Free Blood Rock by Anthony Francis Page B

accepted. “But no exceptions, and no outsiders in the dens.”
    I didn’t even have to think through it: I knew what waking up here alone would do to Cinnamon. “Then we go somewhere else,” I said. “Cinnamon has abandonment issues. I have to be there when she wakes up, or she’ll think I’m trying to get rid of her—”
    “Bull,” Gettyson said. “She knows you wants her in your entourage.”
    “She is wanted, but she’s not in my ‘entourage’,” I said.
    Gettyson reached in and grabbed Cinnamon’s hand, showing me the butterfly that I’d transferred to her skin the very first time I met her. “So why did you mark her?”
    “Maybe the Marquis ‘marked’ her when he took her in because all he wanted a canvas,” I said, “but I don’t do things that way. First, it was a free gift, no strings attached, and second, I’d have never transferred it if I’d known she was so young. Tattooing minors is illegal.”
    “Illegal?” Gettyson laughed, looking at me incredulously. He turned away, shaking his head. “Illegal. Of all the crazy—all right, all right. Set her down.”
    “I can carry her,” I repeated quietly. “She’s light as a feather.”
    Calaphase smiled again. “Give it up, Gettyson,” he said gently. “She’s the only person I know more obstinate than you, you old were-mule.”
    Gettyson just stared at me with those eerie eyes, as if he expected me to crack. His gaze drifted up and down, at Cinnamon, then my face, then my feet, then my face again.
    “She’s not getting any heavier from you looking at her,” I said.
    Gettyson snorted. “You can take her in, stay till she wakes. But that’s it,” he said firmly. “The moon will be damn near full before it sets. You gots to be gone before it gets too close.”
    I sighed. He wasn’t just determined to be an ass, he had a point. “Fair enough.”
    Gettyson nodded and led us towards the back of the werehouse, into the stack of offices and labs that had been converted into living space. There was no need of worry, they were just rooms and hallways, dirty, poorly lit—and covered with graffiti.
    I paused, staring at the dark, spray painted marks. Some of the lettering looked familiar, but they had little of the artistry and none of the movement of the tag that had killed Revenance. I shook my head, and descended the stairs into the depths of the werehouse dens.
    Beneath a dim bulb in a damp hallway was a wall of bars with a steel mesh door, locked with a deadbolt. Immediately I could see that it would keep in an animal with just paws, but a human could put his hand through the bars and let himself out. Gettyson opened the lock with a snap and took us in to a small cell with a cot and chair. It was surprisingly cozy.
    I laid Cinnamon down on the bed gently and arranged the blanket over her.
    “If you have any clothes for her—”
    “I’ll get some,” Gettyson said. “You needs to get a room like this.”
    “We’re having it built,” I said, patting Cinnamon’s head. “In the new house.”
    “Fine,” Gettyson said. “When … Cinnamon wakes, it would help me if you’d vacate. She knows how to let herself out, but the other residents won’t take too well if they finds you in here.”
    “I’m all right, Mom,” Cinnamon said weakly, and I looked down to see her reach up and squeeze my hand. “It just had been so long. I’ll be all right. Someday, when I’m old enough to wrestle the beast myself, I won’t need these stupid rooms anyways.”
    “You had me worried back there,” I said, tousling her hair.
    “Afraid I was going to slit your throat?”
    “No, afraid you’d step on your iPod,” I said, holding it out to her. “Safe and sound.”
    Cinnamon took it from me, holding it to her chest like a teddy bear. “Safe and sound.”
    It killed me to ask, but … ”Are you sure you’ll be safe with it if you turn?”
    “It’s ‘change’,” Cinnamon said, pointing with one long finger at a cubbyhole