Blood Rock Page 6

  “Quite right,” Vladimir said, patting Cinnamon on the shoulder as he walked past. He sat down on the desk and smiled at us. “I think it is a bit much to expect Cinnamon to have learned all our rules before she’s heard them. Have you heard of the Seven Dirty Words, Cinnamon?”

  “Uh … no,” she said.

  “Well, they’re words that the FCC—that’s the Federal Communications Commission, which you will learn about in Civics class—won’t let people say on TV,” Vladimir said. “We don’t use them at the Clairmont Academy, and I won’t say them here, but if you’re web savvy I’m sure you can look them up on Wikipedia as a guide for what not to say to your teachers.”

  “Doctor Vladimir,” Fremont said. “To point a student to … such a list—”

  “What happened to Yonas?” Vladimir asked, smiling at her. Idly he picked up the Rubik’s cube and stared at it. “Our job is not to hide the truth from our students; it’s to teach them how to learn the truth and use it responsibly. Huh. Two sides. Not bad.”

  “I had four,” Cinnamon said reproachfully. Her tail was twitching something fierce now, and she had started to rock in her chair—but she still answered. “I was shooting at five, just so I could see the pattern on six.”

  Vladimir stared at her, then tossed her the cube. “Show me.”

  Cinnamon twitched as she caught it. “We gots to go,” she said, grimacing, but stared at the cube for a second before turning it a few times and flipping it back to him. “Four back at you. The counts, the pairs, the lonelies, and the pretties. I still wants to see what the other ones are.”

  “Wholes, evens, primes,” Vladimir muttered, turning it. He held a side to us—it had 6s in the corners, 28s at north, south, east and west, and 496 at the center. “Are these the pretties?”

  “Not all of them,” Cinnamon said.

  “We call them perfect numbers,” Vladimir began. “That’s because if you add—”

  “Fucking clown,” Cinnamon snapped, abruptly turning away from him.

  “Cinnamon!” I said, shocked beyond words. “What did I say earlier?”

  “Who cares? I can’t pass another fucking test,” she said. “We gots to go—”

  “Not before you apologize to Doctor Vladimir,” I said sharply.

  “There’s no need,” Vladimir chuckled, winking at me. “I can go on a bit, and I do have the look. But she is right, you do need to get going right away.” He turned to a set of cubbyholes beside Fremont’s desk and pulled out a folder and some papers. “The Academy is not a public school and we hold our students to a very high standard. Classes start Friday, not Monday, and we expect our students to get cracking over the very first weekend. We distribute textbooks here, but it will really help if you can get some of the supplemental books for her grade level, and after some assessments on Friday, I may have a few more suggestions—”

  But I was barely hearing him. I just stared down at the folder he had placed in my hands, then held it up to show it to Cinnamon. It said, in bold gilt letters:

  Welcome to Clairmont Academy:

  A Guide for Students and Parents

  “Yonas!” Fremont said, as Cinnamon seized the folder and her eyes started welling up. “You—you can’t just let her in, just like that—”

  “Sure I can,” Vladimir said, shrugging. “We each get one pass. Just because you used yours doesn’t mean I can’t use mine.”

  “But … but her accreditation,” Fremont said. “Her behavior—”

  “Katie, you’re new here,” Vladimir said, a little less patiently. “A good ten percent of our good-reco kids will go bad and a similar percent of the bad-recos will go good. You know this. And as for her behavior, she is an extraordinary needs child—”

  “Thankyou thankyou thankyou,” Cinnamon said, hopping up, tugging at her collar. “I’ll do my very best, I promises, but, like, we gots to go—”

  “Sit down, Cinnamon Frost,” I said. “I’m sure I have forms to sign—”

  “We can’t wait for that,” Cinnamon said, whirling. “Fuck, Mom, we gots to go—”

  “Cinnamon!” I said, astonished. “What’s wrong with you?”

  And then I saw it. Cinnamon wasn’t acting out because she was angry. She was terrified—and her whiskers were visibly growing out.

  —

  “I—I can’t stop it,” Cinnamon said, eyes in tears. “I … I’m changing.”

  Fur and Rage

  “I knew it. I just knew it. When does the moon come up?” Vladimir asked, whirling to look at Fremont’s wall clock. It showed 3:54 pm. “How long do you have?”

  “An hour,” Cinnamon said, clenching her fists. “Fuck! Not even.”

  “Is it really the full moon already?” he asked. “Shouldn’t you have another day?”

  “I haven’t changed in three months,” she whispered. “I can’t hold no longer—”

  “That’s not healthy,” Vladimir said, frowning at me. “Changing is part of who she is. You shouldn’t be trying to suppress her gift.”

  “I didn’t tell her not to change,” I said angrily. “She was poisoned.”

  “Silver nitrate?” he asked sharply. “What’s that called, hyper-argyle-something?”

  “Hyperargyria,” I said, squatting so I could look Cinnamon in the eye. Her eyes were actually glowing, and her pupils had narrowed to vertical ovals. “It damn near killed her.”

  “Damnit,” Vladimir said. He looked at Fremont, who was gasping like a fish, and then he came to join me, watching the fine growth of fur on Cinnamon’s face. “Cinnamon, honey,” he said loudly. “Cinnamon, can you hear me?”

  “I don’t knows,” she said. “Speak up a bit.”

  Vladimir nodded and drew a breath as if to yell, but I poked him and shook my head. “Oh!” he said. “That wasn’t nice. Cinnamon, do you need a safety cage?”

  Cinnamon clenched her fists, staring at them, then nodded.

  “We have one in the basement,” Vladimir said.

  “No, we don’t,” Fremont said, horrified. “Marian Joyce was complaining it was cramped so … I’m having it replaced.”

  “You’re WHAT?” Vladimir said, clearly angry.

  “Classes don’t start until Friday,” Fremont said, eyes frozen on Cinnamon. “The new one is going in this weekend. I didn’t think—”

  “No, you didn’t,” Vladimir snapped.

  “How could I have known?” she cried. “The next full moon isn’t for, what, a week?”

  “It isn’t legal to offer an extraordinary needs program to a werekin without a safety cage on site, full moon or no,” he said. “We’ll have to tell Cinnamon and Marion not to come in on Friday, and how will that go over with Miss Frost, much less the Joyces—”

  “Stop fighting stop fighting stop fighting,” Cinnamon said softly, and Vladimir and Fremont both shut up. “For the love, keep quiet.”

  We all froze. Cinnamon’s little fists were trembling, and I swallowed as a tiny bit of blood beaded in the clench of her hands. But her shaking subsided, her fur faded, and her whiskers slowly drew back in.

  “Mom, take me home,” Cinnamon said. “We gots to go. Take me home please.”

  “Of course, Cinnamon,” I said, putting my hand gently on her shoulder and handing her a wet wipe. I always carried them. Werekin blood, even a scratch, had to be cleaned up. I gave Fremont and Yonas an apologetic word and ushered Cinnamon out. In moments we were stepping through the doors onto the setting sun, and I sighed: this place was beautiful.

  “Wait,” Vladimir wheezed, running (well, limping) up behind us. “Whoo. Ah, wait, please wait,” he said, holding up the folder. “I don’t want to hold you up, but, please. We would love to have Cinnamon as a student at the Clairmont Academy.”

  “Doctor Vladimir, I’m Cinnamon’s guardian,” I said. Actually, we were still working through the adoption, but as far as the law was concerned I was still legally responsible for a werekin minor. “I don’t want to get sued, or, God forbid, go to jail if someth
ing happens—”

  “I’m sure we can make adequate arrangements before classes start.”

  “Oh, gimme that,” I said, taking the folder and handing it to Cinnamon, who cried with delight. “Cinnamon would love to be a student at the Clairmont Academy.”

  “Thank you thank you thank you!” Cinnamon said. “We—ah!” And then she raised a hand to her cheek, felt her whiskers, and said meekly. “We gots to go.”

  We got in the car and drove off.

  “Well, that went—are you OK?” I said. “Are you going to make it?”

  “Just drive,” she said, leaning back in the seat, eyes closed, holding the folder tightly in her hands. “Just get me home.”

  “Damnit, we still need to go by a pet store,” I said. Cinnamon snarled at the word ‘pet’, and I winced, but we still needed to go. I had planned a real safety room in the house we were buying, but the closing was on hold until the Valentine Foundation actually started coughing up the payments they owed me. We still didn’t have a cage at the apartment; we’d been planning to go get one this evening. “We’ve put this off too long—”

  “Forget it,” Cinnamon said with a growl, leaping between the seats to land in the back, tail thwacking me in the face as she went. “Take me home. Lock me in the bathroom.”

  “That’s too small,” I said.

  “You wants me to tear up your bedsheets?” she said, a growl growing in her voice.

  I glanced back: she was on all fours, eyes glowing, pupils oval and staring at something ahead of me. I turned—and slammed the brakes before I rammed the car stopped in front of me.

  “Jesus!” I said, as the Prius squealed to a stop amidst a chorus of angry horns. Ahead, on Clairmont road, early evening traffic stretched off in an endless line of red taillights. I could see a distant blue flashing light, complete with a knot of rubberneckers. “Fuck! This is not fair—”

  And then a low, gut churning growl rumbled through the Prius.

  Swallowing, I carefully reached up and adjusted the rear-view mirror, and stared straight into the yellow eyes of a huge tiger. Cinnamon was snarling, nose wrinkled, eyes oval against the sun. The steel collar about her throat had become chokingly tight as her body swelled, and she tugged at it with a paw broad enough to claw my face off.

  She seemed to fill the entire back seat with fur and rage. I’d never seen her like this: real tigers had nothing on the werekind. She was absolutely terrifying. But oddly, the threat of messy death was not the first thing on my mind.

  That horrible paw raised again to tug at the collar, and I said sharply, “Cinnamon Frost! Stop messing with that, you’ll pull out a claw.”

  She snarled, then roared at me, a fearsome sound that stung my ears and reverberated in my gut.

  I blinked—I couldn’t not blink at that sound—but did not flinch. She reached to claw at the collar again, and I got worried. “Are you choking?”

  The tiger’s eyes tightened, its nose wrinkled up, and I could see huge fangs in the rearview as she flinched back. But among all that, I saw the head twitch … in a clear no.

  “Good,” I said. My right ear hurt, and the steering wheel creaked under my grip, but it stopped my hands from shaking. “We’ll get Saffron to fit you with a larger one. I don’t want you choking, but I don’t want some vamp tearing into you because you’re not wearing her collar.”

  Cinnamon snarled again, striking the back of the seat with that paw so hard I felt the seat squeak. The car rocked under the blow; I understood her strength, but where was she getting the mass to shake a ton and a half of plastic and metal? The steering wheel grew damp under my death grip, but I didn’t turn, didn’t back down, didn’t give her any reason to strike.

  “If I can find a p—” don’t say pet, don’t say pet “—a … store,” I said slowly, swallowing as her crackling snarl rippled through the car, “can you wait in the car until I purchase a cage?”

  The tiger lowered her head, shaking it. A definite no.

  “Great, wonderful,” I said. But I had an idea, and pulled out of the traffic to the left into a nearby driveway so we could turn around. “Don’t worry, Cinnamon,” I said, reaching up to put the gearshift into reverse; when I did so, my hand was trembling. “I know what to do.”

  Only when my hand was calm did I flick the Prius in reverse, put my hand on its seat, and look over my shoulder to back up, coming face to face with Cinnamon’s tiger form. Her head was big enough to bite mine off, her body was twisted in rage, her claws were raking the seat—but her voice was mewling in terror, and the human in her eyes was wide and pleading.

  “All right,” I said, backing out. “No choice. We go to the werehouse.”

  Jasmine and Steel

  The entrance to the Oakdale Werehouse was hidden away on one of South Atlanta Road’s tiny tributaries, a dumpy dirt road hooking off into the forest. Past the bend, almost hidden behind heaped jasmine vines, was a narrow gravel driveway. A NO TRESPASSING sign warned away humans; a triangle of magical runes scared off Edgeworlders.

  And to stop the determined driving their Priuses, a simple chain hung over the drive.

  I saw it almost too late and slammed on the brakes. The Prius noisily slid forward on the gravel, stopping just shy of dinging her nose on the chain.

  Nervously, I glanced back, but Cinnamon did not stir beneath the white hospital blanket I’d thrown over her to hide her from prying eyes. Only the deep sound of her breathing betrayed any clues about exactly what made the lumps beneath its white folds.

  I got out. The werewolf defenses were simple: anyone stupid enough to walk the drive would be isolated from their vehicle, easy pickings. But I had no intention of playing their game. I just stepped up to the chain, concentrated, and murmured: “Image of tooth: clear my path.”

  The snake tattoo on my left wrist came to life, reared, and struck the chain. It parted with a sudden bang, slipping to the ground with a quiet rattle of its own. “Thanks, my trusty serpent,” I murmured, stroking the glowing phantom with my free hand as it merged back into my flesh.

  Then I hopped back in, started her up, and shot us down the drive.

  The sun was still up, barely, which meant we wouldn’t be dealing with the werehouse’s nighttime guardians, the vampires of the Oakdale Clan. This was not good news: I was on good terms with Oakdale, mostly through Revenance and his friend and maker, Calaphase.

  Then it hit me. I was going to have to break the news to him once dark fell.

  I was so distracted by the thought, I almost ran over one of the werehouse’s daytime guardians as he stepped in front of me to bar the road. He was an older man with a wild iron-grey beard. He played a good ol’ boy in a worn woodsman’s jacket, but beneath his black fedora, glinting eyes screamed werekin.

  He cried something I couldn’t hear over the rattle of the road, thwacking his walking stick at me as if I was going to stop—then leapt nimbly aside when I didn’t, mouthing a curse as the Prius skidded to a stop beside him. He shoved bushes aside with his staff and squeezed over to my window, but I’d already rolled it down and didn’t give him a chance to tell us to ‘git.’

  “I’ve got a werekin turning in the back,” I said, and then, when he opened his mouth to object, I amplified, “It’s Cinnamon—Stray. She needs your safety cage. Where do I take her?”

  The man stared briefly, then cursed again, whipping out a cell phone. “Go to the upper loading dock,” he snapped, thumbing a button and jamming the phone into his ear. “Not the lower one. You can back right in. Chris? This is Fischer. We got two comin’ in, one for the safety cage and her handler. Yeah, it’s Stray and her bitch Frost.”

  And then he glared down at me. “What are you waiting for? Go!”

  I put her in gear and trundled down the rest of what they called a road. The smell was awful; there had to be a sewage treatment plant or something somewhere nearby, and I couldn’t imagine how the werekin stood it. I rolled up my window just as the road shot through the chain-link fence a
nd ended in the cracked parking lot of the werehouse.

  Once it had been an ironworks on the banks of the Chattahoochee, but a fire had taken half the complex, leaving graffiti-covered hulks. I rolled forward, trying to get my bearings; the last time I’d been here had been at night, on foot, approaching from the other end.

  I was starting to feel lost when a youngish blond boy, little older than Cinnamon, ran out of one of the least bombed looking buildings. Even from a distance his eyes glittered green. He waved towards a roll-up entrance door, and I whipped the car around and backed it in.

  The Prius slid backwards through the door into darkness, and the view through its backup monitor was not enough. Once again I threw my arm over the seat to guide myself. Through the car’s wide windows I saw the huge space swallowing us up, a giant box barely lit by dying light slipping in through stained skylights. Then we were in and stopped, and the boy ran through the door, hit the button and dropped the roll-up, and only then, as the light faded in its groaning descent, did I reach back and begin to pull aside the blanket to check on Cinnamon.

  She was in human form again, sleeping in a little curled ball, tail coiled around her so she looked more like a housecat than a tiger, even with her tattooed stripes. For a moment, I marveled at her marks: the Marquis did artistic, masterly work, legal or no. But then I saw her new school clothes: shredded, practically destroyed, just like the upholstery and lining of the Prius’s cargo area. She had not been gentle. She would be crushed.

  “Cinnamon,” I whispered. “Wake up. We’re here.”

  She just moaned and shifted in her sleep.

  I got out of the car and the blond boy stepped up beside me, fidgeting. He looked to be a werewolf, though it was hard to tell: he wasn’t as far gone as Cinnamon.