“ Not my fault,” I snapped, trying to refocus the conversation back on me. “Even when I was in hiding I was working to stop-”
“I do not believe you,” Iadimus said stiffly. “And neither does the Lady Scara.”
“I, however, do believe her,” the lich said, smiling. “And Scara is not here.”
Iadimus’s mouth opened in shock, showing full fangs. Then he covered them, scowling.
“Irrelevant. The Lady Scara’s argument holds. I still oppose you. The vote is tied.”
“What about Lord Delancaster?” Vladimir asked sharply. “He’s a vampire lord.”
“The rebel does not get a vote,” the lich snapped, and Vladimir and I looked at each other, baffled. Delancaster did not respond; he just sat on the throne, motionless. “His protege, however… makes a quorum.” And then the lich looked at Saffron.
Iadimus drew a breath. “Oh, you manipulative bastard, ” he said quietly.
“Protege… me? ” Saffron asked. The attention seemed to have rattled her, and her voice sounded one drop less like the lich, and one drop more like Saffron. “What about me?”
“You,” the lich said, “are now in the Gentry. What say you about Frost’s assignment?”
“You know what she’ll say,” Iadimus said icily. “What, did you plan this?”
“Planned the death of Velasquez, the assault of the Destroyer, the shaming of Scara? Planned Frost pulling a dragon from her back? Come now,” the lich said. “But never waste a good crisis. Answer, child. Did you assign Dakota Frost the task of defeating the graffiti?”
Saffron just stared at him. “Yes,” she said cautiously.
“So you would be willing to commit that to a vote? To a finding of fact by the Gentry, that this is the explanation for Dakota Frost’s presence at all the graffiti crimes?”
“Yes,” Saffron said, even more cautiously. I got this sinking feeling that we were being maneuvered into a trap. “Yes, I asked Da-I asked the Lady Frost to investigate them.”
“I concur,” the lich said.
“I do not, ” Iadimus snarled.
“Irrelevant,” the lich said, smiling. “We have a quorum of elders, who have made a finding of fact that dismisses Scara’s objection. In fact, we can go further… now that the Lady Saffron is in the Gentry, her request to Dakota Frost gains the force of command.”
“Now wait a minute,” Saffron began.
“No, I see no need to wait. You commanded her to act, and so far she has produced no results,” he said. His eyes flashed at me. “Perhaps we can find new ways to motivate her.”
“You mention Cinnamon’s name again,” Vladimir said, “and-”
“No need for threats, Vlad,” the lich said. “I heard you when you said you came for Cinnamon and not for Frost. If the child holds her tongue, she can keep her head.”
“I’m not going to let you take her mother,” Vladimir said.
“And if you had to choose between them?” the lich said.
“Well,” Vladimir began, his eyes flickering over at me. “I’d-”
“That’s the same choice I would make, Doctor,” I said, staring at Cinnamon. The mention of her name had rattled her once again, and she was biting her knuckle. What had she said to the lich to piss him off? I had to get her out of here, whatever it took. “Don’t be ashamed.”
“Excellent,” the lich said, eyes focusing on me. “Then perhaps you will both agree that if I guarantee her safety… I can, in exchange, place you ‘on the hook’ for Saffron’s command?”
I swallowed. Vladimir and I glanced at each other. Then we both nodded.
The lich’s mouth parted in that piranha grin. “Dakota Frost,” he said, his bony hand slowly extending towards the cinderblock wall, “you have been given a command by a member of the Gentry, and have failed us. Now, we give you one last chance to redeem yourself:”
“Dakota Frost, on penalty of death,” the lich said, “stop this plague.”
Too Spooky to Pick Up a Phone
I stared at the wall. Then at the lich. “Wait, what? Stop this? That’s… it?”
“That is it,” he said, smiling evilly. “Though I doubt you will find yourself up to-”
“Get to the point,” Iadimus said. “She does not understand what we’re asking of her.”
I stared… and then got what he meant. “Oh, I think I do,” I said, feeling anger build. “Studying it for weeks, remember? I know you aren’t asking for a sandblasting job.”
“Quite right,” the lich said. “We are commanding you to kill the tagger.”
“No. No, you are not, ” I said sharply. Being strong armed into what I was already doing really pissed me off. “First, I’m no one’s hired killer, sir. And second, Saffron’s command was to stop the graffiti attacks. You are not commanding me to kill the tagger, but to defeat him.”
“But if you kill him, wouldn’t that-” the lich began, perplexed.
“Why do you think killing him will stop the attacks?” I said, waving at the tag. “ Look at that thing, growing in power. Is the tagger here? Is he hiding behind one of the curtains, orchestrating it? Who are you to tell me how to fight it? What the fuck do you know?”
“Watch your tongue, Frost,” the lich hissed. “I will not tolerate-”
“ You will not tolerate?” I interrupted. “You have no idea what you’ve done! How long have you had this tag? How long have you had Demophage? Days? Weeks? ”
The lich’s scowl slowly faded, became uncertain. “Over two weeks.”
“ Damn you! ” I said. “That was before Calaphase died, before dozens of others! You had a live sample of the graffiti and kept it hidden when you knew I was fighting it?”
“We did not believe,” the lich said, “you were fighting-”
“All this pointless death, destruction, and brinksmanship, when all you needed to do was make a phone call! I would have broken the speed limit to come take a look at this!”
“You are not an easy woman to find,” Iadimus began.
“You idiots! ” I said. “I only went into hiding, like, ten days ago, and I only did that so I could stay free to fight the graffiti. I’ve spent weeks crisscrossing Atlanta trying to find a way to defeat it. I have been desperate to find a live tag.”
Glaring, I turned to the most perfect-and most safely contained-sample of the tagger’s artwork that I had seen. This is what I’d needed all along, and the bastard had withheld it from me-and Calaphase had died. I wanted to whip out the Dragon again and take my chances.
As I stared, watching the tag elaborate itself further, watching it lift from the wall like a bas-relief, I felt my skin tingle, then heard the crackling of paper. My eyes started to tear up, and I looked over to see the lich standing six inches from me, eyes white points of flame.
“Buzz off,” I said. “You’re making my eyes water.”
I felt Vladimir move to my other side, growling softly.
“If you two are going to fight, take it outside,” I said.
“It took considerable maneuvering to get the Gentry and the Consulates united behind you in this fight,” the lich hissed. “But even still, I will not tolerate insolenc-”
“Save it. We’ve lost weeks and people, all because you all were too proud or spooky to pick up a damn phone. So we’re all now weaker while this thing is getting stronger-every second. You’ll note the tag has become more saturated and dimensional while we’ve been talking.”
I felt a movement from Vladimir, as if he was looking at the tag. But the lich just nodded. “Yes. It has been growing with power since we… caught… it. It was little more than a crude cartoon with the slightest movement. Our wizards think Demophage fought his way free before he died, as his corpse was not burned beyond recognition like the others, but instead continuously burned, with a non-consuming magical flame.”
I scowled. “It harvested enough blood and suffering to start the spell,” I said, “but not enough to finish it, whatever the spell actually is.”
“Our wizards… concur,” the lich said carefully. “We brought the wall and Demophage here for study, but soon we found the link was not broken, and the tag was still growing.”
“I’ve seen that before,” I said-earlier today, outside Cinnamon’s and Tully’s hideout. “With the right core logic, even simple tags could elaborate into full-blown masterpieces.”
“The magic circles stopped the process for a while,” Iadimus said, “but almost from the moment you arrived, it accelerated. You can see why we thought we had the master tagger.”
“Fallout from our fight,” I said. “When the lich shoved me against the magic barrier, it weakened it. Releasing the Dragon couldn’t have helped matters.”
“Regardless,” the lich said, “After Vlad’s assault, it accelerated even more. Now… ”
We looked at the tag, at the familiar design: the whorl of barbs, the rounded hillside with its eerie golden leaves of grass, the black outline of the city behind a sky of fire. This tag-this master piece -was a thousand times more detailed than the one that had killed Revenance. It had to be feeding on the carnage. It stood off the wall like a living sculpture now, and its movement was so supple and fluid I felt like I was watching an animated film.
But there was something more. I leaned in. My eyes tightened. In the center of the whorls was a repeated pattern, wrapped over with barbed wire: six stone pathways, arcing into the center of the whorl. But they weren’t pathways: they were distorted images of columns. The six stone columns that held up the roof of this very room-an echo of our environment.
I looked from the graffiti to Cinnamon, trembling, and Tully, suffering.
There might be a way out of this after all.
I shoved my hand in my pocket. “Look, Sir Leopold, I’m-sorry I backtalked you in front of your fellow vampires,” I whispered. “I understand that looks bad and you can’t allow it. But this menace doesn’t care about your pride or politics. It feeds off living vampire flesh. It murdered my friends. I will do everything in my power to help you take it out.”
The lich’s face contorted into a pleased grimace, in a way worse than his rage. “How… magnanimous of you, Dakota Frost. And how do you plan to… take it out… so you can avenge your lost friends, and save the lives of your remaining friends?”
I stared at the tag, my eyes running over its lines, its logic. Now, close up, not just photos, I could see the receiver lines that gave it power, pick out the intricate woven elements that made it a spatial bridge. “I have a plan,” I said. “But it’s going to be risky and unpleasant.”
“Unpleasant?” the lich asked. “For whom?”
“For me,” I said. “And my assistants. I’m going to have to take the fight to the tagger.”
“So you do accept your burden,” the lich said. “What assistance will you need?”
“ Assistants,” I said. “I need Cinnamon and Tully to defeat the tagger.”
The lich stared at me, then began laughing. “Such a childish ploy-”
“This is real,” I said; my quickly-hatching plan could be trading the frying pan for the fire. “You have to decide what’s more important to you, defeating the tagger or keeping one hostage for each of the Gospels.”
The lich just kept laughing, then gave a little bow. “Very well, you can have one assistant,” he said. “ I will choose this time. We both know who you would pick-”
“I’d pick Tully,” I said loudly, “ if I was willing to take a half-assed stab at this in the hope that dying in the attempt would prompt you to let the hostages go. But I have no intention of dying and no faith in your mercy, so I will need both of them.”
The lich drew himself up out of his bow. He was no longer laughing. “Pick one.”
“I am not picking either of them. I am taking both,” I said softly. “Understand me clearly. This isn’t negotiable, because it isn’t a trick. It’s part of the procedure. I need them both: Tully has seen more of the tags than anyone, because he worked with the tagger.”
“I did not, ” Tully cried, twitching in his hogtie. “I’d never-”
Iadimus snatched Tully’s bag from the side of one of the thrones, strode forward and opened it up atop him. As I had expected from the bulges in it when I’d seen it in their little hideout, oil chalk and rechargeable paint cans tumbled out. The tagger’s tools rained down on Tully, and he cried out, writhing in the barbed wire.
The lich glared at Tully, lips curling in a feral snarl. “Iadimus, how long were you planning on keeping this from us?”
“You are not the only one who withholds information to his own advantage.”
The lich raised his hand. “Guards-”
“You kill Tully now, this won’t work, and the tags take over the city,” I said. “And second, I need Cinnamon because she has analyzed the logic of the tags for me. She may not be a fully trained graphomancer, but her mathematical skill more than makes up for it.”
“Mathematical skill?” the lich said incredulously. “What skill has a street cat?”
“Cinnamon,” Vladimir said loudly. “Come down here. Show us why you’re precious.”
Nervously, Cinnamon left the throne, and I stepped back from the tag. She tried not to look at anyone, not the guards, not the vampires, not Darkrose, and especially not the lich. Then she stopped right in front of me, still holding her own tail, head snapping periodically.
“Cinnamon,” Vladimir said, “how many cinderblocks are in that wall?”
“ Hahh, ” Cinnamon barked, then tilted her head. “Two hundred and forty three.”
“Is that a lonely?” Vladimir said. “A prime number?”
“No,” she said, disgusted, face twitching. “It’s a fffuhh, a f-five threes tower.”
“Oh,” Vladimir said, a bit crestfallen. “Three to the fifth power. So it is.”
“Of course it is,” Cinnamon said, tilting her head the other way. Her head was still snapping, her mouth still twitching, but she was a bit calmer now that she was talking. “The closest lonely’s two forty one, skip down two, also a lonely, the first lonely.”
“So three to the fifth power,” Vladimir said, “is the sum of two primes?”
“ All counts pass three are the sum of two lonelies,” she said. “Isn’t it obvious?”
Vladimir let out his breath, then grinned. “Goldbach’s Conjecture, obvious? No, but… when all this is over, I’d very much like you to explain it to me,” he said, tousling her hair. “In fact, write it up for Monday’s class. Consider it makeup for your missed test, young lady.”
“O-OK,” Cinnamon said nervously, re-adjusting her headscarf with one hand. “Fuck. Everything turns into a test… ”
Vladimir looked at the lich. “Get the point?” he asked.
The lich looked at me, and I flinched away. “Do you really need her?”
I sighed. Steeled myself and looked up at him, eye to eye. It hurt, like staring into two twin suns, not in my eyes, but behind them. “No,” I said. “You shouldn’t let me take them.”
“Do not lie to me!” the lich snarled, and the buzzing between my ears grew worse-then quickly faded. “Ah,” he said, drawing his hands before him like a praying mantis as my wooziness faded. “Ah. I see. Well played. You really think you are going to die?”
“There’s every possibility,” I said-and Iadimus straightened in salute. “The tags are very strong, and the tagger is inventive and artistic. Alone he’d wax me. But Tully knows his patterns, and Cinnamon knows how his magic works. Between the three of us, we can do it.”
“You will have my best men backing you,” the lich said. “Of those that remain.”
“No,” I said. “We do it alone.”
The lich smiled. “Do you really think I will let you walk out of here-”
“We’re not walking anywhere,” I said, gesturing at the wall inside the magic circle. “We’re going to take the tagger on right here.”
Into the Maw of Madness
The lich’s mouth h
ung open… then widened into that grotesque parody of delight.
“Ah!” he said, clasping his hands together. “You and your assistants are going to do a little magic trick, and just make the problem disappear?”
“Something like that,” I said.
“This is ridiculous,” Iadimus said, still standing straight, but the subtle respect in his stance gone, replaced by wary mistrust. “She’s clearly planning a trick.”
“You’ve threatened to kill me if I don’t stop the graffiti. But how do you imagine that’s going to work? Do you expect me to mix up a potion, or break into the Georgia Tech Physics of Magic lab, spin up their magic accelerator and perform an incantation?”
“Well-”
“I’m a skindancer, ” I said. “I ink magic tattoos and dance to bring them to life. I’ve spent the last week learning the logic of the tags, improving my skindancing skill, and repairing some of the tattoos that were damaged in previous battles. I’m as ready as I’m going to be.”
“If you are so ready,” Iadimus said, “then why have you not yet destroyed them?”
“I won’t lie to you,” I said. “These tags have damn near killed me, four times. Each time it was because the tagger chose the time and the target, and either I was the target or I was blundering in to save the target. Now, things are different. I’m ready, I have Cinnamon, I have Tully, I have an intact tag without a trapped victim, and I have a hell of an incentive.”
“Your life,” Iadimus said, “and the lives of your friends.”
“Yeah. But not in the way you think,” I said. “The real reason is that your magic circle is total crap, and the tag is about to bust free and kill us all. Quiet, everyone, and listen.”
The room went silent. In the sudden silence, you could hear a rushing sound, as of a terrific wind. I let the sound rush over me, relished the horrified looks on the vamp’s faces. Then I turned to look at the tag. The whorl was spinning, and the flames behind the city were beginning to rise in a rippling wall of rainbow flame. Beyond it was the source of the noise: within the magic circle containing Demophage’s casket, magic fire was rising in a tornado of flame.
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