink Sorcerer on the loose. But I could see he wanted to question Fred some more, so despite my fear I urged him to leave me there.

Standing in the street alone, I wished I’d let Daniel stay. With a guy who enjoyed burying people in his basement on my tail, I felt suddenly vulnerable. I had no idea what he looked like, or if Fred was the only person he’d sent to kill me. I was also aware of the fact that if it weren’t for Daniel, his first attempt at killing me would have succeeded. I wanted to call for a taxi, but for some reason I didn’t feel like trusting a complete stranger to drive me anywhere.

I shuddered at the sight of the crumpled car, smashed into the wall and started to walk quickly through the empty streets.

Despite being at work, mom somehow knew I hadn’t come home. I blamed our elderly neighbor. I don’t know how she does it, but somehow Mrs. Wilson always knows when I’m late. If I’m even a few minutes over my curfew, my mom gets to hear about it.

I ignored several phone calls from mom, choosing to answer her texts instead, telling her I was fine and giving her a lame excuse about car trouble. Seemed she didn’t buy it and I soon had to turn the sound on my cell phone off all together. Judging by how much it vibrated in my pocket, I guessed my mom was pretty mad.

I walked through the empty streets, trying to keep my imagination from going into overdrive. I thought I heard something moving on the rooftop above me, but when I looked up found nothing. As I moved on, the sensation increased. The occasional shuffling sounding, or heavy bump, as if someone was jumping from roof to roof, put me on edge. Every time I looked up to identify the sound there was nothing.

I could only be one person. “Daniel?”

He didn’t reply, but I knew he was out there somewhere. A roof tile crashed to the ground at my feet and something big slid down the roof. I couldn’t see their features in the dark, but they definitely looked male. They managed to recover before falling off the roof. Then they just . . . disappeared out of thin air.

I hadn’t seen Daniel perform that particular trick. Oh, he could jump really high and move faster than human speed, but he’d never actually blinked out of existence.

Also, my pursuer didn’t sound as light on his feet as Daniel. In fact he crashed across the roofs like an elephant.

So why couldn’t I see him?

Everything went quiet above. I had no idea where he was.

Someone grabbed me from behind, and put me in a choker hold. I struggled to escape their grip but they held me firm and the more I struggled, the less I could breathe. The worst thing was not being able to see their face. I only felt their breath on my neck.

Sure they’d kill me without ever showing their face, I panicked and stamped down hard where I thought their foot was. I heard a painful crunch as my foot crushed bone. He let me go.

Spinning to face them, I saw . . . nothing.

But something felt wrong. I knew I wasn’t alone. I thought I almost heard something and strained to listen. Yes! There it was. The sound of him breathing in front of me. But I couldn’t see him.

He was invisible.

“
What do you want?” I asked.

My question went unanswered for a long time. When he did speak it came from a different direction than I anticipated. “I’ve come to teach you how to master your powers.”

I whipped around to face the direction the voice came in and saw nothing.

“
Why don’t you show yourself?” He couldn’t possibly fear me. My powers were hiding again.

“
I’m willing to teach you how to control your powers.” His voice came from a different direction. “The Ink Mages can’t help you. Only another Ink Sorcerer can do that.”

“
Markus Bint?”

“
Yes,” he said, standing in front of me now, and still invisible.

I wondered if he was playing with me, teasing me, by moving around so much. He didn’t threaten me. Yet. But the fact he could come at me from any angle without me seeing was a threat in itself. He wanted to display his power. And he wanted me afraid.

“
What do you get out of helping me?”

“
An ally.” His voice was right in my ear.

“
I’ve seen how you treat your allies.” Having my mind taken over and being forced to kill didn’t seem like an equal partnership to me.

“
Don’t you want to see how powerful you can be?”

No. I didn’t want my powers. I wanted to be an ordinary teenager whose biggest concerns were midterms. “Can you control your powers? Do you know how to stop them?”

“
Stop them?” He sounded like he’d never entertained the idea.

“
Yes. Just make them go away completely.”

“
You don’t want any powers?” He said it like I’d suggesting eating puppies.

“
No. I just want to be normal?”

“
Normal?” For an instant he was visible, standing to my side, his face twisted in anger. “You think having powers far greater than any living being is some kind of abnormality?”

It was when I started to sprout hairs in the middle of a room full of my friends, or when I grew massive, sharp teeth. “I don’t like being different from everyone else. I just want to be human.”

“
Humans are weak. They’re afraid of us. They would want to use us,” he said, totally unaware of the irony.

“
Well, humans are my friends. My family....”

“
Would kill you if they knew what you could turn into.”

That was my point exactly. I didn’t want to be a threat. I didn’t want to force the people I loved into having to defend themselves against me.

“
There must be some kind of a . . . cure for this.”

“
A cure! You’re not ill.” He flickered back into visibility then. Anger made his powers fluctuate, I realized. He wasn’t as in control as he thought.

I knew him. I was sure of it. That face. So familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on how.

“
You’ve been brainwashed,” he continued. “The Ink Mages want you to think you’re a monster. They want to control you. It doesn’t have to be that way. You can be free. Eventually they’ll think you need to die, for some small indiscretion. We need to destroy them before they destroy us.”

I stared at him in horror. “You think I will agree to kill the Ink Mages?”

“
Yes. They’ll never accept us. I see that now.”

I thought of Margot and knew he was right. But attacking them only proved her right. “No. I won’t do it.”

I turned to walk away and heard him step in front of me. “You have no choice. Join me or die.”

I heard the sound of a switchblade flicking open in front of my face, but I couldn’t see it. I threw myself back onto the ground and scrambled away, not knowing where the knife wielding manic was in the dark and aware he could see me.

I stood to run and strong arms grabbed me, holding me pinned.

“
What will it be?” he asked, his voice close to my ear. I couldn’t see the knife and that was worse than feeling it against my throat.

I could pretend to join him, but he would expect me to prove myself, to kill. I couldn’t do that. But I didn’t want to die here either.

I expected to feel the blade stab me at any moment. Would he plunge the knife into my stomach, or slit my throat? Not knowing was killing me.

My stupid tattoo remained dormant. I knew I could heal myself, but that wouldn’t be much use if he killed me quickly.

I heard the swish of the blade before I felt it, then screamed at the icy stabbing sensation in my thigh. The knife went in deep and he had to pull hard to get it out. It came out with a wet sucking sound. Then warm blood flowed onto my pants.

I tried to stem the blood flow but it gushed over my hands. Even if he didn’t stab me again, I’d probably bleed to death.

“
Would you like another demonstration?” he asked. I doubted I’d survive the next one.

I ran, ignoring the shooting pain it caused in my leg and the blood pouring out. I saw moving lights and ran toward them. My vision spun from shock and loss of blood and the lights circled around my head. As I got closer the lights resolved into circular tunnels. I was feet away from a busy highway. If only I could reach the road, I could flag someone down. My good leg caught on something and I struggled to pull it free. Then I was going backward. He had hold of me, dragging me away from the road into the ditch.

I kicked out with my wounded leg, screaming as pain exploded from the wound. A cry behind me told me my kick made its mark. I scrambled up the bank with every ounce of remaining strength.

Stumbling onto the tarmac, I stood in the middle of the road. Too weak to flag down a car, I just stayed there, hoping I wouldn’t get run over.

A car raced toward me, horn blazing. It swerved to avoid me, narrowly missing. Several more beeping cars drove around me. Until one finally stopped.

I collapsed.

“
Lucy?” Nick’s face loomed above me. Then I blacked out.

Coming to, I felt myself being laid out in the back seat. Someone tugged at my pants, and I groaned when the jeans scraped my wound. I panicked for a moment, wondering why someone was undressing me. Then I remembered Nick and everything went black again.