Authors: Anthony Francis
“He told you to fuck me? How sweet of him,” I said. There was little love lost between us. Zinaga had become Arcturus’ ‘new’ apprentice right around the time I’d started to realize I wasn’t learning how to ink magic tattoos just so I could live the rest of my life in Blood Rock, tattooing backwoods mechanics trapped in the 1950s. The transition had been … awkward. “But it’s a little late—I’m dating boys now. An official
was
bian.”
“You know what I meant, Kotie,” Zinaga said, uncomfortable and embarrassed. I suddenly realized she
was
a lesbian, or at least curious—and we’d worked together for six months and I’d never noticed. Some agent of change I was. “He says you’re ‘in Coventry,’ and when I asked what that means, he said to not even bother to call him. He’s really upset.”
“So am I,” I said. “I got kicked out of my apartment, DFACS took my daughter, and I spent the whole afternoon talking to lawyers I can’t afford.”
“Couldn’t happen to a nicer lady,” Zinaga said brightly, cocking her head, her hand on her hip. “You know, you should stick to one excuse. It sounds more believable.”
“That’s why I left out all the murders,” I said evenly, “or maybe they
just
weren’t material to my being late, whereas my legal woes are.”
“Oh, the murders weren’t
material
,” Zinaga jeered. “You’re spinning and spinning further. Are your highly-educated lawyers rubbing off on you?”
It was the same-old, same-old. I don’t know exactly what I’d done to made Zinaga get off about my education: after all, she
had
a degree in communications and
I
was a dropout. But this wasn’t funny anymore. And I was actually feeling a bit bad about my defective gaydar.
So I just stared at her. Her smile cracked a little bit.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” I said. “And I shouldn’t have brought up my friends who died. It was just last week and I’m still pretty raw about it. Now, I spent the last two and half hours in traffic trying to get here, but since Arcturus doesn’t answer his phone, I couldn’t call him and tell him that. And since you wouldn’t answer the phone either—”
“Sorry about that,” Zinaga said, embarrassed. “And sorry about your friend. What—”
“Two and a half hours,” I repeated.
She cocked her head. “You gotta go pee.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, leaning against the car and crossing my legs for effect. “And in the Grist Mill Café, you have to buy something or Dennis—”
“No dumpink vithout eatink,” she said, exaggerating the café owner’s German accent. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll tell Arcturus you’re paying the bathroom tax.”
“Thanks,” I said, looking at her coveralls. “Did they pass a law banning tattoos?”
Zinaga looked at me in alarm. “No, why? Shit, have you heard something?”
“No, it’s just everyone’s covered up, even you,” I said. Zinaga specialized in light marks, so she could tattoo amazing marks on her dark skin that stood out like white glowing lines when she filled them with mana—but today you could just see a little silver scrollwork crawling up her neck. “I was hoping to see your masterwork—I never saw it finished.”
“You’ve been gone from Blood Rock too long, Dakota. It gets
cold
after dark,” she said, pulling her sleeve down. True enough, but in this context it felt like a lie. It wasn’t cold enough to cover up, so why was she doing it? Surely … she hadn’t ruined a tattoo so badly she felt she had to hide it? “I’m surprised you’re still here in that stupid vest—hey, what happened to
your
masterwork? Where’s the Dragon?”
My eyes narrowed. Interesting the way she deflected my question about her tattoos back onto me and my masterwork. She had been experimental; maybe she
had
ruined her tattoos, trying out some new design that had a bad interaction.
Finally I realized she was waiting for an answer and said, “I had to use it.”
“Use it?” she said. “You mean you
detached
it?
Why?
”
I used it to defeat a serial killer who, blah, blah, blah.
“It’s a
long
story,” I said.
She shook her head. “I’ll go tell Arcturus you’re here. You can tell him about the Dragon—I don’t want to get an earful about the sanctity of your mastermark when I haven’t even done anything. He still goes off on you from time to time whenever some random thing bothers him, and I have to sit there and listen to an hour-long rant.”
“After all these years,” I said.
“Yeah, welcome ‘home,’” she said, walking back towards the studio; Blood Rock was
that
small. “I expect he’s going to go off on you, so bring earplugs, or a sixpack so we have something to pass the time with.”
“I can’t stay the night,” I said. “I have a court appearance in the morning.”
“Well, you know how he is—don’t keep him waiting too long, or blow him off again,” she said, waving as she went. “Piss him off again, you could get the cold shoulder for months.”
I sighed, watching her go. It was
so
good to be ‘home’ again.
Then I turned to go inside—and a fist exploded in my face in a flashbulb of pain. The blow knocked me back against my car and almost off my feet. Everything blurred, then my vision resolved to see a wide, greasy bearded guy grinning at me.
“You should never have come to Blood Rock, skindancer,” he said, cracking his knuckles and throwing another punch before I could even scream.
My arms moved automatically, one curving in a block and the other popping out to clock the guy on the chin. The punch wasn’t Taido, it was older, a college Tae Kwon Do reflex. The blow knocked his head back, but he laughed it off and moved in—straight into my follow up.
This
punch
was
Taido, with skindancing mixed in: thrown from the hip, twisting over in the last half inch, absorbing mana in my skin and discharging it with a bang on his nose. Blood sprayed, he staggered back, and I moved in with a savage, full-power kick to the ribs.
It was like kicking a telephone pole. He cried out but didn’t fall, and actually caught my leg before I could withdraw. I started punching him, single punch, double punch, triple punch, tagging him one-two-three in the skull, chest, and gut, but he shrugged them all off.
“Damn,” he said, shoving back on my leg as a van squealed behind us on the gravel. He ducked under one blow, then cried out as my followup landed on his collarbone, but still held on as feet ran up on us. “You’ve got a hell of a fight in you—for a girl.”
A fist solid as a brick connected with my temple, and suddenly I was swarmed by black-suited figures. I struggled uselessly, flashing on the one and only time I’d played football and ended up on the bottom of a pileup—groped, crushed and unable to breathe.
I was picked up bodily despite my thrashing—and then I saw the hood of a police car slide past the end of the van. I yelled as loud as I could, and as the window of the police car hove into view I saw Sheriff Steyn—who just nodded, smiled, and drove on.
Oh, God—he was
in
on it, whatever
it
was.
Everything went dark as I was hurled into the back of the van. I tried to scream again, but a leather-gloved hand pressed over my mouth. I
mmphed
and squirmed, but could not stop the probing fingers running over my body, picking at my pockets.
“Here are the keys. Get the car. Get the car!” a voice shouted. I kicked out, and someone howled—then a fist was planted in my gut, and the air in my lungs squeaked out my nose in a spray of blood and snot. “For God’s sake, put her out before she uses her marks!”
Then my first attacker leaned over me, blood running down his beard. “Don’t worry,” he said, grinning. “We know how to deal with skindancers.”
—
A stinking cloth was shoved over my face, and then—
blackness.
Choking pain gripped my neck, and my eyes opened in terror.
I saw a black-gloved hand, clamped in a steel ring, a few feet above a floor of irregular slate flagstones. The hand flexed, and I realized it was
my
hand. I tried to jerk away, but my hand just twitched uselessly in the ring. I tried to flex but my black-sleeved arm just writhed against the metal armrest of a chair. I became aware of something clammy and sticky covering my whole body, even my head. I twisted and tried to stand, but just felt an immense pain in my collarbones as they pushed against something rigid clamped tightly around my neck. Panicked, I screamed—but all that came out around the huge ball shoved in my mouth was a whimper.
Oh shit, oh shit, oh
shit.
Minutes of frantic struggle yielded
nothing.
I was wrapped from head to toe in layers of black rubber and clamped into a rigid steel chair. I couldn’t see much, but from my attempts to rock, it seemed like the chair was
bolted
to the floor. I was going nowhere.
A single spotlight, faint and gray, shone down on me and the chair, illuminating a small patch of slate flagstones. Beyond that was murk. I twisted as much as I could and only saw velvety blackness. No one had heard my faint whimpers—or no one had responded.
My discomfort kept building. The chair was built for someone smaller than me, and held me slumped back and scrunched sideways. I was cramped and choking, but still, I tried writhing to power my marks. But I had no tattoos on exposed skin, so what little mana I could generate burned back into my body in a surge of pain, and I sagged back against the clamps.
Then the lights came on.
Dark curtains lined the walls; metal railings hemmed in the flagstones. Before me, steps rose towards a throne sitting in front of a huge disc of stone inscribed with an elaborate ring of bloodstained roses—the
Sanctuary Stone.
It should have been in the Stonegrinder’s Grove, warning them that someone threatened a magician of Blood Rock. But who had it—and me?
Footsteps sounded on the dais, beyond the stone, and level with my eyes I saw a pair of fine leather boots walking confidently towards me. They were medieval yet elegant, styled to match the tailored leggings above them, Renaissance Faire as done by Giorgio Armani.
A dark velvet coat flared like a priest’s cassock as the figure stepped round the Stone, but above the straight line of the sheathed sword in the figure’s hand, the coat’s cut tightened, with subdued, elegant brocade. The figure came to a stop, and I craned my neck to look into red eyes set in a cruel young face, beneath a wiry shock of hair like a blaze of white flame.
It was the vampire Transomnia.
I
screamed.
A high-pitched squeal escaped around the gag, and laughter erupted behind me. My hands flailed, and Transomnia smiled, tightlipped, not bothering to expose his fangs. He turned slightly, lowering the sword behind him, and raised his other hand for silence.
“So, skindancer,” he said, voice as smooth as the velvet of his cloak, “not the welcome you expected to Blood Rock? We have tired of you people swaggering through our town. Try using your marks now. Try breathing a word of power. Not so confident, are we?”
He straightened and glared down at me, voice ringing out. “We made the rules very clear. Blood Rock is
our
domain now. No skindancers are welcome without our token; none may come here unannounced.” He waved a hand at the Stone. “
You
have done both, trying to sneak past—”
“Whath th fkkk, Tranth?” I choked out around the gag. After I’d saved him from Valentine, we had agreed to leave each other alone. “Whh hdd ah dhhl!”
A hand struck the back of my head, hard—but Transomnia paused. “Don’t,” he said, raising his hand to stay the one that had struck me, but without looking at his underling. His eyes stayed on me. His red, glowing eyes seemed to sparkle, and I felt a flush of heat against the skin of my face. Then, slowly, he descended the stairs, sword held back casually, but in what I could see was one quick move away from a decapitating strike.
I twisted uselessly in the clamps, then cringed back as he stepped right before me and leaned down. “Did you have something to say, skindancer?” he asked softly, leaning down into my face. Then his eyes widened in recognition—then further in pure, unadulterated terror.
His head jerked back—just a little—then his eyes tightened and he straightened, much more slowly than he needed to, as if to prove to himself he was not afraid. I saw his hand tighten on the sword, but as he became fully erect he said, “Then let’s hear it.”
“Whffk—” I choked, then sagged forward in the chair. “Fhkk yh.”
He smiled, turned away and climbed two steps of the stairs. “Get it off her.”