Inked Destiny

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, Etain,” 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,” Etain 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 Nortenos.”

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.

“Etain,” 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.”