Pepper / INK /

A familiar face

Daniel was afraid. Anyone who saw him could see that. He wasn’t sure how much his old friend remembered and if the spell was breaking then there was no telling what he thought.

Daniel sat down and flagged down the barkeep, "My usual, Seb."

"Yes sir, he said with a bow. He didn’t use the honorific in public if he could help it. He didn’t want to call attention to himself. If he was being a Guardian he would have used the proper Honorific of ’Honored Father’ or "Father of the moon." Sebastian knew him as an Inkwalker. He was a guardian whose Inkwalker was killed a few years before. He’d find a new one eventually, someone who was supposed to have the other Inkwalker’s ink.

"How goes the search?" He locked eyes with the dark brown eyes with silver rims. While it was an unusual eye-color variant it was not limited to Inkwalkers but rather, to magic users. If a mortal had it there was a magic user in their family. And these eyes, dark brown and rimmed with silver, almost smiled.

"It’s still going." Daniel replied

Sebastian sighed. "Are you sure there is another Seven out there?" Seb put down the cup. ’Sevens’ was the common phrase for those capable of carrying the ink. It came from the fact that seventh Children of whichever sex tended to be more capable of carrying the ink. So they were called Sevens, and seventh sevens. Seventh children of seventh children.

Daniel smiled at the young man. "There is, somewhere, I know it." Daniel smiled tightly. "The moon tells me there is."

That relaxed Sebastian some. If the moon said it was so, it was so. For the Lord of the Moon, and the lady of the Lights, they protected the Inkwalkers. As long as the Moon told him that it was so, he would believe it.

Max came in a few minutes later, his cog-badge in his back pocket. He ordered a scotch. Telling both Daniel and the Barkeep he was off duty and not having the best day.

"I have some questions Daniel. Some of them for me, some for the Taskforce." He took a sip of his drink and fished in his inside pocket. "First thing is, what do you think about this?" He laid down a picture of the tattoo from the market robbery.

"If I didn’t know better I’d say it was one of mine." Now he could see why Jessie and Max had come in earlier. They did look like his ink... well, they were his, just not done at his shop.

"Do you know better?" Max stared at him for a moment trying to read him. "I mean, I ask anyone on the street they’d say that was your art."

"He’s never been in my shop."

Max nodded. He trusted that, he wasn’t sure why, but he’d broach that subject later.

"How old is this piece, it has to be newish?" Daniel asked. "What, three? Four weeks?" He knew exactly when the tattoo was given, but he didn’t know how soon after he had given it the picture was taken.

"Here’s the part I don’t get. At the time that picture was taken the ink was less than forty eight hours old."

Daniel was silent a long moment, trying to figure out how to say what he had to say. "I am not going to say it isn’t possible. I am going to say that without heavy magic that isn’t likely. I mean to heal a tat like that in a day, would take some pretty heavy alchemy. Lots of moonlight and I don’t know many practitioners right now who could do that. I mean unless you are talking forbidden arts or the Guardian of the Moon." He hoped the other form of Inkwalker would jog his memory he didn’t want to have to break the spell head-on if he didn’t have to.

Max nodded but he was still thinking about something that wouldn’t sit still long enough for him to grab hold of. That word again.

"So what’s his story? Why you interested in him?" Daniel asked.

"He’s dead." Max said. "Vigilante got him. Here’s the part I don’t get. Guy dies the same way the person he killed does, one year and eight months to the day after the person he killed, and in the same exact location. If that isn’t poetic justice I don’t know what is. But it seems-- I dunno, familiar. Like something I heard from a story once."

Daniel nodded. He let Max start to put it together himself, trying to figure out if the spell could be broken without hurting him.

Max put down another picture. "Here’s another one. Said he was hitchhiking on the way to Cold Iron. And I quote. "I thought he was a man but it was death, death and a big crow, and he told me that I had to go back, that Max and Jessie had to know, that they knew but they had to remember." He frowned, "So what don’t I remember? And why does everything seem to come back to you?"

Daniel nodded. Death was worried, he knew without a Guardian Daniel couldn’t sleep, couldn’t take off his ink in safety. He had to tell him. That message had been meant for him. "Üzgünüm. I’m sorry." He thought.

Daniel took a sip of his drink. It was a tea, no alcohol, it was rare for him to drink in Inkwalker form because he couldn’t afford to impair himself. The tea suppressed a lot of his powers, made the Ink’s song not quite so loud so he wouldn’t be as tempted to judge in front of his friend who no longer remembered. "Max there is no vigilante." Daniel said. "You have the story backwards. Do you remember the fight we had?"

"Yes?" It wasn’t quite a statement it wasn’t quite a question, he half remembered it.

"You wanted to go away, ran away to Cold Iron where I can’t follow."

"Where you wouldn’t follow."

"No, Max, where I can’t follow. I made a binding oath not to enter that city again under my own power, not so long as the Necromancers control it." Daniel said. "Do you remember the Inkwalker?"

"I’m not interested in legends, just the Vigilante."

"Max, There is no vigilante because Javved is right, vigilantes come under color of authority they don’t have. I have authority, I’m the Inkwalker. I’m the Inkwalker and he’s the Necromancer."

That voice, speaking that word with such authority, Max felt something crack. Not physically, but something that had been hiding his memories. What had been a fine crack or a nick was suddenly broken to bits, and the memories started to flood back.

Inkwalker. That was the word, heavy with weight. Full of hope and faith, full of honor and loyalty. It was a big word, much bigger than its nine letters. A word that would make most men flinch away, but not him, he knew that word, but he knew it differently.

"You are supposed to be my Guardian." Daniel put a hand on his shoulder. And as he drew close there was that smell again, that safe smell.

Max didn’t move, and Daniel knew as much as he wanted to force it, he had to let him sort out the cascade on his own. "Come find me when you are ready."

He got up and bowed toward the barkeep, "Seb, Take care of him, I need to go home."

The young barkeep nodded, a slight eyebrow raise asking the question for him.

"I just broke a memory spell. It might take him a while to be ok." Daniel drank a little more of his drink and left, his half-empty glass on the bar beside Max. He got up and went out the front doors. Shortly after there was a blinding flash of light that reflected through the windows and then nothing. But Max was too caught up in the flood of memories to notice.

If Daniel had left a few seconds earlier he might not have had any warning, and with his slowed reflexes might not have been able to defend himself. If he had left a minute later, he might have missed the thief all together. But as it was, his luck continued to be bad.

He was crossing through the dark area under the awning when he felt something against his back. A moment later a strong arm came around him wrenching his head back. "Coin purse." The figure hissed in his ear. The thing that had poked him in the back was a knife and now it was sitting against his ribcage. The thin tee shirt the only thing that was between him and it.

"Barış olacak" Daniel said. When he got no response he repeated it in English. "Be at peace brother. But I don’t carry money." He rarely did. If he needed it he could just make it appear in his pocket. But with the position he was in, he couldn’t use his magic. He needed his hands free.

"Gimme your purse." He said again.

"No purse, just a wallet on a chain, with my ID and my Tattoo license in it." He was trying to wriggle out of the man’s iron grip but found it nearly impossible. If he had been in better shape, maybe, but now, as weak as he was, there was little he could do.

Daniel could feel the ink moving. And the one that worried him was the dragon. Fafnir could be cranky. And he had a sense of humor that many didn’t find funny. But the dragon was irritated now. With a twist, and a jerk that caused the thief to grab him harder and very nearly got Daniel stabbed in the back, the change started in earnest. Green-black scales ran up and down his legs, and his head, already pulled back by the assailant, twisted away on a suddenly-longer neck, his nose elongating and his brow ridge becoming more pronounced. The eye color remained the same but suddenly there was a human-sized dragon, its tail whipping out to knock the knife out of the man’s hand. "Thou shouldst not meddle in the affairs of Dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with catsup." The dragon said, snapping just over the man’s shoulder. The thief, now unarmed and scared fled, screaming of dragons.

As soon as he had left arms reach Daniel changed back, and it took half as long to change back. In fact, it was so fast the ground came up to meet him and he just lay there a moment trying to regain his breath and gather a little bit of moonlight.

"Light of the moon give me strength." He said as he slowly worked himself onto his back and then into a seated position. It took another couple of minutes of resting before he could rise unsteadily to his feet, claiming he’d had too much to drink. He staggered off to find a quiet place to locate himself.

Max, inside had heard the commotion and the screams about a dragon, and reached for the cog-wheel badge in his pocket, while he fished a gear coin out of his pouch to pay the tab. "Keep the change," he muttered, charging out the door. He didn’t know how he knew it, but somehow he did. That dragon was Daniel.

It took a few minutes to get the story out of passers by who had seen it, and they laid hands on Max. "If he’s your friend go find him, he was white as a ghost and could barely stand if he decided to locate I don’t know where he’d find himself." The woman said. Her silver hair was natural, and her smile was gentle. "Sir? Was that the Inkwalker?"

"Yes, it was. He’s very Ill."

She grabbed his hand, her hands very nearly painful as they squeezed his in her earnestness. "Then you protect him, Ok? You make sure that boy gets food and sleep before he kills himself." She smiled, and Max wondered if Daniel had ever had a grandmother like her.

"I will ma’am" the words were out of his mouth before he realized what he had said, and yet it felt so right.

He charged off down the street the direction that Daniel had staggered. "Light of the moon, guide me to him."

#

Daniel was still stunned by the full change. Having one of them completely take him over without warning or permission was rare, and foolish considering how little energy he had. The Dragon must have considered the attacker that much of a threat. Daniel staggered, stumbling to a cutout at the end of the block he knew was uninhabited. He lay, face-up in the weeds for a moment. He knew he didn’t have enough energy to walk home, he was in no condition to drive, but did he dare to Locate? Location took lots of energy, but it was the quickest way to get out of where you were. Not to mention, there was no way he could walk or drive home, that left him with location or walking back to the bar and hoping that max wasn’t gone yet.

Knowing he was low on power he decided to hedge his bets. Instead of just wishing himself away he reached down and drew a crescent moon in the dust. Before doing anything else he leaned back and looked up at the moon and stars, trying to gather as much light as he could before he did this.

"Light of the moon defend me." His tattoos glowed blue-white for a moment and he lay there as long as he dared. But he needed to be behind four walls where he could take his ink off. He could risk it for a short time at home even without a guardian. Without a keeper, it simply wasn’t recommended.

But he was cold, shivering cold, even though the night wasn’t that chilly. That was a bad sign, and as much as he could gain by walking, the moonlight he could gather wouldn’t be enough and he couldn’t chance meeting the Necromancer or his henchmen on the way.

He tried to clear his mind of the dangers as he reached down and touched the points of the moon, seated crossed-legged the opposite way. Doing this now, with this little energy was dangerous, It could splice him, making him come out the other side wrong, or stuck in a solid object, it was rare, but did happen, far more likely was that he wouldn’t have enough power to get home and it would drop him before he got there.

The world flashed blue-white around him, the world going insubstantial and gauzy as if he were walking through a land of ghosts and spirits. He rose and started to move, the blocks leaping by in single footsteps. But suddenly he was back in the pitch black. "Max, find me." He whispered. "Moon, grant me strength, Protect me, help him find me." Those are the three things he hoped for as the blackness of unconsciousness took him.

There was the nagging fear that his guardian still wouldn’t help him. That he would leave him here to die under the light of the moon. And the desperate plea for Max to find him, to save him before he was still and the world around him was black

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Next Chapter: Moon Week