Blood Rock Page 8

  I jerked him back just as a dozen tentacles whipped out and snatched through the space where he’d been standing. Unbalanced, Calaphase tumbled backward into the mud with a curse, eyes glowing. “Fuck!” he said. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Dakota—”

  But I’d already turned my back on him. “You know what’s wrong,” I said, eyes running over the curving lines, the tombstones, the grassy hillside, the familiar wildstyle letters. They ‘pieced’ us—a ‘piece’—oh, I am such an idiot. “You know exactly what is wrong.”

  Behind me, Calaphase scrambled to his feet, but I held out my hand sharply to bar his path. He cursed, but didn’t try to pass me. “We’ve got to get him out of there.”

  “If we can,” I said. “That tag is just like the one that killed Revenance.”

  A Thankless Job

  “No vampires,” I said, shoving yet another of Calaphase’s guards back behind the line I’d drawn in the pavement. “It seems to like you guys. Talk to me, Calaphase. You said again.”

  “We heard a scream last night,” Calaphase said, staring at Tully, pinned within the tag. “Sounded like Josephine, a panther who ran with one of our transients. I sent Revy into the Underground to check on her—”

  “The Underground?” I asked. It was a series of ancient tunnels honeycombing the central part of Atlanta, but I had no idea it stretched almost all the way out here, nearly to the Perimeter. “There are entrances to the Underground in Oakdale?”

  “Oh, yes,” Calaphase said. “Don’t try to find the ones out here, the werekin use them as escape routes and they’re … protective of that territory. Revy went into the Underground, but never came back. I thought he was waiting for dark, until you showed up with the news.”

  I tried to remember whether there was an entrance to the Underground near Oakland Cemetery. Then I noticed the sharp, questioning glance of a vampire guard, a striking man with a thundercloud of dark curly hair rising over his bushy eyebrows, and I explained, “Revenance died in a tag just like this one on the other side of town.”

  “Something like that killed Revenance?” the guard said, in a reedy, deliberate European accent which was hard to place. He returned his piercing gaze to the squealing tag and the crowd of werekin who were splashing paint on it—no longer just whitewashing it, but covering it with as many colors as they could find. “Really, killed by that scrawl—”

  “Yes, really,” I snapped, “and I won’t have any more of you dead on my watch!”

  Calaphase stood, scowling behind the line, as more of his crew firmed up around him. “Some guardians we are,” he said bitterly, hands jammed in his pockets. “Can’t even protect our clients from a can of paint. Think we could get a pole, lever him out of there?”

  I glared at the serrated band of graffiti on Tully’s chest. “It might cut him in two.”

  “Jesus!” Fischer shouted, leaping back as part of the tag ripped out from beneath the paint and snatched at him. His hat came off as he danced back out of reach, and the barbed tentacle sliced it in half. Fischer kept going, stumbling back over the line without ever fully losing his balance. An ugly scar was torn in his woodsman’s jacket, top to bottom, and he stared at it, then me, his wide eyes even more shocking against his worn, seasoned face.

  “This isn’t working,” Gettyson said, hands on his hips, watching another tentacle ripping out of a splash of paint just thrown by a were. “You hears me, Frost? This isn’t working.”

  “It was worth a try,” I replied, thinking furiously. I’d warned him how dangerous the last tag was, and after a quick conference we’d decided to whitewash the rest of this one. But the graffiti tentacles were squirming out of the wet paint. “At least it’s slowing it down.”

  “Slowing it down?” Gettyson said. His creepy wide pupils seemed made to deliver scorn. “This thing’s cutting him to pieces! You’re the magician—gimme a damn plan!”

  “I’m working on it,” I snapped. What could I do? The splashed paint had cut the exposed area of the tag by half, but it wasn’t enough: the tag was struggling out of its Jackson Pollock coating, and the free parts were alive and vicious. My tattoos weren’t strong enough to hold this thing off. I glared at the tag, its geometry, at the pavement beneath it. Once again, I wished I’d finished my degree, rather than dropping out after I’d learned enough magic … to tattoo …

  “Rock salt,” I said.

  “What?” Gettyson said, blank.

  “You got a kitchen?” I asked. “A real, human, fully-stocked kitchen? I need rock salt. And cane sugar, ginger, cinnamon-the-spice, basil. As much of all of that as you got. Any of your kids like crafts? I need chalk and glitter—and play sand, if you’ve got it—”

  “What the hell are you planning?” Gettyson said.

  “‘Give me a place to stand, and I can move the world,’” I said. “I’m going to build a magic circle, and use the tag’s own magic against it. Now move!”

  As the remaining weres and vamps scattered across the grounds, I surveyed the ground in front of Tully carefully. The pavement was cracked, weedgrown, but basically whole, and there was just enough area for what I planned to do. I cocked my head: yes. Yes. I could do this. Then Tully cried out in pain, and I looked up at him. Then I was certain: I would do this.

  Gettyson returned with bowls, cinnamon, and a big box of Kosher salt. “Will this do?”

  “It’s a start,” I said, tasting the Kosher salt, then dumping it and the cinnamon into the bowl. “More cinnamon. This will work as a conductor, but the circle will need a magical capacitor. I’ll need basil and cane sugar if we don’t have sand—”

  “I found sand,” the curly-haired vamp guard said, seeming to have popped out of nowhere with a sack over his shoulder and an oddly pleased grin on his oddly worn face. “Liberated it from a nearby factory. I’m sure they won’t mind.”

  “What kind is it, play sand?” I asked, tearing at the package. “Quartz granules? Good.”

  In minutes the plan was taking shape, both in my head and reality. I sent Gettyson to get more bowls and started two mixes, one with Kosher salt, cinnamon and sand for the circle, and a second with the basil flakes and sugar. But we still were short ingredients, still had no chalk—and had long since run out of paint, while the graffiti was just getting stronger and stronger.

  Tully screamed, pulled tight against the wall, barbed tentacles coiled diagonally around his chest, half metal octopus, half sadistic rosevine. If the whole thing had been exposed, it would have spreadeagled him and started tearing him apart; as it was the tentacles slid evilly, cutting across his chest, into his flesh, oozing blood.

  I closed my eyes, then opened them again, trying to see past the anger and really look at the tag. I had thought it the same, but really, it was similar without being identical: same general logic, same layout, but different motifs. There was a central coiling mandala, but it was barbed wire octopus rather than a rose. The octopus’s feelers were woven with masonry, but this time stone columns rather than brick. There was a semicircle behind it, but this time a planet rather than a hillside. And the cityscape was replaced by a forest. Even the brushstrokes were different. The more I looked, the more certain I became: this tag was from the same series as the one that killed Revenance, but it wasn’t by the same hand.

  The graffiti hadn’t been inked by one artist. The bastards had a whole crew.

  Tully screamed again. The vines had started sawing into his flesh, dripping a diagonal curtain of blood. It was killing him slowly, almost sadistically; but it was still killing him. This was no time to dither; we had to get him out of that thing now.

  I gritted my teeth, stripped off my vestcoat, and handed it without thinking to Calaphase’s curly-haired guard. When I pulled off my turtleneck, I could see he was glaring at me.

  “What good do you expect a striptease will do?” he said, his deliberate emphasis now sounding like menace, his strange eyes slitted at the vest and shirt I’d dumped in his hands.

  “I’m a
skindancer,” I said, unzipping my chaps, and now, rather than being embarrassed, I relished the sudden raise of his bushy eyebrows. “I expect it will do a great deal of good.”

  Just then there was a rushing of air and suddenly Calaphase and another guard popped out of the darkness, with four bags worth of groceries from Kroger.

  “Honey, I’m home,” Calaphase said, smiling as he saw me undressing—and then his smile faded when he saw Tully. “Hell, it’s killing him—”

  “I know, but damn, that was fast,” I said. “I didn’t think vampires could really fly.”

  “We can run,” Calaphase said. “And I think we found almost everything you needed.”

  “Great,” I said, pawing through the bags. Chalk, cinnamon, rock salt, more Kosher salt—and fresh basil—in January. I pulled out a twig and twirled it: perfect. “Let’s get cooking.”

  “I often cooked with cinnamon, basil, and salt, back when I was alive,” the curly-headed vamp said, watching me mix. “And those ingredients never did anything special but stew.”

  “You’re as alive as I am,” I retorted, not looking up, “and iron filings won’t do anything special but rust—until you add a magnetic field. Then they line up like soldiers.”

  “You expect me to believe basil is magnetic?” Curly asked.

  “No,” I said, “but I expect to show it’s magically active—if you know how to unlock it.”

  I finished the basil mix, said a small prayer over the bowl, picked it up, and then stepped up to the right side of the tag, where it was completely coated with paint. Against the dirty back wall of the werehouse, beneath the many splashes of color, thick cables writhed and bubbled. One had nearly torn itself free, but it did not strike; and so I got almost close enough to touch.

  “I cannot wait to see,” the vamp guard said, “the magic of Julia Child.”

  “Showing your age, Curly,” I said, scooping a fistful of coated basil sprigs. “Me, I prefer Alton Brown, but for this job, you need a little Emeril—BAM!”

  And I tossed the sprigs out through the air, where their coatings absorbed stray mana, discharging it into the leaves until they glittered like feathers of blue flame. They cascaded down the wall, some sticking, some falling, and collected on the pavement in an odd hexagonal pattern that clearly didn’t look random. Magical energy flickered across the pattern each time the tag stirred beneath the paint, and it began to get more sluggish. Even the tentacle that was tearing itself free started to go limp … and then sank back into the paint.

  “You did it!” the vampire said, leaping forward to grab Tully.

  “No!” I shouted, shooting my free hand forth in a sinuous motion. Mana rippled through my skin and one of my vines leapt off my skin like a green glowing whip, faster than even I’d expected. It caught the vampire on the chest and flung him back just as three barbed tentacles tore free from the wall and struck where he would have landed. The momentum rippled back along my glowing vine and near tore my arm out of its socket, knocking me forward, down to the pavement on my already throbbing knee. I cried out in pain—and looked up to see the three tentacles, right above my face, turning slowly towards me.

  I hurled the rest of the bowl at them and scrambled back. The tentacles cracked to the pavement where I had lain, batting the remaining bowl aside with a KHWANGG, scattering basil everywhere. The herbs lit up like blue flame, as before, but without the protective barrier of paint diffusing the flow of mana between them and the tag, the basil sprigs turned to real flames.

  —

  In seconds, my magic mix disintegrated in a cloud of sparks.

  This Will Be a Bit Tricky

  “Damnit,” I cried. I retrieved the overturned bowls. I’d lost almost all of the mix, save a few scraps left in the bottom of the bowl the tag had struck. All the rest was sprayed out over the dirt and in the grassy cracks through the pavement, ruined. I glared up at the vamp, who lay half sprawled in Calaphase and Fischer’s arms. “Asshole!”

  The vamp’s hazel eyes glowed. “I tried to save him, and you insult me?” he said, trying to regain his footing. “In Lithuania I stood in the Gentry! No mortal speaks to me that way!”

  I crouched, hooked my right foot behind my left, and stood back upright, twisting like a corkscrew as I did so. Mana built up in my skin and brought it to life, bursting my vines outward and making every gem on my body sparkle and every flower unfurl. The shimmering light burst onto the clearing in a rainbow of colors, washing all natural color from the vamps and weres and leaving their faces pale circles of shock.

  “I don’t care what country club you were in. This ain’t Lithuania,” I growled. “Now stay back, or this thing will kill you too dead to hear this mortal tell you what an idiot you are.”

  I twisted round, expanding my vines, recreating my glowing shield. “I’m coming for you, Tully,” I said, stepping straight towards him slowly. “But this will be a bit tricky.”

  The tag’s free tentacles snapped and bit at me, uselessly, then folded back on Tully, clenching on him. He screamed—but his eyes were on me and he nodded. Behind him the planet motif shimmered, eerily real; through some trick of perspective it almost looked like the tag’s tentacles were pulling him into the wall, towards it. There was a cracking sound, and I looked over to see ugly lumps begin to form at the base of the wall, beneath the splashes of paint. Tombstones, no doubt—the only element in Revenance’s tag that had been missing from this design. The basil and paint had suppressed the tag a little, but there was no doubt: it had the same logic as the one that killed Revenance, and was getting stronger.

  I knelt and drew the first arc of a magic circle, just beyond the safety line I’d drawn earlier. The chalk broke against a crack in the pavement and I dinged my knuckle, wincing, but I didn’t stop, feeling the tag writhe before me in malevolence and hearing Tully moan. Soon I had the inner rings, the layer of runes, and the outer circle that would hold what little magic powder I had left. I studied the bowl, then began picking out pinches of dust, laying them around the design, trying to stretch each little bit out so that I’d have enough left for my final trick.

  Somehow, I managed to complete the circle, scraping enough out of the bowl to complete the final arc—almost, leaving one gap in front of Tully. The circle of powder looked dangerously sketchy, but it would have to do. So I poured all the dusty remains in the bowl at the edge of the gap, creating a pitiful little heap of fine powder on one end. Too much! The lines of the circle began glowing, like a flickering neon, as the mana it absorbed from the tag began sparking over the gap. I scooted the heap aside, and the sparking stopped. If the circle closed before we were inside, it would shove Tully and me into the tag rather than protect us from it.

  Then Tully moaned again. I flung the bowl aside. There was nothing left to be done. I had to do it now. I crouched down, concentrating.

  “Spirit of Earth,” I murmured. “Shield our lives.”

  Then I lunged forward and threw both my arms around Tully’s chest.

  Tully screamed as the vines tried to saw him in half—then the tag squealed in rage as I wrapped Tully in a protective cocoon of mana. Tentacles flailed at me as my vines whipped around him, barbs wearing at my defenses as my trusty wrist snakes snapped at the tentacles on his chest. More tentacles curled around me, pulling me forward, into the wall, into the tag, like there was a whole world behind the paint. I felt an immense magical pressure weigh on me, like water weighs on your ears at the bottom of a pool—but I jammed my boot against the wall and shoved, hurling myself backward into the circle with Tully in my arms.

  The tentacles refused to give up, wrapping around us, hot, burning, pouring mana out around us in elaborate arcs of living flame. I couldn’t see anything through the blazing light. I’d like to say I used skindancing to fight it off, but I didn’t. I just ground in my feet and held on to Tully for dear life, forcing the tag to expend as much mana as possible. The tentacles squeezed tighter; we both screamed in pain—

  And then
finally the excess mana the tag was pouring into the air closed the circle’s magical circuit, like a spark leaping a gap, and Tully and I collapsed gratefully to the ground. The tentacles leapt back, wounded, and I quickly shoved the tiny pile of mix back over the gap with my boot, making sure the circuit stayed closed.

  But almost immediately the protective bubble began to flicker and sparkle as the tag, squealing, renewed its attack. The clouds on the image of the planet began whirling furiously. I could see the images of tombstones cracking up through the join of the wall and the pavement, struggling to break free of their layer of paint. A horrible scream rent the air, and a dozen new tentacles whipped down on us, screaming with rage as if the tag was a living monster. It was still getting stronger—but Tully was out of the circuit!

  “So much for Saffron’s theory,” I said.

  The bubble began to crack. My mix was thin and poorly refined, and the pavement beneath us was an uneven mess; there was no way it would hold. Fine—I was counting on it. I took a deep breath, sinuously stretching within the bubble until all my vine tattoos came to life again and wrapped around Tully and me, a green glowing shield. Then I grabbed him tight.

  “Hang on, Tully,” I said—and leapt backwards out of the circle.

  The tentacles closed on the magic bubble right as it collapsed with a bright flash. All the built up mana discharged with a bang, rippling back through the graffiti like blue lightning. As Tully and I landed, the whole tag sparked and shorted out, a brief two-dimensional fireworks display, leaving nothing but black crinkled smudges dotted with glowing red embers.

  For a moment, Tully and I just lay there in the dust, staring at the intricate concentric rings that were all that was left of the design. Then we looked at each other.