Marked by Midnight

“Wherever he had this work started was likely one of the last places anyone saw him alive,” Mathias said. “I want to find that tattoo shop. As in, tonight.”



Deacon cast a skeptical look in his direction. “London is full of tattoo shops. We’ll be looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.”



“We can eliminate the tourist traps and celebrity-hound studios right off the bat,” Thane said. “This guy would go to the real deal. Somewhere discreet, off the beaten path. Somewhere no one would raise an eyebrow if a thug like him walked in.”



Mathias agreed. “Callahan, take the Rover back to base. Thane and Deacon, we’ll cover the most ground if we split up, each of us taking the city a section at a time.”



He swiveled his head upriver, against the current that would have carried the body out to sea before long. Southwark’s least prosperous section of town loomed all around them, darkened buildings set against an even darker night sky.



He supposed it was as good a place to start as any.



CHAPTER 2



The buzzing drone of the tattoo machine vibrated through Nova’s gloved fingertips as she inked the delicate line of a spider’s web onto the left pectoral of her final client of the night.



The design was a favorite of many who came to Ozzy’s studio in Southwark, men and women who’d known little else but struggles and hard times, even a long stint in prison, like the middle aged man seated in Nova’s chair now.



Folks who frequented the hole-in-the-wall shop weren’t going to win any humanitarian awards or keys to the city, but most of them were good people at heart.



Fancy clothes and big, sparkling mansions didn’t make someone good. Nova had known that at a very young age. It had taken longer to recognize that there were plenty of good people walking around with ink all over their skin and miles of hard road in their weary eyes.



Ozzy had helped on that score.



Nova glanced over at him, puffing out her breath to blow aside the wisp of her asymmetrically cut, black-and-blue-dyed hair that had fallen into her face as she worked. The wiry, grayed and grizzled, tattooed old man who owned the shop was hunched over his latest creation, his bony, age-spotted hand as steady as a rock.



Oz had been focused on the piece for more than three hours now, the seventy-two-year-old artist working as meticulously--as reverently--as Michelangelo on the Sistine Chapel. Ozzy’s canvas tonight was the masterfully designed, tattooed sleeve of an ex-con who’d lost his only grandson to cancer the weekend before last.



By hand, Oz had painstakingly reproduced the toddler’s smiling face, turning the child’s likeness into the tender image of a winged pixie, cavorting blissfully in the forbidding, Gothic forest that had already existed on the man’s arm.



As Ozzy wiped away the running ink and blood from the final details, the shop’s young apprentice took the opportunity to stop cleaning equipment and come over to have a look. Nine-year-old Eddie’s freckled face lit up as he took in the finished design.



“Fuckin’ righteous, Oz!” the street-wise kid exclaimed. Ozzy had taken in the former juvenile delinquent last year, much the same way he had Nova a decade ago. Eddie grinned through snaggled teeth and a scabbed lip healing over from a recent brawl at school. “Man, I cannot wait until you let me have my own chair and iron.”



“And I can’t wait until you clean up the storage room and swab down the toilet,” Oz said, not missing a beat. “Watch the fucking cursing, while you’re at it.”



Ozzy was more father than boss, a role the old man had somehow slipped right into, even though he had no children or family of his own.



Like any sullen son, Eddie grumbled over the reminder of his chores. As he shuffled to the back of the shop to do as he was told, Nova paused her own work, glancing over to admire her mentor’s most touching tribute.



“Beautiful work,” she said, giving the old man a warm smile of approval.



Ozzy grinned with pride--a rarity--then went right back to finish cleaning and dressing the fresh ink.



Nova turned her attention back to her client, just as a dark-haired, muscular man in black fatigues walked up to the smoked glass window of the studio’s entrance door.



No, not simply a man, she realized in that same instant.



A Breed male.



A vampire.



Even worse, one of the members of the Order.



He came inside, large and menacing, even without saying a word. Nova didn’t startle, but the human client in her chair flinched as soon as his gaze lit on the big, heavily armed warrior.



Given the backgrounds of the majority of Ozzy’s regulars, even if they’d been keeping their noses clean, none of them would be eager to cross paths with the Order’s cadre of lethal peacekeepers. Nova didn’t exactly welcome the intrusion either.



Before she could tell the Breed male he was obviously lost, Ozzy leveled a narrow look on the warrior from across the small studio. “Appointment only. No walk-ins. Got nothing for you, friend.”



The vampire cocked his head, unfazed, in the direction of the surly greeting. Thick, wavy brown hair set off striking, pale green eyes in a face too handsome and aristocratic for his rough profession. That unnerving gaze skated over Nova, then past her, settling on Oz. “I have a few questions for you and the other artists who work here.”



The accent wasn’t English like hers, but American. Boston, if she had to guess. His voice was cultured and deep--as firm as the muscles she could see rippling under his fitted black combat shirt and thigh-hugging pants as he strode farther into the studio, refusing to take the hint that he wasn’t welcome.



Nova’s inner hackles rose in warning. She sent a glance toward Ozzy, whose challenging stare had flattened into a glare now.



“Question-asking requires an appointment too,” he told the warrior. “Right now, we’re booked up until sometime after hell goes glacial.”



While Ozzy confronted the warrior, his client made a casual, if hasty, exit out the back door of the shop. The guy in Nova’s chair seemed to want nothing more than to flee too, and likely would have if she hadn’t already gone back to work on him.



Ozzy stood up, crossed his tattooed arms over his chest. “Unless you’re here for ink, you got the wrong place, friend. Even then, you got the wrong place.”



The warrior grunted, dark amusement in the sound. “Not very helpful.”



“Helpful ain’t my line of business,” Ozzy growled.



“What about you?”



It took Nova a moment to realize he was talking to her. She lifted her head and was blasted by his shrewd green gaze. Those eyes bore into her, as piercing as any needle.



She watched him take in her two-toned hair and the dozens of piercings that studded the rims and lobes of her ears. She didn’t blink as his gaze moved down, over her tattooed shoulders and full-color sleeves that continued down onto her gloved hands, her extensive body art accentuated by the black leather vest she wore to work that night. It zipped up the center, showcasing even more tattoos that rode the faint swells of her breasts.



She couldn’t care less what he thought of her or all of her ink and metal. She wasn’t intimidated by his stare or his certain disapproval.



“What about me?” she tossed back at him irascibly, as his prolonged visual appraisal continued.



Finally, his eyes returned to hers. “I’m looking for an artist who did some specific work on someone recently. Maybe you know something about it that could help me.”



He held his expression neutral, carefully so, but the dark power in his stare was unmistakable. This man, this Breed warrior, didn’t have to resort to bellowing or brute force to get what he wanted.



No, he was all the more dangerous for the way his calm demeanor coaxed her interest, her trust.



And just because he was attractive and cool-headed didn’t mean there wasn’t a monster lurking behind his knight-in-shining-armor good looks.



She’d gone up against worse than him and emerged unscathed.



Well, mostly unscathed.



“Nova’s busy with a client, as you can see,” Ozzy interjected. “She don’t have time for your questions either.”



Intrigue sparked in the Breed male’s eyes. He was intelligent, to be sure, but at the moment, Nova read a note of suspicion in his keen gaze. “If the Order were to shut this shop down tonight, you’ll both have nothing but time on your hands.”



Ozzy snarled under his breath, but let the warrior continue. Without waiting for permission, the vampire took his comm unit out of the pocket of his black fatigues and flashed a photo on the device’s display. “This look familiar to anyone?”



It was a close-up of a tattoo, an incomplete piece. The Celtic cross portion of it was older, a finished work, but the star behind the cross was only an outline with partial coloring applied.



“Not sure? Here’s a different shot.”



The warrior clicked to another photo, this one taken slightly farther away. A wide enough angle to show the full length of a man’s bare arm from below the short sleeve of a sodden, dark T-shirt to the tips of his thick fingers. Against the colorful ink and black lines of his many tattoos, the man’s skin was unnaturally ashen and waxy.



Cadaver-white.



Nova’s pulse kicked up a notch.



“This body was fished out of the Thames about an hour ago,” the warrior confirmed. “No ID on him. JUSTIS is checking for criminal records to see if they can identify him that way, but it’s doubtful they’re going to find anything. All we know for certain right now is that whoever put that star on him was likely to be one of the last people to see this guy alive. If not the last.”



Nova set down her tattoo machine and blotted the ink on her client’s pec. “Let’s break for a bit,” she murmured to him. “Go on in back. I’ll come get you in a few minutes.”



“Nova.” Ozzy’s voice vibrated with warning.



“It’s okay,” she assured her overprotective boss and mentor. “I can handle this.”



The Breed male was determined to have some answers, and as well-meaning as Ozzy was, his lack of cooperation was liable to get them all arrested. Or worse.



After her client had shuffled to the break room and it was only Oz and her left to contend with their unwanted visitor out front, Nova walked over to the counter where the warrior stood. “The star is my work.”



He didn’t seem the least surprised to hear it, didn’t even blink at the admission.



Up close, his face was even more captivating than she thought. Sharp cheekbones, strong, proud jaw line. Green eyes the color of palest sage. “Tell me what you know about the dead man, Nova.”



Her name on his lips sent a shiver of awareness through her that she had to fight hard to ignore. She shrugged. “I can’t tell you much, other than he was a real asshole. Came in here late last night, drunk, belligerent.” An errant lock of her chin-length hair slipped from behind her ear and into her face, but she ignored it, her hands down at her sides, encased in ink-stained gloves. “As we told you, we don’t take walk-ins. That goes double for intoxicated walk-ins. But this guy was insistent. No matter what we said, he wouldn’t leave.”



“Seems to be a pattern lately,” Ozzy muttered, still glaring at the warrior.



“Like I said,” Nova went on, “the guy came in late, just about the time we were closing for the night. He refused to leave without getting some fresh ink--something about commemorating friends who’d recently passed.”



Now the warrior seemed surprised. One of his brows quirked in reaction. “He had a lot of tattoos, from what I saw. I’m no expert, but seems to me he had some hardcore art on him. Death scenes. Kill counts. Some kind of affiliation mark...”



Across the studio, Ozzy cleared his throat.



“I wasn’t looking at him that closely,” Nova said. “I wouldn’t know what other ink the guy had on his body. Even if I saw it, I’d make a point not to notice. That’s what we do in this line of work, especially with the kind of clients that come through that door.”



The warrior gave her a slight nod. “Why didn’t you finish the tattoo?”



“I didn’t have the chance. I didn’t like working on him. When I told him as much, he got upset. Really upset. He stormed out in a rage, and he didn’t come back.”



“Son of a bitch left without paying too,” Ozzy grumbled.



Those penetrating green eyes hadn’t strayed from her for an instant. They studied her, made her skin feel too warm, too tight under his stare.



“Besides demanding a tattoo to memorialize his dead friends, then storming off before you could finish the work, did the victim say anything else to you, Nova?”



He did it again, spoke her name in that smooth, deep velvet voice that made her forget for a second that he was not only one of the Breed, but the Order as well. A dangerous combination that she couldn’t afford to get too close to, for a hundred different reasons.



“Look, I don’t know what more I can tell you,” she said, impatient to be done with the conversation and get back to her work. Back to her life. “I didn’t spend much time talking to the guy, or looking at him. I didn’t want to. I just wanted to do whatever it took to get rid of him.”



“Kind of like you’re doing with me?” the vampire drawled knowingly.



Nova stared at him, refusing to take his bait. Ozzy didn’t give her the chance anyway.



He walked over to join her at the counter. “I got a business to run here, and Nova’s got a customer waiting on her out back. Like I told you, we don’t take walk-ins and we don’t have time for questions. Least of all, questions about our clientele. If the Order wants to conduct some kind of investigation, I’ll thank you to do it on your own turf, on your own time.”