Blood Rock Read online

  Then the blinding white light of a spotlight pinned us all where we were, and we looked up to see a knot of smoke pushed away by a black helicopter, descending in silence.

  “This is the D-E-I!” a loudspeaker screeched. “Everyone stay where you are!”

  Attack on the Werehouse

  Werekin scattered like cockroaches. Two more helicopters appeared—sleek as fish, black as night, quieter than vacuum cleaners: Shadowhawks, the stealth helicopters favored by the DEI. And then the loudspeaker blared again: “This is the D-E-I! Stay where you are!”

  “Oh thank God,” I said, staring up into the light. I knew the voice. “That’s Philip!”

  “Hell,” Calaphase said. “We need to get out of here.”

  “Why?” I said. “We need the help, and we’ve done nothing wrong—”

  “You maybe,” Gettyson spat, tearing off his jacket. “But the werekin here just got outed!”

  “But … ” I said. “But I never gave away the werehouse’s location.”

  “You idiot! You let them track you!” Gettyson shouted, throwing his jacket at me.

  The moment he said it, I knew he was right. Stunned, I watched him tear off into the distance as DEI agents slid down from two of the helicopters on wires. Several followed him, and a team of four converged upon us as the Shadowhawks swung round and settled towards the ground. They had their guns out. They had their guns out. I had to stop this.

  “Let me handle this,” Calaphase said, starting forward. “I—”

  “No,” I said sharply. “Stay here. Cop doesn’t mix well with vamp. You too, honey, you just lie here,” I said, patting Cinnamon’s head. “Let me deal with the police.”

  “Mom?” she asked, then sat up sharply. “Mom!”

  “Hey, hey,” I cried, waving my arms at the flak-jacketed agents. “Thank God you’re here, but what’s with the ordinance? We need fire fighters, not a fire fight.”

  “On the ground!” the lead agent shouted, a big, tough black man with close-trimmed hair and a no-nonsense demeanor—but his eyes were a bit wild. “On the ground now!”

  I was appalled, but I didn’t let him stop me. He was a cop, and, fundamentally, we were on the same side. All I had to do was keep everyone talking until we were all calmed down.

  “Whoa, gentlemen. I’m the official representative of the Little—of the Oakdale vampire clan,” I said, spreading my hands. “We provide security on this site under the umbrella of the Vampire Consulates of Atlanta, and as you can see we’ve got a situation here—”

  “Shut it!” the agent shouted—enraged, buzz cut, jaaaar head. “On the ground.”

  “Where the hell do you think you are, federal land?” I said. “Maybe you didn’t notice zip-lining down from Shamu the Flying Leafblower there, but it’s posted—you’re trespassing. If you ain’t here to help, I sure as hell hope you have a no-knock warrant—”

  “What the hell’s this?” a second DEI agent said, training his shotgun on me. It was a Benelli, the kind Philip used. “A street lawyer?”

  “More importantly, what the hell’s that?” a third agent said, pointing behind me. “It’s like she’s half tiger or something.”

  “Oh, shit,” the second one said. “We’ve got a lyke changing here.”

  Oh, hell no. “What you’ve got is more than you can handle,” I said, raising my hands towards them and sliding one foot back, “unless you cough up a warrant—”

  “Shut it!” the first agent said, as the others tried to flank me. “All right, street lawyer, back to law school. Myers, cuff her. Johann, Briggs, secure the lyke before she changes.”

  “Spirit of justice, shield my stand,” I said—and shot both hands out wide.

  My vines unfolded, and in shock the agent fired. The blast scattered off my growing shield, stung my skin—what were they using? silver? salt? a mixture?—and knocked me back. I was shocked by the noise and impact and my face flushed in terror—but there was no way the agents could see that through the green glow of my vines shining on their astonished faces.

  I settled into a solid karate stance, extending my vines out into a thicket to bar their path to my child and friends. As I settled and my vines thickened, they glowed brighter, their green overpowering the red light of the flames—and the officers backed up. Apparently skindancing was rare enough they simply weren’t prepared, and just looked dumbfounded.

  “Settle down, gentlemen,” I said, trying not to let my shaking show. Jesus Christ. I just got shot in the chest. But these men had been coming after my child, and if I’d learned anything from Taido, it was this: don’t initiate violence, but once your guard’s up, never let it down. “Until I see a warrant, you aren’t badges, you’re just trespassers on private property.”

  “Down, Dakota,” said Special Agent Philip Davidson, striding briskly forward from the now-landed copter, shotgun over his shoulders. He wore a flak jacket over one of his thousand-dollar suits, his brown hair looked black in the dying light of the flames, and his goatee made him look like a villain—but he was smiling. Part of me was glad to see him; the rest wanted to punch him for letting his officers get this far out of hand. “And stand down, gentlemen.”

  “This ain’t your op, Davidson,” the first officer cracked. “And Namura said—”

  “I’m the ranking officer,” Philip said, “and I’ll deal with the Director. Stand down.”

  “Philip,” I said, easing down, furling my vines—slowly. “I’m so glad to see you.”

  “Dakota, you should know better than to interfere with Federal agents. I should arrest you on general principles.” But he stopped next to the agent who’d fired, radiating the calm disapproval he was so good at. “I said there would be civilians on scene. Did you just discharge your weapon point-blank onto my unarmed girlfriend while her hands were empty?”

  “But there’s a lyke—and she was—” the agent began. “Uh, no, well, uh, sir—”

  “Make that ‘uh, yes sir’—he did shoot little old unarmed me,” I said, not giving Philip ‘girlfriend’ after the ‘valuable resource’ crack—but folding my arms so he wouldn’t see my hands tremble. “And yes, my hands were indeed up—”

  “But she was resisting,” the agent said, as Philip just stared at him.

  “Standing with my hands out pleading for calm?” I said, glaring. “Look, maybe I was being hardnosed; but that’s my daughter back there. You didn’t leave me any choice.”

  “Only you, Dakota, could take a shotgun blast to the chest and then apologize for being hardnosed,” Philip said, amazed, stepping right up to me, hands touching a hole in my vest.

  “Holy shit,” I murmured; my vines had protected me, but not my clothes. I deflated a little. “I didn’t expect that.”

  “Lucky woman is the phrase I’d use,” Philip said. “After your ‘emotional experience’ you had toned your bravado down; I take it the volume’s back up?”

  “I wish you hadn’t brought that up,” I said. ‘Emotional experience’ was a bit of Fed jargon for getting the shit kicked out of you—in my case, by the vampire Transomnia. It didn’t take much for me to see his cold red eyes, to feel my fingers in those garden clippers, to remember that I could tattoo now only because he’d let me go. “I was trying to forget.”

  “I was trying to make you remember,” Philip said, finger picking at a hole in my corset. “You’ve got to think things through. No agent will take chances arresting a werekin—at the first sign of resistance they’ll shoot first and sort it out later. What if you’d been a half second slower with your shield? You’d be dead and probably would everyone else on your side.”

  “What was I supposed to do?” I said. “Lie down and hope?”

  “That’s the law,” Philip said firmly. “Anything else is resisting arrest—”

  “The phrase I’d use is defending my daughter,” I said hotly. “Philip, I was raised on the force and I reject the idea cops can’t listen to reason. Why didn’t you prep the agents?”

&
nbsp; “I tried, but I can’t be everywhere watching over every agent’s shoulder—and what if I hadn’t been here at all?” He reached out and briefly squeezed my shaking hand. “You can’t count on me to always ride to your rescue, no matter how much I’d like to.”

  “I know,” I said. I was still steamed, but I still tingled at the brief brush of his fingers. Then Calaphase shifted behind me uncomfortably—and Philip caught it.

  “That your new beau?” he asked, leaning slightly so he could stare around my shoulder. Philip was shorter than most, though it didn’t show, given how he carried himself. “The fang?”

  “If you mean the blond vampire,” I said, frowning, “we’ve had one half-date, and if you feel jealous, you should have seen the look on Saffron’s face when she ran into us.”

  Philip looked up sharply, saw the missing collar. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “Though I could see how she would see it as a breach of trust.”

  “Breach of trust?” I said. “You had me tailed—”

  “I’d never have you tailed,” Philip said, glancing over his shoulder, “and you have to know sending an assault unit into a werehouse filled with children was not my idea.”

  I followed his gaze to see a trim young Japanese man striding towards us in a neat, pinstriped suit. He surveyed the officers, the huddle of survivors around my car, and then me and Philip, and then stepped up and said, “So, Agent Davidson, I take it you have secured the scene.”

  “Yes, Assistant Director Namura,” Philip said. “There’s the issue of—”

  “Not quite,” I said, folding my arms again. “There’s the small matter of the warrant, not to mention the illegal surveillance you had to be doing to follow me here.”

  “And you must be Dakota Frost,” Namura said, black eyes inspecting me with amused displeasure. “Are you aware it is illegal to practice magic in Georgia without a license?”

  “I’m a licensed magical tattooist,” I said. “Licensed to ‘ink magical marks and perform related tattooing magic.’ Just because people don’t understand what tattoo magic can do … ”

  But Namura closed his eyes suddenly, and you could see them working back and forth rapidly beneath his lids, like he was scanning something. “Yes, yes of course,” he said, voice almost bored as he withdrew something from his coat pocket. “That will do.”

  “What, aren’t you going to claim to be offended?” I asked, staring at what I guessed was a warrant in his hand. “To make a case that I’m skirting the law—”

  “The point of the law is that you have training to use magic and know how to handle magical materials safely,” he said, unfolding the papers. “Clearly you have training, and if your skin is the spellcasting material, there’s no danger of it falling into the wrong hands.”

  “Don’t be too sure of that,” Philip and I said simultaneously.

  The man raised an eyebrow, then held the letter out. “Our warrant, Miss Frost.”

  I took it. I’d never seen a Federal warrant before; I had no idea what they looked like. I hadn’t even known they were issued by the U.S. District Court. For all I knew they’d made this up at Kinko’s—but it looked official, and I took careful note of the most important details:

  Takashi Namura and any Authorized Officer of the United States, … having trumped up the necessary evidence and waved around the scary word ‘werewolf’, are hereby authorized to roust the nearby werehouse for … concealed on the person or property Un-Licensed Lycan-thropic (sic) Housing Facility.

  “You see this is a no-knock warrant,” Namura said. “This conversation is a courtesy.”

  “As long as everyone’s talking, no-one’s shooting or biting,” I said quietly.

  “My apologies,” he said, more quietly. “I saw you take a shotgun blast and not strike back. Most impressive. On behalf of my men, thank you for trying to defuse the situation.”

  “Maybe I did that a little for them,” I said, “but mostly it was for my daughter.”

  He glanced at her, then closed his eyes again, letting them flicker behind his lids. Then he opened them, nodded, and turned to his men. “Where are the sirens? Where is our police backup, the ambulances, the fire trucks? There are injured people there. Why are you not helping them?”

  The agents jerked at the sound of his voice, like he’d cracked a whip; yet he had barely raised his voice, and you could tell nothing from his face. Even Philip twitched, but Namura said, “Stay with this group. I don’t want to lose them, even if they aren’t the fish we hoped to catch.”

  “All this wasn’t a response to the fire,” I said, understanding growing in my mind. “It couldn’t have been. You were going to roust the werehouse anyway.”

  “This,” Namura said, “is the inevitable fallout of the attack you partially reported earlier. You called in attempted murder by magic, but didn’t give us enough information to perform a proper investigation. We had to follow up. You should know that.”

  “Of course,” I said. “No good deed goes unpunished.”

  “Maybe,” Namura said, turning to survey the fire, the swarming agents. “But, now that we are here, know that ‘rousting’ the werehouse is going to take a back seat to responding to the fire. In the end, the safety of these … well, these people is our first duty.”

  “All right,” I said heavily. “On that note … we couldn’t get everyone out.”

  “There’s always a further complication,” Namura said, striding off towards his men, motioning to one of them. “We’ll send rescue crews in everywhere we can—”

  “Have them watch out,” I said. “I have strong reason to believe this was a magic fire.”

  Namura scowled. “We’ll want to question you,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  We all stood there in uncomfortable silence, not wanting to look at each other. Philip remained damnably quiet. I expected my big bad vampire beau to bust out with some creepy bullshit to knock his human rival off guard, but Calaphase looked actually embarrassed. Every time he looked like he wanted to say something, he just bit it off and kept quiet.

  I certainly wasn’t going to say anything

  In minutes there were sirens in the distance, followed by police cars, ambulances, and three or four fire trucks. The firemen made short work of what was left of the blaze and stopped a fire that was left in the woods. Only the tag itself kept “burning,” but it was no longer real fire: it was just colored streamers of magic that only looked like flame, slowly weakening.

  Namura summoned me back to the tag to explain to the firemen how to set up a magic circle. They nodded, but I don’t think they were really listening. They just kept their eyes on the tag hoping that the magic would fade on its own without them having to deal with it.

  “Oh, hell, it’s you,” cursed a familiar voice, and I turned to see a dwarf Columbo wannabe stomping up to me—McGough from the Black Hats magical crime squad.

  “It is indeed me,” I said, smiling back at him, surprised to realize I liked the guy. Something about having been through this before put us on the same team. He radiated calm, thought on his feet and the look he gave Namura’s team spoke volumes. I was betting he didn’t like Namura’s tactics any more than I did. “And how the hell are you?”

  “I was fine until I saw you, you tattooed witch,” he said, trying to suppress a smile: apparently he liked me too. He leaned back and stared at the slow rainbow fire leaking out of the top of the whitewash. “What kind of mess have you gotten yourself into this time?”

  “I didn’t get myself into anything, you little toad,” I said, holding up my hands. “This was Cinnamon’s home. She was having a bad change, and we came here for help. Then all hell broke loose.”

  “Yeah, yeah, likely story,” McGough said, still staring, his wrinkled little face lit up by the strobing light like he was standing on a dance floor. “Before anyone from the D.A.’s office shows up and tells me to lock you in the clink, any ideas?”

  “Oh, I’ve got ideas,” I said, reaching out
and touching the whitewash. A bit of it came off on my finger, and I held it up to him. “Under this shit is the mural that attacked T … the werekin I reported. The other werekin painted it over before I could take pictures, but it was definitely by the same tagger, or more likely, crew of taggers that killed Revenance.”

  “Oh, shit, don’t tell me it’s a crew,” he said, raising a hand to scratch the back of his neck. “Don’t you tell me that. How are we going to track them now?”

  “Different hands, but the same style,” I said. “Also, we noticed some wind effects, like when we tried to save Revenance. I think at least one tagger was within eyesight, helping fan the flames. I wouldn’t be surprised if they set the fire as revenge for whitewashing the tag.”

  “I’d believe it, the jerks,” McGough said, nodding. Then he smiled. “Alright, go back and wait with the civvies before someone notices you’re over here. Last thing I need is some idiot D.A. trying to force your foot into a ‘misuse of magic’ slipper.”

  “Namura asked me to come over here,” I said. “You don’t really think—”

  “—people look for their keys under the lamplight because it’s where they can see without having to think to hard?” McGough said bitterly. “Yeah I do, just like I think a DA tired of chasing her tail might decide you’re guilty because you’re always around. Now get out of my crime scene before someone decides to pick you up and see if you’re the key to a promotion and new Lexus. Shoo! I might need you later.”

  I went. But, OK, I had to admit it: I really was starting to like the little toad.

  But when I got back to my car, the pit fell out of my stomach. The Mercedes had returned, bringing Saffron and Darkrose. A tanned, ripped Native American man was there too, the human form of Lord Buckhead, the fae Master of the Hunt and patron of the werehouse. Saffron, Buckhead and Calaphase were arguing with Namura, who looked unhappy. But none of them moved to stop the officers arresting Gettyson, Fischer and half a dozen other elder werekin.