Cheat the Grave

31

The soft ceremony of morning’s birth in the desert is one thing. Yet the neon metropolis flourishing in the Mojave’s middle creates its own dawn, and in the moments before the sun slams into the desert floor, the lights of Las Vegas shimmer, almost as if they exist in another world. Determined to leave an imprint on the valley’s day, they fight for their right to burn air. It’s a futile battle, of course. The first rays of morning exert their dominance, the city lights flicker, and then each snuffs out under the onslaught of the sun touching the valley like a kiss of gold.

Only three days after the catastrophe that was so-called Suzanne’s so-called wedding, I was alone on a quiet residential street, with only the sun’s kiss to keep me company. Well, that and a Beemer-sized dog stalking me from the shadows. I’d picked up the morning newspaper from the corner convenience store, glancing up at the security camera in the corner as the cashier sleepily rang up my purchase. If anyone happened to check those tapes-and there was no reason they should-they’d see an overage goth girl with soft hair in a sharp bob. The black shade was absolute, no high-or low-lights to warm it up, and it sat like a storm against my too-white cheeks. The nose stud and brown contacts were probably overkill, the ankh tattoo temporary, and the black clothing cliché, but I’d already been far too sorry. It was time to be safe.

I’d seen no television in the last thirty-six hours-reception was pretty shitty in a blown-out bunker within a top secret nuclear site-but my guess was it had been a continuous broadcast of what I was reading now: the wedding disaster recap, and a fabricated explanation of how a floating Plexiglas dock had collapsed, trapping the wedding party under the water. Also how Olivia Archer, the last living member of the Archer family dynasty, had disappeared.

At first it appeared to be an accident, but the prevailing theory now was that Olivia, the bride, and the billionaire groom, Arun Brahma, were all kidnapped by a South Asian terrorist group that had been targeting the textile magnate for years. They’d turned Arun’s passion for a westerner into a weakness, reportedly the sole vulnerability to ever visit the pathologically paranoid prince. It was a lesson, some were saying, to the limitations of love.

“Assholes,” I muttered, earning a second glance from the cashier. I grabbed my paper and a pack of reds-part of my new disguise as Olivia didn’t smoke-and swung out the glass door.

Some belated crisis of conscience had the cashier calling after me as he angled his gaze at the cigarettes. “Those things’ll kill ya, you know.”

“I should be so lucky,” I said to myself, and headed out into the reluctant morning. Not that I was overly concerned about being accosted by Shadow or Light. The Shadows were no doubt celebrating. The agents of Light were on their heels. I assumed my acceptance among the grays had brought the fifth portent of the Zodiac to pass, though Carlos said there was no way for us to know that for sure, or what the sixth sign would be. Grays, night crawlers, were always the last to know. What was painfully obvious to everyone was that Warren had his hands full with a newly invigorated Tulpa, once again the most powerful being in the valley.

“You’re welcome,” I muttered, gazing at the photo in the paper, taken mere minutes before Mackie’s attack. The Tulpa was sitting straight-backed in his wheelchair, eyes shut. I thought of all his powers-mind control, the ability to morph into new shape and form, to enter dreams and steal breath, to create black holes and inflict pain without ever touching a person. Shaking my head, I consoled myself with Io’s assertion that he hated the Shadows as well as the Light.

To be honest, it wasn’t much consolation.

Meanwhile, the photo angle had also caught Warren leaning against his pillar, a hard scowl blighting his face as he stared straight ahead. If I’d only assumed he hated me before, I decided, swallowing hard, this picture certainly put the question to rest.

But that wasn’t why I shuddered in the street’s cold center. No, Mackie’s bent head caused that, bowler hat propped atop as if on a peg. Another shiver went through me at the memory of his living knife carving out Skamar’s chest, and I half expected his head to swivel on the page, his blackened tongue pushing forward as he hissed.

The next photo was a blurred shot of the ensuing chaos, and of all the people the Tulpa had ordered into the water via mind control, piled atop one another like battling carp. I’d told Carlos the entire story while he dyed my hair in an old paint bucket, which had him more convinced than ever that I was not only immune to the Tulpa’s mental manipulation, I would be the one to stop him entirely.

“You may be a mortal,” he said when I protested, “but you’re still a part of him. You can still kill him by turning his own power against him, even that of his mind.”

I’m sure he meant that to be reassuring, but his words had the opposite effect. Didn’t that mean the Tulpa could do the same to me? Wasn’t it possible it worked both ways?

And I still had no idea why the Tulpa was so concerned about the symbol of a snake wrapped around a stick. What was the Serpent Bearer-its purpose, its meaning-and why was it so important to a man who could already manipulate others with his mind alone?

All I knew right now was that I was mortal, and the Tulpa was all-powerful, and that was yet one more thing Warren could blame me for. At least the agents of Light were too busy battling back the newly invigorated Shadows to patrol the city’s invisible border. For now, the grays were free to enter and exit the city at will. Yet I knew Warren hadn’t forgotten us, or the child of Shadow and Light living in Midheaven. Hunter’s child.

Tucking both the paper and those particular worries away for now, I arrived at my destination, but froze short of the property line. The house where Ashlyn, another child of the Zodiac, had lived was vacant. The grass was already browning, there was a lockbox on the handle, and the window where my daughter’s gaze had found mine was bare.

“Shit,” I said under my breath.

“I moved her after you shot out the living room window.”

Turning, I saw a woman dressed in gray running sweats, a walnut ponytail as freshly dyed as mine pulled through a ball cap shielding most of her face. Though obviously fit-and now I knew why “Suzanne” had always treated fitness, and running in particular, like religion-she walked steadily, carrying a stainless steel toolbox. Odd enough to earn her a second glance, I thought, but probably not a third.

“Oh, that?” I said lightly, like my heart wasn’t threatening to jump through my chest. “I was just trying to get your attention.”

She set the toolbox on the ground, tucked her hands into her jacket pockets, and gazed at the house where her granddaughter used to live. “Well, all kids act out sometimes. It frees them emotionally from parental control, or so I’ve read.”

I didn’t bother answering. It was small talk, and had nothing to do with where we were today. “Dare I ask how you got away from Warren?”

“Do you need to? I fucking walked.” Lowering her chin and voice, she stared at the house like it was her enemy. Like it was Warren. I’d never seen that look on her face before, not in person, and it rattled me. Suzanne as Zoe. Zoe as warrior, as Archer, like me. I swallowed hard, and changed the subject.

“How’s Cher?” I asked.

“She’s in L.A. They decided she needed a specialist for her arm. I don’t think she’ll be coming back for…a while.”

I nodded once. “And the arm?”

“Clean break.”

“Lucky,” I said. “Whoever pushed her must have known what they were doing.”

She turned her gaze on me then, and it was afire. “She is lucky. Had she been in the front row of that marital shitstorm, she probably wouldn’t have survived.”

I nodded again. So I wouldn’t be seeing Cher for a while. My initial pang of regret surprised me, but I wouldn’t have seen her anyway. I was no longer Olivia, and Cher was no longer safe in Vegas. Not with the Tulpa pulling every possible thread to get to me. Maybe someday I could visit her on the beach. Still, I sighed. Cher’s companionship was the loss of something I hadn’t even known I’d valued.

Glancing back at the house, I decided I was glad Ashlyn was far away too. “So is that it, Mom? Hurting someone is okay as long as it’s for the greater good?”

And just like that we were no longer talking about her stepdaughter, but her real ones.

If Zoe felt the same storm of emotions, she didn’t show it. She appeared almost defiant in her mortal flesh, a woman who’d made hard choices under hard circumstances and wasn’t about to apologize to anyone for it. That was okay. I knew what that was like, and I wasn’t looking for an apology.

But Zoe didn’t know that yet. “I wouldn’t ask anyone to do something I’m not willing to do myself,” she said woodenly, staring down at the tool chest.

I nodded. “Like become mortal?”

She glanced at me sharply. “That was your choice.”

“Ah, but look who I had as an example.” A friggin’ superhero. And one who’d given over all her powers to save me. So had there really been an alternative? Was there any way I could have simply allowed a little girl to die in a flooded tunnel while I stayed relatively safe, and very much alive?

Sure, I thought, huffing lightly. But as Zoe Archer’s daughter, I think the guilt would have eventually killed me.

Zoe, not one to take any criticism without a fight, argued back. “But you had an advantage I didn’t. You spent your formative years outside the troop. I, on the other hand, was raised inside it, groomed for a position in the Zodiac, primed and nurtured to become the Archer of Light.” She laughed humorlessly. “I mean, I had no idea you could actually bleed just by knocking into something, or that it would hurt to stub your toe, or get a paper cut. I even had to alter the way I had sex-”

“Too much information,” I sang, cutting her off.

She smiled thinly, as I wanted. God, there was history behind us. There was so much to ask her, so much to say. A part of me wanted to rail, to ask questions I’d agonized over all through my teen years, while I was punching nylon bags and sparring mitts. But now didn’t feel like the time for hard words, and I wasn’t as angry with her standing next to me. I remembered my back against hers as we faced off against Mackie and the Tulpa. How we’d clung to each other when uniting against Warren.

No. It wasn’t anger at all. It was sympathy. And sadness. And a boatload of understanding. Life was not a straight shot. It veered dangerously. Sometimes all you could do was hold on tight and hope for the best.

“Do you want to know the hardest thing of all?” Zoe asked, voice soft as she frowned into the distance again.

“Worse than the physical weakness, far worse than the loss of powers, was the emotional isolation. Always before, I’d been a part of something. I’d acted independently, of course, going undercover for months without contacting the troop, but that was different. I was doing it for them. It counted, and they were counting on me. But all of that disappeared along with my powers. For a while I wished I was dead rather than mortal.”

She winced at how the truth sounded when spoken aloud.

I winced because I understood. “And now?”

Shrugging, Zoe tossed me a lopsided smile. “I’ve mellowed with age.”

I whistled through my teeth. The woman who’d pulled a bazooka on the Tulpa, and put a round through Sleepy Mac, was “mellow.” Yeah, and I’d been a natural blonde.

“I like it now, though. Mortality, I mean. The anonymity is almost soothing. What I do can’t be recorded, and doesn’t really matter. Not on a global scale.”

I quirked a brow. “You mean outside of little things like creating doppelgängers, plotting the Tulpa’s downfall, watching over me, and acting in support of the rogues who wish to overthrow both the Shadow and the Light.”

“Yes. Outside of that.”

I smiled hesitantly, wondering if it should be this easy after so many years. Sure, she was my mother, but she was so many other things too. So many other people. It was hard to be sure who I was talking to: Zoe?

Suzanne? The Archer? A legend? My mother? Someone Warren once loved? Someone else entirely?

But looking at her shifting her weight in the early morning light, I decided it didn’t matter. Right now she was just a woman standing on the street…and one who was saying good-bye.

So my questions could wait a bit longer. I’d probably kick myself for it later, but I decided to treat her as gently as I’d like to be treated, and as too few people had bothered to do in the past. Besides, there was too little time as it was.

“What will you do next?” she finally asked, dark hair swinging over one shoulder. She looked nothing like the golden goddess at the wedding. Even her stance and carriage were different. I wondered if she’d miss being Suzanne.

I rattled off my to-do list. “Figure out how to cash in on some soul chips. Build an army. Free the rogues from Midheaven.” Retrieve my boyfriend from the arms of another woman.

She tilted her head. “Even those who don’t want to be free?”

“Everyone wants to be free,” I said, still thinking of Hunter.

“Don’t be so sure,” she cautioned, sighing. “And your fight won’t be solely against the Shadows this time.”

No, it would also be against the Light.

Maybe.

Because now everybody knew Warren hadn’t just been treating me like shit, but jacking with the whole of his troop. Knowing them as I did-good, smart, strong people-and remembering Vanessa’s shocked face in particular, I still hoped they’d call him on it. Either way, something had to give. He’d said in the tunnels that nothing was changing, but he was wrong. It already had.

“Well, no self-respecting democracy was ever born without a solid fight,” I muttered, trying to keep my voice light.

“True. Just plenty of bloodshed.”

I shot her a wry look. That wasn’t helpful. Besides, true freedom was worth fighting for, both as a group and an individual. My work now was to gather people around me who believed that. I might be mortal, but I’d returned to the paranormal world. All in, more than ever before.

“I could use some allies,” I said, shooting her a sidelong glance. “As many as I can get.”

Something old and lethal sparked in her eyes as she con sidered it-and I knew she too remembered standing atop that dais, back-to-back, weapons primed, adrenaline running like napalm in our blood. She smiled at the memory, but slowly the light in her eyes died. “I have another task now. I’m more focused on the good of a particular individual than a whole troop.”

“Ashlyn,” I said, and we both pretended my voice didn’t crack.

She nodded, then said brightly, “But you have Carlos. The rogues can provide you with more protection than I can. I, uh, don’t have much left.”

I didn’t argue or agree. Both would be true.

“She knows about me, doesn’t she?” I said instead, remembering the look the girl had shot me from the parted curtains of her bedroom window.

“Not you in particular, no. But us. Them,” she said, motioning out into the world, the underworld. “I couldn’t let it happen again.”

Meaning allow a young girl to enter her second life cycle without training, knowledge, or defense.

“I’ve been putting her through an augmented form of training.” She sounded almost sheepish about it. “Don’t tell her adoptive mother, okay?”

I gave her a flat look, which caused her to grin. I also tried to work up some jealousy just to see if it lived inside me, or at least some pique that she’d spend so much time and energy training a young girl while I was out there figuring it out, mostly through error, on my own. But the anger wouldn’t come. I guess I was mellowing too.

“Subversive, as always.”

“It’s when I’m at my best.”

I smiled. Yes. That was my mother.

“I’ve missed you.” The words slipped from me, and the welling tears were equally unexpected. I choked them back, a proud woman crying in front of a proud woman, waiting until I could again look her in the eye.

She stared at me, my mother’s eyes still locked in Su zanne’s face, fighting not to blink lest her own tears fall.

“I was here all along.”

What broke inside of me then was primal, like a child’s need to cling to something warm and soft. A fractured wail escaped me even while I told myself to shut up. I bent at the waist to hold it in, then at the knees, curling into myself even as I ordered myself to stand. And my mother, my mother, Zoe Archer-once the Archer, agent of Light, who’d nearly toppled the Tulpa, and who had a mind strong enough to form doppelgängers and control other people’s tulpas-she tented herself over me, wrapped her arms around what was both my and Olivia’s body, and held me together.

It bloomed then, an unexpected lemon-herb mixture that had nothing to do with supersenses and everything to do with family. My body recognized my mother, even though my eyes had failed to all these years. And, as she shook holding me, I knew my pores were crying out to her too. I knew she loved me.

And she’d never really left.

“I miss Olivia,” I said at some point.

“I do too,” she replied, and we wept for my sister as well.

That pain was still shockingly acute, though it didn’t take long for our sobs to lessen. After all, we were each used to holding ourselves together. So when only harsh sniffles were left to cut the silence, Zoe pulled back and helped me rise. We swayed, but steadied each other, and finally looked up. Were my eyes that red too? Was my face that bleak? Was there really so much of my mother in me after all?

“We should go,” she said, wiping at her face and pulling her ball cap lower. “They’ll scent this soon.”

I didn’t have to ask who. Whether the emotion was ferried to Shadow or Light, the results wouldn’t be good.

“When do you leave?” I asked, wiping at my eyes.

She only smiled, closed-mouthed. Panic struck me, but I knew better to ask where she was going. “Well, will you call? Let me know how she’s doing?”

“When it’s safe,” she said, meaning not a moment before. It could be years. “And you’ll know when she’s ready.”

An Archer. But would she be Light? I frowned, then realized Zoe was saying something, words tumbling as fast as a chip hustler’s dice roll. “You could come with us. The three of us could start over, maybe create something entirely new.”

Grandmother, mother, daughter. Three Archers battling side-by-side, back-to-back. But I thought of Warren, running this city like a game board. The Tulpa, all the pieces once again stacked in his favor. I thought of the valley, its inhabitants, my city, and I only smiled.

She dipped her head in understanding. “That’s my girl.”

Leaving the toolbox at my feet, she turned and walked away.

I don’t know how many moments passed. Eventually Buttersnap shifted restlessly between two cookie-cutter houses, and an old woman in a tattered bathrobe and toeless slippers slipped outside to pick up her paper. I gave a wave that had her scurrying back inside, then picked up whatever new lethal baubles my mother had given me, and left before the nosy neighbor could call the police.

As I walked, I thought of what Zoe said about the anonymity of mortality, and how what she did no longer mattered on a large scale. I wished I’d spoken up then. I wished I’d told her that everything a person did, big or small, really did matter. It mattered to the ones you loved. Or, at least to the ones who loved you.

In fact, I thought, sucking in a breath of the sharp, cold air, when you were mortal your actions probably mattered even more.