Frost Moon s-1

by Anthony Francis

  I glared at Spleen. "You could have brought him to the Rogue-"

  "NO," the wolf said. "It's not safe-"

  "This," I said, "is the twenty-first century. In Atlanta. In Little Five Points. Trust me, no one is going to hassle a werewolf. Heck, no one will even notice you."

  "I didn't mean it wasn't safe for me," the werewolf said, still staring at me with those hungry eyes. His eyes no longer lingered on my tattoos, but roved all over me, like I was a particularly delicious banquet. Then he caught himself and looked away, shaking his head, face twitching in a pained grimace-I was a banquet he was forbidden to touch.

  He was embarrassed. I felt sad for him, forced to hide in these tunnels, afraid of himself, holding on to what little scraps of dignity he could, like his battered suit. Even looking away, his chin was held up with pride, as of he were trying to be more than the monster most people would choose to see.

  Not that a twinge of fear wasn't still nagging me: here I was, facing a real Edgeworlder, ripe with danger, popping his cork monthly, all too interested in my tattoos. I couldn't help but think of that skin-covered lid in the evidence tray. But I sensed no malice in this werewolf-in this man, this dangerously scruffy but still charming man with gleaming green eyes. And behind the hunger and the pain in those eyes I saw sadness… and interest?

  "What's your name?" I asked.

  The green eyes looked away. "Uh… Wulf."

  A lie. Charming. Unoriginal. But not unexpected. He was hiding in the basement of the Edgeworld; no big surprise that he felt like he needed to hide even his name. I didn't know what drove him to that-but I did know I didn't like how guilty that lie made him feel.

  "Well, 'Wulf,'" I said, cracking my best smile, "I'll get right on it."

  Wulf glanced back to see acceptance, not judgment, on my face. He smiled back, an odd, shy grin, and I brushed back one of the feathers of my deathhawk, where it had curled about my neck. Then Wulf leaned back again, all the way on his heels, putting his hands easily on his knees. "This," he said, addressing Spleen, "has been an unexpected pleasure."

  And then he looked straight at me, eyes hungry with something new. "I look forward to seeing more of you, Dakota Frost."

  Without another word he rose and left, climbing stone stairs up into the blackness of the vault. Even as Spleen turned the boat around, my eyes still lingered, watching Wulf go.

  By the time we got back to Mary's in East Atlanta it was damn near 1 a.m., and my evening was a lost cause. The tiny dance floor was empty, the VJ was putting up his discs, and even the bar was starting to thin out. I was so stressed I debated downing a Jager, but it was just too late and I had to drive.

  The streets glistened blackly as I steered the Vespa back to Candler Park, and hidden shapes flitted among the bony fingers of the trees. The moon had long since set, but I could feel it out there, looming, itching for fullness, an hour closer to midnight each day.

  When I parked my Vespa underneath the stairs and lurched up to my flat, I could feel a presence behind me, every step of the way. Wulf, stalking me? The yowling of my cats and the mechanics of setting down some canned food on the kitchen floor did nothing to dispel my mood.

  In the end I lay in bed, alone, staring at the ceiling.

  Someone out there wanted the skin off my back.

  And I just might be doing a tattoo for him.

  5. Trust but Verify

  In the morning light I felt better. The timing of Wulfs request was creepy, coming right on the heels of Rand's warning, but I didn't think a tattoo killer stalking a victim would arrange a meeting with a witness present. In fact, I had no reason to believe that the killer was after me personally, other than Rand's mothering; if he'd had even a whiff of evidence that I was the target, Rand would have put me in overprotective custody faster than I could blink.

  My clients were another thing: scattered all over Georgia, with some of the best magical tattoos in the Southeast on their bodies, and without relatives on the police force who cared enough to track them down and warn them. I needed to figure out how to get the word to them-in my discreet line of work, clients didn't often share their email addresses or cell numbers-but there was some time before the full moon. First things first-Spleen.

  The little rat had extracted a thousand promises from me to meet him "the very next day," to go over the contract for Wulf s tattoo, and I'd agreed-though he'd have gotten the same effect just by showing up for my shift at the Rogue Unicorn.

  One of the glories of being a tattoo artist, other than having God's finest canvas at your disposal, is that I rarely need to get up before ten. Like most high-end shops, the Rogue doesn't open its doors to the public until noon, though I and the other artists are usually there by eleven for consultations and prepwork.

  So despite yesterday's excitement I was able to sleep in, stroll to the Flying Biscuit cafe-after the breakfast crowds had died down, but before the towering, eponymous biscuits had lost their freshbaked, morning fluffiness-and still putter in by ten-thirty to meet Spleen.

  As I buzzed off of McLendon onto Moreland, I smiled. Little Five Points is the true heart of Atlanta. Forget the bigger Five Points, forget Buckhead, forget Midtown-it's only in Little Five Points, in that vortex of alternative culture whirling through the colorful pile of eclectic shops at the crux of Euclid, Moreland and McLendon, that Atlanta truly lets itself be Atlanta.

  The main square is a parade of dudes hanging out with yuppies, homeless people harassing executives, hot young gay men and cute old lesbian couples, consignment shops for New Age crystals and recycled old duds, bookstores and bondage shops, teahouses and tattoo parlors, protesters crying, "No blood for oil!" and vendors crying, "Get some hot pizza!"

  Glorious.

  If you look closer, you can see more-pale, gothy boys whose high collars hide the bites on their necks, tough butch chicks trying to disguise that bit of wolf in their eyes, and New-Agey grandmothers pretending not to be as hale and hearty as their potions made them. Plus a whole carnival of firedancers and piercers, taggers and tattooers brimming over with magic and trying to hide nothing at all. In the Southeast, Little Five Points was the center of the Edgeworld, a brand new subculture rejecting the secrecy of magical tradition and defying centuries of religious oppression, dragging magic kicking and screaming into the light.

  Even more glorious.

  The Rogue Unicorn wasn't the largest tattoo shop in Little Five Points, but it was the best-and one of only two licensed to ink magic. Catty-corner from the giant skull that marked the Vortex Bar and Grill, the Rogue occupied most of the top of a converted Victorian whose sprawling bottom floor housed the quite decent Make a Wish clothing shop.

  The sign for the Rogue was easy to find-a brushed metal unicorn, rampant, that we'd gotten in a deal with the city a few years back when they were trying to push a new artist-but getting into the shop itself was quite the trick: you had to park in the back, climb rickety wooden stairs, and worm round the balcony to the Herbalist's Attic. But-for the view alone-the trees, Little Five, the skull of the Vortex-it was worth it.

  And I had the best view. My office was small, but streetside, with a broad front window whose dark-slatted blinds were always cracked to give me the aforementioned view of L5P. A glass, L-shaped desk held my computer, scanner and papers. A narrow bookshelf put all my books and tapes within easy reach from the desk… or from the sturdy marble workspace of the butcher's block, whose locked glass cabinet held my precious magical supplies.

  I started the scan and leaned back in my chair, regarding Spleen, who'd arrived right on time. He bounced back and forth in the little space like an animated garden gnome, rattling the cabinet periodically. "Wulfs one of my best clients," he said. "I swear it, if you could just do this for me-"

  "Hey. I said I'd do it." I shagged my hands through my hair, trying to shake my deathhawk back to life after being pinned under my helmet. "So stop trying to persuade me, or I might change my mind." The scanner whirred to life, and I kicked
up my feet, staring out over Little Five. Something was wrong. Spleen was nervous, damp, almost sweaty. Damp and sweaty weren't new, but-"Should I change my mind?"

  "N-no," Spleen said. Another lie. Not that he never did it, buteven more charming. At my scowl he turned away, stammering; but it was too late; I had him.

  "What is it, Spleen?" I asked.

  "Crap, Frost," he said. "What can I say? The design is fucking Nazi."6. The Accursed Flash

  "It's what?" I said, falling forward in my chair to look as the scanner finished its pass and the image popped up on the screen. The contrast was all fucked, but a moment's tweaking in Photoshop brought the contrast back up, along with all the nice German letters and genuine swastika printed on the bottom of the singed photo.

  "It's Nazi, Frost," he said. "I don't mean neo-Nazi or skinhead or anything. It's a genuine fucking World War Two buzz-bombs-andlost-arks Nazi tattoo design."

  "Holy… crap," I said, staring at the image on the screen. Then, gingerly, I raised the scanner cover, hoping nothing would leap out and bite me. The photograph was very old, yellowing, and quite singed. Half the wording was gone, but a rescan at 600 dpi and a bit of fiddling would recover it. No amount of fiddling would bring back my forgotten high school language classes… but with what was left, I recognized the words as unmistakably German.

  "Look, look, look," he said, wheedling. "Wulf s one of my best clients-"

  "For how long?" I asked.

  "The last six weeks-"

  "Hell," I said, disgusted. "What have you gotten me into?"

  "He says he needs the discipline, or he's going to lose it at the next full-"

  "Next Sunday, I know," I said, staring at the tattoo, at the German words I could no longer read. "I don't know how I feel about inking some Nazi… occultism. If I was Jewish I'd probably throw this in your face."

  "I wanted to chuck it at first," Spleen said, a bit bashfully. "But Wulf says he looked for years and couldn't find a better design. And he paid me a lot of money-"

  "Slide," I said, standing, and Spleen moved so I could unlock the cabinet that held my supplies. I pulled out a long, plain wooden case and opened it slowly. The inside was divided into two long compartments, one holding a glass tube containing a fragment of a long spiral horn, and the other holding ten compartments for tattoo needles, six of them empty.

  I held up the fragment and examined it. "Enough for the needles, I think-"

  "Is that-" Spleen breathed, eyes gleaming, reaching out for the horn.

  "Yes," I snapped, "mitts off. It's naturally shed, vestal gathered. I need needles made from untainted horn to ink a white charm-this is a white charm, isn't it?"

  "A… Nazi… white charm?" Spleen asked, perplexed.

  "The Nazis had candy and ice cream, didn't they?"

  "Well…"

  "Just because Hitler painted pictures of Baby Jesus, Jesus's image didn't suddenly 'go bad,'" I said, checking the bottles of ink. Newtseye green, nightshade black-I'd need a replacement for my cinnabar red; a recent FDA study had linked it to melanomas, even when inked with the healing power of free-range horn. I stood there a moment, spinning the newtseye in my hand, watching it glimmer, when I started to get a sinking feeling that I was getting ahead of myself. The design was made by Nazis. There were no obvious swastikas or more subtle black magic marks on it, but really, I knew nothing about this tattoo… or its future wearer.

  "Look, Spleen, I only ink white or grey."

  "That looks green," he said, somehow playing dumb and wheedling at the same time.

  "You know what I mean," I snapped. "What do you know about this tat, other than what he told you?"

  Spleen looked at me helplessly.

  "What about Wulf? Other than the obvious?" Nothing. "Who recommended him to you?"

  "I, uh…"

  "So he found you, is that it?" I kneaded my brow. "So you know zip-"

  "He seemed genuine," Spleen repeated. "And he paid a lot of money-"

  "How much?" I held up my hand. "How much is my cut?"

  "I… dunno?" Spleen said. "I mean, how much would you charge-"

  "Stop being a dick," I said. "And don't lie. I'll have him under my needle for…" I squinted at the screen "… three or four hours. I guarantee you, he'll spill the details."

  "Seventy-five hundred," Spleen said.

  A thousand for the needles, five hundred for the ink and powders. Another five hundred for graphomancy and license fees on a "new" design. Take out the Rogue's twenty percent cut… and I could stand to land close to forty-five hundred dollars-putting me halfway to a new Vectrix electric motorbike to replace my old Vespa.

  "I'll d-" I began, and stopped. Before the money made me stupid.

  I have rules. I don't do black ink. I don't do religious marks. And I sure don't do bad charms. And I knew zip about this tat. For all I knew it was originally an evil Norse mark designed to curse a werewolf with terrible pain every full moon, but after the Nazis fiddled with it… the tat might be just as likely to set him on fire. "I'll… consider it. My statement to Wulf stands-I need to get this flash vetted by a witch before I ink it."

  "Do we reeeally need to deal with that?" Spleen said. "I mean, the fees-"

  "When's the last time you changed the oil on your car?"

  "You last changed the oil on that car," Spleen said. "I save the money-"

  "Spleen!" I said-then stopped and kneaded my brow. "Look, I know you don't think your engine's going to catch on fire, so why spend the money-"

  "Exactly," Spleen said with triumph. "Ex-ZACTLY-"

  "-but if this sets him on fire in my chair, we won't get any money. He won't pay up."

  "He's got the money, he's got it," Spleen said, waving me off. "I got a retainer, yes I did, five thousand when he came to town, so don't josh old Spleen… " But then he saw my face. "Wait, you're. .. serious? Set him on fire? Tattoos can do that?"

  I squeezed one hand tight, letting power flow into the yin-yang in my palm, then thrust it under his face, letting the mana out explosively into a tiny ball of lightning. Spleen leapt back and yelped, eyes wide in terror, and I blew him a big kiss, sending the little crackling ball of light towards him. It bounced around him like a kitten, and he stumbled back, batting frantically at it with a folder until it disappeared into a cloud of sparks and color.

  "Jeez, jeez, JEE%us," Spleen said. "Don't do that-"

  "This is a fifty-year-old Nazi tattoo, Spleen," I said, taking the folder from him. "For all we know it was designed to make a werewolf explode on contact with moonlight as a kind of living magic bomb. So no, I'm not going to ink it until someone can vet it."

  "Well, tell that someone," Spleen said, shuddering, "'Hello, spooky-eyes.' For me. "

  "Spleen!" I said. "Be nice. What if Jinx heard you?"

  "You call her that," he protested.

  "I've known her forever," I replied. "Now shoo. I have to make some calls."

  And I needed to make them quickly. If Wulf s problem was as bad as it sounded, and the tat was as good as he claimed, we needed to move right away. First I called Jinx, who agreed to meet me on my break that afternoon. Then I buzzed our receptionist and asked her to pull the licensing paperwork for some new magical flash.

  "Sure," Annesthesia said, sounding irritated. "Spleen left like fifteen minutes ago-why aren't you ready yet?"

  "Ready for… what?"

  "Don't you check your emails? You have two clients waiting for a consult-"

  "I've been with a client," I snapped, "and I don't check emails until-"

  "Hell freezes over," Annesthesia replied. "I'm sending them back now-"

  "Wait," I said, but the line clicked dead. Really. The waiting room was thirty feet away. She could have knocked or something. But Annesthesia is pretty, coquettish, and beautifully tattooed. Other than me, she's our best advertisement-no, honestly, for straight guys, she is our best ad, since I can scare the little dears-so I put up with her.

  I opened the door to the hall, hoping t
o intercept the visitors and draw them off to our "conference" room before they could see the mess which was my office, but stepped back in shock at the sight of a small but wiry old man with a flaring beard and hair. He was standing so close to the door it seemed like he'd materialized. Behind him, a dark-suited young man with blond hair smiled down at him, eyes lighting when he looked up and saw me. The kindly old man stepped forward, and my jaw dropped in more shock.

  "Hello," he said with a wicked, cheerful grin, devilish black eyebrows serving only to accent his twinkling blue eyes. "I'm Chris Valentine and

  Chris Valentine, and this is my colleague, Alex Nicholson-"

  "Christopher Valentine," I breathed. "The Mysterious Mirabilus!"

  7. The Valentine Challenge

  The Mysterious Mirabilus smiled, and gave a slight bow. "The one and only."

  Christopher Valentine, AKA "The Mysterious Mirabilus," was the world's most famous magician-and debunker. Technically he was what real practitioners called an illusionist-someone who simulated magic through nonmagical means-but this Einstein- haired "illusionist" could do without magic things that most experienced sorcerers couldn't do with magic. I mean, showy, big league stuff like walking on water, parting a small lake, and, most famously, appearing in two places at once, a trick he'd demonstrated on TV's famous talk show way back when, The Night Shift with Jack Carterson.

  I'd caught that one live. As a child, before I was old enough to know stage magic from real Magick, the Mysterious Mirabilus had been my hero, and I'd stayed up countless nights to catch his appearances performing his latest trick. By the time I grew older and had turned to real magic, the Miraculus Mirabilus had come out as Christopher Heywood Valentine, stage magician, and had turned his considerable talents to debunking what he considered "the flim- flammery of our age." He traveled the country, issuing the Valentine Challenge to all magicians: to do a magic trick he couldn't replicate under controlled conditions.

  I know, I know, you're thinking, charmingly nai've-no real practitioner would advertise themselves, and the rest are all charlatans, so why did I still idolize this guy? But like many other Edgeworlders, I find myself sifting through endless tomes of New