Inked Destiny

Twenty-nine

Fire summoned Etaín as the three of them stood beneath the shower, a burn of it where the Dragon’s name lay camouflaged in the ink on her skin. “Get ready to move,” she murmured, closing her eyes and mentally traveling the path of the alliance bond.

Sssoo the Earth-bound Elf is yours as well. Your mother told me it would be so.

Another day perhaps she’d bargain to learn more about her mother, about her birth father, but there was already enough debt between them.

Yesss.

The Dragon moved and a scene unfolded at the edge of the shore, scrolling out in the wake of a ripple to become a pool table with a masculine arm lining up a shot. Movement sent the white cue ball forward to strike the blue-striped ten but it didn’t sink into the hole.

Turn lost. Roberto’s head lifted, providing Etaín with a panorama of the room.

Anticipated victory rushed into her at seeing his cousin Cyco and four others, at recognizing this place belonging to an uncle. She’d been in this room, played pool on this table. Only once or twice, but she recognized the furniture, the curtains, the old shag carpet. She could find this house.

“Got it,” she said, opening her eyes.

They left the shower, drying and dressing quickly.

Liam and Heath and Myk joined them at the sedan, informing them that Cage had taken Derrick and Quinn to his boat.

Myk straddled her Harley, an image straight out of an erotic fantasy with his long dark hair and masculine features. She gave both him and Heath general directions then got in the car.

A couple miles away from their destination she said, “Much closer and someone will tip them off and they might spook. I should get out here.”

Heath pulled to the curb. Behind them Myk rolled to a stop. Eamon’s hand tangled in her hair, forcing her mouth to his. “Take no foolish chances.”

“I doubt I’ll have the opportunity.” She welcomed his lips and tongue, lost herself in scent and heat and the promise of a future together, doing the same with Cathal before making herself leave the car.

Liam had already disappeared into shadow by the time she took the offered helmet from Myk and put it on.

She straddled the bike then rode around the sedan, the kisses like liquid sunshine in her belly, blending in with adrenaline and a little kick of fear to make getting this handled and behind them urgent.

She took a corner, turning into an alley almost immediately, glad it wasn’t cluttered with trashed furniture and bald tires abandoned there. The sedan followed and she felt the spell working like a bubble bursting against her back as the car disappeared from sight in her mirror.

Warmth spread through her in a rush of love. This was Lord Eamon bending, stretching, involving himself in human affairs.

She slowed at the end of the alley, waited for a car to pass in order to allow the sedan to stay right behind her. It was a clear shot to their destination.

She hadn’t known the address, but memory got her to the house. A subtle hand signal noted it for Heath though she passed it, doing a U-turn in front of a neighbor’s house then another U-turn before stopping, the delay giving the men time to park and leave the car.

She took off the helmet, making a show of shaking out her hair. She kept her face hidden to hinder recognition, bought time by giving the appearance of a woman wanting to look good before going to the front door.

Liam would be inside now, getting the lay of the land, counting, positioning himself to stop hearts if necessary.

That made her own skitter.

She got off the bike and headed toward the front door, a confident amble rather than a hurried approach. The whole point of this was to make it appear as if she went in alone, and make the tip she was a few minutes away from giving Ordoñes hot enough to act on immediately with a fugitive apprehension team.

She had someone’s attention, inside the house and from across the street. She felt eyes on her, as well as the unseen caress of a masculine hand along her spine.

A hard knock on the door brought a guy in his early twenties. “Yo, mamacita, who you looking for?”

All good humor until she answered “Roberto Jimenez.”

“Nobody by that name here.”

“Roberto!” she yelled. “Roberto Jimenez.”

He stepped out of the room that had the pool table in it. “Let her in, Cricket.”

Cricket complied, making a point to look up and down the street before shutting the door.

She walked toward Roberto, experiencing a shimmer of déjà vu with Cricket next to her. It was like stepping back into the dream of the slaughter, the two of them approaching the bar together. There was no mistaking the intangibles that made up a person’s presence.

“How’d you know I was here?” Roberto asked when she reached him. The boy she’d known wasn’t present in this man’s eyes.

“I’ve been asking around, trying to look up some of the people I used to hang out with. You know Vontae’s dead? He was killed in that shooting at the Curs hangout.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“You have time for a visit?

“Sure.”

“Check her for weapons and a wire?” Cricket asked.

“I’ll do it.” Roberto leaned the pool cue against the wall.

“Without an audience?” She made her voice husky and could have sworn she heard Cathal growl.

“Yeah, why not.” A jerk of his head sent Cricket down the hallway toward the room with the pool table in it. She strained to hear the clack of ball against ball but didn’t.

Roberto crowded closer. Like a lover until he grabbed her, slamming her against the wall, hand locked on her throat, gun jammed hard against her chest.

The space around her took on a deadly, waiting quality. The eyes on the palms of her hands blazed, a weapon she didn’t want to use if it meant the entirety of his memories would become hers, his life swallowed and made part of hers by a weapon she didn’t understand.

“Talk,” he said, putting weight behind the gun already digging into her. “Who else knows I’m here?”

Choices spun through her mind like a roulette wheel. An instant when the gun wasn’t pointed at her, when the accidental pull of a trigger wouldn’t kill her, was all her unseen companions needed.

She spat in Roberto’s face.

He reacted with violence, meaning to strike her with the gun but finding his arms held by men who seemed to appear out of nowhere. And then he sagged between Cathal and Heath, forced into sleep by Eamon, the gun dropping to the floor.

“Get it done, Etaín,” Eamon said, the heat in his voice and expression in his eyes making it clear she’d failed to follow his take-no-unnecessary-chances edict.

“The others?”

“Myk is capable of making someone lose consciousness. He and Liam have done what was required of them.”

“Might as well make this easier for the police,” Cathal said. “Let’s put this guy in the room with the others.”

He and Heath hauled Roberto down the hall, dropping him into a chair. Eamon allowed the air-cradled gun to fall onto the cushion.

“Moment of truth,” Etaín said, crouching, pressing her palms to bared skin. “Where is the gun you used to kill Vontae?”

His guilt touched her, the barest flicker of remorse, the hesitation caught in the nightmare. Where is the gun you used to kill Vontae?

And she saw it, had felt it pressed below her breast. He hadn’t even bothered to get rid of it.

Ballistics could do what her gift couldn’t do for the police, provide evidence admissible in a court of law. “Where’s the other gun you used at the Cur’s hangout? Where are the silencers?”

The answers came easily, including who had accompanied him, though she posed those questions so only a sliver of memory would be lost, and felt satisfied the guilty and their the guns were all here.

“The sedan won’t remain hidden for much longer,” Eamon warned.

She acknowledged it with a nod, but delayed to ask a final question, because she couldn’t leave without knowing. “Why kill so many people? Why did you invade the Cur’s handout?” Why?

She slid into his memory. Cyco was across the table from him, the two of them eating burgers. “The three Curs die,” Cyco said, “it sends a message that the rest of them don’t want to be moving stolen weed for the Norteños.”

Which three? she asked, delving deeper for the targets, recognizing the men by sight though she didn’t know them. And never would. They’d all been at the bar.

Time flowed again. Roberto said, “I got a better idea, let me get a crew together. Let me take a shitload of Curs out.”

Cyco laughed and she understood why he’d gotten the street name. “Trying to be like me?”

“Fuck no. I’m my own man.” But his desires weren’t hidden from her. He wanted what Cyco had, the name, the respect. He wanted to be a legend, like his cousin.

“You hit their hangout, you better make sure you kill Anton Charles and his brother, otherwise shit will go down.”

“It’ll be a clean sweep. Me and my crew might even top what you did in Mexico.”

“Going to take twenty-six bodies then.”

“When we get done at the bar, you’ll see them bringing out at least that many.”

It sickened her, made her burn with the need for justice. Vengeance. Sometimes there was little separating the two.

“Etaín,” Eamon said, a warning they needed to leave.

She used her gift like a knife, this time entering Roberto’s memories and excising the stretch of them from her arrival until the instant he fell to Eamon’s spell. She shivered doing it, remembered Farrell’s terror of her, the blanched fear she’d seen on other Elven faces at Aesirs.

When she stood, Eamon indicated Cricket with the flash of his hand. “Remove anything that will identify you.”

It bothered her that she felt no guilt doing it. But only because for an instant, she imagined herself back in the captain’s office, heard his condemnation, his accusation, calling the use of her gift an assault.

Mental rape. It could be.

The ends justified the means here, though she rubbed damp palms against her jeans. Felt the fluttering of her heart until Eamon’s hand at her back, joined by Cathal’s, served as a reminder she wasn’t alone in this, that she had two anchors to keep her from becoming a monster.

The inked bond was unique to the seidic, Eamon had told her. Maybe this was the reason for it.

Liam moved to where the man named Cyco lay in a half sprawl on the armrest of the couch. A case was open on the cushion next to him, revealing the weapon that might have killed any of their kind other than Heath. And Heath’s survival had been made possible by the chance warning of a magical artifact.

Time to test Eamon’s intended, to see if she was a Lady he would ultimately give his oath to. The choice was his in a way that didn’t exist for most who called Eamon Lord.

Liam placed his hand on the human’s chest, eyes meeting and holding the seidic’s.

Stop.

And the heart obeyed without protest, the exhalation of one final breath marking death.

“You’re Lady now,” he said in challenge. “Only by your command will I reverse what’s done.”

There will be challenges to come. Never doubt it.

Had Eamon known Liam’s intent? Guessed what he might do?

She glanced at Eamon and found his expression unreadable, though he said, “This is the price that comes of being involved in human affairs. You’ll face it repeatedly if you continue as you have in the past.”

“Meaning you’re not going to stop me?”

“Oh, I’ll try.”

Violence led to more violence.

And yet sometimes it ended it.

This was where the captain’s justice failed. Jailing men like Cyco didn’t eliminate their influence. Wouldn’t end the pain and suffering they were responsible for or stop them from creating more of it.

Her eyes met Cathal’s in a wordless reliving of the past, the moment she’d stayed his hand because she’d known what killing the Harlequin Rapist would do to him. “Maybe I’m too much like your father and uncle.”

He stroked her cheek. “Make your choice. It won’t diminish what I feel for you.”

“Let the police find him dead then.”

“Liam will remain here as a safeguard,” Eamon said, and the assassin moved forward, lifting his arm and pulling his shirtsleeve back to reveal a thin braid of gold. Her hair. And she understood how Liam could find her.

“Tricky,” Cathal said, admiration in his voice.

A spoken word accompanied by the touch of Eamon’s fingertip and the tether between her and the assassin burned in a flash of fire. “Let’s go, Etaín.”

She made the call to Detective Ordoñes in the alley after surrendering the bike to Myk, Cathal and Eamon at her side as if they couldn’t bear the separation.

“You’re sure?” Ordoñes asked.

“Positive.”

He thanked her and she pocketed the phone. Getting into the car, she said, “If we’re going to do much of this, we need some different vehicles. The sedan practically screams Feds!”

“Not happening,” Cathal growled.

She laughed at that. “Never say never.”

His lips curved as he pressed them to her neck. “I’m still a slow learner when it comes to you.”

“You’ve got hundreds of years now to master the subject,” Eamon said, a trickle of amusement in his voice.

Joy was a flower opening up in her chest. “Master the subject? In your dreams.”

“Surely a Lord is allowed them.” Eamon’s mouth brushed her ear. “Home, Myk.”

Home. It rang in her soul and heart like the chimes she’d heard before entering Aesirs that first time. Her hands curled around masculine thighs, desire returning, need both tidal wave and raging fire, what she had with Cathal and Eamon, pure magic.