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.
Trick of Perspective
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.