on my shoulders, already glowing with the mana my walk was pouring into it. Unfinished as it was, it couldn’t defend me-but it could still help me kick this freak’s ass.
“ Spirit of air, ” I murmured, “ give me wings. ”
Twin wings erupted from my shoulder blades just as the last rocks fell away beneath my feet, leaving me floating forward over the vast gulf like a glowing angel. This was beyond even my power, but the surge of mana rippling off the pavement buoyed me up. The more Zipperface fed magic into the chasm, the higher I flew-and the closer I got.
Zipperface’s white gleaming eyes were fixed on me, and I stared straight back at him. I saw his logic now: he was a projectia, an image created by a magician operating somewhere else. Normally that figure replicated the image of the caster as closely as possible, but this figure was inspired by graffiti’s love of distorting an image into a cartoonish parody.
I had a good idea of how to use my vines to disrupt his image and short-circuit his magic, and if the feedback didn’t kill him it would at least leave me with a huge, living master tag I could study and use to track him back to his source.
But Zipperface, snarling, drew on the air again, spray casting runes that began draining the mana back out of the lava. I drifted lower and lower as the piece on the pavement grew duller and duller. My feet struck ground and I strode forward, twisting my arms to gather the remaining mana in my wings and shoot it forward into a net of vines that would disrupt his projection.
Zipperface tensed, watching me approach, canting his head further-then abruptly he drew three quick arcs in the air with his can. My eyes narrowed. The cartoony little sigil began to solidify, taking shape, looking familiar-and then I saw it. It was a baseball.
Zipperface swung his metal bat with a ringing crack, and the ball shot out and landed in my gut, knocking the wind out of me. My wings sagged around me, their mana surging back into my body like fire. I gasped for breath, trying to say a word of power. But Zipperface didn’t wait. He stepped forward, gripping the bat with two hands, preparing to take off my head.
But then I remembered: in magic, pretty words don’t matter. All that matters is intent.
“ Gaaah! ” I gasped, thrusting my hand out at him. A coiling vine leapt and entangled Zipperface’s bat. He leapt back, trying to tug the bat out of my tattoo grip. I grinned and pulled, as my brand new asp curled up the vine and began sliding towards him.
Zipperface’s snarl rippled across those metal teeth like a wave. He switched to a one-handed grip and pulled out his spray can again, drawing a pair of shears in the air. I leaned back, unfurling the vine, drawing my hand back in just as the shears sliced the vine in two.
Tension released, I fell back to the pavement, gasping for breath. In moments Zipperface was standing over me, a glowing cartoon parody of a man, white eyes gleaming, lowering his bat and spray can as he savored his moment of triumph.
I clutched my stomach, struggling for breath, and Zipperface raised the bat again, hefting the coiling tattoo vines trying to find purchase on its surface, preparing to hit me with a roiling ball of my own magic. Finally, I drew just enough breath to squeeze out one word. “Sucker.”
The snake in his half of the vines struck at him, and the vines themselves uncoiled, whipping around his head, crushing his cap, tearing into his face. Zipperface tried to toss away the bat, but the vines coiled around and caught his hand, pinning the bat to him. He dropped the can, trying to wrestle the bat away from his eyes-then snarled and thrust both arms wide, breaking all the vines into pieces, crushing the snake in his hand.
I laughed weakly. Tattoo magic wasn’t graffiti magic: the broken marks couldn’t just be reduced to dust like a sandblasted tag. Tattoos are alive, and tenacious. The remnants of the vines and snake dug into Zipperface’s ‘skin,’ interfering with the magic, disrupting the projection. Zipperface began to melt, to cant over, becoming even more misshapen.
But he didn’t fall. He held his bat out like a sword, holding me off, snarling, long tongue rippling out of his metal mouth. Then he stamped his foot and summoned his skateboard out of the ground. When the board fully materialized, he skated off, sliding back into the lines he had created against the wall of the tenement, merging back into them in a rainbow spray of mana.
I sagged back against the pavement, watching the glow fade from the graffiti. Long after Zipperface had disappeared, I gathered enough of my breath and strength to stand, and began to hobble back towards Calaphase. Even though I had seen what happened to him, my mind didn’t want to accept it. Maybe he wasn’t dead. Maybe he was just stunned. Maybe, with vampire regenerative abilities, he would roll over, smile, and be just fine.
Before I even got to him, I knew I was just lying to myself. Calaphase’s body was drained, charred. After the magic tag had sucked him dry of blood, it had set him on magical fire. Slow streamers of rainbow flame lifted off his body, like slow-motion animation; beneath the flames was a smudge of blackness that was barely recognizable as a man.
Damnit. Damnit. Damnit! I stood there, face screwed up so much it hurt, mouth covered with my hands so no one would see, eyes squeezed tight so I wouldn’t have to either. We were friends, we’d became lovers, seemingly moments ago-and he was gone. Gone! No more walks. No more talks. No more riding to my rescue in the middle of the night with donuts and that confident yet oddly bashful charm. Gone.
Finally, after how long I had no idea, I began to shiver in the cold, and turned away, looking for my vestcoat. I found it a blackened, smoking ruin atop a graffiti’d image of glowing rocks. I snatched it up, cursing as the hot cracked leather burned my skin-but as I grabbed it, my fingers had brushed pavement and found it cool. Magic, again.
I tossed the remains of the jacket into the crook of my elbow and began massaging my singed hand. The burn wasn’t too bad, no worse than all the minor singes, dings and scrapes I’d picked up in our ordeal, but as I looked at my skin, it looked different somehow. After a moment, I realized why, and cursed again, more quietly now, at another loss.
“My dependable snakes,” I said. Emotions welled up in me, and I clamped them down, inspecting the bare skin that until minutes ago had borne one of my best smaller designs, figuring out how to replace it. I needed the distraction of planning to fix what I’d lost. I needed to focus on anything but what had just happened. “I’m going to have to tattoo another one.”
Flashing lights caught my eye and an Atlanta black-and-white shot past the end of the tenement, running silent with lights blazing. I waved hopefully, gratefully, and the car turned into the lot and screeched to a halt well short of the graffiti image of the molten lava. I ran towards it, and my heart leapt as Rand stepped out, flanked by Horscht and Gibbs.
“Rand, thank God,” I said. “Calaphase and I were just attacked by magic graffiti-and it killed him. And I think the graffiti is using vampire blood for power-Rand? What’s wrong?”
Rand stared at me, jaw clenched. Then he spoke the last words I expected.
“I’m sorry, Kotie. You’re under arrest for the murder of Christopher Valentine.”
Lockup
Beloved stage magician Christopher Valentine, AKA the Mysterious Mirabilus, had been famous for challenging “fake magicians” to perform a feat he couldn’t replicate with ordinary stage magic. In twenty-three years of issuing the Valentine Challenge, he’d never failed.
Until me.
The real reason for his perfect record? In secret, Valentine was a real magician, using his Challenge to flush out and kill other real magicians-like me. I decisively met his Challenge to ink a real magic tattoo; that ended me up on Valentine’s sacrificial altar, moments from death.
Karma is a bitch, though. The moment Valentine took me seriously as a threat, his flunky Transomnia realized I was powerful enough to destroy the tattoo that enslaved him-and literally stabbed Valentine in the back, distracting him long enough for me to release the Dragon tattoo.
Released from my body, my precious masterwork tore Valentine to pieces. So it was true: I killed Christopher Valentine with magic. In theory, a serious crime-but I thought there was enough evidence to demonstrate to
