Authors: Anthony Francis
I half expected the tunnel to be artfully hidden behind a trick door, but near the back of the house, a well-lit stair curved down into to a full-sized basement, holding a parlor that was similar to, but more intimate, than the one where the vampire held court. A big-screen TV dominated one side of the room; even the ancient vampire was turning into a consumer.
Glass lamps lit either side of a columned entranceway, with a heavy door that looked not unlike the front door of the house we’d just entered. It had been splintered clear of its hinges. The light grew dim in the hallway, provided by widely-spaced bulbs that barely illuminated the yellow wallpaper. Iadimus led me forward through a century and a half of history splayed over the walls in the form of old photographs, from daguerreotypes through digital prints.
Bloodstains began appearing in the hallway, but Iadimus didn’t stop, not even when we encountered the bodies of two more guards, dead on the floor. We emerged in another parlor, this one filled with scattered bodies. I shuddered, but Iadimus kept walking, climbing the stairs into another room, all the doors but one blocked off with tossed furniture.
Iadimus cleared his throat, then led me through the door and into the vampire’s parlor.
“Thanks for the heads up,” Vladimir said dryly, leaning against the doorjamb.
“Do not mention it,” Iadimus said stiffly.
“You left a lot of bodies on the deck back there,” I said quietly.
“You can’t make an omelet,” he said, staring over my shoulder at Iadimus. “But I don’t think it will matter. Consider it payment for all of Darkrose’s men Scara killed.”
“As you offered before—a fair proposal,” Iadimus said. “I am inclined to seek agreement with you, so we may salvage something from this catastrophe.”
“I am inclined to let you all live if you behave,” Vladimir said.
“Excellent,” Iadimus said, releasing my arm and turning to face forward. “Sir Leopold, Lords and Ladies of the Gentry,” he said, with a gracious bow, “on behalf of the Lady Nyissa of the House Beyond Sleep, may I present her envoy, the Lady Dakota Frost.”
I nodded to myself. Then I turned and faced the vampire court.
Everything was more or less as I had left it: Saffron and Delancaster seated on either side of the lich’s throne, Darkrose still in her cage. Scara sulked at the edge of the dais, and everyone else looked grumpy and uncomfortable. Even the vamps’ guards were seated, except two fresh ones around Darkrose, one guarding the rope, one guarding the cage with a crossbow.
Only the lich seemed alert, bright, animated. He prowled around the chunk of masonry, brazenly walking past the now-broken magic circle, touching with an occasional cackle the blackened surface where the tagged gateway had once stood. Demophage’s coffin still flickered with slowly dying rainbow light.
Interesting
—though the lich seemed not to notice.
“I did what you asked,” I said. “Now release my friends, and let’s put this behind us.”
“We can clearly see you dealt with the magic marks,” the lich said, hand extended to the cracked, blackened ruin of the tag. Chuckling, the lich returned to his throne and sat down. “But what of the rest of what you promised? What became of the tagger?”
“Dead. I short-circuited his magic to kill both him and what he summoned.” I turned to give Scara the full force of my words. “Then I cut him free of the graffiti, pulled what was left of his brain through the hole the tag had made in his skull, cut it into pieces, and stomped on ’em.”
Something flickered over Scara’s face, but she did not respond. The lich, however, did. “Well, well, well,” he said. “Our little Edgeworld witch has shown herself to have a spine—”
“And
then
,” I continued, “since he seemed to have such an affinity for vampire magic, I rammed a wooden stake through his blackened corpse, and cut his head off with this.” I pulled Tully’s closed switchblade out and tossed it at his feet. “I couldn’t quite get off all the goo—and while I’m not a vampire, I’m pretty sure you can smell that’s burnt human, well, werekin fat.”
The lich just sat there in stunned silence. After a moment, Saffron spoke.
“Yeah,” she said. “
That’s
what I’m talking about.”
“Nuke the site from orbit,” I said. “It’s the only way to be sure.”
I glanced at her, and she nodded. Neither of us was smiling, or happy, or even really friends again, but it was a truce, of sorts, a shared bit of sentiment in the face of adversity.
But then Scara spoiled it. “Lead us to them, and we will put them on trial,” she said, spinning around, talking to the hall. “One of the delightful farces all you precious children value so highly. If we find them innocent, we find them innocent; if we find them guilty—then we will kill the wolf, and leave to Vlad the Destroyer the duty of killing his own pupil, or the guilt of sheltering a murderer—”
“God
damn
you,” Vladimir said.
“That sounds like a
great
idea—go to hell, Scara!” I said. “I did what that the Gentry asked, and
this
is the thanks I get? I don’t believe for a minute that you plan to hold a fair trial, and I’d die before I turned over Cinnamon.”
But at that, Scara whirled and jabbed her hand out at me.
In hindsight, I don’t think she intended to strike. Her mouth was open, as if she was making a point, a gesture I recognized half a second too late. Too late, because in the first instant her hand shot towards me, I instinctively sashayed back and murmured
shield
.
Mana flooded out over my body—but my vines were gone. Magic surged into what was left of my tags, especially the Dragon, my
unfinished
masterwork, with unterminated graphomantic circuits spreading out over my whole body. Without the vines to ground them, they dumped all their mana back into my skin in concentrated points, and I
screamed.
My body flailed. More mana built up as my skin stretched and living blood surged through millions of capillaries running beneath billions of cells, feeding back into my tattoos and then back into my body. It was a living feedback circuit, like the one I had used to destroy the monster—but the only place for the magic to go was back on myself.
—
Slowly, inevitably, the pieces of the Dragon came to life—and began tearing me apart.
I screamed again. I hunched over. And I concentrated, as hard as I could, at holding the Dragon together. It was still in four major components, each with open circuits meant to be connected together. If any of them fully detached from my body as they were, they would dissipate—and spew mana all over me as it did so. God knows what that would do.
But I held it together, gritting my teeth in pain. The wings of the Dragon erupted and flapped, smashing into the cinderblock wall and knocking it over. The tail snaked out and flipped over Demophage’s coffin. And the head and neck lifted from my own neck, rising, rising, eyes opening to show me the room through the Dragon’s eyes.
Saffron’s distorted image stood before me, eyes wide with fear, shouting something. Vladimir had fallen back, Iadimus and Scara had fled to corners, even the guards had scattered as plaster and wood fell from the ceiling under the relentless beating of the Dragon’s wings. But Saffron stepped up straight before me, in the eye of the storm, shouting my name.
“Dakota, please,” she was crying. “Calm down! The rafters! You’ll kill us!”
And then I realized: they didn’t know this was unintentional. Here I was, seconds away from dying at the hands of my own magic, but to someone from the outside it looked like a skindancer had whipped out a monster and was laying waste in her wrath.
Pain rippled through me, and I snarled. I staggered, but played it up, shoving my hands out like vicious claws. That actually helped, the tattoos on my knuckles filling in for the magical points of the Dragon’s unfinished hands, and I drew the wings in around me like twin shields.
“Back up,” I growled. Saffron did so, and I hunched over further, letting the mana bleed out into the religious marks on my knuckles. The other vampires flinched, but Saffron just stood her ground. “Give me a minute to calm down, and I’ll hear your plea.”
“Thank you, Dakota,” Saffron said.
I couldn’t tell whether she really believed she was in danger, or was playing it up for effect. Regardless, the mana streaming out through my hands started to balance the Dragon, and I began to straighten, drawing it in slowly, hands still shining with unearthly light.
The lich rose and stood by Vladimir, muttering something. Vladimir nodded, with a light chuckle. After a few moments, Scara and Iadimus rejoined them, hanging a bit further back, shielding their eyes from the light coming from my hands.
“I now believe that she was capable of taking the writer,” Scara said.
“Agreed,” Iadimus said.
“Of course she took out the tagger,” the lich said dismissively. “You should have known that when she teleported out of here, much less when the tag exploded.”
I was now standing fully straight, but the head of the Dragon was still whipping about, giving me a headache-inducing double image of the room. The freestanding wall had been completely destroyed, the outer columns were cracked, even the ceiling was damaged.
Impressive. Time to play this up.
“I have a few things to say,” I said, clenching my fists until the tattoos on my knuckles
blazed
. All the vampires flinched—except Saffron, and, interestingly, the lich. “First, get Darkrose out of that thing, right the flying fuck now.”
Everyone stood frozen a moment, then the lich flicked his hand at Darkrose’s cage. Guards began to free her. I was so glad that the Dragon hadn’t knocked the weight down on her while it was flailing. Saffron smiled gratefully and ran to Darkrose’s side as they got her out.
“Second,” I said, turning my attention to Scara, “leave my daughter out of this. No one even mentions her
name
, and don’t take that as an excuse to call her a stray, not ever again. She was never here, and had nothing to do with this plague.”
“But,” Scara said, clearly afraid, but unwilling to drop the matter—or drop her hand, which meant she still meant me harm. “But if she was a tagger—”
“I’m not finished,” I said. “The master tagger was Tully’s mentor, but duped him into drawing tags that were part of a master spell that required werekin blood. Tully was almost killed by one of his own pieces, which elaborated itself into a trap just like the one here on that wall.”
Scara lowered her hand, ever so slightly.
“If you are really convinced of that,” she said, “you must have some proof.”
“I have proof, a copy of the tagger’s blackbook,” I said, counting on Tully to find me one. “A dossier of all the tags, my notes, and how I deduced there were three taggers but only one master. Even proof that I took out the Streetscribe. I can take your men to the cavern.”
“Yes, of course,” she said. “Once I have seen proof with my own eyes, I will consider the matter closed, and order my soldiers to dynamite the cavern to eliminate any remaining—”
“You’ll do no such thing,” I said firmly. “You will have to send trusted human witnesses, and if I catch a single stick of dynamite on a one of them I’m going to shove it up their asses.”
“But,” Iadimus said, “if we cannot see—”
“This is for your protection,” I said tightly. “No vampire, vampire wannabe, or anyone who even
smells
of vampire is to approach the inner sanctum of vampire-draining magic.”
“Agreed,” the lich said. He seemed amused, even muttering asides to Vladimir as I spoke. “But what about the suggestion to dynamite it? Even you seem to think it is still a threat.”
“Before we make
any
irrevocable decisions about the cavern,” I said, relaxing the Dragon slightly, “we’re going to collect enough evidence to tell us what we’re left with. If
you
can’t find an Edgeworld crew with skills to photograph it properly, we use my contacts with the DEI.”
“We will
not
allow you to bring in outsiders,” the lich said slowly.
“I’m not done,” I said, flexing the Dragon’s wings, “and I
do not
want to have to do this again next week having destroyed our best evidence. The tags were part of a
genocide
engine. Designed to exterminate vampires, using human and werekin blood to balance the magic.”
“Is that even possible?” Iadimus asked, looking at his magicians.
“Oh, yes,” the man said. He had gone pale. “Obvious, really, now that she said it.”
Both Iadimus and Scara seemed to draw back, and I continued, “Bad enough, but the magic was corrupted, a misreading of forbidden Incan magic. The collected intentions of the victims were slowly incarnating a demon.”
“A … demon?” Vladimir said.
“Demon, alien, small-g god, what have you,” I said. “My scientists from Georgia Tech assure me this magic uses advanced concepts not likely to be hidden lore or backwoods graphomancy—it’s more likely to come from another world or dimension.”
“Your … scientists,” the lich said.
“When I said I’ve been studying it for weeks, I meant I’d been studying it for weeks,” I said hotly. “So we don’t throw away our best chance to figure out what the hell it was and what it was trying to do before my scientists and your magicians have a chance to look at it.”
“Agreed,” the lich said, and Scara hissed, but reluctantly. Iadimus nodded.