The Taste Of Night

32

The Tulpa let me have my head start, but he didn’t make it easy on me. I exploded into the casino and shot for the front entrance as quickly as my legs would take me. It wasn’t as precarious a trip as it would’ve been had the casino been packed, but I still had to dodge geriatric gamblers and jaded cocktail waitresses while careening past slot banks, all of which nearly slowed me down to a mortal’s pace. A woman running helter-skelter through a casino would’ve caught attention in any case, but I’d had the feeling of being watched from the moment I stepped back on the tacky carpeting, and my guess was that the Tulpa’s telepathic skills extended to mortals. Two Valhalla guards-not Shadows, just guards-were waiting for me as I whipped through the lobby, and another pair stood at the ready, guarding the front exit.

I dodged the first, ignoring their yells as they fell in behind me, and if I’d been darting down the fifty-yard line, I’d have been home free. The second pair were more of a worry.

They expected me to dodge, or alter my direction. Instead I ducked, barreling directly into the first man’s legs, flipping him over the top of me with the force of my momentum. Releasing him, I palmed the ground and swept the second guard’s legs out from under him as he came at me. Then I gained my feet and burst through the front doors, rounding a corner to press myself against the outside wall, and tried to look casual. The dozen or so people waiting in the taxi queue stared.

I smiled back as I sniffed at the air, which was too still to catch more than a skein of Ian’s scent, but I determined it led north, back into the center of town. I filled my lungs and blew south. Then I waited.

“Your wig’s crooked,” a helpful onlooker said.

I straightened it as sound erupted behind me. Joaquin appeared seconds later, and as predicted, swung south. I raised my conduit and shot. He stepped forward, and the arrow whizzed past him. Somebody screamed. Joaquin put a hand to his ear-just clipped, dammit-and whirled my way as I raced forward. I caught him with a kick to his solar plexus, and spun to plant my right elbow in the center of his face. He went down again as hands grabbed me from behind.

Time for some girly moves. I rammed my heel into the foot of one guard, then nailed him in the temple, and when his grip slipped, spun to grasp the neck of the other. I had time to register the surprise on his face before my knee came up, his head went down, and he joined his partner in la-la land. Then, before any more backup could arrive, I ran, and this time I didn’t stop.

Dodging the sirens already screaming toward Valhalla, I abandoned the main thoroughfares for little-used roadways where rock and bramble sprouted up between potholes and busted-out streetlights. At one point, when I sensed I was getting closer to Ian, but with no clear passageway to the other side of Flamingo Road, I had to skirt two chain-link fences and run along the freeway, car horns honking as they blew by me in the opposite direction.

When I finally reached the corner of Tumaric and Pollack Street, the desperate terror infusing Ian’s pheromones was so strong I could practically see it. The olfactory trail broke off at an abandoned warehouse framed in concrete and chipped pink stucco, accessible by only one door.

“I know this place,” I whispered, circling it twice just to make sure this was it, while drawing my conduit. I’d seen it before, but more, I sensed it. A psychic smear blanketed the building like a mental chalk outline. It was thin now, the kill spot tinny with age, but the hereditary thread of the one killed here was well known to me. “Stryker.”

Was this a deliberate choice by the Tulpa? Did the location have some increased meaning or power, because Stryker died here? Or because it had been Joaquin who’d killed him? Or was it just a random building, useful because it was both central and abandoned, and nothing more nefarious than that?

I sighed. Sometimes it sucked being the new superhero on the block.

Still, super is as super does, so I kicked in the steel-plated door and ducked aside as it crashed to the ground, waiting for gunfire, booby traps, or whatever else the Tulpa had tucked in there along with Ian. The silence deafened. Not even an alarm to cut through the night. “Ian?”

Still nothing. I was sure he was in there…but if he was dead, if those leaky, fearful pheromones were phantom scents, I was going to be pissed. And heartsick. The Tulpa would know that, I thought with a sick twinge.

“Ian,” I tried again. “It’s me! Olivia!”

A scratch of movement, and if whimpers could sound hopeful, this one did. “O-Olivia?”

I sighed in relief. “Is anyone in there with you?”

“No. No, they left me alone.” His voice raised an octave. “I’ve been here for hours. Please help me.”

“I will, Ian. Just tell me…are there any alarms that you can see? Booby traps? Cages?”

“No, nothing. Just me, and I’m tied up. Please hurry.”

Well, you’d think I’d do just that, wouldn’t you? After all, I was the one who’d gotten Ian captured, kidnapped, and trussed up like a sow at the county fair. But just because it sounded like a nerdy computer geek, and smelled like one-and presumably looked like one-didn’t mean it was necessarily so. Just because he said there were no agents waiting to ensnare me didn’t mean they weren’t there.

I took a deep breath and peered through the doorway. The dim interior matched the nightscape outside, so I didn’t need time for my eyes to adjust. I stared, then stared harder, before tilting my head wonderingly. “How clever.”

Besides a cement floor, concrete walls, and a steel-beamed ceiling dotted with shattered and tilted light fixtures, the building was entirely empty. Ian sat dwarfed in a room a quarter the size of a football field, hunched in a steel chair that must have lost its comfort about half a second after he’d been tied there. They hadn’t gagged him, knowing nobody would hear his cries on a lonely night in a warehouse the city had all but forgotten. His face was tear-streaked, eyes wild as he looked at me from behind shattered glasses, and his shirt bloodied from a fat lip. And tousled wouldn’t even begin to describe his hair. I had to get him out of here before Joaquin arrived.

But first I had to make sure this was really Ian. “Name the event you were supposed to compete in this weekend.”

“You’re not Olivia,” he said slowly.

“Oh,” I unpinned the red wig from my head, tossing it in a corner as I smoothed back the wisps of blond, sweaty hair that had escaped from my bun. “See?”

He started screaming for me to get him out of there, rattling the chair’s screwed-in base with his bound hands and feet, head upturned like a baby bird’s in the nest. He had about as much chance of getting free like that as I had of being the next Mrs. Brad Pitt.

“Answer the question first,” I told him, raising my voice to be heard over the racket. “What’s the marathon called?”

He snuffled a few times, and calmed down enough to ask why.

“Because I have to make sure you are who you say you are.”

“Olivia-” he protested, and I lifted my conduit, pointing it at his forehead. He stuttered off into silence, and the smell of urine immediately joined the nervous sweat. Which answered that question.

“Sorry,” I said, tucking the weapon at the small of my back. I used the light from the horizontal windows ratcheting the roofline to guide me as I hurried toward Ian. Frankly, I was already thinking of all the ways I’d make Warren eat crow when I returned to the boneyard with the cure for the virus. I’d just decided to go easy on the old guy when the world erupted in a flash of light and I was tossed backward, sparks singeing off my skin as I landed so squarely on my ass, the concrete reverberated up my spine. There was a shimmer in the air, like water flowing between two sheets of glass, and a single rectangular panel appeared before me like it’d been conjured from nothing. Twice my height, both vertically and horizontally, I didn’t have to touch it again to know it was impenetrable. Gradually the glimmering lessened, and half a minute later it was invisible again.

But it was still there.

“Fuck,” I muttered, rubbing my ass, and that was a sincere understatement. The Tulpa’s maze was here, intact, and Ian-seemingly a mere two hundred yards away from me-was at the center of it.

“What was that?” Ian said, eyes still fixed on the spot where the wall had appeared.

“Not was. Is. That’s your cage, honey,” I said, backing up to study the layout. As much as one can study an invisible force, that is. Ian’s bindings were just for show. The real hurdle was in getting to him, and I was sure the Tulpa had gotten a charge, literally, out of my running up against his mental minefield. “So that’s his game.”

Now I was sure Joaquin had done something to piss off the Tulpa. Because dear ol’ Dad, fond of intricate puzzles and mental games, was playing with both of us. Hopefully that would unnerve Joaquin enough to have him second-guessing himself into fatal distraction. Even so, I still had to get in…and there was no telling how many electrified walls I had to touch just to find the entrance.

Deadly to the player who enters but doesn’t exit, Hunter had said, talking of this maze. And I’d stepped into the game the minute I ran out of Valhalla. Question was, how would I make my way to Ian without getting zapped with enough volts to power a small city? The first jolt still hummed in my brain like a hive. And how would I get a mortal out of this thing without frying him like butter on a griddle?

“You jump,” Hunter said, when I called him on my cell phone and gave him the condensed version of events. The urgency in my voice must have convinced him not to waste time questioning me.

“Jump,” I repeated, as visions of green-faced children winging through the air popped into my mind.

“Just keep your legs together so when you land you don’t straddle a wall and get the ride of your life.” He paused, before adding. “By default, that is.”

“Glad you can joke at a time like this.”

“Was I joking?” he deadpanned. “Besides, I’m just trying to keep you loose. Relax, okay? And focus. Remember, sight is your least valuable tool. Try to tap into your sixth sense.”

Focus, I thought, and took a deep breath. That’s what Tekla had repeated during our sessions together-the need for clarity of mind, the harnessing of intention. Never mind that I’d never managed to break down even one of her glass walls. I swallowed hard. “You stay on the line, okay? I might need you to-”

“Talk you through it?” he finished, when I couldn’t. I nodded, realized he couldn’t see it, and made an affirmative noise. I couldn’t tell him that I didn’t want to die alone.

The sound of feet pounding across asphalt kept me from getting too self-reflective. I whipped out my conduit, fired an arrow through the open doorway, heard a halting scuttle, and fired a second shot just to buy myself a little more time. Turning back, I spoke into the phone. “Hold on.”

Intention, inshmention-I just leaped. I expected the up-swing to be just fine, and was already bracing for the fall when I slammed facefirst against a barrier a good thirty feet in the air. The blow knocked me back another ten, and as I dropped, my legs ricocheted off a second wall, flinging me backward so I landed on my spine. I came to a stop against yet another wall, and scuttled away from it as its jarring power combined with the previous two. I felt like an electrified pinball.

The commotion, of course, brought Joaquin sprinting inside.

“Ah. The maze,” he said, looking at the three panels my graceless flight had lit up. He didn’t sound surprised or impressed. That couldn’t be good. I kept my eyes on him-once they could focus again-and as he sauntered to the right his mouth moved like he was counting, and he paced in steady, measured steps.

No, I thought again, that couldn’t be good at all.

I closed my eyes, and cursed, because I suddenly knew exactly what the Tulpa was doing.

If she can be killed by the likes of you, I don’t want her.

Those words alone should’ve told me he wasn’t just going to give me a head start and let me waltz away with the cure for the virus. Nope, every time I touched one of these walls my power and energy were sucked back into the maze. Back, I thought, into the Tulpa. No wonder he hadn’t killed me. My power would’ve reverted to my mother, just like Stryker’s had reverted to Tekla. Our lineage was matriarchal…but this way he could claim it for himself.

Ian, meanwhile, had begun screaming again at the sight of Joaquin, words pouring over one another as tears and sweat rolled down his face. I tried to shush him, to let him know he was only fueling Joaquin’s ego with his fear, but he was too panicked to listen. Not that I blamed him.

Joaquin finished his pacing and halted with his hands on his hips, regarding Ian sourly. “What a pussy.”

I shot him a look of pure hatred as I gained my feet, steady despite wobbly knees, and checked my phone long enough to determine my connection with Hunter had gone dead when I hit the electrified barriers. “Well, what do you expect when you kidnap him, beat his face to shit, and tie him up?” I said, tossing the phone to the ground.

“But I didn’t beat him at all, did I, Ian?” He blew Ian a kiss. The crying escalated. “No, I was real sweet to your boyfriend. In fact, after he decoded your computer for me, we had ourselves a real nice party. Didn’t we, honey?”

Ian whimpered again, and this time I made out what he said. Don’t hurt me anymore.

“You rancid bastard.”

Joaquin smiled my way. “A couple more minutes and I’ll let you say that to my face.”

And he stepped forward, counting again. I didn’t need a wall to light up to know he’d entered the maze. Panic must have shown on my face because Joaquin’s eyes remained fixated on me as he counted off five paces, before pivoting left as he spoke again. “He always starts on the right.”

And he face-planted into a stinging sheet of balled energy. I’d have laughed as his eyes rolled into his skull, except my own had probably resembled slot reels only seconds before. The energy pulled from Joaquin into the maze zipped like a current through the rest of the walls, and I followed it with my head as it crackled past me, realizing I could track it to move another few feet either way without getting zapped. Question was, which way was forward and which way was back?

“Ian. Hey, Ian!” I snapped my fingers, and when that brought no alertness to his vacant stare, clapped my hands as hard as I could. “Ian, you have to help me here. I need you to count for me. Count the number of steps I take, and remember the directions I turn. You can do that, right?”

He cocked his head to the left, but the glassy look was slowly returning to his eyes.

“Ian?” I yelled, which had him blinking again.

“I-I don’t know.”

My gut tightened. I couldn’t do this alone. “I need your help if you want me to get you out of here. I’m going to be too dazed from hitting walls I can’t see. I won’t remember the path to the center of the maze, and I sure won’t remember how many steps I took along each corridor. I need you to focus for me, okay?”

His brows knit together and his eyes welled up as his head jerked. No. I sighed. “I can’t.”

“You can, Ian. Just concentrate on the numbers.” But I was losing him. I could practically feel the icy fear rending him immobile, freezing his thoughts, causing him to anticipate death. “Look, what’s math, anyway, but one mental pathway leading to another? Follow the path, and you get to the answer, right?” He nodded, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay, well, you’re the answer. I’m coming to get you. Just keep track of how my footsteps add up.”

And before he thought I was giving him a choice, I paced to my right, keeping my steps as uniform as possible. I hit my next wall only three paces away, and this time controlled my direction as I was repelled away from it. An ache started in my jaw, an old filling I’d forgotten was there until now. I pressed my tongue to it, hissing through my teeth when I burned the top of it. I knew I was going about this all wrong-there was another way around this maze, something I was supposed to remember or know how to do-but I couldn’t jump as the walls obviously arched all the way to the ceiling, and I didn’t know how to anticipate what I couldn’t see.

My only comfort was in the electric snaps, followed by curses, coming from Joaquin’s direction. So I stood, found the spot I’d been in right before my last point of impact, waited until Ian returned my nod, then stepped toward him, sighing with relief when I didn’t fry. From the corner of my eye, I caught Joaquin watching.

“Guess the Tulpa changed things up a bit on you,” I said, sounding more confident than I felt as I inched forward. Jaw clenched, Joaquin mirrored the movement from his position. “What’d you do to piss him off? Must have been pretty severe to have him turn on you this way.”

“He hasn’t turned on me,” he snapped, and stepped right into a wall.

I followed the crackle of electrical current as it arched past me, gained another three steps, and waited until Joaquin was sitting up. I shot him a smile as I rounded a corner. “You were saying?”

Next thing, I was staring up at the ceiling, Joaquin’s laughter echoing in my ears. “Guess blood isn’t any thicker than water, is it?”

I raised myself to my elbows, grunting. “Well, I won’t take it personally.”

“He’s your father,” Joaquin said, clearing another foot.

“He’s a stranger,” I replied, standing.

“You mean a stranger like…” He gained two more feet. “Your daughter?”

I bounced off another wall, and this time momentarily lost consciousness. I awoke to find him yards closer, and whipped myself up despite the ache coursing through my marrow. It wasn’t just physical pain, though; there was something akin to the rush of adrenaline pouring over me, but instead of receding on a wave that left me jumpy and alert, it left me feeling sluggish and unwilling to rise from the floor. Given time, and enough direct contact with these walls, I knew I’d be unable to rise at all. But not yet. I had enough determination left to stand this time, but I wondered how much energy I’d already transferred to the Tulpa, and what new powers it would afford him. It’d be nice if I could live long enough to ask.

Nicer still to pummel the sly smile snaking over Joaquin’s cruel, sneering face.

“Oh yes, I know all about little Ashlyn, thanks to Ian over there.” He shot Ian a wink and a kiss, and the mortal’s concentration faltered. I clapped my hands to gain his attention again. Joaquin seemed content to wait. When my eyes returned to his, he smiled innocently. “She lives in the southwest part of town. She has wavy brown hair that curls into ringlets when it’s wet. She likes riding her bike and is quite the competitive swimmer.”

My hands balled into fists, and I gritted my teeth to keep my eyes from stinging. I hadn’t known any of that. And this man shouldn’t be the one telling me. “You stay away from her,” I said, my voice thick and too low. He heard anyway.

“You mean like you?” he said pointedly. “No, I could never just abandon my own child.”

“I didn’t abandon her,” I said, knowing I shouldn’t bother defending myself against him, but doing it anyway. “She was adopted.”

“You forsook her,” he said with genuine disgust. He looked me over, up and down, like I’d committed a crime he couldn’t even fathom. Yeah, that’d be the day. “You gave her over to the care of strangers, and lost the chance for a relationship with the child of your blood. All because of the sins of her father.”

I took two steps forward in quick succession, almost willing myself into a wall just so the physical pain would drown out the ache brought on by his words. An ache, I realized, that’d been living inside me for years. “You’re no father,” I managed, my face hot, blood pounding in my temples. Even I could smell distress issuing from me in giant bulbous waves.

“As much as the Tulpa is yours.” He shrugged, unaffected, and I heard disdain in his words; for me, for the Tulpa, for everyone that wasn’t directly useful to Joaquin…which left only himself. And men like that were the most dangerous, I knew. Unleashed from care or concern about consequence outside his own world, Joaquin was a loose cannon at best, and a suicide bomber at worst. One who’d take out as many victims as he could in the search for his own twisted salvation.

That child, I swore, wasn’t going to be one of them.

“I’m only going to say it one more time,” I said, spacing my words evenly, fire burning in my core. Suddenly I found I had energy in reserve. “Stay away from her.”

“The concerned mother act doesn’t suit you at all,” he said, and sniffed at the air mockingly as his lip curled back. “And I’ll do exactly as I please with my daughter.”

And that word, coming out of that corrupted throat, was the vilest sound I’d ever heard. I opened my mouth, ready to rage, the bones beneath my face pressing against my skin and pulling it taut when-

“She’s not his daughter.”

“You!” Joaquin shouted, whirling on Ian. “Shut up, puppet!”

Red cleared from my vision, and I turned to Ian to find frightened determination had replaced the stark terror from before. Joaquin snarled, strode forward, and was sent barreling to his back. I listened for the whistling of energy as it whipped past me, gained another painless few feet from it, then looked back to Ian.

“She’s not his daughter,” he said again, licking his bruised lips, and swallowing hard. “The blood type’s all wrong. It was on her birth certificate…and the DNA doesn’t match up either.”

Relief flooded through me like a breached dam, as if something lodged in my chest for a decade had suddenly been jostled free. I closed my eyes as a shiver stole over me. Dark hair that curls into ringlets when it’s wet.

Ben.

I remained frozen where I was, my thoughts tumbling across my mind, and from Ian’s sympathetic reaction, my face as well. So Ashlyn wasn’t divided evenly between Shadow and Light? She was only of my lineage? Mine…and Ben’s?

“You’re going to die, mortal! You’ll bleed from every orifice before I’m done with you!” Joaquin snarled, lifting himself to his knees. “And you! Does it make you feel any better knowing you gave up a relationship with your lover’s child because of me? Because it makes me feel damned fine. I took your innocence-what was left of it, anyway-and then I took your lineage. And when I finish killing you, that girl is mine.”

The idea of this man’s hands on my child, mine and Ben’s, made my stomach pitch. I barged forward…and rammed directly into a wall. This time I didn’t recover as fast. Even Joaquin’s laughter seemed to come from a far-off place, and I felt myself shaking, shoulders jerking uncontrollably as nerves misfired inside me. But I still lifted my head. I’d endure a thousand lightning bolts into my flesh if it meant keeping him away from her.

Ashlyn. Oh God.

I sat up slowly, got my bearings, and wiped the blood from my nose where it’d begun to run. Somewhere in the soft tissue of my head, something was going very wrong. A buzzing had set up shop in my left ear, like I was losing my hearing, but I ignored it and focused on preserving my mental energy, on not being so stupid and careless, though when the time came, I knew I’d need my physical reserves too. “And you think the Tulpa would let you lay a hand on his granddaughter?” I said more evenly as I wobbled to my feet.

“Now why would I ever tell the Tulpa about Ashlyn?” I winced as he said her name, and catching it, Joaquin smiled.

“Stop!”

I whirled, thinking Ian saw something I didn’t; that danger was circling me from another angle. But he was looking square at me.

“Back up a step. Be careful not to lean left or right.”

I did as he said, though I asked why.

Ian licked his lips, and his breathing picked up. Excitement was rushing off him in waves now, and I turned my full attention on him, momentarily forgetting Joaquin. “I know where you are. I saw the other man leave. Turn to your left and take three steps forward.”

I hesitated, but Ian couldn’t possibly do any worse than I was. Nothing happened as I moved, unless you count Joaquin’s growl erupting behind me. I looked back at Ian expectantly. Maybe he really had seen the Tulpa exit the maze.

He swallowed hard, distracted by Joaquin’s detailed accounting of what parts he was going to rip from Ian’s body first, but finally managed a nod in my direction. “Another two steps to your left, three to your right.”

I followed his directions exactly. When I lifted my head off the ground thirty seconds later, he winced apologetically. “I may have gotten that one backward.”

I stood up, shaking now, both nostrils bleeding, and reversed the directions. This time I made it.

Sighing with relief, Ian guided me the rest of the way through. When I was a mere ten feet in front of him, he looked up at me expectantly.

“That’s it?” I asked. “I’m in?”

He shrugged as I wondered where the bells of victory were, the cheering crowds, the clouds parting from the heavens.

“That’s not it,” Joaquin snarled, lifting himself to his feet once again. He’d been trying to move too fast, and it comforted me that he was finally rattled. “Didn’t you hear the Tulpa? You have to save him too.”

And in order to save him, we’d have to wind our way back out, past Joaquin. “One hurdle at a time,” I muttered, and set about freeing Ian.

Aligning my conduit with the ropes binding him, arrow pointing down through the center of the knots, I fired. Nothing happened. I made sure the safety was off, and compressed the trigger to draw back the bow again. Still nothing. Only twenty feet away, Joaquin was splayed on his back, but this time he got up laughing.

“Conduits don’t work in the maze, Archer, or didn’t you know?”

The answer was obvious, so my reply was a mere curse as I bent to unravel the knots by hand. Five minutes later Ian’s hands were free, but I was no closer to figuring out how to get him past Joaquin. And it seemed Ian hadn’t been the only one paying attention to my progress through the maze. Joaquin was making fast progress; either he’d managed to retain his faculties while getting zapped off his feet or the Tulpa wasn’t as angry with him as I’d come to believe. Either way, Joaquin would find the center in the next few minutes.

“Listen,” I said, kneeling at Ian’s feet, fingers working furiously over the knots there. I glanced up. He wasn’t listening. He was watching Joaquin’s progress with mounting terror. I slapped his leg. “Ian! You have to listen to me. He’s going to take us both out if he can, but stay behind me no matter what happens. We’ll circle around him, and that’ll give you a chance to exit.”

His eyes darted back to Joaquin. I slapped him again, harder, to regain his attention.

“Just make sure you remember the number of steps in each of the pathways out there,” I told him as he rubbed his arm. “And round the corners exactly. If you hit a wall, even once, you won’t survive it. Got it?”

He swallowed hard, but nodded. “What about you?”

I handed him my conduit and stood, wiping my sweaty palms on my pants. “I’m going to make him bleed from every orifice.”

We lined up then, Ian behind me, both of us as far from the entrance as we could get without being deep-fried. Joaquin was moving faster, meticulously counting off steps, and I marshaled my flagging energy by thinking of a young girl I’d never known. Ben’s child.

He rounded the last corner, eyes bright with anticipation as he tracked me through that final barrier. The bolted chair was all that lay between us, and Joaquin feinted first to one side, then the other; he was testing us, teasing, trying to draw us forward. Ian whimpered behind me, and I patted him reassuringly. Unfortunately there was no one to do the same for me.

Body tense, I followed Joaquin with my eyes. Neither he nor I had a conduit, but he still had an advantage. If he touched a hair on Ian’s head, I’d lose this contest. More, I was sure I’d knocked into more walls than he had, and the energy loss had made me shaky. I wasn’t as agile as normal, and it felt like the entire world was shuddering under my feet as I sidestepped first one way, then the other, an unwilling snake to Joaquin’s flute.

Pull it together, Jo, I told myself. If only for the next five minutes. No sooner did I have the thought than Joaquin lunged. I dove forward, wanting to meet him away from the electrified walls surrounding us, but he did a quarterback pivot around the bolted chair, slipping away from me and reaching for Ian, who yelped and bolted. A squeal, half terror, half pain, rose from him as he scraped the invisible barrier on his left, and the scent of burned flesh reached my nose. Joaquin sucked in a deep breath, a closed smile on his lips, and lunged again.

“Run!” I yelled at Ian as I launched myself over the seat of the chair and tackled Joaquin from above. We skidded across the room, and Ian leaped awkwardly over us to clear the entry. Joaquin, struggling and swearing beneath me, managed to lift a hand and grab the other man’s ankle. This time Ian didn’t squeal, but stomped down hard on Joaquin’s arm, twice, while I pummeled him from the top. Joaquin let go with a murderous howl, and as Ian escaped, turned the full force of that rage on me.

This time we were more evenly matched. I was grown now, my warrior skills honed first as a mortal and now as a heroine of Light. The passage into the center of the maze had taken a toll on both of us, though, and neither of us were throwing our best blows. I reached up to his greased head, fisted my hand, and pummeled his skull into the ground. My body was pressed so firmly against his that the reverberations sounded in my breast.

It sounded like a choir of angels.

Joaquin bucked beneath me, scrambling for purchase against the ground, my body, the nearby chair. What he found was an invisible wall. Unfortunately, the maze didn’t discriminate between bodies locked so closely together, and raw power shot into me, exploding in my brain in a shower of stars and pretty lights. I flew backward and crumpled against the bolted chair, head torqued awkwardly.

Joaquin, though, had taken the brunt of the blow. I rose first; grasping the base of the seat, I heaved with everything left in me. Biceps straining, lungs aching, I was rewarded only by a faint creak. I glanced back. Now he’d found an elbow and was propped up, almost sitting. I strained against the base again, and the cement ruptured beneath my feet. But the fucking chair held.

If I’d been fresh, this wouldn’t have been a problem, and I wondered if the Tulpa was enjoying all the new power my stolen energy was allowing him. All that kept me on my feet was knowing he’d zapped quite a bit of Joaquin’s as well, and I strained again, groaning with it, and this time was rewarded with a resounding crack. My cry turned victorious, and I steadied myself, pivoted, and sent the chair plowing into Joaquin’s face.

Or where his face should’ve been. A hand locked on to a chair leg, then another. I pushed, but Joaquin was quicker, a forward kick catching me in the sternum beneath my makeshift weapon. Tumbling backward, doubling over, I anticipated the chair cracking over my back.

Anticipation didn’t make the reality any less painful. The breath flew from my body as I ate cement, and I could’ve sworn I heard vertebrae collapsing in my spine. Sprawled, the line of agony concentrated in my core before burning itself out in my limbs, I screamed in pain and frustration as my hands and feet went numb and useless.

I heard the chair clatter, then crackle as it sparked against a wall, then Joaquin was on me, flipping me over.

“This is familiar,” he taunted, and though he didn’t exactly look fresh, he was straddling me, propping his weight on the center of my spine, bearing down. When I’d finished screaming-and that only because there was no more breath left in my lungs-he spoke, words liquid and smooth, his face glazed over in satisfaction. “Look at you. You’re exhausted. Burned so badly your skin is peeling…probably sensitive to the touch.”

He plowed his fingertips into the burns along my neck, but this time I couldn’t even spare the breath to scream. Pain was a constant, but so was the rapid thudding of my heart. Which meant I was alive.

“You don’t look…any…better,” I told him, and he whipped his hand across my face so hard, my cheek ricocheted off the cement.

He propped himself up on my waist, sitting so straight I could’ve toppled him if I’d still had the use of my limbs. Instead I had to wait until I recovered, or thought of something better. Nothing was coming to me right now. “I’ll never understand why you guys do that,” he said, running his hand through his hair, smoothing all the ends back into place. “Expending all your excess energy protecting a mere mortal. You might’ve had me if not for that. And now”-he shook his head in mock sadness-“you’re my victim again.”

“No. This was my choice,” I said, almost at peace with that. Funny, but I felt more centered and relaxed now that it was almost over. Staring Joaquin in the face was easier than avoiding him in my dreams and thoughts, the way I had all these years past. That had been a useless expenditure of energy, I knew now. And just as debilitating as the Tulpa’s maze.

But that wasn’t the only reason I remained still. I had one more choice available to me, something actually learned in my endless lessons with Tekla. True, I’d never been able to knock walls down with my mind, but I had become somewhat adept at building them up. Therefore, as sweat seeped down my back, I fought to imagine a single, solid wall into existence, hoping my strength would be enough to manage that much. Fortunately Joaquin was busy shooting off at the mouth, and as the air five feet to his left began to ripple, he noticed nothing.

“Ah, yes. The noble sacrifice.” He buffed his nails on his chest, pretending to inspect them closely. “Though that’s nothing new for you, is it? You did the same for your sister years ago. And now you can expect the same results…except this time I will destroy you.”

“I will destroy you.” I mimicked, right down to the low baritone. It halved my concentration, but it made me feel like I still had a degree of control. “Jesus. Been practicing that one long?”

He rose, nearing the wall solidifying on his left, and I’d have cursed myself for building it too close if I had the time or energy to do so. And maybe if he hadn’t kicked me in the kidney. I curled into the fetal position, my concentration snapped, but after a moment was able to take the pain and my will and center it back into the wall. Sweat began to form on my forehead, sliding along my cheeks and jawline, though I didn’t dare wipe it away. If I did, Joaquin would know I was doing more than recovering from his blow. I had to keep him talking.

“I should’ve killed you at the swingers’ ball,” I said, angling myself so he was again in front of me. A second wall began to shimmer to his right.

“And I should’ve killed you as soon as Regan told me of your new identity.” He laughed at my surprised expression, and I had to refocus as my second wall bobbled. “She did, you know. Right after she ambushed you at the aquarium. I didn’t believe her, of course. It was too obvious, too risky…totally out of character for the agents of Light.”

“And because she was just an initiate,” I added, because that’s what I’d thought too.

“There was that,” he conceded, dropping back down on my waist, gently wrapping his fingers around my neck. He didn’t squeeze, just held them there, thumbs soft on my windpipe. “For some reason she seems to hate you even more than I do.” He quirked his head as if considering that while his fingers played gently over the row of vertebrae in my neck. “Of course, I don’t really hate you. I desire you…but I’m still going to kill you.”

The second wall was solidifying strangely, an amalgamation of Tekla’s mirrored practice walls and the Tulpa’s invisible barriers. Though I doubted they possessed the same energetic sting as the maze surrounding us, it was amazing what the mind could do once it knew what was possible. I couldn’t overthink it, though, because just then Joaquin’s fingers tensed, then stilled as a popping sounded from behind me, also within. The pain was momentary, the nausea fleeting. And the paralysis was immediate. Fear flooded my brain, and the third wall I was erecting behind Joaquin disintegrated. I had to refocus-I couldn’t be broken or killed this way; Joaquin knew it, he was just fucking with me-but more than the physical abuse, his words had crept into my mind, and questions now warred with my concentration. I shook my head to clear it of these thoughts, the only movement left to me, but Joaquin stilled the movement with only a slight press of his thumbs.

“Regan got a real kick out of setting you up,” he told me, his own nerves giving a strained lilt to his voice. He was getting excited now. “She loved that she got you to watch those fireworks, to infect your friends, chase me, lose your place in the troop.” He released his hold on my neck and rose to his knees, inches from the wall on his left. I swallowed, felt my throat working painfully, and was careful not to let my eyes stray to any of the walls surrounding him. He continued to stare me down as he stood.

“I have to confess, it has been fun watching you chase your tail, Joanna. More fun than simply killing you.” He kicked at my feet playfully, then stopped playing and slammed his boot down on my kneecap. I heard the crunch of bone and cartilage shattering, and even though I felt nothing, the need to scream welled up inside me. I clamped my teeth together, squeezed my eyes shut, and refused to let the tears come. That’s how I caught his next words, the most telling. “I know the Tulpa thinks he can lure you to our side, but I don’t. A monarchy is all good and well, especially given no choice, but nepotism rubs raw.”

I swallowed down another bout of nausea, my head now pounding, which meant the physical abuse was registering somewhere, despite my numbed limbs. Voice rasping, I said, “You don’t sound very afraid of your leader.”

“He acts independently of his maker; we act independently of him.” Joaquin shrugged, folding his arms over his chest. He was almost fully recovered now.

“The Tulpa’s creator is dead,” I reminded him. If I could keep him talking I could get a fourth wall up and trap him inside. And if they all held, I could heal and figure a way out of this maze. But damn, that was a lot of ifs.

“Yes, and we have your mother to thank for that,” he murmured, nudging my other kneecap. I winced instinctively. “If only she’d finished the job.”

I blinked, swallowed hard, and then it was done. All three walls were erected, and either my work would hold, those walls would stand, or they wouldn’t. And there was no reason to prolong this any longer. Besides, his fucking stench was getting to me.

“So we have a pretender to the throne, is that it?” I said, gazing up at him. The fourth wall began to shimmer at the edges, but gave away as he stepped forward. Either he hadn’t felt it or pretended not to, because he only had eyes for me. How romantic.

“I’ve a greater right to it than you,” he said coldly.

“And I’m sure Regan told the Tulpa you said so,” I said, and got to watch him flinch. “No wonder he sent you in here with me.”

“No.” Joaquin straddled my shoulders, forcing me to look straight up at him. “If he knew, I wouldn’t be here now. He wouldn’t have given me a shot at his precious Kairos. You wouldn’t be walled up in a maze I’ve already walked through, or lying on the ground with my boot print on your spleen.”

“Now why does everything you say come out like a line in a B-grade spaghetti Western?” I said, feeling my limbs start to tingle to life. Too bad, because this was going to hurt. “You’re so conscious of being recorded in the manuals…Joaquin, the Shadow Aquarian, the big star.” I scoffed as his expression tightened again. “You’re so fucking wooden you make Keanu Reeves look like a method actor.”

And then his expression blanked. I was beginning to recognize this as a bad sign, but as he stepped back to regard me from a distance, he unexpectedly backed into my trap. I scrambled to get the fourth wall up while there was space between us, and his face remained impassive as the air shimmered between us. Maybe, just maybe…

“Let me speak more plainly, then,” Joaquin said slowly. “Your walls can’t hold me.”

Or maybe not.

And he rammed his fists outward, one to each side, and my walls materialized, shining briefly, before disintegrating altogether. In what was almost the same movement, his right fist plowed through the front wall, the weakest, and it wobbled, then evaporated. He was on me so fast-fingers around my throat, spittle raining on my face-that my gaze had barely found his before he spoke. “I’m going to rape you raw, Joanna Archer. I’m going to shove myself so far down your throat I’ll tear your lungs. And after I’m done with you, I’m going after Ashlyn. Is that clear enough for you?”

A flash of fear arrowed through me like heated quicksilver, stronger than any physical pain so far, mightier than the Tulpa’s walls or Joaquin’s fists or even my long-held hatred, and my vision blurred-from lack of oxygen or Joaquin’s words, I didn’t know-but inside my head the images were clear as polished glass.

A baby squalling as it was lifted from my body.

A photo of a family I didn’t know, now complete, and a card sent to me in thanks.

Ben’s curls on a child’s head.

All this mingled together in a collage of color and action and sound, and then…nothing. Not even light. Just a blank canvas in my mind where clarity and intention finally found a resting place, and I saw what Tekla had really been trying to teach me.

That, I thought, and a way to write my own future.

“How about that?” I managed, voice strangled. “Tekla was right.”

“That loony bat?” Curiosity had Joaquin’s grip loosening. “I thought she stopped making predictions the night I tore her son’s head from his neck.”

I shook my head, my skull rubbing against the pavement beneath me, but Joaquin yanked my hair back to still the motion, though he did allow me to speak. “No…she saw this. You and me, here.” I gasped out a strangled laugh, amazed I hadn’t seen it all along. “God, how could I be so blind? I was going to get what I wanted all along. I just had to be patient and not fight it.”

Joaquin, unhappy with my digression, slapped me hard. Strangely enough, that restored my vision. “And what did batty ol’ Tekla say? That we’d meet again in the warehouse where I murdered her only child, both of us trapped until one of us dies? That you’d end up victorious? Because it doesn’t look that way to me. Did she also see you unarmed, sprawled beneath me, unable to move?”

I looked up, blinked. “Yes.”

Joaquin looked as if he couldn’t decide whether I was joking or not. Then he laughed, the sandpaper sound coarser and sharper than his nails at my neck, harder than the thighs pinning me in place. It was such a strange thing to behold, a wide, delighted grin on a face I’d only ever seen hooked in a sneer, and the thought of joy penetrating the wasteland of this man’s life was so startling I nearly froze. Nearly.

“It’s not you on the outside,” I continued speaking, almost conversationally, as the printless pad of my thumb aligned with the smooth gem sitting on my ring finger. “It’s you on the inside that I want gone.”

I said it like I was making a wish, and depressed the stone into its setting.

Joaquin, kneeling in front of me, sneered like he didn’t already know he was dead.

“Don’t give me that psychological mumbo-jumbo, or act like you’re made entirely of Light. If that were true, I wouldn’t have been able to string you along, using your thirst for vengeance against you.”

“I know. Which is why I’m letting it go.” And I pinky-swore that to the Universe. “I have better things to do with the rest of my life.”

He leaned down, chest touching mine, and I stared into his eyes, startled by the sudden realization that they were actually a dark moss color, almost pretty. Crazy the things you realized when you were no longer afraid for your life. “With the next five minutes, you mean? And what’s that?”

I ignored the heat of his breath, the pungent sulfur rising from his soul, and tried to read his mind, wondering when he’d realize he couldn’t touch me anymore. “Helping others. Fighting for those who can’t fight for themselves. Giving voice to those who can’t speak.”

He saw how earnest and honest I was, and doubt flickered across his face. It was fleeting, contradicted by the facts as he knew them, which he spelled out, though for my benefit or his, I didn’t know. “You’re pinned beneath me like a butterfly to a board. You’ll never do any of that.”

Too bad he didn’t know all the facts.

“I already have,” I said simply, and let my gaze slip past his shoulder. Joaquin turned.

She stood, solitary and small, just outside the maze, half obscured by the shadows of the warehouse. She didn’t look like an agent of Light, I thought, as Joaquin’s weight eased off me. In fact, right now Tekla looked like the least heroic agent I’d ever seen. I didn’t know how much Joaquin could really see of her-the aura that was usually a steady soft lavender was now crackling around her in sharp violet snaps-but he couldn’t take his eyes off her, and he didn’t move as she stepped into a moonbeam, the light making her look ghostly and one dimensional.

So it’s true, I thought, eyes flicking to the unwavering Joaquin. She really could trap you in her gaze.

She was wearing a robe of crimson red, a weapon like a crossbow with a chain attached to it, held at her side. Her son’s. On her chest was a pulsing glyph, and with every steady beat of the Scorpio sign, the hollows of her face lit up; unsmiling, severe. Vengeful.

I spread my palm flat, moving my fingers away from the ring that had called her to me, and she acknowledged me with a flick of her gaze as I propped myself back on my elbows, pulling my legs in tight. Joaquin shifted into a fighting stance. I’d have stood myself except I wasn’t sure what Tekla was going to do. But if there’d been a bunker to disappear into, I’d have ducked into it at that moment.

“Well, well.” Joaquin lengthened the words, his head coming up and fists tightening at his side, like he didn’t know he was moving because she allowed it. “If it isn’t the Scorpio figurehead. Come to save the Kairos? Or just happen to be in the neighborhood?”

Tekla didn’t even blink, and for the first time, even with two hundred yards between us, I could feel the combination of control and power that made her so revered among the troop. Swallowing hard, I wished again for that bunker. “Don’t mess with her, Joaquin. You’ll just make it worse.”

He spared me a glance, a kind of half-amused, half-annoyed sneer that turned to confusion when he scented my own rising nervousness. It wasn’t an act. The ring hadn’t just brought Tekla to me. The energy used to call her was like a taut rope linking us together. The room suddenly held the stillness of a vacuum, or the eerie abandonment of a coastline right before a monsoon. What was it Tekla had once told me? About the destructive power of vengeance?

Revenge is an A-bomb that will flatten everything around you.

I curled up tighter into myself.

Joaquin frowned, then expelled the scent from his nose, nostrils flaring as he turned back to Tekla. She still hadn’t moved. “I take it you’ve come to play, then. Two against one? Not good odds, but it’s not as if I haven’t raped and killed two women in one night before.”

When Tekla still didn’t speak, Joaquin’s own nervousness mounted, though it wasn’t nearly as high as it should’ve been. If he could feel what I felt-the raw rage gathering behind the fragile shell of that diminutive frame-he’d be on his knees already, begging for forgiveness. Instead his nerves heightened his arrogance…though the maze between them probably also had something to do with it.

“Or maybe you come here often…eh Tekla, old girl? Could this be a pilgrimage of some sort? Coming to pay your respects at the site where your son took his last cursed, gurgling breath?” He snickered, and I felt my chest tighten as the air grew thin around me. I gasped for breath, but Joaquin kept talking. “No offense to the Archer over here for the attempts I’ve made on her life, for the one I’ll make as soon as I take care of you, but I have to admit…Stryker was my favorite kill.”

It was like an airplane had lost its cabin pressure, and I had to put my hands to my temples as they began to pound, my eardrums tightening into a squealing ache. “Tekla,” I whimpered.

But she didn’t spare a glance, a thought, or an instant for me. With steps that started slowly, then accelerated, she strode right up to the point where the maze began. Then through it. And directly toward Joaquin. The electrical current that should’ve zipped through her body, frying her from the inside out, rose above her in noxious vapors, coalescing like storm clouds overhead. Joaquin gasped-or tried to as he backed up into me, he seemed to be having trouble breathing now as well-and I kicked at him, wanting to be as far from him as possible when this unnatural disaster struck.

Still striding forward, eyes locked on her target, Tekla lifted her arms. “Never utter my son’s name again.”

The cloud didn’t rain. It exploded. Downward, outward, shafts of fire sheared the air in blinding arrows, careening into what remained of the maze. Those walls too flared before shattering into thousands of shards, turning the warehouse into an asteroid field of electric slabs and searing light.

I tried to lift myself to my knees and crawl from the storm’s eye, but something rammed into my elbow, and the screech of living current whizzed through me. I dropped into the fetal position, crying out, but the sound was lost in the zing of live electricity. And in Joaquin’s screams cresting over me in waves of unseen horror.

Tekla drew closer, and the ripping winds sagged around me as she reached my side. Calm broke around my body, like a door had been slammed, and silence buzzed in my ears, though the rest of the warehouse was still fraught in chaos. I glanced up to find her hovering above me, protecting me. But I didn’t rise. Instead, I felt like I should genuflect.

The Tulpa’s maze was annihilated. All that remained of the walls were flying bits, some small as ice cubes, others large as icebergs, each jagged piece visible, and careening toward a swirling vortex under which, I realized, was Joaquin. Like bees swarming, the heightening mountain en-shrouded his body, only a bloodied foot or hand appearing before being attacked, and drawn back into the core. All I could make out between snaps of light was the gleam of steadily pooling blood widening on the floor. More blood, I thought, than one body could hold.

As haphazard and total as the destruction was in the warehouse, the only scratch on me was on my elbow. I gained my feet as the roar in the air softened, and straightened when it was silent enough to hear my breath rattling in my chest. Intermittent grunts came from the pile of debris, usually preceded by a sharp sizzle or crackling pop. The scent of electrocuted flesh permeated the air, and suddenly I wasn’t so happy to have my breath back.

I turned to Tekla, who kept her eyes on Joaquin and the swarm until it died off altogether. I wondered briefly if she was seeing what I did, or if she was remembering as well; the night her son was taken from her, the blood that had seeped over the floor then, the weight of his severed head in her lap. Then the Tulpa’s maze dissolved completely.

Take that, Tulpa.

I stepped forward, my footsteps like gunshots in the silence, until I stood over a body so mutilated and burned I barely recognized it as a person, much less Joaquin. He was still alive, though his limbs were no longer intact, severed bits lying in awkward angles, like an abandoned puppet loosed from its strings. His flesh smoldered in places where the larger sections of wall had struck, imbedding themselves to fry through skin and muscle and tissue, cracking against bone. The smaller injuries, surface ones, merely cleaved off digits, or dug themselves into organs, revealing finely sheered sections of his core where flaps of skin waved like bloody flags.

His nose no longer existed. The soft flesh of his cheeks looked like they’d been carved almost with purpose, and his thin-lipped mouth extended ear to ear, the full set of his teeth revealed in a permanent smile. His bones were black, but I knew they’d been that way before, and my eyes wandered to his glyph, still heating his ravaged chest in irregular, smoky beats. I looked at it, hating it, despite all the carnage wracked upon the rest of him.

I glanced at Tekla and saw the same nothing in her eyes that I felt in my chest, and without looking at me she held out her conduit, useful again now that the Tulpa’s maze had been annihilated. Heart in my throat, I nearly reached for it before sighing and shaking my head. I’d made a vow.

I turned back to Joaquin, and his eyes, the only part of his face not completely rearranged, ran wildly from Tekla’s face to mine. “You want us to hurt you,” I told him, throwing his words to me back in his face. “You expect it. And you’d be disappointed if we didn’t.”

Okay, so I didn’t need vengeance anymore…but I still loved having the last word.

Joaquin’s lower jaw hinged open as if to speak, but blood pooled down his chin from the stub of his tongue, and Tekla fired before any sound could gurgle out. A palm-sized anchor imbedded itself into the center of his glyph. She fingered a release button, and the chain attached to the anchor retracted, yanking Joaquin’s black and bloody heart out with it. His glyph snuffed out like a candle beneath Tekla’s gentle breath, and a whiff of sooty smoke joined the cloying rot saturating the warehouse air. The kill spot would impress generations to come.