Dark Lies: Chapter 28

Jaxson

When I got back to my penthouse, Savannah was gone.

That wasn’t entirely surprising. The woman was possessed by the gods of chaos themselves and went wherever she wanted.

I should have never given her back her keys.

Calling and texting her proved useless. The damn woman never answered her phone—which I’d bought for her specifically so that I could contact her.

Fantastic. Dragan was going to try to release the Dark Wolf God that night, and she was nowhere to be found.

At least I’d had the foresight to install an emergency tracking app on the phone.

I turned it on and braced myself for the results, desperately hoping she hadn’t gone off to Michigan on her own to hunt down the bastard.

Luckily, she wasn’t far, only a few blocks over in the Midway Dens—demon territory.

While the Midway boss and I maintained a fragile truce, he wouldn’t like to have me in his domain uninvited. Again.

Screw it.

I drove past the Rift, the demon bar that Sam had rescued Savy from two nights before, and headed along Razorback Avenue until I got to 53rd. I turned right and pulled up in front of a shop with a dark wood façade and its name etched on the glass windows: Devilish Inks.

Savannah was inside. I could feel her pull on me, a whirling vortex drawing me in. It was getting stronger every day, which was both a blessing and a curse.

I gripped the steering wheel of the truck and took a deep breath. My father’s words had shaken me to the bone, almost as much as what Laurel had done to Savannah had shaken her—a crime I would never forgive, no matter her justification.

We did it to protect her from your father.

I slid out of the cab and slammed the door. What a godsdamned mess.

Two steps took me to the front door of the tattoo parlor, and I pushed inside.

The place was clean and tidy with white plaster and brick walls, faded black furniture, and pale wooden floors. The sound of buzzing tattoo needles filled the air. Framed artwork, oil paintings, and photos of completed tattoos hung on the walls. The work was impressive.

That was a good sign, at least.

As I stepped in, Sam looked up from the long wooden bench she was sitting on—an old church pew, by the look of it. “Shit. So much for the surprise.”

“This is surprise enough,” I grumbled.

Savannah was in the back in a parlor chair, under the needle. A she-devil with horns, short black hair, and a pierced lip bent over Savy’s right arm. I could sense my mate’s discomfort as if it were my own.

“Why don’t you ever answer your phone?” I snarled.

She looked up, and her eyes dilated.

“What are you doing here?” Savy grunted through her clenched teeth.

I pushed through a low decorative gate and strode over to her chair. “I’m tracking down a rogue wolf. Want to tell me what you’re doing here?”

“Getting a tattoo, obviously. You were gone this morning, so where were you?”

Speaking to a man you can never meet.

“Gathering information.” Irritation writhed beneath my skin. I wasn’t going to let her put me on the defensive. “What on earth possessed you—”

“Sam said that we had time before—” She cut off her words with a glance at the tattooist. “Well, before we head to Michigan this afternoon, and since I didn’t know what you were up to, I decided to take advantage of your absence.”

“Seems rash, considering—”

She bared her teeth. “This isn’t something out of the blue. I’ve wanted new ink for a while—I’ve just been broke.”

I swallowed uncomfortably as a modicum of guilt tugged at me.

Sam put down her magazine and grinned at me from the waiting area. “I think you’re going to fucking love it when it’s done, Jax.”

I ground my teeth. Her body, her choice, yes…but part of me still wished I’d had a say in the matter. It wasn’t like tattoos were permanent.

I stepped forward. “Fine, let’s see it.”

The she-devil paused her work and met Savy’s eyes. Savannah nodded, and the tattooist leaned back. Although the woman was only two-thirds of the way through the outlines, I could see the whole design from the residual imprint of the thermal stencil.

The face of a wolf. And not any wolf—Savannah’s wolf.

My breath caught.

Fuck.

Savy raised her eyebrows expectantly. All her initial fire had been a ruse, and I could smell her sense of expectation, even trepidation. The work was excellent, deeply lifelike. I’d seen enough of her artwork to know it was her design.

And it would mark her as a werewolf forever.

I nodded slowly, taking in the implications. “It’s…beautiful. Perfect.”

When Savannah Caine burned bridges, she used napalm.

The she-devil returned to her work, and the buzz of the tattoo machine filled the air.

“I love it, but why now?” I asked softly.

Savy bit her lip, then hardened her eyes. “I didn’t want there to be any mistake any more about who I am.”

My pulse accelerated.

The way she’d fought at first, I’d been afraid it would take her months or years to truly accept what she was. But now that the truth had come out, she was all in—just like that.

Part of me was elated. If Savannah could accept her wolf, she could accept the pack, and maybe she could finally face our bond.

But the rest of me boiled with fury.

All it took was her losing everything.

I fought down my anger at the fucking LaSalles and looked around the shop.

There was a big horned demon working on a vampire in the corner. I chose my words carefully. “Why this shop, rather than…down in Dockside?”

Implication: why the hell are you getting a tattoo of a wolf done by a devil rather than one of your own kind?

The she-devil paused her work and narrowed her eyes at me. “This area is for customers only.”

I didn’t budge.

Savy flinched and gave the tattooist an apologetic look. “I met a demon bartender at the Rift with unbelievable ink—colored tattoos on blue skin. I asked him who did the work. I figured that if you can work on blue skin, you can do anything. So I wound up here with Alana, who’s an unbelievably awesome artist, by the way. That’s her stuff on the wall over there.”

Alana, the she-devil, dipped her needle in an ink pot and returned to inking. “I’m just tracing the lines. You drew the design. I bet you could do this kind of work, if you wanted. You have a lot of talent. I can see it in your other tattoo as well. I can tell it’s your design.”

Savy winced at the pain but forced out a smile. “Thanks. But I just cope with this bat-shit crazy world by sketching.”

The original drawing was lying on the table, next to the transfer paper. It was more than just pencil and lines—it had vitality. I could feel her in every stroke. “It looks exactly like your wolf. It’s perfect.”

She met my eyes. “I’ve drawn her from every possible angle a hundred times, trying to come to terms with…all of this.”

I nodded slowly. “I understand.”

But did I? What would it be like to not know your wolf your whole life?

Savannah cocked her head to the side as if listening to someone. “Also, my wolf wants you to know that she hates having to pose for me in front of mirrors, which I think is BS, because I reward her with bacon.”

My skin turned cold.

Often, I referred separately to my wolf, but it was just a feral, more noble part of my personality—one that was in conflict sometimes with my more human drives.

But the way Savannah spoke about hers, it was like a completely different being living inside of her.

Was she a twin-soul like Dragan? Fully sorcerer and fully wolf, doomed to tear each other apart?

Or maybe she was simply wounded. Her wolf had been torn from her as a child. I couldn’t even imagine the trauma left by that vile spell. Savy never had a chance to understand that part of her personality growing up, so maybe the two parts of her soul were still suturing together like the edges of the wound on her shoulder.

I had to hope that was the truth. But it begged another question: would she ever be whole?

Yes, said the part of me that was a wolf. Give her time.

My knuckles cracked as anger threatened to consume my calm. Laurel LaSalle had stolen Savannah’s identity and chained her very soul. She’d ripped Savannah’s mind in two. I couldn’t think of a crime more perverse to commit against a werewolf. Against a member of my pack.

Her words cracked through my mind: We did it to protect her from your father.

My gut twisted, and my claws slipped out. Savy tilted her head to the side. “What’s wrong?”

This wasn’t the time or place to discuss these things, if there ever would be one, and so I set my jaw and reined in my wolf. “When will you be finished? We need to talk things over before we head to Michigan. The situation there is more dire than I anticipated.”

Savy looked at me with curiosity, then turned to the tattooist. “How much longer?”

The she-devil didn’t pause. “Two hours, give or take. We’re mainly doing outlines and some shading today. Finishing touches and color will take another session or two.”

I fished a wad of cash out of my pocket and counted off a grand or so. “Your best work. Please.”

Savannah’s eyes widened at the stack of bills. “I can cover it, Jax. This is for me, not you.”

“Fine. Then that’s the tip.” I turned and strode away but paused at the door. “Meet me at Eclipse at two. We’ve got a biker rally to break up.”