Cheat the Grave

9

I drove. Specifically, after Skamar dropped me at the guard-gated compound my not-so-dearly departed stepfather had left to me, I had the estate guard let me into the garages, left my black Porsche there, and took Xavier’s gold-toned Bentley. I’m sure that had him squirming six feet under.

Sailing from the gates and out onto residential streets stained with neon and oil, the Continental GT was the opposite of urban camouflage, yet I didn’t think Sleepy Mac knew the difference between a Bentley and a Buick. I figured he was aware of Olivia’s possessions and routine, which was why I didn’t head to Valhalla. Despite the army of security at the casino, I wouldn’t be any safer there than at the death house. It would also be the equivalent of thrusting innocents into his homicidal path. Besides, companionship was an illusion. Despite Skamar’s reluctant promise to watch over me when possible, I was as alone as when Warren had abandoned me on the shallow bank of the Las Vegas wash.

So I drove through the bold, bleak city, a landscape colored by my own problems, wanting to at least make Mackie work to find me. And though still shaky from losing Luna, still horrified at the nature of her death, I was steadying. I’d long faced my personal demons head-on, and merely running made me antsy. Even if I did have a good reason for it. To temper my unease, and at least feign proactivity until I figured out what to do next, I pulled out my smartphone and surfed the Web for info on Arun Brahma. I hadn’t forgotten that either he or someone around him was angling for me, or that they were using Cher’s family-my only remaining family- to do so.

Rich as the proverbial Midas, untouched by even a remote whiff of anything resembling a recession, the international textile magnate Arun Brahma was also the kind of handsome some would call devastating. As someone with a good deal of experience in real devastation, I wouldn’t go that far, but I could understand Suzanne’s attraction. He had the gold undertones of his Indian descent, with the strange light eyes that relatively few in his culture were blessed with-which was why, I decided, they were so desired. People always valued more that which the masses did not possess. Stick the same eyes in the face of a Swede and they wouldn’t be remarkable at all.

Yet combined with the dusky skin and perfect thatch of ink-dotted hair, they were remarkable. The photo I pulled up with his Wikipedia entry showed a man who knew it too. His smile was cool and wide, smug with the knowledge that he’d been born with reservations tapped out in his name. Here is your palace, Mr. Brahma. Here is your empire. The world is your garden, everything in it yours to be plucked like fruit.

I wanted to hate him. My knee-jerk reaction was to dismiss a man born to the lucky sperm club. Yet I caught the envious thought like a fly between two fingers, and just as swiftly flicked it away. Who was I to talk? From the outsider’s perspective, Olivia Archer was a bubble-headed debutante with an entire empire also thrown at her rose-petaled feet. Everyone had some sort of substance to them, even if it was only the clay that made up all of humanity. My purpose in studying Arun now was to find out what lay beneath the slick, playboy exterior.

Because there was more to Arun Brahma than that. Either he was an agent masquerading as a mortal, or he was a rogue agent who’d somehow made his way into the valley. I leaned toward the latter explanation, if only because he could travel so freely between countries and continents, something a real agent, Shadow or Light, could not do. But why his interest in me? And why now?

I looked up, and realized with a start that nearly an hour had passed. I’d been driving in circles both mentally and literally-getting nowhere on the streets or in my search for any real information on Arun. I also found myself skimming the warehouse district, and did a quick U-turn without stopping. The troop owned a building not fifty yards away, though the place had essentially been Hunter’s. He had set the security system, laid the booby traps coiled inside, and run the tests to develop weaponry for the troop’s battles with the Shadows. But now he was gone and there were only unfinished sketches inside, foam mock-ups for conduits he’d never make, and a ceiling of mismatched stars above a bed we’d once made love in. Everything he’d left behind in this world locked up tight. Everything but me.

“Damn him…” Running from the thought, the Bentley’s engine growling like a low-slung predator on the streets, I wound up at another unexpected destination. It was probably just my research on Arun and the mysterious trunk left by someone in his party, but it was as if my subconscious was touring all the places haunting me. Idling before the dilapidated house Cher and I had visited the night before, I willed myself to keep driving until I either found a safe place or ran out of gas, whichever came first.

The neon green sign spelling psychic flickered on while I idled. Leaning forward, I peered through the windshield at the boarded-up building. Nothing moved, and after another moment I slid from the car’s high-tech womb and into the chill night. A man’s harsh, rattling laugh sounded from the nearby apartment complex, an answering hoot rocketed into the night, and if I squinted, I could imagine myself in a bombed-out country with rubble and lean-tos competing to hide the most menace.

Sidestepping a stain that looked like it could rear up and bite, I fought the impulse to turn back. I’d done my best to honor Warren’s wishes and stay away from the Zodiac world, but what he should have done was tell the Zodiac world to stay away from me. If he wasn’t going to protect me, then I’d do what I’d always done…as Joanna, as the Archer and Kairos, and now as Olivia: arm myself.

My eyesight, always dim these days, adjusted slowly, but I spotted the spindly form of the clay pot and dead plant upturned next to the door.

And the man who wore bones on the outside of his skin was waiting.

Again, he was not dressed for company. The same torn, grubby jeans-too loose for the thin white body painted black. Thank God for the slivered light angling through the boarded-up windows like lines on a music sheet. If not for that, he’d have looked exactly like the skeleton he was pretending to be, the tattooed bones inky in relief, his sunken eyes twin voids of dark knowledge. His nails, living dead things, writhed slowly as he considered me.

“No mask this time,” he said, though I didn’t know how he could tell with eyes sewn shut.

“You’re a Seer.” I fought not to cross my arms. He’d know it for self-protection, not defiance, and I needed defiance. “You already know who I am.”

“And why you’re here.” He swung the door wide to reveal a room bare but for the dust. And, I thought, the ornate chest marking its middle like a black hole. Holding my breath, I edged past the Seer, pretending not to hear his inhalation, or his nails clacking as he shut the door behind me.

“That where the psychic part comes in?” I asked, struggling to keep my back to him. I wouldn’t be able to stop him from killing me now. And why would I want to see death coming anyway?

“It’s merely obvious. Question is, do you know?” He appeared in front of me. Just like that. One sharp clack of toenails like talons and his breath was on my cheek. He angled his head, his beard forking right. “Quick-what do you most desire?”

“Protection,” I said, sighing deeply. There was a relief in speaking openly again with someone about the underworld and my former place in it. It was like the first breath after taking off tight clothing worn too long.

“To arm myself. I need help.”

“Then you shall have those things.” His lacquered nails glinted in the slanted light as he gestured to the chest.

“We all manifest our true desires. As long as we name them, of course.”

Because desires were the emotions that most heavily controlled our thoughts, and the Zodiac world had taken the “it’s the thought that counts” principle and turned it into a religion. Thoughts-precise, applied, fixed- determined action. They could create living beings and walls and plant life out of nothing. Our minds were our might.

I smiled wryly as I crossed the shadow-drenched room. I should have gone for the man, the munchkins, and the picket fence. I’d have made a kick-ass soccer mom.

Dismissing the pipe dream, I traced the symbol centered on the chest’s carved and silken top. The one I’d drawn from memory and that had so interested the Tulpa. “May I?”

“Do you believe you are the Kairos?” he asked.

Jerking my head, I flipped open the lid. “I believe I still count.”

He made a considering noise in the back of his throat. “That’s a start.” Then a pause. “My name is Caine.”

I nodded to acknowledge I’d heard, but the odd arsenal before me was a shadowy attraction, like death beckoning. All four weapons I’d seen before were here; maybe Arun Brahma was an ally. I tested the hinge on the trident, a thrill reverberating up my arm as the blades winged open with a definitive snap. It was older than me by at least two lifetimes, but still sharp, which was all that mattered.

It’s also magical, I thought, retracting the blades and tucking it into my oversized bag. Conduits were allegedly taboo for me now. Most often they turned impotent in mortal hands, though in some cases they backfired. Seeing the gun with the coolly glowing liquid vials again, I was too juiced to care. It felt like a part of me, long buried, had just lifted the casket lid. Better to die armed than stand flatfooted against a magical blade.

I placed that into my bag too, though the saber with an additional firearm was too large to tuck away. Good thing it was winter. It could be concealed in a long coat. I decided to leave the cane, with a blade at its pommel, out. Carrying it as Olivia Archer would either be attributed to affectation or need. It was well known I’d only recently rehabbed from a near drowning. As to actually using it, or any of the conduits, I guess I’d test the backfiring theory when the time came.

“Don’t forget the additional ammo,” Caine said, jerking his head. His beard did the pointing for him. “That’s all there is.”

Because the weapons were so old. Their controlling agents were long dead…as were the weapons masters who’d created them. Every paranormal weapon was made for a particular agent, and most effective in its original owners’ hands. However, they could also be inherited, which was how I’d once gained my palm-sized bow and arrow.

I sighed, still wishing for my conduit. Nothing else was so perfect an extension of my body, as if my skin wrapped around it to draw it closer to my bone. I glanced up to see Caine’s attention on me, despite his sunken gaze. He would know of my losses. No reason he couldn’t tell me about his.

“What happened to your eyes?” I asked, with the same directness most Seers used. People who could intuit others’ designs and deeds before they occurred had no need or patience for pretense. I’d learned that from Tekla.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” He shifted so his face fell into the fractured light. “My visions are gifts from the Universe, but a great gift requires a great sacrifice. As you know.”

I did. Tekla’s gift had taken a good chunk of her sanity. She slept sporadically, mumbled to herself, obsessed over her charts. Screamed in the night. I used to feel sorry for her. Lately I’d found myself thinking, So what?

She had more than enough power to compensate, and so did Caine.

I turned. “I don’t want to give any more.”

“That’s your problem.”

“My problem,” I snapped, “is that no one will leave me alone.”

He shrugged. “And that you wallow in self-pity.”

“Fuck you,” I said, drawing it out. It felt good to say to a person who could snuff me like a cigarette. I muttered it again, even lighter.

“Thank you for confirming it.” Caine’s tone was taut, like it was threaded with a thin strip of wire. “But don’t dare say that again. Your losses have nothing on mine.”

We had losses in common? Doubtful. But it’d been a long time since anyone wasn’t patronizing me. “I’m sorry.”

“I understand your wish for less weight on your life,” he said, inclining his head. “But what you should really be wishing for is more strength to bear it.”

“Wishes don’t mean shit.”

“True.” He closed the distance between us again, his nails clicking like children’s jacks against the scuffed wood floor. “You must take action. Which is why I sewed my eyes shut as soon as I began to See. I knew the narrowing of my sight would make me stronger than the distractions’ full vision would allow.”

“You…did that to yourself?” I shuddered at his nod. Tekla had nothing on this guy’s madness. “Let me rephrase my earlier statement. It’s not that I don’t want to give any more. I don’t want to lose anything more.”

Including my eyesight. I turned quickly and headed for the door.

“Better to know what you do want than what you don’t.” Caine clacked over to the window, and I wondered if he’d counted out feet from one side of the room to the next. Without touching the wall, he pointed between one of the boarded-up holes like the view was a good one. “Like him.”

My hand slipped from the doorknob. “Who-”

The homicidal whine started up then, a long, loud throat-burn that made me wonder how he, it, breathed.

“Mackie.”

Caine stepped aside as I ran to the window, hunching to peer through one of the fist-width slits. Caine remained still, head tilted, the nails of his right hand clacking lightly against the wall, like mice fleeing up its sides. Meanwhile, Mackie tore into the Bentley. Face hidden beneath his inky bowler hat, he hunched on the shining hood, knife plundering sheet metal like scissors slicing rice paper. Ripping strips of the hood back with one hand, he then dropped inside, his guttural whine pitched high as he went to work on the oiled leather seats.

Shit. How’d he get there so fast? I’d never even driven the Bentley before. From the way Mackie was shredding it, I wouldn’t do so again. “He wants to kill me.”

“More than anything.”

Caine’s nails snapped louder, and I glanced down to see the black bone tattooed on his forearm flex with his fingers. I didn’t think he was doing it consciously, but the motion proved mesmerizing. In the dim room I could almost be lieve the bone moved, inky against the skin, defined and liquid all at the same time. Looking up, I saw his nostrils widen, opening and closing like fish gills, seeking to discover exactly what sort of monster Mackie was. He was also sensing Mackie’s destructive rage in a different way than I ever had.

One, I thought, looking back down, I’d never even conceived of before.

The bones on Caine’s body continued a sinewy, almost sexual dance that traveled up and then back down the length of his body. Yet all the energy was derived from and concentrated in his fingertips. They vibrated finely, black nails banging into each other like wooden wind chimes. He almost appeared elegant, feeling out the world not through sight like everyone else, but through little implosions of movement on the air. I tested the theory by waving my hand at my waist, as if motioning him away. His pinky darted in my direction, taking on an unnatural angle before twitching and falling back into the reading rhythm of his other fingers.

His head was still upturned, but if he had eyes, they’d have been closed. A moment later he finished this vibrational reading and dropped his arms to his sides. “Oh. He’s new.”

Why’d he have to sound so damned impressed?

“No, he’s old,” I said on a long sigh. Mackie’s head shot up, his long neck craning from the destroyed car like the tourists in their moon roof limos. His feral grimace went wide and he snarled into the air. Rabid wolves might make that sound. People didn’t.

Caine raised his brows. “You may want to call the police. Tell them vandals have your car.”

Shaking my head, I pulled out my single-use cell. “He’ll mow down the mortals.”

Warren could very well take care of this. I’d saved his ass enough times, and besides, he’d told me to let him know of any other rogues. “I’m calling the Light.”

“Wait!” Caine reached out, no longer elegant as he scrambled to grab at my wrist. I still didn’t understand the purpose of the nails. They seemed more of a hindrance than help. “The attention from the mortal population will be enough to scare him off. He’ll want to remain under the radar as long as he can. Besides, other than Tekla, your former allies have never been mine.”

Other than Tekla? I drew back, distracted that this man would know the powerful Seer. It made sense, I suppose, as they had the same gift. But how did he know her? “Aren’t you Shadow?”

“Born free, here in this valley. Same as you.”

Not exactly an answer, thus all the answer I needed. I stepped back. Despite his blindness, he smiled. At least I now knew what we had in common. “A rogue,” I said harshly.

“I prefer the term ‘independent.’”

“So do I,” I said, and turned away. I had what I’d come for. I’d exit the wooden house, guns blazing, punch holes in Sleepy Mac while he was gnawing on the steering wheel, then run like crazy. If he caught me? Well, maybe it was a blessing. Maybe a girl wasn’t supposed to spend her lifetime on the run.

“Please,” Caine said as my hand hit the door. “Remember why you’re here.”

Protection. Armor. Help.

I looked down and considered the phone, still clutched in my other hand. I’d asked those same things of Warren and he’d turned his back. “The mortal police are no match for Mackie.”

“That’s why I’m here. Destiny has provided me with this choice. Our choices bring us relevance.”

I laughed bitterly, and Mackie heard all the way outside. A homicidal cry spiraled into the air. “I’ll settle for surviving the night.”

“I can give you that wish.”

Wishes don’t mean shit.

True. You must take action.

I put the phone away and squinted across the room, the meager light colorless against all the room’s shadows. I didn’t know what Caine sought from his destiny, but he waited, a motionless monster, for my answer. Just waiting. Letting me have a choice, when choices had been a diminishing commodity in my life, was almost too much responsibility to bear.

But Caine did see me. Despite his blindness, or because of it, he was offering his power to me now, when Warren and everyone else refused to give even an inch of respect or acknowledgment. How could they not know, when this man clearly did, that it was all anyone really wanted out of life?

“Fine. I’ll allow you, a rogue, to be my protection.” Then I pulled out the saber and pumped its attached firearm. “But I’m going to do it armed.”

Of course Caine was a Shadow. He said independent, yet everybody came from somewhere and had an individual lineage as clearly drawn as the lines on their palm. But when up against something as destructive as Mackie’s blade, those things ceased to matter. Race riots were quelled when it was the entire human race thrown into the fray.

A Shadow helping me. I shook my head as I backed into the center of the room, giving Caine access to the door. It was an awkward thought, like someone poking me in the brain.

“So don’t think about it,” I muttered to myself as Mackie’s war cry ricocheted up the staircase. Just aim.

But the building shook under Mackie’s ascent, and when his blade pierced the wooden door, I wished I’d run. Then I thought of Luna, eyes moving within a ruined body, and widened my stance. The scent of my defiance made Mackie squeal louder.

I waited for Caine to get in front of me, but glanced over to find him peering back out the window instead.

“The problem is over here, Skelator.” I probably shouldn’t let my nerves-and thus my mouth-get the best of me when someone was actually trying to help, but what was he doing by the boarded-up window? He couldn’t even see the moon he was gazing up at!

“A lovely evening, really,” Caine said, like we were meeting for a midnight cocktail. He stuck his fingers through the slats, palms disappearing out the window, as if feeling for the night. “I can smell the spines on the yucca.”

A scrabbling on the floor, like Mackie was trying to sneak underneath. But when I whipped my gaze back, his blade was still actively sawing through the door’s center. “Caine?”

“I love the tarry wood scent of the creosote bush.”

“I don’t fucking care!” More scrabbling, more cutting. Caine was playing touchy-feely with the night sky and I was trapped inside a collapsible fire hazard across from someone who made him look sane!

Glancing at the floorboards as the sounds ran along the scarred planks, I wondered if Mackie was down there. For all I knew, the blade imbued with his soul energy could cut all on its own. I backed up, heard more scrabbling behind me, and altered direction. It was like playing hot potato with the floor, trying to avoid getting burned.

Until I tripped over something and fell on my ass. Pushing to my feet, my fingers slipped alongside something abrasive, like an exposed extension cord. Odd, I hadn’t seen it before. Usually hyperaware of my surroundings, especially in a battle, I knew my mortal eyes had failed me again.

Gaze and gun focused on the knife at the door, I used my foot to tap out the dark space on the floor. I found that strange ridge again, and followed it backward…all the way to Caine. More specifically, to his foot.

“Ew!” I jumped again. Mackie howled in the hallway. Caine continued to lean against the wall, breathing in the moonlight, hands outside. I bent, squinted, then my eyes widened as I held back a squeal. Caine’s talons had lengthened into black spears that cut shavings into the floor as they slithered all around the room. I followed the one I’d first encountered back to the room’s center, realizing it had cut a path around me on its way to the front door.

Caine was standing in front of me, I realized. At least, his toenails were. And what allowed all that forward extension? I lifted my gaze to find the tattoos on his body pulsing like individual hearts-two hundred and six of them, I bet-one for each bone in his freaky body. I also realized I was having trouble seeing, like the skeleton drawn atop that malleable skin was pulling in all the light. Opaquely, the tattoos burned.

A tremendous crash sounded at the door, then Mackie’s howl slid around the frame. I shook and fired off a round, wincing from the sound and in belated anticipation of losing a limb. Yet the conduit didn’t misfire, and after another cry from Mackie-this one steeped in pain-I knew my bullet had struck home. I aimed again.

“Please don’t put holes in my door,” Caine said calmly. “I’ve got it from here.”

And he did. His ten nails had made their way across the entire floor like roots, planted like they were born of the wood grain. By now they’d disappeared beneath the door’s frame, and whatever they were doing, Mackie didn’t like it. With a furious grunt, the knife disappeared, and then the pounding began. The building shook with each blow.

“He’s cutting them,” Caine said unnecessarily. I refrained from telling him I thought they could use a good trim. The lacquered bone-nails were the only thing keeping Mackie from this room. Caine leaned against the wall like he had a listening glass pressed there, and I heard a sinuous slide making its way over the roof and the building’s sides. “It’s okay. My fingernails are almost there.”

Mackie seconded that with an infuriated howl.

“Are you hurting him?” Not that the idea bothered me. But if those nails turned into spears, it was something I needed to know.

Caine angled his head once in negation. “They grow too slowly for that. I’ve often wished for a nice swift jab, an exact thrust. Alas, it’s not my gift.”

“So…you’re just holding him there?”

“No, he can move, but it takes effort. Every time he frees himself from one nail, two more replace it.”

Or nineteen I thought as the building shuddered over and over again.

“It’s like trying to escape an octopus. Mind, it’s pure defense, but it allows me to touch others without them ever touching me.”

“Awesome gift.” Minus the foot fungus.

“He’s fast, though.” Then he muttered to himself. “Can’t crush this one…”

“It’s the blade.”

Caine nodded. “Let me lead him away from the door. Then you can run for it. Mind, I can hold him the night, but no longer. And he won’t fall for the same trick twice.”

So I waited, marking Caine’s progress by the scrabbling of nails over the rooftop and the occasional blade piercing the rotted wood. I wanted to run when Mackie hit the apex-I wanted to pump the entire round of glowing ammo into his stomach, but Caine asked me to hold my fire until I was outside, and it was the least I could do. This was his home, and despite the sparse interior, I got the feeling he’d been here awhile.

Finally, Mackie was entrapped in the web of nails on the house’s side, Caine pulling him near, ostensibly so the new growth could reach Mackie quickly every time a nail was cut. The nearness to those long, strong fingertips also increased the likelihood of crushing the raging man. I began relaxing, readied by the doorway, when something unexpected happened.

“Ouch.”

For a moment I thought I’d misheard. But Caine’s face was black with wild and soundless shock, and I squinted at him warily. “Ouch?”

“He touched me.”

That was a severe understatement. Caine pulled his right hand-the higher one-back inside to reveal bloodied fingers…cleaved at the first knuckle. Blood poured down every digit, causing a macabre bracelet to appear on his wrist, but the nails continued to grow from their centers, black coils unfurling like licorice. Mackie, now close to his captor, had launched another, apparently new and untried assault.

“Never felt that before,” Caine said with a disturbing lack of concern. Then, inexplicably, he stuck his hand out the window again. Though anticipating the next blow, he jolted when Mackie struck, and I jumped with him.

“I-I could just run, you know.”

“Not yet.” He licked his lips, the slow swirl of his tongue at odds with the grunts coming from his throat. Mackie was relentless. “He’ll catch you.”

But these were like Tripp’s wounds. Something in that blade infected the agents Mackie struck, so while mortals died, agents were left wishing they had. “You have to cauterize it,” I said, remembering Tripp’s work at the jewelry shop.

Caine sniffed, nostrils going so wide it seemed he could take in every mote in the air. His nose was angled toward his outstretched arm, though, and after another moment-and three more strikes-he shook his head. “It won’t help.”

And yet he held his hands out there still. He even leaned closer, turning from me to press the front of his body against the wall. “I’ve never been touched in this way before.”

And suddenly I got it. He wasn’t offering protection from Mackie from purely altruistic purposes. No. He wanted to see what Mackie’s blade felt like. It had nothing to do with my fate, or our commonalities-few that they were. He didn’t feel a kinship with me beyond the here and now.

The bones atop his body seemed to sharpen with my realization, the full body bleed of tattoo work now making sense. So did the piercings along his ears and brows and spine. And the eyes. Oh my God. The eyes. This man had a love affair with pain.

“But what if I need you again?” I meant only to think it, but somehow whispered it aloud.

Caine’s head alone swiveled, ecstasy etched on his pained, pierced brow. “All you needed from me was imparted once you walked in the door. Walk out with it, and in a way, I will too.”

He knew he’d die here, hugging the wall in this crumbling shack, another victim of Mackie’s poisonous blade.

“I’m sorry.”

“Ah but it’s such a novelty to finally be touched.” And Mackie reached the digits on his other hand. Caine gasped, sewn eyes bulging, but when he’d finally regained breath, he rubbed his cheek against the splintered wall. “Do you understand? Being untouched is the price anyone in possession of strong defenses must pay.”

I raised a brow. He was imparting a life lesson? Now?

“One should feel the pain as it comes. Losses aren’t bad things in themselves. Not as long as you remain open to new sensation. Be careful,” he said, nodding at the forgotten treasure chest, “Or your defenses might wind up being your prisons.”

I wanted to say that only someone who’d never been touched could give such advice, but his sudden cry didn’t back me up. “Thanks for the weapons anyway.”

“Oh, those aren’t from me.”

“Then who-”

But before I could wonder about Arun, or voice my new suspicions about Tekla, he gasped. Mackie’s face appeared, sliced on the diagonal between the mismatched slats, and when his gaze landed on me, he opened his jaw wide and hissed. Caine turned his head to me, face etched in an orgasm of ecstasy and pain. “Go…” he moaned.

I lunged for the door. I avoided as many of the hacked nails as I could, stepping on and snapping the ones I couldn’t, then practically threw myself down the stairwell. Mackie screamed, and his guttural war engine cries chased me into the creosote-laden, moon-hung night.