Liquid Fire (25 page)

Jewel called up a couple of friends and took us to Bondage a Go Go, a BDSM-themed dance night playing every Wednesday in the SOMA district at a sprawling, multi-level affair called the Cat Club. Bondage a Go Go was
extremely
long running: the Lady Saffron and I had visited ten years ago, back when she was still called Savannah.

Something
else
that was extremely long running was the music. Everything gets periodically recycled in the club scene, and the very same track—
Spank My Booty
by Lords of Acid—was playing when we walked through the door, though then it was “New Beat” and now it was “Old News.” Fortunately, the music quickly began to fast forward through the ages.

I noticed other changes—as before, smokers were corralled outside, but now, inside, the ban was actually enforced. Club kids mixed in with the Goths and punks, and even a small contingent of tourists. But the soul of the place was the same—a cavalcade of fetish fashionistas strolling over balconies and catwalks surrounding a cavernous dance floor powered by thumping music.

Like a child in a playground, Saffron laughed and pulled Darkrose onto the dance floor; Nyissa followed, then a lesbian couple Jewel invited joined them and they all began bouncing to the music. Vickman and Schultze hung back, watching; Jewel and I broke off, wandering.

I missed having Jinx here, but I was glad she and Doug had decided to stay in and watch over Cinnamon. My little monster had sulked when I told her they carded at the Cat Club—and that if she produced a fake ID, I’d confiscate it—but had perked up at the idea of math games with my brainiac friends. Unexpectedly, Molokii had decided to hang back and join them.

“You sure Molokii is going to be all right?” I shouted, as we climbed a tight curvy stair toward the second level. I’d felt bad about ditching our friends for a girl’s night out, but the four of them seemed happy with the arrangement. “Seems like he’d enjoy all the thumping music—”

Jewel glanced back at me, a bit sad. “Too much confusion,” she yelled. “Even when he can feel the beat, everyone else is dancing to rhythms he can’t hear—”

“Or yelling to each other in the dark,” I said, a notch more quietly as we turned the corner and stepped out into the quieter, warren-like upper level. “Jinx feels the same way. She’s not a big dancer, but she used to love people-watching. Now she says it’s like—”

“Like pouring salt on a wound,” Jewel said, toning her voice down too.

“Yes,” I said, not precisely smiling, but gratified as she got it. “Her words exactly.”

If this was the same place, it was more crowded than I remembered, but it had the same energy that had drawn Savannah and me so many years ago. I got a charge out of watching the costumes, seeing the gear, spotting the occasional handcuff or collar or leash—though ten years ago, bondage and discipline had been the exciting new thing Savannah and I were discovering, and now it was a nostalgic reminder of . . . if not a happier time, at least a different one.

Repeated slaps—the noise of whipping—could be heard in an unseen room, and the hall was partially blocked by a standing couple—a dazed but happy man in the arms of a dommish woman, who tousled his hair and whispered in his ear in what was almost certainly aftercare.

With barely suppressed grins, Jewel and I stepped around them on either side. That took us on opposite sides of a larger area where a crowd was gathered around a man who was rigging a woman up a rope sling, using knots similar to those in Jewel’s bikini. For a brief moment, we could see each other passing on either side of the show, and Jewel’s eyes must have caught mine noticing the knots—because when I glanced back down at her, her eyes were gleaming.

We rejoined on the other side of the crowd and walked through a seating area where people were actually dining.
They have a kitchen now?
The Cat Club had expanded since I’d seen it, or maybe I’d been too into dancing with Savannah to notice all that it had to offer.

“So,” Jewel said, still trying to suppress that smile, “you’re into bondage.”

“Whatever gave you that idea?” I said with a smile. “Leather coat, leather chaps—”

“Steel collar,” she responded. She winced slightly, chewing over something that seemed like a delicate subject. “If I may ask . . . whose submissive are you? Darkrose’s?”

I laughed. “I’m no one’s sub,” I said. “I was Sav—the Lady Saffron’s once, long ago, and I think that gave her the idea to use a collar for the sign of her house. But it’s not a sub collar. It’s the sign of her protection—a big red neon ‘fangs off’ to other vampires.”

“Ah,” Jewel said, half smiling, but falling back into that wince. “And Saffron’s a switch, then. So . . . you’re not technically a sub, but . . . her human servant, then?”

“Most vampires think that because I’m her ‘troubleshooter’,” I said, “but, technically, no. I’m not a blood donor, bound by a psychic link or even a part of her ‘household.’ ”

“And Nyissa?” Jewel said. “She sticks to you like glue. Is she
your
sub?”

“What? No!” I said. “That’s ridiculous. She’s a full-time vampire dominatrix.”

“Is she now?” Jewel smirked. “Most interesting. Not her sub either, I take it?”

“We—are—just—friends,” I said. “She kidnapped me once, then saved my life.”

“Sounds . . . complicated,” Jewel said. “I don’t mean to be so particular, Dakota, but . . . vampires scare me. I just wanted to be completely sure that—oh, hell, that you were—”

“Completely free, Jewel Grace.”

Jewel stared up at me, swallowing. “You know, Dakota,” she said, eyes wide, hopeful. “You have a lot of power. You should use it.”

I stared at her a long time. Then I smiled. She smiled back. I leaned toward her. Then we kissed, first briefly, then passionately. Her lips were sweet, and I could smell the patchouli on her skin, feel something almost damp in the heavy curls of her hair.

I leaned back, cradling her cheek in my hand. “Well, hello, Jewel Grace.”

“Hello, Dakota Frost,” she said, head shifting aside so she could kiss my palm.

“You are really sweet,” I said, relishing the taste of her lipstick against my lips. Even my Dragon stirred against my skin.
I really like the taste of her lips
. “And I really like you. But I have to take it slow. I’ve been burned too much, lately.”

“Burned, she says, to a fireweaver,” Jewel said, with a sudden grin.

“
Badump-tish
,” I responded. “Totally unintentional.”

“S’okay,” she said. “That one kiss is enough of a start.”

A couple at one of the tables was grinning at us, so we finished our circuit of the upstairs, coming out on a balcony almost exactly opposite the stairs we had just climbed. Briefly, I caught a glimpse of Nyissa, prowling on the far balcony, her eye catching mine as she descended. She’d been keeping tabs on us, at a discreet distance. Huh. My bodyguard wanted to make sure we were safe—without interfering. How sweet of her—and I’d thought she’d been jealous.

Jewel and I leaned against the railing overlooking the dance floor and looked down on the world of Goths, punks, bondagiers, and club kids milling about to the music. A staff member was bringing out a ladder, and a shapely young model was bopping next to it, preparing to climb up and do her go-go thing in a previously unused hanging cage that I’d thought was decoration.

“Hey, my friends are here,” Jewel shouted over the music, waving to a group on the dance floor—and the small knot of dancers waved back. “You know, we’ve so been looking forward to coming back here,” Jewel cried. “Ready to hit the dance floor?”

“Coming
back
?” I shouted back. “This is a
planned
thing? People know you’re here?”

“Yeah,” she cried back. “Bondage a Go Go only runs on Wednesdays. The Fireweavers come here
every
time we visit San Francisco, a girl’s night out, sometimes with a light-balls performance thrown in, but we had to cancel that after—”

“Oh, God damn it,” I said, shoving myself back from the rail. “We’re going!”

“What?” Jewel said, as I turned to the stairs. “But, Dakota—”

“When I said cancel everything, I meant cancel
everything
,” I cried, stomping down the stairs, whipping my hand round in a “let’s go” motion. “A performance at a club
every
time you visit San Francisco is as big a frickin’ bulls-eye as flyers for a performance in Union Square—”

And then, cutting even over the music, the screaming started.

We gathered, forming up, Vickman and I taking point, Jewel and her two lesbian invitees in the center, and the vampires in a triangle around them. Vickman and I pushed through the crowd, past Jewel’s newly arrived friends, standing there in shock.

Out by the bar, the screaming and commotion was louder, but it wasn’t the terrified, panicked screaming that I expected, accompanied by a strong flow back from the doors. It was a more shocked-relieved-oh-look-at-that screaming . . . and the milling of curious gawkers.

We pushed through the crowd and stepped into the street. Outside, the smokers and the curious were stopped and staring; but as whatever shocking event had died down, people began to disperse, backing away in fear from what they did not understand. And then we could see:

———

From curb to curb across the street burned a dragon, ringed with symbols written in fire.

26. The Drake Cage

After that, the idea of leaving Jewel to her own devices was over. When the police were done questioning us, we hightailed it back to our fortress on Cathedral Hill. Vickman sorted out a new arrangement with the hotel—the entire block of rooms down a dead-end corridor with a fire escape at the end. Vickman opened up all the interior doors and pulled out chairs and sofas to soft block the L join of the hall, making our wing into an impromptu fort.

Molokii joined us, staying with Jewel and Nyissa, and the rest of us mortals stacked in rooms on either side as the vampires prowled about. As everyone else was settling in, I buttonholed Vickman by the ice machine for a conference.

“Jewel and Molokii have changed their flight to Hawaii to midnight tomorrow,” I said. “We keep her with us, and safe, until we put her on the plane. At that point, I hate to say it, she’s on her own. We don’t have the manpower to start protecting people all over the globe.”

“We don’t have the manpower to protect the people in this
hall
,” Vickman said.

“Yeah,” I said. Vickman used to have a dozen men. Most of those were dead now, at the hands of Scara, the enforcer of the Vampire Gentry in Atlanta—another reminder I needed all the allies I could get. “But, damn it, Vick, I’m
trying.
I didn’t ask for this. But I still got it.”

Jewel padded up, in fuzzy flannel pajamas, fuzzy slippers, and holding . . . well, I supposed the thing in her arms was supposed to be a dragon, but whatever animal the shapeless thing had started its life as was no longer clear. “What?” she asked, reddening.

“I didn’t say anything, fireweaver,” I said, smirking.

She started to retort, then just looked at me. “I love your smile,” she said, and then bit her lip, glancing over my shoulder at Vickman. “Hey, look, it’s been a long day and I’m—I’m turning in. I just wanted to say good-night.”

I walked Jewel back to her room. “I’m glad you’re safe,” I said.

“
I’m
glad you’re keeping me safe,” she replied, clutching the dragon.

“We’ll do our best,” I said, “but . . . when you get back to Hawaii . . .”

“I’m going to lie low,” she said. “Let this blow over, reconsider my approach—”

“OK . . . but don’t let the bad guys win,” I said. “This country was founded on the strategic withdrawal, but don’t let them intimidate you into giving up—”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Jewel said. “You’re guarded by vampires and weretigers and your skin is a living weapon. All I’ve got are some spinny sticks that become useless at the first tangle, and known and unknown enemies that know just how to tangle them.”

“Well, think of it this way,” I said gently. “Fireweavers are good at tangling up those around them.” Then I leaned down and kissed her forehead. “Good-night, Jewel.”

She stared at me, eyes wide. She bit her lip. But before she could nerve herself to kiss me back, she whirled and ran back into the room. “Good-night,” she said, closing the door.

“Ah, hell,” I said, walking back to Vickman. “Here I was, trying not to let things move too fast, and now
I’m
the one coming on too strong.”

“Eh,” he said. “She’s cute, and you’re scary.”

I glared at him. He raised an eyebrow. I gave up and retreated to my room, where, despite what I’d told Jewel about a good night’s sleep, I ended up staying up the next two hours reading puzzles to Cinnamon out of the codes-and-ciphers book she’d picked up at Berkeley.

Between puzzles, we talked about the code.

The messages were encoded by magic, mathematics rewriting reality, so in theory, the code could be anything. Cinnamon, a talented graffiti artist herself, boasted that she could create the magical equivalent of the Enigma machine, creating a code that was essentially uncrackable.

But in practice, this wasn’t the complex, layered graphomantic circuits of graffiti magic, or even the simpler single-layer patterns of tattoo magic; this was
fire
magic—elaborate physical movements, yes, but tracing out a comparatively simple magical shape. Cinnamon even claimed the “seven hundred and twenty basic weaves” were probably just all the ways you could combine six basic elements, what she called “six factorial.” As Jewel’s tattoo-activating performance at the Crucible showed, the real subtlety in fire magic lay in its caster’s
intentions.

So unless the caster could hold giant tables of letters in their head and think of what they wanted to say at the same time, that ruled out substitution ciphers. More likely, the spell relied on some very simple rule to jumble the letters, so, other than the weird symbols, the message had to be hidden in plain sight, like a cryptoquote—what Cinnamon called a transposition cipher.