Blood Rock (11 page)

“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.

“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.

“Congratulations, Tully,” I said. “You get to live to run another day.”

“Thank you thank you
thank you
,” Tully said, trying to give me a hug, then grimacing as the gesture squeezed a new river of blood from his chest. “Aaah—I’m so sorry—”

“Thank you, Dakota,” a voice said, and I looked up to see Calaphase staring down at me. The vamps and werekin were all standing over us, all looking down gratefully—except Gettyson, who just stood there, jaw clenched, before turning on his heel and stalking off.

Tully kept sobbing. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I had no idea this would happen.”

“There’s no way you could have known,” I said.

“I means, it was just magical graffiti—”

“Wait,” I said. “You
already
knew it was magical?”

“You can’t miss it,” Calaphase said quietly. “These tags, they’re always moving—”

“Wait
wait
,” I said, alarmed. “They? This has happened before?”