Cheat the Grave

25

Of course, the agents of Light followed. Once over their initial shock, once they realized these were not Shadows they were battling, but rogues-also enemies, according to the law of Warren-they were human Scuds on our trail. My revelations about Hunter weren’t enough to stop their pursuit, and I hadn’t expected them to be. Mistrust of rogue agents was too deeply in-grained for them to dismiss us automatically, but eventually what I’d revealed would give some of them pause. For now, the weaponless rogues fended them off with a mixture of crafty defense and a good head start, though they made sure I was safely away before falling back.

What really saved us, though, was the troop’s shock at our numbers. Almost a dozen rogues existed in the valley? For the agents of Light, this revelation was akin to discovering me a year earlier. There were as many rogues as agents of Light…and they didn’t even know of the other four who’d left the valley. Thus, we numbered more than even Shadows, who boasted a full troop, one agent for each star sign on the Zodiac.

So, with a head start, and clear knowledge of where we were headed-whereas the Light had to fan out, cover and cut off all angles, and try to anticipate our direction-we made it over the city line, crossing the invisible boundary so abruptly I didn’t even know we’d done so until Buttersnap’s gait slowed and she circled widely to return to Carlos’s side. He was breathing hard but his face was alight. One by one every gray who’d entered the tunnels returned, safe, and Carlos laughed so long and loud the sound threatened to rip the sky.

I climbed from Buttersnap’s back, giving her a tight squeeze around the neck, earning a giant, sloppy kiss as the others joined Carlos, whooping wildly into the night as Warren and company paced the invisible barrier like they were straining against leashes. I listened to the joyous laughter ringing about me and could almost scent the perfume of their giddiness at this unexpected victory. It would smell like fresh baked meringue, I decided with a small smile. Bright vanilla, morello cherries, a dessert served first after a miles-long marathon.

When Kimber fired a dart in an attempt to reach us despite the known boundary, I laughed along with the other rogues as the little missile dropped harmlessly to the desert floor. In fact, fatigue, relief, and the spent embers of righteous anger had me so wound up that I found I couldn’t stop. I knelt on the desert floor, arms wrapped around my core as I tipped over. Gareth found this hilarious, and together we howled into the night, almost burping up jagged laughter as the agents of Light fumed only feet-yet miles-away.

Eventually, Carlos and Gareth helped me up, and I sent a final giggle spiraling over the invisible barrier while giving a fury-pale and trembling Kimber the finger.

Sure, the hubris might cost us all dearly later. But right now? The giddiness was amazing, the satisfaction at seeing Warren thwarted and fuming complete.

However, the celebratory mood was quelled once back at Frenchman’s Flat. Io met us in the atomic anteroom with reports of Alex’s deteriorating condition. Sure, he’d only lost an arm, and sure, even mortals recovered in time from such an injury. But Mackie’s magical blade was working quickly, and by her estimation, he wouldn’t make it through the night. I thought of Tripp’s leg wound, festering like gangrene. Maybe Alex was lucky.

“He wants to see you,” she told me, brows raised over those full-moon eyes. “All of you.”

So we proceeded to his sickroom in a funeral march, spirits dampened, the silence weighty. Yet we found Alex sitting upright in bed, a meal of chicken and rice on a tray before him while candles burned around and above him like he was in a cage of flame.

“I understand the Tulpa and I now have something in common,” he said, glassy-eyed, but with enough bite to allow he knew how drugged he was…and that he would soon die. For now, though, it seemed he’d decided to feast.

And so we all did. With the candlelight casting shadows over the beaten floor, we pulled chairs to his bedside, using it as a table as we told tales of the full battle in Xavier’s study and of in the stinking tunnels where the grays faced off against the Light. Roland and Gareth re-enacted particularly good blows, while Vincent fended them off with a plastic spork, pretending to be Mackie. When they settled, Oliver mentioned his surprise that Vanessa would stand up for me against Kimber. I shrugged, uncomfortable with talk of my old troop, and it wasn’t long before the subject returned to Mackie and his rampage as they led him away from the mansion. There was also collective awe expressed at the injury he’d inflicted on the Tulpa’s hand. What kind of magic could defeat the most magical being of all, a tulpa?

Alex was drinking as well, throwing back tequila and beer chasers faster than any of us, and why not? He didn’t have to worry about the hangover. He howled with laughter, doubling over as Gareth mimicked the reactions of the Light when the grays rushed the tunnel in my defense.

Oliver, in particular, did an award-winning imitation of Warren’s face as Carlos pinned him against the wall, and though Carlos professed not to be their leader, their affection and regard for him as such sat bare on each face.

I looked around at the roomful of outcasts and outlaws, awed how a group of people who were so powerless, and who had so little compared to those aboveground, could find joy in the smallest victory. Yet the feeling was addictive, probably because I too had been living in lack. So I smiled and, as I licked the warming beer from my lips, enjoyed the moment. We were like medieval warriors come back from war-Vikings anchoring in some great northern port, celebrated as heroes by our loved ones, and returning with stories of battle and adventure.

“To Tripp!” Alex yelled, and the others took up the toast, lauding a man who’d been a part of this rogue group for mere weeks. Carlos had tears in his eyes, and even Vincent sniffled in the corner, head tucked against his broad chest. They didn’t see Tripp as separate from themselves, I realized. His struggle as an outcast, a rogue, was theirs…and so was mine.

It was how the agents of Light should have treated me. I sank back into my seat, trying to tuck the emotion away before it could taint the air-Alex deserved to celebrate in his last hours among friends-but once the despondency took hold, I couldn’t shake it. Maybe because only weeks earlier I’d lain in bed as helpless as he. Maybe it was because my troop had never gathered to celebrate my battles and heroism and life.

Maybe I was drunk.

I picked up my bag, and mumbled something to Io-closest to the door-about the bathroom as I backed from the room. Then I grabbed an oil lantern, and as Carlos and I had done only a day earlier, exited the rogue lair to seek privacy upon the desert floor. This time it was night, and I was as alone as I felt, so when I looked at the sky, wounded with stars, tears welled.

I couldn’t figure out why I felt so deflated as I wandered across the brutalized terrain, but I wanted to sit down in some radioactive crater and be swallowed up.

Instead I found what looked like a moon rock, though it’d probably once lived deep beneath this desert floor, and was as surprised to find itself sitting upon this ablated surface as I was. The lantern wobbled atop it, then steadied, and I got right to business, doing what I knew I’d come all the way out here to do. I pulled out the manual with Hunter on the cover. He was penciled in silhouette, a hulking figure outlined against the tunnel that would ferry him to another world. I flipped it open to where I’d left off and read the rest.

The story Tripp had told me was all there, so obvious in black and white that it made me wonder how I hadn’t seen it before. Solange had put scales on all our eyes, I supposed. A too-pretty face could do that. But the real reason this manual was stripped of color was because Solange had moved through Hunter’s life-or Jaden, as he was known then-like a Nordic winter: dark, cold, fierce, and relentless.

After they’d met as children, after Solange tried and failed to rectify that night’s choice to let him live, and after becoming his lover instead…she decided to use him. Love him or not, he was Light and she was Shadow, which meant a child between them would be this world’s prophesied savior: the Kairos. Of course, in a matriarchal society this person’s mother would be exalted.

How ironic that to bring the child safely into the world, she had to leave it. The Light would want to destroy it, the Tulpa would use it, and Solange wanted the power solely for herself, and so she used Hunter one last time.

Entering Midheaven required payment-a third of an agent’s soul…or all of a mortal’s. The manual didn’t say why she didn’t use Jaden’s soul-maybe she thought it too risky. He was too big, too strong. Maybe she really did love him in part. However, the other part stole the soul of a child who’d trusted Jaden, using it to cross into Midheaven. She killed the innocent, escaped from everyone else, and had been ruling Midheaven in the way the mother of the real Kairos would-utter omnipotence.

Meanwhile Hunter had lived with the guilt and consequence of her betrayal, just as he must now be living with the consequence of helping me escape.

Don’t ever return. She wants your power, your ability t… .

I glanced back down at the closed manual and rubbed a thumb over his profile, then closed my eyes and imagined Solange sucking on a sliver of his soul; cold and diamond-shaped, like a sparkling lozenge.

Then I took a deep breath, picked up the lantern and headed back to the bunker, shaking. Yes, it was cold, but that didn’t bother me. If things went my way, I’d soon return to a realm where this cold, blasted patch of desert would be as dreamy as a day at Laguna Beach.

Because Midheaven wasn’t done with me yet.

And after reading this manual, I wasn’t done with it either.

I was guided back to the rogue bunker by another hurricane lamp. It was a beacon leading me closer, and though the night hid all but his outline, there was no question who stood there. Yet I was surprised to also find a bistro table set up right behind the cell’s cavernous mouth, complete with two battered chairs and a softly fluttering tablecloth. Less surprising were the two shot glasses and half-full tequila bottle perched atop, and when Carlos caught me peering at the bottle’s glass bottom, he laughed as heartily as he had when escaping the Light. “Not this time, mi molcahete. Not this time.”

I took a seat. “A candlelit dinner in the middle of a nuclear blast site. Carlos, you do know how to romance a girl.”

He pretended to flip back the tails of an invisible tuxedo as he settled across from me. “I’m trying to make up for the state of the place. Maybe entice you to stay…”

I looked away as his voice trailed off. He thought I might want to run after being attacked by a tulpa, a madman with a soul blade, and the entire troop of Light in the same evening. Shows how well he knew me. Though I had to admit, a fresh start elsewhere sounded good. But that wasn’t my life. I turned back to him. “Alex will die.”

Carlos inclined his head. “By morning at the latest.”

“Faster than Tripp.”

“A more severe wound. Plus, I suspect Harlan picked up some vital immunities during his time spent in Midheaven. One can’t go through a heated kiln without being changed. Strengthened.”

He raised his glass for a toast, brows lifting meaningfully at me as well. I ignored that. I didn’t feel any stronger for having been in Midheaven. That place had stripped me raw. I also, for once, ignored the drink.

“Will they stay long, do you think?” I asked Carlos after he’d sipped.

“Of course,” he said, jerking his head in the direction of the city. “They’ll pace the barrier until morning, trying to figure out a way around it and into our hideout. They are stunned by the bright new knowledge of our existence. It upends the world as they knew it…along with your own timely revelations, of course.”

So he’d been in the tunnels long enough to hear about Hunter, I thought, gazing at the tequila. Well, it only made sense. I ran my index finger along the glass rim, dipping my finger into the golden spirit, but still didn’t drink. “Did you know the Jaden Jacks story, Carlos? I mean, had you ever read about it in a manual or even heard the rumor before?”

He shook his head, and sipped. “The ways of the written word are mysterious, weda. As great a magic as any power we possess.”

“But why are some things in the manuals while others aren’t? The open knowledge that Hunter was really Jaden Jacks could have saved him from having to enter Midheaven.”

“Maybe,” Carlos said, with less care than I’d have liked. “Or it could have led to his death. You can only trust that such information is revealed in its heralded time.”

Just like life. I leaned back on the chair, parked on the desert floor. I was nothing special out here on the edge of a crater. Another speck of dust piled on top of the rest.

“For example,” Carlos said, breaking back into my thoughts. “Take a mother in possession of a child’s biological makeup. Maybe she waits some time to tell the babe of her alcoholic uncle, or the cancer riding rampant over her mother’s side. It doesn’t determine a person’s entire fate, but it certainly marks their life. Yet are they to worry of it before misery even visits them? Or are they meant to live well, making the best choices they can, no matter what is fated in the future?”

I could feel my emotions passing like storms in my expressions. Doubt and bitterness and anger all made appearances in sweeping succession. It made me want to hide my face in the tequila until my lips were numb. But there was something-someone-else I wanted more. “So you’re saying it’s for our own good?”

“I only trust that it’s for our own good.”

“So what about now? The Light knows where you are. It won’t be long before the Shadow does too.” Because Warren would let the secret out. The Shadow and Light were enemies, but rogue agents were a common one. A third party would upset the balance between the two warring factions, and the Tulpa wouldn’t welcome that either.

“It doesn’t matter.” Carlos said, again with that shrug. “They can’t cross the line.”

“But Mackie?” I asked, because that’s where the line blurred.

Carlos set his glass down. “And now you have come to the reason we’re here.”

Because as a rogue, Mackie could cross into Frenchman’s Flat as easily as the rest of us, and with the Light stalking the perimeter like wolves, it wouldn’t be long before he pinpointed my location. My mind-so recently settled, and spinning with joy-cringed. This was why I wasn’t drinking. Best to face fated truths sober.

“Where is he?”

“We led him to the California state line. He’s probably still in Barstow somewhere. Maybe he stopped at the outlet mall.”

My mouth quirked upward, but only at one side. “Can we stop him?”

“Sleepy Mac is our bunker buster.” Carlos gazed at the stars and blew out a deep breath. “He will plow through anyone and everything standing in the way of his quest to murder you.”

“Comforting, Carlos. Thank you.”

“I wish I could say differently.” He shook his head. “But I’ve never met a being so single-minded and strong.”

Yet he sat with me, sipping tequila in the starlight on the edge of an abyss, even though Mackie couldn’t be stopped. It was forlornly comforting…and made me think again of Alex and Tripp and the rogue agents forming a family out of a bunch of paranormal misfits. Carlos should be running from me, but instead he was sitting. Dining. And the men downstairs were celebrating, even though fate might have plans as heinous as Alex’s for them.

“So then what do you say we speed things up a bit?”

Carlos’s eyes dilated, and I knew that beyond the liquor in his glass, he smelled something that excited him.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think we should allow Mackie to even attempt to breach the cell’s crater.” It was the least I could do for those who’d stood, and sat, and lay dying, for me. “You guys need this place. It’s your home.”

“And you suggest?”

“A show of boldness verging on the insane,” I said grandly, pouring him more tequila.

“I like it already,” he said in his liquid, rhythmic voice, though for the first time he looked uncertain.

Smiling, I reached over and squeezed his hand. “Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, and more importantly, the date of the grandest, most lavish wedding this city has ever seen. The papers have been announcing it for weeks. Dignitaries from all over the world are expected to attend. I’m a bridesmaid.”

He cocked a dark brow. “Which Mackie surely knows.”

“Which,” I emphasized, “means I’ll have to stick very close to the Tulpa.”

The irony in sticking close to one enemy to avoid another had one corner of my mouth lifting, but Carlos’s considering exhale was a teakettle’s hiss. “This is your grand plan? Kill the Tulpa in front of hundreds of guests, gain the aureole, then escape Mackie for Midheaven?”

And stop Suzanne from marrying a freakishly obsessed man with ties to a paranormal underworld. After that?

I was going to fucking ferry Hunter away from Solange and back into this world. Unless I died trying, I thought, shrugging. “You have a better one?”

“Wedita,” he said, laughing humorlessly, “I never thought we would get this far. I have no plan at all.”

“Okay, then.”

Carlos reclined again, one arm over the back of his chair. “Of course, you’re forgetting one grave detail. You can only attempt public patricide by first getting past one very pissed off leader of the Light.”

Ah, yes. Warren. I sighed and attempted Carlos’s careless shrug, but he didn’t smile. Instead he pursed his lips and stared off into the distance. “I don’t think the other agents of Light will move to hurt you,” he finally said, voice a mere whisper. “Their confusion was obvious tonight, both at our appearance and your revelations about this man, Hunter. But what you couldn’t sense was their flashing anger and mounting frustration. I know this tangled knot of emotions. It will turn them against one another.”

Yes, but would they move to help me against Mackie? Because none but Vanessa had done so during the tunnel fight. I frowned, mentally canvassing the scene at the border. I couldn’t be sure, I’d been too giddy with laughter to notice, but I didn’t think I’d seen her there. And if I noted her absence, along with her violent opposition of Kimber, Warren had too. A fist-sized worry unclenched in my belly, one I hadn’t even known was there, as I realized one person in the troop remembered me.

I silently thanked Vanessa.

“You could still head that way, you know,” Carlos said, jerking his head in the opposite direction of the city. He was right. With Olivia’s money I could change my mortal identity a dozen times a year, alter my locations at whim, and still never make a dent in anything but the interest.

But Suzanne’s words on the night of Mackie’s first attack swung my way like a pendulum marking the moments. No gossip or naysayer-and certainly no asshole-is going to keep me from love. The next moment brought Tripp’s voice back to life, words so recently spoken I could almost feel the warmth of his breath on my cheek.

Everyone’s got a right to their own damned reasons.

I glanced down and tentatively rubbed my printed fingertips over Carlos’s. “There’s no freedom in flight, Carlos.”

His smile took a long time to spread over his face, but when it did, it lit up the night. “And now you’ve discovered what all rogues eventually do. It is why at some point we settle somewhere, and battle for the right to remain where we choose.”

Which settled that. Tomorrow I’d head back into Vegas, risking Warren’s wrath, the Tulpa’s suspicions, and Mackie’s blade, all because what I really wanted, my reason, was as valid as anyone else’s. I wanted to get the aureole, enter Midheaven, and take back what was mine. More than anything? I still wanted Hunter.

“You still offering your full resources to protect me from Mackie’s blade?” I asked, tilting my head.

“I’m here, verdad?” And the shrug was back, as was the gleam in his eye. What a fatalist. What a dreamer.

“You should get some sleep.”

I nodded, then stood, and waited for Carlos to accompany me back into the cell. When he only held out his hand for my lantern, I realized he was standing guard.

“And while you’re sleeping,” he went on, graciously ignoring my sudden tears, “send up a prayer that we find a way to get past your former troop leader. He’s pretty pissed.”

“I’ll take care of Warren.”

“Really? So again, you’re going to take on Warren, the Tulpa, and Sleepy Mac?”

“All in a day’s work.”

“You must be some sort of superhero.”

In response, I stepped forward and kissed both his cheeks, scented the slim vein of tequila coming off his breath, then briefly pressed to my lips to his. If I weren’t in love with another man, and if Carlos didn’t know that, we might have deepened the kiss into something more. I pulled back and saw that knowledge in his eyes too.

“No, chilango, ” I said, cupping his cheeks. “But despite all odds, I’m alive, and that’s enough.”

But it wasn’t all.

So with my failures piling aboveground like a funeral pyre of mistakes, I headed off in search of Io instead of rest. I had an idea which might just set a torch to that pyre, but what the hell…

One way or another, life as I knew it was about to go up in flames.