and slammed it shut behind us.
The flames roared behind us, trying to batter the door open. Calaphase wedged the bottom of the door shut with a dented metal pot the size of a tub, and I slid a broom handle through holes in the wooden slats around the top of the frame.
Desperately we looked around the blockhouse. Despite the musty darkness of our little prison I could see it had once been a kitchen, the back room of a hot dog stand or burger joint. There were no other doors or exits; the next best bet was a barricade of rotten wooden planks nailed over the broken remnants of what had probably been the front serving window.
I peered through the slats and could see the edge of the carousel, a black strip of pavement, and then a blissfully green tab of grass, wet by a sputtering sprinkler. I tugged at the boards, but they were stronger than I expected. Calaphase reached to help, but recoiled as the flickering light of magic fire rippled past the edge of the slats.
But the flames did not immediately tear inside; they retreated. We relaxed, but only for a moment. Then light began to creep in through cracks in the base of the cinderblocks all around us. Calaphase cursed and began looking around, tearing the place up looking for a fire extinguisher.
I whipped out my cell phone and dialed 911. It started ringing, but before anyone picked up, flames surged against the blockhouse walls: we didn’t have much time. Through the cracks in the door and in the window we could see the fire rising up around us, cooler now but more elaborate, lazy licks of graffiti flames climbing the walls of the shop around us. Coiled wires and vines and roses were now visible in the flames, along with other motifs that I didn’t recognize. The graffiti was tackling this building too.
I could hear the tinny voice of the dispatcher now, but the rising roar of the flames drowned it out. I lowered the phone, and Calaphase and I looked at each other.
“Dakota,” Calaphase began.
“Don’t you dare,” I said. “Don’t you dare talk like we’re going to die!”
“We’re going to get out of this,” Calaphase said. “I want to live , because I’ve had a taste of a life that’s better-and I don’t mean your blood.”
I was speechless. Calaphase stepped forward and took my hands, a Greek hero cast in bronze, flickering in the rising golden light around us. “I’m sorry I bit you. I regret that. But everything that led up to that-I’ll never regret. Not for one minute.”
“Calaphase,” I said, squeezing his hands in mine.
“Dakota,” Calaphase said. “I’m so sorry.”
And then he grabbed me and threw.
Rotted boards exploded about me. I screamed as I was engulfed in flames. It felt worse than normal fire: hotter, more tenacious, biting at me as I flew through the boards, snapping at me as I sailed over the tagged pavement and onto the cool grass. I landed and rolled, winded, dazed-then caught myself, lurching to my feet as Calaphase prepared to jump after me.
The entire parking lot had been consumed by graffiti. What had been pavement was now a illustrated nightmare landscape of cracked black rock floating on hot lava. But it was no longer cartoony: it was eerily real. Like a street painting that fools you into thinking there’s a hole in the sidewalk, the graffiti had dimension, making the blockhouse seem like it was supported on a crazy Jenga stack of flaming boulders, tottering over a lava field a thousand feet below.
But unlike a street painting, this was no forced perspective: it was magic. No matter which way I moved, the tower moved with me, and the chasm stayed between us. There was no way to bridge it. The blockhouse itself had become a torrent of lazy fire too bright to look at, climbing to the sky in a column of hate. Calaphase hesitated, flinching back from the snarling flames eating at the hole in the rotten wood barrier.
“Jump, damnit, jump! ” I screamed, watching flames curl over the top of the blockhouse, a flue of vapor spreading over the roof just like the blue haze that flicks over a log a second before it lights. “For God’s sake, Cally! Jump!”
Calaphase disappeared, then burst forth from the opening in an incredible burst of speed, sailing through the opening, the flames. But the flames grabbed at him, tripped him up so he tumbled and fell short, fell into the parking lot, fell into the tag –
And fell a thousand feet to his death below.
Trick of Perspective
Calaphase stared up at me, lifeless, body broken on the tagged parking lot in a vast splash of blood. I couldn’t believe it. He’d just jumped from the broken window of the little hot-dog stand, tripped as magic flame caught his feet, and pitched face down in the pavement-but instead of hitting the pavement, he’d seemed to fall forever into the vast chasm depicted by the tag, disappearing into the painted distance in some horrible trick of perspective.
But it wasn’t just a trick, it was magic, and seconds later Calaphase had splatted into the pavement right in front of my feet with more force than if he’d fallen from an airplane. I stared down at him from the safety of my strip of grass, stared at the twisted body that had been so strong in my arms, at the broken fangs that had sipped my blood, into the lifeless eyes that an hour ago had stared back into mine as he told me he loved me.
His body twitched, and for a brief moment I felt a flicker of hope: maybe blunt trauma wouldn’t be enough to kill a vampire. But then the vast splash of blood gurgled obscenely and began sinking into the pavement, blotted up by the graffiti, draining into the cracks painted in the rock, turning the glowing lava blood red. There was the power of the graffiti-these monster marks were feeding off of vampire blood, literal blood rocks. How dare they. How dare they!
My nostrils flared, and I looked up.
Zipperface stood at the far end of the parking lot, his misshapen head canted beneath his huge cap, his tiny eyes glowing, holding his baseball bat down and out like a sword in challenge. My face flushed with rage as I read more and more clearly off that exaggerated body language one clear emotion: saucy, self-satisfied glee. Suddenly a jagged, cartoony grin spread across that inhuman face, and he swept his paint can across the air in a clear gesture: I tagged you.
“Like hell,” I said, stalking out across the grass towards him.
Zipperface raised his hands, and flames surged from the blockhouse, a wash of mana driving cracked lines out across the parking lot, extending the lava landscape that had killed Calaphase. No matter-I was still going to kill him. But I’d have to get past the lava to do it-and then I realized the magic was reaching my skin before the heat.
I spread my hands wide, testing the air, feeling the mana like an electric charge. Normally I built up mana, then activated the tattoos to spend it. But now I stepped up to the edge of the lot, threw my arms wide, and soaked up mana like fresh spring rain. The tag spreading across the lot began to lose definition, no longer an active menace but just a few inked lines. I was astounded that the tag could not just move, but spread itself; but I had no time to think about that now. The mana was flooding my body, filling me with heat and light, more than I could safely take.
Lacking real skindancing training, I once again borrowed moves from Taido, twisting round once to draw in the mana, then surging forward in a high-stepping stomp that punched both hands forward and hurled the mana out in a fiery ball. Dazzling and impressive, yes, making Zipperface jump back; but improvised and weak, too. Zipperface swung his bat and struck the ball of mana full on, making it pop into multicolored fireworks.
I stalked out over the pavement, throwing my arms wide to suck more mana out of his tag. The air was cool now. We were far enough from his playground that I could keep him from creating new flames as long as I kept his tag drained. But Zipperface was not out of tricks: he snarled, drew his spray can, and began drawing lines in the air in a complicated pattern.
The vast tag began to shimmer again, the lava regaining its glow, the rocks regaining their depth and falling away, one by one-but I was having none of that this time, and began sashaying to pour my own magic into the mix. I whipped off my jacket and let it flap away over the spreading chasm, exposing the unfinished wings of the dragon
