Blood Rock (53 page)

“No need for threats, Vlad,” the lich said. “I heard you when you said you came for Cinnamon and not for Frost. If the child holds her tongue, she can keep her head.”

“I’m not going to let you take her mother,” Vladimir said.

“And if you had to choose between them?” the lich said.

“Well,” Vladimir began, his eyes flickering over at me. “I’d—”

“That’s the same choice I would make, Doctor,” I said, staring at Cinnamon. The mention of her name had rattled her once again, and she was biting her knuckle. What had she
said
to the lich to piss him off? I had to get her out of here, whatever it took. “Don’t be ashamed.”

“Excellent,” the lich said, eyes focusing on me. “Then perhaps you will both agree that if I guarantee her safety … I can, in exchange, place you ‘on the hook’ for Saffron’s command?”

I swallowed. Vladimir and I glanced at each other. Then we both nodded.

The lich’s mouth parted in that piranha grin. “Dakota Frost,” he said, his bony hand slowly extending towards the cinderblock wall, “you have been given a command by a member of the Gentry, and have failed us. Now, we give you one last chance to redeem yourself:”

—

“Dakota Frost, on penalty of death,” the lich said, “stop this plague.”

I stared at the wall. Then at the lich. “Wait, what? Stop
this?
That’s … it?”

“That is it,” he said, smiling evilly. “Though I doubt you will find yourself up to—”

“Get to the point,” Iadimus said. “She does
not
understand what we’re asking of her.”

I stared … and then got what he meant. “Oh, I think I do,” I said, feeling anger build. “Studying it for weeks, remember? I know you aren’t asking for a sandblasting job.”

“Quite right,” the lich said. “We are commanding you to kill the tagger.”

“No. No, you are
not,
” I said sharply. Being strong armed into what I was already doing really pissed me off. “First, I’m
no one’s
hired killer, sir. And second, Saffron’s command was to stop the graffiti attacks. You are not commanding me to kill the tagger, but to
defeat
him.”

“But if you kill him, wouldn’t that—” the lich began, perplexed.

“Why do you think killing him will stop the attacks?” I said, waving at the tag. “
Look
at that thing, growing in power. Is the tagger here? Is he hiding behind one of the curtains, orchestrating it? Who are you to tell me how to fight it? What the fuck do you know?”

“Watch your tongue, Frost,” the lich hissed. “I will not tolerate—”

“
You
will not tolerate?” I interrupted. “You have no idea what you’ve done! How long have you had this tag? How long have you had Demophage? Days?
Weeks?
”

The lich’s scowl slowly faded, became uncertain. “Over two weeks.”

“
Damn you!
” I said. “That was before
Calaphase
died, before dozens of others! You had a
live sample
of the graffiti and kept it hidden when you
knew
I was fighting it?”

“We did not believe,” the lich said, “you
were
fighting—”

“All this
pointless
death, destruction, and brinksmanship, when all you needed to do was make
a phone call!
I would have broken
the speed limit
to come take a look at this!”

“You are not an easy woman to find,” Iadimus began.

“You
idiots!
” I said. “I only went into hiding, like, ten days ago, and I only did that so I could stay free to fight the graffiti. I’ve spent weeks crisscrossing Atlanta trying to find a way to defeat it. I have been desperate to find a live tag.”

Glaring, I turned to the most perfect—and most safely contained—sample of the tagger’s artwork that I had seen. This is what I’d needed all along, and the bastard had withheld it from me—and Calaphase had died. I wanted to whip out the Dragon again and take my chances.

As I stared, watching the tag elaborate itself further, watching it lift from the wall like a bas-relief, I felt my skin tingle, then heard the crackling of paper. My eyes started to tear up, and I looked over to see the lich standing six inches from me, eyes white points of flame.

“Buzz off,” I said. “You’re making my eyes water.”

I felt Vladimir move to my other side, growling softly.

“If you two are going to fight, take it outside,” I said.

“It took
considerable
maneuvering to get the Gentry and the Consulates united behind you in this fight,” the lich hissed. “But even still, I will not tolerate insolenc—”

“Save it. We’ve lost weeks and people, all because you all were too proud or spooky to pick up a damn phone. So we’re all now weaker while this thing is getting stronger—every second. You’ll note the tag has become more saturated and dimensional
while we’ve been talking
.”

I felt a movement from Vladimir, as if he was looking at the tag. But the lich just nodded. “Yes. It has been growing with power since we … caught … it. It was little more than a crude cartoon with the slightest movement. Our wizards think Demophage fought his way free before he died, as his corpse was not burned beyond recognition like the others, but instead
continuously
burned, with a non-consuming magical flame.”

I scowled. “It harvested enough blood and suffering to
start
the spell,” I said, “but not enough to finish it, whatever the spell actually is.”

“Our wizards … concur,” the lich said carefully. “We brought the wall and Demophage here for study, but soon we found the link was not broken, and the tag was still growing.”

“I’ve seen that before,” I said—earlier today, outside Cinnamon’s and Tully’s hideout. “With the right core logic, even simple tags could elaborate into full-blown masterpieces.”

“The magic circles stopped the process for a while,” Iadimus said, “but almost from the moment you arrived, it accelerated. You can see why we thought we had the master tagger.”

“Fallout from our fight,” I said. “When the lich shoved me against the magic barrier, it weakened it. Releasing the Dragon couldn’t have helped matters.”

“Regardless,” the lich said, “After Vlad’s assault, it accelerated even more. Now … ”

We looked at the tag, at the familiar design: the whorl of barbs, the rounded hillside with its eerie golden leaves of grass, the black outline of the city behind a sky of fire. This tag—this
master piece
—was a thousand times more detailed than the one that had killed Revenance. It had to be feeding on the carnage. It stood off the wall like a living sculpture now, and its movement was so supple and fluid I felt like I was watching an animated film.

But there was something more. I leaned in. My eyes tightened. In the center of the whorls was a repeated pattern, wrapped over with barbed wire: six stone pathways, arcing into the center of the whorl. But they weren’t pathways: they were distorted images of columns. The six stone columns that held up the roof of this very room—an echo of our environment.

I looked from the graffiti to Cinnamon, trembling, and Tully, suffering.

There might be a way out of this after all.

I shoved my hand in my pocket. “Look, Sir Leopold, I’m—sorry I backtalked you in front of your fellow vampires,” I whispered. “I understand that looks bad and you can’t allow it. But this menace doesn’t care about your pride or politics. It feeds off living vampire flesh. It murdered my friends. I will do everything in my power to help you take it out.”

The lich’s face contorted into a pleased grimace, in a way worse than his rage. “How … magnanimous of you, Dakota Frost. And how do you plan to … take it out … so you can avenge your lost friends, and save the lives of your remaining friends?”

I stared at the tag, my eyes running over its lines, its logic. Now, close up, not just photos, I could see the receiver lines that gave it power, pick out the intricate woven elements that made it a spatial bridge. “I have a plan,” I said. “But it’s going to be risky and unpleasant.”

“Unpleasant?” the lich asked. “For whom?”

“For me,” I said. “And my assistants. I’m going to have to take the fight to the tagger.”

“So you
do
accept your burden,” the lich said. “What assistance will you need?”

“
Assistants
,” I said. “I need Cinnamon and Tully to defeat the tagger.”

The lich stared at me, then began laughing. “Such a childish ploy—”

“This is real,” I said; my quickly-hatching plan could be trading the frying pan for the fire. “You have to decide what’s more important to you, defeating the tagger or keeping one hostage for each of the Gospels.”

The lich just kept laughing, then gave a little bow. “Very well, you can have one assistant,” he said. “
I
will choose this time. We both know who you would pick—”

“I’d pick Tully,” I said loudly, “
if
I was willing to take a half-assed stab at this in the hope that dying in the attempt would prompt you to let the hostages go. But I have no intention of dying and no faith in your mercy, so I will need both of them.”

The lich drew himself up out of his bow. He was no longer laughing. “Pick one.”

“I am not picking either of them. I am taking both,” I said softly. “Understand me clearly. This isn’t negotiable, because it isn’t a trick.
It’s part of the procedure.
I need them both: Tully has seen more of the tags than anyone, because he worked with the tagger.”

“I did
not,
” Tully cried, twitching in his hogtie. “I’d never—”

Iadimus snatched Tully’s bag from the side of one of the thrones, strode forward and opened it up atop him. As I had expected from the bulges in it when I’d seen it in their little hideout, oil chalk and rechargeable paint cans tumbled out. The tagger’s tools rained down on Tully, and he cried out, writhing in the barbed wire.

The lich glared at Tully, lips curling in a feral snarl. “Iadimus, how long were you planning on keeping this from us?”

“You are not the only one who withholds information to his own advantage.”

The lich raised his hand. “Guards—”

“You kill Tully now, this won’t work, and the tags take over the city,” I said. “And second, I need Cinnamon because she has analyzed the logic of the tags for me. She may not be a fully trained graphomancer, but her mathematical skill more than makes up for it.”

“Mathematical skill?” the lich said incredulously. “What skill has a street cat?”

“Cinnamon,” Vladimir said loudly. “Come down here. Show us why you’re precious.”

Nervously, Cinnamon left the throne, and I stepped back from the tag. She tried not to look at anyone, not the guards, not the vampires, not Darkrose, and especially not the lich. Then she stopped right in front of me, still holding her own tail, head snapping periodically.

“Cinnamon,” Vladimir said, “how many cinderblocks are in that wall?”

“
Hahh,
” Cinnamon barked, then tilted her head. “Two hundred and forty three.”

“Is that a lonely?” Vladimir said. “A prime number?”

“No,” she said, disgusted, face twitching. “It’s a
fffuhh
, a f-five threes tower.”

“Oh,” Vladimir said, a bit crestfallen. “Three to the fifth power. So it is.”

“Of course it is,” Cinnamon said, tilting her head the other way. Her head was still snapping, her mouth still twitching, but she was a bit calmer now that she was talking. “The closest lonely’s two forty one, skip down two, also a lonely, the first lonely.”

“So three to the fifth power,” Vladimir said, “is the sum of two primes?”

“
All
counts pass three are the sum of two lonelies,” she said. “Isn’t it obvious?”

Vladimir let out his breath, then grinned. “Goldbach’s Conjecture, obvious? No, but … when all this is over, I’d very much like you to explain it to me,” he said, tousling her hair. “In fact, write it up for Monday’s class. Consider it makeup for your missed test, young lady.”

“O-OK,” Cinnamon said nervously, re-adjusting her headscarf with one hand. “Fuck.
Everything
turns into a test … ”

Vladimir looked at the lich. “Get the point?” he asked.

The lich looked at me, and I flinched away. “Do you really need her?”

I sighed. Steeled myself and looked up at him, eye to eye. It hurt, like staring into two twin suns, not in my eyes, but behind them. “No,” I said. “You shouldn’t let me take them.”

“Do not lie to me!” the lich snarled, and the buzzing between my ears grew worse—then quickly faded. “Ah,” he said, drawing his hands before him like a praying mantis as my wooziness faded. “Ah. I see. Well played. You really think you are going to die?”

“There’s every possibility,” I said—and Iadimus straightened in salute. “The tags are
very
strong, and the tagger is inventive and artistic. Alone he’d wax me. But Tully knows his patterns, and Cinnamon knows how his magic works. Between the three of us, we can do it.”

“You will have my best men backing you,” the lich said. “Of those that remain.”

“No,” I said. “We do it alone.”

The lich smiled. “Do you really think I will let you walk out of here—”

“We’re not walking anywhere,” I said, gesturing at the wall inside the magic circle. “We’re going to take the tagger on right here.”