Nightmare Ink (11 page)

Not his.

The masculine murmur inside Isa’s head dwindled in the confusion of flashing lights, shouting, and gloved hands checking her pulse and her blood pressure.

“Hey, can you hear me? I’m here to help, okay?” Male voice. Young. Overloud. He wrapped something unyielding around her neck. “What’s your name?”

She wanted to shout back that until now her ears had been the only uninjured part of her body.

“Isa Romanchzyk,” Troy answered.

“You her SO?”

“She’s a friend.”

Enough of a friend that he’d come out in the cold and rain to search for her when he should have been home with his wife and brand-new baby boy.

On a three count, the owners of those hands rolled her onto a backboard. She managed to straighten her legs. That seemed to encourage them and the loud one went on talking, trying to elicit a response she couldn’t muster the strength to give him. He secured her to the board with straps, even immobilizing her arms.

She was a prisoner. Again.

Ice rushed through her veins. She whimpered, and her passenger rolled like an uneasy swimmer in deep water, abrading her bones from the inside.

Freedom
, he murmured.

His protest knocked a tidbit of information loose inside her head. It careened out of conscious reach before she could catch it.

A sting in her left arm made her and the creature sharing her body flinch. Her hand tingled. It grew to a throb that seemed to echo the unsteady ping of her heart.

“All right, Ms. Romanchzyk,” the loud voice said. “We’re going to Harborview, okay?”

Her brain kicked. Something important she should remember.

More sirens approached.

“Looks like police!” Oki called.

“We’ll wait for Detective Corvane,” Troy said, “and meet you there.”

A swarm of people clad in blue surrounded her when the ambulance crew brought her into the emergency department. Medical personnel lobbed questions at the crew, who caught them and tossed back answers.

Again, the annoying buzz of something she should recall sounded inside her head. And she had it.

“No drugs,” Isa tried to say. Nothing but a croak emerged.

“I know you hurt,” a woman said. “We’ll get you something for pain in a few minutes.”

She had to make them understand. Pressure mounted in her chest.

“No drugs,” she mouthed over and over.

The nurse undid the straps holding Isa down while “X-ray, CT, and labs” winged through the air above her.

She closed her eyes.

The entity sewn into her skin, still weak from his introduction to her flesh, flashed on an image of being stuffed into too small a space. He struggled, weak against the current of unconsciousness, pulled down a split second before Isa slid beneath the dark water in his wake.

The nightmares began.

She was confined, encased in something far too small and rapidly shrinking. Bones snapped as she screamed, as the prison reshaped her natural form, breaking off bits and constricting around her like a starving reptile. No matter how she fought, no matter how she shrieked in rage, she couldn’t escape. She was trapped, imprisoned for eternity.

She woke herself screaming.

Harried-looking personnel filled the room.

Breathing as if she’d run a long way, she closed her mouth so fast her teeth clacked together.

“Jesus, Ice,” Nathalie rasped from somewhere near her feet. “You scared the shit out of half the hospital.”

Nathalie was here? How long had Isa been out?

“Are you in pain?” a male voice demanded from her left side.

The tattoo floundered inside her skull as if trying to shake free of the sticky tendrils of nightmare.

“Talk to me, Ms. Romanchzyk. Where do you hurt?”

Memory poked her. She had to tell them before they killed her and the tattoo.

“No drugs,” Isa said. “No drugs.”

“What?” the man working at her side said.

“What is she saying?” Nathalie asked at the same time.

“Now that we have some of your blood work back, I can give you something for pain, okay? Just enough to take the edge off,” the man at her side said. “Here you go.”

She tasted salty chemicals. Medication.

Shadowy magic poured strength through her.

“No! No drugs,” she cried, bolting upright through no will of her own.

Tearing pain shot up her left arm as the IV catheter tore free.

A syringe clattered to the floor.

Multiple voices swore.

Gloved hands took hold of her, urging her to lie down, to let them help. Restraining her. The two of them.

Hot, bitter-tasting rage burned the back of her tongue.

The partial dose of pain meds dulled the constant throb in her hands. It also smeared the edges of her personality and her will.

Multiple alarms shrilled.

She couldn’t get her breath. Black ire hooked a claw into her consciousness and slung her out of the driver’s seat of her body.

Her awareness slid down the inside of her skull. Confused, she turned to swim against the ebony tide pulling her down. Inky bars blocked her way to her control center. This wasn’t unconsciousness or sleep.

While she couldn’t control her body, she heard the shouts. She knew she was moving, fighting for escape.

For freedom.

Daniel’s creature had taken over. No different than Daniel kidnapping her. Rage exploded into hatred. Her rage. The tattoo’s hatred.

No.
The bars imprisoning her in the recesses of her head shuddered.
No. Let go. Get off!
The shadow magic shattered. He spiraled through the inside of her, an evil moth that had battered itself to tatters against a lightbulb.

As if that lightbulb popped, Isa burst into full possession of her mind and body. From her hands waves of pain beat against oddly renewed strength.

Grim-faced security guards, their noses bloody, pinned her to a bed while a pair of men in scrubs strapped her down. Again.

She was pinned to the table like an insect to a card. Her breath came in audible sobs. She grappled for command of that and of the adrenaline tremors in her limbs.

“Secure,” one of the nurses said.

The guards eased their weight off of her slowly as if she might tear through the ballistic nylon holding her. They retreated from her line of sight.

“All clear, Doctor Yammani. Thank you for your assistance, gentlemen,” one of the men said before footsteps trooped away.

Pulling in a breath, Isa held it, and then let it out in a slow stream in an effort to coax her too-rapid heart rate lower. This wasn’t Daniel, she told the lead weight lump of panic in her gut.

A young woman, her curly black hair cropped short, came to look her in the eye. “How are you feeling?”

“Scared,” Isa said. Her voice wobbled. “The guy who did this kept me tied.”

“We can tell by the marks on your wrists,” she said. “I’m—”

“Who?” a man demanded. “Who did this?”

She knew that voice. “Steve?”

Frowning, she lifted her head.

Looking haggard in a rumpled white button-down and wearing at least a day’s growth of beard, Steve leaned against the wall, sporting a busted lip. Relief broke over his shadowed expression as he met her eye.

Troy stood beside him, a cold pack held to his right eye.

Isa frowned. “What happened to you guys?”

“You did,” Troy said.

She dropped her head back to the pillow. “Sorry.”

“You’re not the first,” Troy replied.

“Who did this to you, Isa?” Steve repeated.

“I’ve already told you who,” Nathalie said from Isa’s right side. When Isa looked, Nathalie stood in the doorway scowling.

Oki hung behind her, uncertainty pinching the skin between her brows.

“I can’t get a search warrant based on dreams,” Steve retorted.

Isa lifted an eyebrow.
What dreams?

Nathalie wouldn’t meet her eye.

“I need a name.” Steve had tried to press his voice into his usual cool, businesslike tone. Suppressed rage roiled up through his words anyway.

“Daniel Alvarez,” Isa said.

“Goddamned bastard,” Steve gritted. He didn’t sound surprised.

“Told you,” Nathalie muttered.

For a moment, Isa saw the glimmer of lavender fairy fire surrounding Nathalie. Was that enough magic to account for prescient dreams, if that’s what had been happening?

“Here,” Doctor Yammani said. She raised the head of Isa’s bed.

“Thanks,” Isa said.

“You seem much calmer, Ms. Romanchzyk,” she noted.

“I am. Will you undo the straps?” She met the woman’s searching gaze. “Maybe turn down the lights? He never shut them off and . . .”

“I can do that,” the doctor said, flipping switches until only a single light above the tiny sink shone. “But I can’t release you. I’m sorry. One of our psychiatrists is on his way to evaluate you. It will be his call. What happened?”

“Live Ink happened.”

“What?” Troy and Steve barked.

“Damn it,” Nathalie bit out. “I told you!”

Interest brightened the young doctor’s gaze. “Your tattoo is alive? And we tried to give you pain medication. I’ll put a note in your chart. We won’t make that mistake again.” She shook her head. “You were in bad shape when you came in. Now, you’re not. Did you know you tore out your IV and fought off a legion of personnel?”

Dark leather wings rustled inside Isa’s skin. Satisfaction not her own twisted her lips. Her Ink-based Mr. Hyde co-opting her motor control.

A lightning bolt of fear struck through her psyche. It split open her insides as if her awareness were the wood of an old oak, bright and green on the outside, rotten and fragile at the core.

It wasn’t blood that oozed up from that crack in her sense of self. It was Ink. Live Ink. With intent and malice and an unknowable, alien thought process of its own.

“You healed, Ms. Romanchzyk,” the doctor said. “I came in to bandage your arm. There’s no sign you ripped out the catheter, not even a bruise.”

“But my hands . . .”

The Ink laughed through Isa’s mouth, and in his amusement she glimpsed his intent.

The doctor shrank back.

Clenching her teeth, Isa wrested control from him, then said, “He healed me so I could fight. He values freedom.”

“Not ‘he.’ ‘It,’” Oki corrected. “Why didn’t it heal your hands?”

“He healed the rest of my body because he needs it. The pain from my hands is meant to erode my will. He was put on me to steal my magic and kill me.”

And Daniel had spent six weeks shattering her hands to condition her to shrink from using magic. Was that what this was about? If he didn’t want her working with magic, then with every breath she had remaining, magic was what she’d do.

Steve and Troy swore.

“I take it that failed?” the doctor surmised.

Isa shook her head. “No. It simply hasn’t happened yet.”

“Of course it failed,” Nathalie insisted. “You survived the inking! That’s the hardest part.”

Everything Isa hadn’t known about the possibilities of Live Ink constricted around her chest.

“How do we prevent it?” the doctor pressed.

Isa shook her head. “If I could bind the tattoo, I could destroy it. For that, I need my hands.”

“Can someone else do the work?” the doctor pressed.

“She’s the only Live Ink artist we know of who does binds,” Troy said.

“We’ll have to fix your hands then,” the doctor said.

Isa nodded, expecting some comment from her new roommate. She didn’t get one.

Apparently, he understood kill or be killed. Why did that make her suddenly reluctant to destroy him the moment she was physically able to do so?

The doctor shifted closer. “Our orthopedic team is the best on the West Coast, if not in the nation. We’ll get you back to work. You’re right-handed?”

Not trusting her voice, given the burn behind her eyes, Isa nodded.

“Excellent. I can’t promise it’ll be like nothing ever happened,” the doctor said. “That may be outside our power.”

Egotistical—
Isa’s alien shadow added a word or a concept that didn’t translate in her head. The contempt, however, did.

Meaning he could make it like nothing had ever happened to her hands?

Ask. No. Beg.

“You belong to Daniel,” she said inside her head. “If I have to ask the price, I can’t afford it.”

I belong to no one,
he growled
.
Dark rage scorched the inside of her skin and bones.

If the tattoo could heal her with magic, what kept her from using magic to heal her injuries?

Don’t bother. You won’t live that long.

“Then neither will you,” Isa snapped.

“I’m sorry?” the doctor said. She looked confused.

Heat crept into Isa’s face. She’d answered the tattoo aloud. “Complex internal dialogue.”

Nodding, the doctor rounded the end of the bed and said, “I’m going to call the orthopedic surgeon. We clearly need to set up an aggressive program to get you ready for surgery.”

She quit the room.

Silence stretched tight.

Troy lowered his cold pack. His right eye had already started to blacken. He cast a guarded look between Isa and Steve. “Find anything?”

Steve shook his head. “We traced the back trail, but with the rain we didn’t get far. I’ve got trackers on it.”

“No one saw anything?” Oki said.

“Manufacturing and industrial part of town,” Steve said. “Not a lot of windows and nothing open in the middle of the night. If there were trucks or cars on the roads, no drivers called in.”

Troy grunted. “You get the answers you need here?”

“Enough to make a start,” Steve said.

The pair of them pointedly did not look at Isa.

“Good,” Troy said. He blew out a huff of breath. “I don’t want to have to protect her from you, too.”

Nathalie’s grin looked feral.

In that moment, Isa realized she’d stepped out of Daniel’s prison and into one she’d never known existed—the care of the people she hadn’t fully realized were her friends.

The creature attached to her hide hissed.

Steve’s cell phone beeped twice.

“Damn it. It isn’t me you’ll have to protect her from,” he said. He sounded weary. “Isa. Agent Macquarie is here. One of the marshals who brought the prisoner to your studio was killed a week ago.”

Isa’s heart thumped, and memories of her concerns prior to waking in Daniel’s prison rushed into her awareness. “The dragon?”

Steve nodded.

Already the rapid advance of high heels on polished hospital linoleum sounded in the hallway.

“If the guy’s been dead a week, what’s Isa supposed to know?” Oki protested.

Isa tensed as the agent strode through the door.

“Glad to have you back with us, Ms. Romanchzyk,” Anne said. Her words were fine, but her flat, dead tone suggested she wasn’t at all glad. She took in the straps securing Isa to the bed and smirked. “Your disappearing act let that creature you set free murder one of my agents.”

Did she expect Isa to go all defensive, protesting that she would have preferred not having been kidnapped and tortured? Isa was too weary, the wounds were too recent, and it was too much like a bad TV drama script.

“Yes,” she said.

Troy bristled. “Lady . . .”

Anne’s brows lowered.

Steve stepped in front of him, talking fast and in an undertone so Isa couldn’t hear.

Muttering under his breath, Troy fixed Anne with a dire glare. He stomped out the door.

Nathalie and Oki followed.

The tattoo stirred, jabbing some ephemeral part of Isa with an elbow, as if either of them had the room to jostle for space.

Isa flinched.

He opened his eyes. Interesting that she could feel something like that—the fact that he’d reared up to join her in looking out of her eyes at the AMBI agent. He tightened her muscles as if preparing for another fight.

Barely a sentence exchanged and his assessment of Anne Macquarie matched hers. That they agreed on something didn’t reassure her in the least.

“Do you have any reason to believe that your kidnapping is related to my case?” Anne demanded.

“No.”

The agent straightened. Her gaze sharpened. She looked as if she wanted to carve answers out of Isa’s flesh. “Explain.”

“Daniel went to the smart evil mastermind school of villainy,” she retorted. “He wasn’t exactly forthcoming regarding his motives. If he was supposed to monologue about what he was doing and why, he didn’t get the memo.”

Steve groaned.

The tattoo sniggered.

Oh, good.
At least her snide response amused someone.

“I find it hard to believe he said nothing.” Anne’s voice rose.

“He spoke fewer than fifty words within my hearing. All within the first hour of my captivity,” Isa said. She’d memorized everything, the words he’d said, the way he’d said them. She’d had hours to pull it all apart, looking for clues, for meaning, for any reason for what he’d done.

“Anyone else?” Steve prompted.

The tattoo woke a memory of someone hosing her down as if she were an animal.

She cringed. But she couldn’t run from what she carried inside. Not with the tattoo taking such obvious pleasure in dredging up miserable memories of captivity.

An alarm sounded beside her.

Steve appeared at her side as if he’d teleported across the room. “Breathe, Isa. Whatever you’re remembering, breathe through it, okay?”

The tattoo laughed and prodded her recall until she felt the stinging chill of water numbing her skin beneath the blankets of her hospital bed.

“Damn it, Isa!” Steve gripped her shoulder. “Breathe!”

The panic in his voice reached through the overpowering sensation that she’d awakened in Daniel’s cage to find she’d dreamed her escape.

She hadn’t. She couldn’t have. Not even she was perverse enough to dream Anne into anything involving her.

Isa sucked in a shallow breath and let it go.

Footsteps stopped at her door, then entered. A tall, elegant nurse wearing a black headscarf strode to the monitor and silenced the alarm. “Officers, I need you to step outside.”

“No,” Isa gasped. “I’m okay.”

The nurse hesitated.

Isa pulled in another breath, deliberately drawing in air to a slow count of four, held it, then let it go.

The tattoo’s grip loosened.

“Good,” the nurse murmured, watching the monitor. “You’re not having trouble breathing?”

Not physically. She shook her head.

“Can you take another deep breath?”

She did. The sensation of stinging cold faded from her skin and nerves. Scratchy sheets and textured woven blankets weighed her down again.

“Excellent. No holding your breath,” she admonished. “If this alarm goes off again, I’ll call the respiratory therapy team. Those people are relentless.”

The nurse seemed to expect a response, so Isa twisted her lips in what she hoped looked like a smile. The nurse glanced between Anne and Steve.

“The doctor okayed your questions,” the nurse said. “But if you upset my patient again, that will change.”

“The subject matter is upsetting,” Anne said in a tone so smooth, so friendly, Isa did a double take to make sure it was she who’d spoken. “We need what information Ms. Romanchzyk can offer if we’re going to assure her safety.”

The nurse met Isa’s gaze and lifted a brow. “The room is under video and audio monitoring to assure your safety. Call if you need me. I’ll hear you.” She quit the room.

Isa laid her head back against the pillow and stared at the ceiling. “Sorry.”

“Want to talk about it?” Steve asked.

A derisive laugh kicked her diaphragm. She forced it down. “Not a chance. Look. No one spoke to me. I was an object.”

“An object?” Anne echoed. “Why?”

“I don’t know. I assume it was personal. Daniel and I were involved. It was a long time ago,” she said. “Before he changed. Before . . .”

“Before what?” Steve prodded.

She shrugged. “Before he snapped?”

The memory of Daniel at the police station the night the dragon had broken free edged up through the tattered shreds of her sense of self.

The tattoo inspected her recall.

They both jolted at the point when she’d caught a whiff of sulfur and the hint of something else looking at her from Daniel’s eyes.

Tattoo?

Isa had her passenger’s complete attention, felt his intense concentration and the loathing he tried to hide while he examined her memory of Daniel.

Oh, look
. Something else they had in common.

“Speculation,” Anne said, sounding impatient.

Isa started, then realized that Anne had addressed her last verbal comment, not the odd-feeling internal dialogue.

“And unless it relates to one dead material witness or a murdered agent,” Anne went on, “your kidnapping doesn’t interest me.”

“No. That falls squarely within SPD jurisdiction,” Steve rushed to amend.

“Both statements are true,” the tattoo and Isa said with her voice.

Isa flinched.

Anne recoiled.

“What the hell was that?” Steve said.

“We’re sharing one set of vocal chords,” Isa said, “and the Ink has a thing for saying aloud what should stay in his—in my head.”

Steve scowled at her.

“Neither of us is crazy about this, either,” Isa assured him while the tattoo sneered.

“You know what interests me?” Anne said, her tone rippling. “What I found when I ran your background.”

Blood congealed in Isa’s veins.

“Isa Romanchzyk isn’t the name you were born with,” Anne said.

The tattoo reared up, slamming his way into sharing her senses as Isa shook her head. She felt him rifling through her brain, digging deeper and deeper, looking for the pieces of her childhood she absolutely wanted him nowhere near.

“What was?”

“I don’t know,” Isa said, slamming walls into place, barring him from her past.

He growled with her vocal chords. That rocked the agent back. Her reaction seemed to please the tattoo.

“How old are you?” Anne asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Your real birthday?”

“No idea.”

Steve’s eyes widened.

“Do you know where you were born?”

“Nope.”

“Are you even an American citizen?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“I was adopted.”

“By?”

“Ruth Sinquah.”

Anne’s eyes narrowed as she studied Isa, trying, Isa could see, to work out the ethnicity of the name. Anne glanced over her shoulder.

Steve spread his hands wide. “Don’t look at me. This is the first time I’ve heard any of this.” He sounded annoyed by the fact.

Anne looked back at her. “Where will I find this Ruth Sinquah?”

“You won’t,” Isa replied. “But you’ll find record of her in Arizona. Check with the Navajo Nation.”

“Navajo?” Steve echoed.

“You’re Native American?” Anne asked, looking her up and down.

“I don’t know what I am,” she said, “but I’m not Navajo, not genetically. I could have been adopted from another tribe. I could be Latina. I could be black Irish.”

“How old were you when you were adopted?”

She shrugged. “The local doctor guessed I was between five and eight years old based on my size and the fact that I’d lost one baby tooth.”

“You don’t remember anything about your birth family?”

Nothing that she intended to pull out into the light of day for Anne or for Daniel’s creature to shake like a dog with a toy.

I am NOT his!

“Then stop playing Indiana Jones in my memories,” Isa commanded internally.

They’re mine now. You’re merely borrowing.

“All right,” Anne said. “I’ll find paperwork filed with the tribal court for your adoption?”

“Yes.”

Anne’s gaze tried to pry into her head. Isa was impervious to her, but not to Steve’s concern-furrowed brow. That sliced straight through her chest.

“Anything else I can help you with, Agent?” Isa prodded.

“Get your ass out of this hospital and destroy that monster you freed before it kills again,” Anne commanded, her stare a clear challenge. She spun on the heel of her polished navy pumps and stalked out of the room.

The tattoo watched through Isa’s eyes as Agent Anne Macquarie departed.

Isa’s muscles went limp and she dropped her head back against the pillows as the tap of Anne’s footsteps dwindled.

“Can I take out a restraining order against the AMBI?” Isa asked of the ceiling.

Steve snorted. “You’d be trampled by the stampede to the courthouse if you could. Navajo, huh?”

“It was a long time ago, Steve.”

“Isa. No. Never mind. When you change a name, it’s either because you don’t want to remember or because you’re hiding from someone. Tell me it’s not the latter.”

“It wasn’t,” she said.

“Fine. The rest of it you can tell me when you’re ready.” He went to the door.

Scowling, Troy, Nathalie, and Oki crowded into the room.

“I’ve got a uniform on the door,” Steve said, “but I want one of you here with her at all times.”

“Right there with you,” Troy replied.

“I’m going to see a judge about a search warrant.” Steve walked away.

Relief made Isa weak. Good. She could pick up the pieces of her life and let the law handle Daniel.

The damned thing on her skin chuckled. It sounded condescending.

Oki followed Steve out the door.

“Take me to the apartment?” Isa heard her say. “I’ll stay with . . .” Her voice dwindled as their footsteps receded.

A pair of nurses bustled into the room to put in another IV, saying she’d feel even better once she’d had another bag of fluids.

She was watching liquid drip when the psychiatrist turned up.

“I’ve been updated. I understand the tattoo is Living,” he said. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“Someone gave me pain medication.”

“Which is bad in cases of Live Ink, yes,” he said. “But I meant what set the Ink off?”

“People were trying to hold me down. He doesn’t like being restrained.”

The man chuckled. “That didn’t work out, did it?”

She didn’t find it amusing.

He ordered a bright red
LIVING TATTOO
warning banner for her chart and unbuckled the straps.

“Keep that tattoo under control,” he warned, “or I’ll order a seventy-two-hour psych hold in our containment unit. Then that tattoo will comprehend the real meaning of involuntary restraint.”

The tattoo snarled.

Apparently, it showed on her face, because the psychiatrist winked as he walked out of the room.

Even the orthopedic surgeon showed up. She examined Isa’s hands, injected a local numbing agent, set the bones that could be set, and then splinted and wrapped Isa’s hands as much to protect them as to help them heal. She assured Isa she could do surgery under a local, but it wouldn’t be easy. As a result, she scheduled her for mid-April, insisting that Isa recover some of her lost weight before then.

Within twelve hours of the time Isa had come through the emergency room doors, the doctor discharged her.

Steve and Troy appeared as if summoned, Steve bearing a bag of Isa’s clothes.

“I want you under police protection,” Steve said, handing the bag off to Nathalie.

“No.” The tattoo and Isa said with her voice.

Her friends flinched.

Steve recovered first. “Isa . . .”

“I didn’t walk out of Daniel’s prison so I could march into yours!” Just her in her voice that time.

Troy’s lips went thin and white.

Unless Daniel had let her go.

Not on purpose,
the tattoo murmured.

“You escaped?” Steve said, nodding. “I need to know more about that.”

Damn it.
“Try manipulating me for information like that after I’m dressed, Detective,” Isa said. “I’ll stomp on your toes.”

His brows lowered. The muscles in his jaw bunched.

“Let’s take a walk,” Troy said to him. “This isn’t the time or the place, man.”

“Daniel is still out there,” Steve snapped. “When is?”

“I’m getting dressed,” Isa said, shifting around to put her feet over the side of the bed. “You can stand there and watch or you can hit the hallway.”