Bound by Ink (A Living Ink Novel) Read Online Free Page A

down its snow white feathers. Its beak was wide open as if the bird screamed.
    Isa still couldn’t hear.
    Windmilling clawed wings, it came for her.
    She nearly burst her throat shrieking as she backpedaled on legs taken over by pins and needles.
    In a blur of motion, something dark struck the Magic Eater’s head. Viscous purple blood fountained into the April rain. A burst of smoke tasting like burning rubber coated her tongue. Fire, amber and deeper orange, erupted from the blood, charring white feathers.
    Isa dared to take her eyes off the burning thing flapping in a mud puddle.
    Cold, dark eyes set into a man’s expressionless face met her gaze briefly before jerking back to the creature on the ground. Four teardrops tattooed beneath the man’s left eye glinted in the rain as if they were real and not merely ink.
    Ria, the local gang leader. He had a length of rebar in his hands. He gripped it as if it were a baseball bat and he meant to knock one out of the park. Reversing his hold on the rebar, the gang leader shoved the struggling Magic Eater onto the gravel-strewn pavement with the toe of his scuffed black motorcycle boots. He stabbed the rebar through the creature’s body.
    Wings spasmed, then went limp. Fire flared up around the iron, fizzled, and died. Nothing but ash remained, sinking into a coffee-colored mud puddle.
    Only someone without magic.
    Isa blew out a shaking breath.
    A flash of dusty yellow spun out across the parking lot, sucking away relief. She dove for her backpack and bolted for the man lying facedown where the Magic Eater had left him.
    “Live Ink going bad!” she shouted at Ria as she dropped to her knees beside the body.
    He stopped short.
    Her fingers slid across the wet, slimy surface of a nylon jacket, the smell of blood so strong her mouth filled with the metallic taste of it.
    She touched clammy skin.
    A pulse.
    As she counted, she caught no hint of the man’s red-brown magic. Desperate, howling yellowish power swirled into her bloodstream. His Ink, but no answering surge of energy from the Magic Eater’s victim.
    Isa frowned. Chilly amber magic answered her call. She threw a shield into place, expanding it to contain her, the wounded man, and his Ink. A cold sage-and-pinyon-scented breeze brushed her cheek.
    Isa fed her power into the man’s sluggish blood. Her attempt to nudge the three of them—man, Ink, and tattoo artist—into the etheric dragged at her like sticky, rank mud. They finally fell into the other world, dragged down by the weight of the man’s curiously absent power.
    Gold light flared in the nowhere of the astral. The dusty yellow whirl of Ink manifested before her. Wind buffeted her, rose to a howl.
    Isa glanced at the tattoo.
    A whirlwind? A dust devil, maybe.
    It flung stinging particles at her face and eyes.
    “I want to help,” she said. She dove into the river of power flowing through her. Liquid amber enfolded her and invited her to feel at home. Once upon a time, she would have. Before she’d become addicted to the gold of her magic shimmering through the night of the demon who’d been forced to share her psyche.
    Before Murmur.
    Now, the bright, shining energy struck her as flat. Inadequate.
    In the physical world, she dug in her pack for stasis paper and settled it over the tattoo on the injured man’s skin. The Ink had to have someplace to go if it couldn’t remain on its host. No matter how Isa nudged with power, no trace of magic answered from within the man’s body. Without magic to feed upon, the Living Tattoo couldn’t remain on his skin.
    Isa pressed the paper to the tattoo. Blood soaked into the surface. She wouldn’t get the chance to ease the tattoo off the man’s skin. The Ink was coming off the hard way, tearing free. Sudden weight came into her physical hands, as if she’d caught a buzzing softball. The dust devil had landed in the stasis paper. Assured that it was safe, she turned her attention to the wounded man.
    Forcing