Dark Ink Tattoo: Episode 2 Read Online Free Page A

the tasteful lighting from above, I could see the puckered scar where a bullet had found his shoulder instead of a client’s heart.
    And me? I hadn’t changed. At all. 
    “You’re a proud asshole, you know that?” he told me, falling back into drill sergeant mode.
    “The proudest,” I said, laying claim. Proudest that I was Paco’s only, ever, top. I could go either way in the right situation, but I was the only one that ever saw that man face down.
    “So now that we’re agreed – yeah, I’ll ask my friends on the force about Bella for you. There aren’t violent murders in Summerlin too often, my curiosity’ll seem natural.”
    “Thanks, Paco. And….”
    * * *
    I walked out of the magician’s house, holding keys to Paco’s car and wearing one of the magician’s long sleeved shirts.  
    * * *
    I drove Paco’s dark sedan to Summerlin and parked a few blocks away from Bella’s house. My car was nothing but noticeable, and there was a chance its engine’d woken a few people up the prior night coming and going – I didn’t want anyone thinking I’d returned to the scene of the crime.
    I made sure on my way in to be unseen, which was easy, Paco’s willing blood had my powers flowing at full blast. The magic that made you a vampire -- it was like always being lucky. Beautiful women would angle across a room to you. Dice would roll in your favor. And what you weren’t already given you could most often charm.
    Someone, cops or a neighbor, had tacked some wood up over where Bella’s door had been. I took some solace in the fact the lock I’d set hadn’t had a chance to work – the door’d been ripped off its hinges and flung aside, pressing down a square patch of clover in the yard.
    I looked around again then set my fingers against the plywood they’d replaced it with and tugged and the nails unsealed from the surrounding wood. The second it was wide enough I slunk in.
    I could smell the fight before I saw it, my eyes adjusting to the darker space indoors. Bella’s fear, her blood – blood I’d always wanted to know, and held back from – and the scent of her attackers. Someone – someones, at least two of them, but they smelled the same. Grease, like from a car shop, and something else, more animal and musty.
    I made careful not to touch anything, although as a vampire I didn’t have fingerprints – almost like the magic that ruled us knew we were destined for lives of crime – because if there was something the police could do, I wanted them to be able to eventually do it. I only wanted to do it faster -- because the punishments I could dole out were ever so much more just.
    There were signs of a struggle, strewn tarot cards, shattered crystal skulls. Her laptop was gone, and I didn’t know who’d taken it, the attackers or the police. And in the bedroom, where I’d fucked her less than a day ago, a massive blood stain and a sense of death.
    I walked over the line she’d drawn, her ritual spell meant to trap me – and now, with Paco’s blood on board, I could feel its pull. I knelt down beside it and waved my hand out and it tugged me every time. My little witch had been magical after all – just less magical than me. 
    So had she seen the future? Hers – and mine? My black aura, my evilness? I waved my hand across the spell one more time, then stood. There was nothing else for me here, and it was time for some magic of my own.
    * * *
    I got into Paco’s car and drove out of Summerlin. Vegas wasn’t that big a city and I had hours left till dawn – it was time to cruise. I drove for downtown, intent on Bella, the scent of her blood still fresh in my nostrils. If her killers were still in Las Vegas tonight, there was a good chance I’d find them.
    How? By being me – and full of blood. It was some sort of psychic dowsing – the same thing that pulled innocent creatures into my path to bleed could pull other people toward me, or me to them. So I drove east on 515 and