Blood Rock (18 page)

The agents jerked at the sound of his voice, like he’d cracked a whip; yet he had barely raised his voice, and you could tell nothing from his face. Even Philip twitched, but Namura said, “Stay with this group. I don’t want to lose them, even if they aren’t the fish we hoped to catch.”

“All this wasn’t a response to the fire,” I said, understanding growing in my mind. “It couldn’t have been. You were going to roust the werehouse anyway.”

“This,” Namura said, “is the inevitable fallout of the attack you
partially
reported earlier. You called in
attempted murder by magic,
but didn’t give us enough information to perform a proper investigation. We had to follow up. You should know that.”

“Of course,” I said. “No good deed goes unpunished.”

“Maybe,” Namura said, turning to survey the fire, the swarming agents. “But, now that we are here, know that ‘rousting’ the werehouse is going to take a back seat to responding to the fire. In the end, the safety of these … well, these
people
is our first duty.”

“All right,” I said heavily. “On that note … we couldn’t get everyone out.”

“There’s always a further complication,” Namura said, striding off towards his men, motioning to one of them. “We’ll send rescue crews in everywhere we can—”

“Have them watch out,” I said. “I have strong reason to believe this was a magic fire.”

Namura scowled. “We’ll want to question you,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere.”

We all stood there in uncomfortable silence, not wanting to look at each other. Philip remained damnably quiet. I expected my big bad vampire beau to bust out with some creepy bullshit to knock his human rival off guard, but Calaphase looked actually embarrassed. Every time he looked like he wanted to say something, he just bit it off and kept quiet.

I
certainly wasn’t going to say anything

In minutes there were sirens in the distance, followed by police cars, ambulances, and three or four fire trucks. The firemen made short work of what was left of the blaze and stopped a fire that was left in the woods. Only the tag itself kept “burning,” but it was no longer real fire: it was just colored streamers of magic that only looked like flame, slowly weakening.

Namura summoned me back to the tag to explain to the firemen how to set up a magic circle. They nodded, but I don’t think they were really listening. They just kept their eyes on the tag hoping that the magic would fade on its own without them having to deal with it.

“Oh, hell, it’s you,” cursed a familiar voice, and I turned to see a dwarf Columbo wannabe stomping up to me—McGough from the Black Hats magical crime squad.

“It is indeed me,” I said, smiling back at him, surprised to realize I liked the guy. Something about having been through this before put us on the same team. He radiated calm, thought on his feet and the look he gave Namura’s team spoke volumes. I was betting he didn’t like Namura’s tactics any more than I did. “And how the hell are you?”

“I was fine until I saw you, you tattooed witch,” he said, trying to suppress a smile: apparently he liked me too. He leaned back and stared at the slow rainbow fire leaking out of the top of the whitewash. “What kind of mess have you gotten yourself into this time?”

“I didn’t get myself into anything, you little toad,” I said, holding up my hands. “This was Cinnamon’s home. She was having a bad change, and we came here for help.
Then
all hell broke loose.”

“Yeah, yeah, likely story,” McGough said, still staring, his wrinkled little face lit up by the strobing light like he was standing on a dance floor. “Before anyone from the D.A.’s office shows up and tells me to lock you in the clink, any ideas?”

“Oh, I’ve got ideas,” I said, reaching out and touching the whitewash. A bit of it came off on my finger, and I held it up to him. “Under this shit is the mural that attacked T … the werekin I reported. The other werekin painted it over before I could take pictures, but it was definitely by the same tagger, or more likely, crew of taggers that killed Revenance.”

“Oh, shit, don’t tell me it’s a crew,” he said, raising a hand to scratch the back of his neck. “Don’t you tell me that. How are we going to track them now?”

“Different hands, but the same style,” I said. “Also, we noticed some wind effects, like when we tried to save Revenance. I think at least one tagger was within eyesight, helping fan the flames. I wouldn’t be surprised if they set the fire as revenge for whitewashing the tag.”

“I’d believe it, the jerks,” McGough said, nodding. Then he smiled. “Alright, go back and wait with the civvies before someone notices you’re over here. Last thing I need is some idiot D.A. trying to force your foot into a ‘misuse of magic’ slipper.”

“Namura
asked
me to come over here,” I said. “You don’t really think—”

“—people look for their keys under the lamplight because it’s where they can see without having to think to hard?” McGough said bitterly. “Yeah I do, just like I think a DA tired of chasing her tail might decide you’re guilty because you’re always around. Now
get out of my crime scene
before someone decides to pick you up and see if you’re the key to a promotion and new Lexus. Shoo! I might need you later.”

I went. But, OK, I had to admit it: I really was starting to like the little toad.

But when I got back to my car, the pit fell out of my stomach. The Mercedes had returned, bringing Saffron and Darkrose. A tanned, ripped Native American man was there too, the human form of Lord Buckhead, the fae Master of the Hunt and patron of the werehouse. Saffron, Buckhead and Calaphase were arguing with Namura, who looked unhappy. But none of them moved to stop the officers arresting Gettyson, Fischer and half a dozen other elder werekin.

“These people are under my protection,” Saffron snarled.

“And mine as well,” Lord Buckhead said, glaring down at Namura.

“
And
mine,” Calaphase said.

“That’s fine in the Edgeworld,” Namura responded, “but they still must follow the law.”

“What the hell is going on?” I asked.

All of their eyes turned on me. When Saffron’s eyes met mine, Namura abruptly cursed, and something white and gleaming dropped out of his hand. Calaphase and Darkrose flinched as a cross fell to the ground and bounced before Saffron’s feet, white hot.

Saffron winced, but she stood her ground, still glaring at me. Finally, she bent down, picked up the cross, grimacing in pain, and then stood, holding it in the palm of her hand as white magical fire rose off of it, fueled by feedback between her power and her hostility.

Her eyes locked with mine, red and glowing. “I forgive you,” she said. But the cross was still burning. She meant me harm. She
still
meant me harm—her flash of rage at Canoe hadn’t evaporated; it had crystallized into a grudge. And, worse, she saw
me
as the guilty party.

Eventually I realized she expected me to respond. I was flabbergasted: I could barely believe she was letting our spat at Canoe get in the way of dealing with the very real problem of Namura arresting the weres. Calaphase was right: she wasn’t acting like a vampire queen.

“Apology accepted,” I replied,
you spoiled brat
.

Her expression flickered—she caught that
I
wasn’t going to take the blame. Her face fell, her eyes softened. She drew in a breath, let it out slowly, and the flame in her hand went out. She flicked the cross to Namura, who cursed and dropped it, holding his hand like he’d been burnt.

“This isn’t over,” she said, not looking at Namura. “The Consulate will be in touch.”

“Of course,” he said, pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket. “Of course it will.”

He picked up the still-hot cross and looked around at all of us, worried and afraid. His eyes fell on Philip, who was sitting next to Calaphase, talking in a low voice.

“A daywalker ruling the vampires? Vampires working with werekin? An entire werekin compound? And
skindancers
out in the open? I’m disappointed, Agent Davidson,” he said. “To let this kind of power build up—”

“It was in all my reports,” Philip said, standing. “You just didn’t listen.”

“Frost!” a voice shouted, and I saw an officer putting Gettyson in a squad car. Gettyson threw him off and glared at me. Apparently running an “unlicensed werekin housing facility” merited more than a slap on the wrist. “I told you this would happen!”

I started to say a dozen things, but stopped as I realized it didn’t matter. At the end of the day, I was walking away—and Gettyson was being arrested.

As one officer, then two, then three wrestled futilely with him, Gettyson just glared at me with pure contempt burning out of his wide-pupiled eyes. I swallowed. No matter how this came out, regardless of who was to blame, I had made a true enemy.

“I was wrong earlier,” Gettyson snarled. “
Now
we knows where your loyalties lie.”

The DEI held us at the werehouse as long as they
possibly
could, asking questions, telling us to wait, and asking us questions again. Apparently, having a magical fire and homicide on the site of a DEI operation had created a jurisdictional mess. Finally Namura relented when I tracked him down gabbing on his cell phone and told him to arrest us or let us go.

Now the werehouse was far behind us, and Cinnamon was beside me in the seat of the loaner—but rather than overjoyed at our reunion, she just looked sick. Her skin was covered with fine downy fur, her eyes were closed, and she kept swallowing. “Mom, hurry, please, hurry.”

“Can you hold it?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said, very quietly. “God, I feels sick.”

“Are you going to hur—going to throw up?” She didn’t answer, and, feeling like a cad, I said, “Just let me know if you need me to stop. I don’t own this one. We can’t mess it up.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, anguished. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to ruin it.”

“It’s all right,” I said, patting her leg. “You’re more important than a car.”

“But … ” she said, and then shut up, swallowing again. I kept my eyes on the road, but out of the corner of my eye I could swear she was getting furrier every time I looked. “God, feels like Six Flags. Dumbasses put me on a rollercoaster, thought it was funny. Up and down, up and down, Mindbender, fuck! I was puking the whole night.” She swallowed again. “Now I gots it again, except
I’m
the rollercoaster. I changes, I changes back, I changes, I changes back … ”

“Well, don’t worry,” I said, pulling the car to a stop. “We’re here.”

My flat was on the second floor of a home in Candler Park, itself tucked behind a larger home that the owner, Donna Olsen, had subdivided into apartments after her husband died. Now she lived beneath me, in a small little ground floor flat that was “all she needed.”

Given the hours I normally kept, this was not a problem; but her lights were on, and the last thing we needed was an hour and a half of Mrs. Olsen pinning us down on the stairs with Cinnamon one sneeze away from turning furry.

I pulled up into the narrow concrete drive and squeezed out. It was barely wide enough to open the door—on either side, which I’d never noticed before. The Accord was a notch bigger than the Prius, and before the Prius, I’d parked my Vespa beneath the stairs. But I got Cinnamon out and up the stairs before Mrs. Olsen could come out and trap us into conversation.

In the center of the room was the biggest dog cage I could find at PetSmart. I opened it and started looking for something to use as bedding; Cinnamon immediately began pulling off her clothes—raggedy old top, Capri shorts, the kind of castoffs she wore before I took her in, but I knew her: even if they were rags she cared enough about them not to tear them to pieces. In moments she was down to her undies, her tiger-stripe tattoos—and her silver collar.

“We should get Darkrose to take this off,” Cinnamon growled, tugging at the collar—then she looked sharply over at my neck. “Where’s yours?”

“Long story,” I said, returning with a blanket and stuffing it onto the floor of the cage.

“The bitch found out about you and Calaphase,” Cinnamon said, staring at me, changing by the moment, striped with fur now rather than tattoos, tail slashing the air, eyes glowing yellow, pupils tightening to ovals. “Someone should teach her a lesson.”

“Cinnamon!” I said sharply. “In the cage!”

She hesitated, but only a second. Then she pulled off her underwear, fell onto her hands and knees and prowled forward. There were pops and shudders as her body changed, but unlike our old friend Wulf, who had been born a human and whose changes were protracted and painful, Cinnamon had been born a werekin. So by the time she passed into the cage she was fully changed, a hulking tiger who glared at me sidelong with one angular eye.

I closed the door of the cage and swallowed. That huge eye reminded me of my own cats, except for the pupil: not sharply slitted like a cat’s, but oval, almost human. Then fear reminded me that a tiger’s eyes
aren’t
slitted: that slight oval cant wasn’t a sign of ‘humanity,’ but instead that she was fully changed. Something
else
reminded me that a tiger’s eyes only became oval when constricted in bright light—her eyes had just become six times more sensitive.

I snapped off the overhead, leaving me in the gloom with the predator.

When I felt I could control my face, I looked at her. Cinnamon was in tiger form, true, but somehow … recognizably Cinnamon. She shifted in the cage, snarling. Even hunched up, she was far too big for it, and its sides bowed and bent as she tried to get comfortable—but she didn’t try to break out. Finally, she curled up on the blanket and began chewing at it.