Chapter 9
Nine
NOW | JAX
The pain hits like a crack of lightning inside my skull.
“Fuuuuuck.” I slam both palms into my head, fingers digging into my hair like I can physically hold my skull together.
The magic spikes behind my eyes and something on the bar counter shatters.
If I stay here, I’ll rip the entire place apart. Scotch included.
This is why the whole damn city locks up on full moons. Bars, shops, streets—dead quiet. They call it tradition now. A harmless superstition, but it wasn’t always like this. The truth is uglier: I’m the reason it started. They just don’t know who they’re hiding from.
I stumble toward the door, half-blind, half-feral, pushing into the freezing night air. The cold slams into me, cutting through the worst of the heat, but not enough to stop the burn under my skin. The moon is high—too full, too bright.
Last full moon, I woke up in an alley covered in someone else’s vomit. Not fucking happening again. I move fast, not toward anything—just away. Away from the bar, the windows I could break, the dog I could accidentally crush by breathing wrong.
Tar City is nothing but alleys, and every one of them feels like it’s waiting for me to slip. The magic lunges again, and I grab the wall to steady myself—but the brick cracks under my hand.
“Shit.”
I look up instinctively. The moon hangs over the rooftops like it’s watching me choke on myself.
My breath fogs white—and then I feel it: The ink rising.
The skin over my abdomen tightens, burning from the inside out.
A shape pushes beneath the surface—the start of lines, marks, symbols I’ve spent years trying to hide.
Not tattoos, they’re just cover-ups. The Markings.
That’s what Murtaugh called them the first night they showed up—lines the tar magic uses to carve itself into me.
They only reveal themselves during a full moon, but once they're there, they're there for good. Most people can’t tell where my real tattoos end and the Markings begin. Except her. Sisk always sees them, always touches them, and her mouth grazing the Markings? My fucking undoing and this city’s salvation.
Sometimes she can quiet the tar before it takes hold.
Sometimes she becomes the only thing standing between me and whatever the Pit wants.
My breath fogs again. I try to think of something else—anything else—but she crowds my head instantly. Her scent. Her thighs. Her bruises. The hunger slams into me, vicious and sudden. I double over. “No—no, no—”
A deep animal sound rips up my throat. The street concrete shudders slightly under my feet and the lamppost above me flickers. A car alarm across the block screams to life and dies instantly.
I hear the Tar Pit calling. A thrum that slips under the city noise and curls around my thoughts. A voice made of pressure and memory. A demand. The Pit is hungry; it wants to be fed. “No,” I grit out.
I force myself to move, stumbling deeper into the narrow streets. I need somewhere—anywhere—with no glass, no metal, no lives. The headache is splitting me open from the inside. My vision is starting to shift.
A streetlight overhead bursts, showering the alley in darkness. That’s my cue to disappear further. I shove past a chain-link fence—and a man standing there raises a hand like he’s going to stop me. “You can’t enter—”
He looks at me—at my eyes, my posture, the way I'm barely holding myself together, and lowers his hand slowly.
A trash can beside us rolls and tips over, crashing against the wall—loud enough to echo through the alley. He jumps back and I disappear into the tunnel.
My Markings flare under my shirt, spreading over my ribs. I press my back to the wall, trying to breathe, trying not to think of her, trying not to think of the way she'd look if she saw me right now. Trying not to think about how badly I want her when I'm like this.
The tar shifts again inside me and the world sharpens, edges brighten, shadows peel back and the tunnel around me blooms into clear grayscale—the kind of clarity no human should see in the dark. The night vision peaks and my pulse spikes.
I lift my shirt with shaking fingers and the Markings come to life across my abdomen, shifting under my skin as if they're deciding, choosing. That's what the Markings are: a preview, a map, a teaser of who the tar wants—who The Pit thinks I owe, who I'm supposed to give it to tonight.
Sometimes the Markings stay vague, like smoke trapped in skin. Sometimes they form letters and faces. Tonight? The lines hook into shape, curving, pulling into a human silhouette. I see the neck, the beginning of a profile and then, a swollen belly.
I lose my balance. “No,” I breathe. I grip the fabric of my shirt tightly, trying to steady my breath. “I’m not hunting a fucking baby, you son of a bitch!”
The Markings burn and I grit my teeth. This is the part Sisk doesn’t run away from—and the part that makes me stay away from her: the monster; the hunter; the puppet. I don’t have control over it, but sometimes I manage to stop a foot away from the prey.
Sometimes I don't mind tossing a criminal or two in their place.
Hell, some people deserve worse. But that's not the point.
The point is that it isn't my choice. It never is.
That's why I'll keep fighting it until the day it kills me.
Because the moment I stop fighting, the moment I accept that the tar gets to decide who lives and who dies, I'm no better than the thing controlling me.
The only problem is, I'm not the one in control.
I stopped counting how many people I killed a long time ago.
It always starts the same way. The moon becomes full, and the tar changes.
It feels hollow somehow, starving in a way that's impossible to explain.
Then the markings appear, telling me what it wants.
Sometimes it's one person. Sometimes it's a couple. Once, it demanded an entire group.
I don't know what determines it, maybe it's the number of wishes people made that month, maybe it's the size of them, or maybe the tar just decides when it's hungry.
I stopped trying to understand the rules.
All I know is that every full moon is different.
Sometimes I wake up covered in blood. Sometimes there are bodies.
Sometimes there aren't. Sometimes entire chunks of the night disappear, and I have to piece together what happened from whispers at the bar and rumors drifting through the city the next morning.
The Markings burn deeper until it feels like my insides will split. The urge to obey—to feed the thing that lives in the cracks of Tar City—will soon become unbearable. My hands tremble and panic hits raw and animalistic.
There’s only one person who’s ever been able to pull me back from this edge.
One person who can drown out the hunger twisted through my veins and bones.
Sisk. The problem is that relying on her comes with a price.
Sometimes she can talk me down. Sometimes a touch, a kiss, the sound of her voice is enough to remind me who I am.
Other times, the full moon amplifies everything—the rage, the hunger, the need buried beneath my skin until it feels like I'm vibrating with it.
Even desire becomes something monstrous.
The tar wants more. I want more. And when those lines start to blur, Sisk becomes the thing the hunger reaches for.
I've never wanted to use her as a leash to keep myself human.
I've hurt her before, not because I wanted to, but because sometimes I lose the battle.
That's why I try to carry this alone whenever I can.
But some nights are worse than others, some nights the pull is too strong.
And tonight there's a baby fighting for his life. Tonight, I need her.
It's either her hands on the Markings, her dragging me back from The Pit the only way she knows how—or someone dies. I’ll try to be gentle. I lie through my teeth, but the truth is brutal and simple: It's either I drown myself in her tonight, or I kill.