Frost Moon (37 page)

At first what you see is easy to interpret: an outsider trying to fit in, or a rebel forced to fit in. But then your eyes do another double take: are those…
cat ears
poking out from beneath her head scarf? Did they
move?
And is that a
tail?
My God, honey, could she be one of those… what are they called… “werecats”?

Why yes, her ears did move, and yes, she’s a weretiger. But didn’t your mom tell you it’s rude to point? She has a name, Cinnamon Frost, and she’s my adopted daughter.

Both the Prius and the weretiger in its passenger seat are relatively new to me. I met Cinnamon only two months ago visiting a local werehouse to research a werewolf tattoo, and ended up adopting her after rescuing her from a serial killer who had used her to get to me. I picked up the Prius shortly thereafter, a little splurge after winning a tattooing contest.

The adjustment was hard at first: Cinnamon took over my house and tried to take over my life. But my Mom had been a schoolteacher, and I’d learned a few tricks. In the first few weeks after she moved in I put the hammer down, never smiling, setting clear boundaries for
her
behavior and
my
sanity. Finally—when she got past the point of the tears, the “not-fairs,” and the most egregious misbehaviors—I eased up, and we once again shared the easy “gee you’re a square but I like you anyway” camaraderie we’d started with.

Now we were peas in a pod; whenever I went out she tagged along, riding shotgun, listening to her audiobooks while I jammed to Rush. The two of us look as different as can be, except for the identical stainless steel collars about our necks, but one minute seeing the two of us laughing together and you’d think I’d been her mother for her whole life.

But today my sunny bundle of fur was feeling quite sullen.

“Don’t worry,” I said, patting her knee softly.
“One
of them will accept you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said, pulling her leg away and tucking her knees under her chin. Cinnamon
claimed
she didn’t want to go to school, but I’d learned her moods and knew that not only did she
want
to go to school, she’d had her heart set on
that
school, and was crushed to be rejected out of hand. She propped her head on her knees and stared out into the gentle leafy tunnel that was Ponce de Leon Avenue. “Just don’t you be sorrying me about it.”

“Who, me?” I said, grinning. “Do
I
say sorry? Oh, I’m
so
sorry—”

“Don’t you be starting that,” she said, putting her knuckles in her ears. Unlike a normal human, actually putting her long, clawed fingers into her huge cat ears could prove dangerous. Werekin could heal most normal damage pretty quick, unless it was dealt by something silver—but still, she tries to be careful. “Don’t even be funning about it—”

My cell rang and I gave it a squeeze to pick up. I loved my new Bluetooth earpiece, even though our receptionist at the Rogue Unicorn Tattooing Studio told me it made me look like I’d been ‘possessed by the Cybermen,’ whatever that meant. “Dakota Frost,” I said. “Best magical tattooist in the Southeast—”

“Dakota,” Uncle Andy said. “It’s Rand. Where are you?”

“Out school shopping with Cinnamon,” I said. When I was a kid, “Uncle” Andy was my father’s partner; now that I was an adult,
Detective
Andre Rand was my guardian angel in the Atlanta Police Department. Normally smooth, he sounded
very
stressed—and that scared the hell out of me. “What’s wrong?”

“Whats happened?” Cinnamon said suddenly, staring at me. “Who died?”

Immediately when she said it, I felt she was right. Something catches in a person’s voice when they report death. Listen for it, in those few horrible times in your life when someone around you gets the call: you can tell it from the grief in their voice, from the crumple in their reaction. Even a news announcer goes sad and sullen if they care one whit about who died.

“Andre,” I said, more urgently this time. “What’s wrong? Is someone hurt?”

“How quickly can you get over to the Oakland Cemetery?” he said.

I scowled; that was downtown, south of the last school. “Ten minutes.”

“Whatever you do, hurry,” he said. “Just—hurry.”

The phone hung up and I cursed, punching the trip computer to find the fastest route.

“Don’t be using that thing,” Cinnamon said, snapping her head aside in a kind of a sneeze. “It will rots your maps right out of your brain—”

“Crap,” I said. “It’s not going to let me do this while we’re moving—”

“Whip us round, takes Moreland to Memorial,” Cinnamon said. She pointed at an upcoming street. “No. Hooks right here, then rights on Fairview,
then
Moreland.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Not bad for someone new to downtown—”

“Don’t be so shocked,” she said. “I catches on fast.”

We shot down a mile of old warehouses and new apartments on Memorial before reaching the brick ramparts of Oakland Cemetery at the cross street of Boulevard. The winter chill had long since stripped the leaves off the trees, leaving branches stretched to the cloudy sky like the claws of dying things pleading to Heaven.

When we hooked around to the entrance, we found an officer guarding the driveway. As we pulled up to the striped sawhorse, I steeled myself for a runaround. My dad was on the force, Rand was a friend, heck, I was even sort of dating a Fed—but somehow six-foot-two tattoos-and-Mohawk just doesn’t mix well with cop.

But the officer’s eyes lit up when he saw us. He didn’t even check for ID—he just pulled the sawhorse out of the way and waved us forward. This was bad—they’d closed off the whole cemetery, and it was huge. I rolled down my window and asked, “Which way—”

“You Frost? Straight back,” he said, eyes a little wild. “Straight back! And hurry!”

“This is bad,” Cinnamon said, head craning back to look at the officer. “Rand’s sweet on ya but we never gets special treatments from the piggies—”

“Don’t call them ‘piggies’,” I said, swallowing, speeding down the tiny road.

“Why?” she asked, flicking an ear at me. “They can’t hears us.”

“And you knows that none of them are weres?” I asked, miming her broken diction. “You knows for sures?”

Her face fell. “No, I don’t.”

We bumped down a worn asphalt road through a canyon of elaborate Victorian markers and rows of Confederate graves. I grew more and more apprehensive as I saw officers spreading through the homes of the dead, searching. The road sunk down, the graves grew smaller, more sad, and we rolled to a halt in a forest of headstones at the bottom of the hill between the Jewish section and Potter’s field.

What seemed like a thousand flashing lights waited for us: police cars, an ambulance, even a firetruck, surrounding a crowd of uniforms, paramedics and firemen gathered at the end of the road in front of the low brick wall that ringed the cemetery. Striding out of them was a sharply dressed black man, bald as Kojak and twice as handsome: Detective Andre Rand.

I opened the door, my boots crunched on gravel, and my vestcoat swished as I stepped out of the car,
fhwapping
behind me in the wind as I slammed the door shut. The eyes of the officers fell on me, narrowing; I became acutely conscious of my Mohawk, of my tattoos, of my leather pants and ankle-length faux-snakeskin vestcoat: they all felt conspicuously out of place in this land of grey tombs and black uniforms. I’d felt more comfortable talking to the buttoned-down principal of the school we’d just visited; now I just wanted to go and change.

“Hi, Rand,” I said, forced cheerful, putting my hand on Cinnamon’s shoulder as she materialized in front of me—though she had drawn so close it felt like she was hiding behind. “Whats you— ahem. What do you have for me?”

At my grammatical slip Rand glanced down at Cinnamon briefly, trying to smile. His neck was wrapped in a stylish turtleneck, not unlike mine, but the rest of him was in one of his GQ suits that never seemed to get dirty no matter what he’d gone through. Today, however… his suit was torn. There was blood on the back of his hand. And not even Cinnamon could spark a smile. Rand was off his game, and I was getting more and more worried.

He glanced up, scowling. “Dakota, thanks for rushing. We really need you but… this is bad. Really bad. Cinnamon can wait in—”

“I can takes whatever you gots,” Cinnamon said indignantly.

He nodded sharply, turning back to the knot of officers. “Alright. Let me show you—”

“No-one thinks to ask me whether
I
can take it,” I said, stepping round Cinnamon.

Rand grinned back at me, but just kept walking. “McGough,” he said, “this is Dakota Frost. I think she can help us—”

“Well let’s hope somebody can, we’re outta options,” said a small, wiry, wizardly looking man wrapped in a Columbo trench. Like Rand, his coat was torn, his hands bloodied, but where Rand was thrown off his game, McGough’s movements were still crisp, his eyes sharp. A few nicks and cuts?
Bah.
Didn’t even slow him down.

But when he saw me, his eyes lit up in surprise. “Jeez, you’re tall.”

“And a happy hello to you too,” I said, followed slowly by, “Detective McGough.”

He looked down at Cinnamon, scowling. “You really want a minor on the scene?” Rand and I just looked at him, and Cinnamon raised a clawed hand and mimed a swat. “Fine, fine,” he said. “When DFACS comes calling, don’t come crying to me.”

“DEE-fax?” I muttered.

“Department of Family and—” Rand began.

“Alright, boys and girls,” McGough cracked with authority, wading back into the officers. They all jumped; he was little taller than Cinnamon, but his presence dominated the scene. “Move aside and let’s see if Rand’s pet witch can figure out how to handle this.”

Before I could even
try
to correct the ‘pet witch’ crack, the officers—all nervous, most worried, many nicked up like they’d been in a fight with a cat—parted so I could see the outer wall. My breath caught, and it took me a moment to realize what I was seeing.

The brick wall was sprayed with graffiti, a huge shock of exaggerated letters exploding out of a coiling nest of elaborately thorned vines. The graffiti “tag” was amazing work—even
I
had to admire the roses woven into the vines, and they’re a specialty of mine—but it was just background. Dead in the center of the tag, a man was crucified in a web of barbed wire, half-standing, half-sprawling in a splash of his own blood.

The man moaned and raised his head—and with a shock I recognized him: Revenance, a friend we knew as a guard at the werehouse—and a vampire of the Oakdale Clan.
What was he doing out in the day?
Automatically I looked up for the sun. I relaxed when I saw it hidden by clouds—and then something clicked in my mind, and I looked back in growing horror.

Revenance wasn’t crucified in the wires, but in the graffiti itself. The painted vines had erupted from the wall, fully dimensional, moving like they were alive, curling around him, hooking into his flesh, drawing blood and pulling outward—pulling as we watched.

The graffiti was tearing him apart.

It’s been a long road from my first stories in grade school to that night in 2007 when Cinnamon burst her way into the werehouse, and it would be hard to thank all the friends, family, teachers and colleagues who have helped me along the way. So I’ll thank instead all the people who helped me after I emerged from the haze of graduate school and began writing again in earnest.

First there are the Dragon Writers, the alumni of Ann Crispin’s Writer’s Workshop at DragonCon 2002 who have stuck together for all these years providing fellowship, critiques and moral support; then there’s National Novel Writing Month, a November challenge which prompted me to start writing novels again. But it wasn’t until I found the Writing Group at Barnes and Noble at Steven’s Creek in San Jose that things really began to gel.

The Writing Group’s facilitator, Keiko, set the tone with her innovative writing prompts and “we write, not critique” policy. Group regulars like Gayle, Liza, Carl, Mel, and Matthew have all worked together to create a wonderful environment for many writers to grow. Much of Frost Moon, including the first meeting of Cinnamon and Dakota, was written in 20 minute chunks at the Writing Group and then read aloud to the most supportive yet honest audience I could ask for. Thank you guys.

Frost Moon
is deliberately set in a world next door, and I am indebted to my research staff: to David for info about the APD, to Vandybeth for background on vampires, to William for his descriptions of Atlanta, to Keiko for linguistic analysis, and to my wife Sandi for character backgrounds. And my apologies to the whole city of Atlanta, which I metaphysically abused to wedge Dakota and her world right into the middle of landmarks like City Hall East and Little Five Points.

Frost Moon benefited greatly from the invaluable critique of my beta readers: Keiko, Gayle, Mel, Liza and Betsy at the Writing Group, also my wife Sandi, father-in-law Wally, and stepmother-in-law Barb (who copyedited it and read it aloud as an audiobook); and my good friends in the “Edge” from whom Atlanta’s Edgeworld got its name: the betas from the Edge included Fred, Diane, Gordon, and Dave.

Frost Moon
would not be in your hands if it wasn’t for Bell Bridge Books. Thanks to Nancy for noticing me typing away in the Dragon Con Writer’s Track and recommending Bell Bridge Books to me, to Debra for taking a chance on me and for her detailed editorial feedback, and to Debs putting up with me endlessly tweaking the manuscript days before the deadline.

And finally, thanks go out to the Big G. You know who you are.

—the Centaur, February 10, 2010

Dr. Anthony G. Francis, Jr. graduated from Georgia Tech in 2000 with a PhD in computer science and a certificate in Cognitive Science. In academia he applied principles of human memory to computer information retrieval; in industry he’s worked on software for search engines, robot pets, the military, the police and the CDC. Anthony spent most of his adult life in Atlanta, Georgia but he and his wife moved to San Jose, California when he joined Google’s search quality group. Perhaps surprisingly, Anthony has no tattoos, though he has spun fire and is a brown belt in the martial art Taido. Anthony is a science fiction author and a comic book artist and loves exploring the collision of hard science with pure fantasy.
Frost Moon
is the first in the
Skindancer
urban fantasy series, in which he has two books written, two trilogies planned, and has also started a YA spinoff featuring Dakota’s adopted daughter, Cinnamon. You can visit him and learn more about the world of Dakota Frost at
www.dakotafrost.com