City of Souls

12

Heat assailed me even before I hit the landing. Everything, I suddenly realized as I resettled my bag behind my back, from wacky Mackie at the piano to the potent drinks the bartender served, was meant to reinforce this world and keep it fueled. As for the men used as that fuel? Well, let’s just say I had a change of heart regarding their POW status when I reached the top of the landing to find every chair pushed back, every man standing, and every hard gaze turned my way.

Well, almost every man was standing.

Tripp remained seated, either unable to move due to the heat or merely unwilling to waste his energy on me. But from the way he watched me, his amusement honed, I could tell he was thinking wistfully of a world where Shadow and Light were all that mattered. Here he was content to let everyone else do the work for him.

And why wouldn’t they try to stop me? I thought, swallowing hard. By leaving now, and possessing nearly everything I’d entered with, I was robbing the men of the opportunity to skin my powers from me, and the women from using my soul to reinforce their pretty realities.

I returned my attention to the crowd, knowing I couldn’t take them all on. The players didn’t scare me. Each had been here far longer than I had, and I knew the extent of the lethargy one suffered under the influence of that drink. I’d be past them and at my lantern before any could shuffle from their seats.

Bill was more of a concern. He kept casting glances up at me, showing unnatural consideration as he ran his rag over the bar in small controlled circles. Moving normally, he could be over that bar top in one solid leap. Question was, how far could I get before he reached me?

Not far enough, I decided, especially if the dealers were in on the action. Though still seated, they too were operating on full cylinders. What bothered me were the things I didn’t know about them. Did they have weapons? What would they do if they caught me? How soon would they rise from their seats?

I took the stairs slowly, ring-studded fingers and black lacquered nails trailing over mysterious symbols carved into the banister, and by the time I hit the bottom stair my thirst was back in full force, like moisture was being wicked from my body from the inside out. The dry heat pulsed against me, and I knew standing and fighting would deplete all my energy reserves. Working together, these men would easily wear me down, and even if all they did was deliver me back upstairs, I wouldn’t be in any state to resist. I’d drink whatever those women put to my lips, fall asleep in the sky, and awake to someone studying my pretty soul.

So, bag on my back, I ran.

Closest to me, fittest, Bill moved first. I turned away from the rest of the room to focus on him. I felt the men moving behind me, but they were still like ants in molasses, so I was free to concentrate on the bartender. He was taller than me, wider too, with the extra mass and density afforded his sex. Everyone here was or had been agents raised and trained in battle, but it’d been a while since any of them had bothered to use their skills. Surprise rippled over his smooth features when I squared on him.

I shook my head. Pretty boys. Thought they could do whatever they wanted.

“Sit down, honey,” he said, circling like a hawk on prey. “Have a drink on the house.”

“The last man who called me honey,” I said, circling back, “spent the rest of his very short life sitting down.”

He remained cautious, knowing I had skills. Yet I doubted he’d ever encountered a woman exactly like me before; one who’d been born to mortality, never relying upon strength beyond what she’d built up herself. And what I’d built was a quick mind and a mean jab. Just because this was the house where “deeds reflected our true selves” didn’t mean our actions couldn’t lie. I drew him into a boxing stance by setting up my own, anticipated the one-two combination that was automatic in most fighters, and timed my double jab to rock his head straight back on his neck. I finished it with my own cross, and his eyes rolled back, much like Boyd’s had when calling Solange, before he hit the floor.

I smiled. If I didn’t know how good I was, I would have said he hadn’t even tried.

A tinkle of laughter had accompanied Bill’s fall, and I glanced up to find the women gathered again on the landing, though Solange was notably absent. Her mention of the second lantern on the right was what pulled my gaze from the light and life and color above, and I turned…

Just in time to dodge Boyd’s cruel uppercut.

Dodge it, but not avoid it completely. He too knew what he was doing, and grazed my kidney, the impact stealing breath I could ill afford to lose. The bell and bloodred rose in my hair fell to the ground. I coughed, a rasp that kept building, and almost got hit again because of it. Wheeling away, I instinctively backed toward the bar because that’s where all the liquid was. My throat was parched. It was like suffocating, but through lack of moisture instead of air. I squinted, noting with a mounting panic that my lids were beginning to stick to my eyeballs. If I didn’t leave soon, I’d dehydrate where I stood.

“Boyd,” I rasped, bracing myself against the bar, my tongue fat in my mouth. “I didn’t like you before, but now you’ve pissed me off.” The words stuck to the insides of my cheeks, one syllable hiccuping into the next, but he caught my meaning okay. Maybe it was the accompanying straight kick into his gut.

He managed to grab my foot as he toppled forward, but I closed the space between us, balancing my weight on his shoulders as my kneecap collided with his nose. From there, I just hammered the back of his neck until Boyd joined Bill in la-la-land.

Above me, Diana laughed. She’d changed into pink tulle and fishnets, but was still channeling a music hall version of Raj Barbie, looking like a neon ornament in the muted branching of the stark hallway. “Two down, Olivia. Only five more to go.”

I whirled to find the remaining half-dozen dealers lined up, single file, the ones near the front popping their knuckles and rolling their necks. They knew what I could do now, so I’d lost the element of surprise. However, the dealers near the back looked bored, the final one even glancing at his table to making sure his pot was safe while he stepped away. Meanwhile the players-men who’d once been both agents of Light and Shadow-had shuffled to the wall of lanterns, four and five bodies deep, a wall of flesh and muscle to overcome on my way home.

Okay, I thought, first things first. I returned my attention to the men who worked for the house.

The last dealer was right to be unconcerned, of course. Even fresh, it would have been a challenge, but as it was, I’d expire from dehydration and exhaustion long before reaching him. So I held up my hands in surrender. The first dealer, severely pock-faced with odd silvery eyes, shot a smile at the guy behind him, and I hit the floor, yanking the lighter from Boyd’s shirt pocket. Then I grabbed Bill’s ever-brimming liquor bottle and prayed the liquid that extinguished the will to fight would ignite like gas in the pretty green bottle.

It flared like a torch gun, and for the briefest of moments I considered throwing it in the direction of the beautiful, carefree laughter still raining from above, but the dealers were closer, faster, and rightly alarmed. I hurtled it forward, my body swinging with the movement.

I am a great fighter, but my pitching arm has always been shit, and the improvised bomb landed to the right of where I’d intended, directly between the lined dealers and huddled players…and atop one of the poker tables.

Felt and cards went up in a searing conflagration, the dry air hungry for fuel. Fire uncoiled across the table like a whip, and within seconds a handful of men guarding the wall started screaming, breaking rank in the tight formation. For once they moved at a normal speed, yanking at their clothes, clenching their throats, and scraping at their chest and necks.

Every eye gaped at that table and at the flaming little disks sparking with color, tiny tabletop fireworks of vibrant blues and yellows, greens, golds, and violet. Those men’s powers popped and sizzled like Roman candles and stunted sparklers, but the air wasn’t scented with sulfur or barium or black powder. Even the dealers leaned toward the inferno, inhaling deeply of toasted cinnamon and warmed coconut. The women upstairs started crying out, some weeping, some running their hands along their bodies in pleasure as power floated up to them.

As horrified as I was by what I’d inadvertently done, I couldn’t help inhaling the tiny bits of lost power wafting my way. They whetted my tongue, revived my energy, but also stirred the unconscious men at my feet. Before they could rise, or the dealers stopped getting off on someone else’s destroyed power, I sprang toward the wall of men, focusing on the holes left by those I’d inadvertently attacked.

I plowed through the remaining agents like they were bowling pins. Indeed, pushing them aside wasn’t much different than a gym workout; they did nothing to resist me, because they couldn’t. Their sole purpose was to form a wall of flesh, and my job was to dismantle it…body by body.

I took the most direct approach, because even with the added distraction of the flaming chips, my limbs were growing heavy and weak. I wanted to drop to my knees, put my cheek to the splintered floor and cry. But I was almost there. One last big bastard to plow through, a sandy-haired man with empty button eyes and outstretched hands, and then I could yank the cover off that second lantern and go home.

The thought spurred my strength. I barreled into him and delivered an elbow that caught him in the larynx, a little extreme, but I’d feel guilty over it later. Hell, I’d go to confession if it meant returning to a patriarchal society.

Not everybody felt the same. At the end of the line, while the dealers were still leaning over the burning poker table like kids beneath a broken piñata, and the rogue agents littered the floor like discarded toy soldiers, there was one man left standing. He had a dusty bowler hat on his head and a knife in his hand.

It was Mackie, the piano player. He stood erect, like he’d been pulled straight by levers and strings. Twisting the knife like a butcher would, I saw that he moved as quickly as I did, but my attention was on his face as he lifted his chin, his leather skin rearranging itself over his frame. Creepy when still, he was terrifying when animate. His eyes were missing altogether, black sockets empty as craters. His teeth were rotted away, mouth caught in an eternal grimace.

“Sleepy Mack,” I said slowly, licking my lips as I kept an eye on that deadly blade. The only indication he heard me was a wide-lipped snarl. Great. I took a step back. “That chip thing was an accident. I wasn’t really aiming for the table.”

Obviously a man who cared about results, not intentions, his arm arced through the air in a full-forced swing. Training took over as I stood beneath that falling blade, and I defended and countered at the same time. I thrust my left arm up to connect with his wrist, shifting my weight with it despite my instinct to recoil. At the same time, I burst forward, delivering a straight punch to his jaw, which I envisioned disappearing through the back of his head.

The blade allegedly holding the last of Mackie’s soul flew from his hands. There was a collective gasp, and the look on his face was more like I’d severed a limb than disarmed a weapon. I kept moving forward, knowing but ignoring that he’d nicked my left forearm, and attacked with everything I had left. My goal was to imprint his final expression of bereft surprise upon my knuckles.

The next few seconds were so fast I’d remember them forever. Mackie was stronger than the others, as dense and tough as jerky, almost petrified from living so long in a room that was also a kiln. No wonder he had no conscience. His brain was probably as rotted as the meat of a walnut. So I was guilt-free as I hit him again on the button. As good a shot as it was, it only popped his head straight back. He was reaching for me even as it snapped forward again.

And now the fucker was starting to growl, a high-pitched whining that intensified as he returned to offense. I sprang, my knee exploding into his temple, into his ribs so he’d buckle, again and again, and still he didn’t go down. I kept pummeling him, but it wasn’t until I picked up his piano stool and whipped it across his face that he fell to the ground and stayed there.

Mackie was down. Bill was up. And Boyd was charging.

But it was too late. I still had breath in my body, and with two steps and an overhead stretch, I also had the lantern off its hook and in my hand. A stunned cry drowned out even the rushing feet, and as my gaze met Diana’s shocked one above, I took an extra moment to smile and blow her a kiss.

In doing so, I extinguished the flame.

Smoke carried me. I was familiar with the sensation now, the weightlessness accompanying the obscured sight, the gritty vapor so paralyzing it was almost heavy. The cries and yells and voices I left behind blurred like streaming colors outside a speeding vehicle, and after I’d outrun them, there was a moment of supreme silence in which I was flipped vertically and diagonally and horizontally all at the same time. It was a whipping motion, strange because I never even moved, but this, I now understood, was a worlds-crossing. There both was and wasn’t ground beneath my feet, and though breathing, I hadn’t taken in air since extinguishing that lantern. And while nothing and everything changed, I had enough consciousness to recognize the shift when it occurred, like tectonic plates were grinding against one another. The sound made my teeth ache at their roots, though I eventually realized I was grating my lower jaw against the upper. I stopped, the aching ceased, and the smoke gradually cleared.

Don’t fight it, I thought, taking my first real breath of cool winter air. Yet that was like telling a driver not to tense before a car accident. My knee-jerk reaction was to try to control the situation, but it was release that I needed. Remember, I told myself, in a head-on collision it was the careless ones, those already out of control, who came out fine.

Then a sphere began to take shape in front of me. It grew larger, flipping over itself and expanding to the size of my head, doubling again on the next rotation to become a large mirror.

Catching my reflection, it froze. Cleopatra eyes, ruby lips, leather halter, cuffs and hoops, winking silver. I had a single moment to take it all in.

Then the mirror began ripping away the powers I’d lost in a game of chance.

I’d once been cold-cocked in a sparring match with a guy who didn’t take well to being beaten by a girl. It had been a controlled situation-in a dojo, on a mat-but none of that meant a thing once the blow met my jaw. Tingling launched through my limbs to pool in my fingertips, while my eyes rolled into my head. Numbness had me crumpling like a wad of paper instead of catching myself, and I felt that now, except it was concentrated on the inside of my skull, shot like novocaine upward through my spinal cord.

My eyes remained unblinking upon the reflection that locked me immobile against my wishes. My scream was silent, rebounding off the vacated places in my mind where three powers were methodically ripped away. I tried to protest, but my mouth wouldn’t move. The mirrored eyes shot to silver and then black, like they were catching light from a dark sun. Numbness ran through my mind like maggots over meat. Bitterness drained down my throat as infection was introduced, then cauterized.

And for one last, brief moment my bartered power was reflected back at me, beauty being torn away like pages from a book. And without them, I suddenly realized, the rest of the story wouldn’t make sense.

You can’t have it! I thought, staring back into eyes that were and were not mine. But those black eyes only winked to silver.

You have to leave me something.

The silver began to fade.

No, I thought. I’ll keep it for myself.

I fought then. I didn’t need to move to will every nerve and neuron into fighting for the information. Don’t you know who I am, what I’ve done? I’m the Kairos, I’ve survived attack before, I’ve adapted to other bodies and worlds. I’ve always fought for what’s mine. And…

And I didn’t know who I was without my power. I didn’t want to be incomplete. I wanted to run with my troop, battle the Shadows and defeat the Tulpa. I needed these powers because they were the foundation for so much more! Returning home without them would be like standing on pockets of air. Without them, I’d be less than Kimber, or even Chandra-relegated to an auxiliary role. If Warren even allowed that, I thought, panicked. I wouldn’t be permitted, or even able, to fight. Not for myself, and not for people as injured as I’d once been.

And who was I, if I wasn’t a fighter?

So I used all my strength of will to mentally hold onto the powers that had been taken from me. Suddenly I knew these losses would shape my future happiness more than any other.

No, I stated again, still holding tight.

And I continued to hold tight until their last precious tendrils slipped away.

My reflection winked. The mirror began spiraling back into the mist, shrinking in size as it went, until it was no larger than a mere gaming chip. I blinked and it snapped from sight, and I was again alone in the dark.