As for the room...
A more thorough scan showed closeable blinds on the front windows and an interior door leading to an adjacent private room, probably used for etching tattoos on a person’s backside. She perceived no heartbeats beyond those of the two people in front of her. Those beats were steady and rhythmic.
Just a normal night in the life of a tattoo parlor.
But hell...her shoulder blades were already aching more than usual, as if they knew what she was going to do and also that there would be pain involved. Muscles often retained memories of what had happened to them in the past, especially after experiencing the extremes of agony. And although pain was nothing new to her, Avery always dreaded having more of it voluntarily.
“Take a chair,” the artist suggested. “They’re more comfortable than they look.”
She didn’t heed his advice. The lingering odor of hot flesh was cloying. The ink used for the tattoos offered up another distinct scent that tripped more old memories best forgotten.
Nerves bristling, Avery glanced again to the front door, nixing the return of a hazy belief that someone was out there. Anxiousness was likely the cause of her nervousness. An artist in a rundown ink shop was going to see her scars. He was going to touch them—a crime so heinous that no one had ever managed it.
Hadn’t she dispensed with the last person who tried?
In order to provide this guy with his next canvas she’d have to take off her shirt. Predicting his reaction to the sight of the multitude of scars covering her body was a no-brainer. Very little space wasn’t crowded by the grid of crisscrossed white raised lines. Tat Guy would be fascinated by the old wounds and he’d be nosey, but the stories those grids told were none of his business or anyone else’s.
She wished they weren’t hers.
“Almost there,” he said to her while dabbing at the girl’s ankle with a cloth—a benign little bear on a girl’s youthful, otherwise unblemished skin.
What would this pubescent girl say if she were to witness Avery’s roadmap of scar tissue and the two deep six-inch grooves edging her spine? Humans were squeamish about marred flesh. Other species reacted differently. Werewolves, in particular, got turned on by battle scars and displayed them like jewelry.
So, if exhibiting or touching her old wounds was blasphemy of the highest order and against the rules, why was she chancing this?
She was here because it was her one shot, a last-ditch effort, at soul healing. If this artist could cover the two large wounds on her back with a design that would make her feel like her old self, maybe she’d regain some semblance of balance and a small modicum of peace.
That ever-elusive peace...
The transformation of something ugly into something better, at least superficially, would be an accomplishment terribly long overdue, and one less freakish thing to contend with in the long stretch of unending years to come...if she didn’t find what she had come to London to find.
“You still there?” the guy asked, speaking to her.
There was no need to answer him. He was acutely aware of her. She could feel how badly he wanted to take a closer look. The air between them vibrated with that need. He was struggling to keep his attention on the ankle in front of him, and eagerly awaiting the girl’s departure.
This was the reason she had to be so bloody careful. The uncanny attraction all humans felt when they saw her was due to the light of the Divine still being there...in her face, her body and her hair. Though the light had dimmed considerably over the years, there was no way to mask what was left of it completely. Throughout time, mortals had been mesmerized by its vibrant energy and lingering afterglow.
“Calm the hell down,” she silently sent to the guy to dim his growing interest. He obeyed that directive the way most humans did when she messed with their minds. She’d have to erase this guy’s thoughts completely once they were done.
Running a hand along the edge of the sleek metal counter’s iron and tin compounds served to sharpen her focus by making her fingertips burn. She blew on them, more for sport than comfort, long practiced in dealing with forbidden metals.
“Two minutes,” the artist announced.
Two minutes, and then what? Avery asked herself. Peace actually would descend? Did she actually expect that kind of outcome?
Sound...
Jolted by a sudden lash of nerve burn that instantly heated her face, Avery turned to the door.
“I will wait.”
A voice had seeped under the crack.
“I will be waiting for you.”
“Son of a...” Striding to the door, Avery rested her hand on the wood. She had been right. Someone was out there. Not just anyone, either. Somebody powerful enough to reach her with a threatening call.
All she had to do was open this door to find out who it was.
Or not.
The flush of volcanic heat and the staccato uptick in her pulse that followed that call paved the way for a streak of fiery intuition. Only one kind of presence in the world had the ability to affect her like this. Seven things, actually...which meant that one of Castle Broceliande’s Blood Knights was somewhere nearby. And he had found her.
Fired-up nerve endings were tingling en masse. Avery stifled wicked four-letter oaths. Imagining she could stride through the shadows of this city undetected had been foolish. London had always been overrun by monsters. At least one of those Knights could potentially have been on guard, protecting the city’s humans from things that went bump in the night.
While she...
She was a sitting duck in this small enclosed space, if she had indeed been made by one of them.
Damn Blood Knights.
Guardians. Overseers. Monster killers. That’s what the dangerous Seven had become. Seven physically perfect specimens of immortal manhood had been created to be as much like her as possible, and their Makers had outdone themselves. Due to their skill with alchemic machinations, the Blood Knights existed unchallenged to this day by any who stood against them—immortals unable to die by any normal means. Immortals unknowingly built on a foundation of pain.
Still, despite the agony the creation of the Knights had caused her, Avery yearned for their company with every fiber of her being, and always had. They alone, out of anyone on Earth, would come the closest to understanding her, and yet could never be allowed to. Misplaced longings for them were never to be addressed. Urges like want and need had to remain tucked inside her. Only when her mission had been fulfilled would she be strong enough to get what she required from them.
“I know you’re there, Knight. Leave here. Leave me. Honor my wishes.”
“What did you say?” The tattoo artist asked.
Hell, had she spoken those words aloud?
“Have you changed your mind?” he queried.
“No
