the night, limping and crippled by most definitions, with just my cane. I guess he did have reason to be bold.
I turned the corner. Normally on a Saturday night the Masquerade would be bustling, but now the marquee over the ancient, converted mill read: “THANKS HOTLANTA—17 GREAT YEARS.” I scowled, grasped at my courage, tried to regain my bravado as I limped round the corner and past the ticket gate. I could do this. I would do this.
Two thugs flanked the entrance to the club, one a fat, grinning redneck with a walrus moustache and the other a hard, balding man with glinting eyes.
“Lose the cane, bitch,” the balding man said crisply.
“I need it to walk,” I said, truthfully, clenching my fists on the cane.
“Lose it or the kid dies,” he said, drawing a gun—but not pointing it at me. Curious—he could have left it at ‘drop it, bitch’ punctuated by a gun barrel, but here he was skipping the direct approach and immediately resorting to leverage. He has orders not to harm me. I hoped I could chalk that up to a Transomnia’s desire not to disrespect Saffron’s collar. I really didn’t want to entertain the possibility that Transomina had a desire to preserve the canvas for the tattoo killer, who I really hoped was up in North Carolina getting his ass kicked by Philip.
I dropped the cane and kicked it away, holding my hands up and out placatingly.
“I’ll do anything you want,” I said, pleading. “Just don’t hurt Cinnamon.”
“Cinnamon?” Walrus said. “Who’s that?”
“That stray cat the fang picked up for his boss, idiot,” Baldy said.
The fang’s boss. Oh, hell. Transomnia was not alone.
“Now hands up,” Baldy said, stepping forward, and I raised my hands.
“Hands,” Walrus said. “What was that bit the fang went on about painting her tattoos to slow her down?”
“Hell if I know, didn’t make any sense to me,” Baldy said, eyeing my trembling hands with a mixture of contempt and appreciation. “Not that it matters, fight’s gone out of this one—does have nice tattoos, though. I said hands up, girly—”
I closed my eyes and raised my hands higher, pretending to whimper. A boss, a vamp, two thugs, maybe even a driver or a backdoor man. I felt Walrus and Baldy closing in on me through a ripple in the mana of my tattoos, and cringed, flinched back, with only one thought:
If I was going to beat Trans, I needed to thin out his support mechanism.
As Walrus’s paws closed on my hand, I popped out my other hand and nailed Baldy straight in the face, discharging all the mana I’d stored in the vines hidden beneath the right arm of my turtleneck in a sudden magical POP. Darren might have not let me into his classes yet, but I had taken tae kwon do in college. I knew from my time on the mat that even people who could see how tall I was never expected that I had the reach I did. Baldy toppled backward, stone cold, and I twisted my elbow round to block Walrus’s punch an instant before it hit me.
“Damnit, bitch, you settle down—” he snarled, hand clamping down on my left. He was immensely strong—hey, he was a guy—but I didn’t need testosterone to beat him.
“Big beefy guy like you should have a tattoo,” I said, clamping my free hand down on his and twisting it round so I could grab it with my trapped one. “Why not try one of mine?”
And then I let all the mana in my left arm surge into the snake tattoo, which reared to life and hissed at Walrus. He screamed and tried to get away, but I held on as the snake slid off my arm and latched on to his.
Walrus stumbled away, tumbling to the ground. “Get it off me!” he screamed, twisting, doing a passable St. Vitus’s dance. All he was doing of course was irritating the hell out of it; you could hear the tattoo hissing and sparking as it coiled over his body, looking for a comfortable home. “Get it off me! Get it off me!”
“Ready to give up?” I said, dropping my vest, pulling off my turtleneck and my sweat pants to reveal a sports bra, short pants— and a hundred magical tattoos.
“—get it off me—get it off me—” Walrus screamed, getting up and stumbling away.
“Crap,” I said, watching him go. Apparently my snake wasn’t coming back. “I’m going to have to tattoo another one.”