“Who?” I asked. “I can only keep track of so many ‘Lady S-something’ vampires.”
“She’s one of the Gentry,” Calaphase said. “Old, moneyed vampires who used to run the cities before the rise of the Consulates. There a few of them, the Lady Onyxa and the Lord Ian something and supposedly an ancient vamp too deformed by age to be seen in public.”
“Sounds charming,” I said. “And this Scara?”
“Their enforcer,” Calaphase said. “Scara’s informed the Lady Saffron that the Gentry officially considers the Consulate’s handling of this plague a failure-because they’ve found out one more of their vampires has been killed by graffiti, just like Revenance.”
“Oh no,” I said, my heart falling. “A new wave of killings… ”
“Maybe,” Calaphase said. “Scara had been hunting the vampire’s human servant, thinking he was responsible, but when she found him he was hiding out, scared shitless. He and his mistress were partying on New Year’s Eve when she was caught and killed by graffiti.”
“That’s even before Revenance,” I said. “Maybe the first vamp taken.”
“And just before Josephine,” Calaphase said. “And get this, same night-”
“A homeless man was set on fire,” I said. “I’ve been reading the crime blotter too.”
“Sounded awfully suspicious,” Calaphase said. “We should compare notes.”
“Sure,” I said. “Hey, what happened to the human servant? Sounds like Scara treated him like a suspect, but since he’s not involved, I’ll want to hear that he was released unharmed.”
“Would you now?” Calaphase laughed, a bit nervously. “I’ll, uh, pass that along if I ever see the Lady Scara, not that I ever hope to.”
“Speaking of hope,” I said. “What about Demophage… ”
Calaphase fell silent. “Dakota… the vamp he was looking for. .. the weres found his body, not two days ago. Burned to death, just like Revenance, about four miles from the werehouse-near some very familiar looking graffiti.”
“Please don’t tell me-”
“They’d painted it over before they even talked to me,” Calaphase said, and my heart sank. “The weres that weren’t caught are really pissed, and Krishna still hasn’t made bail. But… they did listen to me, and took pictures. Just got them today.”
“Great!” I said. Pictures wouldn’t be as good as a live tag, but if they were good enough maybe we had a shot of tying the design to the behavior. “I mean, not that I’m happy he died or anything, but, maybe, finally, maybe we’ll be able to make some progress-”
“ And,” Calaphase said, “if that sounds good, I’ve got an entirely new batch of pictures of suspected master tags taken by the Van Helsings, Darkrose Enterprises, and even some from Tully, all printed out in a folder ready for you to take a look at.”
I was speechless for a moment. “Oh, I love you.”
“Easiest way down a tattooist’s pants is to show her some flash,” Calaphase laughed.
“I’m not that easy,” I said.
“I didn’t say you were. Still, Darkrose wanted a report to give to Saffron,” Calaphase said. “Can I bring these by and get your official opinion? Darkrose isn’t a daywalker, so I need to tell her tonight. Otherwise I have to pass the message to Saffron herself, and she’ll-”
“I know, I know,” I said, looking around me and tossing the rest of the pile around me into a box. “But can it wait a few hours? I’m not done moving out, and I promised Mrs. Bitch downstairs that I’d be out of here by midnight tonight.”
“Need a hand?” Calaphase said.
“I-thanks, but no thanks. I just don’t think it’s a good idea,” I said. “Mrs. B-Mrs. Olsen is on a hair trigger. She wanted to call the police on me over Cinnamon.”
“I’m just, ” Calaphase said, “a cleancut young man come by to help a friend move.”
“Oh, damnit,” I said finally. What could it hurt? “Sure.”
A Friend Helps You Move
Twenty minutes to midnight. No time, no help-and no more boxes. I had only one left, which was rapidly filling as I found bric-a-brac and knick-knacks and odds-and-ends in every nook and cranny of the apartment. I swear, the things were breeding.
And then there was a knock at the door, and I looked up to see Calaphase, holding a box of Krispy Kreme donuts which he opened with a flourish, row upon row of glazed delight.
“Oh, I love you,” I said, hopping off the floor and snatching up an original style. It was hot and soft in my hands and seemed to dissolve in my mouth with a grand flash behind my eyes. “Oh. Oh. These are better than sex. Not really, but they’re better than sex.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” he said, laughing.
“Mmm. Mmmmm. Wht?” I said, munching, scanning the box. There were already four missing out of the dozen. “Didn’t you have some?”
“No, I gave three to Mrs. Olsen,” he said. At my shocked look, he laughed again, a warm sound that left me as tingly as the donuts. “Call it a peace offering. I explained that I was supposed to help you, but was late. You’ll have all the time you need.”
“Thank you, Calaphase,” I said, taking another donut. “You’re a lifesaver.”
“Finish up,” he said, handing me the box. “I’ll take loads to your car. Can you beep it?”
With a vampire carting boxes and me cleaning up, we finished up quick. I filled the last box, taped it up, and then helped carry down the final load. So many boxes. Even with the seats folded down in the back, they barely fit in the Prius, and I couldn’t see out my rearview mirror. Thank God for the backup monitor-and thank God I didn’t need to make a second trip.
After the car was packed, I took one last trip up the stairs to the place I’d called home for… hell, at least five years. As I climbed the steps, I saw Mrs. Olsen’s light was now on, no doubt from Calaphase’s visit, but I tried to ignore it. This was hard enough already.
At the door, I sighed. My mat, my curtains, the little stand beside the door were all gone; it already felt like a completely different place. I went in, finding empty rooms, feeling the place even more empty than when I’d moved in. Then, it held promise: now, it held nothing.
The storage unit closed at seven, so we dropped off the load at my hotel. Hands full, I slipped the little card in the slot, saw green, and kicked the door open, dumping the boxes next to the air conditioner. Calaphase, with three boxes in his arms, stopped at the door.
At first I thought he was staring with amusement at my Vespa, parked in front of the hotel window at the management’s request to free up a space in their tiny lot. Then he seemed to gather himself, cleared his throat, and looked straight at me. “May I come in?”
I hesitated-just a second-wondering if that pause was a vampire thing or simple courtesy. “Sure,” I said, moving a chair out of the way to make more room.
He waltzed around me silently, murmuring, “Wouldn’t want to wake-oh.” He stood there, holding the column, staring at the two, tiny, made beds. “Where’s Cinnamon? Out running with the werekin, or dare I hope, a sleepover with new friends from school?”
“She’s not here,” I said sharply, heading back to the car.
We got the rest of it unloaded, and then I came in and sat down on the bed. My hands were shaking. I could feel my face, hot, could see Calaphase standing by the door, feel the concern in his gaze, even though I couldn’t see his eyes.
After a moment, I explained the situation to him, as briefly as I could without pissing myself off again. Of course, that didn’t work so well. Just as I was getting really wound up, Calaphase made a motion, and I looked up to see him gesturing to the door.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go get a drink.”
“Why?”
“You need one, and… I’m a vampire,” Calaphase said. “I don’t want to be alone with you, especially not for drinks. Let me take you to a nice place, frequented by many humans.”
I glared at him, face still hot. “Don’t you
know I trust you?”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s not the problem.”
“Then what? Don’t you trust yourself? ”
He shrugged. “Don’t trust the situation.”
I was still glaring, but I felt it soften. “Fine,” I said. “No, really, fine.”
Calaphase directed me down North Avenue to Peachtree Road, then towards Buckhead. Long before we got there, we approached R Thomas, a New-Agey 24 hour joint that made the only vegetarian burgers that Cinnamon could stomach. I was about to suggest it when Calaphase pointed to a car coming out of a parking space, right in front of a set of small shops on the opposite side of the street. “There,” he said. “Someone’s smiling on us tonight.”
So we parked the Prius and hopped out into a row of shops that felt like a snippet of a walking neighborhood, like a micro-Virginia Highland on the other side of the road from R Thomas. We passed a Chinese restaurant and an art gallery before walking up onto a chic crowd of Buckheadites, milling around the front of Cafe Intermezzo.
“How late is this place open?” I asked.
“Two,” he said, taking me through heavy wood doors into a dark, loud, crowded empire of wood and glass. Classic posters and slogans extolling the glories of coffee adorned the walls, a slide show of what looked like ancient Greece was projected up into a high cranny, and everywhere people were crammed at tiny tables, consuming an astonishing variety of drinks.
“What?” Calaphase said, after the screech of the espresso machine ceased.
“A little loud, isn’t it?” I repeated.
“Two,” he said, handing a twenty to the maitre d’, who winked and nodded. “I wouldn’t do that normally,” he said, a little embarrassed when he saw my eyebrow, “but Cheryl knows me. She’ll get us a table in the front window. It’s a little quieter, but it takes a few minutes.”
We stood by a rack of newspapers on dowels, like you might see in a library. “Right across the street from my favorite veggie burgers,” I said. “Why have I never been here?”
Then he handed me the menu-a thick, narrow booklet that was as comprehensive as a dictionary-and I knew. “Jeez!” I said, and Calaphase winced. “OK, the normal coffees aren’t much worse than Starbucks, but some of the liqueurs are like, fifty dollars.”
“Only if you get one that’s older than I am,” Calaphase said.
“I have dresses older than you are,” I said, flipping and flipping and flipping, trying to get to the back. “All right, I can see why poor dropout me has never been here, but how can you afford it on what the werehouse crew have been paying you?”
“Vampires have many sources of income,” Calaphase said, slightly uncomfortable.
“Such as what-oh my God.” In a reflection I saw what I was standing next to, and turned around to see two huge glass cases of elaborate cakes in front of the espresso machine. “You had to stuff me full of donuts before I came here, didn’t you?”
“Now you know how I suffer when you eat,” he said. “Come on, she’s got us a table.”
The front window wasn’t much quieter, but at least there we could hunch over the table and talk. I told him the long version of what had happened to Cinnamon, and Calaphase patted my hand. “Don’t worry,” he said, face clearly worried. “You’ll get her back. I’m sure of it.”
“Try not to sound so convinced,” I said, slurping my mocha just to see him squirm. Unexpectedly they had delivered it with a small glass of hazelnut liqueur, which I sniffed before offering it to him. “I don’t drink and drive. Not even a little.”
“Aren’t we here to drink?” he said, sipping, with pain, a tall blended drink. “ I’ll drive.”
“Doesn’t that milkshake thing have like, a shot of vodka in it?”
“Something like it,” he said. “Look, you ordered it, and it is good. Please-”
“ Fine, ” I said, taking the hazelnut and taking a small sip. “Not bad. I’m still not drinking the whole thing, no matter what you say. Just my luck, they’ll pull me over and breathalyze me.”
“You’re sounding a little more like Dakota. Ready to get back in the saddle?”
I stared at him blankly-and then he pulled a manila folder out of his jacket. “You have pictures of the tags,” I said, leaning forward. “Gimme, gimme!”
These pictures were better than any I’d seen yet. The finest masterpiece, a complicated whirlpool design almost certainly made by the first tagger, was marred by whorls of black soot emanating from its center. The soot hadn’t destroyed it, but it obscured too much of the design to see it clearly, and I scowled… until I remembered that Calaphase had said the victim had burned. Then the soot began to look uncomfortably like a body, and I looked away.
“Both this guy and Revenance caught fire,” I said thoughtfully, “and I assumed it was the sun… but the werehouse burned too. Could burning be part of the life cycle of the tag?”
“I hope not,” Calaphase said. “That would be a disaster. There are a lot of tags.”
“I’d tell Rand, but I think he’d have me arrested,” I said. “Calaphase… can you arrange to send an anonymous tip to the police for me? I mean, we can warn the Edgeworld, but the police are looking into this too and I’d hate for some poor officer to get crisped.”
Calaphase frowned. “If I can’t arrange it, Saffron certainly can.”
There were also pictures showing the art of the second tagger, mostly around the werehouse. Apparently Tully had been chronicling the graffiti for some time. There were a few candid pictures with tags in the background featuring werehouse regulars like Vic, a few werekin boys, and even Cinnamon, who had been caught swatting her claws at the camera.
“These are very good,” I said, studying that last picture closely. I loved my girl, and already missed her terribly. “What are you up to, Calaphase?”
“What do you mean?” he said, taken aback.
“You didn’t need to do all this just to get an early report to Saffron. She’s not going to come stake you in your sleep because you’re slow getting back to her.”
“Touche,” he said, raising his glass. “You caught me. I planned to ask you out again.”
I leaned back in my chair. Damnit. “I smelled something fishy with your late-night call.”
“I take it that’s a no, then?” Calaphase said, smiling.
“What are we doing right now?” I asked. “Having coffee that costs as much as a meal? If the kitchen was still open, you’d be selling me on their food, just to watch me eat.”
“That I would. I love watching you eat,” Calaphase said warmly, and I glanced away, embarrassed. He laughed, then got serious. “Care to try again? A real date, no drama?”
“Someplace inexpensive?” I said. “Not four thousand dollar drinks forty miles down the backwoods of Atlanta? Someplace we can go Dutch, like real twenty-first century humans?”
Calaphase laughed. “That sounds good to me.”
“OK,” I said. “It will have to be after the hearing, though. I’ll let you know.”
“I understand-you’ve got a lot going on,” he said. “Whenever you’re ready-but until then, throw me a bone on the pictures, something I can pass to Saffron.”
“There are three separate taggers,” I said, and Calaphase leaned back in his chair. “Call them two and a half Siths: a master, a journeyman, and an apprentice. My mystery benefactor in the police force has said as much, and these pictures confirm it. The master tagger is active in downtown Atlanta, and his tags are the most dangerous. No vampire should go near them. The other two look to be wankers, copycats. Only the one that nearly killed Tully was associated with an attack, and I think that’s only because he tried to whitewash it alone.”
“That’s not a bone,” he said. “That’s a labeled skeleton with a copy of Gray’s Anatomy.”
I shrugged and took one more sip, finding I’d finished the tiny little glass of the liqueur. “I do my best. Mind if I send these to my mysterious benefactor?”
“Please, g
o ahead. One more thing-if you do squeeze out some time, give me a little advance notice? One of my flunkies can take my shift and we can have the whole night together.” His face fell as soon as he said it. “I didn’t mean to imply-”
“I’m not made of glass, Calaphase,” I said, smiling.
But Calaphase didn’t smile. “Vampires are known for taking advantage of human… prey,” he said with distaste. “I do not want you to think I’m just out for your blood.”
“You know what I think, Calaphase?” I said, finishing the last swig of mocha.
Calaphase cocked his head at me. “No. What do you think, Dakota?”
“It’s going to take more than the threat of a bite to scare me away from you, vampire.”
Land of the Skindancers
Blood Rock, Georgia is a tiny little hamlet between Stone Mountain and Conyers. Everyone knows Stone Mountain: a mammoth single stone of granite, literally the size of a mountain, upon which some racist idiot carved a bunch of Confederate yahoos on horses, simultaneously the world’s largest rock carving and the largest instance of vandalism. And almost everyone knows Conyers, a charming little town desperately trying to forget that the Virgin Mary appeared in a cornfield there sometime in the 1980s.
No-one knows Blood Rock, and Blood Rockers are happy to keep it that way. The stadium-sized knot of granite that dominates the town is dwarfed by Stone Mountain itself, dwarfed even by nearby Rock Chapel Mountain; but it is the treelined half-hill slumped over the boulder that really obscures it-and gave the Rock its name: with each rain, red Georgia clay bleeds out of the hillside, dripping down the rock in rivulets like red blood.
But it was more than just metaphorical blood. I got a tingle as I passed the ENTERING BLOOD ROCK sign. Blood Rock was protected by a magic circle, but there was no literal circle like that buried under Atlanta’s perimeter. Blood Rock’s barrier was projective, the magic of a sanctuary stone powered by ley lines and resonating off the Rock itself.
Rubbed into the Sanctuary Stone was a drop of blood from every magician that practiced in Blood Rock, even me. That blood magic enabled a powerful protective spell, protecting us from enemy magicians and alerting the Stonegrinder Clan, the keepers of the Stone, if any of us came to harm.
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