Page 7 of Inked & Bloodbound
But I don’t have a family. Not anymore.
If they knew where I was—knew that I had been taken in like a stray animal by the rogues of the Sixth—they would hunt and eviscerate me. Tear my limbs from my body and scatter the pieces like confetti across the four corners of the earth. I intend to leave here before they come and find me.
But first I have to finish what I started with Beau Fontaine.
The trill of the doorbell cuts through the peace, and I crane my neck over the front desk to get a glimpse at the college kid in an oversized UT Austin sweatshirt who’s just ambled in.
“Yo, you guys open?” he slurs, spittle flying from his mouth.
“Tegan, you have a customer!” I shout.
My colleague, Tegan, has been flicking through a tattoo magazine on the other side of the shop. She lifts her head from the pages and rolls her eyes at me.
“Fine.” She presses her lips into a thin line. “But you’re doing the next one.” She shakes her head as she passes, loud fire-engine-red hair swishing down her leather-clad back. “You’re a lazy piece of shit, you know that?” she hisses before plastering on a sarcastic smile and leaning over the desk to examine the half-pickled patron.
“Woah,” the drunk says. “You’re like…really fucking hot.”
“I know, and you look like an unwashed asshole. What can I do for you, handsome?”
The drunk is bewitched by her, checking her out like she’s a pieceof meat. His drooling face slack-jawed and starry-eyed as she leads him to the back of the shop. He tries to flirt, like most men do, but she shuts it down. I’ve never tried. To flirt, I mean. She tested the waters when I first started here but gave up when I didn’t return the favor. Tegan is beautiful, but any woman who gets close to me is signing her own death warrant.
Even dead men cast long shadows, and mine has a habit of falling on anyone I care about.
When the drunk’s clumsy hands come within inches of Tegan’s tits, she grabs him by the throat, pins him to the couch, and threatens to ink the word “predator” into his forehead with her tattoo gun. After that, he sits like a rock and stays real quiet.
Tegan isn’t a vamp, but she’s tough and knows our kind well. In old-world terms she’s a familiar, but in reality, she’s one of a handful of humans tasked with running the shop during the day. Occasionally she does the night shift with me or one of the other vamps. We trust each other, I think. But I know she carries silver spray in her purse, and I sometimes see her watching me closely when I’m working on someone who’s bleeding more than normal.
The bell above the door chimes again, and I notice a pink-cheeked blonde in hospital scrubs hovering in the doorway like she’s not sure she wants to commit to coming inside. She’s carrying that nervous energy of someone doing a thing they’ve never done before—blue eyes wide and glassy, a pink phone case clutched in her fidgeting hands.
She’s captivating. Stunning in an ethereal sort of way—the kind of girl you take home to meet your mama.
Not mine obviously. My mother would destroy her.
There’s a luminescence to her. A glow that radiates like the morning sun on a warm spring day. Bathing everything in her brilliance.
She doesn’t belong in a place like this.
“We’re open,” I call out from behind the partition, instinctively softening the edge in my voice.
The frightened girl takes a tentative step toward the counter, herazure eyes darting around the shop before landing on me. “Hi, um, I was hoping to get a tattoo? Tonight, if that’s okay? I know it’s late, but?—”
“What do you need?” I say, moving into the fluorescent beam toward her. She takes half a step back when she sees me up close. “Are you looking for a custom design? Or do you want some flash? We can do anything on the walls for you.”
She shakes her head, then hesitates. “Actually, I have two things. First, I want a tattoo—laurel leaves like this.” She holds up a picture on the phone screen. “Nine leaves, not eight. For my mom.”
I study the image. “Nine leaves would look off balance. Better to go for an even number, like eight or ten, otherwise it’ll just look strange.”
She juts her chin out stubbornly. “No, it has to be nine. And I want it on my chest. Under my breast. Near my heart.”
When she saysbreast, I imagine them. Picturing her milky, soft skin with marbled veins running through it.
Fuck.
I drag my mind out of the gutter.
“All right, it’s your body. Your rules.” I pause, watching her fidget with her phone. “You said two things. What’s the second?”
Her demeanor shifts, becomes more clinical. “I’ve been seeing some people around with a specific tattoo—a stylized ‘6’ just like your shop logo. Same design, same placement.” She studies my face carefully. “Do you know what it means?”