The Black Tattoo Read Online Free

trying for a smile.   "That guy could be anybody!"
    "So?" Charlie asked.
    Jack blinked.
    "You coming?" Charlie asked.   "Or what?"
    Without waiting for a reply, he set off after Nick, leaving Jack staring at his back.
    Well, thought Jack, there it was.   With Charlie in this kind of a mood, there was no telling what he was going to do — or what kind of trouble he was going to get into.   And just as before, when they'd been standing outside the restaurant, there was no choice for Jack, not really.   Sighing uselessly, he set off after his friend.
    They were heading back toward Cambridge Circus, back the way they'd come, but then   Nick turned left, taking Charlie down a side street.   When Jack caught up with them, they were standing outside an old and solid-looking black back door that looked strangely small in the mountain of red brick that surrounded it.   Nick smiled thinly at the boys and pressed the buzzer.   Jack looked up at the Palace Theatre again.
    It was odd how different the back looked from the front.   There were no fancy windows and statues here, just a vast Victorian clod of red brick with a cast-iron fire escape sticking out the top.   The afternoon sun was very bright, so Jack looked down — and that was when he glimpsed something strange.
    There was a weird kind of shadow on the back of Nick's neck: weirder still, it was moving .   Curves and spikes of inky darkness were drifting across the man's skin.   Jack blinked.
    But when he opened his eyes again, whatever he'd seen was gone.   Except for the glossy comma of Nick's long black ponytail, the back of his neck was bare.
    Jack shook his head to clear it.   Should've brought my sunglasses , he told himself.
    "Yeah?" grunted a voice from the intercom.
    "It's me," said Nick.
    The door buzzed.   The black-clad man pushed it open, and he gestured the boys inside.
     
     

THE TEST
     
    Nick led them up a spiral staircase to a set of double doors.   Jack had been feeling more uneasy with every step — but then the doors opened, and he suddenly found he was looking at the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen in his life.
    She was dressed in a red hooded top and green combat trousers.   Her thick black curly hair was tied back tightly in a bunch, leaving dark little wisps at her temples.   Her face was angular and fiercely elegant, her skin was the warm color of milky tea, and her eyes were the most extraordinary shade of amber.   They flicked from Jack to Charlie, and the fine black curves of her eyebrows arched at Nick in a quizzical expression:   evidently, she wasn't too impressed by what she'd seen.   As far as Jack was now concerned, however, following Nick didn't seem like quite such a bad idea.
    "Esme," said Nick, "I'd like you to meet Charlie..."
    "Hi," said Charlie.
    "...and, I'm sorry, what was your name again?"
    "Jack," said Jack, annoyed.
    "And this is Raymond," Nick said, joining the large and frankly terrifying-looking hairy man who was standing by the long conference table in the center of the room.   "There.   Now the introductions are out of the way, perhaps we can get started."
    "Hold on," said Raymond.   " These are the new recruits you wanted?   Two kids you just found on the street?"
    "That," said Nick crisply, "is precisely what we're about to find out."
    Esme frowned at the boys, shrugged, then closed the doors, leaving Jack and Charlie just standing there.
    The room they were in was very big.   The wide walls sloped inward toward a high, arched ceiling and were covered with a pattern of regularly spaced, strange-looking blotchlike things.   The only light in the room came from a great round window at the far end, so Jack was having trouble making out the details.
    "My colleagues and I," said Nick, leaning back against the table, "belong to a small yet ancient organization know as the Brotherhood of Sleep.   We're... jailers," he said.   "Of a kind, anyway; our prisoner is a demon.   We call it the