Blood Rock (31 page)

I sat down on the floor next to the edge of the bed and looked up at him, pacing the room like a caged animal. I couldn’t believe he was doing this. I couldn’t see why he was doing this. I couldn’t imagine how he thought this might help.

There was a screech, and Calaphase winced. “I’m sorry,” he said. I scowled at him. He was
apologizing
for
sleeping with me!
But he ignored me and continued, “I didn’t mean to. I tried to avoid it, it’s just she was very—” he struggled for a word “—bold.”

There was no screech on the other end of the line this time. There was only a long pause. Then I heard a quiet voice, almost a murmur, and Calaphase looked down at me in surprise. “Do … do you really think so?” he asked, eyes fixed on me. “I see.”

“What did she say?” I asked.

“I called for two reasons,” Calaphase said into the phone. “To apologize, and to ensure that there will be no repercussions—you know what we’ve been negotiating. I wanted you to know sooner, rather than—I see. I see. That’s magnanimous of—I see. Thank you, my Lad—”

He took the phone away from his ear and stared at it, then sat down on the bed.

“Well,” he said, hanging up the phone and scowling. “That’s done, and done.”

I struggled to remember what had happened. I remembered his wonderful voice telling me what to do. I recalled him leading me somewhere, light drumming against my eyelids, a flash of the bathroom, a flash of wonder. What had he planned for me now? A warm bath, a slow massage? I had actually giggled in the shower, when I swayed to one side and cold tile had touched my breast. Then he’d turned the water on.

But before that, nothing. Nothing before the blast of icy water but scattered images and a feeling of great contentment and affection for Calaphase, stretching back … until he had bit me.

“Oh, God,” I said, feeling my neck gingerly. “Calaphase. You
hypnotized
me—”

“Not precisely,” Calaphase said, still scowling. “Certainly not intentionally—but, yes I did.” He sighed. “Forming a link is like a reflex. It’s hard to stop once started.”

“You
bit
me,” I said fearfully, the implications finally starting to hit home. “
You bit me!
Do I need to use holy water—”

“There’s a garlic derivative,” Calaphase said. “The Lady Saffron is checking for me—”

“Fuck her! She didn’t need to know about this!” I said. “
Why did you call her?
”

“Dakota, I
had
to,” Calaphase said firmly. “You were
completely
under. The sex and the bite were establishing a link—in lay terms, you were becoming my human servant. You were minutes away from imprinting
completely
on me and
I couldn’t stop it
.”

I started shivering. His voice now sounded different, yet strangely familiar—deeper, reverberating, echoing through my head, calling up intoxicating memories from my stupor. Even the wound on my neck tingling in time with his words. He was right. He’d had me under his thrall, my aura merging with his, and he couldn’t stop it. And I hadn’t wanted him to.

“This the real reason they used to kill vampires on sight.
Not
because we drink blood—but because we can enslave minds,” he said. “I never wanted to do that to you—but I had no one to turn to. My master is dead, Revenance is gone, Demophage is gone—but one of the best vampirologists in the world was one phone call away. Who else could have helped me?”

“No, no, you’re right,” I said, still rubbing my neck. “You did the right thing.”

“Thank you, Dakota,” he said, sitting down heavily on an ottoman on the side of the room. The hiss of an air conditioner starting up sounded in the distance, and Calaphase glanced up briefly before looking back at me. “Believe me, I
am
sorry. I had no intention—”

“I know, I know,” I said. “Unless you’re the world’s master at reverse psychology.”

“Most of my—” and Calaphase frowned “—my
prey
are shrinking violets, desperate for me to take the initiative. I didn’t expect you to be so, ah,
forward.
”

I laughed, but the laugh quickly died. As disturbing as all this was, there was another question I had, based on a curious little choice of words Calaphase had used when talking to Saffron. I struggled for a moment, figuring out how to ask it, and then just gave up.

“What are you negotiating for me, Calaphase?” I asked simply.

Calaphase looked away. “For the Lady Saffron to take you back under her protection.”

“Fuck her,” I said. “She threw my collar away, just like she did our relationship.”

“You need her,” Calaphase said, cocking his head, then focusing on me. “Dakota, the Oakdale Clan—we’re punks. We’re a bunch of punks with a security service that’s little more than a protection racket. The Lady Saffron is the de facto mistress of the city.”

“You are
not
a punk,” I said. “And I thought Lord Delancaster was in charge of the city.”

“Only in his mind,” Calaphase said. “And on TV. No-one cares about him, holed away in his mansion. He has no more significance than the Queen of England.
Saffron’s
the one who attends the Atlanta City Council meetings, meets with the Mayor, brokers deals. Delancaster gave her power, and she’s used it. I do
not
want to be on her bad side. Neither should you.”

The hiss sounded again, closer. Now I could tell it was not an air conditioner. It was more like a snake; it was even followed by a sinister rattling. “Did you hear that?”

Calaphase sat up straighter. “Yes. What is that? I’ve heard it for the last few minutes.”

The rattle sounded again, followed by another sharp hiss, and I recognized it. “Oh my God,” I said. “It’s a spray can.”

I leapt out of bed, out of the room, and snagged my leather jeans, slipping them on like I’d been born in them. I hit the light for the hall and ran forward, grabbing my sportsbra, painfully wrenching it on, scooping up my top, and running towards my coat. At the end of the hall I looked back and saw Calaphase appear at the bedroom doorway.

“Calaphase!” I shouted, slipping on my top and vest so fast they seemed to flap around me. “The fuckers burned down the whole werehouse! We gotta go!”

Calaphase scooped up some clothing and sprinted down the hall towards me, long legs closing the distance seemingly instantly. Something tumbled over in the carport, and I flinched. Calaphase slipped on his shirt, then he held out his hand for me to stay back.

“
Fuck
that,” I whispered. “They’re experts in anti-vampire magic. We do this together.”

Calaphase nodded, holding up his hand for silence. Then, slowly, we crept up the stairs side by side, rising until we could see the kitchen door.

Something stood between the door and my car.

At first I couldn’t understand what I was seeing. Then the figure resolved to a huge, floppy hat, almost an upside-down pyramid of felt—the same dumpy Seussical hat I’d seen on the grinning spectator to Revenance’s death. Beneath it was a wide, olive face, shrouded in darkness—except for two glowing white eyes and a broad, evil grin that split the face open ear to ear with a jagged zipper of pebbly white teeth. A giant zipper tab hung from one ear, completing the effect.

“What the hell is that?” Calaphase said.

It was the tagger from Oakland Cemetery, but—”He’s
not human
,” I said.

“No matter,” Calaphase said, slipping his jacket back on. “I’m a vampire—”

“He’s not human, and he’s not moving,” I said, desperate to communicate something, but not sure what it was. “And he has to know you’re a vampire.”

“I don’t care,” he snarled, crouching, preparing to spring. “I’ll tear his throat—”

“He
knows
you’re a
vampire
,” I said, “and he’s
sprayed the door.
”

At that Calaphase finally froze, seeing the slight lines of paint sprayed on the glass—lines that looked like spray paint, but slowly shifted and moved, sinuous, hungry.

“Oh, fuck,” Calaphase said, and Zippermouth reached up and
pulled the zipper tab across its face
, the metal tabs I had thought were teeth splitting wide open in zigzag, hissing grin, a long snakelike tongue sliding out of his mouth. “Oh,
fuck me!
What
is
that?”

“Tell me you didn’t brick up the back door,” I whispered.

Calaphase began backing down the stairs, and I mirrored him. We turned to face each other, only for a second, then ran. Calaphase flew past the red flickering light flooding out of the bedroom and cut to the left, hurling himself at the outer door and splintering it off its hinges before I could even
begin
to say ‘wait, let’s see what we’re getting into’.

No need to wait, though. Fast on his heels, I found out immediately.

Technicolor tentacles of graffiti wire whipped out around us, catching us like a net and jerking us aside like horizontal bungees. We screamed, both of us, the big bad vampire and his skindancer squeeze, as thorns erupted and dug into our flesh as we swung through the air.

For the briefest moment, I saw the whole side of Calaphase’s house, a long low rectangle of red brick and white trim covered with a massive, elaborate graffiti tag, a tortured whirlpool of vines and chains and tentacles swirling towards a point just left of center.

—

Then the tentacles pulled us into the maelstrom—and we fell inside the tag.

Our screams swept away on the whirlwind. Blinding waves of color assaulted my eyes. Burning torrents of magic twisted me up like a towel. An orange and black horizon flipped around us. Then a vast octopus of graffiti exploded outwards and swallowed us up.

It spit us out into empty space. A black glittering sheet rushed forward and hit us like a wall of concrete. Pain exploded in my cheek, my shoulder, my hip, my knee, and I registered a delayed
whack-whack
as Calaphase fell to the pavement beside me.

Don’t pass out. Don’t give up.
Don’t
let them win.

I opened my eyes. We were in absolutely the
worst
section of Atlanta I had ever seen, a cityscape so decrepit it bordered on the surreal. We stood in the twisted remnants of a concrete playground, hemmed in by tottering chainlink fences. Beyond the fences, hulks of building staggered up, forming a canyon of ruins. Deeper within the canyon, the pavement stepped down, a ravine of garbage piled up between a decayed tenement and a crumbling parking deck. The sea of garbage and rusted cars rippled out away from us across the broken pavement, seeming to crash in waves against a
giant
wall, a huge slab of cinderblocks that towered over us like a cliff at the dead end of the canyon.

Briefly I wondered whether this playground was a real place, whether we’d fallen into some tag-induced hallucination. But surely that was impossible; no-one could ink a whole world … could they? And the grit against my cheek didn’t feel like phantom dirt:
it
was real.

Then my eyes registered what was written on the cinderblock wall.

I staggered to my feet, staring up at the cliff in absolute horror. Spray painted at the upper edge of the huge wall of cinderblocks was a block letter logo: THOUGHT CRIME LORD. And beneath the logo, bleeding out over every surface,
infinite
layers of graffiti.

Every graffiti artist and style I’d seen across Atlanta were represented: bare white lines, repeated stencils, finely shaded oilchalk. How had they
done
this, cover a wall six stories high? Climbing on scaffolds? Hanging from ropes? On
jetpacks?
Both toys and masters sprayed here, leaving simple tags and extensive pieces, stretched-taffy letters and elegantly shaded portraits. Even Keif and Drive were represented by a few tall, narrow tags depicting cartoon rabbits in army fatigues. But the tags, pieces and masterpieces of all the artists—save one—looked slightly old, worn by weather and time, as if all the artists—save one—had given up on this playground and yielded it to its new overlord: the graffiti killer.

The designs of the journeyman and the apprentice were absent; this place was the exclusive canvas of the master. All of the familiar signs were here: the vines, the chains, the barbed wire; but he had not stopped there, experimenting with new motifs that I hadn’t seen elsewhere: ships crewed by hostile hip-hop frogs; herds of blood-dripped sheep with sparkling eyes; a vast writhing worm wrapped around the arc of a swinging pendulum—figures tortured and amazing. But across the cliff I recognized a familiar design: the skyline of Atlanta, a grassy dome of a hill, and a coiling rose hovering between two sets of tombstones.

The same type of tag that had killed Revenance.

The vast tag seemed to shiver, a wave of wind rippling over the grassy dome, and I seized Calaphase by the arm, pulling him to his feet. “We have to go. We have to get shelter. We have to get
you
shelter. That entire thing is a vampire trap!”

Calaphase’s head snapped quickly from side to side, sizing up the canyon around us. “The opening faces the rising sun,” he said. “Think, Dakota! The trap is almost fifty yards away. How do you think he planned to get me into it?”

Good point. The master tag was too far away—probably. Surely it couldn’t grab us all the way out here? I tensed, eyes seeking movement. Then I felt a prickling, goose bumps rising on my flesh—but it wasn’t goose bumps. It was a flood of mana—but not from the master tag.

“Behind us!” I said, and we dove under the uncoiling whip of a serrated wire that trailed drops of glowing blood as it snapped through the air. Sure enough, there was another tag, a sprawled octopus snapping hungrily on the wall of a decayed tenement looming behind us.

On the cliff, the master tag’s vines were now uncoiling, and we dodged back from them too, edging backwards, away from the tags, until we butted against the chainlink fence barring us from the parking deck’s dark, twisted innards. Light flared from within, flashes in darkness, illuminating moving shapes which bore no resemblance to anything human.

“I think the tagger means for us to go to the tag,” I said, “rather than it come to us.”

“What do we do?” Calaphase said. “Run the gantlet?”

I swallowed. The tagger’s playground was a box canyon of buildings. The black pavement stretched away from us, between the expanding rings of the master tag on the cliff and the waving wires of the coiled design on the tenement that had brought us here. Some of the twisted remnants of the swings and jungle gyms had tags on them, almost certainly traps. At the other end of the weed-strewn lot, forming the only opening in the box canyon, was a painted wooden fence, filled with hundreds of marks by the tagger.