Blood Rock s-2

by Anthony Francis

  “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.

  Playing Hooky

  On my guard, I crept forward, gathering my vines like a shield. These marks were just quick throwups, a crude sketch of a snake by the junior apprentice, and a more assured mark by the journeyman-but with an unmistakable motif of a werekin ward rune embedded in it.

  My heart fell. I stared at it in horror, hoping that didn’t mean what I thought it meant. But as I watched, the rune changed slightly: a little tweak here, a little edit there, fleshing itself out so it grew a little bigger, a little rounder, the nubs of six tentacles appearing at the outer edge.

  What Arcturus and I had feared was true: the city-wide master spell was feeding back even into simple graffiti. The apprentice’s throwup was too simple, but the journeyman’s had the right motifs. It was plugged into the circuit. He probably didn’t even know he’d done it.

  Maybe that was what had happened before.

  No matter. I sized up the mark: no larger than a hand, it probably had days before it could go off. Once I was satisfied it wouldn’t rear up and eat me, I leaned up a torn piece of chain link fence, stepped through, worked my way around to the door, and stepped inside.

  Cinnamon was there, laughing, talking into her cell phone, sitting on an upended trash can in front of a table made from a weathered old door over which she’d spread her schoolbooks. Two schoolbags were tossed in the corner at her feet, positively bulging with books.

  On the other side of the room, Tully was fretting over a battered old boom box. He turned to say something and froze, staring at me. His eyes flicked involuntarily at a battered backpack; rather than books, however, his bag bulged with cylindrical objects, like… spray cans.

  I scowled. There was a reason Tully had been so good at finding graffiti. He was one of the taggers, probably the journeyman. Almost certainly he hadn’t meant harm-certainly he hadn’t meant to get himself almost killed-but there was so much collateral damage.

  And if he was a tagger, then Cinnamon- oh, God. There was a reason Cinnamon’s notes had been so useful to Doug- No. No, I couldn’t deal with this now. I had strong suspicions-but no proof yet. I had to focus.

  I drew in a breath, pulling in the mana and my vines. Then, slowly, sounds returned.

  “-no, not longways, stupid, they’ll buzz in all over us,” Cinnamon said, laughing. “Just add the digits. F-uhh! No, add the digits, and if the sum divides by three, so does the original. Try it-eeek!” She froze like Tully, just staring at me, and I mimed closing the phone. After a moment, she said, “Mom wants me. Call you back.”

  I stared at her a moment. I felt my eyes narrowing. Clearly she was not trying to stay hidden, going to math club and calling friends. She was just ditching the Palmottis, unthinkingly jeopardizing not just me, but my chances of getting her back. And that wasn’t even counting the awful mess I strongly suspected Tully had gotten her into. I pulled off my helmet.

  “I’m very disappointed in you, young lady,” I said, flashing on all the times Mom had said that to me. It felt more than learned: was there some motherly-daughterly DNA that made that particular sequence pop out, in any language? “The door wasn’t even barred. What if I’d been Transomnia?” She flinched, as I’d hoped. I didn’t really think Transomnia would go after her, but I knew she feared him from their last encounter and I hoped that would drive the point home. “And there’s no other exit. What if I’d been Zipperface?”

  “Zipperface?” she said, eyes widening.

  I was glad to hear she had no idea who I was talking about-maybe she was innocent-but then I realized I’d never told her what he’d done. I’d never had the chance. “Zipperface is the punk with the nasty grill,” I said. “The projectia of the tagger. He… he killed Calaphase.”

  Cinnamon stood there trembling. Then her eyes grew fiery, defiant.

  “Cally died?” she asked. “Cally died and you didn’t tell me! You didn’t even call!”

  I just stood there, stunned. She was right, and I had no defense.

  “I calls you and calls you, and you never answers your phone-”

  “Cinnamon,” I repeated.

  “Fuck you. My name’s not Cinnamon!” she screeched. “It’s Str-”

  But she choked that off. Then her lower lip began trembling.

  “Cinnamon, I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you about Cally,” I said quietly. I was relieved. Her surprise meant she almost certainly wasn’t in deep, and Tully looked as shocked as she was. “I never got to talk to you in private, and before I knew it, I was on the run from the police-”

  “Ol
d witch! ” she barked, immediately looking away. “You still could have called!”

  I drew a breath and looked up into the air. That hurt, but not because of the witch crack. I could slough that off: it was just as Vladimir had said, caused by the Tourette’s, something that had popped out under stress, not even in the same tone of voice as the very next sentence.

  It hurt because her accusation was true. I could have called. Cinnamon had been wearing me out. It was hard being a mother. It was far more than befriending a kid and filling out a few forms. It was real work. And when all this nonsense had started, I had used that as an excuse. Not that I didn’t need to be fighting the graffiti; of course I did. But I used it as an excuse to take a break from Cinnamon, and called it work. My mom, in contrast, had found time to call me almost every day-even on the day she died of cancer.

  I looked down at my baby girl. Her lip was still trembling. She still thought, to this day, that I was trying to get rid of her-an impression she’d gotten from a few wisecracks I’d made the first day Lord Buckhead had cajoled me into taking care of her.

  I frowned. My sharp tongue had left scars we’d have for the rest of our lives. Now my slack ass was an inch away from reopening those wounds and pouring in a whole shaker of salt. Like it or not, I was going to have to take the reasons I’d not called her and defend them.

  “Cinnamon,” I said firmly. “I’m sorry I left you in the dark, but I’m on the run. I had to cut everyone off-they’re trailing all my friends, not just Saffron, but even Doug and Jinx. And I had to turn off my phone. I had to. The police can track you with your cell phone.”

  Cinnamon dropped her phone like it had stung her, but Tully just laughed. “Don’t listen to her, Cin, she’s just tryin to weasel,” he said. “They can’t track your cell phone.”

  I spread my hands. “And yet, I’m here,” I said. “They may seem like it at times, but cell phones are not actually magic. They’ve got little radios in ’em. They talk to cell phone towers. Each phone has a chip with its own little number so the tower knows the call is paid for, and who to beam the call back to. How could they not track a cell phone? They wouldn’t work! ”