Frost Moon (32 page)

“Well,” Transomnia said. “I can’t say the same for my rent-a-thugs.”

“I
told
you to warn them about her magic,” the hooded figure hissed.

“I
did.
Perhaps they didn’t believe me, or perhaps they thought she would have more sense than to risk a hostage,” Transomnia said, glancing at Cinnamon. She
mmmm’d
and kicked, and Transomnia shook her once, a sharp snap that flicked her head back and forth and made her body go limp. “Did you kill them?”

“No,” I said. “They’re all still alive. I just ran them off—”

“Damnit,
if you were going to fight you could have at
least
done us the courtesy of killing them,” Transomnia snarled, fangs flashing. “Now
I’ll
have to run them to ground. I
hate
tying up loose ends— speaking of which, step up to the table, Dakota.”

He pointed to the table with the shears, but I stood frozen.

“Ever smashed a cat’s brains out against the wall?” he said, giving Cinnamon another shake. “Like salsa made from steamed cauliflower and cranberry sauce—”

I swallowed. Cinnamon
claimed
she could soak up bullets; but you could
kill
a were by cutting off her head, so there was no way letting him slam her brains out could be good. I stepped forward to the table, scowling. “Hurt her, and I’ll—”

“Now, now, Dakota, as a tattooist you know the importance of proper hygiene,” he said, pointing at the kettle. “Why don’t you wash your hands before we get started? Dunk them deep—we wouldn’t want you to miss a spot.”

I stared into the huge kettle, swallowing. It was filled with something black, hot and steaming, running down over the edges of the vessel in dripping, frozen streamers. Some kind of disgusting potion? I looked back at him, and he raised the clippers to her ear— then her eye.

“It’s only getting hotter,” he said. “And my imagination is just running wild—”

I thrust my hands deeply into the kettle.

Like gloves made of liquid fire:
I screamed, jerking backward, pulling back hands and forearms dripping with black, scalding pitch. The sticky goop coated my hands like paint, like glue, cooling and drying so fast that half my fingers were already stuck together. With effort I forced my left hand opened, seeing no marks, no skin, only black sticky goo.

“You—you bastard,” I said, shaking. “I’ll—”

“Do nothing,” he said, pocketing the clippers and pulling out a syringe filled with a clear liquid. I cried out and tried to lunge around the table, but he slid it into Cinnamon’s arm with practiced ease and emptied it into her bloodstream. “And neither will she. Just a little medicine to help her sleep, and some silver nitrate to help it along—”

“You bastard,” I said, shaking.

“So you said,” Transomnia said, slapping Cinnamon’s head back and forth with his free hand, watching her sag until her head lolled with each blow. “But keep standing right there, or I’ll exercise my imagination.”

“Why should we need to do that?” the hooded figure said, with a touch of amusement. “Let’s get straight to why I came here—to see the goods. Strip, Miss Frost, and let’s see what you’ve got that I can add to my collection.”

Oh, God.
Exactly as I’d feared: the robed monk was the tattoo killer.

“You’re the third person to tell me to strip in as many days,” I said, shaking. “Go to hell.”

The killer snorted. “Strip, or we start with the stray—”

“No, no, she’s right,” Transomnia said, tossing Cinnamon aside like an old gym bag. “There’s no need for you to do that, Dakota. After all, it’s something I’d prefer to do myself.”

The table and vat flew aside as Transomnia leapt on me with blinding speed, and then threw a punch straight into my face.

39. ROUND THREE

When I was a child I used to play on an old squad car my dad kept in the back yard. I think he meant to fix it up and get it running again, but my dad was always more interested in police work than puttering, and so the car just sat there and rusted—until the day, when playing atop it with Savannah and Jinx, I tripped over the light bar and fell backwards off the car.

I thudded solidly on my back, vision erupting in a bright flash of light, all the air whooshing out of my lungs at once. I never lost consciousness, but scrambled immediately to my feet, gasping, unable to speak, unable to breathe, while my mother screamed at my father “Get that damn rust-trap out of here!” When I was older I realized I had bruised my diaphragm, but at the time all I could think of was the pain and being unable to breathe.

That’s what it felt like when Transomnia threw me through the door into Hell.

There was the same thudding impact, accented by the sound of splintering wood. The same flash of light accented by a tremendous vertigo. And the same whoosh of air out of my lungs, accented by a dizzying pain spreading over my back. I stumbled away from the door, gasping, away from Transomnia, until I hit the rail around the sunken the dance floor and pitched over. I fell flat on my back again, gasping uselessly like a beached fish for air, but no air came.

Transomnia stepped up to the rail and looked down at me, elegant and cruel in his long black coat. “Oh, come now, Dakota,” he said, hopping up onto the rail. “After your performance outside I’d hoped you’d have more fight left in you.”

I rolled aside as he dropped, stumbling to my feet, stumbling away—but he whipped round me, vampire fast, grabbed my pitch-covered wrist, and pulled it up behind my back.

“Now, now,” he breathed into my ear, wrenching my arm painfully, “see how much trouble little girls get into when they don’t do as they’re told?”

“F-k,” I gasped, “F-k hyu.”

“Now, now,” he said, even more patronizingly. “We both know I’m not supposed to do that—but if I were, I’d need to get rid of this, wouldn’t I?”

And he hooked one clawlike finger into the back of my sportsbra.

“Shine, solar radiance
!” cried a triumphant voice, and white-hot light burned across the dancefloor of Hell. Transomnia cringed and screamed, dropping me, and I fell back to see Jinx, guided by Alex, standing at the entrance of Hell. He carried a sword dipped in fire, and she held her spirit cane raised high in the air, its tip blazing with the brilliance of a miniature sun.

Transomnia scuttled sideways onto the handicapped ramp and sprinted up towards them, ducking low to use its wall as a shield from Jinx’s light. Alex whipped his fire sword round and sent a bolt of multicolored flame down the ramp. Transomnia dodged, leaping up into the upper VIP section in a crash of tables and chairs.

Alex advanced towards him, swinging the sword to bathe Transomnia in flames, but the vampire picked a table up like a shield and the wave of flame boiled away into the air. Alex struck again, but Transomnia rushed him through the fire, tackling him with the table and knocking him past Jinx, all the way back down the stairs onto the dance floor.

Jinx stood there frozen, head canted, listening. I croaked and tried to warn her—but Transomnia just grinned back at me, and advanced.

Jinx abruptly swung her cane backwards in a full arc, sweeping into the table with a crack of thunder. The table burst asunder into a thousand splinters and Transomnia flew all the way across the dance floor and to the opposite raised bar, shattering the back glass and slumping behind the counter. Jinx smiled, tilting her head, feeling for me.

“Dakota?” she said, twisting her cane until it brightened like a sun again.

“Beh—
behind you
,” I croaked.

The dark hooded figure I had seen in Purgatory stepped up behind her and stretched forth his hand, and simply said:
“See.”

Jinx screamed and held her hand in front of her eyes, tossing her cane away as if blinded by its light. She whirled, and the hooded figure stretched out his arm and clotheslined her, and she fell back to the ground in a little heap.

I tried to get to my feet, as the hooded figure stepped to the rail.

“Let’s simplify this problem,” he said, stretching forth his hand. “Sleep.”

40. SACRIFICIAL LAMB

Icy cold water splashed over me, and I screamed, bucking. I was awake, cold, and in pain, hunched over in a kneeling position, my head pressed to a stone surface before me. I tried to sit up, and found my hands bound together with wire, fixed tight to a steel ring set into the stone . My legs pulled apart by something similarly tight and sharp. And as the water ran down over me, I realized in utter terror that but for my steel collar, I was completely naked.

“Oh, God,” I said, looking up to see a box covered in tattooed skin.

I was on the main stage of Hell, tied to a flat stone disk. I’d never seen it at the Masquerade before; it was new. Before me, the dark hooded figure stood, vigilant, one hand resting on the box, that horrible box covered with tattoos ripped from their owners. His other hand held a silver knife. Beside him Transomnia stood, glowering, a little worse for wear but angry and alert, holding the pruners.

“Oh, God,” I said. I cringed, and my terror intensified as I realized they could
rape
me in this hunched-over position. Then I looked again at the box, and I realized the real reason I was tied like this was probably to harvest the Dragon from my back. “Oh,
God—”

“Shut up,” the hooded figure said.

“Let her whine,” Transomnia said. “I figure her friends ain’t done—”

“Good,” the hooded one said. “I’m counting on it.”

Transomnia’s eyes narrowed. “Are you now?”

“Yes,” the figure boomed. “Though, you’d think they’d’ve come all at once.”

My eyes caught a bit of movement, and—Oh, Lord—over to my right I could see Jinx and Cinnamon, hanging in the air, back to back, bodies making a cruel butterfly as they slumped away from the bloody nest of barbed wire that bound their arms and feet behind them. As they turned midair I saw they hung from a meathook dug into the wire. Saw blood dripping out of the barbs. Saw the drops fall onto Alex Nicholson, similarly trussed on the floor at their feet.

Oh, Lord. What had I gotten them all into? When I’d messaged Jinx, telling her what I was doing and to come get me if I didn’t call back in an hour, I’d assumed she would call the cavalry—not come herself and get killed.

“Or that at least
one
of them would have called the police,” Transomnia said thoughtfully. His eyes fell on me, and I cringed against the plate. “I was surprised
you
didn’t call the police, Dakota. You were a
good
girl—”

I was going to kill him. Somehow,
somehow,
I was going to
kill
him—

“It wouldn’t matter if she had,” the dark figure laughed. “I told you, I took care of that. I’d know—but more importantly, I can stop it. Even then, I think my pup’s raised enough havoc elsewhere to keep the police busy all night.”

“Fair enough,” Transomnia said. Suddenly he grinned down at me, and pulled a cell phone out of his pocket—
my
cell phone—and began thumbing through the contacts. “Not one call after I called you, Dakota, a
very
good girl. Is he about back?”

“Almost,” the dark figure said, and my stomach lurched. I had a very, very good idea of who he meant, and it was tearing me to pieces. “What do you have in mind?”

“To speed things up,” Transomnia said, reaching down and jerking my face up so I faced my phone. “Smile for the camera, Dakota,” he said.

“Fuck you,” I replied.

“I’ll pass, thanks,” he said, looking back at the dark figure. “I’d be second in line, after all, and I prefer unspoiled meat.”

My eyes widened in terror, and Transomnia took the picture.

“Perfect, perfect,” he said, smiling as he hit send. “Just the look I want.”

He leaned back and showed the picture to the hooded figure, who nodded.

“You have a great eye,” the figure said. “As always, you truly are an artist.”

“Thank you,” Transomnia said, with a small bow. He winked at me as he bent down, and I looked away again. “Don’t fret, little one,” he said, reaching down to tousle what was left of my hair, making me flinch, and him giggle. “It will all be over in—”

And then what had been the service door of the Masquerade exploded, showering Hell with shards of corrugated metal and sparks.

“Oh, if only help would arrive!” Transomnia said, grinning. “That was fast—”

“At last,” the hooded figure said, reaching out and pulling a staff into his hands with nothing more than the force of his will.
“At last.
He’s here.”

Lord Buckhead stood in the shattered door in his man-stag form, North Avenue behind him. His huge antlers cut through the upper ridge of the doorway like a hot metal knives as he strode under it. The matching antlers on his staff began to crackle with power, and the feathered skull between them glowed with a warm, green light.

His alien eyes swept over Transomnia, over me, and his brow wrinkled with rage. But then he saw the hooded figure beside me, his eyes widened, his forward charge halted, and his deer’s mouth opened. “The Archmage.”

The figure beside me tensed slightly, drawing in a breath. I expected some kind of banter, some kind of taunt; but the two figures just stared at each other.

Then Buck snorted and he swaggered into the room. I knew that look. I
owned
that look. It was bravado. Half of me felt flooded with relief that even Lord Buckhead resorted to bravado when facing a serial killer—and the rest of me was batshit terrified.

“You should never have come here,” Buckhead’s deep voice boomed. He extended his arms, and a small army of coyotes, hawks and smaller creatures began slipping through the door behind him. “I do not permit necromantic rites in my domain.”

“You
don’t
permit
?” the ‘Archmage’ asked. Casually he swept his silver dagger across my right forearm, and I cried out in pain. He jammed the bloody blade into a socket in his staff, just beneath its skull and crossbones, and it began to glow a deep, ominous red. “I’d wager you didn’t permit skyscrapers in your domain, but humans built them anyway.”

“I do not begrudge the humans their hives,” Buckhead said.