National bestselling author Marcella Burnard’s first Living Ink novel, Nightmare Ink, was an “outstanding series starter.” Now she continues her “truly mesmeric and heart-stopping”* story of magical tattoo artist Isa Romanchzyk… After being kidnapped and forcibly Inked with a Living Tattoo named Murmur, Isa thought she’d survived the worst her enemies could throw at her. She was wrong. Murmur is walking around her world in someone else’s body, and without him, Isa is losing control of her magic. Then, in the middle of rush hour, a Live Tattoo comes off its host, killing over a hundred people. Isa discovers that Murmur’s nemesis, Uriel—a demon she believed defeated—is responsible. He’s seeking the power to force his way back into Isa’s world. If he succeeds, everyone Isa loves will be destroyed. There may be a way to stop him, but it will mean sacrificing Murmur—or herself…
Includes a preview of the Living Ink Novel, Nightmare Ink
Praise for the novels of Marcella Burnard: “Burnard is a genuine gift to the genre!”—*RT Book Reviews “A huge hit!”—Night Owl Reviews “Thrilling!”—USA Today bestselling author Susan Kearney
Marcella Burnard, author of Nightmare Ink, graduated from Cornish College of the Arts with the ever-practical degree in acting. She promptly made more money as a musician than as an actor, so it made sense that she switched to writing fiction for Berkley. Her first book, Enemy Within, won the Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice award for Best Futuristic of 2010. The second book in the series, Enemy Games, was released in 2012, followed by the novella, Enemy Mine, set in the same world, in 2012. She currently lives with her husband and their cats aboard a sailboat on Puget Sound, and writes full time.
Release date:
November 18, 2014
Publisher:
InterMix
Print pages:
360
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
Art saves lives, shining a light into the shadowed corners of the soul. Until it brushes you up against something best left in the dark.
***
Heat, wet and ripe with the scent of decaying plant material, constricted Isa’s ribs. It had no effect on the cold inside. Birds chattered unseen in foliage that did not reach into the plaza to shade her. Leaves rustled when spider monkeys shrieked and chased one another in conflict over a morsel of fruit.
She couldn’t look up, couldn’t turn her attention from sculpting blue pigment mixed with clay. The color was sacred, but the drops of her blood added to the mix ought to entice the gods to hear her supplication. The skin of her hands took on the stain of the material she worked as a plea to be made whole. To be made warm and human.
The flesh between her shoulder blades tightened as, around her, every last sound of life fell silent.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. It resolved into words that rattled her fragile bones. “Brother. A petitioner.”
Wind, laden with the sweet-sick reek of death, brushed exploratory fingers across her skin, testing, weighing. And found her unworthy.
Terror shot a scream into her throat. She clamped her teeth on it until she tasted blood.
Lightning struck. Frigid electricity exploded through her, outlining every fiber of her in cold agony, casting her into the hard-packed dirt.
***
“Holy shit, Isa,” a shaking feminine voice said. “What the fuck was that?”
Isa Romanchzyk drew a shallow breath, expecting pain and the stink of rotting flesh. She got neither. Frowning, she blinked her eyes open to stare at the exposed steel I-beams of her tattoo shop’s basement ceiling.
She’d been remembering how to paint on something other than a person’s skin. Therapy, her friends had said, to help her cope with having gotten rid of a Living Tattoo who’d wanted to kill her and take over her body for his own use.
How had she ended up on the floor dreaming of a jungle she’d never seen?
“Isa?”
She glanced at the stairway.
Cheri, one of Isa’s friends, teetered on a riser halfway down the stairs, uncertainty in her white-knuckled grip on the railing.
“I don’t know what that was,” Isa said. She shivered at the uneasiness skittering up her spine.
Cheri’s gaze flicked from Isa to the canvas still on the easel. Her brown eyes widened. She came the rest of the way down the stairs, slowly at first, then gathering speed like iron shavings attracted by a magnet. “My God, Isa. Is that what you’ve been working on? That piece is amazing.”
Piece? Isa sat up and looked. The blood rushed out of her head.
The canvas was half sculpture, half painting. Textured Maya blue clay hinted at tumbled-down pyramids. Red slashed the heart of the piece so it looked as if the canvas bled. Unsettling shadows and ripped shreds of black cloth—her sweatshirt, she gathered—had settled like vultures in the midst of the canvas. She remembered creating none of it.
“You certainly tapped into—something,” Cheri said. She shook her head and turned her back on the canvas. “Hey. Oki’s going-away party started. Can you leave this and come have a beer?”
“I think I’d better,” Isa mumbled. “Go on ahead. I’m going home first to change into clothes without paint. Or holes.”
Cheri nodded and started up the stairs. “We’ll be waiting.”
Isa scrambled to her feet and fled to the sink to scrub the drying blue clay from her hands. The clay washed away.
The Maya blue would not.
Even though Isa had agreed to put in an appearance at the party, she hadn’t intended to end up in a crowd. Certainly not a crowd of people comfortable inside their own skins.
Yet after turning tail on the inexplicable artwork in her basement to go change clothes, she stood in the early afternoon April rain outside the Tractor Tavern, staring at a sign plastered to the door that said PRIVATE EVENT. It sat atop a poster for her piercing artist—her friend—Nathalie’s band, Rage of the Raptors.
A guy in skinny jeans and a faded black sweater, with wisps of stringy blond hair poking out from beneath the knit cap pulled low on his head, came out the front door for a smoke. A guitar riff followed him out into the cold afternoon like a lost puppy.
Nathalie and Troy had invited her to Oki’s going-away party, and to the show, like they always had.
Isa had said no. Like she always had. Out of habit. Or self-pity maybe. Or was it out of self-preservation? She was a day late and a dollar short on that one. She should have known Troy would send his wife, Cheri, to haul Isa out of the basement of Nightmare Ink, the tattoo shop Troy, Isa, and Nathalie shared.
Isa had once wanted nothing more than to be normal. That possibility had gone up in smoke when Daniel Alvarez had kidnapped and tattooed her with Live Ink against her will. The tattoo had been designed to steal her magic, her sanity, and ultimately, her life. Instead, the tattoo she’d named Murmur and she had negotiated an uneasy truce. Then they’d stumbled on a way to give him what he’d wanted.
Freedom.
Daniel had tried to sacrifice Murmur and Isa. He’d ended up sacrificing himself and his Living Tattoo instead. Maybe she and Murmur had helped make that happen, sure, but it hadn’t gone well for them, either.
Daniel had died.
Murmur had ripped out her throat, taken over Daniel’s body, healed it, and then healed Isa.
Now Murmur was gone. Free.
Isa should have been relieved. Yet three weeks after the fact, she could still taste the smoky caramel of their first and last kiss. And she craved him in ways she’d never imagined were possible.
Within her psyche, an ice-cold razor traced the outline of where Murmur had been. Isa shivered. Driven by longing for something she couldn’t have and shouldn’t want, she went inside. A young woman glanced at Isa’s ID, checked off a list, and nodded.
A simple, sweet melody rang from a single guitar on a darkened stage. A scent that seemed to be a combination of sweat—the kind from exertion rather than nerves—and alcohol hung in the air.
Sound resonated through her as if her barren soul had no further purpose but to vibrate in sympathy with Nathalie’s guitar.
Lights exploded on, aimed at the stage.
The tiny audience roared.
All four women on stage picked up the strand of melody and turned it into a pounding, driving beat.
Music and dancing bodies filled the room. A few people clung to stools and their drinks, tapping their feet or swaying in their seats.
Isa spotted Troy’s tall, broad-shouldered frame in the middle of the dance floor. It took another second of staring to find Cheri.
Hugging the shadows near the edges of the room, Isa looked for an empty spot where she could watch Nat’s girl band perform their brand of blues-y, angry white chick rock while Troy and Cheri danced.
Someone dancing beside them, black hair flying, stopped dead. She stood stock-still amid the gyrating throng and peered at Isa.
Glittering starlight magic brushed Isa’s cheek.
Oki Oshakagiri, the reason for the party. She’d used her power on Isa’s behalf, chasing down research rabbit holes and coming back with exactly what Isa had needed. Oki had caught the attention of the Imperial Order of Living Art in Japan. They’d recruited her.
Isa suppressed a groan. Not only was it her fault that Oki was leaving for Tokyo that evening, Oki had caught Isa lurking in the shadows.
Oki spun, gesturing as if she meant to flag down a naval carrier. Dancers dodged.
Troy stopped mid-bounce.
Cheri led the charge to Isa’s position. Troy’s diminutive wife had an explosion of curly brown hair and pale skin in a heart-shaped face that sported a spray of freckles across her nose and cheekbones. She hit maybe five foot four, but she cantered off that dance floor.
Isa had never seen anyone that small move so fast. She waited for Cheri to body check any of the dancers who weren’t quick enough to get out of her way.
“Isa!” she crowed. “Come on! We’ve got a table set up in the back. I’m going to get that beer.”
The song ended.
The crowd yelled and whistled approval.
Nathalie stepped up to a mike beside the bass player and added her voice to the lead singer’s as they started the next song.
“This way,” Troy said. The former bouncer turned tattoo artist played ice breaker through the enthusiastic dancers.
Cheri angled toward the bar.
Isa couldn’t do anything but follow in Troy’s wake. He led the way to a table tucked into a shadowed corner beside the bar where it couldn’t be a mortal danger to the people on the dance floor.
“This is it,” Troy said. “Let me get your coat.”
He took Isa’s rain jacket from her shoulders and draped it over an empty chair.
Oki grinned.
Isa sat and shifted so she could see the band.
Onstage, Nathalie waved. She’d dropped out of the duet. Grinning, she applied herself to the strings of her guitar, her eyes suspiciously red.
Isa had no idea how Nat could see her past the glare of the lights.
“One pitcher of porter and an extra glass,” Cheri announced, plunking the glass before her.
“Where’s Austin?” Isa asked.
“The ankle-biter, by which I mean my beloved son, is hanging with my folks,” Cheri said, “who, I discovered, have a bunch of my cast-off canvas. I’m not going back to painting. Since you are, I’ll bring you the canvas.”
Isa lifted her palms, stained bright, vibrant blue, for Cheri to see. “You’ve done enough, thanks.”
Cheri stared, then doubled over, cackling.
“That is so disturbing,” Isa said.
Oki grabbed one of Isa’s hands. “What the hell?”
“Maya blue,” Isa said, “a pigment someone sent Cheri. She wasn’t into it. And I’ve discovered it doesn’t wash off.”
“Cheri had me bring it to Ice when I mentioned Isa had taken up painting again,” Troy said between chuckles.
Wiping her eyes, Cheri sobered and filled Isa’s glass, then everyone else’s. She dropped into the seat next to Isa.
Troy picked up his chair, spun it so he could straddle it facing the stage, and sat beside his wife.
Oki took up position on Isa’s other side. “Thanks for coming, Ice! I didn’t think I’d see you again before I had to fly out.”
“I had no idea you guys had bought out the Tractor.”
“Only because we agreed to a Thursday afternoon,” Troy said.
“I know how this sounds, but who are all these people?” Isa asked.
Oki downed half her beer, then said, “Friends from the university, some customers. There’s Cynthia from the yoga shop. You know. People like you who wanted to see me before I fly off.”
Isa watched Oki polish off her beer and then reach for the pitcher. “Do you intend to be sober when you get on that plane for Tokyo?”
“Yes,” she said, after downing half of her second glass. “Have to be at the airport a couple of hours early. That’s enough time to sober up, right? I can’t face Mom crying anymore. Not sober.”
“I feel a little of her pain.” Isa grimaced. “It’s selfish, but who’s going to bring me California rolls?”
“Hey, if you cry, I swear I’ll dump what’s left of the beer on your head,” Oki said.
Cheri grabbed the pitcher. “Don’t you dare!”
“Your California roll is officially no longer my problem.” Oki grinned. “I’ll be able to dish up better stuff where I’m going.”
Nodding, Isa breathed in a slow, thin stream of air. It did nothing to stabilize the feeling that another chunk of the world was crumbling beneath her feet.
“The library of the Imperial Order of Living Art,” Isa said. “While it’ll be nice to have someone I haven’t pissed off in a position to look stuff up for me, I’m learning to hate change.”
Oki and Cheri laughed.
“Any wisdom for the departing student?” Oki asked. “Tell me the rules.”
“What rules?”
“Magic.”
Isa blinked. “I must have misplaced my copy of the rulebook. I didn’t think rules had been worked out in the past fifty to one hundred years that magic has been a thing.”
“But you do everything a certain way,” Troy protested.
“Sure. The way I was trained,” Isa said and looked around a circle of glum faces. “Okay. Maybe we start the manual of magic. My first rule would be: Train hard so you know your limits and your abilities. Find out what they are before someone else does.”
“Whoa,” Oki said. “That starts us right off on a paranoid note. I like it. What else?”
“Same rules as life, I’d say. Be a decent human being. Help people. Protect the innocent. Defend life. Respect death.”
“Now you’re writing a philosophy treatise,” Cheri said.
“I don’t think you could grow up with the three elders I grew up with and not,” Isa said.
“I was hoping for something like, ‘You’ll be able to find six unlikely things a day. After that hit the sake and give it up,’” Oki said.
“How many unlikely things have you found in one day?” Isa asked.
Oki wrinkled her nose. “I—It’s not like that. The expenditure of energy goes on for days while I loop down a spiral, circling ever closer to the thing I need. It’s like a lost kid, you know? Hiding and crying. I have to zero in on the crying.”
Isa sat back. “Congratulations. You’ve written your own first rule.”
“Hey! Great work.” Troy lifted his beer glass in toast.
“What are your rules, Ice?” Cheri asked.
Isa wanted to offer a flip answer. She couldn’t. “I wish I could tell you. It isn’t that I don’t want to. It’s that everything has shifted inside, and I can’t help thinking that the rules I’ve internalized and built my practice on were for a game that has changed in a way I don’t yet understand.”
The three of them stared at her.
Cheri put an arm around her shoulders. “It’s the aftereffect of losing your tattoo. It has to be. Your reality got turned inside out twice, first when Daniel forced that Ink on you, and then, second, when that Ink came off in the worst possible way. Give it time.”
“Maybe so,” Isa said. “If you don’t like the philosophy treatise as rule two, try this on for size. I was taught that magic is only as good as your concentration and focus. I don’t know if you can train to get more magic, I suspect every branch of the military is researching to find out, but I do know that concentration is a muscle. It can be developed.”
“It’s also the thing that can be drugged away, right?” Oki said. “That’s why Live Ink means no mind-altering substances.”
“Absolutely.”
“Is that rule three?” Troy asked.
“Specific to Live Ink,” Isa said, shaking her head. “This is a labyrinth, isn’t it?”
“A whole series of rulebooks? Applicable to different situations,” he said.
“Oh, no. I have a job.”
“We’d help you,” Oki said. “So what are the limits? When do you—does anyone—run out of magic?”
“For me, it was working with someone whose power doesn’t mesh with mine,” Isa said. “Nothing since has bled me dry faster or more completely than that.”
Troy grimaced. “Apprenticing alongside Daniel?”
Isa nodded. “It’s one of the many reasons I believed I was an idiot when I was an apprentice. I’d trained so hard on the reservation and then I got here and didn’t seem to have enough power to do Live Ink bigger than a postcard.”
“If you were an idiot about anything, ever,” Cheri said, “it was for dating Daniel past the point that it became clear he was trying to grow his power at the expense of yours.”
“Hindsight,” Isa said and lifted her beer. “Maybe that’s rule three. Don’t let anyone feed off of you.”
Her friends laughed.
The song ended, but the band dove straight into their next piece. Cheri drained her glass, rocketed to her feet, and held out a hand.
“Let’s go, you’re dancing!”
“Wait. What?”
Oki jumped up, grabbed her hands, and pulled.
Cheri, Oki, and Isa found a few inches of space on the floor, squeezed in, and danced. When Troy joined them, they won considerably more room. Nathalie even hopped offstage to dance with them at one point.
The physical exertion in time with the music didn’t drive away the chill plaguing Isa the way she’d hoped it would. Silvery frost, sharp and biting, traced the scars inside her again. In the middle of the crowded dance floor, uneasiness crept over her. The flesh between her shoulder blades tightened.
Power rose from her center like a dog lifting his nose to test the breeze. It yanked her around to stare at the eastern wall of the tavern. She scowled. “What the hell?”
A fist of multicolored, multivoiced magic slammed her. Ears ringing, she rocked and stumbled.
That was a magical scream for help if ever she’d heard one. Felt. Ouch. Gold surged to the underside of her skin, shoving away the bruising magic.
Oki slumped. Ashen, Troy grabbed her. She sagged, limp, in his arms. Troy helped her to a chair.
Dancers stumbled as people sensitive to magic registered the hit and either fell or fainted outright.
Nathalie fumbled a chord. The music crashed to a stop.
Isa’s cell phone buzzed in her back pocket. The faint strains of “I Shot the Sheriff” played into the silence, then died.
Onstage, Nathalie snorted.
Isa grabbed the phone. Maybe now that she was dating Officer Steve Corvane, head of the Seattle Police Department Acts of Magic Unit, she ought to change his ring and text tone.
911 where r u? Steve’s text said.
Isa frowned. Had Steve felt that hit? Or was whatever had caused it generating emergency calls to the police already?
Her heart bumped against her ribs.
Oki’s party. U were invited. Come on down, Isa answered, edging off the dance floor.
People were recovering. Nervous laughter and a few “I’m fine, just need another beer” statements signaled the return to normalcy.
“I’m okay,” Nathalie said from stage. “Sorry.”
The phone buzzed in Isa’s hand. Meet @ shop. 5 min.
Isa shoved the phone into her back pocket and grabbed her coat.
“Something just happened, didn’t it? With magic. And Steve expects you to help?” Troy asked.
She hadn’t heard him follow her. She nodded. “He’s issuing orders.”
Troy’s brow lowered. “Steve’s sense of self-preservation is usually better than that.”
“I—” She hesitated, not sure how to give voice to the uneasy frisson lighting up her internal scar tissue. “I’ve got to go.”
She tilted her head at Oki, who’d achieved her feet and was busy denying that she needed to sit down. “If she has any further trouble, get her to the containment studio and close the door.”
Troy frowned. “Rule four. Gotcha. Do what you have to. We’ve got your critters covered.”
“Thank you.”
She glanced at the stage.
Nat lifted her chin in one of those all-purpose gestures that could mean “all good,” “so long,” or “see you later.”
Maybe Isa wouldn’t change Steve’s ring tone. When her friends heard it, they knew she’d been summoned to consult for the Seattle Police Department’s Acts of Magic Unit. Isa strode out the front door into blinding afternoon sunlight. Typical April weather that couldn’t make up its mind.
At least one driver on Ballard Ave had been hit by the magic surge that had kicked Isa and Oki in the gut. The white minivan had swerved into the side of a parked car. People surrounded the vehicle. The driver pressed the heels of his hands into his forehead, as if still trying to drive dizziness away.
The block and a half to Nightmare Ink stretched long, even though Isa jogged it, dodging the people wandering between the shops and restaurants lining the avenue.
Steve wasn’t there yet.
Isa went inside, locked the door behind her, and clattered down the narrow stairs to the basement. She’d built her metal and basalt containment studio into the bedrock of the place so it could ground magical energy rather than let it escape out into the world the way that rainbow-hued fist had. Ducking into the dark studio, she grabbed a backpack she kept on a rack Troy had built beside the door.
Working as Steve’s Live Ink consultant, Isa had learned to keep a kit of all the things she might need at a crime scene packed and ready to go. She slung the pack containing Live Ink, stasis paper, and binding ink to her back.
Upstairs, the Nepalese goat bell tied to the door jingled. She’d locked that door. Someone with a key to the shop, then. Which, given her friends, didn’t narrow the field much.
Frowning, she glanced up the staircase. “Steve?”
“Nah.” Troy poked his head around the door at the top of the stairs and peered down at her. “You okay?”
“Yes. What’s wrong?”
“Nat. Oki and Cheri,” he said, flashing a grin. “Worrying.”
“You weren’t?” Isa asked as she climbed the stairs.
“I know when I’m outgunned, Ice.” He stepped aside and held the door open.
Smiling, she drew breath to comment.
A bolt of puce magic slammed through her sternum. It knocked the air from her lungs and set her heart to pounding. Tottering on the top step, she gasped. What the hell? Another one?
Troy snagged her gray-and-black jacket and yanked her into the lobby.
Gunfire. Two shots. Three. Near enough that the percussion wave rattled her bones.
Screams erupted from the street, the noise ghostly, filtered as it was through the brick, steel, and plate glass of the building.
Was this another wave of the initial strike that had hit at the Tractor? The magic didn’t look or sting in the same way. A single color dominated the attack, which was different. The first one had clearly been multiple cries for help.
This bolt had been an unshielded attempt to kill.
Chest aching, Isa dove for the front door. Innocent people on the streets would be as vulnerable to magic as to gunfire. She couldn’t do anything about bullets. She could interrupt a magical attack.
She barreled out onto the uneven sidewalk into the chilly spring breeze. At least the rain had stopped.
Red-brown power pierced her chest again, a spreading bloodstain of terror. Isa marshaled her magic, not to block the attack, but to trace it to its source.
Liquid gold, cold and bright as midwinter sunshine, rose from within to obey. She opened her etheric eye.
West.
Did consulting for the Seattle Police Department Acts of Magic Unit give her the obligation, not to mention the right, to respond? Or was that a matter of sheer human decency?
“Isa!” Troy yelled from the doorway.
Isa pulled up short and spun to face him. “Call Steve! Report the gunfire! Tell him unshielded magic attack!”
Maybe she hadn’t shielded, either. Troy jolted back a step when Isa met his eye. Hastily, she pulled her power back into the confines of her skin and bone and slammed a shield into place. Rule five: Shield.
Hands shaking, her business partner unhooked his cell phone from his belt clip and dialed.
Isa’s fingers curled on the strap of her brown leather backpack. She strode around the corner of the building. West.
Someone screamed. Sharp. Gurgling.
Her heart slammed into her ribs. Breathing too quickly, she risked twisting an ankle running downhill. Unconscious bodies slumped on the sidewalks. One or two were already recovering and stirring. Isa caught glimpses of pale, wide-eyed faces peeking out of the shops lining the street.
She picked up speed. Wrought iron fence posts, pointing at the sky, blurred past.
Cars littered Shilshole Avenue, still running, fenders dented, hoods crumpled, and in one case, radiator fluid dripping. A couple of drivers slumped behind the wheels. The few conscious drivers she spotted as she ran held cell phones to their ears.
She ducked between a pair of parked cars. Sunlight filtered through the patchy clouds showed through the tinted windows of a dark luxury SUV, illuminating the shadows of people inside.
As she darted between their car and the dented primer gray door of an ancient pickup, the hair at the back of her neck lifted in warning focused on the SUV.
What was that about?
Another flare of brownish-red magic rippled through the street.
No time to decipher the reaction to the four silhouettes inside the vehicle.
She found a stretch of asphalt not blocked by an accident and ran across the street to the gravel on the other side. She jumped the decrepit railroad tracks paralleling the shore of the boat canal.
A rising cloud of blue gun smoke directed her into the crumbling parking lot of a shuttered restaurant. Between the rows of parked cars, Isa spotted someone on the ground.
A huge, white bird, wings beating, swooped over the body.
Pausing in the dubious shelter of the parking rate sign, she renewed her shield and once more shifted her eyesight out of the ordinary into the etheric. Sunshine broke through fast-moving slate-colored clouds. The yellow rays slanted to earth, competing with the splashes, trails, and pools of other people’s magic.
The bird hit the person huddled on the ground with his arms wrapped around his head. It looked like an owl, save that it was the size of Gus, Isa’s forty-pound dog.
An agonized shriek followed the thud of flesh impacting flesh.
“Lady! What the hell are you doing?” a male voice bellowed behind her.
The man on the ground rolled, dislodging the bird. It shrieked and launched skyward.
Sobbing, the man lifted a gun. Three shots exploded across the parking lot, so close she caught the muzzle flash. That was the only way she could count the shots. After the first, her ears buzzed and ached as if stuffed too full with cotton.
The man on the ground hemorrhaged magic the color of old blood. As Isa stared, her breath caught in the confusion of trying to make sense of a barn owl attacking a grown man in broad daylight, a tendril of dusty yellow erupted from the man’s flickering aura.
Live Ink pulling free?
Unless she got close enough for touch, she wouldn’t know for sure, and the longer she stood looking, the greater the chances the tattoo would pull free and escape. The last time that had happened, three people had died, one of them a critical witness in an organized crime case. The other two had been Acts of Magic Bureau of Investigations—federal—agents.
Isa stepped into the open, pulling up enough magic to color even her mundane vision gold.
A hand closed hard around her upper arm, stopping her.
She glared over her shoulder at the owner of the hand.
The man wore a slick black business suit. He was a boulder, broad, thick, and immovable.
Instinct whispered, Danger. Isa ground the internal warning between her teeth and yanked her arm free. The waffle weave cotton of her shirt tried to stay behind in his grasp. It took a few layers of skin.
The man grimaced, his clenched teeth bared. His dark brown eyes flicked away, as if seeking escape from the rising tide of gold moving through Isa. He tried to say something.
Her ears, still ringing in response to the gunfire, refused to register anything more than the fact that he was speaking. All she got was a thick, muted parody of sound, not words.
She slid away from him and raced for the incomprehensible attack under way in the parking lot.
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