Ink (31 page)

I will not get sick. I have to end this.

He struck out again with the glass, striking the griffin’s furred foreleg, and another wound opened up on his own forearm. Fresh blood spilled down his arm in a crimson waterfall. The griffin roared again, and reached out one impossibly large talon. It grabbed the glass from Jason’s hand and waved it back and forth, like a mother scolding a naughty child, then it slipped back into his skin, taking the glass with it, in a rush of wind and foulness. Jason’s ears popped, and he fell flat on the floor. The smell of fur and blood and filth whipped around, and gray spots danced in front of his eyes as the light of his kitchen faded and dimmed. Jason had one last thought before he gave in to the gray.

I can’t kill it.

2

Bright lights. Pain. Cold liquid under his cheek. Warmth on his leg and arm. Burning in his shoulder. Jason couldn’t open his eyes. The lids were too heavy. He wanted to sleep, sleep and forget, way down deep in the darkness. The darkness wanted to take him in, wrap its arms around him, and fold him into its shadows. No talons existed there. No foul stench of matted fur. Only safety and warmth.

“You have to wake up.”

His father’s voice. Commanding. Strong.

Stronger than I am. Stronger inside and out.

“Now.”

Jason sighed and opened his eyes. He pulled himself up to a sitting position, groaning aloud. Night had fallen. Blood, water, glass, and grayish-green

griffin blood, Frank blood

fluid colored the floor in a chaotic swirl of grim modern art. Jason shifted and pain seared his arm. Fresh blood trickled down his right shoulder. Shards of glass were stuck to his jeans. He tugged them out one by one, wincing when he removed the pieces pushed deep enough through the fabric to pierce his skin. He pulled the long shard out of his ankle with a grunt.

Jason stood up slowly, trying to keep his feet away from the glass. A wave of dizziness slipped in, and he leaned up against the sink until it passed. His left arm hurt, the tattoo hidden behind a dried film of blood and dark fluid. A vile, sickly stench hung in the air. He turned on the tap and closed his eyes, listening to the rush of water.

Once the water in the sink ran warm, he held his hands under the faucet, wincing at the sting. The water washed away the dried flecks of blood, revealing cuts on his palms and fingers, several already clotted shut, others leaking tiny, teardrops of blood. He soaked a handful of paper towels, wiped the blood away from his right arm, biting his lip to keep silent, and tossed the mess in the sink. Dark pink water ran down the drain. More paper towels, more warm water. The pile of paper towels turned into a mound, and watery trails of blood streaked the bottom of the sink.

When he’d used up all the paper towels on the roll, Jason turned off the water and grimaced. The wound on his shoulder gaped open, deep enough for stitches

not going to happen

but not deep enough to reveal muscle or fat. The ragged edges reminded him of the blade of a serrated knife, although neither knife nor glass made the cut. The inside of the four-inch gash gleamed pale pink with a line of dark at the center, oozed a snakelike trail of blood and burned like fire. The wound should not even be there at all. The cut on his forearm, not as deep

No, because I cut through fur and skin. The wings are more fragile.

seeped sticky, clear fluid and stung like a bad cat scratch. The edges appeared even more jagged, though, the shake of his hand apparent in its shape.

“What are you going to do now?”

His father’s voice again.

“I don’t know, Dad.”

How many more would the griffin kill because of its monstrous rage? Its hunger? He couldn’t let it live, but he couldn’t kill it, not without killing himself.

Jason went upstairs and put bandages on his palm and fingers. When he put antiseptic ointment on his forearm, the wound cried out in protest; he ignored it. He covered it up and stared at his shoulder. More blood leaked out of the wound. He pulled the edges as close together as he could and slapped on a few butterfly bandages. With a shaking hand, he covered it with a gauze pad and wrapped tape around his arm, then used a washcloth to wipe away the gore on his left arm, the thick smell of the griffin’s blood making his eyes water. Finally, clean skin emerged. The wounds from the griffin’s talons were red around the edges, the only color on his arm. The rest of his skin was clean, pale and unmarked.

Frank was out again.

The dizziness rushed back in, and Jason stumbled toward his bed. He had one last thought before everything fell away—he hoped like hell the kid had listened and was safe and sound inside his house.

3

Jason dreamed of the white room, but it had changed. The heat in the air seared his lungs with every breath. Some strange perfume, dark and flowery and alive, kissed the air. Whispery voices drifted out from the walls, and when he looked behind him, he saw the outline of hands pushing from the inside. A song, sad and mournful, played only a little louder than the voices. A tall figure stood in one corner, hunched at the shoulders. A dark suit, crusted with dirt and other foul things Jason couldn’t name.

“Dad?”

The figure turned with a wet, rattling noise. His father, but not. Decay had turned the skin gray and yellow, bony hands gleamed white below the jacket sleeves, and the cheeks were drawn, the lips pulled back from the teeth in a grimace. The not-father sighed, and the horrible smell of rot reached out across the room. The jaw moved, the mouth worked, but no sound emerged. When it found its voice, the words emerged thick and moist.

“You didn’t read the fine print.”

Then it raised its arm. The finger bones clattered together as it pointed. Jason turned his head. A black curtain hung in a doorway, swaying in a hidden breeze. Movement behind him. A creak of plaster. And hands pushed Jason’s shoulders forward.

“What’s in there?” he asked.

His father merely held out his arm in nightmarish silence. Jason took slow steps across the room. As he drew closer to the curtain, the heat grew. Beads of sweat burned in his eyes and trailed down his back. When he reached the curtain, he glanced over, but the not-Dad was no longer there. A dark suit lay puddled on the floor with a pool of yellow, viscous liquid seeping out beneath the fabric.

Jason pushed aside the curtain and stepped forward into chaos. A wave of scalding heat and roiling gray smoke washed over him, blurring his vision and filling his lungs. Screams, a dozen, a hundred, a thousand, filled the air. He tried to step back because he didn’t want to see, didn’t want to know, but the curtain no longer existed. A wall, a brick wall, stood in its place. The smoke swirled around him, long tendrils touching, tasting, his flesh, rising up from the chasm in front of him—a deep, horrible pit with moving walls.

Oh God, they’re not walls.

Writhing, twisting figures lined the chasm. Bodies, raw and bleeding, with mouths open in grimaces of terror as dark flames of red and orange licked at what remained. The smell of smoke, ash and cinder filled his nostrils. He opened his mouth to scream; the sound disappeared into the voices.

So many of them.

They grew louder. Too many voices, blending together in sorrow, pain and bitterness.

“Please, help us.”

“We didn’t know.”

“He tricked us.”

“No way out.”

“He lied.”

“Father of lies.”

“No way to undo it.”

“Don’t sign it.”

A million faces stared up at him from the chasm. Screaming faces.
Skinless
faces. One face swam up to the top. A vile, inhuman face, smiling amid the horror. Sharp cheekbones, pitted flesh and a mocking smile.

“You’ll be here soon enough, boy. Don’t worry.”

The mouth opened and laughter bubbled up, louder than the voices, louder than everything. The flames brightened and revealed walls rising impossibly high around the pit. And hanging on the walls, like empty shells, were faces and limbs and hair. Smoke swirled around them and sent them moving, swaying back and forth with a slippery, wet slither, hanging like coats in a closet.

But that’s what they are. They
are
coats. Human coats. Skin coats. No, this is not real, not real, not real.

He turned and pounded the brick until his hands bled. His screams were nothing compared to the laughter. It wrapped around him and echoed in his ears. A voice, thick with foul humor, rose up over the others. “Had a girl and she sure was fine,” it sang. “She was fine, fine, fine.” The words dissolved into more laughter. Jason raised his hands and covered his ears but couldn’t block out the sound.

Let me out. This isn’t real.

The laughter went on. Tears coursed down his cheeks as he kicked and punched at the brick wall. He couldn’t get out, and the laughter would not stop. It would never stop.

“Make it stop, make it stop, oh God, make it stop.”

He sat up in bed with a lurch, instantly awake, whispering the words over and over again. Bright sunlight filled his bedroom, but it couldn’t take away the memory of the faces. And their words. When his voice turned hoarse, the words slid away, and he wiped his eyes. The pain in his shoulder burned. He pulled his hands away from his face and froze. Streaks of gray, dark and oily, crisscrossed his palms. Jason looked down and scrambled from the bed, holding in a shout between clenched lips.

A fine layer of ash covered his chest.

4

Jason didn’t go to work on Monday. His boss had called him three times. Brian, twice. The messages left by Brian held confusion and concern. Those left by his boss held irritation and outright anger. Jason turned his phone off. A jumble of images from the nightmare danced in his mind. He remembered voices and heat and smoke but what they said? Gone before he got in the shower. And something about coats…

“What was it, Dad? What were they trying to say?”

His father’s voice did not reply.

The ash, though. Nightmare or not, he could not deny its existence.

Just like Frank, and he came back, oh yes he did.

The gray film did not wash off easily; it coated the bottom of his bathtub with an oily residue. After his shower, he rebandaged his wounds and grabbed his car keys with a cold, rock-hard knot in the center of his chest. An alien thing, like the griffin, but needful. He’d hold on to the knot as long and as hard as he could. That knot (his Alpha knot) was the only thing in between his sanity and darkness. The only thing keeping him from crawling into a corner and covering his eyes like a child.

He drove to Fells Point and when he turned on Shakespeare Street, the knot loosened and threatened to uncurl, but he thought of his father, and after several deep breaths, it coiled again. He’d failed his dad in the worst possible way. He could never make it right, but even if he had to fake it…

I have to be strong. I owe it to my dad. I owe it to myself.

Once again, he found a parking spot. In Fells Point, parking was always an issue, but not on Shakespeare Street.
Never
on Shakespeare Street. He stood outside his car, staring up at the row of buildings for a long time. In the bright sun, the crumbling brick appeared faded, a dull pink, chipped and worn. Dusty windows concealed the interior of the café, the window of 1305 had a long crack at one corner, the For Rent sign tattered and torn and in between, the door for 1303 did not meet the frame evenly on all sides. Paint hung in brittle strips. The last number on the sign beside the door hung askew. Even in the sunlight, it appeared vile and wrong. Jason stepped up to the door, his hands in fists. This close, the red underneath the faded paint was pale.

Not fresh blood at all. But I am. I’m the fresh blood. The orderly-musician? Old blood.

The musician wanted the girl. He couldn’t have her, not for anything more than a stolen hour or two, so he got her tattooed on his arm. And then she…what? Came out and pressed those perfect pink lips on his skin? He probably thought he’d died and gone to heaven, until he saw the hand behind her back and the sharp steel it contained.

Jason grabbed the door handle and pushed. The door didn’t move. He pushed it again. The wood creaked and groaned but didn’t open. The street was empty. Deserted. He turned and pressed his left shoulder on the door and
shoved
. The door quivered. He shoved again. Paint flakes rained down on his shirt.

Come on, come on, come on.

He shoved again. The gashes from the griffin’s talons opened and warm blood ran down his skin. Jason swallowed the pain. The door moved, but the lock held. He stepped back from the door. Dark, wet streaks of blood gleamed against the paint. Jason wiped away a trail of blood seeping below his shirt, avoiding the tattoo.

Because it came back. Of course. Where else would it go?

The knot slipped, and Jason pulled it tight.

I’m not an Alpha, but I have an Alpha knot, so it’s okay. An Alpha-knot for an Alpha-not.