Page 9 of Endless
Declan grinned broadly. “I’m undefeated.”
“No shit.” I was oddly fascinated. As an assassin, I wouldn’t make for a very entertaining fighter. But if I hadn’t ended up with the Demons, I may have found myself doing very similar work. Although my socially stunted ass would’ve most likely ended up in a gladiator type of situation.
“Yeah, you should come see me fight sometime. Might want to leave the wife and kids at home, though. It gets pretty brutal.”
I paused to sit up and stretch my hand, returning his grin. “I would, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be arrested on sight if I ever show my face in Blakeworth again.”
“For real?” Declan’s eyes widened. “Okay, I need to hearthatstory.”
We spent the next few hours swapping war stories while I tattooed him. All the line work on his dragon became sharp and crisp. I had started adding shading to the surrounding smoke, plus green and gold coloring to the dragon’s scales, when we decided to stop.
“I’ll be in town ‘til the end of the week.” Declan sat up from the bench after I cleaned his skin and went to grab his shirt. Now that I knew what to look for, he clearly moved like a fighter. “Thanks for squeezing me in, Shadow. I know you’re busy as hell these days.”
“It’s no trouble. I actually keep my schedule pretty flexible in case something comes up with the kids.” Speaking of, it was my day to pick up Rori from school. I cleaned up my area quickly, not wanting to leave a mess for my shop apprentice. “Come by in the mornings,” I told Declan. “I have to pick up my daughter, but tomorrow I can work on you for an hour longer.”
“Sounds good, Shadow. We’ll catch up more over a drink later, yeah?”
“Sure. See you, Dec.”
“And then we played tag,and I was It, butguess what, Dad!”
“What happened, Ror?” I held on to my daughter’s hand as we walked up the driveway together, carrying her llama backpack in the other hand. Ever since we went on a family trip to an alpaca farm a few weeks ago, she’d been obsessed with llamas and alpacas.
“I tagged everyone!” Rori released my hand and started jumping and skipping in front of me. “’Cause I’m the fastest! I was like this!” She sprinted up the rest of the driveway to the front door, where Hades waited for her on the front porch.
“Wow, look at you go!” I dug out my keys, smiling at my exuberant daughter.That’s one way to burn all that energy.
The dog matched her excitement, returning her tackling hug with face licks and excited tail-wagging as I let us into the house.
“Hades, can you catch me?” Rori darted through the living room, circling the couches with her bright laughter as Hades chased her.
“Hey Freyja.” I set our stuff down and greeted the sleepy cat with an ear scratch. She head-butted my hand once, then promptly turned around to sleep in a different position. “Fair enough, we’ll hang out when it’s quieter.”
Freyja loved Rori, but didn’t care for our daughter’s tendency to tornado around the house when she was at full energy.
Playing tag at school seemed to drain her earlier than usual, though. Hades only chased her for a few minutes before she sprawled out on the couch, panting.
“Do you want a snack, Ror-meister?” We had the house to ourselves until the others got home, so the kitchen was unusually quiet and empty without Jandro whipping up something.
“Yes, please. Can I have animal crackers?”
“Sure. Drink some water for me, okay? You ran a lot today.”
“Okay.”
I set out her snack for her, then flipped through some upcoming tattoo sketches while Rori nibbled her crackers. Declan wanted a lion on his back, interacting somehow with the dragon once I finished adding color to the scales. I got so absorbed in sketching that I didn’t notice Rori had finished her snack until she crawled up on the couch and nestled into my side.
“What are you drawing, Daddy?” She leaned on my shoulder, voice quiet and calm.
“Some tattoos for work.” I brought an arm around her and dropped a kiss to her forehead. “What do you think of this lion?”
“He’s hungry. He’s gonna bite the snake.” She pointed to where the lion’s open jaws hovered dangerously close to the back end of the dragon.
“That’s a dragon, silly.” I tugged a lock of her hair. “See? He’s scaly like a snake, but he has feet.”
“Where are his wings?” Rori’s eyelids blinked heavily. All that running around really tuckered her out today.
“This one doesn’t have wings, but he does breathe fire.” I flipped to another page where I had drawn the details of the dragon’s head. “See all this smoke coming out of his mouth? And he’s got feet up here too, so he’s got four legs.”
