Cheat the Grave

15

I emerged from the rogue’s lair hesitantly, squinting like a newborn into a blinding winter day. For some reason I’d expected nighttime, but the sun rode high above the desert, sprawling around us like a forbidden planet. I felt like a cactus thrusting up through the crusty terrain, surviving despite the harsh climate, eking out an existence with only the barest of necessities. Not too far from the truth, actually.

Looking at Carlos-busy not looking at me-I wondered if he felt the same, emerging from an environment no one knew existed. Looking past him, I saw something else residing on the desert floor. Like the cactus, like me, it too was built for survival. And like most things on Frenchman’s Flat, it was also built for destruction.

“Go ahead,” Carlos encouraged, as I took an involuntary step toward the cache of weapons…those I’d just learned my mother had left me. “I always feel better about things after I hit something.”

I did too, I thought, gazing down at the trident, gun, cane and saber. They’d been returned to the original black chest, retrieved at some unknown point from Caine’s destroyed home. Its lid was propped wide and, in additional invitation, a bull’s-eye was set up across from it in the distance.

I reached for the saber, stroking its small antique firearm. Though still upset about the drugging, I wasn’t unaware of the faith Carlos was putting in me by bringing me here, revealing not only his location but the bulk of his plans. There was nothing keeping me from going back to Warren with the information, trying to insinuate myself back into the troop…or even to the Tulpa in efforts to exact revenge on my former allies.

Though Carlos wasn’t entirely without protection. The agents wouldn’t be able to destroy the bunker beneath Frenchman Flat because they couldn’t leave the city, unlike the rogues-and now me-who could travel freely. And right now, I thought, leaving didn’t sound half bad.

Lifting the saber, I tested its heft. Two months ago I’d have been able to propel the thing across the desert floor like a javelin, striking dead center ten out of ten times when standing still. Squinting, I sighted down the silver barrel. I’d be lucky now if my mortal eyesight would allow me to hit the thing at all.

I squeezed the trigger. There was a swift chuff, as if I’d shot air instead of a bullet, then silence. A miss. Gazing in the opposite direction, I sighed.

“You could do it,” Carlos said, reading my mind. “You could just start walking, head northeast toward Salt Lake. Use Olivia Archer’s money to alter your appearance, draw up new personal documents, build credit under a new name. Even enterprising mortals have managed all that.”

It wouldn’t be so different than how I was living now, I thought, reloading. All my possessions and habits dependent on the woman I was impersonating. Going through each day ever conscious of appearances. I sighted again.

“But-”

“There’s always a but,” I muttered, firing. Damned sun. Its glare was relentless, even in winter. I immediately reloaded.

“You can’t unlearn what you know. Your experiences this past year have shaped you into a different person entirely. Even with a full memory cleanse, there will be dreams. I know…because there was a time when I tried to forget as well.”

“What I need to forget,” I said, squeezing air-whoosh! “Is that last shot.”

Yet Carlos’s words made me think of my old boyfriend, a mortal and my first love, who’d recently undergone a memory cleanse. I wondered if Ben had dreams featuring him in the arms of the woman he’d known as a boy?

Or of watching the daughter he never knew he had playing in her yard, his own dark curls lying damp on her forehead?

Had I done him any favors in allowing his memory to be erased? The idea had been to free him from the knowledge of the Zodiac world, and keep him from being targeted by the Shadows. Maybe the cleanse worked better on those who’d always been mortal. I propped the saber back in the chest with a sigh, picking up the gun instead. I sincerely hoped so.

“You know I’m right. You’ve tried to forget the past before.”

I looked up at Carlos, a breeze shifting long strands of hair across my face. He meant the attack that had claimed my innocence, and nearly my life, when I was a teen. Brushing my hair back, I again turned away. “I never forgot.”

“No, you fought.” He joined my side, arm brushing mine. “But you cannot fight who you are. You must accept it, let the knowledge wash over you, and allow it to change you. The truth forces you to become who you are meant to be.”

“I’m not Shadow, Light, a rogue agent, or a leader. I don’t have any power and-as you might have noticed-I don’t really play well with others.” Relaxing my shoulders, I sighted the target. “I’m human, and nothing else.”

He snorted next to me. “So you’re exactly like all those who are unaware of beings who fight to control this valley and every person in it? Is that what you really want? A return to ignorance despite the truth tunneling beneath your feet?”

Sometimes. It would be infinitely easier to believe people acted of their own volition for both their good and evil deeds. Like the guy who’d tried taking my wallet while I sat alone and defeated on the cold winter ground by a loading dock. Could he take responsibility for the impulse…or had a Shadow once whispered in his ear? Had a not-so-coincidental series of misfortunes sent him spiraling into self-indulgent madness, making him prone to exert his control over someone who appeared weaker? Or was he just a prick?

I fired. A bubbling green vial shot forward, the barrel burned. The target stayed intact. My shoulders slumped.

“Face it, Joanna,” Carlos said, moving behind me. “You’ll never be blissfully ignorant again, wish it as you may.”

Wishes don’t mean shit.

You must take action.

“I want to be normal.”

“That’s different for everyone, isn’t it?” He put his arms around me, guiding the gun back to the target. Sighting for me, he guided the weapon higher than I would have. The liquid vial gleamed in the sunlight. “You, mi weda, will be normal when you accept your destiny as Kairos.”

Warren once believed that meant working on behalf of the Light. The Tulpa had been hedging his bets toward the Shadows…though if what Io had told me was true, he hated agents on both sides of the Zodiac. And now Carlos thought I could represent neither…and both. The Shadow will bind with the Light.

And do what? Create gray?

We fired together. The target’s center exploded…and disintegrated in an acid burn. I lowered my arm. Satisfying…though not as much as if I’d done it on my own.

“Well, I still don’t understand why it has to be me. You’re El Jefe,” I said, giving Io’s words a bite she hadn’t.

“Those men look up to you, they’re your army. So why don’t you unlock Midheaven? Fight your own war.”

I’d had my share. Turning, I held the gun out to him. He ignored it.

“We need more than just the lock removed. We need a woman to enter and free our men.”

Because Midheaven was ruled by women who could move about freely, while the men were slaves. I thought of the abject bitterness living in Shen’s gaze. Even in dreams, even unwittingly, I’d told him what to do with my will alone. Wishing might not mean shit in this world, but in an entire realm created from thought? It was everything.

But Carlos knew nothing about Solange, or Hunter, or the way I’d been treated the two times I’d managed to enter. If possible, Midheaven was more dangerous to me than this world. “Let my mother do it.”

Since you’re so buddy-buddy and all.

“Mortals can’t get near Midheaven.”

“I’m mortal.” And I was exhausted. I dropped the gun back into the chest.

“But you won’t be.”

I turned at the smile in his voice. “Really? Got a phone booth I can change in? Maybe an invisible plane and bulletproof bracelets while you’re at it?”

“No. Only the opportunity to help you achieve what you’ve already done twice before…” He paused for an imaginary drum roll, smile widening. “Gain the aureole.”

And even jaded, tired, and mortal, I could see how well that could work. The aureole allowed a person to wander the earth like a ghost-no one could sense, touch, or even see them unless they willed it. Yet to acquire such power, you had to kill an agent with his own conduit, turning their own magic against them. As Carlos had said, I’d done it twice, something no one else had managed. I swallowed hard. The whole plan was starting to make sense. “Look, if I don’t convince the Tulpa that I’m Olivia Archer, he’ll take me out. And if Warren suspects for one instant I’m work ing with you, he’ll do the same.” As much as I’d like to believe otherwise, I knew that much to be true. “There’s no way I can just hide out here, or take time off to go traipsing off to another world to gather an army meant to usurp them both.”

Surprisingly, Carlos didn’t disagree. “So continue being Olivia. Attend your meetings at Valhalla. Live in the mansion as the Tulpa expects. We will watch for Mackie…as well as a chance for you to gain the aureole.”

A chance to kill a Shadow agent. And then re-enter Midheaven and usher every last trapped rogue-men who’d gone there to escape something unsavory in their past-back out into the Vegas valley. Yeah, that sounded like a good idea.

But I thought of Tripp, and how he’d been the one to step up against Mackie. I thought of the men I’d spent time with in Midheaven, washed out lithographs of their old selves, sweltering in heat no living thing should have to bear. Even Shen, as much as I disliked him, deserved to be free of a tortuous place that slowly siphoned his soul.

But how unlikely that they’d follow me, that I’d succeed, or even manage to escape once I was there.

How much that would piss off Solange and her ilk, who fed off the souls of the agents trapped over there.

I was smiling faintly at the thought when I had another. Looking at Carlos, I said sharply, “I’m not killing one of the Light. I know you’re all one giant paranormal Woodstock lovefest here, but that’s not how this is going to play out.”

“Sí, mon. ” Carlos shrugged one shoulder, recrossing his legs on the desert floor. “Only Shadow. The Shadow.”

I jolted, self-preservation jump-kicking in my gut. “Which Shadow?”

“The one you’re closest to, of course.” Carlos squared on me, filled my vision, causing the desert and all other worries to disappear. Replacing them with a new one. “The Tulpa.”

I swayed, but shook off Carlos’s steadying hand. “The Tulpa can’t be killed.”

That’s what made him so effective and dangerous and powerful. Even conduits were useless against him. In fact, the energy spent trying to bring him down made him even stronger. He fed off the intent of his attackers. Even Skamar, another tulpa and the most powerful being to ever challenge him, hadn’t found a way to kill him outright.

“That’s because nobody ever tried to turn his own weapon against him.”

“But he doesn’t have…” I stuttered into silence under Carlos’s weighted stare. A magical weapon, a conduit, was as much an extension of an agent as a limb. Once made and bestowed, it was a part of them, and by striking them down with it, you turned their own magic against them. It was a natural law in any world. No person could stand divided, or in conflict against a part of themselves. And true, the Tulpa didn’t have a conduit forged in a smithy, and fitted to his attributes, abilities, or whim.

But he did have a daughter. Someone who was a part of him. Someone who, over the past year, he’d simultaneously courted, feared, and wanted dead.

“You are that weapon,” Carlos said, supplying the thought’s end for me. “Better, now that the whole of the paranormal world knows you’re mortal, he will never suspect you might be his downfall, blood against blood.”

Io’s lesson about the body’s connections was still fresh in my mind, as were the scents it’d brought to life. Coupled with her warning about Ashlyn’s fast approaching second life cycle, I realized there was more at stake in the immediate future than my life. So regardless of what Carlos said, I didn’t have a choice. I needed to do this for her. But damned if I wasn’t going to get something out of it too.

“Maybe,” I finally conceded, nodding slowly. “But if I’m going to kill the Tulpa, then enter Midheaven and free an army-”

“Then lead it,” Carlos added, seeing no reason to hold back now.

“Right,” I said dryly. “If you want me to do all that while still running from Mackie and hiding it all from my former troop, then I want something in return. Something equal to the risk.”

He finally looked wary. I let him think about it, and it didn’t take long. He shook his head. “She won’t like it. She may even stop working with us. Helping us.”

“I may stop working with you,” I said testily, and turned back to the weapons. “Look, Io said she worked on my mother before. She probably gave her the same protective coating for her organs, right? What else did she give her, Carlos? What else do you know?”

“Nothing. Zoe Archer is infamously paranoid and secretive. She trusts no one.”

“But you’ve been in contact with her.” Pulling the ancient trident from the chest, I flicked the blades open. They winked sharply in the full day’s light.

“She’s in contact with us. That’s how it is with her. I go along with her whim.”

Because he hoped she’d lead him to me. “I thought she had your father killed?”

“I don’t blame her. She was newly mortal, had no defenses against attack in the Guardian Angel Cathedral. Besides, she has done many helpful things for us since. While others merely sit around and talk, her actions are proof of her intent.” He pursed his lips and locked his dark, serious gaze on mine. The lone wolf act, coupled with a tragic past and dark good looks, was a heady mixture. His expression alone could gain a hundred beds. If I wasn’t already actively avoiding dangerous men, I might have inched closer. “But I can’t find her, no more than the Tulpa, or Warren. We’ve all looked, you know.”

I hadn’t known that about Warren…but it didn’t surprise me. He did a lot of things without the rest of the troop knowing.

I straightened, still determined. “But they don’t have her lineage and bloodline living inside of them. I do. I just need you and Io to help me develop my hereditary gifts.”

He continued gazing into the distance, breathing in deeply before allowing a slow nod. “It may be possible to redevelop your senses. With time and study and Io’s help.”

“That’s all I’m asking.”

Then I’d go after my mother myself. Because with her granddaughter’s second life cycle approaching fast, she’d be sticking close to Ashlyn. Thanks to a Shadow agent named Regan DuPree, the Tulpa knew of his granddaughter’s existence, and was gunning for her too. A feminine triptych, I thought wryly. He wanted us all.

Yes. My mother would be very close.

So with that alone as incentive, I would have agreed to help Carlos. But Mackie wouldn’t stop until either he or I were dead, and I certainly couldn’t take him on by myself. But with the grays’ help, an army at my back, it might be possible to survive.

As for a return to Solange and Midheaven and the special horrors awaiting me there…well, that was a worry for later. And I owed Carlos enough to try.

So he smiled when I nodded, a heady look bringing out new angles on the beautiful face, and I glanced back down at the conduit in my hand. It was archaic and not even my own, but my fingers twitched with the need for action, to once again take my fate into my own hands. Sure, I made mistakes-I had never pretended otherwise. But I did it armed. “Let’s try that gun again.”