Blood Rock

by Francis, Anthony

  “Saffron,” I began, but room service knocked again, and I gave up. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Fair enough,” she said, putting her hand on her hip, still standing there nude before me, the window, God and everybody. “Now … I need to sun and feed, I mean, get real human food in me, before the fungal symbiote destroys any more of the outer layers of my skin.”

  On the way down in the elevator, my phone rang, and I whipped it out. The number was PHILIP DAVIDSON. I clenched my jaw, found my wits … and put the phone to my ear.

  “Oh, hi, Philip,” I said.

  “She said nonchalantly,” Philip replied. “So, Dakota … vampires who haven’t been seen in days or weeks are back on the radar. Savannah Winters charged a suite at the Four Seasons, and Lord Delancaster’s office has called a press conference. And the DEI’s remote viewers woke up screaming that something mammoth went down somewhere in Atlanta around four a.m. I can’t see the whole picture, but I can tell this is all part of the same elephant. Fill an old friend in?”

  “Oy,” I said. “All right, Philip. Here goes.” And I told him. Not in half measures, either. I talked, the elevator landed, I kept talking, I crashed in a comfy chair in the lobby and kept telling him as much as I could without giving away any confidences that would get me killed.

  “Oy,” Philip said. “You’ve cleaned up a mess, and created a bigger one.”

  “Not likely,” I said. “You didn’t see it. You have no idea what we were up against.”

  “Then you have to give me an idea,” Philip said firmly. “You have to come in.”

  “Philip,” I said. “I can’t just drop by the DEI office. I’ll be arrested on the spot.”

  “Right now, we all just want to talk to you,” Philip said. “I can get them to hold off on any new charges at least until we debrief you—I play golf with the U.S. Attorney’s husband. But I can’t do that if you’re on the run. You need to turn yourself in. Now’s the time.”

  My eyes widened as a short, rumpled figure wandered in to the lobby of the Four Seasons—Detective McGough. “You aren’t kidding,” I said. “You sell me out?”

  “Of course not!” Philip said. As if on cue, Detective McGough noted the phone on my ear, waved politely, and hung back as Philip denied having led him to me. “I wasn’t responsible for the raid on the werehouse, and I’m not going to turn you in now. You can’t do my job if you stab everyone you meet in the back … and besides, Dakota, you’re a friend.”

  “Whatever you say, Philip,” I said distantly. “See you soon.”

  I hung up, pocketed the phone slowly, and stood.

  “All right,” I said, proffering my wrists. “I’m ready.”

  “Ready for what?” McGough asked, jamming his hands in his rumpled coat.

  “To turn myself in,” I said, lowering my hands. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”

  “No,” McGough said, with a rough shake of his head. “That’s something you need to work out with Rand. I heard through the grapevine you’d be here … and we need to talk.”

  “Heard through the grapevine? How?” I said.

  “What, you don’t think your guardian angel knows where you are?”

  I stared at him blankly. For a moment I thought he was being completely literal; then I got it. “My mysterious benefactor in the APD, revealed at last.” My mouth curled up in a smile. “What did you do, feed the texts through a friend in the National Security Agency?”

  McGough’s eyes bugged. “No, but damn close,” he said. “How’d you figure—”

  “Well,” I said, “Mystery texts are all spooky, and it was a Fort Meade area code.”

  “Headquarters of the NSA,” he said. “Not bad. Actually, it was an old college roommate, now in a CIA field office also in Maryland. Very good contact to have, like your Special Agent Davidson. I’m impressed you looked up the area code. Not many people would have done that.”

  “Not many people used to date Special Agent Philip Davidson,” I said.

  “That’s not what I hear,” McGough laughed. Then his face grew serious. “You did good with what I gave you, Frost, but I’m not here about the case—I’m here about the aftermath. Especially about that stunt you pulled this morning with the vamps.”

  “Well,” I said, “once I—wait a minute. How did you know I did good with what you gave me, much less what went on last night? I haven’t spoken to the police yet … ”

  “I’m not here on police business,” McGough said. “This is strictly Wizarding Guild.”

  The Gift That Keeps On Giving

  “You’re working for the Wizarding Guild?” I asked. “While working on the APD? Isn’t it a huge no-no to have a practicing magician on the Black Hats?”

  “Yes, yes, and no—and I’m not a practicing magician,” McGough said. “I have only the barest hint of a magical bloodline, and hardly do any magic at all.”

  My brow furrowed. “Then … why are you in the Wizarding Guild?”

  “I,” McGough said firmly, “am a magical forensic investigator. I know as much magic as ten average wizards, but every week I find some perp abusing magic in a new way. I don’t have time to learn how to do card tricks with pixie dust—I have a job to do.”

  “You go, Detective McGough,” I said. “So … what’s up with this?”

  “The Guild has ‘requested,’” McGough said, “that you accept a representative onto your magical oversight committee until a body with legitimate authority is established.”

  “Huh,” I said. “Have they. Well, tell the Guild that I will consider their request.”

  “It’s not really a request,” McGough said.

  “It wasn’t really a request when they put it to you,” I said, “but it is a request when they put it to me. Right now I determine the makeup of the Council, and even then every appointment also has to be approved by the vampires and the werewolves.”

  McGough put his hand to his brow. “Damnit. Damn those stupid, touchy, violent fangs and claws. All right, I think you’ll like who they’ve chosen, but I’ll tell the Guild we need to be sensitive about our request. The last thing we want is a vamp-werekin war.”

  “Good, you do that,” I said. My mouth quirked up in a smile. “Seriously, you old toad … it will be good to work with you, officially this time.”

  “Oh, it won’t be me,” McGough said. “My relationship with the Guild is strictly incognito—has to be, or I couldn’t help prosecute crimes. The Guild picked someone you already know, a friend with good relations with the Guild here and in San Francisco … ”

  At first I was completely baffled. Then I slowly realized there was only one person he could have meant, although I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why they’d picked him. “Alex?” I said. “Alex Nicholson? Valentine’s former assistant? The fire magician?”

  McGough smiled. “Right first time, you tattooed witch.”

  “Oh, blow me, you old toad,” I said, grinning back at him. “Hey, can we go get some coffee? I’ve been up since seven yesterday, and we can fill each other in on the walk.”

  We talked on the way to Starbucks, me filling him in on all that had happened and him filling me in on what stake the Wizard’s Guild wanted with the Council. After I had a full cup of coffee in me, felt a bit more energized, I steeled myself and asked the question.

  “One more thing, you old toad,” I said. “Can you give me a ride?”

  “Where to, you tattooed witch?” McGough asked.

  “City Hall East,” I said, holding out my hands. “I need to turn myself in.”

  McGough scowled, then pulled out his handcuffs. “All right,” he said. “It is time.”

  At Homicide, I was questioned. Oh, was I questioned: first by McGough, then by Rand, then by Philip, and then by more detectives and agents, for hours and hours and hours. Helen Yao had to practically sit on Damien Lee whenever I mentioned anything even vaguely nefarious. But something … different … was in the air, and eventually it was Assistant
District Attorney Paulina Ross who came in and spilled the beans on why I hadn’t been charged.

  “I received a package in the mail,” Ross said. “New evidence in the case against you.”

  “What kind of evidence are we talking about here?” Lee said. “The U.S. Postal Service is not a typical link in the chain of evidence.”

  “Not for the prosecution,” Ross said, with a slight smile, “but for the defense … gold.”

  Lee’s jaw dropped. “Do you have a present for me, Miss Ross?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “A box of videotapes. The security cameras from the Masquerade.”

  Now my jaw dropped.

  “I’m having them checked out, but I think they’re genuine,” Ross said. “And they show, from multiple angles, virtually the whole assault on you, Miss Frost. What you did was clearly self-defense. I could never in good conscience push this forward. We’re dropping all charges.”

  I was stunned. “Thank you … but … how?” I said. “The person who took the tapes … I can’t see why he would have kept them … ”

  “There was a note attached,” Ross said, somewhat uncomfortable. “It said, ‘Lay off Frost. Valentine had it coming,’ and it was signed, ‘T.’”

  “Transomnia,” I said, rubbing my tongue over the implants in my right jaw where he’d knocked out two of my molars. “Now isn’t he the gift that keeps on giving?”

  “This has come up more than once,” Ross said, “and I hate to even raise it—but I have to. Do you have some kind of agreement with the vampire Transomnia?”

  “Now, now,” Lee said smoothly. “My client isn’t admitting—”

  “Hush, Damien,” I said. “Ross, you saw the tape. If Transomnia hadn’t turned on Valentine, I’d be dead, and my skin would be the new lid on his damn box—but Transomnia didn’t do it for my health. He basically used me to free himself from Valentine.”

  “And?” Ross said.

  “Well, there’s a reason he used me. Dumb old me screwed up his attempt to escape Valentine by getting him fired from the Oakdale clan. He was under a control charm. Outside the influence of a more powerful vampire, he had no choice but to go back to Valentine.”

  “So he … convinced Valentine to make you his next victim,” she said slowly, “knowing that you had the skills to free him from bondage?”

  “Or, more likely, hoping to watch me die on the table, and to then lick the scraps,” I said. She looked away. “But at some point, I think he decided I was powerful enough to free him, and took a gamble. Afterward, our agreement was to leave each other the hell alone.”

  Ross looked back at me, then nodded. “I can’t blame you,” she said. “And not just for defending yourself. The security cameras were running through the whole Masquerade. They showed not just what was happening to you … but who you were doing it for.”

  “For Cinnamon,” I said. “They had Cinnamon … ”

  “I know,” Ross said. “And I’ve shown these tapes to Janet McCarthy of DFACS. She’s calling for a special meeting. Almost certainly, they’re going to drop their case.”

  “Which means … ” I stood up. “I’m going to get Cinnamon back!”

  ——

  And so, on Wednesday, the first of March, over two months after I’d first dropped her off at the Academy, I turned up the drive to see Cinnamon standing there at the curb waiting for me between Fremont and Palmotti. She was wearing a brand new school uniform, new shoes, and had a sharp little denim bag bulging with schoolbooks.

  And perched on her tiny nose were cute, owlish glasses, hooked into earrings at the base of her cat ears. “Don’t say anything,” Cinnamon said, adjusting them. “Not one word.”

  “Not even cuuuute?” I said, stepping off my bike and tousling her hair.

  “Faahh!” she said, twitching. “Mom! They are not cute. They’re … necessary.”

  “Exactly right,” Palmotti said. “A lot of werecats, including weretigers, are nearsighted. They get that from the cat DNA in their Niivan organelles.”

  “You had to have paid for those,” I said quietly. And he’d researched it. “Thank you.”

  Palmotti smiled, sadly, and a bit tired; then he gestured towards Cinnamon. “She’s a handful, but also a treasure. Godspeed to you and your daughter, Miss Frost. I’m sorry she was taken from you. I just hope that in the time I had her, I did her a little good.”

  And then, without saying goodbye, he turned and limped off.

  We watched him go. Cinnamon stepped in front of me. I let my hand fall on her shoulder, and sighed. All was right in the world again. But … her breath caught as he walked away.

  “Go give him a hug and thank him,” I said. “You probably won’t see him again.”

  Cinnamon snapped her head, but before something awful popped out, she reached up and bit down on her knuckle. After a moment, she released herself.

  “No,” she said, sniffling. “He knows how I feels.”

  He got into his car and drove away, and Cinnamon took a big deep sigh. Then she turned into me, burying her head into my chest. “Mom,” she said. “Let’s go home.”

  “Where’s that?” I said, patting her head. “We got kicked out, and can’t move in yet—”

  “Your house, your hotel, a cardboard box by the Chattahoochee,” Cinnamon said. “Wherever you are, Mom, that’s where home is.”

  “All right, Cinnamon,” I said, holding her close. “Let’s go home.”

  Payoff

  The adoption went through. Cinnamon and I are mother and daughter for real now. I think it actually scares her. She was so glad to have someone who cared for her, I don’t think she realized she was also getting someone who was responsible for her, both in good times and bad.

  We moved into our new house the same week the adoption went through—thanks to the Valentine Foundation. I had to swallow my pride and settle with them, but the truth was, they couldn’t pay up, any more than I could buy a house out of pocket. Valentine never expected to lose his Challenge, so coughing up a million bucks would have bankrupted his Foundation.

  But, just like a house payment, the Foundation could pay up over time. So, in exchange for letting the payments stretch out over the next ten years (and for not suing them), I got the Valentine Foundation to pony up the closing costs on the house (and my legal fees).

  Once Cinnamon and I really were home, and everything was settled, we had a long walk, and a long talk. She looked crushed. She didn’t hear me say how glad I was she was home and alive; all she seemed to hear was how disappointed I was in her, how irresponsible she had been, how upset I was to find she’d been running out with Tully almost every night.

  I didn’t take her iPod, which would have interfered with her studies. She’s the math whiz at school now, and I’m trying to encourage that as much as I can. I didn’t forbid her to see Tully again, which would have been pointless. They’re childhood sweethearts, and I’m not going to discourage that, because I know I can’t.

  But I did ground her. No running at night, only jogging at the school. No solo dates with Tully, only with me chaperoning. And next full moon, she stays in the safety cage. I know, that last bit sounds cruel. But I find myself thinking that’s a parent’s job, sometimes: being cruel to your child, so she learns not to do things that will destroy her.

  It takes a real effort of will to leave it at that, to not blame Cinnamon for the death of Calaphase, or to give her a walk and shift the blame onto Tully. They really didn’t know what they were helping unleash; the blame rests upon the Streetscribe. Thanks to him, no one knows how much Calaphase came to mean to me—and I’ll never know what we could have had.

  That last bit burns me. I miss Calaphase. I really do. But everything happened so fast. I hadn’t lied. I had planned to take him home, but that was it; literally, to take him home. I never expected our relationship to progress that quickly, and seemingly moments later it was over. I still couldn’t process it. I just felt a void. So I’ve been throwing myself in
to my new work.

  Doug has been working with Tully to find and destroy all the remaining copycat marks, and he says it’s a wonder Cinnamon and Tully weren’t killed just spraying the damn things. McGough’s been revisiting the arson sites with a magical disenchantment squad, making sure nothing pops up out of the soot. And I’ve been bouncing back and forth between Arcturus and a dermatologist, treating the damage to my skin when my vines were ripped off.

  All in all, we were lucky. The tags were all over the city, as were copycat taggers. Tully spread the word about the dangers of the marks, and the copycats stopped; but from them he found enough photocopies to reassemble the blackbook. After Doug had looked at it, he went around for a whole week muttering things damnably Lovecraftian.

  Doug wrote up a report on the blackbook, first thinking to publish it, then thinking to suppress it, and finally passing it around, with ample warnings, to all his most trusted contacts. After enough people had read it … the Magical Security Council turned into a real thing, and not just a Hail Mary play to get the lich and his lieutenants to back off.

  Delancaster’s announcement of my appointment came just in time for Magnolia magazine to slap together a full story on me, the graffiti, and the Council, running with a spectacular cover of me and my vines looming over Keif and Drive in a shot that looks pretty damn prescient now, even though it was totally unplanned. Magnolia called me an “unexpectedly cantankerous tattoo wizard,” and I was oddly pleased—Arcturus apparently trained me too well.

  Between all the publicity and the very real threat, everyone is playing along. Even the Wizarding Guild: they won’t show in person, but have been speaking effectively through Alex (and unofficially, through McGough), analyzing the blackbook and passing on strategies that will help us eliminate the tagger’s marks safely.

  I know, I know, councils like this are more about which group is in control of what than about solving the problems we all have, and I keep on expecting one of the old-school vampire or werekin groups to stab us in the back. But it hasn’t happened yet, I think mostly because anyone who takes the time to read Doug’s dossier ends up scared shitless.