Blood Rock (24 page)

I kicked and kicked and kicked the bag as hard as I could, and
screamed
.

The first few kicks had started out all right—the Taido
ma-washy-getty
kick was close enough to an old Tae Kwon Do roundhouse that I’d picked it up pretty quickly. But Taido had all these stupid rules about how to throw kicks that I didn’t really get yet, and it was hard to remember to come back to the same position. I tried, really, but the more I kicked, the madder I got, and by the final three I’d lost all form and was just kicking, kicking, kicking.

“Jeez, Dakota,” Darren Briggs said, dropping what he was doing. He was the black belt in charge of Emory University’s Taido club. Today he’d traded out his normal blue instructor’s jacket for a uniform so old and worn the belt and clothes were both shades of grey, rather than the stiff white karate gi’s worn by the rest of the class. But the man in the uniform wasn’t old. He was young, clean-cut, with a spray of spiky hair he was constantly dying different colors; this week, it was purple and platinum white. “Are you drinking?”

“I have a water bottle,” I said, waving him off. “I’m hydrating.”

“No, I meant,
have
you been drinking?” he asked. “Like, alcohol. Your face … ”

I straightened and looked in the mirror. My face was flushed red, almost mottled, and I knew it was from more than from just working out. “No,” I said, disgusted,
whacking
the bag one more time and cursing as it caused a throbbing pain in my knee. “They took Cinnamon.”

“What?” he said. “Your daughter? Hey, wasn’t she supposed to come tonight?”

“Yeah,” I said, trying to fall back to the long low stance Darren called
choo-dan
—but it just made my knee throb and I cursed. “Yes, damnit, damnit,
damnit!
YAAAA!”

And I kicked the bag again, this time so hard it popped off the chain and fell to the floor. No big feat—it was attached with a big carabineer up top and was always popping off. But as it fell, pain exploded, and I knelt on my other knee, cradling the wounded one. “Damnit.”

“Dakota,” Darren said, hunching down beside me. “You all right?”

“No,” I said. “And I know what you mean. No, my knee hurts.”

“Same one? Damnit, Dakota,” Darren said. “All right, take a break. You weren’t supposed to start back until you healed, but I cut you a break because you were doing so well. Clearly you’ve been overdoing it. So chill out tonight, and go see a doctor tomorrow.”

I hissed, and Darren pressed. “I
mean
it. Nobody’s been seriously injured in the whole history of the club and I don’t want to start with—”

“All right,
all right
,” I said, struggling back to my feet. “Ow.”

“Just … try to go easy,” Darren said. “Keep icing it after every practice. And on your own time—don’t laugh—do
sem-ay-no-hokay,
the new exercise I showed you tonight. You did really good for your first time. It’s pretty advanced stuff.”

“It felt natural,” I said, “but, man, it wore me out.”

“
Sem-ay
can give you a real workout, but it’s low impact,” he said. “Probably OK for your knee, but if it bugs you, focus on the breathing. Focus on the breathing if nothing else.”

“Does that really help?” I said.

“Sure does,” Darren said expansively. “Breathing isn’t just the source of your power—it’s the bridge between your conscious and your subconscious.”

I looked at him skeptically, but just then, Rary, the number two in the class and Darren’s off-again, on-again girlfriend, appeared with an icepack.

“No, seriously,” she said, putting the ice on my knee. “The diaphragm is the only muscle under joint control of the deliberative and autonomic nervous system. Controlling your breathing lets your conscious self signal your subconscious self in its own language.”

Both Darren and I were staring at her. “What?” she said. “I
am
in med school.”

“Soooo … ” Darren said. “You going to join us at Manuel’s?”

“No,” I said. “I have to bail. I gotta get the last of my junk out of my apartment tonight.”

“You need help?” Rary said.

I shook my head. “I’m almost done,” I said. “And, look, Olsen is being a real pisser about Cinnamon. She almost called the cops on me, not just that night but when I went back for the first load. I really don’t want to involve you guys. I’d hate for her to call the cops on
you
.”

What I didn’t say is that I was scared my crazy life would bite these people. Maybe it was uncharitable, but I thought of them as mundanes: they couldn’t roll minds, lift cars or block bullets, and if their guts got ripped out they wouldn’t come crawling back to them.

So that’s how it was that I found myself alone in the apartment at ten-thirty that night, with about fifty thousand times more crap to box up than I remembered. I desperately hoped Mrs. Olsen wouldn’t hold me to the midnight deadline, but I started tossing things into boxes at random in the hope that I’d somehow get it all done.

My cell rang. “Dakota Frost,” I said, taping up a box with the phone in the crook of my shoulder. “Best magical tattooist in the Southeast—”

“You should have that on your answering machine,” Calaphase said over the line.

“I do,” I said, “you just catch me awake whenever you call.”

“My shift at the werehouse must be when you sleep,” Calaphase said.

“Your shift?” I said, laying down one more line of tape and tearing it off with the dispenser’s serrated edge. “You lead the Oakdale Clan. Don’t you have flunkies for that?”

“I lead by example,” Calaphase replied. “What
are
you doing?”

“Moving out,” I said. And I explained about Mrs. Bitch downstairs and her ultimatum.

“Charming,” Calaphase said. “Speaking of bitches, I have news from the Lady Saffron, delivered by the way of the Lady Darkrose.”

“A four-link chain,” I said, emptying a junk drawer wholesale into one of the smaller boxes. “Nicely insulated so that neither of us has to talk directly to someone who has talked to the other. Sounds good. Maybe this will keep things on an even keel.”

“Don’t count on it,” Calaphase said. “Her high-and-mightyness the Lady Scara—”

“Who?” I asked. “I can only keep track of so many ‘Lady S-something’ vampires.”

“She’s one of the Gentry,” Calaphase said. “Old, moneyed vampires who used to run the cities before the rise of the Consulates. There a few of them, the Lady Onyxa and the Lord Ian something and supposedly an ancient vamp too deformed by age to be seen in public.”

“Sounds charming,” I said. “And this Scara?”

“Their enforcer,” Calaphase said. “Scara’s informed the Lady Saffron that the Gentry officially considers the Consulate’s handling of this plague a failure—because they’ve found out one more of their vampires has been killed by graffiti, just like Revenance.”

“Oh no,” I said, my heart falling. “A new wave of killings … ”

“Maybe,” Calaphase said. “Scara had been hunting the vampire’s human servant, thinking he was responsible, but when she found him he was hiding out, scared shitless. He and his mistress were partying on New Year’s Eve when she was caught and killed by graffiti.”

“That’s even before Revenance,” I said. “Maybe the first vamp taken.”

“And just before Josephine,” Calaphase said. “And get this, same
night—”

“A homeless man was set on fire,” I said. “I’ve been reading the crime blotter too.”

“Sounded awfully suspicious,” Calaphase said. “We should compare notes.”

“Sure,” I said. “Hey, what happened to the human servant? Sounds like Scara treated him like a suspect, but since he’s not involved, I’ll want to hear that he was released unharmed.”

“Would you now?” Calaphase laughed, a bit nervously. “I’ll, uh, pass that along if I ever see the Lady Scara, not that I ever hope to.”

“Speaking of hope,” I said. “What about Demophage … ”

Calaphase fell silent. “Dakota … the vamp he was looking for … the weres found his body, not two days ago. Burned to death, just like Revenance, about four miles from the werehouse—near some very familiar looking graffiti.”

“Please don’t tell me—”

“They’d painted it over before they even talked to me,” Calaphase said, and my heart sank. “The weres that weren’t caught are really pissed, and Krishna
still
hasn’t made bail. But … they did listen to me, and took pictures. Just got them today.”

“Great!” I said. Pictures wouldn’t be as good as a live tag, but if they were good enough maybe we had a shot of tying the design to the behavior. “I mean, not that I’m happy he died or anything, but, maybe,
finally
, maybe we’ll be able to make some progress—”

“
And
,” Calaphase said, “if that sounds good, I’ve got an entirely new batch of pictures of suspected master tags taken by the Van Helsings, Darkrose Enterprises, and even some from Tully, all printed out in a folder ready for you to take a look at.”

I was speechless for a moment. “Oh, I
love
you.”

“Easiest way down a tattooist’s pants is to show her some flash,” Calaphase laughed.

“I’m not that easy,” I said.

“I didn’t say you were. Still, Darkrose wanted a report to give to Saffron,” Calaphase said. “Can I bring these by and get your official opinion? Darkrose isn’t a daywalker, so I need to tell her tonight. Otherwise I have to pass the message to Saffron herself, and she’ll—”

“I know, I know,” I said, looking around me and tossing the rest of the pile around me into a box. “But can it wait a few hours? I’m not done moving out, and I promised Mrs. Bitch downstairs that I’d be out of here by midnight tonight.”

“Need a hand?” Calaphase said.

“I—thanks, but no thanks. I just don’t think it’s a good idea,” I said. “Mrs. B—Mrs. Olsen is on a hair trigger. She wanted to call the police on me over Cinnamon.”

“I’m
just,
” Calaphase said, “a cleancut young man come by to help a friend move.”

“Oh, damnit,” I said finally.
What could it hurt?
“Sure.”

Twenty minutes to midnight. No time, no help—and no more boxes. I had only one left, which was rapidly filling as I found bric-a-brac and knick-knacks and odds-and-ends in every nook and cranny of the apartment. I swear, the things were breeding.

And then there was a knock at the door, and I looked up to see Calaphase, holding a box of Krispy Kreme donuts which he opened with a flourish, row upon row of glazed delight.

“Oh, I
love
you,” I said, hopping off the floor and snatching up an original style. It was hot and soft in my hands and seemed to dissolve in my mouth with a grand flash behind my eyes. “Oh. Oh. These are better than sex. Not really, but they’re better than sex.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” he said, laughing.

“Mmm. Mmmmm. Wht?” I said, munching, scanning the box. There were already four missing out of the dozen. “Didn’t you have some?”

“No, I gave three to Mrs. Olsen,” he said. At my shocked look, he laughed again, a warm sound that left me as tingly as the donuts. “Call it a peace offering. I explained that I was supposed to help you, but was late. You’ll have all the time you need.”

“Thank you, Calaphase,” I said, taking another donut. “You’re a lifesaver.”

“Finish up,” he said, handing me the box. “I’ll take loads to your car. Can you beep it?”

With a vampire carting boxes and me cleaning up, we finished up quick. I filled the last box, taped it up, and then helped carry down the final load. So many boxes. Even with the seats folded down in the back, they barely fit in the Prius, and I couldn’t see out my rearview mirror. Thank God for the backup monitor—and thank God I didn’t need to make a second trip.

After the car was packed, I took one last trip up the stairs to the place I’d called home for … hell, at least five years. As I climbed the steps, I saw Mrs. Olsen’s light was now on, no doubt from Calaphase’s visit, but I tried to ignore it. This was hard enough already.

At the door, I sighed. My mat, my curtains, the little stand beside the door were all gone; it already felt like a completely different place. I went in, finding empty rooms, feeling the place even more empty than when I’d moved in. Then, it held promise: now, it held nothing.

The storage unit closed at seven, so we dropped off the load at my hotel. Hands full, I slipped the little card in the slot, saw green, and kicked the door open, dumping the boxes next to the air conditioner. Calaphase, with three boxes in his arms, stopped at the door.

At first I thought he was staring with amusement at my Vespa, parked in front of the hotel window at the management’s request to free up a space in their tiny lot. Then he seemed to gather himself, cleared his throat, and looked straight at me. “May I come in?”

I hesitated—just a second—wondering if that pause was a vampire thing or simple courtesy. “Sure,” I said, moving a chair out of the way to make more room.

He waltzed around me silently, murmuring, “Wouldn’t want to wake—oh.” He stood there, holding the column, staring at the two, tiny,
made
beds. “Where’s Cinnamon? Out running with the werekin, or dare I hope, a sleepover with new friends from school?”

“She’s
not here
,” I said sharply, heading back to the car.

We got the rest of it unloaded, and then I came in and sat down on the bed. My hands were shaking. I could feel my face, hot, could see Calaphase standing by the door, feel the concern in his gaze, even though I couldn’t see his eyes.

After a moment, I explained the situation to him, as briefly as I could without pissing myself off again. Of course, that didn’t work so well. Just as I was getting really wound up, Calaphase made a motion, and I looked up to see him gesturing to the door.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go get a drink.”

“Why?”

“You need one, and … I’m a vampire,” Calaphase said. “I don’t want to be alone with you, especially not for drinks. Let me take you to a nice place, frequented by many humans.”

I glared at him, face still hot. “Don’t you know I trust you?”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s not the problem.”

“Then what? Don’t you trust
yourself?
”

He shrugged. “Don’t trust the situation.”

I was still glaring, but I felt it soften. “Fine,” I said. “No, really, fine.”

Calaphase directed me down North Avenue to Peachtree Road, then towards Buckhead. Long before we got there, we approached R Thomas, a New-Agey 24 hour joint that made the only vegetarian burgers that Cinnamon could stomach. I was about to suggest it when Calaphase pointed to a car coming out of a parking space, right in front of a set of small shops on the opposite side of the street. “There,” he said. “Someone’s smiling on us tonight.”