City of Souls

3

At one time only three people knew I was masquerading as my sister, the socialite and casino heiress Olivia Archer. It had been a month since the other agents of Light found out I was Joanna Archer beneath all this Stepford perfection, but other than Regan DuPree-now an outcast and rogue agent-the entire Shadow Zodiac was still clueless about my cover identity. Everyone in the mortal world believed Joanna Archer had died a year ago in a fall from a high-rise building, and it was out of this destruction of my old identity that my true life was birthed. In order to keep that life, it was imperative the Shadows never discover my Olivia Archer identity.

So I made one last check of my mask before we collectively slipped under the turned-up eaves of a strip mall impersonating a Chinese temple. The red tile rooftops appeared black in the moonless night, and we stole past the crowded restaurants on the lower levels, where menus I couldn’t read were pressed against the windows and the people inside were munching contentedly on dim sum and pot stickers. Ignoring the scent of steamed food, we instead followed that of fresh blood and rotting flesh, heading one by one up a wide concrete staircase to the empty furniture stores above.

Antiques shops comprised most of the retail space, Buddhas and dragons and Shaolin warriors all peering out from the window displays in wary dismay, but we kept going, the macabre scents intensifying as we neared a Chinese bakery. The Shadows weren’t even trying to conceal their location.

Warren, sotto voce. “Make a net.”

We put some distance between us, so the splitting of ranks would appear natural, though we were running short a couple of agents. Chandra, whom I’d displaced, was now serving the troop in an auxiliary role only, and Kimber was no longer strong enough to run with us. As she blamed me for that lack, I didn’t exactly mourn her absence. Yet it was at the moment that everyone pulled out their conduits that I felt most vulnerable. That now-rogue agent, Regan, had stolen mine after being expelled from the Shadow troop. I had to settle for a mortal weapon until Hunter could make me a new one. The Micro Uzi was a poor substitute for a conduit, but you took what you could get.

The bakery was abnormally large, with giant plate-glass windows sporting tiered wedding cakes that overlooked the ornamental patio and the lights of passing traffic on Spring Mountain Road beyond. There was no way to sneak up unseen, but we didn’t need to in a safe zone. So we walked single file through the sole glass door, propped open to let the scent of Shadows-and Vanessa-waft outside.

The table and chair clusters had been cleared from the room’s center, and bakery cases lined the opposite wall, while red paper lanterns set on a low glow shot an eerie light through the cavernous shop’s middle. There were coffee and tea stations, and a curtained doorway leading into a kitchen, but the Shadows were clustered at one side of the elongated room, tilting our attention that way. It was like they were baiting us. But for what?

And then, as they parted ranks, I decided they’d been luring us in for a close-up of the carnage they’d wreaked upon Vanessa’s once pristine body. She was trussed to a chair like a victim in a gangster movie, except the ropes wrapped only around her core, leaving limbs and remaining appendages free for further attack. But they’d dispensed with the toying games now. In addition to her shorn hair and missing nose, and the ear and digits we’d already found, there was a foot lying beneath her chair.

They had done this because of me.

It was all I could do to hold back a wail.

Felix didn’t. His cry rose out of him like a siren, but guttural and borne from his belly. He strained forward, but Gregor and Micah were already flanking him in anticipation. They held him until he stopped struggling, but his voice had awoken something in Vanessa. She lifted her head, which had been lolling, and though it took her a moment to focus, seeing us brought her to life. She shook her head from side to side, gurgling as she strained against her bonds, eyes bulging, the movement making the blood flow free in her mouth again. After all she’d been through, it was a testament to her will that she could still move at all.

Other than the man securing her, the Shadows fanned out, and we each gravitated almost unconsciously to our opposite on the Zodiac. Felix dutifully followed Sloane, the Shadow Capricorn, who fucked with him by arching the farthest away from Vanessa. Though I didn’t will it, I found myself bisecting the room to stand directly in front of our captured Leo. My opposite, the Sagittarian Shadow and their troop leader, was missing.

“So what now?” Warren finally asked. I could tell by the tightness constricting his voice that it rubbed him to ask, but right now the Shadows were firmly in control.

“We wait,” said the man securing Vanessa, the man-I could tell from scent-who’d defiled our Zodiac’s Leo. This was the first time I’d met him, but I recognized him from the Shadow manuals. Harrison Lamb was Micah’s opposite, the Shadow side’s new Virgo. I’d killed his uncle Ajax nine months earlier, and because of Ajax’s prowess and brutality, Harrison hadn’t been expected to succeed Ajax until later in life.

Yet despite his sudden rise in rank, he was surprisingly self-possessed. He moved with grace, wore his paranoia with an ease that said he’d rather be wrong than dead, and hardly made any effort to withhold the smell-or in the Shadows’ case, the stench-that rose with emotion, giving him away to his enemies. I took in a good whiff, committing the scent to memory: Gucci cologne laid over an ashy sack of skin laid over a marinating stew of organs laid over decaying bone.

In short? Shadow.

Harrison stretched and yawned, bloodied fingers splayed to the ceiling like he was completely unconcerned that a six-foot, seven-inch agent of Light was creeping up on him. In contrast to his current posturing, Micah was a gentle soul where his troop was concerned, using a sweet disposition and his surgeon’s skill to attend to our health. Though his fury sat atop his emotions like oil upon water, I could already see him calculating how to put Vanessa back together, how to reattach and regrow and erase all the damage the Shadows had done.

Harrison saw it too. “Don’t worry, Micah. We used mortal knives to cut away the fat. They all regenerate…eventually.”

But it would be an excruciating process. We couldn’t die from the strike of man-made weaponry, but we felt the pain just as acutely.

Micah’s jaw clenched and he took an involuntary step forward. Harrison unsheathed a barbed poker from the holder behind his back, immediately stilling the advance. The unspoken message was clear. If Micah kept moving, Harrison would instead drag Vanessa outside the safe zone and use his personal weapon upon her…and then she’d never heal.

“So what are we waiting for?” I asked. For us to give in? For my allies to turn me over? To allow Vanessa to go to her tortuous death without a fight? I narrowed my eyes on Harrison’s responding grin, thinking if that were the case, it was going to be a long wait.

Vanessa’s renewed struggle drew every eye. She was wild, almost fierce now, gagging on the blood her movement caused to seep from her mouth and nose. Harrison leaned down like he was concerned, then looked in turn at each of us, dark humor giving life to his eyes. He continued this cruel pantomime, glancing back and forth in exaggerated concern, before letting all expression drop from his face as his gaze arrowed in on Felix. Lifting one side of his mouth, his skeleton momentarily flashed, as if revealed on an X ray. Then his smile was back, and he was slipping a hand over Vanessa’s mouth and nose. She began suffocating immediately.

When I was younger I didn’t fully understand why it was so distressing to see a woman specifically brutalized by a man. As a victim, I’d identified with anyone who’d ever been forcibly overcome by another. Violence was impervious to gender, and it didn’t always come in physical form either.

It was only as I grew older, and especially once I’d gained strength no mortal woman or man could know, that I realized why this was such an abomination. Yes, using a physical force on someone smaller than you was immoral. But an attack on a woman was an additional insult-it was an attack on life itself. Every strong man-down to the worst rapist and murderer-had once been nurtured, if only for a small while, by the softness and solace of a woman’s body. To turn upon that was a desecration, and in our world-a matriarchal society where power was passed through the woman’s bloodline-it was absolute blasphemy.

And Felix-as good and strong a man as any-still took his solace in Vanessa. He reveled in her wit and smile, her laugh and, yes, her body. She was his soft spot. So, despite it being a safe zone, he lunged.

The Shadow conduits still didn’t appear. Their power was useless in a safe zone, but what could be done-what I didn’t know how to do the first time I was attacked in a safe zone-was to turn the attacking agent’s power against them. It was a more dangerous sort of power because, as any soldier knew, it was easier to defeat an enemy if they were already at war with themselves. It would have been enough for Harrison to face down Felix alone, but the Shadow troop timed their defense so perfectly it was clear they’d anticipated this response. When Felix was no more than five feet from Harrison, they all held up a hand, ringing him in silent negation.

He didn’t freeze, as I’d thought would happen to an agent trapped in a cloud of their own power. Instead he thrashed as he was lifted from the ground, fighting invisible bindings, like he was being pulled from every side at once. One hand clutched at his throat when he hit the ground, the other at his chest, and he flopped like a fish on a dry bank. This eventually dropped off into random twitches, pitching the Shadows’ laughter even higher.

I didn’t move, nor did any of the other agents of Light. I’d been warned against trying to help someone who’d breached a safe zone…warned too that no one would help me if I did the same. The bond between troop members was so strong that the negative energy would be transferred, and we’d both end up being strangled by our power.

No, not strangled, I thought, watching Felix heaving. Drowned.

“Anyone else want to try?” Harrison asked lightly as Felix continued to gasp. I swallowed hard. At least the gasping was an improvement. And his limbs had fallen still, so the power was abating, being reabsorbed. “How about you, little Kairos? I mean, you’re the cause of all this. Want to take a long shot at redemption?”

“Why don’t you give it a go, Harrison?” I said. “I mean, take out the Kairos, the woman of legend, and you’ll go down as one of the most powerful, badass Shadows of all time.”

His eyes flickered like he was briefly considering it, but a sneer quickly replaced the look. “In a safe zone? Do you think I’m stupid?”

“Yes. Ugly, foul-smelling, and inbred too.”

His gaze flat-lined. “Well, I’m not the single-handed cause of my entire troop’s collapse.”

“Nor am I.” I wasn’t responsible for someone else’s evil, even if I was the target.

“Oh, but you are. You broke your changeling, right? And breaking the changeling of Light, that one special little child, is what caused the manuals of Light not to be written. So now the children of the world can’t read of your antics in comic book form. Their fertile little minds don’t birth the dreams and power that give you the energy to fight us. Your entire troop is weakened.”

“We’re not getting weaker.”

He held out his bloodied hands. “We’re getting stronger, so it’s the same thing.”

Because their manuals were still being recorded, detailing the battle between good and evil, and sold in comic book shops all over the nation. The fact that manuals vital to our survival were masquerading as comic books wasn’t as oxymoronic as it might seem. There was something to be said for hiding in plain sight, and though truth might be stranger than fiction, in this case they were one and the same.

So Harrison had an ugly, foul-smelling point. Despite our demigod status in this smoggy, bright valley, our micro-universe was as fragile as a rain forest’s. Knock out one little organism, and suddenly the whole ecosystem was thrown off balance.

“So you’re not the almighty savior of the Zodiac,” Harrison pushed, with a lift of his chin. “You’re a hindrance to your troop.”

Though I’d gotten better in recent months at controlling my anger, I decided Harrison could use a reminder of just whose daughter I was. So I opened the darkness in my heart, locked in the middle of the light one, and lifted my lids to reveal a gaze as smoldering and bright as the sun’s flashing core. I let my cheekbones rise to press at my skin, and felt it pull tight across my forehead. I imagined my skull gleaming, almost glowing white against my skin, while the rising pressure and the smoke from my pores brought to life a pounding headache. I ignored that until I knew my dark eyes-the only thing visible beneath my mask-had completed their transition into glowing red coals. When Harrison shuddered involuntarily, violently, I smiled sweetly and let the demonic mask fade.

Yet he recovered quickly…and came back for more. “That’s just a parlor trick. We’ve no real use for you.”

“Then why do you want her so badly?” Hunter piped up, arms folded over his chest. His expression was shuttered, like he was observing events that didn’t involve him, but I knew better. Hunter was a tactician and warrior, and wasn’t so much at rest right now as he was coiled and waiting.

Meanwhile, Felix was finally sitting up, head hanging forward and mouth open, like his power was pouring from his throat.

“I don’t.” Harrison began idly picking through the pastry case, lifting and considering a good half-dozen sweet buns before replacing them, leaving a trail of Vanessa’s blood on each one. He turned his attention back to me. “But your daddy does, and he’s been doing everything in his power to get to you.”

I thought of what I knew about the Tulpa’s power: the ability to touch people in their dreams, take over his agents’ bodies and turn them inside out, and how he could stud the sky with black holes, insert someone inside them, and make it all disappear. And those were only the homicidal abilities I’d seen firsthand. He’d been at rest for much of the time I’d known him, trying to court me into joining his troop, and abandon the Light for the Shadow. He was beyond that now, and as lethal as his wrath had been in the past, it was nothing compared to the complete, unbridled hatred he felt for me since our last encounter. Great.

“Then what do you want?”

“Right now?” He stuffed a moon cake in his mouth and spoke around it. “A cappuccino.”

Felix struggled to his feet but didn’t move forward. “You prick-”

“Shhh…” Harrison put a bloody finger to his lips. “He’s coming…”

And in a strange unspoken harmony, agents of both Shadow and Light turned toward the wall of windows to watch the Shadow leader, the Tulpa, drop as if from the heavens, landing onto the false pagoda patio like a descending UFO. Of course, a living being that had been created rather than birthed really was as otherworldly as all that. I swallowed hard and stepped forward to face him because he was also my opposite on the Zodiac. The Shadow Archer. Their troop leader.

My birth father.

A tulpa was a thought-form; a being so vividly imagined it became an actual person. Tibetan monks had honed this skill for centuries through visualization, meditation, and extreme discipline, though this tulpa had been birthed from the mind of a westerner…and a twisted one at that. Once actualized, the Tulpa had become unnaturally powerful. There was no known way to kill him. In fact, if we attempted to do so with one of our conduits, the energy put behind the attempt actually funneled more power into him. So we battled his agents, while searching hopefully for his invisible Achilles’ heel, but steered clear of direct battle with him whenever possible.

Yet we’d recently discovered that the nature of his birth was also his weakness. His creator had been killed before he could gift the Tulpa with a name, so his title was his name. His ability to alter his appearance entirely was a power, but it was also a sign that he lacked permanence in the world, and that was a weakness.

His appearance today was a cross between a Wall Street executive and a construction worker, interesting, as he took the physical form of a person’s expectations. I’d seen him as a casino mobster, a suave college instructor…and a hairless, spine-horned demon. To be honest, that was the visage I preferred. At least I knew exactly what I was up against when staring into the face of a demon.

My allies pulled in tighter as a result of his arrival, but we held our ground. As powerful as the Tulpa was, even he couldn’t violate a safe zone.

“My gawd, Harrison. You’ve practically dismantled that agent. And yet her allies are just standing around talking.” He sauntered into the entry, hemmed in the doorway like he was both posing for a picture and caught in its frame. He smiled slyly at me. “And you call yourself the Kairos.”

That’s what they called me. “I call myself the Archer.”

“And Joanna,” he said lightly, tilting his head. “What else?”

“Nothing I can repeat in such polite company.”

His eyes traced the mask covering my eyes, temples, and hairline, and his fingers twitched reflexively, causing me to smile. He’d been angling for my Olivia Archer identity for months now.

Reining in the need for a little while longer, he folded his hands before him and settled into himself. “Well, you should check the temper, daughter. That’s how I pinpointed you.”

That brought my black humor to an abrupt halt. “My temper?”

“Anger is a gift. In this case, my gift to you. It lurks in your heart as surely as my blood resides in your veins. It’s how I found you.”

“Bullshit.” I was not linked to the foul nonhuman being. Not in any way that mattered. “You orchestrated this.”

He shrugged. “Of course. But I can’t stand around waiting all day for my troop to capture an agent of Light, torture her-bonus points for inventiveness, Harrison-”

Harrison smiled, and both Felix and Micah strained forward like they were leashed.

“-and draw the rest of you in. I’m a busy man.”

“Yes, your dates with Skamar must keep your calendar quite full,” I said.

Finally, a barb that hit home. His overly pleasant expression fell and his nostrils widened. Skamar was the Tulpa’s nemesis, enemy, and equal. Also a tulpa, and as such, she was the first being he’d never been able to completely overcome. And though new to the valley, she also had a power he did not: she was named.

Where was Skamar, anyway?

The Tulpa settled himself, pulled at his jacket sleeves, then sniffed once as he lifted his nose into the air. His placid gaze landed directly on me.

“Kill them,” he said softly. The glyphs on every agent of Light’s chest shot to life. Depicted in comic books as a superhero’s lettering across the chest, they only did so when in danger, but we were in a safe zone, so for a moment no one moved.

Then the Tulpa tilted his head and the Shadows surged forward. I saw hands go up all around the room, the Light deflecting the advance and turning the Shadow agents’ powers upon themselves. But they kept on coming. Vanessa managed to force a scream past her tongueless mouth, and it hit me then, as it did all the Light: she hadn’t been struggling so vehemently to get free. She’d been struggling to warn us. We were not safe here.

I only had one second to return my attention to the Tulpa, catching the anger and hatred in the red flare of his eyes, before the order of the world turned upside down. He flicked a finger, and even though I was twenty feet away, I was catapulted through the air to slam head first into an ornate concrete pillar. On one level I was aware of the activity around me-the Light fleeing, conduits useless, no offense available to them but a good defense; the Shadow chasing, battle cries in their throats; Vanessa struggling, screaming and forgotten on the far side of the bakery-but blanketing all that concern was one greater than the rest.

I lifted my head slowly and found the Tulpa staring at me, his eyes as glittering and hard as our city’s night-soaked grid of lights. He bared teeth of chipped granite…and he charged.

I froze amidst the pile of crumbled plaster, knowing I’d never escape that wheeling vortex of limbs. He was a rocket, faster than anything I’d ever seen, and when a scream escaped that decaying mouth, the building shook, plaster and tiles fell from the ceiling, bulbs shattered in their sockets, and I ducked.

A wall of sheet silver appeared between us, too instantly for the Tulpa to avoid. The crash was like a car wreck, and I looked over to find Tekla with both arms outstretched. So we weren’t entirely powerless.

“Get Vanessa!” she yelled, flinging up wall after wall as the Tulpa, screaming now, continued to punch through them. I bolted. We were lucky; Vanessa’s opposite was Regan, now an outcast, and Tekla’s had been Zell, whom I’d helped kill last month. But the Cancerian Shadow, Drake, had heard Tekla’s cry, and was reaching for Vanessa along with me. Without thinking, I pulled out the Micro Uzi-the weapon I’d thought useless-and rolled off an ear-shattering round from arm’s distance away. No, mortal weapons wouldn’t kill him. But as evidenced by Vanessa-they were still effective. He jerked backward, spraying blood.

I didn’t waste time on Vanessa’s ropes. I just swung the Uzi to one side and picked up the entire chair with the other hand. It wasn’t heavy, just awkward, and with Tekla covering my back, thrusting up walls to cover my retreat, I ran. Outside, I vaulted over the ornamental wall, silently apologizing to Vanessa for the rough landing, but kept spraying bullets at anything that moved…or moved too fast. I was one of those things, of course-fleeing so fast that all the mortals would see was a blur-but fast and fast enough were two different things.

With our lives depending on it, I put on the speed. I needed to be the latter.