Cheat the Grave

3

The other teams returned by midnight, exhausted from the hunt and disappointed by their loss. Those who could be easily bought by free booze and food-the majority of the partiers, it turned out-were appeased by the sight of the newly arrived caterers, though a few poor sports flounced off in sore-footed pique. I never understood that response to disappointment. If you didn’t have a yacht before and you still didn’t have one, what had you really lost?

Shaking my head as Suzanne hurried off the bus to coax them back, I turned back to Cher. “Who planted the clues for the treasure hunt?”

She was holding up a hand mirror as she fiddled with a replacement nose ring, while sitting third in line for a real piercing. Now that she’d taken off her boa, she’d returned to her healthy, mildly blitzed self. “What? Oh, one of Arun’s people. He’s got an army of them apparently.”

“Apparently?”

A squeal sounded behind us, and she slid along the velvet bench, still gazing at her reflection. “Well, I’ve never actually seen any of them. They’re like elves. They work in the night. Even when I stay overnight at the compound, my cocktails appear out of nowhere, or I’ll enter the dining room to find my food set, and still steaming. But his servants? They’re nothing but shadows. It’s kinda creepy…in a decadent sort of way.”

No, it was kinda creepy in a creepy sort of way. Was someone from my old life using Arun and his wealth to get close to my mortals? The coincidence was certainly uncanny, though I couldn’t think of who it might be. As far as I knew, only the agents of Light were aware of the connection between Cher’s family and me, and they were charged with protecting all mortals. Besides, if the Shadow agents knew, these bubbly socialites would already be sleeping in a shallow grave.

Still, my mind winged back to the feeling of being stalked while on the scavenger hunt. I looked back at Cher for signs of concern, but she was busy tousling her hair. I might have to warn her of impending danger later, but I decided against it now. She needed to be steady for her piercing.

Glancing over, I saw Terry holding statue-still, clearly waiting for a new earring. All I could see of the piercer was his hands and forearms as they rubbed alcohol over the area, but Terry was leaning forward into the light, his face ashen with anticipation.

“Are you sure you want to do this? Terry looks like he’s going to pee himself.”

“Terry’s a wuss.” Still peering into the mirror, she gave her newly tousled hair an experimental toss. “I have my Momma’s strong constitution.”

I thought of Suzanne running after a handful of spoiled debutantes, all huffy because someone didn’t hand them a yacht. It made me want to order her into therapy where someone could talk to her about being a chronic people pleaser.

“I mean my real Momma,” Cher said, catching my look and wincing in return. At least she recognized the disorder. “She wrote me letters when she found out she was dying. Loads of them filled with all sorts of advice. I still have them.”

“Wow.” Cher’s birth mother had passed away around the time Cher hit double digits, when a girl would need a mother most. Her father met Suzanne not long after, but because it’d been a May-December romance, he too had since passed. In all the years since, it’d been Cher and Suzanne going it alone, more girlfriends than mother and daughter, with Olivia a steady and welcome third wheel.

Slowly, Cher nodded to herself. “She thought of all the things I’d most need to know-the names of the best plastic surgeons in town, her personal shopper’s home number-and wrote them all down. My father accidentally stored them with her belongings, so I didn’t find them until recently.”

“What a wonderful gift.” Why couldn’t my mother have left me with a treasure trove worth of knowledge and advice? I could have used a straightforward lesson on paranormal espionage and politics. “You’re very lucky.”

A high-pitched squeal sounded as Terry’s earlobe came under fire. Cher glanced back and gulped, her Momma’s constitution getting a test-drive. “Guess it’s time,” she said as a pasty-faced Terry wobbled past. The bus wasn’t even moving.

“Want me to come with?” I asked as Cher shot him a finger wave.

“Accompanying one’s best friend in all things that will eventually be attributed to a misspent youth is in the BFF contract. You know that.”

“I misplaced my copy.” I said, but held out my hand.

“I’ll send you another.”

We strode to the bus’s dark back corner with as much boldness as we could while holding hands. The piercer was reclined, sucking back an entire bottle of water like he’d just run a marathon. Cher’s brows pinched as she took in his scuffed boots, workman’s jeans, and shiny black vest, but he didn’t note it from beneath the low brim of his Stetson. My guess was that he came from one of the rougher ink parlors, and I whispered as much to Cher. “He probably has a name like Tank or Bruise or Bomb.”

We giggled and she settled in the L-shaped corner. When I dropped down next to her, the piercer raised his head and my smile dropped like a stone.

“Hello, Archer.”

Harlan Tripp leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees and cracked his knuckles. I blinked twice, my mind needing an extra moment to catch up as I stared at the rogue Shadow agent I’d both mocked and left frying in another world.

Trapped there, I corrected, swallowing hard. His body set to a slow burn in a world closer to earth’s core than this one. I wouldn’t have recognized him as Shadow if we hadn’t met before, but knew full well a charred skeleton lurked beneath his exterior of flesh, as did breath so rancid it could billow from hell’s belly itself. I couldn’t smell it now, but memory alone had my palms sweating.

My first impulse was to throw myself in front of Cher. My second was to run…though realistically I couldn’t save either of us. Tripp could catch me, kill me, without breaking a sweat. Even a rogue, stripped of troop status, could blow a hole through a mortal’s life with a rap of his fist…and Tripp was famous for loving to do just that.

I was fucked.

“Can’t say I like whatcha done with the place,” he said conversationally, motioning to the fat painter’s splats of neon outside the bus, like he saw it everyday. Telltale neon bulged from the desert floor, but beyond that there was little that remained of the Vegas he’d left. As proof, he said, “Was that a fucking pirate ship settin’ anchor in the middle of the Strip?”

“The light show’s a nice touch, though,” Cher said, oblivious to the tension between us.

He ignored her. “Even the grand ones-the Trop, Fla mingo, Caesar’s-they all look different. And what the fuck did you do with the Hacienda? And the little Glass Pool Inn?” Tripp still looked hard and mean, but also confused.

I shrugged…though I was melancholic about that one’s destruction, too. “Eighteen years is a long time to be gone,” I said stiffly. “Though not quite long enough.”

Tripp shook his head. “Looks like a new Vegas got built up over the old.”

“Can’t stop progress.” I shrugged.

“Can’t stop much,” he agreed.

“How’d you get out?”

Tripp’s feral grin returned. “What you should be asking yourself is if I’m the only one who did.”

No, I’d ask him, I thought, relaxing a bit. It looked like he was just here to talk.

“Now git up.”

Or not.

“Let me put it this way, Archer,” he said when I didn’t move. “Throw up the sponge now, and I’ll murder you gently.”

Despite the deafening beats of my heart, I managed a sarcastic drawl. “Harlan, you sure talk mighty funny.”

His sharp, black eyes darted from me to Cher. “Eighteen years of frying like bacon has made me a mite impatient. You’ll come…or she will.”

“Silly boy. I don’t come for just anyone.” The retort was classic Cher, though her voice shook as she spoke. No wonder Terry had been white-faced while having his lobe pierced. A mortal facing a Shadow was like a rat facing a hungry snake. Even if you’d never seen one before, you instinctively knew which side of the predator/prey relationship you were on.

Tripp knew it too. “Fine.”

One moment I was seated, the next I’d been hauled up, neck trapped beneath an unyielding forearm. “You still stink,” I managed before my eyesight grew spotty. I knew he heard me over Cher’s screams because his clinch tightened. Would he really kill me in front of all these people?

He loves to blow holes through mortal lives.

Yes, he would.

The partiers nearest us took up Cher’s chorus, a call-and-response of ascending fear. Terry flat passed out again. At least I think it was him. I was busy blacking out, so didn’t note the finer details. Unlikely relief came in the form of Cher launching herself onto Tripp’s back. His grip on my neck loosened enough for me to suck in one great breath before he resumed an even tighter noose as he angled from side to side. I let that last, lovely bit of air go in a futile warning. “Let go, Cher!”

He could dislodge her by throwing her through a window, squeezing her neck until her arteries popped, caving her head in against the minibar. Sure enough, after another second a thwack sounded before a soft limb fell into view, and Cher sprawled unconscious on the bench beside me. I had no breath left to scream.

The bus swayed, partygoers scrambling for the door in full riot. Tripp surprised me by stumbling as well, before body-slamming me onto the hard floor. My limbs were numbing but I still felt my face eat rubber as his full weight dropped atop mine. Pain arrowed through my right knee, tendons stretched and threatening to snap. Then he twisted again, loosening his hold on my neck. I choked on the fresh air, the soft tissue there already bruised and swollen. My larynx had either shifted to a place it shouldn’t have or was missing altogether. The pain brought tears to my eyes even as the oxygen worked to clear my vision.

Then screeching metal joined the panicked voices, and the bus rocked harder. I was still trapped beneath Tripp’s arm but glanced up to see the metal rooftop peeling open like an aluminum can. Tripp’s partner, was my first thought, because such bold destruction was the mark of a Shadow. Then he cursed, and my hopes soared.

One of the Light? A former ally watching over me after all?

The thought gave me strength, and I decided to buy myself time for whatever they had in mind. I whipped my head back and his nose crunched beneath its weight. Another curse, then his forearm tensed in the tightest grip yet. My vision deteriorated into stop-motion, but I made out three terrifying things in the next few seconds:

A skeleton’s face, wrapped in worn, leather skin.

The skeleton’s rotted grin and bright, curved blade.

A scissored cry as the skeleton leapt.

Tripp yelled, terrified, but sunk one booted foot into the falling man’s middle. The blade arced, and another scream followed, sounding red. Then there was more frantic jostling as Tripp fled with me, faster than a Chevy on drag night. On his way out, though, he thoughtlessly rapped my head into one of those sexy Lucite poles. Embarrassment flooded me as I thought, Death by stripper pole. Then I was out.

I’d been knocked unconscious enough times to be intimately familiar with the staggered return of hearing, the touch-and-go awareness of feeling returning to limbs, and the eventual need to open eyes and regain bearings…whether one wanted to or not.

“What fresh hell is this?” I murmured, even before I’d peeked. You were never bound to wake to something good after a violent kidnapping.

Despite a wave of dizziness, I recognized Tripp’s stocky, hunched outline, though his back was to me, his desk lamp angled low. He didn’t bother looking up.

Probably because of the Boy Scout/bondage thing he had going on. I tested my restraints, unsurprised when all I could do was tense my muscles. Overkill in restraining a mortal, but then Harlan Tripp wasn’t known for his generous nature…and he probably didn’t yet know I was mortal. I certainly wasn’t going to clue him in.

Studying the narrow glass surfaces around me, I realized I lay atop an identical one like some pending sacrifice. I wasn’t a virgin, though, so I reserved hope for escape. We were in a darkened jewelry store with bright surfaces and tiny custom cushions filling every available space in the glass interiors. I didn’t know how Tripp had circumvented the store’s alarm-the entire store was a vault, thus the jewels still safe in their cases-but there he was, relaxed as could be behind the jeweler’s desk. I didn’t ask what he was going to do with the cutters.

“Diamonds really are forever,” I finally quipped in the elongated silence, though the scratch in my voice belayed the forced tone. “But if you’re going to choke me, please use the emeralds.”

“Don’t tempt me… Olivia. ”

My purse was open next to him, my identification spread haphazardly over the desk. So he knew who I was, big deal. I was already mortal and bound like a rodeo calf. He didn’t need my cover identity to kill me, just a reason and the flick of his wrist.

“How’s the nose?” I asked cheerfully.

“Already healed. Bitch.”

Sticks and stones, I thought, but stayed silent…and wary. It’d been weeks since I’d seen him, though to him it might have felt like years. Time moved differently in Midheaven. But on that first meeting Tripp had referred to the place as “Mid-hell,” and I couldn’t argue that. Midheaven drained a man’s soul energy, using it to feed the desires of the chosen few-all women, and all with delusions of goddesshood.

I’d only been trapped there a short time, but Midheaven had served as Tripp’s prison for years. He’d fled there as a rogue agent, banished by his leader, but it was the classic case of jumping from the pan into the fire. He’d attempted escape before, only to find someone had locked the entrance from the other side. So…“How did you get here?”

“You should damned well thank your stars that I did.”

I didn’t thank the stars for shit anymore. “Yeah. I’m always thankful when I get knocked out, tied up, and tortured with ring clamps.”

He finally turned. The light even made him look marginally amused. “You could be dead.”

“I’m sure it’s on your to-do list.”

He shook his head, features sunken beneath his wide-brimmed hat. “Nope. Mackie’s the one lookin’ to settle up with you.”

Mackie. The name alone sent a shiver crisscrossing my spine. Also known as Sleepy Mac for his ability to fall into a comalike state to keep his energy from being drained by the women of Midheaven. A reported member of the Nez Perce tribe, he was the world’s oldest living agent. I didn’t know how he’d found his way into Nevada, or even if he’d started out as Light or Shadow, but I did know you didn’t get to be as old as he was by being merciful. “I thought I’d imagined him busting through the bus’s rooftop.”

But I remembered the skeletal face clearly. I’d seen the leathery visage in recurring nightmares, the screaming mouth a sharp whir in my mind, the deadened gaze that could burn holes of decay in my body with a mere glance.

“Carving through,” Tripp corrected, and shifted to reveal what he’d been working on. Himself. He’d been using a hand torch to cauterize a wound already festering with pus. He gestured with it, unnecessarily adding, “With his magic blade.”

And when an agent of the Zodiac said “magic” like it was a special thing, it was worth fearing. Mackie reportedly stored the last bit of his soul-the small part Midheaven hadn’t drained away-in his knife’s blade. He kept it protected there, always on his person, and it did his will almost independently of him. That was why Tripp wasn’t healing.

“What the fuck is Mackie doing outside of Midheaven? Who unlocked the entrance?” Someone who wanted me dead?

And why hadn’t that list gotten any shorter?

Tripp resettled his hat on his head. “I thought it might have been you.”

I shook my head.

Tripp shrugged. “Well, I didn’t waste time askin’. I saw Mackie go through the lantern on that side of the veil and waited till I was sure he was gone ’fore diving out myself.”

The pagoda lanterns were the exit on Midheaven’s side, while a pinched taper buried in Vegas’s underground sewer system marked this side. When the flame was extinguished, an agent’s body was wrapped in a solid wall of smoke, ferrying them to the other world. But even Mackie couldn’t have exited without someone removing the lock that secured the entrance on this side. And while entering Midheaven would still cost an agent onethird of their soul-the price of a round-trip ticket to another world, and no wonder there was no great rush- exiting meant freedom.

But who would allow that?

I bit my lip. “No one else got out?”

“You know how it is over there. No one even tried.”

Hunter hadn’t tried.

I frowned, but stopped following the thought when I realized Tripp was watching me closely.

“So how’d you find me?” I asked, clearing my throat.

Tripp’s shrug allowed it hadn’t been easy. Only true identities were revealed in Midheaven. I was Joanna Archer over there, my appearance reflecting the old me-muscular limbs on a slim frame, black bob and dark, un-amused eyes-rather than this bubble gum, Barbie Doll packaging.

“I didn’t,” he finally admitted, lighting a strange little cigarette. He blew out the smoke, and though yards away, it choked my pores. I shook against my bindings, which seemed to amuse Tripp. “Mackie tracked you and I tracked him. After eighteen years, I could pinpoint that mean fucker anywhere. His power tastes black.”

I couldn’t help it. The opening was too great and inviting, and though I was all trussed up, Tripp had forgotten the gag. “And what did the power you stole from me taste like?”

I was referring to the chips I’d lost to him over a game of soul poker in Midheaven-two odd triangular symbols, their meaning still unknown to me. Not that it mattered much now.

Spitting a stray bit of tar from his tongue, he scoffed. “I won it from you.”

“Then traded it away.” For some alone time with a woman.

“Tell me you blame me.” And he said it so defiantly I really wanted to. But I couldn’t. Ruthless barter was the way of that world. Come to think of it, it was the way of this one. “That’s what I thought. And now that that’s settled…you’re going to help me.”

“Why, Harlan Tripp,” I said, in my sweetest southern drawl, “why on earth would I deign to assist the likes of you?”

No amusement this time. He leaned forward, still seated, but far closer than I ever wanted him. In a voice rumbling like a far-off streetcar, he whispered, “Because I know who you are. Your father killed my entire family, outlawed me, and sent me on the lam. The only thing that kept me going in that seventh level of hell was the thought of killing him, his sycophants, and everyone else who done me wrong.”

I lay silent for a long moment, trying to scent the heat of his bitter fury, and feeling only the warmth of that strange cigarette’s smoke. If I could move I would have waved it away, though I had a feeling it would cling to my hands with its deceptive warmth.

“Tripp,” I finally said, licking dry lips. “You and I are not on the same side, got it? Never have been, never will be.”

I could appreciate the idea of a world unpopulated by the Tulpa and his Shadows-after all, my birth father had tried repeatedly to kill me, too-but even were I still an agent with powers beyond a mortal’s, still in possession of a lineage marking me as special, I would never work alongside a man like Harlan Tripp.

A ghostly smile flashed on his ruddy stubbled face. “I will tear off long, precise strips of your flesh with these pliers,” he whispered in a lover’s voice, and holding up the sharp tool, “until you are.”

I swallowed hard, but said nothing. Letting a Shadow know I was mortal was a direct invitation to the grave.

“I’ll start with your eyelids.”

I didn’t need to smell my fear spiking, I could feel my heartbeat screaming. But Tripp’s responding grin was short-lived. Inhaling sharply, head swiveling toward the glass door, he dove for me and began roughly working away my ties. They were belted around the entire case. Apparently he’d been serious about the pliers.

“Done it now, haven’t you?” I said, as he cursed, my relief making me punchy…though I wasn’t out of this yet.

“What are they? Two blocks away? Three?”

I tried to remember how far off I could scent another agent. Three was my best effort. The most senior of agents could double that distance.

“I’m better than that, missy. I haven’t smelled pure Light in so long, I could pinpoint them on a map.”

It was a dig, but all I could think was, Pure Light. “They’re not Shadows?”

He frowned, like I’d spit in his eye.

Even as my heartbeat bumped faster at the thought of seeing my old troop, the look gave me an idea. “Let me take care of them.”

He was scrabbling at my ties, growing more anxious, and an edgy Shadow was a homicidal one. “Don’t fuck with me, Archer.”

“Just hide. I’ll distract them. I’ll tell them you’ve already left.”

Tripp stilled, stared, and sucked in one long breath.

I held his gaze. “It’ll be the fastest way to get rid of them, and it’ll throw them off your trail too.”

He dropped his odd, handrolled smoke on the floor and stomped on it as he angled his gaze toward the door. He either had to leave me there or kill me. Even I could tell there wasn’t enough time to untie me. “Why would you?”

“I like my eyelids where they are,” I said wryly. “Besides, they’re not coming here for me.”

Either the ticking clock or my genuine bitterness decided it for him, because he soon nodded. “Chisel me, woman, and so help me, I’ll find a way to kill you. Even if it’s my last act ’fore death.”

“I know.”

He backed away, disappearing into the shadows.

“Take my ID with you!” I hissed after him, because if Warren thought even a rogue Shadow knew my cover identity, he’d alter my memory, my mind, and my life altogether. It wouldn’t have anything to do with my general safety either. He’d do it only to protect the troop.

So I took a steadying breath after Tripp and my belongings disappeared and resettled my head on the hard glass top as if napping there. Then I waited in silence, mere moments from facing an entire cadre of superheroes. The agent of Light. The troop that had abandoned me completely.