no matter what he’d gone through. Today, however… his suit was torn. There was blood on the back of his hand. And not even Cinnamon could spark a smile in him. Rand was off his game. Rand was never off his game.
He glanced up, frowning. “Dakota, thanks for rushing. We really need you but… this is bad. Really bad. Cinnamon can wait in-”
“I can takes whatever you gots,” Cinnamon said indignantly.
“And I’d rather not let her out of my sight,” I said quietly.
Rand’s eyes tightened. He knew why I never let her out of my sight: just before I took her in, a serial killer had kidnapped her to get to me. It wasn’t that I never let her out of my sight… but whenever things got sketchy, I’d pick bringing her over leaving her every time.
“I understand, Dakota,” he said, turning back to the knot of first responders. “Let me show you what we’re dealing with.”
“Sure thing,” I muttered. “No one thinks to ask me whether I can take it.”
Rand just kept walking. “McGough, this is Dakota Frost.”
“You didn’t mention she was a civvie,” said a small, wiry, wizardly man in a Columbo trench. Like Rand, his coat was torn, his hands bloodied, but where Rand was thrown off his game, McGough’s movements were still crisp, his eyes sharp. A few nicks and cuts? Bah. Didn’t even slow him down. “Bad idea, having a civilian on a crime scene-”
“She was practically raised on the force,” Rand said, “and I think she can help.”
“Well let’s hope somebody can, we’re outta options,” McGough said, sizing me up. “So you’re Rand’s fabled Edgeworld expert. Jeez, you’re tall.”
My mouth quirked up. ‘Edgeworld’ was slang for the magical counterculture. Unlike most practitioners throughout history, who’d kept magic secret, or most normal people today, who tried to pretend it wasn’t there, Edgeworlders practiced magic openly-something which did not endear us to either group.
“What gave me away?” I said. “And it’s Edgeworlder, not ‘Edgeworld expert’-”
“Ah, she knows the lingo. Good, but it’s still a bad idea,” McGough said, frowning. He glanced down at Cinnamon, and his frown deepened. “And on the note of bad ideas, you really want to bring a minor along?” Rand and I just looked at him, and Cinnamon raised a clawed hand and mimed a swat. “Fine, fine,” he said. “When the Department of Family and Child Services comes calling, don’t come crying to me.” He waded back into the officers.
“All right, boys and girls,” McGough said, voice crackling with authority, making the officers jump. He was barely taller than Cinnamon, but his presence dominated the scene. “Move aside and let’s see if Rand’s pet witch can figure out how to handle this.”
Before I could even try to correct the ‘pet witch’ crack, the officers-all nervous, most worried, many scratched up like they’d been in a fight with a cat-parted so I could see the outer wall. My breath caught, and it took me a moment to realize what I was seeing.
The brick wall was sprayed with graffiti, a huge flock of exaggerated letters exploding out of a coiling nest of elaborately thorned vines. The graffiti “tag” was amazing work. Even I had to admire the roses woven into the vines-they’re a specialty of mine-but the artwork was just a backdrop. Dead in the center of the tag, a person was crucified in a web of twisted and rusted barbed wire, half-standing, half-sprawling in a splash of his own blood.
The man moaned and raised his head-and with a shock I recognized him as our friend Revenance, a guard at the werehouse, Cinnamon’s former home. Revenance was a vampire of the Oakdale Clan-so what was he doing out in the day? I looked for the sun, relaxed a little at the cloud cover-and then something clicked in my mind, and I looked back in horror.
Revenance wasn’t crucified in the wires, but in the graffiti itself. Painted vines had erupted from the wall, fully dimensional, moving as if alive, curling around him, sprouting metal barbs, hooking into his flesh, drawing blood and pulling outward-pulling as we watched.
The graffiti was tearing him apart.
Boiling Blood
“Revenance is a vampire,” I said loudly, and the officers around me pricked up and listened-but made no move towards my friend, trapped in that nest of bloody wire and thorned vines. “He needs protection from the sun right now!”
“You know this guy?” one of them said uneasily. He stood his ground, but several of the other officers began backing further away. “I mean, is he really a-”
“Vampire,” I confirmed, and more officers backed off. Pathetic. OK, I once felt the same about vamps, but Revenance was the nicest vampire I knew. True, he looked like a biker-OK, he was a biker-but he acted like a perfect gentleman. I even got on well with his girlfriend; she was down to earth, with none of the nonsense of a typical vampire flunky. If any vampire deserved to be saved, he did. “Did you hear me? Get him out of there! Protect and serve, man-”
“We, uh, tried,” the officer began, starting forward, then halting. “But those vines are vicious! They damn near tore Lee apart when she tried to check on him.”
“Oh, crap,” I said, staring at the sky. The sun was beginning to break through the clouds.
“Oh jeez, jeez, that’s Revy! ” Cinnamon said, suddenly getting it. She took a step forward, and the vines seemed to twist, to bunch in anticipation of her approach, making Revy moan. “Wait, wait-one thing atta. If the sun pops out, just for a second, it’ll kill ’im!”
“Yeah,” I said, scowling. “We need something to shield against the sun.”
Cinnamon’s ears pricked up. “You gots tarps in the backs of your mobiles?”
“What?” McGough asked blankly.
“Tarps, covers, blankets, anything,” Cinnamon said, tugging at her collar and grimacing. “And poles. We makes a tent, keeps the sun off him long enough to get him free of that crap!”
The officers remained frozen, and then McGough spoke. “Rand,” he said calmly. “Could you have your boys check their cruisers for tarps, blankets-”
“I’ll get on it,” he said. “Dakota, deal with the vines.”
“Sure,” I said. Yeah, right-dump the magical problem in the lap of the magician. I know I’d gotten a reputation for fighting other magicians after taking on the serial killer that had kidnapped Cinnamon, but “ Deal with the vines?” Fuck. How was I gonna do that?
I stepped forward, and the graffiti tag convulsed. Revenance groaned, then opened cloudy eyes in a face cracked like burnt paper. I recoiled. Scattered ultraviolet had to be killing him.
And while I was noticing all that, a tendril of barbed wire snapped out like a whip, nailing me in the temple. Only a last second flinch saved my eye, and I threw myself back into a crouch, hands raised, tails of my vestcoat whapping out around me. I was actually a bit surprised at my own reaction, I guessed a product of my recent training. Apparently karate works.
“Girl’s got moves,” said a voice, and after a glance at the vines, I looked over to see a crewcutted black officer stepping up-Gibbs, one of Rand’s friends. “You OK, Dakota?”
“Yes,” I said, touching my temple, fingers coming back with blood. “Where’s Horscht?”
“Your kid has him running to the grounds shed,” Gibbs said. His clothes and face were scratched too, worse than the others, and one eye was darn near swollen shut. I had been lucky. “Looking for wood to prop up a tent around your fang there.”
“He’s not my ‘fang,’” I said, staring back at Revenance. The vamp writhed, and with shock I realized what I’d thought was stylish frosting in his hair was actually sunbleach, where the light had blasted the strands to pale brittleness. “But he is a friend.”
I glared at the graffiti, at the live, hungry vines erupting from the wall and twisting through the air. They seemed to swat at me just for looking at them; but I was not deterred. It was just graffiti. Just ink on a wall. Whatever magic had animated it would slowly fade away, unless it had some source of external power, which was not likely on a dead brick wall.
Grimly I wondered whether the graffiti was powered by Revenance himself; vampires had powerful auras. But
