Blood Rock (47 page)

He smiled, picked out a diagram, put it in front of me. “And now something else to ignore: chakra, smakra, mana, qi,” he said, smoothing the paper out. “All pretty words for the flow of magic, for the loci where it collects in the body. To fight the tagger, you must master that power—not intellectually, but intuitively, as an instinctive reaction without thought.

“Your martial arts have done you well. You have maintained your skill at concentrating magic in your loci, maybe even improved it a little. Now you must learn how to concentrate more coordinated patterns of magic and use them to generate more complex spells on the fly.”

But I was staring at the diagram: it was the Pentacle of the Dance, a pentagram that showed how the five different kinds of magic used by skindancers related to each other. I’d seen it, drawn it a thousand times: walking the pentacle was a fundamental tool used to check the magic of flash to make sure the magical circuit worked as advertised.

But this one was different. Overlaid on the pentagram was a square, then a circle, then a naked, spreadeagled human figure: the Vitruvian man, the iconic figure drawn by Leonardo da Vinci five centuries before I was born.
This
Pentacle, Arcturus explained, showed how the human body itself was not just a source of magic, but a component in its logic.

“Oh, God,” I said, flashing on Revenance’s spread-eagled form, on Tully, suffering in the vines, even on Cally, broken body splayed out in a crude X as his life’s blood spilled out onto the tag. “It
is
skindancing. The tagger is using skindancing logic with graffiti magic.”

“Now how is he doing that, Frost?” Arcturus said. “There is no
dancer—”

“The writhing of the victims. Hence the barbs, the sawing, the prolonged
torture.
”

“Frost!” Arcturus said. “We went over that. Random movements wouldn’t sum—”

“It would if there’s a ratchet, like a self winding watch,” I said, staring into the Pentacle. “What if it’s not just a receiver, but a
transmitter?
It traps people, kills them, and beams the harvested magic elsewhere to power … something else. Do you have a map of Atlanta?”

Arcturus froze, then went out to the garage, yelling for Zinaga while I got the graffiti pictures. When he returned with the map, I tamped it down with the pitcher and M&M jar and used M&Ms to mark where graffiti had been found or where fires had been reported.

In moments the picture emerged. Our data was not complete, the diagram not perfect, but there were enough little bits of candy to see the beginnings of a great pentacle spread over the whole of the city of Atlanta, just like the Pentacle of the Dance on the Vitruvian Man.

“It’s a city-sized resonator,” I said. “No wonder the tags never seem to run out of mana. They aren’t just powering themselves—they’re powering
each other
. Mana building up in the mold capacitors all over the city gets beamed to the traps, which in turn use that power to torture more magic out of their victims. It’s a … a
distributed necromantic network
.”

Arcturus’ jaw clenched. “God
damn
it,” he said. “And it will be more than just mana—it will transmit the tortured intents of the dying victims back to the source. It’s not just a city-sized resonator. It’s a city-sized harvester of pain. That is
foul
.”

I thought about Transomnia, Nyissa, and their auras prickling against my magical tattoos. “It likes vampires because their auras extend beyond their body,” I said. “That triggers the magic and springs the trap. Shapeshifters can trigger it too, but anything alive could feed it.”

“Vampiric graffiti using skindancing magic,” Arcturus said. “Killing people as part of some far vaster spell … to do
what?
”

“Something
really
horrible,” I said, pointing at a join on the network. Arcturus
had
taught me something new, just in this short week. “Look at the corresponding point on the Pentacle. This isn’t a chi junction. It’s an intent nexus. That’s why the network transports people.”

Arcturus stared at the map, then the Pentacle. “How do you figure that?”

“Extracting a person’s intent is a short-range process,” I said. “And these points on the Pentacle are points of pain. It moved Revenance—it moved me and Calaphase—to the place which needed the most pain to be applied. This network is collecting
suffering
.”

“God,” Arcturus said. “We must
stop
this.”

I laughed bitterly. “No argument.”

He nodded a couple of times and took another swig of his limonshine. “I have to call the vampires,” he said with distaste. “I don’t believe this.
I’m
going to call the bloody vamps. I’m going to thank them for their gesture, then propose we work together to eliminate this threat.”

My eyes widened. “You’ll … you’ll fight
with me
against the tagger?”

“What? No … I can’t leave Blood Rock, Frost,” Arcturus said, pained. “I can’t afford to be outside the Sanctuary circle, much less appear in public. I am marked for death.”

I stared back at him. “You’ve been here, what, twenty years … ”

“It does not matter how long you hide,” he said grimly. “If you kill the right person from the wrong family, you do not appear in public, ever. Not even to fight this. It’s a rule.”

“Who did you kill?” I asked, immediately regretting it.

Arcturus looked away, took another long gulp of limonshine. I followed his eyes. He was staring into the house, into the open sliding door of the den, staring at a small picture on the coffee table. I didn’t need to get up to know it was a picture of his wife and daughter.

After what seemed like minutes, Arcturus cursed and set his drink down. “I cannot
think
with all this racket,” he said, and stormed into the house. Then my mouth fell open as Arcturus picked up the phone savagely and snapped, “What the hell do you want?”

I swallowed. I had successfully tuned the phone out after Arcturus’ speech. For him to pick up the phone, my questions about his family must have really rattled him. Or maybe it always rattled him, and he was putting on a brave face to forget what he’d lost.

“Yes, speaking. Who are—yes, right again,” Arcturus said. He grimaced, then picked the phone’s cradle up and walked over to the door, and I sat up in alarm. “It’s for you.”

“
How?
No one knows I’m here,” I said. “Who is it?”

“God damned Bespin, sounds like.”

“Bespin? I don’t know a—” I said. “Oh. Where Luke went after he bailed on Yoda.”

“Yeah,” Arcturus said. “This is why I hate phones. If you take the call, you have to act.”

I stared at the phone, then took it. “Hello?”

“Dakota,” Philip said, a bit strangled. “God, I hope your line isn’t already tapped.”

“Philip,” I said. “Oh, Philip, how did you—”

“I got your cell phone records, tracked your recent calls—and the last one got me Transomnia,” Philip said. “To get your location, we had to trade some information. I told him to ditch his phone. He’s probably gone to ground. He’ll be harder to track now.”

“It’s all right, he’s … not wholly evil,” I said. “But why risk it? What’s happened?”

“Palmotti’s filed a missing persons report,” Philip said. “Cinnamon has disappeared.”

“Vladimir,” I said, into a spectacularly disgusting gas station pay phone, “tell me Cinnamon showed up for her afterschool math club.”

“Why, yes,” he said. “She just left.”

“Thank God, and damnit,” I said, glancing around. I half expected an army of spring-loaded cops to descend on me at any moment. I know the drill. If the police can’t find a fugitive, they let it be known that the suspect has won a prize—or that her daughter has disappeared.

“What’s wrong?”

“She’s gone missing from the Palmottis,” I said. “He’s filed a missing persons report.”

“Oh, Jesus,” he said. “And here I was thinking things were going better. She’s actually
been
at school. Didn’t Palmotti even think to call us?”

“Maybe he did,” I said. “Who knows?”

“You haven’t talked to him?”

“Not yet. And frankly, I’m scared to, and not because I’m forbidden to see Cinnamon.”

“Why, Dakota?” Vladimir asked, voice filled with concern. “It isn’t the police, is it?”

Oh, damnit, me and my big mouth.
Instinctively I trusted Vladimir, and had been talking to him as if I’d already taken him into confidence. I hemmed and hawed; finally, I gave in.

“Yes,” I said. “They started looking for me because I was on the scene of the Candlestick fire, and have been loose while fires have been ravaging the city.”

“You’re taking a risk even calling me,” Vladimir said, even more concerned.

“Yes,” I said, and explained how Philip had tracked me with my cell phone. “But a random payphone is probably safe, at least calling you. They’ve probably tapped the Palmottis’s phone—my daughter is there—and maybe the phones of my close friends.
I
would.”

“You’re probably safe making one call per payphone,” Vladimir said, after some thought, “if you’re willing to hang up and drive for twenty, maybe thirty minutes after the call.”

“Vladimir! I’m shocked,” I said. “I didn’t mark you as devious lawbreaker.”

“I read a lot of suspense novels,” he admitted. “But if you’re willing to spend one call, why not go for broke? Why not call the police directly, tell them you’ve nothing to do with the fires and ask for news about your daughter?”

“I take back my crack about devious, Vladimir,” I said. “Switch to true crime books. The police won’t believe me because I call and sound concerned. They won’t believe anything short of me turning myself in so I can rot in jail while the tagger burns the city down to the ground.”

“If you do turn yourself in, and the fires keep popping up, wouldn’t that clear you?”

“Maybe, but I’m not going to sit on my ass in the Fulton County Jail while Cinnamon’s gone to ground, probably to precisely the same places this werekin-eating graffiti is likely to be found. Turning myself in for something I didn’t do is an absolute last resort.”

“Jesus,” Vladimir said, after a long pause. “What’s that going to do to your case?”

I blew out a harsh breath. “Oh, hell, Vladimir,” I said. “Nothing good, but I can’t think that far. We need to find her and get her back to Mister Palmotti, or at least find her some other kind of protection, before she gets killed. Once she’s safe, we worry about saving the case.”

Vladimir was silent for a moment. “Dakota,” he said. “You weren’t this worried about her safety the last time we spoke. What’s happened?”

Without thinking … I told him.

About Calaphase’s death. About Revenance’s death. About the attacks on Tully, on the werehouse, at the Candlesticks. I told him how hard the graffiti was to fight, what it could do—and how Arcturus and I had pieced together that it was part of a far greater spell, a citywide network of death, one Doug believed was beyond any magic or science known to man.

“Oh my God,” Vladimir said. His voice was trembling. I’d forgotten I was speaking to a math teacher and not one of my normal Edgeworld contacts, and that taking someone into confidence didn’t have to mean dumping off all my woes. “What are we going to do?”

“Don’t be afraid,” I said. “Focus on what we can do. Go after Cinnamon, if she hasn’t been gone too long, and get her to wait for Mister Palmotti. If not, find a pretext to call him and let him know she’s been seen—but
don’t
mention my name. If you see her again—”

“I’ll make her wait for Mister Palmotti,” Vladimir said.

“
No,
” I said. “Don’t
make
her do anything. She’s a werekin with a large beast. She can take a bullet, lift a car, and run like the wind. Don’t spook her, or she’ll go to ground.”

“Maybe I’ll just
ask
her to wait for Mister Palmotti,” Vladimir said.

“Better,” I said. “But more importantly … tell her she needs to keep away from graffiti.”

“Sure,” Vladimir said, “but, Dakota, as bad as everything you said was … it didn’t sound like a Cinnamon-specific threat. Are you sure you’re not borrowing trouble?”

I was quiet for a moment. He was right, but he didn’t know the whole story. And I hated to violate her privacy, but … ”Yes, I’m sure,” I said. “She runs with …
dates,
in our language, this boy, Tully. He’s another werekin, maybe a little older, not in school.”

“Hoo boy,” Vladimir said. “And you let her, unchaperoned?”

“Not on purpose,” I said. “I’m not even supposed to know about it.”

“And how do you know about it?” Vladimir asked, a smile in his voice.

“Because I’m a parent, and I did the same kind of thing before she was born,” I said, and Vladimir laughed. “Before the werehouse burned, I’d pretty much gotten the picture. If she’s not with me, not with Palmotti, and the werehouse has burned to the ground, she’s running with him.”

“Well, if he is a werekin,” Vladimir said, “maybe he can keep her safe.”

“No. She has a bigger beast, and he nearly got killed at the werehouse when they made him whitewash it,” I said. “And he’s a
fan
of graffiti, if not a writer himself. They’re probably hiding out in precisely the same kind of places that the tagger would have hit, and they don’t know a random-looking squiggle can unfurl into a masterpiece that can burn people alive.”

“Hoo boy. All right,” he said. “Look, I’m going after her, Dakota. She didn’t leave fifteen minutes ago, and maybe she and her boy are grabbing a smoke behind the school.”

“Oh, Lord,” I said. “One more thing I’m not supposed to know … ”

“You
can
confront your children about things they’re trying to hide,” Vladimir said firmly. “Like you said, you’re a parent. It’s your job.”

“Yeah,” I said quietly.

“One more thing—have you called to warn her?”

“Yes, but there’s no answer,” I said. “She may have let her cell phone die.”