So I poured all the dusty remains in the bowl at the edge of the gap, creating a pitiful little heap of fine powder on one end. Too much! The lines of the circle began glowing, like a flickering neon, as the mana it absorbed from the tag began sparking over the gap. I scooted the heap aside, and the sparking stopped. If the circle closed before we were inside, it would shove Tully and me into the tag rather than protect us from it.
Then Tully moaned again. I flung the bowl aside. There was nothing left to be done. I had to do it now. I crouched down, concentrating.
“Spirit of Earth,” I murmured. “Shield our lives.”
Then I lunged forward and threw both my arms around Tully’s chest.
Tully screamed as the vines tried to saw him in half-then the tag squealed in rage as I wrapped Tully in a protective cocoon of mana. Tentacles flailed at me as my vines whipped around him, barbs wearing at my defenses as my trusty wrist snakes snapped at the tentacles on his chest. More tentacles curled around me, pulling me forward, into the wall, into the tag, like there was a whole world behind the paint. I felt an immense magical pressure weigh on me, like water weighs on your ears at the bottom of a pool-but I jammed my boot against the wall and shoved, hurling myself backward into the circle with Tully in my arms.
The tentacles refused to give up, wrapping around us, hot, burning, pouring mana out around us in elaborate arcs of living flame. I couldn’t see anything through the blazing light. I’d like to say I used skindancing to fight it off, but I didn’t. I just ground in my feet and held on to Tully for dear life, forcing the tag to expend as much mana as possible. The tentacles squeezed tighter; we both screamed in pain And then finally the excess mana the tag was pouring into the air closed the circle’s magical circuit, like a spark leaping a gap, and Tully and I collapsed gratefully to the ground. The tentacles leapt back, wounded, and I quickly shoved the tiny pile of mix back over the gap with my boot, making sure the circuit stayed closed.
But almost immediately the protective bubble began to flicker and sparkle as the tag, squealing, renewed its attack. The clouds on the image of the planet began whirling furiously. I could see the images of tombstones cracking up through the join of the wall and the pavement, struggling to break free of their layer of paint. A horrible scream rent the air, and a dozen new tentacles whipped down on us, screaming with rage as if the tag was a living monster. It was still getting stronger-but Tully was out of the circuit!
“So much for Saffron’s theory,” I said.
The bubble began to crack. My mix was thin and poorly refined, and the pavement beneath us was an uneven mess; there was no way it would hold. Fine- I was counting on it. I took a deep breath, sinuously stretching within the bubble until all my vine tattoos came to life again and wrapped around Tully and me, a green glowing shield. Then I grabbed him tight.
“Hang on, Tully,” I said-and leapt backwards out of the circle.
The tentacles closed on the magic bubble right as it collapsed with a bright flash. All the built up mana discharged with a bang, rippling back through the graffiti like blue lightning. As Tully and I landed, the whole tag sparked and shorted out, a brief two-dimensional fireworks display, leaving nothing but black crinkled smudges dotted with glowing red embers.
For a moment, Tully and I just lay there in the dust, staring at the intricate concentric rings that were all that was left of the design. Then we looked at each other.
“Congratulations, Tully,” I said. “You get to live to run another day.”
“Thank you thank you thank you,” Tully said, trying to give me a hug, then grimacing as the gesture squeezed a new river of blood from his chest. “Aaah-I’m so sorry-”
“Thank you, Dakota,” a voice said, and I looked up to see Calaphase staring down at me. The vamps and werekin were all standing over us, all looking down gratefully-except Gettyson, who just stood there, jaw clenched, before turning on his heel and stalking off.
Tully kept sobbing. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I had no idea this would happen.”
“There’s no way you could have known,” I said.
“I means, it was just magical graffiti-”
“Wait,” I said. “You already knew it was magical?”
“You can’t miss it,” Calaphase said quietly. “These tags, they’re always moving-”
“Wait wait,” I said, alarmed. “They? This has happened before?”
“An attack, no, but the tags-yes,” Calaphase said, even more quietly. “We’ve seen tags like this for weeks, nothing this elaborate, usually just little ones, though they seem like they get bigger over time-or else the prick keeps coming back to flesh them out. Revy said he saw a huge one yesterday, though he never got to show me where. For all I know, this was it-”
“No,” I said. “This thing loves vamps. If he’d gotten close to it, it would have caught him-and then how would he have ended up in the cemetery?” I asked. Then I recalled the odd sensation I’d felt in the graffiti’s grip… like it was pulling me inside. The conclusion sounded outlandish, but was just too damn obvious to ignore. “Unless. .. that’s where this one… led?”
But before I could go any further, Tully began convulsing in my arms.
“I gots-I gots to change,” he said, holding his bloody hands up, staring at them, at the gash in his chest. The graffiti had dug down to the bone, exposing white flashes of ribs, and I felt my stomach churn. “I can’t heal like this.”
“Come on, cub,” Fischer said, squatting down beside us, taking Tully from my arms and picking him up. “I’ll carry you out to the clearing, to the light of the moon.”
I got to my feet, groaning, covered in grime, dirt, blood and basil. More and more weres and vamps were gathering; the ones who had watched stood in awe, but the newcomers stared at me with cold, hungry eyes. Wonderful-I was covered in Tully-flavored barbecue sauce. Fortunately the curly-headed vamp guard was on crowd control, keeping both the weres and the vamps away from the tag.
“She’s Lady Saffron’s troubleshooter,” he said to a new arrival, following with a glowing account of my recent duel with the graffiti. I half smiled. I wasn’t Saffron’s ‘troubleshooter,’ and it hadn’t been that easy. I turned to correct him-and got a bucket of water in the face.
“Wash up, wash up,” Gettyson said, splashing the rest of me with cold, stinging liquid, then attacking me with a towel. “You gots to get Tully’s blood off you, get it off you.”
I took the towel and began scrubbing gratefully. The fluid stank of ammonia and disinfectant and other things besides, and felt harsh against my hands. My eyes were watering from the initial splash, and my lips were actually tingling… surely he hadn’t just splashed wolfsbane extract in my face! But then, a thin purple haze began lifting off my top, chest and shorts-not smoke, but mana, from Tully’s moon-charged werekin blood-and the grateful magician in me won out over the worried chemist.
Gettyson handed me a dry towel for my face and looked me over roughly, checking my chest, my hands, under my arms. He daubed a more concentrated form of the stinging substance on a cloth and began wiping scrapes on my legs, arms, finally my forehead.
“That was from earlier,” I said.
“But still,” he said, frowning, wiping it clean. “You feels like you’re cut anywhere?”
“No, no,” I said, feeling myself up and down. “I’m good.”
Gettyson seized my hand and inspected the knuckle. “That’s not from earlier,” he said, holding my hand firmly in the cloth and pouring the stinging fluid straight on the wound. “Keep watch on this. I don’t wants you turning wolf unless you wants to.”
“Ow. Thanks,” I said, taking the bottle and cloth gratefully. He nodded, barely looking at me, his odd, slit- pupiled eyes angry and tight; not at me, but at a memory. I had a feeling he hadn’t ‘turned horse’ because he wanted to.
A sudden howl rent the air, and Gettyson looked off. “Tully’s changed,” he said. “If he has, the other young ones will too. It’s like a trigger. You gets yourself out of here.”
“We don’t have time for all this werekin bullshit,” I said. “A tag like that killed Revenance. This one nearly killed Tully, started to drag us both inside. I think the different graffiti is connected somehow. I need to see the others-”
“In daylight,” Gettyson said. “ After the full moon. The last thing we needs is you here covered with the scent of blood right when we gots a crowd of wolves changing.”
And then a crackling growl rippled across the pavement. I looked up to see a monstrous bear lumbering past, larger than a horse, eyeing me sideways as he planted himself at the edge of the darkness: the Bear King, leader of
