Blood Rock Read Online Free PDF Page A

to fingerprint it, even though the killer couldn’t have used it to make this mark—”
    “I get the point, I shouldn’t have touched it,” Horscht said, staring down at the can, a plain white affair with a larger-than normal top and glittery gold oozing down one of its sides. “But I did take a picture, and I do remember where I got it—in the yard where we found the basketball goal. These crime scene guys, they think they’re so sharp but they miss stuff—”
    At that crack, McGough, who had calmed down as Horscht explained himself, suddenly glared at Rand, who scowled back at him. I remembered the ‘first responders’ crack. Oh, great. I’d just blundered onto some internal rivalry in the APD. Joy.
    “—and I thought this was evidence,” he was saying. “Why are you so sure that it isn’t?”
    “Fair question,” I said, “but Home Depot doesn’t sell spray cans filled with a thousand bucks of magical pigment, and even if they did you wouldn’t want to spray a magical mark—”
    “Why not?” Horscht said, shaking the can experimentally. “I mean—”
    “NO!” yelled McGough, but it was too late. Horscht squeezed the top, and a screaming blaze of golden flame erupted as the magical ink— magical ink, oh shit! —reacted against the stray mana floating through the air. He flinched and screamed, dropping the can, which skittered across the pavement, propelled for a moment by an elaborate trail of fire.
    Like a fat number six made of yellow and orange sparkles, the fireball folded in on itself and curled lazily up into the sky, taking the trail with it, coiling off into the clouds. Horscht was still screaming, chest and face covered in glowing wildstyle flames, but I grabbed him, flexed my hand over his face and chest, generating enough mana to pull the ink out of his skin before it could set and do damage. The sparkling stuff began attacking my skin now, a thousand pricking ants, but I just shook my hand until it dissipated into a cloud of colorful, acrid dust.
    “Damnation, Horscht,” Rand said, steadying him. “You’d think you’d never been on a crime scene before. What were you thinking?”
    “I don’t know, sir,” Horscht said, scared. “I’m sorry, sir—”
    “You can’t play around with this shit,” I said. “Magic is really dangerous.”
    “Cut him a break, he showed us all up,” McGough said. “Sorry I went off on you, Horscht. This is the best piece of evidence yet.”
    We all stared at him in shock. McGough’s bluster was gone, replaced with a quiet seriousness. He’d put on a rubber glove and picked up the can, turning it so I could see an air valve sticking out of its neck, like you see on bicycle tires—a rechargeable spray can.
    “Hell, Frost,” he said, “I sure wish you hadn’t been wrong about this.”
    I stared at it. “Me too,” I said. “I’d never heard of magical marks this powerful before today, and if someone has learned to spray paint them …”
    “ … we have a big problem,” McGough finished.

Sticky and Sweet

    Gibbs questioned me, and it didn’t take long—he was polite, efficient, and to the point. “That does it,” he said, putting a few finishing touches on the statement. “Anything to add?”
    “No, but I do have a question,” I said, shivering, hands on my scraped knees, staring down at my jeans shorts. “Can I get my clothes back, or are they evidence now too?”
    “I’m having them dry cleaned,” Gibbs said, deadpan.
    “ What? ” I said, then blinked as he grinned. “Oh, very funny.”
    “Sign this, and I’ll fetch your things so you can get dressed,” Gibbs said, handing me his clipboard. “Just to warn you, they’ll probably want you at the station later.”
    I sighed and looked over the form. It summed up my morning in a few short lines: school shopping with daughter (with name and address of my alibi), police summons (with time of call noted), and failure to prevent magical attack (which resulted in