City of Souls

2

“That was horrifying.”

“No, it wasn’t that bad,” I assured Hunter as I handed him a towel. We were backstage, shuttled to a corner of the dressing room while models wearing-or not wearing-lingerie trotted out pieces for Suzanne’s trousseau. I mentally marked a particularly cute peignoir for later. “You’ve actually got rhythm.”

Unamused, Hunter snatched the towel from my hands and wiped icing from his chest. I found myself staring a moment too long, and looked away before he could catch me. It was the first time we’d been alone since the end of our affair a month ago, and by “affair” I meant something that’d ended almost as soon as it began.

As he turned his back-his beautiful back-to me, I pulled on a black trench coat and reminded myself that starting a relationship on the rebound was asking for heartache. Though the tension between Hunter and me had gradually eased, that didn’t mean we were back to normal. Our interactions were stilted, the pauses filled almost to bursting with everything we were trying not to say, or even think. There was absolutely zero innuendo or sexual tautness, and there’d always been at least that. Even my teasing had no effect, as if what once stood between us had never even existed.

It’s resolve, I thought as I switched into sturdy soled boots. I knew how it felt to have an indecision finally put to rest. I’d done the same with my last boyfriend, Ben, so I recognized the hardened glaze shellacking Hunter’s once soft feelings for me. When resting on me, his expression was faraway yet focused, like he was seeing past skin and blood and bone and laying his mind’s eye at the base of my spine.

It wouldn’t have been so bad, I thought, tucking my heels into my bag, if I didn’t have the memory of how he’d once let that knowing gaze linger on places only lovers found of interest. He’d once captured and followed the length and shape of my fingers, clearly reimagining them on himself. He’d memorized the curve of my wrists, which he once held and bit and raised above me in bed in willing surrender. He’d run his jawline along the muscles in my calves, taking pains to caress them before sliding them around his sides, covering himself in a second skin.

All of that was suddenly barricaded behind a wall of something he wanted more, but as there was no end to the things on this earth a man could want, I had no idea what it was.

But I did know that despite our physical attraction, and a mental connection once forged through magic, Hunter had his own dark secrets. The ones I was aware of-an undercover callboy identity, a cameo appearance with someone in the Shadow manuals, a daughter no one else knew about-were only the beginning. Experience had taught me that beneath such jagged tips lay emotional icebergs, and Hunter, I thought, stealing a glance as he pulled a long-sleeved collared shirt over his head, looked like an unsinkable ship going it alone. For some reason, it made me fear for him.

“What’s your problem, anyway?” I said, careful to keep my voice light. “I mean, this is well within your line of work, right?”

I was referring to that secret work as a male escort, even though I knew it was only a cover in his search for someone, or something, else. Hey, I had to deal with the Jessica Rabbit references in my cover, so why should I let the facts stop me?

“I don’t do that anymore.”

“I know.” He’d sold his Mustang, cancelled his private number, and disappeared from the escort brochures, leaving behind only wistful memories of lonely women. What I didn’t know was why. I couldn’t tell from his demeanor whether he’d found what he was looking for or if he’d given up altogether. And the dead calm of his gaze told me he wasn’t saying.

“So where’s the real stripper?”

He jerked his head. “Still in the cake.”

I snorted, and crossed to the corner to peer inside. Sure enough, there was a hunky stripper inside, sleeping like a well-built baby. “You climbed into a cake with another man?”

“Shut up, Jo.” He crossed the room, and for a moment it looked like he was going to keep on coming, and that was something you didn’t want Hunter Lorenzo to do. I stepped back, but he only yanked his black pants from the center of the cake, checking them for frosting before pulling them on. “How else was I supposed to infiltrate the land of estrogen?”

“You wouldn’t have had to if Vanessa had shown up.”

“Exactly.” He flipped a cap on to conceal his hair and facial features.

I frowned. “What?”

“She’s missing.” He jerked his head to the door, assuming I’d follow. “Let’s roll.”

Missing? I shook my head, but willed my feet into moving. “No. She’ll be here. I was just texting…”

where R U

The text had no punctuation. Vanessa, as I’d known earlier, would never do that.

“Oh, my God.” No, I pleased silently. Visions of Vanessa laughing and smiling and blowing kisses raced through my head. Not her. Not anyone, but…the Shadows couldn’t have Vanessa. I picked up my pace.

Hunter led me from the ballroom, careful to keep a discreet distance between us. I put an extra sway in my hips but kept up the pace. We had to get clear of Valhalla, and the Eye-in-the-Sky security system, before we could look like we actually knew each other. Here, in the Archer dynasty’s hallowed gaming halls, we were Olivia Archer and Employee.

“We think they got her while she was on her way to you, so they shouldn’t be far.” Hunter nodded to another guard, who goggled at me when we passed. I shot him a smile that could melt iron and kept walking. “Same message sent to everyone on her contact list. Riddick, Jewell, and Warren were all together when they got it. It’s how we figured it out so quickly.”

And Hunter, who acted as a security guard at Valhalla when not saving the world, had been the closest to me. I should’ve known he wouldn’t have taken off his uniform and climbed into a cake unless the situation was absolutely dire. “Whoever has her is trying to use her to get to me, aren’t they?”

where R U

He lifted one shoulder noncommittally, which meant yes, and pushed through the door into the open air. Beyond Valhalla’s ornate porte cochere and winding drive, Las Vegas stretched like a winking rainbow, light scoring the ground and sky.

Hunter halted as we reached the fountains, lifting his phone to his ear. I bit my lip, waiting as he listened silently, nodded once, and hung up. “Gregor traced the call.”

“Find the phone?”

“Yes.”

“And Vanessa with it?” My heart pounded as I waited for the answer.

“Sorta.” He turned his back to the street and gazed back up at the casino.

Worry washed over me from head to toe. “What do you mean ‘sort of’?”

“The phone was wrapped in a package. With a bow.” His slumped shoulders gave away the bad news before he spoke again. “And her tongue.”

We raced across Maryland south of the university, the busy street teeming with college students letting off weekend steam and enough traffic that we had to dodge headlights. The sound of laughter and music rang from the off-campus apartments, the gas stations were bright, and the restaurants dim but bustling.

It wasn’t until I spotted the tiny variable star winking above the side entrance of a tavern that I realized where Hunter was leading me. I stifled a groan, knowing it would only earn me an arch look. This tiny star marked a portal, an entrance into the washed-out flip side of reality. If you knew how to look, they could be found almost anywhere.

But that didn’t mean I liked entering them. Sure, it reduced the chances of being spotted by both mortals and Shadows, but reality’s flip side reduced the landscape into a hazy black-and-white line drawing, and the molecules comprising air zinged in my mouth with every breath, snapping in my throat when I swallowed. Most disconcerting, though, was never knowing what lurked on the other side of these supernatural thoroughfares. The weather was capricious, the terrain more like something found on another planet than this one, and the basic universal rules-like time and space, and sometimes even gravity-were as bendable as straws.

I followed Hunter through the dented metal door, eyes locked on the portal’s star for as long as possible, though I knew it wouldn’t wink out until the entry closed behind us. As soon as it had, the street sounds ceased, and we took a moment to acclimate ourselves to what looked like a street scene from some grainy gumshoe film set in the forties.

“I mean to solve this crime, ya see, and you’re not going to like it, ya see.”

I snorted, gratified that Hunter was thinking along the same lines, and we started off down Rainbow Boulevard, a good fifteen miles from where we’d entered. Entries and exits between the two sides never matched up.

We walked on, easier without the threat of Shadows to contend with. In the past we’d found snow or rain or rainbows shaped like lucky horseshoes marring the landscape, but this time there was a knotty ball of power gathered in the sky. The clouds were dense around the center bulge, the layers extended in frayed wisps, which disappeared at the valley’s edges. It was as if the victim of a very large spider had been wrapped up tight. Every so often there was a flash, like sheet lightning was caught in that bulbous center. I gave thanks that the odd cloud bump was only on this side of the portals, and caught Hunter giving it a wary glance as well.

Yet even given that, what really stood out in the achromatic gloom was the one thing that shouldn’t have been there at all.

Us.

In the smeared, dulled, monochromatic milieu, Hunter’s aura pooled around him like a full-body halo, a snapping gold that played off his burnished skin like light cutting on glass. It trailed behind him as he walked, a colorful cloak dissipating with the absence of heat from his body. I lifted my hand to run it through the trailing light when he wasn’t looking, sending sparks pinging from my skin in his wake.

Which was how I noted my aura, or lack of it. Aura represented life force, and what had once fairly pulsed in a vibrant red band was now nothing more than a wispy cloud, barely colored at all.

“Worse than the last time,” I said, ducking my head when I realized Hunter had heard. But it was. Thankfully, he said nothing, and we continued on in silence until we reached the Spring Valley Park, and the others. Six agents of Light were gathered under a green steel awning, and they greeted us with subdued nods. The two newest agents, Riddick and Jewell, were flanking Felix, who was only a little older but already a senior troop member. Tekla, mysterious and tiny, was an island unto herself as usual. Gregor was behind Micah, our troop’s physician, and was using his one good arm to unconsciously rub at the stump of the other as he watched Micah rifle in a trash bin. Hunter and I joined the first three agents and were quickly filled in.

They’d found two more body parts. Micah was pushing aside soda bottles, empty fast food wrappers, and bags of chips, in search of a third body part that we all could readily smell. He finally found it-an ear-and added it with a sigh to his growing collection. He wouldn’t throw them away, I knew. No matter what happened to Vanessa, we would later burn them as relics, give our thanks for her sacrifice, and if needed send up prayers for her soul.

I turned at a sound, and found my troop leader jogging toward us, though it took me a moment to recognize him. Warren Clarke had a multitude of covers meant to keep the Shadows from tracking him, though his favorite was that of a weary, timeworn indigent. His matted hair, crusted fingernails, and bloodshot eyes regularly sent people scurrying the other way, but the Shadows had recently put a new agent on patrol in the city’s homeless shelters, so Warren decided to take time off, appearing as a regular Joe instead.

He jerked his head in the direction he’d just come and we followed without a word. Colorful auras trailed behind the others, reminding me again of my faded red hue. I didn’t have time to regret it much beyond that, though. Two hundred yards away we found a big toe with shiny silver polish. Micah’s giant shoulders drooped. Tekla bent to pick it up.

They weren’t trying to kill Vanessa. Not yet. No, these were just tokens. Teasers. Her tongue left in the middle of the street, her right ear in the trash. They’d severed a thumb, and left it hanging like an ornament on a tree. Very creative. We also found her hair, which didn’t technically count as a body part, but it was the one thing that took the same amount of time to grow on us as it would on a mortal, so the shearing was symbolic. I looked at the mass of shining dark curls and couldn’t help my tears.

As the body parts were too small to attract mortal attention, we found each one through Vanessa’s blood and unique scent, all of us attuned to the macabre signage pointing us in her direction.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Jewell said when we came across Vanessa’s perfect, petite, and now severed nose. It was as if they were chopping off every available appendage, severing all the bits that came together to identify her as a whole.

“Don’t you dare!” Felix whirled, and his tears rolled from their tracks, disappeared into the night. He wiped a hand over his face, leaving a smear of dirt. “She has to endure this. It shouldn’t be so hard for you.”

Felix, normally engaging and easygoing, fisted his hand in his already tousled hair like he wanted to pull it out. It wasn’t just that he’d grown up with Vanessa in the underground sanctuary that housed the agents of Light and their children, their world. The two junior agents had quietly become an item in the last year, and he was having a hard time keeping his emotions from burning like acid in the air.

Tekla, our troop’s Seer, wise woman, and senior troop member, placed a hand on his shoulder. “She didn’t mean that, Felix. She didn’t mean anything by it.”

“She is not just parts…” He shook off Tekla, but kept on shaking. “She’s not…”

Hunter and I looked at each other, then he jerked his head and we silently followed.

We followed the body parts all the way into Chinatown.

“This can’t be right,” Riddick said as we turned onto Spring Mountain Road. “All of Chinatown is a safe zone.”

Safe zones were places where neither side of the Zodiac could touch the other, and were built in around the entire city. Even an agent’s paranormal weapon, their personal conduit, was useless in such a place.

Gregor squinted at the faux Imperial skyline. “You sure it’s not residual? Has Vanessa been here before?”

“It’s fresh blood,” Micah said, voice strained. Felix winced.

“So why would they lead us somewhere they can’t touch us?”

“I know why.” It was the first time Warren had spoken since Hunter and I joined them, and the timing was telling. It was only recently that I’d begun to realize his quietude was much like his indigent cover, designed to make us overlook him…and that he had such a great stake in our lives. Meanwhile the wheels were turning behind that sturdy frame, his mind ever-working, and all to an end that he’d already pinpointed at his personal destination. “They want to make a trade.”

I swallowed hard. There was only one person they’d be willing to trade the life of a full-fledged agent of Light for-only one thing we had that they wanted. Our world’s chosen one. The Kairos. Me.

They were torturing Vanessa because of me.

I was careful not to let Felix see my face as my stomach roiled.

“No trade.”

“Of course not.”

Felix frowned and bit his lip, and he didn’t look at me.

I took a breath. “Wait. There has-”

Tekla stayed a hand on my arm, but spoke loudly enough for Felix to hear. “No, Jo. We’ll get her back without risking you. Now put on your mask. And start searching for a portal. We can’t enter a safe zone on this side of reality.”

We found one, and we entered it as a team, as one.