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.