City of Souls

23

Nobody moved for so long it was as if the entire room had been paralyzed. When someone finally breathed-Gregor or Micah or Riddick letting a curse loose on the air-everyone else seemed to deflate. Whatever it was that’d been holding them up seconds before disappeared, and the entire troop sunk to the nearest surface-wall, tables, floor-looking more like rag dolls than superheroes.

I stared at them all, but my incredulity was met by blank stares. I spoke so loudly in the dumbed silence it was like a slap in the face. “We have to go after him!”

Warren, slumped in the corner, put his head in his hands. He shook it mournfully. “Joanna. He’s gone.”

My eyes winged so wide they felt like flying saucers. “What do you mean gone? He’s right outside those doors!”

I pointed, but Warren said nothing.

I spun on the others, letting my arm fall. “Riddick, Vanessa?” Neither of them looked at me. I goggled again. “It’s Hunter!”

Micah pushed himself into a standing position. He was so tall and wide it looked like a chunk of the wall was moving. I almost sighed in relief, but before he could take even one step forward, Warren rose as well.

“He betrayed you, Jo.” Warren shook his head sorrowfully. “He betrayed us all.”

Micah paused…then bent his head.

No arguing, Warren was right. Betrayal lay everywhere, but I’d seen the look in Hunter’s eyes, and I knew that in some way he’d also betrayed himself. I needed to find out why. “So that erases all the good he’s done before that. His friendship? His past deeds?”

“Yes,” he said simply.

I shook my head. “So then we deal with him!” I looked around, but nobody would meet my eye. “All of us. Not Regan.”

“We just did. Jo-”

“No!” I was so tired of Warren speaking for the rest of us-there was no way everyone in the room felt like that! No way had kinship and brotherhood and the absolute love these people felt for Hunter been so suddenly replaced by indifference. Not in mere moments. Not just because Warren said so. “So we take a vote or something, right? Isn’t that what you were going to do when I first came in the troop?”

It was supposed to be a democratic gesture. Suddenly it felt more like a popularity contest.

Tekla finally stirred, her whisper full of grief. “That was different.”

“He knew better,” Warren added, like that made a difference. “He’s known from birth.”

Because unlike me, he’d been born and raised in a troop of superheroes, taught not to question his duty or his troop leader. He’d kept secrets from Warren too, but…

“Maybe he just made a mistake.”

It sounded hollow even to me. A mistake was something done once, not over again and again. He’d been meeting with Regan repeatedly, if not regularly. It was inexcusable, but I still wanted to find out why.

“Some mistakes are irreparable.”

I shook my head, staring at my troop leader. He sounded like a religious fanatic. One of the fundamentalists intent on spreading the Word to new places and people, and once the natives heard it, they had better heed it or burn. A year ago today I had been one of those natives.

So it wasn’t my fault, I thought, crossing to pick up Hunter’s whip, if things were getting a little hot in this kitchen.

From the corner of my eye I saw Tekla making her way to me, using the voice she reserved for her most troublesome pupils. “Archer, Warren is-”

She was going to tell me Warren was right. She was going to tell me to drop the conduit, fall into ranks, and do as I was told. But that was before I turned the whip on her.

“Get back, bitch.”

Vanessa gasped. “Joanna!”

Now the troop came to life, and that pissed me off even more. They’d stir for Tekla, but not for Hunter? Was this how easily a valued member of the troop could be thrust on the outside? How much easier, then, would they do the same to me? The bad pupil, I thought, feeling Tekla’s considering gaze. The wild native, I decided, catching Warren’s.

My anger began simmering. I might not have had Tekla’s control or Warren’s ruthlessness, Shen may have taken my ability to heal, and I’d had to give over my ability to construct walls from thin air to Boyd on my last escape from Midheaven…but I still had my temper.

My father’s temper.

“One step toward me, one wall set up to box me in…” I looked pointedly at Tekla. “…one move to stop me, and I’ll let it go. My eyes will burn so red they’ll serve as a beacon for the Tulpa. He’ll dive-bomb your new hidey-hole. He’ll flatten us all.”

“Think about what you’re doing, Joanna.” Tekla’s gaze was ice cold in comparison to my heated one.

Gregor, then, a man who’d never been anything but kind to me. “Don’t betray us too.”

“I’m not. But we’re stronger with him.” I turned back to Warren. “You know it.”

Warren’s jaw clenched and he swallowed hard, but he remained unmoved. I shook my head and started to back up, just as Regan had minutes earlier.

Vanessa, perhaps closer to me than anyone there, tried, her voice imploring. “Joanna, please-”

“No, let her go.” Warren crossed his arms and leaned against a stainless steel rack. I wasn’t fooled. The last thing he felt with his beloved Kairos walking out the door was in control. His tight smile kept me from feeling remotely bad about it. “But we won’t help. We won’t risk ourselves by going after him.”

“Some friends,” I spat, looking at each of them in turn. Felix was cross-legged on the floor, almost in a ball, and his fists were clenched so tight his knuckles were white. Good. I hoped his inaction sliced like a knife. Riddick had his eyes closed, head back, like he was thinking of pounding it through concrete-I hoped that hurt too-and though Micah had returned to his position up against the wall, he and Gregor were shooting uncertain glances at each other behind Warren’s back. I shook my head. Hunter hurt me too, but outrage on his behalf momentarily helped keep that at bay. If there was one thing I knew, it was how to prioritize.

But so did Warren. He tried again. “He betrayed you.”

Because Hunter had taken me to his bed, in his arms, while meeting with Regan. Knowing how I felt about her, I thought. Knowing she’d do anything to get to me. But it was the magnitude of those offenses that made me want to know why. “Well, I’m not going to lower myself by doing the same.”

I felt something close to hatred then; not for Hunter, but for Warren. Because he could just wash his hands of Hunter, even after he’d dutifully served this troop for so many years. Hunter was still that same person, and he was out there, still alive…though not destined to stay that way for long. I sneered at Warren. I scoffed at them all.

“Stay safe, heroes.” I looked pointedly at each of them, and found that none of them were willing to meet my eye. “Enjoy the fucking cake.”

Doubts crept in once I was out on the apocalyptic streets with the strange hovering sky and eerie silence, with the Shadows lurking and my troop in hiding. I even had the urge to turn around a couple of times, but images of Hunter kept flashing through my mind: the whip that I was holding licking air as he battled the Shadows, his eyes going soft as caramel as he moved inside of me. Betrayed me? Okay, yes. He’d done that. But betray the rest of the troop? His family? It just didn’t hold.

I wasn’t far behind. Though she had a head start, Regan was weighted down with injury, Hunter, and the need for stealth. I had only the third issue to worry over, and that was nothing new. So I followed the scent of blood-both old and new; tainted and fresh, fouled and that of the recently ruined hope-and thought, Oh, Hunter. What have you done?

Grieve later, I told myself, and headed into the core of the city.

I wasn’t surprised when the trail led to the nearest pipeline entrance. I hadn’t been in this one before, but it didn’t matter. All roads led home. It didn’t take a genius to figure out where Regan was headed. She was going to the entrance to Midheaven. It was symbolic, since he’d apparently engaged her in order use her soul energy for access. It was mean and meant especially for me.

I picked up my pace inside the tunnel’s depths. I could now move unseen, and I counted on Hunter to make enough noise so I was also unheard. The first tunnel emptied into a ninety-degree turn, but I stopped keeping track after that. The turns and whorls it took were impossible, part of a magic system rather than any clever planning on the city’s part. After the first few, which I navigated by touch, the air became stifling, and the blood I’d smelled earlier intensified.

Just as I was wondering how much farther this particular rabbit hole went, I heard Regan’s voice. It was closer than I expected, and I froze.

“They won’t come after you,” I heard her say, and a sharp thwack! told me she had just slapped his face. What was it with these Shadow women and face slapping? Did they take classes in it or something?

“I know.” His flat, annoyed response told me it wasn’t the first time he’d been hit. It was probably how she’d brought him back around. It was hard to carry someone heavier than yourself while trudging through a damp tunnel.

“Great, so be a good boy and leap onto that ledge. I’ll tear off a huge chunk of flesh if I try throwing you, and it takes forever for that shit to grow back.”

Eww. A part of Regan’s personal hygiene routine that I really didn’t need to know about.

“Nah,” Hunter replied, and I could practically see the shoulder shrug that went with it. “Go ahead and kill me here.”

“No. I want your kill spot to shine forever just outside Midheaven’s entrance.” By killing Hunter at the entrance to Midheaven, anyone who tried to access that world in the future would scent the olfactory chalk outline that was his kill spot, basically paranormal graffiti that said, Regan was here.

“I know,” he said in a way that meant he wasn’t budging.

She hesitated, thinking. “You know there are lots of ways to seriously injure you before killing you, and believe me, I’m familiar with most of them. This crossbow makes a particularly effective edged weapon.”

“Try burying it just beneath his Adam’s apple,” I said, and sent a thought pulse to bring my glyph to full blast. “That’s always been my favorite.”

Both Hunter and Regan cringed, eyes closed. “Uh-uh-uh,” I said when she swung my conduit my way. “You’d better watch where you point that.”

She notched an iron bolt.

“You can’t kill me, remember? The Tulpa wants me alive.”

“No, but I can kill your boyfriend here.” She pointed the bow exactly where I’d told her. Hunter gave me a dead stare. I grimaced apologetically. “Oops. I mean, ex.”

“Geez, my memory must be bad.” I put one hand on my hip, the other behind my back. “Regan, weren’t you supposed to bring me to the Tulpa at the first given chance?”

Hunter made a warning sound, knowing I was baiting her. “Jo-”

We both ignored him, though Regan kept my conduit trained on his throat. Kill spot or not, she’d murder him there if she had to. He stilled again.

“So what if I tell Daddy Dearest that you traded me for Hunter? That, once again, you put your desires above your leader’s?” I shook my head and heaved a sigh. “Then you’ll never heal. You’ll never be reinstated into the troop. You certainly won’t ever sit at his right hand side…not unless it’s as a knickknack on his side table.”

“And what? You’re going to tell him? Hunter is? Like I’ll let either of you out of this tunnel.” She laughed, but even in the empty tunnels it rang more hollowly than it should have. I smiled.

“He’ll be happy to come to me. All I have to do is let the fury I’m feeling unfurl like a giant red banner. It’s actually quite easy. Probably because it’s so close to the surface.”

She weighed her options, notching the arrow a little tighter in Hunter’s throat, just to feel in control. “You’re going to do that anyway.”

I lifted one shoulder. “Not necessarily. Not if we can strike a deal.”

“No,” Hunter said, as I knew he would, drawing Regan’s attention. “No more deals.”

“Let the woman talk,” she told him, before turning back to me. “What kind of deal? Your life for his?”

“Actually, I had something else in mind.” And I pulled Hunter’s whip from behind my back. Lashing like a rattler’s tongue, I wrapped it around my conduit. Hunter-feeling the same attraction for his conduit that I felt for mine-ducked so the barbs nearest his face licked air. Regan misfired, and I jerked my crossbow from her palm.

But she didn’t let go. She stumbled forward, instinct telling her release meant death, so I simultaneously pulled and delivered a front kick to her chest. My boot sank clear into its center, splitting ribs and separating muscle, and threatened to lodge there. I’m ashamed to say I squealed, but I’d have defied even Hunter to plow through someone else’s chest without a groan.

“Yuck,” he said now. I couldn’t agree more.

“So here’s the deal I was thinking of,” I said once my foot was free. I was breathing hard, kinda grossed out, but I didn’t miss a beat. Too bad Regan couldn’t say the same. She was sprawled on the concrete floor, bloodied and stinkier than ever, and alternating squeals of pain with gulps of breath. I’d displaced her heart, which had to be unbelievably painful…especially when you couldn’t die that way. Now via conduit was another matter, I thought, flipping mine around in my hand to point at her, and throwing Hunter his whip. “How about your soul in exchange for his passage into Midheaven? But wait-there’s more! You get absolutely nothing out of it except more excruciating pain. Do we have a deal?”

“Fuck no, you-”

“Shh…I wasn’t asking your permission.” I shot Hunter a tentative smile, but he was standing flat-footed, arms at his sides, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, that I’d come for him after what he’d done and what I now knew. I swallowed hard and shrugged. “Come on, let’s hoist her up. I have a feeling we won’t be alone for long.”

He hesitated, but bent after another moment to grab an arm and a leg. Well, what else was he going to do? He was a rogue agent now. He had nowhere else to go. Plus, Midheaven was obviously where he wanted to be.

“You think the Tulpa’s really coming?” he said.

“Nah, I didn’t work up my mad yet. Besides, he’s captured Skamar.” Hunter looked surprised. That even caught Regan’s attention. I privately marveled at how natural it was to be working together, talking together, over the body of the one he’d betrayed me for. “I have a feeling he’ll be busy for a while.”

I didn’t even want to know what kind of madness one tulpa could inflict on another.

“Warren, then.” Hunter grimaced, and the niggling I’d felt in the kitchen was back. I was still angrier with Warren than Hunter, but he shouldn’t get too comfortable.

“Of course.” We both knew Warren wasn’t going to just let me walk away. I was, after all, his precious Kairos.

We got Regan up on the ledge, then stood, staring at each other. Conscious of her eyes on us, I put my boot over her face. I resisted the urge to stomp, but only because we needed her breath.

“So,” I finally said. “In return for what?”

“I didn’t betray you, Jo. This,” he said, motioning to Regan down at our feet, “this had nothing to do with you.”

But it should have. Because we were lovers. Because I trusted you. That should have played into whether he teamed up with the trash we were standing on now. I let my silence speak for me. Hunter rubbed a hand over his face.

“This is so stupid,” Regan muttered, knowing she was finished anyway.

“Shut. Up.”

“Lovers are retarded.”

I kicked her in the head.

“I don’t know what you’re looking for over there,” I told Hunter softly, “but I hope it’s worth it.”

It was probably the dim lighting, but tears may have sparkled in his eyes. I looked at the small rips dotting his flesh like a new constellation. They’d scar, I thought, putting my finger to one and wiping the blood away. Injury from conduits always did. “Jo-”

I sniffed, and cleared my voice, focusing on the safe’s dial instead of him. I lined it up with the Leo glyph, Regan’s sign. I wanted to be sure it took her soul and not Hunter’s. “You’ll skip the worst of it by using Regan’s soul in lieu of your own. I guess you figured that out.”

And only now did I realize that was why Warren initially sent me to find Skamar. She’d originated in Midheaven, so she knew how to enter, and what it cost. Ah, well. At least I’d lived long enough to learn that. I sniffed. “So, that’s good, because it really hurts. But you need to know about the drink. Hunter, the drink. You’ll be dying of thirst, literally, but the minute you sip from that shot glass, you become a part of that world. Do you understand?”

He nodded, and that possible tear fell.

“And don’t play poker,” I said, voice cracking. I cleared my throat. “It’ll remove bits of your power, and you won’t have them when you return.” If he returned. I felt tears starting to well suddenly too. Everything was happening so fast! How could this be good-bye? A year ago I’d been outside of the troop and he’d been firmly planted within. How could our fortunes have reversed so suddenly?

I wanted to ask, but his expression had sharpened. “Wait, you played? You lost?”

“It doesn’t matter now.” I paused, thinking I heard something far away, closer to the mouth of the tunnel than our placement there at the core. Far off, but not far enough. Warren. But there was so much more! “Watch out for Mackie, he’s the piano player, I promise you can’t miss him. There’s also Harlan Tripp, you probably heard of him-”

“Harlan doesn’t worry me.” He wiped sweat from his brow, let his hand trail down his face.

I nodded, and though my throat was tight, I thought, I can do this. I could let this man go. Everyone should have their greatest desires, right?

But what if he is yours?

I pushed the thought away by pulling on the concrete window. The candle was there, still burning, still appearing newly lit. “But the person you have to be most careful of, Hunter, is the woman you saw when we…when we…” I couldn’t reference the way we’d made love, so instead I referenced our other connection. “In the aureole. She’s beautiful, yes, but so dangerous. Her name is-”

“Solange.”

“That’s right.” My brows drew down. Had that been in the aureole too? “And Jacks will be with her. He’s a big motherfucker, and he’s from here too. He’ll know of you, of course. Solange and he are-”

“Married,” he said softly. “He’s her husband.”

“Yes, he-” I froze, mouth open, all the blood in my body pooling in my toes. Hunter steadied me when I swayed. Regan snorted under my feet. Jaden Jacks…

Is standing right in front of me.

And despite the unearthing of that knowledge, the easy click of nonsensical pieces falling into place, a part of me felt numbed, dumbed. I didn’t believe. “H-How am I able to talk to you about Midheaven? How can I provide all these details now, and not before. I haven’t been able to tell anyone else. How-”

An undercover identity to lure women. One woman in particular. Dark-haired. Dark-eyed. A type. Just like Solange.

“Oh, my God.” He’d returned to her as soon as Warren opened Midheaven, but he’d been plotting it long before that. Woodenly, I looked down. And Regan had been a part of that plot. And despite both those women…

He still made love to you.

“Oh my God,” Regan mimicked, voice muffled. “It just keeps getting better and better.” Hunter kicked her this time. She grunted.

Hunter was Jaden Jacks. Hunter had already been in Midheaven. And I finally knew Hunter’s greatest desire.

Solange.

Had Warren known this?

Solange.

“Look, I’ve been searching for Sola for a long time…”

Sola?

“But I’d changed my mind. I wasn’t going to go. And then last month. You chose Ben.”

I tilted my head, not understanding.

Hunter squinted like he was in pain. “I asked you to forget. To be present and stay with me, and when you left…”

He’d made a deal with this she-devil.

The realization must have blanketed my face. I know the scent of my distress had to be reverberating like aftershocks against the walls of the confined space. Hunter’s head jerked from side to side. “No, it’s not what you think. There’s more. So much more that you don’t know-”

I held up a hand and laughed without humor. “Please, I don’t want to hear any more. And you don’t need to explain. I saw her, remember?” He said nothing. I looked up into his face, forcing him to meet my gaze. He did so somberly. “I mean, it’s where you want to be, right? You still want to go?”

He swallowed hard. “Yes, but-”

“Then go.” I hated how flat my voice sounded, like nothing lived inside of me. I hated the way I used Regan to push away his words and my pain. I grabbed the gauze circling her neck to lift her to her feet-ignoring the way her skin gave unnaturally beneath my grip-and propped her between us.

“Your death,” I muttered to her, “is going to be a relief.” For us all.

Regan didn’t answer, and I realized it was probably as close to an agreement as we’d ever come. I looked into her deadened gaze one last time, inhaled lightly of the rotted scent, and knew that, Tulpa’s touch or not, Regan had been this gone from the first. Dying even while she was being birthed. Wanting to cause destruction because she was destruction, decay, poison…and the enemy of love. She was pure Shadow.

“Here’s your candle.” I handed it to Hunter, though I guess he already knew how this worked, then pushed Regan in front of the small window, though I guess she did as well. She’d already provided him with a third of her soul…at least! “And you blow.”

I looked at Hunter and he stared back over the top of Regan’s ruined head. I still couldn’t put it together. Hunter was Jaden Jacks. Jacks was Hunter.

“One more thing,” he said, as an uneven scrape sounded below and behind us. Warren was getting closer.

“Please. No.” I didn’t think I could take another surprise tonight.

“This is important.” He put his free hand on my arm. I looked down but he didn’t move it, so I looked up and met his gaze. “Don’t believe him,” he said softly, almost like he really cared. “Warren, I mean. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. Not even in the darkest corner of that beautiful soul.”

I was unsure what to say to that, not that it mattered. I’d never get words past the lump in my throat. Besides, there was something wrong with me. Hunter just didn’t know about the pieces of myself I’d left in that other world. I might have told him, but Regan was weary of waiting, of standing…probably of living.

“Enough with the long good-bye,” she said, leaning forward. “Fuck you both.”

It was different than when I’d blown the candle out myself. My arms were dragged forward in the sudden, thickening smoke, like the muscles were being pulled out through my fingertips, causing a terrible tickle to work its way back into my body, but I didn’t release Regan. And she, in turn, grabbed onto me, the bones of her still-tensile fingers digging into my skin, strong enough to pierce skin and draw blood. I imagined its infection as her rotting body clung to mine. Even while trading an opened-mouth kiss with death she was attempting to drag me along. Then a pained gasp fled her mouth, and the smoke hissed like it was alive. Then nothing. An absence beside me, though nothing could actually move in that choking muck. It was like a metro turnstile, making sure only one person passed and paid at a time, and as Regan’s soul wheeled away, yanked from her body to be used as fuel for another world, her scream sounded, like fangs on a chalkboard. Another moment, no more or less, and the smoke cleared. The candle burned anew in the center of the shelf. And Hunter was gone.

I looked down at Regan, limp in my arms.

“You have caused me, and the men I’ve loved, a lot of trouble,” I told her carcass.

It’s what I do, I could practically hear her say as I stared down at what was essentially dust held together by blood and bile, and I knew some of her spirit yet lingered.

“Not anymore,” I told it. And I let her body fall. The kill spot that would forever lay at the entrance to Midheaven wasn’t mine or Hunter’s, but Regan’s. It’s what I’d long wanted. And everyone, I thought, standing alone, should have their greatest desires.

Right?