Blood Rock (32 page)

Only then did I notice that the tagger was breaking the unwritten rules of the Atlanta graffiti scene: he had painted over the marks of other taggers. In my research, I’d found other taggers had immense contempt for paintovers and whitewashes; no one with any skill did them. I scanned the lot rapidly. The more I looked, the more I saw his tags almost desperately trying to plaster over his competition. The better the original, the harder the tagger tried to outdo it.

And through it all, woven through every design, was a quirky spray of wildstyle letters that I now recognized as the artist’s actual ‘tag’, his signature: the word
XRYBE
over a stylized road snaking into the distance. At first I didn’t get it, but then I saw older variants, the same road with all the letters above it still spelled out, still wildstyle, so I had trouble parsing it: S-T-R-E-E, then T, the X was actually a jammed-together S-C … and then I
got
it.

“
Streetscribe
,” I breathed. The name Revenance had warned us about. It was
everywhere.
“
Someone
is crying for recognition.”

“Dakota!”

“What? No, no, we can’t risk it,” I said, glancing around. “The playground equipment is tagged. The far wall is tagged. This whole place is one big trap.”

“Can we go back through the tag that sent us?” Calaphase asked.

I glanced up at it. It was weakening, spinning down, though it wasn’t clear that it was actually going to shut off. “No,” I said. “I think it needs to recharge—and besides, do you have any idea how to work that thing? Because I sure don’t—not yet, anyway.”

He glanced around. “We can climb the fence there, try the parking
deck—”

“He’ll have tagged the cars,” I said—and then a solution hit me. “He’ll have tagged everywhere he could—so let’s go where he can’t.”

There was a narrow gap between the parking lot and the tenement. I ran to the corner of the chainlink fence and peered through, seeing a long parking lot and a ruined carousel covered by old graffiti. The fence was strong, the chainlink newer, and rings of razorwire guarded its top twenty feet above—and it held no surface for the tagger. Little tags lurked at its base, squealing sausage monsters like blind piglets, but they were too simple to pose real danger. I paid them no mind, spinning round over them as I built up mana and cried: “Striking serpent, open a door!”

My newly-inked asp tattoo reared to life and struck the fence once, twice, three times. Chainlinks popped with ringing cracks, then squealed away as Calaphase tore into the opened links with his hands, peeling the fence away in layers.

Then a horrible wail drifted from the far end of the lot.

“Keep pulling,” I said, turning around. “Use your strength on the fence, and I’ll use my magic to watch our backs.”

Calaphase cursed and pulled at the fence. I could hear it tearing—but that noise was drowned out as the tags over the far end of the fence rippled with a massive wave of mana I could feel all the way back here, seventy yards away. There was no movement and almost no light; there was no
way
that could have been built up from the mana in old rotten boards.

So much for the mold theory.

Zipperface slid out of the tag, rolling out in style on a skateboard. Over his shoulder he carried a baseball bat; around his waist were strapped a set of spray cans like Batman’s utility belt. His face was barely visible beneath his vast floppy hat, but even from this distance, the steel tabs of his jagged mouth glinted, a vicious grille spreading beneath glowing white eyes.

Then the eyes narrowed. The mouth frowned. And then that wide olive face peeled back open as Zipperface screamed in rage, a long, ropy tongue snapping out as Calaphase tore the second layer of the fence away. I tensed, not sure what form the attack take or how I might defend against it; but defend us I would.

Then Zipperface raised his arms, and a long low line spread across the base of the wooden fence behind him, a sparkling sliver-like light peeking underneath a door. I recoiled as the line lit up into a rainbow wall of graffiti flames.

Oh, hell. Fire. Defend us, I wouldn’t.

“Dakota,” Calaphase said, jerking at my shoulder. “Dakota, we gotta go.”

Zipperface threw down his arms, and the fire shot out along the edges of the canyon, screaming towards us on both sides. The graffiti wasn’t just reaching for us: it was
spreading
, cracking out over the pavement in jagged blocks, turning it into a sea of lava.

We turned and ran, slipping through the clinging wire of the fence, darting through the chasm between the tenement and the garage, putting on a burst of speed as the lines of fire met behind us and exploded through the gap in a blast of flame and mana.

We ran down the sidewalk, full tilt, Calaphase almost flying, dragging me behind him as I poured my all into it, ignoring the explosion of pain in my knee. But as fast as we ran, the fire ran faster, sliding along the foundation of the tenement, rippling up its side in waves of flame. The running tongue of fire shot past us towards the end of the lot, impacting a low brick fence, boiling up in a torrent of flame that cracked the pavement and cut us off.

Driven sideways by groping tendrils of fire, we dodged out across the asphalt, leaping over glowing red cracks in the pavement shooting out beneath us, aiming for a squat cinderblock building next to the carousel as yet untouched by the tags. Calaphase threw his shoulder at the door and knocked it off its hinges, dragged me inside, and slammed it shut behind us.

The flames roared behind us, trying to batter the door open. Calaphase wedged the bottom of the door shut with a dented metal pot the size of a tub, and I slid a broom handle through holes in the wooden slats around the top of the frame.

Desperately we looked around the blockhouse. Despite the musty darkness of our little prison I could see it had once been a kitchen, the back room of a hot dog stand or burger joint. There were no other doors or exits; the next best bet was a barricade of rotten wooden planks nailed over the broken remnants of what had probably been the front serving window.

I peered through the slats and could see the edge of the carousel, a black strip of pavement, and then a blissfully green tab of grass, wet by a sputtering sprinkler. I tugged at the boards, but they were stronger than I expected. Calaphase reached to help, but recoiled as the flickering light of magic fire rippled past the edge of the slats.

But the flames did not immediately tear inside; they retreated. We relaxed, but only for a moment. Then light began to creep in through cracks in the base of the cinderblocks all around us. Calaphase cursed and began looking around, tearing the place up looking for a fire extinguisher.

I whipped out my cell phone and dialed 911. It started ringing, but before anyone picked up, flames surged against the blockhouse walls: we didn’t have much time. Through the cracks in the door and in the window we could see the fire rising up around us, cooler now but more elaborate, lazy licks of graffiti flames climbing the walls of the shop around us. Coiled wires and vines and roses were now visible in the flames, along with other motifs that I didn’t recognize. The graffiti was tackling this building too.

I could hear the tinny voice of the dispatcher now, but the rising roar of the flames drowned it out. I lowered the phone, and Calaphase and I looked at each other.

“Dakota,” Calaphase began.

“Don’t you dare,” I said. “Don’t you dare talk like we’re going to die!”

“We’re going to get out of this,” Calaphase said. “I want to
live
, because I’ve had a taste of a life that’s better—and I don’t mean your blood.”

I was speechless. Calaphase stepped forward and took my hands, a Greek hero cast in bronze, flickering in the rising golden light around us. “I’m sorry I bit you. I regret that. But everything that led up to that—I’ll never regret. Not for one minute.”

“Calaphase,” I said, squeezing his hands in mine.

“Dakota,” Calaphase said. “I’m so sorry.”

And then he grabbed me and
threw
.

Rotted boards exploded about me. I screamed as I was engulfed in flames. It felt worse than normal fire: hotter, more tenacious, biting at me as I flew through the boards, snapping at me as I sailed over the tagged pavement and onto the cool grass. I landed and rolled, winded, dazed—then caught myself, lurching to my feet as Calaphase prepared to jump after me.

The entire parking lot had been consumed by graffiti. What had been pavement was now a illustrated nightmare landscape of cracked black rock floating on hot lava. But it was no longer cartoony: it was eerily real. Like a street painting that fools you into thinking there’s a hole in the sidewalk, the graffiti had dimension, making the blockhouse seem like it was supported on a crazy Jenga stack of flaming boulders, tottering over a lava field a thousand feet below.

But unlike a street painting, this was no forced perspective: it was
magic
. No matter which way I moved, the tower moved with me, and the chasm stayed between us. There was no way to bridge it. The blockhouse itself had become a torrent of lazy fire too bright to look at, climbing to the sky in a column of hate. Calaphase hesitated, flinching back from the snarling flames eating at the hole in the rotten wood barrier.

“Jump, damnit,
jump!
” I screamed, watching flames curl over the top of the blockhouse, a flue of vapor spreading over the roof just like the blue haze that flicks over a log a second before it lights. “For God’s sake, Cally!
Jump
!”

Calaphase disappeared, then burst forth from the opening in an incredible burst of speed, sailing through the opening, the flames. But the flames grabbed at him, tripped him up so he tumbled and fell short, fell into the parking lot, fell into the
tag
—

—

And fell a thousand feet to his death below.

Calaphase stared up at me, lifeless, body broken on the tagged parking lot in a vast splash of blood. I couldn’t believe it. He’d just jumped from the broken window of the little hot-dog stand, tripped as magic flame caught his feet, and pitched face down in the pavement—but instead of hitting the pavement, he’d seemed to fall forever into the vast chasm depicted by the tag, disappearing into the painted distance in some horrible trick of perspective.

But it wasn’t just a trick, it was
magic
, and seconds later Calaphase had splatted into the pavement right in front of my feet with more force than if he’d fallen from an airplane. I stared down at him from the safety of my strip of grass, stared at the twisted body that had been so strong in my arms, at the broken fangs that had sipped my blood, into the lifeless eyes that an hour ago had stared back into mine as he told me he loved me.

His body twitched, and for a brief moment I felt a flicker of hope: maybe blunt trauma wouldn’t be enough to kill a vampire. But then the vast splash of blood gurgled obscenely and began sinking into the pavement, blotted up by the graffiti, draining into the cracks painted in the rock, turning the glowing lava blood red.
There
was the power of the graffiti—these monster marks were feeding off of vampire blood, literal
blood rocks
. How dare they.
How dare they!

My nostrils flared, and I looked up.

Zipperface stood at the far end of the parking lot, his misshapen head canted beneath his huge cap, his tiny eyes glowing, holding his baseball bat down and out like a sword in challenge. My face flushed with rage as I read more and more clearly off that exaggerated body language one clear emotion: saucy, self-satisfied glee. Suddenly a jagged, cartoony grin spread across that inhuman face, and he swept his paint can across the air in a clear gesture:
I tagged you.

“Like hell,” I said, stalking out across the grass towards him.

Zipperface raised his hands, and flames surged from the blockhouse, a wash of mana driving cracked lines out across the parking lot, extending the lava landscape that had killed Calaphase. No matter—I was still going to kill him. But I’d have to get past the lava to do it—and then I realized the magic was reaching my skin before the heat.

I spread my hands wide, testing the air, feeling the mana like an electric charge. Normally I built up mana, then activated the tattoos to spend it. But now I stepped up to the edge of the lot, threw my arms wide, and soaked up mana like fresh spring rain. The tag spreading across the lot began to lose definition, no longer an active menace but just a few inked lines. I was astounded that the tag could not just move, but spread itself; but I had no time to think about that now. The mana was flooding my body, filling me with heat and light, more than I could safely take.

Lacking real skindancing training, I once again borrowed moves from Taido, twisting round once to draw in the mana, then surging forward in a high-stepping stomp that punched both hands forward and hurled the mana out in a fiery ball. Dazzling and impressive, yes, making Zipperface jump back; but improvised and weak, too. Zipperface swung his bat and struck the ball of mana full on, making it pop into multicolored fireworks.

I stalked out over the pavement, throwing my arms wide to suck more mana out of his tag. The air was cool now. We were far enough from his playground that I could keep him from creating new flames as long as I kept his tag drained. But Zipperface was not out of tricks: he snarled, drew his spray can, and began drawing lines in the air in a complicated pattern.

The vast tag began to shimmer again, the lava regaining its glow, the rocks regaining their depth and falling away, one by one—but I was having none of that this time, and began sashaying to pour my own magic into the mix. I whipped off my jacket and let it flap away over the spreading chasm, exposing the unfinished wings of the dragon on my shoulders, already glowing with the mana my walk was pouring into it. Unfinished as it was, it couldn’t defend me—but it could still help me kick this freak’s ass.

“
Spirit of air,
” I murmured, “
give me wings.
”

Twin wings erupted from my shoulder blades just as the last rocks fell away beneath my feet, leaving me floating forward over the vast gulf like a glowing angel. This was beyond even my power, but the surge of mana rippling off the pavement buoyed me up. The more Zipperface fed magic into the chasm, the higher I flew—and the closer I got.

Zipperface’s white gleaming eyes were fixed on me, and I stared straight back at him. I saw his logic now: he was a
projectia
, an image created by a magician operating somewhere else. Normally that figure replicated the image of the caster as closely as possible, but this figure was inspired by graffiti’s love of distorting an image into a cartoonish parody.