Soul Ink by J. C. Nelson

Author:J. C. Nelson [Nelson, J. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2015-01-06T05:00:00+00:00

Seven

Falling back into a monster alligator’s lair wasn’t on my list of things to do for the day. Landing in a pile of eggs and obliterating the few that remained ranked even lower. I sank into the detritus of shells and dying alligator-lets, and froze.

My hunch was that Mama worked mainly on smell. And covered in egg goo and bits of shell, I couldn’t possibly smell like shampoo or deodorant, which were the only two scents Liam admitted to me having. If I ever smelled like anything else, he kept his mouth shut, and hopefully she would too.

Now, some people will tell you dinosaurs went extinct because they had brains the size of walnuts. I’ll point out that alligators, mutant or otherwise, never went extinct. Scientists would say this was because they were well adapted. I’d say it was because they were too smart.

This one stopped moving, running a careful gaze over the ruined mound of eggs. It cracked its jaws just wide enough to sift through the eggshells, and began transferring shells into a smaller mound which would contain only broken shells and things that weren’t me.

Grimm had given me three months of training on how to deal with monsters like banshees, imps, or mother-in-laws, but I’d learned a fascinating trick on the job. Taught to me by a Himalayan Sherpa on vacation in the city, it involved how to handle yetis.

After many days of tracking one through the slums, we’d camped, building a fire in the remains of a Volvo, and there he revealed his secret to preventing the yeti from tearing his arms off: Hit them with something heavy, and keep hitting them until they stopped moving.

So when the alligator’s head turned away from me, I sat up, swung the tuning fork like a club, and brained it right across the head.

It hummed a note to end the world. To tear the ether apart and rend the dead. A vibration which shook all forty of my fillings and made the world shake. So I hit it again, using all the strength my tattoo could summon. It surged up my arm, all too happy to help with violence.

I suspect the alligator was used to being shot at, grabbed with ropes, or having flamethrowers leveled at it. She was the only one reacting worse to the tone. While it threatened to tear my spirit from my body, a combination of head injury and head-splitting hum left her thrashing upside down.

And my tattoo danced like something alive. It ran like a river of ink, pooling into puddles under my skin and then spreading out. With each strike of Aiyn’s Press, the strength it gave me faded, but so did the control it had over my arm. When I stopped, the alligator lay still. Only the slightest quiver at the tip of her tail told me she was still alive.

Now seemed like as good a time as any to split. With the fork over my shoulder, I climbed across the motionless alligator—and froze.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.