enslave minds,” he said. “I never wanted to do that to you-but I had no one to turn to. My master is dead, Revenance is gone, Demophage is gone-but one of the best vampirologists in the world was one phone call away. Who else could have helped me?”
“No, no, you’re right,” I said, still rubbing my neck. “You did the right thing.”
“Thank you, Dakota,” he said, sitting down heavily on an ottoman on the side of the room. The hiss of an air conditioner starting up sounded in the distance, and Calaphase glanced up briefly before looking back at me. “Believe me, I am sorry. I had no intention-”
“I know, I know,” I said. “Unless you’re the world’s master at reverse psychology.”
“Most of my-” and Calaphase frowned “-my prey are shrinking violets, desperate for me to take the initiative. I didn’t expect you to be so, ah, forward. ”
I laughed, but the laugh quickly died. As disturbing as all this was, there was another question I had, based on a curious little choice of words Calaphase had used when talking to Saffron. I struggled for a moment, figuring out how to ask it, and then just gave up.
“What are you negotiating for me, Calaphase?” I asked simply.
Calaphase looked away. “For the Lady Saffron to take you back under her protection.”
“Fuck her,” I said. “She threw my collar away, just like she did our relationship.”
“You need her,” Calaphase said, cocking his head, then focusing on me. “Dakota, the Oakdale Clan-we’re punks. We’re a bunch of punks with a security service that’s little more than a protection racket. The Lady Saffron is the de facto mistress of the city.”
“You are not a punk,” I said. “And I thought Lord Delancaster was in charge of the city.”
“Only in his mind,” Calaphase said. “And on TV. No-one cares about him, holed away in his mansion. He has no more significance than the Queen of England. Saffron’s the one who attends the Atlanta City Council meetings, meets with the Mayor, brokers deals. Delancaster gave her power, and she’s used it. I do not want to be on her bad side. Neither should you.”
The hiss sounded again, closer. Now I could tell it was not an air conditioner. It was more like a snake; it was even followed by a sinister rattling. “Did you hear that?”
Calaphase sat up straighter. “Yes. What is that? I’ve heard it for the last few minutes.”
The rattle sounded again, followed by another sharp hiss, and I recognized it. “Oh my God,” I said. “It’s a spray can.”
I leapt out of bed, out of the room, and snagged my leather jeans, slipping them on like I’d been born in them. I hit the light for the hall and ran forward, grabbing my sportsbra, painfully wrenching it on, scooping up my top, and running towards my coat. At the end of the hall I looked back and saw Calaphase appear at the bedroom doorway.
“Calaphase!” I shouted, slipping on my top and vest so fast they seemed to flap around me. “The fuckers burned down the whole werehouse! We gotta go!”
Calaphase scooped up some clothing and sprinted down the hall towards me, long legs closing the distance seemingly instantly. Something tumbled over in the carport, and I flinched. Calaphase slipped on his shirt, then he held out his hand for me to stay back.
“ Fuck that,” I whispered. “They’re experts in anti-vampire magic. We do this together.”
Calaphase nodded, holding up his hand for silence. Then, slowly, we crept up the stairs side by side, rising until we could see the kitchen door.
Something stood between the door and my car.
At first I couldn’t understand what I was seeing. Then the figure resolved to a huge, floppy hat, almost an upside-down pyramid of felt-the same dumpy Seussical hat I’d seen on the grinning spectator to Revenance’s death. Beneath it was a wide, olive face, shrouded in darkness-except for two glowing white eyes and a broad, evil grin that split the face open ear to ear with a jagged zipper of pebbly white teeth. A giant zipper tab hung from one ear, completing the effect.
“What the hell is that?” Calaphase said.
It was the tagger from Oakland Cemetery, but-”He’s not human,” I said.
“No matter,” Calaphase said, slipping his jacket back on. “I’m a vampire-”
“He’s not human, and he’s not moving,” I said, desperate to communicate something, but not sure what it was. “And he has to know you’re a vampire.”
“I don’t care,” he snarled, crouching, preparing to spring. “I’ll tear his throat-”
“He knows you’re a vampire,” I said, “and he’s sprayed the door. ”
At that Calaphase finally froze, seeing the slight lines of paint sprayed on the glass-lines that looked like spray paint, but slowly shifted and moved, sinuous, hungry.
“Oh, fuck,” Calaphase said, and Zippermouth reached up and pulled the zipper tab across its face, the metal tabs I had thought were teeth splitting wide open in zigzag, hissing grin, a long snakelike tongue sliding out of his mouth. “Oh, fuck me! What is that?”
“Tell me you didn’t brick up the back door,” I whispered.
Calaphase began backing down the stairs, and I mirrored him. We turned to face each other, only for a second, then ran. Calaphase flew past the red flickering light flooding out of the bedroom and cut to the left, hurling himself at the outer door and splintering it off its hinges before I could even begin to say ‘wait, let’s see what we’re getting into’.
No need to wait, though. Fast on his heels, I found out immediately.
Technicolor tentacles of graffiti wire whipped out around us, catching us like a net and jerking us aside like horizontal bungees. We screamed, both of us, the big bad vampire and his skindancer squeeze, as thorns erupted and dug into our flesh as we swung through the air.
For the briefest moment, I saw the whole side of Calaphase’s house, a long low rectangle of red brick and white trim covered with a massive, elaborate graffiti tag, a tortured whirlpool of vines and chains and tentacles swirling towards a point just left of center.
Then the tentacles pulled us into the maelstrom-and we fell inside the tag.
Column of Hate
Our screams swept away on the whirlwind. Blinding waves of color assaulted my eyes. Burning torrents of magic twisted me up like a towel. An orange and black horizon flipped around us. Then a vast octopus of graffiti exploded outwards and swallowed us up.
It spit us out into empty space. A black glittering sheet rushed forward and hit us like a wall of concrete. Pain exploded in my cheek, my shoulder, my hip, my knee, and I registered a delayed whack-whack as Calaphase fell to the pavement beside me.
Don’t pass out. Don’t give up. Don’t let them win.
I opened my eyes. We were in absolutely the worst section of Atlanta I had ever seen, a cityscape so decrepit it bordered on the surreal. We stood in the twisted remnants of a concrete playground, hemmed in by tottering chainlink fences. Beyond the fences, hulks of building staggered up, forming a canyon of ruins. Deeper within the canyon, the pavement stepped down, a ravine of garbage piled up between a decayed tenement and a crumbling parking deck. The sea of garbage and rusted cars rippled out away from us across the broken pavement, seeming to crash in waves against a giant wall, a huge slab of cinderblocks that towered over us like a cliff at the dead end of the canyon.
Briefly I wondered whether this playground was a real place, whether we’d fallen into some tag-induced hallucination. But surely that was impossible; no-one could ink a whole world… could they? And the grit against my cheek didn’t feel like phantom dirt: it was real.
Then my eyes registered what was written on the cinderblock wall.
I staggered to my feet, staring up at the cliff in absolute horror. Spray painted at the upper edge of the huge wall of cinderblocks was a block letter logo: THOUGHT CRIME LORD. And beneath the logo, bleeding out over every surface, infinite layers of graffiti.
Every graffiti artist and style I’d seen across Atlanta were represented: bare white lines, repeated stencils,
