Blood Rock (63 page)

“Transomnia,” I said, rubbing my tongue over the implants in my right jaw where he’d knocked out two of my molars. “Now isn’t
he
the gift that keeps on giving?”

“This has come up more than once,” Ross said, “and I hate to even raise it—but I have to. Do you have some kind of agreement with the vampire Transomnia?”

“Now, now,” Lee said smoothly. “My client isn’t admitting—”

“Hush, Damien,” I said. “Ross, you saw the tape. If Transomnia hadn’t turned on Valentine, I’d be dead, and my skin would be the new lid on his damn box—but Transomnia didn’t do it for my health. He basically used me to free himself from Valentine.”

“And?” Ross said.

“Well, there’s a reason he used me. Dumb old me screwed up his attempt to escape Valentine by getting him fired from the Oakdale clan. He was under a control charm. Outside the influence of a more powerful vampire, he had no choice but to go back to Valentine.”

“So he … convinced Valentine to make you his next victim,” she said slowly, “knowing that you had the skills to free him from bondage?”

“Or, more likely, hoping to watch me die on the table, and to then lick the scraps,” I said. She looked away. “But at some point, I think he decided I was powerful enough to free him, and took a gamble. Afterward, our agreement was to leave each other the hell alone.”

Ross looked back at me, then nodded. “I can’t blame you,” she said. “And not just for defending yourself. The security cameras were running through the whole Masquerade. They showed not just what was happening to you
…
but who you were doing it for.”

“For Cinnamon,” I said. “They had Cinnamon
… ”

“I know,” Ross said. “And I’ve shown these tapes to Janet McCarthy of DFACS. She’s calling for a special meeting. Almost certainly, they’re going to drop their case.”

“Which means … ” I stood up. “I’m going to get Cinnamon back!”

——

And so, on Wednesday, the first of March, over two months after I’d first dropped her off at the Academy, I turned up the drive to see Cinnamon standing there at the curb waiting for me between Fremont and Palmotti. She was wearing a brand new school uniform, new shoes, and had a sharp little denim bag bulging with schoolbooks.

And perched on her tiny nose were cute, owlish glasses, hooked into earrings at the base of her cat ears. “Don’t say anything,” Cinnamon said, adjusting them. “Not one word.”

“Not even cuuuute?” I said, stepping off my bike and tousling her hair.

“
Faahh!
” she said, twitching. “Mom! They are not cute. They’re … necessary.”

“Exactly right,” Palmotti said. “A lot of werecats, including weretigers, are nearsighted. They get that from the cat DNA in their Niivan organelles.”

“You had to have paid for those,” I said quietly.
And
he’d researched it. “Thank you.”

Palmotti smiled, sadly, and a bit tired; then he gestured towards Cinnamon. “She’s a handful, but also a treasure. Godspeed to you and your daughter, Miss Frost. I’m sorry she was taken from you. I just hope that in the time I had her, I did her a little good.”

And then, without saying goodbye, he turned and limped off.

We watched him go. Cinnamon stepped in front of me. I let my hand fall on her shoulder, and sighed. All was right in the world again. But … her breath caught as he walked away.

“Go give him a hug and thank him,” I said. “You probably won’t see him again.”

Cinnamon snapped her head, but before something awful popped out, she reached up and bit down on her knuckle. After a moment, she released herself.

“No,” she said, sniffling. “He knows how I feels.”

He got into his car and drove away, and Cinnamon took a big deep sigh. Then she turned into me, burying her head into my chest. “Mom,” she said. “Let’s go home.”

“Where’s that?” I said, patting her head. “We got kicked out, and can’t move in yet—”

“Your house, your hotel, a cardboard box by the Chattahoochee,” Cinnamon said. “Wherever you are, Mom, that’s where home is.”

“All right, Cinnamon,” I said, holding her close. “Let’s go home.”

The adoption went through. Cinnamon and I are mother and daughter for real now. I think it actually scares her. She was so glad to have someone who cared for her, I don’t think she realized she was also getting someone who was responsible for her, both in good times and bad.

We moved into our new house the same week the adoption went through—thanks to the Valentine Foundation. I had to swallow my pride and settle with them, but the truth was, they
couldn’t
pay up, any more than I could buy a house out of pocket. Valentine never expected to lose his Challenge, so coughing up a million bucks would have bankrupted his Foundation.

But, just like a house payment, the Foundation could pay up over time. So, in exchange for letting the payments stretch out over the next ten years (and for not suing them), I got the Valentine Foundation to pony up the closing costs on the house (and my legal fees).

Once Cinnamon and I really were home, and everything was settled, we had a long walk, and a long talk. She looked crushed. She didn’t hear me say how glad I was she was home and alive; all she seemed to hear was how disappointed I was in her, how irresponsible she had been, how upset I was to find she’d been running out with Tully almost every night.

I didn’t take her iPod, which would have interfered with her studies. She’s the math whiz at school now, and I’m trying to encourage that as much as I can. I didn’t forbid her to see Tully again, which would have been pointless. They’re childhood sweethearts, and I’m not going to discourage that, because I know I can’t.

But I did ground her. No running at night, only jogging at the school. No solo dates with Tully, only with me chaperoning. And next full moon, she stays in the safety cage. I know, that last bit sounds cruel. But I find myself thinking that’s a parent’s job, sometimes: being cruel to your child, so she learns not to do things that will destroy her.

It takes a real effort of will to leave it at that, to not blame Cinnamon for the death of Calaphase, or to give her a walk and shift the blame onto Tully. They really didn’t know what they were helping unleash; the blame rests upon the Streetscribe. Thanks to him, no one knows how much Calaphase came to mean to me—and I’ll never know what we could have had.

That last bit burns me. I miss Calaphase. I really do. But everything happened so fast. I hadn’t lied. I
had
planned to take him home, but that was it; literally, to take him home. I never expected our relationship to progress that quickly, and seemingly moments later it was over. I still couldn’t process it. I just felt a void. So I’ve been throwing myself into my new work.

Doug has been working with Tully to find and destroy all the remaining copycat marks, and he says it’s a wonder Cinnamon and Tully weren’t killed just spraying the damn things. McGough’s been revisiting the arson sites with a magical disenchantment squad, making sure nothing pops up out of the soot. And I’ve been bouncing back and forth between Arcturus and a dermatologist, treating the damage to my skin when my vines were ripped off.

All in all, we were lucky. The tags were all over the city, as were copycat taggers. Tully spread the word about the dangers of the marks, and the copycats stopped; but from them he found enough photocopies to reassemble the blackbook. After Doug had looked at it, he went around for a whole week muttering things damnably Lovecraftian.

Doug wrote up a report on the blackbook, first thinking to publish it, then thinking to suppress it, and finally passing it around, with ample warnings, to all his most trusted contacts. After enough people had read it … the Magical Security Council turned into a real thing, and not just a Hail Mary play to get the lich and his lieutenants to back off.

Delancaster’s announcement of my appointment came just in time for
Magnolia
magazine to slap together a full story on me, the graffiti, and the Council, running with a spectacular cover of me and my vines looming over Keif and Drive in a shot that looks pretty damn prescient now, even though it was totally unplanned.
Magnolia
called me an “unexpectedly cantankerous tattoo wizard,” and I was oddly pleased—Arcturus apparently trained me too well.

Between all the publicity and the very real threat, everyone is playing along. Even the Wizarding Guild: they won’t show in person, but have been speaking effectively through Alex (and unofficially, through McGough), analyzing the blackbook and passing on strategies that will help us eliminate the tagger’s marks safely.

I know, I know, councils like this are more about which group is in control of what than about solving the problems we all have, and I keep on expecting one of the old-school vampire or werekin groups to stab us in the back. But it hasn’t happened yet, I think mostly because anyone who takes the time to read Doug’s dossier ends up scared shitless.

So far the arrangement has worked well. We’ve got the misuse of graffiti magic under control, have put procedures in place to keep it from happening again, and are starting to draft rules to guide us in the future. Everyone appears to be pulling their weight, and more importantly, everyone seems to be talking.

Except Nyissa. Scara’s crossbow bolt left her mute. The doctors think that they may eventually restore her voice, but until then, it serves a purpose. She comes as my escort, glares ominously, twirls her metal poker anytime anyone says anything threatening—and, when it comes up, gives Iadimus an excuse to tell Scara to leave. This happens all too often.

Everyone on the council, me included, is looking for my replacement. No one wants me heading this board permanently. But they’re all helping me find people they think can do the job. Unfortunately, while there are plenty of good candidates on paper, it’s hard finding anyone who is competent in practice, willing to take on the problem, and acceptable to everyone.

I’ve even talked to Philip about replacements, but our relationship is strained. Personally, he still resents me dumping him for Calaphase. Professionally, neither he nor Namura are happy about this new concentration of power. But we’re civil, and so, as Alex has taken on speaking for the Council of Wizards, I’ve taken on responsibility of speaking for the DEI.

Hopefully, soon, better hands will take this over. I’m not trained in law enforcement, or law, or even management. Heck, I’m only half-trained in magic or science; I’m a dropout. I’m supposed to be a
tattoo artist
, for goodness sake. I know I can’t keep doing this forever.

But I’m not going to go through life in the dark anymore. I’m not going to
hope
that if shit sweeps up on me I can clean up the mess. I have a daughter, friends, and colleagues that count on me, people that have my back, and I’m not going to let them down.

I know I can’t fix everything—the world is darker, deeper, stranger than I ever imagined. I know I can’t make my little corner of the world into heaven—but God gave me the skills to keep it from going to hell, and by God, I’m going to keep it that way.

—

I’m Dakota Frost, skindancer—and Atlanta is
my
city.
Nobody
trashes it on my watch.

(Continue reading for more about Anthony Francis)

First off, thanks to Chris Baty for founding National Novel Writing Month, during which I wrote the single largest chunk of BLOOD ROCK: if you’re interested in writing, you should try this annual challenge to write 50,000 words in November.

Thanks also to the Write to the End group (formerly the Writing Group at Barnes and Noble at Steven’s Creek) at which most of BLOOD ROCK was written. We meet every Tuesday (except the first Tuesday) of every month at Mission City Coffee; join us.

And thanks most of all to my beta readers: my wife Sandi, my in-laws Wally and Barb, and my friends in the Edge: Fred, Diane, Gordon, and Dave. The betas also included Keiko, Gayle, Liza and Betsy from Write to the End.

BLOOD ROCK was the first Nanowrimo I read on Ann Arbor’s Unbedtime Stories at KFJC; since then I’ve appeared on her show nearly ten times, including the first few chapters of FROST MOON and BLOOD ROCK over the last two summers. Thanks!

I am also indebted to my research staff: to Vandybeth, who inspired the Gentry, to William, who inspired their hideout, to Keiko, who helped refine werespeech, and my wife Sandi for inspiring the ‘Candlesticks’.

I can’t begin to cite all the books I’ve read while researching BLOOD ROCK; that would need a separate bibliography. GRAFFITI WORLD by Nicholas Ganz and GRAFFITI KINGS by Jack Stewart stick out in my mind.

BLOOD ROCK is set in a world next door, so thanks to the city of Atlanta, especially the very real restaurants I loved and made a part of the story: Manuel’s Tavern, the Flying Biscuit, R Thomas, of course Cafe Intermezzo, and many more.

BLOOD ROCK was the longest novel I’ve written to date, and it was a long hard slog to get this sprawling story under control while preserving its distinctive voice. Thanks again to my beta readers, and especially to my editor at Bell Bridge, Debra Dixon, who spent hours at Dragon*Con discussing the story and then months hammering away at it with me until we were both satisfied.

In fact, BLOOD ROCK would not be in your hands if it wasn’t for Bell Bridge Books. Thanks again to Nancy for recommending them to me, for Debra for taking a chance on me, and to Debs and the rest of the crew with putting up with me.