Authors: Anthony Francis
The lich’s mouth hung open … then widened into that grotesque parody of delight.
“Ah!” he said, clasping his hands together. “You and your assistants are going to do a little magic trick, and just make the problem disappear?”
“Something like that,” I said.
“This is ridiculous,” Iadimus said, still standing straight, but the subtle respect in his stance gone, replaced by wary mistrust. “She’s clearly planning a trick.”
“You’ve threatened to kill me if I don’t stop the graffiti. But how do you imagine that’s going to work? Do you expect me to mix up a potion, or break into the Georgia Tech Physics of Magic lab, spin up their magic accelerator and perform an incantation?”
“Well—”
“I’m a
skindancer,
” I said. “I ink magic tattoos and dance to bring them to life. I’ve spent the last week learning the logic of the tags, improving my skindancing skill, and repairing some of the tattoos that were damaged in previous battles.
I’m
as ready as I’m going to be.”
“If you are so ready,” Iadimus said, “then why have you not yet destroyed them?”
“I won’t lie to you,” I said. “These tags have damn near killed me, four times. Each time it was because the tagger chose the time and the target, and either I was the target or I was blundering in to save the target. Now, things are different. I’m ready, I have Cinnamon, I have Tully, I have an intact tag without a trapped victim, and I have a hell of an incentive.”
“Your life,” Iadimus said, “and the lives of your friends.”
“Yeah. But not in the way you think,” I said. “The real reason is that your magic circle is total crap, and the tag is about to bust free and kill us all. Quiet, everyone, and listen.”
The room went silent. In the sudden silence, you could hear a rushing sound, as of a terrific wind. I let the sound rush over me, relished the horrified looks on the vamp’s faces. Then I turned to look at the tag. The whorl was spinning, and the flames behind the city were beginning to rise in a rippling wall of rainbow flame. Beyond it was the source of the noise: within the magic circle containing Demophage’s casket, magic fire was rising in a tornado of flame.
“The tags are both batteries and generators, transmitters and receivers,” I said loudly. “Their magic feeds on not just blood, but pain and death, then stores it up. Even through your crappy magic circle, it was able to absorb enough power and pain from the carnage of Vladimir’s assault to finally activate. Once activated, it can power magic fires.”
Iadimus appeared and consulted with two sycophants, a man and a woman. Scowling, they looked over at me—perhaps they were the magicians that had laid the magic circle I’d just called crap. Well, fine: it
was
crap. Then Iadimus asked them a question in low tones, and both of the mages nodded—one reluctantly, the other vigorously. Both were scared.
“I’m sure they’ve told you that if the fire breaks out, it will destroy this building,” I said. “But just as clearly you can see that there’s no more material to burn in there. That fire is being fed magically from an exterior source. To stop it, I’m going to need to go into the magic circle, take on the tag and sever that connection. The tagger uses a graffiti-based
projectia
, so he’s plugged into the circuit. The feedback of destroying this tag will almost certainly kill him.”
The last sentence was a lie, but Iadimus looked at his mages, who slowly nodded.
“Very well,” the lich said.
They bought it.
“Release Tully and give him back his backpack,” I said. “And give me my cell phone. It’s in Velasquez’s breast pocket.”
“Why, so you can call for help?” Iadimus asked.
“And provoke you to kill Darkrose?” I said. There was no one manning the rope at this second, but any guard with a gun or crossbow could do the job in a heartbeat. But then Vladimir stepped forward, and I smiled. They wouldn’t dare kill her while he—
“Or provoke me to kill all of you?” Vladimir said darkly. I swallowed, and Vladimir looked at me pitilessly. “I want to help you, Dakota, but I survive by preserving my privacy. Do not involve the police, or I will wipe this place out, move on, and start over.”
I stared at him. I hadn’t expected that; I’d thought we were on the same side. Perhaps the lich was right; I really
didn’t
know Vlad the Destroyer. “Good to know,” I said finally. “In any case, I’m on the run from the police. I’m not going to even turn it on unless I have to.”
“And why would you have to?” Iadimus asked.
I struck the magic barrier with my hand, and a hollow sound echoed through the hall. “Because these are damn near soundproof. Listen to that fire: it’s raging, but you can barely hear it through the barrier, and if you can barely hear that you won’t hear me. If I need you and your magicians to do something I’m not going to play fucking charades.”
“If it’s soundproof,” Iadimus said, “how do you know your phone will work?”
“You can
see
it. Obviously it’s transparent to electromagnetic radiation.” There were blank looks. “You know, light, radio waves, two parts of one spectrum—”
“Dakota, quit showing off your knowledge,” Vladimir growled. “And the rest of you, quit dicking around. Leopold, give her what she asks so she can get on with it, or quit this place before the fire escapes and kills you all.”
“Just us? Not you?” Iadimus asked.
“He will not die,” the lich said, motioning to his guards, “not even in a fire.”
Moments later, Tully appeared beside Cinnamon and me, left hand squeezed over his bloody right wrist. “The barbs were silver,” he said. “The bleeding won’t stop—”
“Keep pressure on it,” Vladimir said. “The touch of silver may have damaged the outer layers of cells, but it won’t have poisoned you.”
“What are we going to do?” Cinnamon asked fearfully, tugging at her collar.
I took Tully’s refilled backpack and my cell phone from one of the guards and knelt down before the two of them. “I’m going to take us inside the magic circle. Once inside, I’m going to perform the Dance of Five and Two, which will highlight the lines of the tag. Tully—”
“I didn’t do anything—”
“Regardless, you know graffiti magic,” I said, and then, since I knew it would irritate him, I said, “you know it because you’re a
tagger.
”
“It’s
writer,
” he said, and bit his lip.
“Yeah, gotcha,” I said. “Once the lines of the tag start to glow, you, Tully, will need to identify the mana cycles—the magical power circuit. Then Cinnamon can tell me which points to destroy in what order to create maximum feedback.”
“But I don’t knows how—” Cinnamon said.
“It’s a simple logic problem,” I said. “You’ll know it when you see it. It’s why you’re precious, remember? I don’t need you to explain it. Just see it and tell me. Remember,
stay close to me
while I’m doing the first dance, then as soon as I tell you, step straight back to the edge of the circle while I’m working. If anything goes wrong, Iadimus’s magicians will pull you out.”
“We will not,” the female magician said.
The lich raised his hand. “Do as she says. We must question them if she fails,” he hissed. “And you must be on hand in case the circle is broken when she takes them through the barrier.”
Reluctantly, the two magicians stepped forward. The lich stood behind one of them; Vladimir stood behind the other. I put my hands on Cinnamon and Tully’s shoulders and led them forward, straight up to the edge of the magic circle.
“How will you stop it from grabbing us?” Tully asked fearfully.
“Arcturus, my master, taught me how,” I lied. “Ready?”
“Yes,” she said, swallowing. “Fuck!”
“All right,” I said, “let’s do this.”
I raised my hands and stepped right up to the edge of the field. I stared at the spinning whorl, at the six arcs of stone, then closed my eyes. For the moment, the magic of the tag was a distraction: I needed to feel the magic of the circle first.
I heard the surging of the magic barrier as it tried to contain the magic within, the muffled roaring of the flames, and beyond that, like a hidden baseline newly noticed on a familiar song, the humming of the spinning whorl as it gathered its power.
I spun, then began shimmying my arms up and down, harmonizing myself with the field. Then I slowly lowered my hands, placing them on Cinnamon’s and Tully’s shoulders. I couldn’t believe I was going to do this, to take us into that torrent of magic.
But hopefully it was better than where we were.
I tugged Tully and Cinnamon forward and leapt with them through the field, shattering the magic barrier. The tag surged out hungrily. No time for fancy dances or subtle intents; I just lunged forward and screamed:
“Web of space, take us to your heart!”
—
The whorl expanded. Its tentacles reached out—and
pulled us inside.
Second time through, Streetscribe’s Happy Fun Ride was much more manageable. There was the initial shock as mana flashed against my skin, worse than before as this tag was more powerful and my skin had grown more sensitive. But I sloughed the pain off, and with it the buffeting of color and the torrent of wind screaming around us.
Even with training, I couldn’t help being jerked, twisted and buffeted: it was like riding a roller coaster in a hurricane. But I once rode the Mindbender at Six Flags Georgia five times in a row, and had been through this before. So when this kaleidoscope ride came to an end, I landed head up, boots down, with legs coiled for impact, and then straightened right up to standing.
Cinnamon and Tully fell into the water at my feet, their screams turning to spluttering as water splashed up into their lungs. I reached down and collared them both, hauling them to their feet. Tully looked fine, if a bit rattled, but Cinnamon was dry retching—I had forgotten about her motion sickness. While she struggled upright, I took stock.
We were in a dark stone tunnel, lit only by the magic of the tag behind us. It was a cruder version of the masterpiece we’d seen in the lich’s lair, and I realized there was a brief window when they could come after us—or that the tagger might have a secondary trap, like the one that took Revenance. The werekin were still stunned, but I was going to take no chances. “Move,” I said, and dragged them down the corridor away from the tag before anything happened.
When we were fifty yards away, it was so dark I pulled out my phone and powered it up, using the light to guide us into a small cubbyhole in the tunnel. I pulled Cinnamon and Tully inside and positioned myself at the edge, watching to see if anyone else came through the tag, or if any secondary tags had triggered. After a few moments, however, the glow of the tag died out.
“Whew,” I said.
“What,” Cinnamon said, gasping. “What the
fuck?
”
“We’re in the Underground,” Tully said, staring up at the masonry. He was right: the tag had transported us somewhere into the vast network of ancient tunnels that crisscrossed the city. Legend had it that they dated back to the Civil War. From my time down here, however, I suspected they were actually far older. “How did we get into the Underground?”
“I was hoping you would tell me,” I said, “but in case the tagger didn’t fill you in on that part of his magic, the tags can act as magic doors.”
“I don’t knows the writer that did the tag,” Tully said.
“Whatever,” I said, dialing a number.
“What are you doing?” he said fearfully.
“Calling Vladimir,” I said. It buzzed several times, then picked up.
“Hello, Frost,” Vladimir said. “What the hell—”
“Sorry to keep you in the dark, but it was necessary,” I said. “I was afraid the lich and his buddies wouldn’t let us proceed if he knew what I planned.”
“You’ve got that right,” he said, “They’re demanding to know where you are.”
“Tell them we’re wherever the blood goes when a tag drains a vampire,” I said, glancing around the dank tunnel around me, flickering in my own light. “Tell him I think that’s somewhere in Underground Atlanta—and I don’t mean the tourist trap downtown.”
“I think he got that from context,” Vladimir said, laughing. “What are you doing there?”
“Exactly what I said we were going to do,” I said. “We’re taking the battle to the tagger.”
Vladimir was silent for a moment, then he relayed what I said. “Sir Leopold is asking how you plan to do that?”
“The doorway tags transport victims to traps,” I said, “but they’re not one-to-one. It’s more like a subway network. I used my magic to guide us to its heart. With any luck, there’s a central tag within a few hundred yards—and along with it, hopefully, the tagger.”
“So you really are taking the battle to him,” he said. “The lich is impressed.”
“Good. So tell him hands off the hostages, or when I get back I’ll be most irate.”
There was a squawking on the phone, and Vladimir laughed. “I think they heard you.”
“Vampire hearing, right,” I said. “Well, Lords and Ladies of the Gentry, next time you hear from me, I’ll either have dealt with the tagger—or will be calling the cavalry. Frost out.”
“Frost out?” Tully said. “Can’t you just say goodbye like a normal person?”