Read Online Nightmare Ink by Marcella Burnard - Free Book Online

things wanting to take her apart lately?
    Only long habit kept her from throwing herself to one side and losing contact with Zoog’s clammy skin. She jerked back, psychically and physically, as the magical defenses she wore as a matter of habit flared to turn the blow aside. From the ache and warmth trickling down her right arm, she gathered she hadn’t been fast enough. Again. Muttering a curse, she leaned forward on the stool.
    “This thing is really pissed off, babe,” Zoog breathed.
    “Me, too,” she said, edging back into that sense of enraged, bleeding dark. She didn’t have a body per se in this world between daylight and the things that went bump in the night. Anyone who learned to deal with magic, however, needed a frame of reference for working with the astral planes no one else could see. So most people took their images of themselves into the otherworld. The etheric. Or dreamtime. Or magical planes—different cultures called it different things. Isa wasn’t invested in the semantics. The important point was that what affected her in this place impacted her physical body sitting in her containment studio if she didn’t shield quickly enough.
    So when she summoned a mote of power into ephemeral hands and set it alight, it was merely to illuminate the trap and the creature that had laid it for her. In this otherworld, illumination meant both light and understanding. She desperately needed to comprehend the nature of what she intended to bind.
    The next attack came, brutal and raging.
    The ball of light in her hand expanded in the blink of an eye, surrounding her, protecting her.
    Claws, vastly oversized and heavy, slashed. They collided with her energy shield, but didn’t break through. Light exploded over the thing.
    The creature squalled. It withdrew.
    It was a killing machine, something brought into being for the sole purpose of cutting down other living things. Few animals on earth killed for the sheer joy of destruction. This thing did.
    Isa could bind that kind of evil. She could wipe its existence away as if it had never been, and then Zoog would have a damned ugly flat tattoo to show for his foray into Live Ink.
    On the heels of her decision, the creature threw itself at her in a frenzy, ripping, shrieking in protest and terror. Even surrounded as she was with a shield, the creature knocked her off her feet.
    Ice dropped into her middle.
    Ground had no meaning here. It took several seconds to gain command of the notion that she’d fallen, was still falling. When she righted herself in her bubble of golden sunshine, nausea sloshed in her belly.
    Zoog’s tattoo struck again, knocking her spinning.
    That’s when she saw the hole between its shoulder blades. Raw. Oozing. Painful.
    And that’s when Zoog’s screaming finally ripped her out of trance.
    “Kill it!” he wailed. “Kill it!”
    The creature shrilled in Isa’s head.
    “SHUT UP!” she shouted, yanking her hand free of Zoog’s skin. “I can’t just kill it!”
    Silence settled over the studio. Surprise at the pronouncement rocked her. The chill in her gut dissipated, but it took several seconds for the heat and smell of sage to drive away nausea.
    “What do you mean you can’t just kill it?” Zoog said. His voice sounded stronger.
    “It’s wounded. Bleeding. It’s a cornered animal, in pain and afraid.”
    He scowled and shook his head. “You make it sound like it’s alive, babe. This is nothing but Ink and magic, right?”
    “Who told you that?” she snapped.
    He propped himself up on his elbows and levered himself up to look her in the eye. “Daniel. While he was inking me.”
    Isa shivered. She shut out disquiet with a bracing dose of anger. “What? Daniel thinks he’s God, creating animate constructs with Ink and magic? What did you think while he was inking you, Zoog? That he’d birthed the animating force out his ass?”
    He barked a strangled laugh. “You have a way with words, Ice.”
    “Part of my