The limo slid through the hairpin turns and rickety bridges of Blood Rock. I sat in the rear seat, staring forward, at Nyissa, who sat opposite me, green eyes blazing, her shag of violet hair shimmering against her porcelain-white skin. Her corset-topped dress-like coat flared open on the seat around her to expose leggings and riding boots, and she had woven strips of cloth into her outfit, accentuating her curves with a dangerous Mad-Max-meets-steampunk air.
Knowing that she was one of the Sanctuary’s professional dominatrices should have made her less threatening, but she didn’t carry a crop: she carried a metal poker. She’d threatened to blind me the last time we met. And I was alone in the car with her.
Her eyes blazed at the gold coin around my neck.
“I’m sorry about the Stone,” I began. “I didn’t know-”
“I don’t care if this makes political or strategic sense,” she interrupted. “Vampires survive by being disciplined. By following the rules. Those who violate the rules must be punished, and yet he has rewarded you.”
“I’m sorry to offend you,” I said. “But I called ahead. I was willing to walk away… ”
“That is not the point. Normally, to win protection, a client must offer… tribute,” she said, rolling the poker in her fingers. “Blood, and money, the occasional service.”
“That protection racket again,” I said.
“An act of submission,” she countered. “Clients, after all, come to us-as you did.”
“Not willingly,” I said. “Only because I had no other option. And I’d have thought twice if I had known a favor required a pound of flesh.”
She laughed at me. “Surely a vampire has demanded service of you before,” she said. “Were you not under the protection of the Vampire Queen of Little Five Points?”
“She never asked anything of me-” I said, then stopped. That was not quite true.
“She had to take blood, or she could not have protected you,” Nyissa said, eyes boring into me. “If you were too skittish for a bite, perhaps she demanded a cut.”
“A pinprick,” I said. “One of those little medical finger pricks.”
Nyissa nodded. “How sanitary. I use them myself. And what toll did she require?”
“I didn’t want her help,” I said hotly. “I just needed safe passage-”
“Past my master, Transomnia, who asked for blood as his toll,” she said. I squirmed, and she smiled. “Yes, I know your history. You refused his toll, and paid another price.”
“Are you vampires or trolls?” I asked. “He got kicked out over that.”
“And yet we must live, and so even passersby must pay the toll,” she purred, twirling the poker in her hands. “Unlike humans, vampires need not kill their prey to feed, so the arrangement worked well for centuries, until you Edgeworlders upset the order.”
“We never intended to starve you,” I said, staring at the poker. The light from her eyes was actually reflecting off its metal surface, which somehow made the glow more real. “We just wanted to use magic freely, and all the stuffy old rules just sounded like excuses.”
“Understandable, but now you know our secret. Vampires trade in sex and blood. We demand submission and tribute from our favored clients, and grant them safety in return. For those not so favored, there is the toll of passage.”
I sat there frozen, acutely feeling the blood pound in my throat.
Her eyes gleamed. “I think I shall make you pay the toll.”
“Transomnia gave me his protection,” I said.
“From external threats, but not from me,” she said. “And your ignorance is no longer an excuse. If you refuse me, you will pay another price. I will not help you. In fact, I will throw this olive branch in Arcturus’ face. When I’m done, he will rather die than help you-”
“Transomnia ordered you to help me,” I said.
“And what if I disobey him?” she said, leaning back in the seat and thwapping the poker against her palm. “We have seen what he does to those who break the rules. I will likely be rewarded. What a coup, to make his enemy my client for a drop of blood and a quarter.”
“I’m not going to give you blood,” I said, mouth dry as paper. “And I have no money.”
“Not a drop? Not even a quarter?” Nyissa said, smiling viciously. “That is all I demand for my clients to claim protection. Just a token of the traditional toll of blood and money. That’s all you’d have to give up. Just a drop of blood… and a quarter.”
“That… ” sounds so reasonable, I thought, but it also sounded like a deal with the devil. I didn’t know what being her client meant, and given that she was a vampire dominatrix I had no desire to find out. Well, very little desire. Still… ”That’s so not going to happen.”
“I shall make you my client,” she said more firmly, mouth opening until I could see her fangs. “But not yet. For now, you are just a passerby. Nothing more than a toll would be appropriate. But what toll could I demand that would give you the taste to return?”
She pulled her dress apart father, and my eyes went wide.
“Now,” she said, planting one foot in the middle of the limo, “kiss my boot.”
I stared at her for a moment. Then I laughed. “I have far too much self-respect-”
“You will kiss my boot,” she said imperiously, “or I will not help you. That is my toll.”
“But… Transomnia gave me his protection. He ordered you to help me,” I said, voice sounding unpleasantly petulant. For her part, Nyissa arched an eyebrow and tilted her head in an effort to look imperious. “I don’t think he will approve of you adding conditions.”
“But Transomnia is not here,” she repeated, “and he need not know.”
I just stared at her, wearing her boots, her corset, with her poker, so like a crop.
“You know you want to,” she said, eyes burning at me.
“Are you… hitting on me?” I said, eyes tightening. Her lips slowly curled into a smile-and then mine into a snarl. “Oh, you insensitive bitch! ”
I don’t think it was possible for someone as pale as Nyissa to actually blanch, but her eyes widened and her eyebrows shot up, accomplishing the same thing. “Well,” she said, scowling, “whether you want to or not, you must lick my boots, or I will not help-”
“I’d rather die!” I snapped, leaning forward, and as I did so I felt a flush hit my cheeks and a ripple of mana go through my tattoos. “The hell with you and your toll! You can go shit on Arcturus’ doorstep for all I care, and sort it out with Transomnia!”
Nyissa froze. “My apologies,” she said carefully, her eyes tracing my tattoos, no doubt following the mana still trickling through them. “Given the stories that are told about you and the Maid of Little Five Points, I thought you would find that appealing.”
“Have you lost your mind? Were you not listening?” I snarled. “My lover was just murdered, and here you are, treating me like a side of fresh meat.”
Nyissa put the poker down and abruptly leaned forward, putting her hand on my knee. I jerked back, unsure of whether I should take her hand off or whether she was about to take my head off. Then her hand squeezed me briefly, not unlike how Transomnia’s had.
“My sincere apologies,” she said. “I was not thinking. I had heard
… well, that you were once the submissive of the Vampire Queen, before she was a vampire,” she said, eyes flashing at me with equal parts lust and embarrassment. “Now that you have permitted us to bite-”
“First Saffron, now you,” I said. “What is it about being a vampire that makes you so pushy?”
“Our diet, and auras,” Nyissa said, withdrawing her hand. “We have to be pushy to satisfy our… desires, and our auras give us a sense of when someone is… receptive.”
I glared at her. “You really think I’m giving off signs? ”
“No, no,” Nyissa said, raising her palms. “I apologize. I sincerely apologize. I can see how that would sound insulting. You are not giving off signs. It is more a sense that your blood is compatible. If the donor is in any way willing, a vampire’s aura… greases the wheels.”
“You’re trying to sway my mind,” I said, looking away.
“Not trying, exactly, it’s just a reflex,” she insisted, and I remembered Calaphase saying the same thing. “But skindancers are different. Your reflexes naturally keep us out. You sense our auras against your skin and deflect the energy.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ve been almost rolled by a vampire.”
“When he bit you,” she guessed. I reddened, and she nodded. “During sex, when your nervous systems were in full contact, interpenetrating.” Her eyes glinted as I squirmed. “But normally, the only time a vampire comes in direct contact with your nervous system is when you look them eye to eye, exposing your retinas to their auras. You probably think by looking away you’re safe. But it isn’t that simple. A vampire’s aura is always on, always hungry for life. I can teach you how to recognize it. How to defend against it.”
I looked at her, not directly in the eye as I had before. “Why-”
“If I make you my client, I must give you protection,” she said. “But protection has many forms. Teaching you to defend yourself would protect you, even if I was not here. Isn’t learning how to do that worth becoming my client? Look into my eyes-”
“No,” I said, looking even more off center. “You’re just trying to sway me.”
“I would love to,” she said, licking her lips. “But… I am not a powerful vampire.”
My eyes narrowed. She was right: she wasn’t a powerful vampire. I guessed she’d been a vampire for at most thirty, maybe forty years. Saffron, in contrast, had matured in a few short years into some kind of cross between a vampire Terminator and a force of nature.
What determined a vampire’s power? Clearly it wasn’t age. I had no idea.
“You have little to fear from me,” Nyissa was saying, “and in truth I can offer you little physical protection. But I can easily teach you how to defend yourself. I know how to thwart a vampire’s aura-I was a wizard before I was a vampire, after all.”
“Really?” I asked. “Isn’t that some kind of no-no?”
“I am lurking in rural Georgia,” she said, smiling wryly. “Still, what of my offer?”
“Sounds great,” I said. She had designed the Stone, after all. She probably had a lot to teach me. “Very generous. But I’m still not going to look you in the eye.”
She looked away, the frown returning to her expression as her eyes searched the air. “No, I suppose not,” she said. “I don’t guess I’ve earned that yet, have I?”
“Not by a long shot,” I said. “And I don’t like that language ‘yet’… ”
“Very well,” she said, picking up the poker again-and once again planting her boot in the center of the limo. “That still leaves the toll.”
I glared at her boot. “Like hell. I am not going to kiss-”
“Please,” Nyissa said. “Vampires who control territory must exact a toll. I’ve already lost my position at the Sanctuary by allowing Lord Transomnia to come in without a toll.”
“Then why did you let him do that?” I said.
“I owe him my life,” she said, and I found myself with nothing to say. “Now, please, Lady Frost, play along. Kissing my boots is the toll I am known for, and being able to claim I exacted it from you will not only enhance my position, but also reestablish some respect for the law within the House Beyond Sleep, rather than the rule of Transomnia’s whims.”
Damnit. Now the crazy psycho vampire with the metal poker was talking law and order to me, and giving me a chance to throw something in the face of Transomnia he couldn’t easily take umbrage at. I struggled on the seat for a moment. Then I broke down.
“ Fine,” I said. “I’ll kiss- peck -just one boot. You have to pick which one.”
Nyissa smiled, her face breaking out with little dimples when she did so. She stared off in the air for a second, holding the poker by her cheek like a fairy wand, then leaned back and pointed the poker at her extended right boot.
Swallowing, I slipped off the seat and knelt on the floor, then went forward onto my hands and knees, cheek falling aside Nyissa’s boot. I could smell the leather, feel the soft, plush carpet beneath my feet, hear her breathing as she leaned down over me.
The car screeched to a halt and we were both thrown forward, me flying between her legs and landing on top of her. Her eyes were thrown wide in total shock as I awkwardly tried to push off her and nailed her breast.
Then the tires squealed and we were thrown forward again as the driver hurled us into reverse, a hail of gravel and dirt roaring beneath the limo as it awkwardly fishtailed, trying to back up from whatever had brought us to a stop.
Nyissa pushed me off her, her hand nailing my breast this time, and I tumbled back into the floor. I flexed and brought my vines to life. Nyissa’s eyes glowed, she raised the poker, and we crouched back to back, staring out the windows as the limo rocked from its hard stop.
The squealing and rattling stopped, but the tires were still spinning. Nyissa and I were thrown onto each other as the limo drunkenly slewed around, lifting into the air. Flickering red light began creeping up under the cracks of the doors and climbing the sides of the windows.
“Oh, God,” I said. “It’s the tagger-”
“Oh, no,” Nyissa said. “He’s going to kill us-”
“That’s far enough!” a voice screamed. “I’ll make you regret coming to Blood Rock!”
A Torrent of Red and Gold
“What the hell? ” I was certain I recognized that voice, and reached for the door.
“No, don’t,” Nyissa said, grabbing my arm with irresistible strength. “Don’t challenge him. Let him rage, maybe he will tire of it and let us go.”
“Let go of my arm,” I said. Nyissa shook her head, and I asked, “This client thing, is it feudal? You protect me in exchange for tribute, but I can also be called on to protect you?”
Nyissa blinked, then squealed as the car rocked. “Y-yes,” she said, shrinking back from the flickering orange light now roaring around all the windows.
“Then let go of me,” I said. “It’s my time to protect you.”
The car rocked again, slewing around, and she released my arm. Quickly I tore off my jacket, unzipped my chaps, exposing as many tattoos as I could. Then I opened the door.
A torrent of red and gold leaves whipped around the car, like a tornado made by the spirit of fall. Giant vines weaved through the storm, not unlike my own, but thick as tree trunks, snapping like giant snakes-and then one struck the car and knocked me flying.
“ Whoa! ” I cried, arms windmilling. A ‘spirit of air’ haiku it wasn’t, but my cry captured my intent and my panicked movement spread the mana I had already been building, making the half-finished wings of my new Dragon erupt from my back in a flare of purple feathers.
Wind caught under them, braked my fall-I wasn’t quite flying, or even falling with style, but managed to twirl downwards like a maple seed, buffeted by the roiling tornado of tattoo magic around me, but not quite knocked from the air. As I stabilized, I saw him.
The wide, strong figure of Arturo Carlos “Arcturus” Rodriguez de la Turin danced in the road, legs moving quickly around the points of a pentagram, arms waving in counterpoint with the grace of a Tai Chi master. His shaggy white hair tossed in the wind of his power. The tattoos of his bare arms and chest didn’t just glow, they blazed, sweeping out around him in a tornado of leaves and vines that swirled beneath the limo, lifting it thirty feet up into the air. From his back, a huge serpent uncoiled, rising up, growing larger, preparing to strike.
“ Spirit of vengeance, ” he snarled-and then he saw me. “Frost?”
He paused his quick dancing steps, and the torrent began to abate. “ Friends of the earth, ease my fall, ” I murmured, and my vines coiled out and below me, cushioning my fall as I touched down on the dirt road, which he’d nearly blasted back to the clay.
“Frost!” he cried, happily, stepping forward. As he did so, Zinaga, who had been leaning against a tree and watching the show with an unconcealed grin, suddenly scowled and turned her back. Arcturus, as usual, did not notice. “I can’t believe it-Dakota Frost!”
He looked genuinely surprised to see me. I wondered what, if anything, that I’d said that Zinaga had passed on to him. Probably just enough to cast me in the worst possible light. Then I looked over my shoulder, up and at the limo, which was now tottering and sinking as the tornado began to break up. Arcturus saw it too, grimaced, looked at me, then grimaced even more. He struggled with something; the glowing snake twisted, reared. Then Arcturus cursed.
“ Spirit of vengeance, spare them my wrath, ” he said, bowing slowly, throwing his hands wide. The limo began to settle gently to the ground, the leaves dispersed, the vines recoiled, and the snake resentfully sank back down into his back. At the precise moment he completed his bow, all signs of his magic dissipated-and the limo’s tires gently touched the Earth.
“Always the showman,” I said quietly, letting my own wings and vines fade.
“Good Lord, Frost, what are you doing riding with the vampires?” he said, rubbing his hands together. Little glowing sparks erupted where flesh met flesh-the mana-capacitor yin-yangs on my palms were based on his example. “And why are they riding straight into the heart of Old Town? I told both you and them to stay away until you learned better manners.”
I stared at Arcturus, taking him all in: Hispanic features, English accent, that slightly aristocratic air which always made me want to kick his teeth in. I reflected on what Nyissa said. I thought about how to best handle the situation. Then I opened my damn mouth.
“Damnit, Arturo, you didn’t tell me anything because you don’t answer your phone.”
“The telephone,” Arcturus said archly, “is not a universal feature of the human condition. For the bulk of history, people have spoken without electrical intermediaries-”
“I’m not finished,” I said. “Any message you had for me was not passed on by Zinaga, who just as clearly hasn’t passed on to you half of what I told her. She’s probably holding out on both of us for the same reason she sold me out to the vampires: she’s jealous.”
Arcturus’ eyes bugged out and he whirled on Zinaga. “You betrayed my star pupil to the vampires?” he said. Zinaga flinched at ‘star pupil’-meaning she and her years of service were, what, chopped liver? No wonder she was jealous. “A serious accusation. Defend yourself!”
“Of course I didn’t sell her out,” she said, shrugging her shoulders with a cocky ‘I can get away with it’ air. “And if I had, would she be here?”
“Actually, I get on famously with vampires, after their fashion,” I said. “Which answers Arcturus’ first question. I had grovel to them before I could come grovel to you.”
The limo door opened, and Nyissa’s booted foot planted itself in the road. She followed it out, twisting her poker in her fingers, features composed, assured, hostile. The layered, nuanced woman was gone, replaced by the scary psycho bitch I’d seen in the court of Transomnia. Her game face was on, and she strolled straight up to Arcturus as if she was not terrified.
“Oh, it’s you, ” Arcturus said dismissively-but beyond that, was he a tiny bit… embarrassed? “Sorry about the light show. I thought you were your boss.”
“Think nothing of it,” she said, staring straight at Arcturus. “The Lady Frost is correct. We intercepted her earlier based on a tip from Zinaga, with whom I have maintained a… private relationship
… to keep the line of communication between skindancers and vampires open.”
“She’s lying!” Zinaga said. “I never called her!”
“I never said you called, ” Nyissa said, withdrawing a cell phone from the folds of her dress-coat, “but… you did.”
Nyissa thumbed through listings on the phone, then held it to Arcturus. He stared at it, cursed, then glared over at Zinaga, daring her to contradict. She just slumped back against the tree, looking away. “Return to the shop,” he said. “I’ll decide your fate later.”
“She should stay,” I said. “I want her to hear this.”
Arcturus glared at me sharply. “See now, Frost, you’re in Coventry already-”
“Because we forbade the Lady Frost to return to Blood Rock,” Nyissa said.
Arcturus squinted at Nyissa. “Well, if she didn’t have the fortitude to defy you,” he said, glancing at me sidelong, “she should have just stayed away.”
“ No one has the guts to buck them,” I said. “Not even Zinaga, and she’s their ally. You don’t know that because you spend all your time holed up in your studio, but everyone in town is running scared. Go downtown tomorrow night and you won’t see one exposed tattoo.”
Arcturus winced… then snorted. “Who cares,” he said, though he was grimacing. “Anybody with my ink could take them, if they had chests-”
“But, as she said, no one has any guts,” Nyissa said. “Everyone in Blood Rock fears the House Beyond Sleep… which brings us to the Lady Frost’s proposal.”
“Proposal?” he said. “What proposal?”
“The Lady Frost has convinced us,” Nyissa said, “that our fear of skindancers has created the very conditions we wanted to avoid: open hostility. She has suggested that we should lift the ban on skindancing in Blood Rock… and we have agreed.”
Zinaga stood up straight, leaning away from the tree with her mouth hanging open. Arcturus stood there in the road for a moment, swaying, then said, “Again, why should I care? Anyone who doesn’t have the guts to stand up to you-”
“Stop being an ass, Arturo,” I snapped.
“No, you stop being an ass,” Nyissa said. “You are not helping.”
“Look, you-”
“Are you not my client?” Nyissa asked. “Do you not want my protection?”
“Technically no,” I said, “and not really, no.”
She raised an eyebrow. “So you want all vampires to consider you free game?”
I stared up into the night sky, then let out my breath. “No.”
“Then as my client,” she said, “you will learn to hold your tongue.”
“I’d pay good money to see that trick,” Arcturus said.
“I only need a minute of silence to make my case,” Nyissa said. “This town was a haven for skindancers first, before the vampires came. You and I had our disagreements, but we were civil. It was my master who feared skindancers, and my master who imposed the ban. Frost was one of the skindancers he feared, and she convinced him that fear was not warranted.”
“Oh really?” Arcturus said. “You don’t think we could put the hurt on you?”
“So could a posse of pissed off townspeople with shotguns,” Nyissa said. “Frost’s suggestion is to stop pissing you off, starting with rescinding the ban on displayed ink.”
Arcturus cocked his head. “And what do you get out of it?”
“My Lord Transomnia would like you to extend his apologies to the people of Blood Rock,” she said, “and my client, Dakota Frost, would like you to accept my apology for interfering with the legitimate business she had with you.”
I let out an exasperated breath. “Oh, you’re just loving this.”
“Zip it,” she said. “And don’t forget, you still owe me a drop of blood and a quarter.”
Arcturus looked at her, then me. “This vamp your new girlfriend, Dakota?”
I rankled-and so did Zinaga; how interesting. “Now, look-”
Nyissa licked her lips and looked at me. “Why, that’s-” she began-and then her face fell. “That’s a flattering suggestion, but poorly timed. Miss Frost’s romantic companion was just murdered, by magic. I believe that’s what she’s here to talk to you about.”
Arcturus stiffened. “Murdered? By magic? Not skindancing-”
“No,” Nyissa said softly, so I didn’t have to. “Magic graffiti. And her friend is not the only victim. This plague has claimed dozens of vampires, werewolves, and normal humans.”
“Damnation. And I’m sorry to hear about your friend,” Arcturus said. Clearly Zinaga had told him nothing. His eyes scanned me, then narrowed. “But the vamps have picked the wrong horse to back-you’ll be useless in a fight, now that you’ve stripped your masterwork.”
“I’m inking a new Dragon,” I said.
His eyes narrowed further. “Those wings you used? Show me.” I turned so Arcturus could look down the back of my shirt, which left me facing Nyissa. She smiled sweetly, and I shuddered. “Hard to get a whole picture,” Arcturus said. “Could I pull this up a moment?”
“Not with Miss Predator figuring out where to sink her teeth,” I said.
“Or plant her tongue,” she said sweetly.
“Ew,” I said, folding my arms in front of me. “Look, you can see the wings over my shoulders, and between them the head of the Dragon, or the start of it, anyway. Those aren’t isolated marks, I’m redoing the whole masterwork to a new design-”
“So you are,” Arcturus said, and despite my warning, lifted the back of my shirt to inspect my inking more closely. After a moment, he said, “Impressive. I thought you’d have gotten sloppy, running all that commercial ink. But you’ve gotten better.”
“I love my work.”
Arcturus released me, and I turned back to face him.
“Tell me, Frost,” he asked, “are you ready to learn to fight this thing?”
“Yes,” I said. “Do you have anything to teach me?”
“Oh, do I,” Arcturus said, his eyes glinting. “I don’t have secret knowledge about graffiti, but there’s a lot about skindancing I didn’t teach you before you quit.”
“Damnit,” I said. Actually I had hoped Arcturus would have some secret knowledge, but there would be no silver bullet. “I don’t have time to get bogged down with dancing lessons.”
“You don’t have time not to,” Arcturus said. “Tell me all you know about the graffiti, and together we’ll work out how to take it apart. Then I’ll train you to do it, using improvements to your library of tattoos and specific moves to use your new tattoos to defend yourself. Deal?”
I blinked at him. “Now that’s what I’m talking about,” I said. “All right. I’m in.”
No Easy Answers
The fires in Atlanta petered out after a few days, according to the news, but I was not relieved. The attacks had stopped for a week after the werehouse fire-then we lost Calaphase. Now we were a little over a week past that round of fires-and running out of time.
But I had no idea how I could be working any harder or faster.
“Understand me. This is no Yoda nonsense,” Arcturus said- again. He moved his arms in a slow arc, which I mirrored with difficulty-and increasing frustration. “Fuck ‘do or do not, there is no try.’ No. Try and try again, piece by piece, until each piece is right. Then puzzle the pieces together, over and over again, until the big picture is second nature.”
Since I’d arrived, each day had been devoted to skindancing until I could barely stand, and each night to graffiti analysis until we could barely keep our eyes open. Yet, deep in the night, trying to drift off in the musty chill of the spare room, I often lay awake, worrying about Cinnamon, mourning Calaphase… or dreading what disaster was coming next.
I sent Cinnamon a postcard through Doug, but I was too paranoid to call directly. I was off the radar and planned to stay there. I did try emailing her through an anonymous proxy-I remembered a few tricks from my days volunteering in the Emory computer lab-but got no response. Heck, I didn’t know if Palmotti was letting her use the Internet.
When I logged in, however, I found my secret admirer had no problems with his Internet connection. Based on the press clippings he’d flooded my inbox with, Arcturus and I estimated the new fires had killed at least thirty-five people. Also, a werekin lawyer disappeared at the same time, and I suspected a transportation attack like the one on me and Calaphase.
Counting everything, the death toll from magic graffiti had nearly hit eighty. It got worse each time: a handful of people around New Year’s Eve, twice that many after Revenance died, and another doubling after Calaphase died. I was dreading what was coming next.
At least I was making progress on skindancing. Arcturus had showed me a technique to remove the curdled ink left in my burn, then helped me design a better asp I inked in its place. We also added a few defensive marks that might help if I ran into Zipperface again.
As I carefully inked the design to Arcturus’ impatient direction, I guessed why he had let his own marks get so crude. If you tattooed yourself repeatedly, only to pull them off so you could ink new ones, I could see how you could start focusing on the magical lines over the artistry. I love my work, though, and when I was done, even Arcturus was impressed.
But, as my new arsenal healed up, Arcturus didn’t let me rest on my laurels. Instead, he gave me a crash course in skindancing logic-first, with a refresher of the basic moves, and then a review of the Dances-what in karate would be called a hoke or a kata.
We practiced beneath the trees on a big hexagonal sand pit behind his wooden split-level home, a crisp January wind making the shadows of the branches dance with far more grace than I could manage. Strangely, the regular exercise seemed to be helping my knee: maybe I had been pushing myself too hard at the dojo. Regardless, being in less pain didn’t mean I made fewer mistakes. Soon, I stumbled again, sand kicking up from my foot where I caught myself, and Arcturus broke his form and stood beside me, watching me move.
“Pathetic. Back to the Dance of Five and Two,” he said sharply, walking beside me, correcting my arm here and there, occasionally cuffing me upside the head as I stumbled through the motions. My feet drew out a pentagram, forward, back left, right front, left front, back right, forward again, then repeated it again, switching right for left. I felt like I was falling over my own feet with every little J-step. But at the end Arcturus grunted, pleased.
“Not bad,” he said, rubbing his chin. “Thought you’d abandoned your practice?”
“Rarely doesn’t mean never,” I said. “And I do martial arts. They’re similar.”
He laughed sharply. “Not likely,” he said. “What’s your most similar move?”
I thought a moment. “Not so much a move, as a formsemay-no-hokay. ”
“Means nothing to me,” he said. “Show me. Or must you put on jammies to fight?”
“It’s not a fighting form,” I said. I knelt, bowed to touch the sand, and leaned back up. I exhaled completely, lifted up on one knee, extended my hands-then pulled them back in, inhaling, and started windmilling myself through semay.
Its movements weren’t that difficult; the really taxing part was its elaborate pattern of controlled breathing. Soon everything else was pushed out of my mind. Arcturus, despite his protests, seemed to instinctively get the form, even correcting my hands once.
“Not bad,” he said, with the same little grunt. “Doesn’t sum like the skin dance, but you’re going over many of the same moves. I can see why it helps. Let’s take a break.”
He poured some lemonshine for us from a pitcher on the picnic table and took a swig. When I tried, I gagged, half from the alcohol and half from the lemon. I’d forgotten how strong he made it. “Gaah,” I said, “worse than ever. Is this lemonade or a margarita?”
“Can’t quite make up its mind, can it?” he said, grinning. “Zinaga has been feeding in limes along with the lemons. That and the tequila gives it quite a kick.”
I stared at the drink, suspicious of anything prepared by Zinaga. But I had convinced Arcturus to forgive and forget, so I had to put my money where my mouth was. I grimaced through another swallow, and set it down. “Gaah. All right. How bad am I doing?”
“Terrible. Rusty as all getout. It will take a month to get you back to fighting form.”
“We don’t have a month,” I said. “We’ve got to figure out how to defeat the graffiti before it starts killing people again-”
“Dakota, we’ve spent almost a week and a half looking at graffiti, and neither of us have made headway because there’s no headway to be made,” Arcturus said. “Trust me, there are no secrets to be found looking at more pictures or drawing more diagrams.”
“Then we’re not looking hard enough,” I said. “There has to be some weakness-”
“What is this, the Star Wars theory of battle?” Arcturus said, plucking an M amp;M out of a jar on the picnic table. “Hoping to find that small exhaust port just below the main port?”
“Don’t mock me,” I said. “I need to find out how the tags work so I can beat them.”
“Dakota, you can’t beat the tags,” Arcturus said. “You can’t. He can spray one as big as the side of a barn, with a thousand layers, and all you have is two square meters of skin. If you go toe to toe with that, it will burn you. You need to learn to beat the tagger. ”
I sat down on the picnic table. As soon as he said that, I knew he was right. I closed my eyes, running through the math. Doug once called magic conceptual physics: the part of the world affected by pure ideas. Well, it wasn’t that simple: a magical intent is only as strong as the mana that powers it. Against stronger magic, that intent can pop like a soap bubble.
Ignore for a moment where it was getting the power, and just look at the surface area, at the layers. At a rough guess… the magic that a large tag could put out could be a thousand times as much as that put out by a person. And the source of the mana? If he painted enough layers, it could be the world’s best magical capacitor, storing up the trickle of magic put out by the living mold underneath for hours or days before releasing it all at once in a torrent of mana.
No wonder I hadn’t been able to shield against the graffiti.
It was like trying to stop a bullet with tissue paper.
Inside Arcturus’ basement studio, the phone began ringing, and I started to get up to answer it, just like I always had when I’d been his star pupil.
“Leave it to Zinaga,” Arcturus said, stopping me with a hand on my shoulder. “Why so quiet? Trying to use all your college maths to figure out how it beat you?”
“Yep,” I said. “Actually, I’ve pretty much nailed it.”
Arcturus sighed. “Cocky as ever. You keep thinking you understand magic, but calling it mana is no better than calling it qi and looking for chakra. Everyone tries to reduce magic to laws they can understand. But magic doesn’t obey the laws of nature. Magic is super natural.”
“Supernatural doesn’t mean anything,” I said, staring out at the patterns in the sand as the phone went silent. “It’s just a word we use for the ‘vitamins’ of nature, the parts you can’t assemble out of smaller pieces unless you’ve already got the material to work with.”
“By that definition radioactivity is magical, or damn near close to it,” Arcturus said, rubbing his hands together. When the roughly inked yin-yangs on his palms came apart, a glowing pattern spread between them, a cat’s cradle of light far more delicate than anything that sprung from the finer lines of my tattoos. “But you know better than that. Magic is more than just a rare spice. It’s the spice of life-living, breathing life forms.”
I stared at the dance of light between his fingers. I knew the graphomantic patterns that made the form possible, could gauge his intent, maybe even measure his mana, but there was more to it than that, something just beyond my reach, elusive and tantalizing.
Then the phone started ringing again.
“Let me shoo whomever’s on the phone,” I said, standing.
“Don’t,” Arcturus said firmly. “ Don’t answer it.”
I stared at him, as the phone kept ringing, and ringing, and ringing.
“Answer your own phone on your own time,” Arcturus said. “Leave my phone alone. No one has any business calling my phone. If I wanted to talk, I would call them.”
“That won’t work if everyone has your attitude,” I said, as the phone kept ringing.
“I am not everyone,” he said, ignoring the noise. “I am Arcturus. I’m a skindancing master. And I’m with my star pupil, trying to beat some sense into her.”
“That’s incredibly annoying,” I said, pointing at the ringing phone. “I need to concentrate. Let’s at least take it off the hook.”
“Learn to ignore it,” he said. “Would you stop and answer a cell phone during a fight?”
“We’re not in a fight,” I said. “And what if it was important-”
“It is never important,” he said.
“My daughter was kidnapped last year,” I snarled. “They called to tell me what to do. What if I hadn’t answered the phone? They might have-”
“They were not going to kill your daughter just because they couldn’t get you on the phone,” Arcturus said quietly. “They took her because they wanted something. Killing her wouldn’t get it from you. They will find another way to deliver the message.”
“How do you know that?” I said.
“Trust me,” he said, even more quietly. “I know.”
I just stared at him, as the phone rang, and rang, and rang. Arcturus was an aristocratic Chilean, educated at Cambridge, hiding out in the backwaters of rural Georgia in a cabin filled with pictures of a wife and daughter I had never met and he had never spoken of.
As usual, dumb old me never thought to ask why.
“Arcturus,” I said softly. “Who was on the phone the last time you picked it up?”
“What?” Arcturus said blankly. “What? No! Not kidnappers, if that’s what you’re asking. I have picked up the phone since then, Dakota. Last time for my brother, I think.” Then his face clouded. “But… yes, once it was. And the experience left me with an aversion.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged, turned away. “Waters long under,” he said, pulling out his sheaf of notes. “Back to the here and now. Back to the sound. On the other end of that phone, a person is looking for you, but they can only find you if you pick up. The sound is just an alarm. It can’t hurt you. It doesn’t oblige you. But it can distract you. Realize that, then learn to ignore it.”
“Ignore what?” I asked.
He smiled, picked out a diagram, put it in front of me. “And now something else to ignore: chakra, smakra, mana, qi,” he said, smoothing the paper out. “All pretty words for the flow of magic, for the loci where it collects in the body. To fight the tagger, you must master that power-not intellectually, but intuitively, as an instinctive reaction without thought.
“Your martial arts have done you well. You have maintained your skill at concentrating magic in your loci, maybe even improved it a little. Now you must learn how to concentrate more coordinated patterns of magic and use them to generate more complex spells on the fly.”
But I was staring at the diagram: it was the Pentacle of the Dance, a pentagram that showed how the five different kinds of magic used by skindancers related to each other. I’d seen it, drawn it a thousand times: walking the pentacle was a fundamental tool used to check the magic of flash to make sure the magical circuit worked as advertised.
But this one was different. Overlaid on the pentagram was a square, then a circle, then a naked, spreadeagled human figure: the Vitruvian man, the iconic figure drawn by Leonardo da Vinci five centuries before I was born. This Pentacle, Arcturus explained, showed how the human body itself was not just a source of magic, but a component in its logic.
“Oh, God,” I said, flashing on Revenance’s spread-eagled form, on Tully, suffering in the vines, even on Cally, broken body splayed out in a crude X as his life’s blood spilled out onto the tag. “It is skindancing. The tagger is using skindancing logic with graffiti magic.”
“Now how is he doing that, Frost?” Arcturus said. “There is no dancer-”
“The writhing of the victims. Hence the barbs, the sawing, the prolonged torture. ”
“Frost!” Arcturus said. “We went over that. Random movements wouldn’t sum-”
“It would if there’s a ratchet, like a self winding watch,” I said, staring into the Pentacle. “What if it’s not just a receiver, but a transmitter? It traps people, kills them, and beams the harvested magic elsewhere to power… something else. Do you have a map of Atlanta?”
Arcturus froze, then went out to the garage, yelling for Zinaga while I got the graffiti pictures. When he returned with the map, I tamped it down with the pitcher and M amp;M jar and used M amp;Ms to mark where graffiti had been found or where fires had been reported.
In moments the picture emerged. Our data was not complete, the diagram not perfect, but there were enough little bits of candy to see the beginnings of a great pentacle spread over the whole of the city of Atlanta, just like the Pentacle of the Dance on the Vitruvian Man.
“It’s a city-sized resonator,” I said. “No wonder the tags never seem to run out of mana. They aren’t just powering themselves-they’re powering each other. Mana building up in the mold capacitors all over the city gets beamed to the traps, which in turn use that power to torture more magic out of their victims. It’s a… a distributed necromantic network.”
Arcturus’ jaw clenched. “God damn it,” he said. “And it will be more than just mana-it will transmit the tortured intents of the dying victims back to the source. It’s not just a city-sized resonator. It’s a city-sized harvester of pain. That is foul.”
I thought about Transomnia, Nyissa, and their auras prickling against my magical tattoos. “It likes vampires because their auras extend beyond their body,” I said. “That triggers the magic and springs the trap. Shapeshifters can trigger it too, but anything alive could feed it.”
“Vampiric graffiti using skindancing magic,” Arcturus said. “Killing people as part of some far vaster spell… to do what? ”
“Something really horrible,” I said, pointing at a join on the network. Arcturus had taught me something new, just in this short week. “Look at the corresponding point on the Pentacle. This isn’t a chi junction. It’s an intent nexus. That’s why the network transports people.”
Arcturus stared at the map, then the Pentacle. “How do you figure that?”
“Extracting a person’s intent is a short-range process,” I said. “And these points on the Pentacle are points of pain. It moved Revenance-it moved me and Calaphase-to the place which needed the most pain to be applied. This network is collecting suffering.”
“God,” Arcturus said. “We must stop this.”
I laughed bitterly. “No argument.”
He nodded a couple of times and took another swig of his limonshine. “I have to call the vampires,” he said with distaste. “I don’t believe this. I’m going to call the bloody vamps. I’m going to thank them for their gesture, then propose we work together to eliminate this threat.”
My eyes widened. “You’ll… you’ll fight with me against the tagger?”
“What? No… I can’t leave Blood Rock, Frost,” Arcturus said, pained. “I can’t afford to be outside the Sanctuary circle, much less appear in public. I am marked for death.”
I stared back at him. “You’ve been here, what, twenty years… ”
“It does not matter how long you hide,” he said grimly. “If you kill the right person from the wrong family, you do not appear in public, ever. Not even to fight this. It’s a rule.”
“Who did you kill?” I asked, immediately regretting it.
Arcturus looked away, took another long gulp of limonshine. I followed his eyes. He was staring into the house, into the open sliding door of the den, staring at a small picture on the coffee table. I didn’t need to get up to know it was a picture of his wife and daughter.
After what seemed like minutes, Arcturus cursed and set his drink down. “I cannot think with all this racket,” he said, and stormed into the house. Then my mouth fell open as Arcturus picked up the phone savagely and snapped, “What the hell do you want?”
I swallowed. I had successfully tuned the phone out after Arcturus’ speech. For him to pick up the phone, my questions about his family must have really rattled him. Or maybe it always rattled him, and he was putting on a brave face to forget what he’d lost.
“Yes, speaking. Who are-yes, right again,” Arcturus said. He grimaced, then picked the phone’s cradle up and walked over to the door, and I sat up in alarm. “It’s for you.”
“ How? No one knows I’m here,” I said. “Who is it?”
“God damned Bespin, sounds like.”
“Bespin? I don’t know a-” I said. “Oh. Where Luke went after he bailed on Yoda.”
“Yeah,” Arcturus said. “This is why I hate phones. If you take the call, you have to act.”
I stared at the phone, then took it. “Hello?”
“Dakota,” Philip said, a bit strangled. “God, I hope your line isn’t already tapped.”
“Philip,” I said. “Oh, Philip, how did you-”
“I got your cell phone records, tracked your recent calls-and the last one got me Transomnia,” Philip said. “To get your location, we had to trade some information. I told him to ditch his phone. He’s probably gone to ground. He’ll be harder to track now.”
“It’s all right, he’s… not wholly evil,” I said. “But why risk it? What’s happened?”
“Palmotti’s filed a missing persons report,” Philip said. “Cinnamon has disappeared.”
The Hunt is On
“Vladimir,” I said, into a spectacularly disgusting gas station pay phone, “tell me Cinnamon showed up for her afterschool math club.”
“Why, yes,” he said. “She just left.”
“Thank God, and damnit,” I said, glancing around. I half expected an army of spring-loaded cops to descend on me at any moment. I know the drill. If the police can’t find a fugitive, they let it be known that the suspect has won a prize-or that her daughter has disappeared.
“What’s wrong?”
“She’s gone missing from the Palmottis,” I said. “He’s filed a missing persons report.”
“Oh, Jesus,” he said. “And here I was thinking things were going better. She’s actually been at school. Didn’t Palmotti even think to call us?”
“Maybe he did,” I said. “Who knows?”
“You haven’t talked to him?”
“Not yet. And frankly, I’m scared to, and not because I’m forbidden to see Cinnamon.”
“Why, Dakota?” Vladimir asked, voice filled with concern. “It isn’t the police, is it?”
Oh, damnit, me and my big mouth. Instinctively I trusted Vladimir, and had been talking to him as if I’d already taken him into confidence. I hemmed and hawed; finally, I gave in.
“Yes,” I said. “They started looking for me because I was on the scene of the Candlestick fire, and have been loose while fires have been ravaging the city.”
“You’re taking a risk even calling me,” Vladimir said, even more concerned.
“Yes,” I said, and explained how Philip had tracked me with my cell phone. “But a random payphone is probably safe, at least calling you. They’ve probably tapped the Palmottis’s phone-my daughter is there-and maybe the phones of my close friends. I would.”
“You’re probably safe making one call per payphone,” Vladimir said, after some thought, “if you’re willing to hang up and drive for twenty, maybe thirty minutes after the call.”
“Vladimir! I’m shocked,” I said. “I didn’t mark you as devious lawbreaker.”
“I read a lot of suspense novels,” he admitted. “But if you’re willing to spend one call, why not go for broke? Why not call the police directly, tell them you’ve nothing to do with the fires and ask for news about your daughter?”
“I take back my crack about devious, Vladimir,” I said. “Switch to true crime books. The police won’t believe me because I call and sound concerned. They won’t believe anything short of me turning myself in so I can rot in jail while the tagger burns the city down to the ground.”
“If you do turn yourself in, and the fires keep popping up, wouldn’t that clear you?”
“Maybe, but I’m not going to sit on my ass in the Fulton County Jail while Cinnamon’s gone to ground, probably to precisely the same places this werekin-eating graffiti is likely to be found. Turning myself in for something I didn’t do is an absolute last resort.”
“Jesus,” Vladimir said, after a long pause. “What’s that going to do to your case?”
I blew out a harsh breath. “Oh, hell, Vladimir,” I said. “Nothing good, but I can’t think that far. We need to find her and get her back to Mister Palmotti, or at least find her some other kind of protection, before she gets killed. Once she’s safe, we worry about saving the case.”
Vladimir was silent for a moment. “Dakota,” he said. “You weren’t this worried about her safety the last time we spoke. What’s happened?”
Without thinking… I told him.
About Calaphase’s death. About Revenance’s death. About the attacks on Tully, on the werehouse, at the Candlesticks. I told him how hard the graffiti was to fight, what it could do-and how Arcturus and I had pieced together that it was part of a far greater spell, a citywide network of death, one Doug believed was beyond any magic or science known to man.
“Oh my God,” Vladimir said. His voice was trembling. I’d forgotten I was speaking to a math teacher and not one of my normal Edgeworld contacts, and that taking someone into confidence didn’t have to mean dumping off all my woes. “What are we going to do?”
“Don’t be afraid,” I said. “Focus on what we can do. Go after Cinnamon, if she hasn’t been gone too long, and get her to wait for Mister Palmotti. If not, find a pretext to call him and let him know she’s been seen-but don’t mention my name. If you see her again-”
“I’ll make her wait for Mister Palmotti,” Vladimir said.
“ No, ” I said. “Don’t make her do anything. She’s a werekin with a large beast. She can take a bullet, lift a car, and run like the wind. Don’t spook her, or she’ll go to ground.”
“Maybe I’ll just ask her to wait for Mister Palmotti,” Vladimir said.
“Better,” I said. “But more importantly… tell her she needs to keep away from graffiti.”
“Sure,” Vladimir said, “but, Dakota, as bad as everything you said was… it didn’t sound like a Cinnamon-specific threat. Are you sure you’re not borrowing trouble?”
I was quiet for a moment. He was right, but he didn’t know the whole story. And I hated to violate her privacy, but… ”Yes, I’m sure,” I said. “She runs with… dates, in our language, this boy, Tully. He’s another werekin, maybe a little older, not in school.”
“Hoo boy,” Vladimir said. “And you let her, unchaperoned?”
“Not on purpose,” I said. “I’m not even supposed to know about it.”
“And how do you know about it?” Vladimir asked, a smile in his voice.
“Because I’m a parent, and I did the same kind of thing before she was born,” I said, and Vladimir laughed. “Before the werehouse burned, I’d pretty much gotten the picture. If she’s not with me, not with Palmotti, and the werehouse has burned to the ground, she’s running with him.”
“Well, if he is a werekin,” Vladimir said, “maybe he can keep her safe.”
“No. She has a bigger beast, and he nearly got killed at the werehouse when they made him whitewash it,” I said. “And he’s a fan of graffiti, if not a writer himself. They’re probably hiding out in precisely the same kind of places that the tagger would have hit, and they don’t know a random-looking squiggle can unfurl into a masterpiece that can burn people alive.”
“Hoo boy. All right,” he said. “Look, I’m going after her, Dakota. She didn’t leave fifteen minutes ago, and maybe she and her boy are grabbing a smoke behind the school.”
“Oh, Lord,” I said. “One more thing I’m not supposed to know… ”
“You can confront your children about things they’re trying to hide,” Vladimir said firmly. “Like you said, you’re a parent. It’s your job.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly.
“One more thing-have you called to warn her?”
“Yes, but there’s no answer,” I said. “She may have let her cell phone die.”
“No, I’ve seen her using it today. And her iPod. Look, I need to run after her.”
And with that, the phone went dead. But it was OK. Without even knowing it, Vladimir had given me everything I needed to know to find Cinnamon. I opened my phone, turned it on, quickly checked my call history, then powered it down and made one more payphone call.
To Philip.
Twenty-five minutes later, I was pulling past a row of dilapidated homes into a ratty old cul-de-sac. No, cul-de-sac dignified it; the street just ended in a canyon of scraggly trees and fallen leaves. Where the sidewalk ended, a broken gate lay against a chain-link fence. Through the gap a narrow dirt path led into one of Atlanta’s city parks.
I thought of parking there and walking, as not to spook my targets. Then I realized they would hear me on foot or on wheels. And then I realized I was a skindancer, and there was no reason for them to hear me at all-unless I wanted them to.
I didn’t get off the bike, I didn’t strip off my clothes, I didn’t murmur a cheesy haiku. I just closed my eyes, drew in a breath, writhed sinuously in the seat of the Vespa in a movement Arcturus had taught me, and breathed out, focusing on the thought of silence.
Mana burned against my skin, then receded as my vine tattoos came to life and slowly began snaking out from beneath my sleeves, my pants, my jacket, my collar. Slowly, the sounds of the wind, the road and the trains receded. When all noises were gone, I opened my eyes.
My vines coiled around me, ghostly and silent in the sunny air. The trees waved in silence, and a train lazily slid by, just beyond the end of the park. One car was covered with wildstyle letters, colorful and splashy, but as it passed it made no sound. Satisfied, I started the Vespa up, and quiet as a ghost, bumped it down through the park and hid it behind the trees.
I tromped silently up to the edge of the park, where the grassy green space overlooked the railroad. This clothes on technique was too slow for battle, but my clothes trapped stray mana and made the spell last longer. Soon I found a squarish cinderblock structure, covered in graffiti, sitting in a kink of the railway lot. With all the underbrush, it was actually hard to tell whether it had been abandoned by the railway or the park service.
And then my breath caught, as I saw, on the side of the building where Philip told me Cinnamon was probably hiding, the distinctive graffiti marks of the tagger.