The Touch of Twilight

28

Despite Zell’s resistance-his conduit, his cries, his fists, his blood-my next great feat actually took longer…probably because I couldn’t just whip Chandra into doing what I asked. I found her huddled over a microscope at the Sky-Chem drug testing facility, her cover in the mortal world and where she snuck in on the weekends to do the reconnaissance we needed while not surrounded by curious coworkers and bossy supervisors.

I knew she’d be here, distracting herself with work to keep her mind off where the rest of the troop was, what we were doing, and how badly she wanted to be a part of it. It was for that last reason only that I eventually succeeded in convincing her to go along with my plan.

“It’s too risky,” she still argued, but she was locking up as she said it.

“It’s the best way, Chandra. And if we succeed, when we do, we’ll have done something previously unimagined. We’ll topple a troop.” I smiled grimly as she turned to face me. “It’ll be in manuals in every city the world over.”

“I don’t care about that!” she snapped so quickly I almost believed her. I kept silent as she whirled away, afraid one more word would have her reaching to call Warren…and then I really would have to hurt her.

She paced, biting her bottom lip, running her hand through her hair so much it stood up like a troll doll’s. Finally she jerked her head, and I followed her to the parking lot for the long drive to Cathedral Canyon.

Blue Diamond Road was markedly different at night than during the day, and as we left the city glittering behind us, we fell off into disembodied blackness, only the cab of our car lit by the steady glow of our console, silence as deep as the night.

I’d once thought myself a stranger to darkness. Growing up in a twenty-four-hour town was a lot like going to bed with the ultimate nightlight on. Sure, there were untouched parcels of desert still sunk like inky pockets within the sprawling city boundaries, and the terrain surrounding that shiny core fell away abruptly into an inflexible vacuum of time and space, but that only made Vegas appear all the more like an island unto itself. Because on that island was undying luminosity. You could make your way across the valley simply by following landmark after shining landmark alone.

I first went camping when I was seven, an event fueled by my own incessant nagging and questions about why we never left town on family trips. Of course, now I knew why. As a full-fledged Zodiac member my mother could no longer physically cross state lines, or even enter another town, but she did her best to fulfill my wish, taking us to a campground in mountains I didn’t know existed so close to the desert. The camping trip was a resounding success, but on the way back I cowered in the backseat of the car as we hurtled into a darkness cut only by the beam of our headlights. Olivia slept soundly beside me, her breathing drowned out by the speed of our wheels on the asphalt road, and the report of other cars as they rocketed by us in the opposite direction. I watched them disappear through the back window, their taillights growing smaller until they popped like the dot on an old television and disappeared completely. It was, I remember thinking, as if they’d never been. There were houses in those mountains too. I saw a chimney smoking, a strong rooftop peeking out from the firs, and the occasional light winking in some far-off window, looking lonely and too isolated to stand for long.

“Why,” I had asked my mother, greatly concerned when we passed yet another one of these disturbing homes, “do these people live in the dark?”

“Humans are creatures of habit,” my mother said, her voice a comfort in that small heated space. “People do what they know, what they’ve always done, because it’s a comfort to them. Perhaps they live in a dark place because that’s where their parents lived, and their grandparents, and theirs before them.”

“I would never live in the dark. No matter where you used to live.”

She turned in her seat, hands upon the wheel, the lights from the dashboard illuminating half her face, lengthening the amused smile that lingered there. “Yes, but if you were born in darkness, born to darkness, you wouldn’t know the difference.”

“I’d know there was no light,” I said, as she turned back around. I heard a sigh stream from her chest.

“The absence of a thing doesn’t tell you about its nature, Joanna. Its lack robs you even of a comparison. You’d have no idea what you were missing; you’d only know that there was…” She paused, searching for the right word, then gestured to the landscape hidden beyond the sweep of our headlights. “A void.”

“A void?” I repeated, frowning, not sure of the word, much less if I agreed. But my mother was wrong about few things. “Well, do you think people who live in the dark want some light?”

I couldn’t see her face, just the outline of her shoulders as she slumped against her seat and stared out into the night. Her voice, however, went soft, almost like she was afraid of the sound. There was no force behind the words, as if whispering them would keep them within the confines of this car.

“Yes, Joanna,” she murmured. “They covet the light more than anything.”

It was one of those answers a child was ever frustrated in understanding. One of the ones that, if pushed, would be explained away with an unsatisfying You’ll understand when you’re older. I knew I was missing something important, something she wouldn’t explain to me, and that made me sulk.

“Well, I’m never going to live in the dark. I’ll live in Las Vegas forever!”

She turned again, and this time her face was absent of all humor. “No matter where you live or how many streetlamps there are, no matter how many hours of sunlight there are in the day, or neon bulbs torching the skyline, every place at one time or another is touched by darkness. And every person.”

Well, she knew better than most, I thought, as Chandra and I hurtled forward on a similar journey. A lesser person would’ve been consumed by all that darkness too. I couldn’t help wondering what would’ve happened to me, what path I’d have chosen, if I’d been through all my mother had before me.

At least I knew Warren was right. My mother was still out there. Somewhere. She was working to do what she could to help the troop, and me, fight the Tulpa. And she’d go on doing it too, all the way up until her death. I would do the same, I swore, fists clenching on my thighs. Even if that death was only minutes away.

It didn’t matter how warm it was on any given October day, by the time midnight came around, the desert air crept in like an invisible fog to send residents and tourists alike scurrying for the indoors, its icy fingers pulling the heat from the city’s sizzling lights as it swept through the streets. It was even colder out where the wild desert air originated, the brittle breeze snapping over cacti and bramble in the same way reality could snap in the palm of an uncaring being.

It was this thought, more than the biting cold, that caused me to shiver as I stepped from Zell’s car at Cathedral Canyon. The other agents of Light were already waiting in the shimmering little gorge, the scent of their initial impatience crowded out by a greater worry, and finally relief as I appeared over the lip of the ridge. Just as I’d seen in the mask four hours earlier.

“I’d have called,” I told Warren as he met me at the top of the rickety wooden staircase, “but you said no cells.”

We only spoke about these locations face-to-face, usually in the safety of the sanctuary. The life of the agent being reborn into their star sign depended on the security of that information. During the metamorphosis itself, the rest of the Zodiac troop also formed a circle around him or her, partly for ceremony’s sake, but mostly for additional protection. The circle had been breached before, and if my mental dip into the future was right, it would be breached again tonight.

“We’ll talk about this later,” Warren said impatiently. “Here are your robes. The others are already waiting.”

I ignored the censure in his voice and draped the robes over my arm as I wordlessly made my way down the zigzagged staircase. It was a time for picking battles, and I needed to save my energy for the one to come.

Tekla was overseeing the troop formation and Kimber was already centered in the widest part of the canyon, the initiate’s gold robe shimmering spectacularly even among the chips of stained glass and stars. Everyone else was robed in white, and I slipped mine over my head as I passed by Hunter…not a coincidence. It would be hard to face him at any time, but right now I had to focus. I halted on the spot indicated by Tekla, immediately recognizing that we were arranged in the order of the Zodiac wheel. First came Hunter, the Aries, joined next by Warren, our Taurus. Then Jewell, Gregor, and Vanessa, all evenly spaced and somber. Micah was next, though there was a large gap next to him where Kimber would stand as the new Libra when her metamorphosis was complete. Tekla and I were followed by Felix and Riddick, with the empty Piscean spot our only weakness. Warren had been trying to fill it for months, and I eyed the dusty ground nervously. It was the one spot that could be tested.

“Star signs, draw the line of defense.”

Every fist, save Warren’s and mine, suddenly held a weapon; a whip, military fork, mace, clawed hand fan, surgeon’s steel, palm-sized grapnel, edged boomerang, and a shiny new dental saw. Warren hadn’t used a weapon beyond his own body and mind for years, ever since he’d had to draw down on his own father. But I slipped my hand beneath my robe…and pulled out the animist’s mask instead.

Jewell, opposite me, was the first to notice. “Olivia, what are you doing?”

One by one the other star signs turned my way. I glanced up as the roof of the sky suddenly lowered, cirrus clouds clamoring for prime spots over the little canyon. “Putting on the only weapon I’m going to need.”

Though I was expecting the kick of power this time, the mask still knocked me back a few steps as it bound itself to my skull. Pure power pooled through my temples, divining my purpose, my expectations, my future actions…starting with those I’d take in the next second. I relaxed, calming the breath as it ran through my body, and waited for the chaos to settle. Finally the inner world fell silent and the slate blank. Power rumbled through the canyon, but that was only the thunder gathering overhead, sending ozone to slip through the mouth hole and lick at my lips.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t tell the troop what I was seeing. The future assailing me behind the mask was too near, and it’d be too easy for them to lose perspective. The same sort of revelation was what made amateur fortune-tellers and going to psychics so dangerous. It wasn’t that their advice was evil or wrong, but even the right information doled out in the wrong moment led to poor decision making, or in some cases, no decision at all. The agents of Light needed to act, and do so in unyielding agreement according to the knowledge they currently possessed, and no more. If the vision in the mask was to come true, I had to be careful about exactly how much I revealed.

Yet my pulse jumped once my vision cleared and I caught the stares of disdain and surprise-coupled with a skein of burgeoning fear-all of which made me itchy with the need for action. But it wasn’t time; it wasn’t the kairotic moment. Not yet.

Kimber’s somber piety fled her and her head snapped up over the golden cowl of her robe, hood slipping back so her hair looked star white in the deepening night. “Goddammit, she’s trying to make this about her!”

“I’ve already metamorphosed once and it was enough, thank you.” They couldn’t view my scowl behind the mask, but it couldn’t stifle the sarcasm.

“Then what are you doing, Olivia?” Tekla said sharply. “Metamorphosis is a sacred ceremony requiring the troop to act as one. You’re to do what you’re told, remain in formation, and never, ever act or speak out of turn!”

“Uh-huh,” I said absently, as color flared behind my eyelids. The mask was agitated, fate momentarily unwritten-destiny up in the air-but then it settled and I breathed a sigh of relief. As the blinders of the future lifted, I swiveled to regard Tekla. “Do you happen to have the time?”

“What?”

“Never mind.” I glanced up at the sky to find a perfectly formed hole in the clouds, a funnel revealing a ringed moon on the high side. The air was thicker than it’d been even a minute ago, and farther off, a giant nexus of thunder began rolling our way. Time, and other fluid, manipulative elements, were drawing nearer. Deciding to err on the side of caution, I put my fingers to my lips and sent a piercing whistle knifing through the canyon.

“Are you nuts?” Felix asked, from my other side. “Do you want the world to know we’re out here?”

“Which world?” I muttered darkly, as I lifted my head to the two figures stepping onto the lip of the ridge above us. Feeling the air current, sensing the motion, the rest of the troop whirled as well.

“Chandra?” said Micah, because she wasn’t supposed to be here.

“Archer?” Warren growled, demanding an explanation through the question. Again, as one, the troop whirled my way.

“You told us to partner up.” I shrugged. “So we have.”

Chandra managed a nervous smile as she held tight to the bound Shadow agent, but I could see she was already faltering. I’d only told her enough to convince her to help me, but even that would doom us if she revealed it too soon. Zell groaned, eyes edging my way before rolling to white. His shirt was a mess, ripped and bloodied from his earlier struggle against us, and his labored breathing infused the air with the acrid scent of his pain in sharp, floating puffs.

“This is a metamorphosis,” Tekla said lowly, and her outrage seeped like oil into the briny air. “It’s not meant as a kill spot.”

“No, but as you know they’re sometimes one and the same,” I answered just as coldly.

There were a handful of gasps, and Tekla blanched at the untimely reminder of her son’s death. Despite her shocked wobble, I kept my eye on her. She had more usable power in her pinky finger than I did in my entire body.

“You’re grandstanding,” she managed in a ragged whisper.

“I’m not.” Without taking my gaze from Tekla’s, I said, “Tell them, Zell.”

Zell swallowed hard, like his throat was working against the rest of his body, and blood bubbled from the side of his mouth as his eyes rolled again. “They’re coming,” he croaked.

“Who…?”

But the chaos I’d been privy to in the confines of the mask suddenly made itself known in a resounding crack, and the thick sky still gathering to welcome Kimber into the Zodiac was rent apart by a new splintering power. And when every single glyph in the circle flared to life, they all knew who.

Kimber whimpered in the center of our circle, her face turned toward the unnatural roil of smoke as it filled in the gaps between the battered clouds. The furious expression that’d met my appearance was gone, and in its place was stark, palpable fear. “Oh God.”

“Stay centered.” Warren put a hand on her shoulder as she started to move, but removed it immediately. Ozone was gathering around her, and enough elemental power would soon assault her body that it could kill even him. There was nothing she could do, and nowhere to run or escape. At her moment of metamorphosis she’d be frozen where she stood, easy pickings for the swarm headed our way. And it was too late anyway. The clouds pinpointed her location, revealing her existence to the heavens…and anyone else who might be watching. “And stay low. It’ll be better that way.”

“But the Shadows…”

The Shadows appeared over the ridge of the bright little canyon, glyphs smoking on their chests as they circled us in a living ring. We turned outward as one, backs toward Kimber, moving in as tightly as we could. There were a number of Shadows I’d never seen in person before, ones who’d gradually taken the place of the four I’d sent to an early grave. Ronan was the new Aries who, for some reason, had an affection for dressing as a modern-day pirate. Too much Jack Sparrow in his cinematic diet, I gathered. Harrison was the Shadow Virgo, and like Ajax before him, he had a build to match his slim, sharp weapon, a fencing sword. En garde. Little was known about the Aquarian, Tariq, who, as the Shadows’ newest member, had replaced my former mortal enemy. On the other hand, I knew everything I needed to about the Piscean Shadow. I’d encountered Adele spiking the drink of a sorority sister weeks earlier, then setting the poor girl loose in a notorious “gentlemen’s club.” She’d obviously escaped me then, but not unscathed. The new limp would’ve gone better with Ronan’s disguise.

Regan had taken up the five o’clock position, and though her stance widened, her arms were crossed as if the outcome of this contest had already been decided. Yet, as alert as I was to her presence, nothing about her called to me, and I knew she hadn’t brought my conduit. She wouldn’t risk losing it to me or her ally agents, who wouldn’t hesitate to seize the opportunity to steal it from her. The chance to erase the Kairos’s existence from the earth was too great to resist. Yet, in the next pulse-pounding moment, even that concern, along with Regan, was forgotten.

He appeared directly opposite Chandra, positioning himself above the statue of the Christian savior…and well above all of us. This time he wore the flesh suit of an absentminded college professor, his day-old stubble and haphazard hair accented by loafers, a vest, and the expression of someone who’d just looked up from a particularly engrossing text. It was all at once thoughtful, faraway…and calculating.

If he were mortal, I thought, he would’ve been called slight and almost considered handsome. But with liquid power causing his hair to stand on end and kindling his eyes into fiery silver and onyx globes, what he looked was invincible.

“Well, what have we here?” His voice was almost gentle. “A familiar scenario, it seems. An agent of Light, about to kneel before me.”

Lightning drilled into the dry ground next to Kimber, searching for her, and she yelped while the rest of us drew closer, the bolt jumping like an electrical current to run through the tight circle, tying us together in purpose. In duty.

In the kairotic moment.

The Tulpa laughed…and I inhaled deeply, swallowed hard, and stepped forward, breaking the circle.

“Joanna, no!” Though he barked out the order, Warren was careful to use my real name in front of the Shadows, but the air around me still shook with the shock of my ally agents. My identity beneath Olivia’s soft shell had been a mystery among our agents from the first, so they couldn’t help themselves. The air was so heavy with storm clouds and humidity you could almost take a bite out of the emotion, and I knew the Tulpa felt their surprise because of it…and because he laughed again.

“Another secret revealed among the troop.” He lifted his leg as if to take a step from the gorge’s rim…and gently floated to the canyon floor instead. His flesh looked like a lustrous silver parachute, unlined and glowing, as midnight air rustled his clothes. Once his feet touched ground, he asked, “How long before the new mole inside your sanctuary shares it with us?”

“There’s no one else,” Micah said, calling his bluff.

“So confident,” said the Tulpa, tilting his head, electric eyes firing. “So sure. I guess that makes you suspect number one.”

“There’s no one else,” Warren said, backing Micah up, and I wondered if he was even aware of how the circle tightened around Kimber at his words, with me on the outside. No one seemed to note it, though. No one but the Tulpa.

“Ah, except for the sole agent who remains now, as always, divided between us.”

“I’m not divided anymore.”

“Step back, Joanna,” Tekla commanded, deliberately making room for me next to her. It temporarily loosened the ring, creating an obvious breach among them, though the Piscean gap between Riddick and Hunter still stood out more. Even linked, there was nothing they could do about that, and I knew the Shadows, whispering and shifting up on the canyon’s rim, saw it too. Adele, as the opposing Pisces, would be particularly drawn to it.

A second bolt of lightning suddenly speared at Kimber’s feet, sizzling as it lifted the hairs on our bodies, showing off the depths of its immense power, though it was just the warm-up act. I closed my eyes, steadied myself on a breath, then looked straight at the Tulpa.

“No.” The dense air thickened even more. I licked my lips and tasted sky. “As you said, Tekla, this is not a time for grandstanding. But it isn’t just a metamorphosis either. This is the third sign of the Zodiac come to pass. Tonight marks the rise of my dormant side.”

The ring instantly tightened around Kimber, my spot again swallowed by their bodies.

“I know what fate awaits me at the end of this night, and where my future lies.” I chose my words carefully, raising my voice so it could be heard over the storm already railing above us. By the time those swollen clouds broke it’d be too late. “While my fellow troop members have seen only success through the eyes of this mask, I see the truth.”

The Tulpa smiled wryly. “You figured it out.”

I waited until the sky had finished crackling. “What? That you’ve planted masks all over the city to draw on the power of the public?” Shrugging, I lied. “It was easy.”

“Tell that to Warren.”

I did. “It’s how he’s been getting energy,” I said, though it looked like Warren had figured that one out for himself. “At one time he would’ve forced people to don the masks, stealing their soul essence to yield energy for his animation, but he knew you’d be looking for that. What you wouldn’t be looking for was a souvenir sold in the Valhalla gift shop, one worn to every Las Vegas event imaginable.”

One quick phone call to Janet had confirmed all the masks worn at last month’s Swingers’ Ball had been generously donated by the Valhalla gift shop. And all the power in the wearer’s thoughts and emotions and soul had been ferried right back to the Tulpa.

“All this time…” Warren began.

But time was short. I looked up as the sky fell unnaturally still, and even though the clouds could be seen spinning and roiling via the bolts firing within, the silence was the same that waylaid the land before a tsunami. So I kept my eyes on the sky, and finished for him.

“All this time mortals have been wearing these masks willingly, their vitality leached from their body in bundled packages of soul power. They’d stumble home in a fog, wondering why they had a headache at the end of the night-if they’d drunk too much, if it was just jet lag, or if it was Vegas working its late night magic.” Still others, like Xavier, put on the masks in worship, and who knew how many of those willing victims were out there, giving up bits of their soul they could ill afford to miss? “But an animist’s mask, like this one, is even more powerful. This is a weapon that was designed with superheroes in mind, right?”

The Tulpa inclined his head, and in that same unnervingly gentle voice, took up the telling. The absentminded professor schooling us all. “It shows an agent of Light exactly what they hope to see of the future. It gets them to let down their guard, then it feeds their thoughts directly to me.”

Now Chandra, who’d stolen the mask, looked guilty, and Warren looked positively ill. He’d willingly donned the mask, and from the way he began to sway, I had a feeling it was more than once. He’d certainly done so after choosing Cathedral Canyon as the site for Kimber’s metamorphosis, thus the Tulpa’s appearance here. The only thing to be thankful for was that the mask only revealed the future, not the past. Otherwise the Tulpa would already know of my transformation into Olivia, and I wouldn’t be standing here now, alive, the only one still able to spin lies and hide thoughts.

Hunter was the first to find his voice after I’d explained all this to them. “Why did the mask adhere to your face? Why’d it choose you to reveal the future to?”

“Because you’re the Kairos?” Micah guessed.

“Because you’re part Shadow?” said Regan from the ridge.

“No.” Though those things were undoubtedly a part of it. “Because I’m the only one in a position to do something about it.”

The Tulpa began to laugh, his voice no longer gentle as it boomed over the canyon to equal the power of the thunder roiling above. “Your position, darling, is at the bottom of a canyon, surrounded by enemies, with no conduit, and a troop of agents facing imminent death. Or so I saw from this end.”

“And when’s the last time you checked?” I snapped, unable to help myself. “Fates can change quickly…and I’m the only one wearing a mask now.”

“And what, pray tell, do you see?”

“I see, I see,” I sang in a childhood rhyme, before my voice fell to a growling scratch. “…something bloody.”

The energy in the mask wobbled, the Tulpa’s spike of concern a sudden factor. It was too early yet for either of us to act, so I whirled to face Warren, again playing the traitor’s card. “I’m sorry, but our fate is already written. I told you the first time I put this thing on that destruction awaits the agents of Light.”

Micah whirled toward the top ridge, and the woman he’d counted as his closest friend. “And Chandra? You’re helping her?”

Chandra couldn’t look at him. “Trust me…it’s for the best.”

“Chandra’s the one who told me I had to respect that biology has made me different,” I said, because we could all sense her wavering. “She’s the one who made me face the consequences of my Shadow side.”

“So it seems you do have some betrayers in your troop after all.” The Tulpa’s grin widened so far it was beyond normal, and no longer handsome. “My daughter and the girl you betrayed for her. Too bad your Kairos is really my Kairos.”

I shook my finger in his direction like I was chiding one preschooler for swatting at another. “Not so fast. Shadows never do anything unless there’s a trade involved. If I’m to come stand at your side, I want something in return.”

“Name it.”

“I will,” I said, smiling at his word choice. “So…anything?”

His inclining head fell well short of a nod, the only outward sign of his hesitancy. “You’re my daughter. I want you on my side.”

“Yet there’s something else you want more, isn’t there?” I said, and he suddenly looked less comfortable, though he hadn’t moved at all. I had to risk it, though. A mean game of push-and-shove would be more believable than a total and abrupt turnaround. Changing the subject before he could answer, I feigned ease. “Well, this mask has shown me that if things go your way, five minutes from now the entire troop of Light will be nothing more than a memory, but at least one of your agents will die with them. It’ll either be Zell…”

And here Chandra pulled out Zell’s ax and pointed the weapon at his back.

“Or Regan.”

I saw her jolt on the shelf above us, her mouth falling open before she knew what she wanted to say. Her attempt to catch the Tulpa’s eye failed because his were glittering excitedly, pinned on me.

“Trades are always tricky, and fraught with risk. Zell believes himself destined to die at your hands anyway. He almost deserves the fate; a belief that strong can only come to pass. Why would I exchange a perfectly solid star sign for him?”

Exactly the question I wanted him to ask. The mask hid my smile, and I held my breath until I was sure I could neutralize my voice. “Because Regan knows who I am beneath this mask. Beneath all my masks. She’s known my secret identity for months. She just hasn’t shared it with you.”

Truth rode over some people like a stampede. Confusion marred their brows like new thoughts were trying to break out in Braille over their foreheads. Then their expressions, their bodies, would slacken with lost hope. Yet other people, those who held little hope to begin with, didn’t move at all when their ideals were shattered, and not surprisingly, the Tulpa was this latter sort. Minus the “people” part. Because no mortal’s bone would’ve flashed like quicksilver to match his eyes, his hair, the nails that had spontaneously lengthened into honed points beyond the silvered skin.

Black mist, opaque against the stormy desert night, formed in half a dozen tendrils snapping to wrap around Regan’s body. They coiled like sinewy lassoes, jerked her half a foot into the air, and tightened so quickly, the plea forming on her lips was thrust from her body in a terrified gasp.

“Come.” It was said almost sweetly.

Rain began to drench the tiny canyon as Regan floated to him, like rope drawn through a pulley designed of his will.

“You’ve been given an inordinate amount of freedom, Ms. DuPree. From the time you were small it seemed to have been an expectation of yours. I blame your mother for that. How fitting that we should be reminded twice in one night that despite a matriarchal hierarchy, the mother’s lineage isn’t always dominant.”

“Let me explain-”

“It’s a lucky turn of events for the Archer, but…” He raised one pronged hand in the air. “Not so much for you.”

With a mere jerk of his wrist, the coiling mist yanked from Regan’s body, taking her clothes with it. The bonds dissolved immediately, and her clothes fell haphazardly across the dusty ground, like they’d tried to run off on their own. Before shock could set in at her nakedness, before she could even cover herself, the Tulpa also began stripping her of her identity.

Literally.

Raking his fingers through the air, the man who’d been dreamed into being flayed a woman born of this world. Five solid slashes formed down the front of her body like thick paper cuts, from her hairline all the way to the cracks between her toes. She went stock-still, momentarily wide-eyed, until the skin lifted and began to curl back from all edges on her face and body and limbs. Even her screams turned tattered, the cut muscles of her throat causing the sound to overlap in deep and anguished waves, while the Tulpa only watched, his face again lengthening into that unnaturally wide grin. He gave another finger wave, and muscle tore from bone.

“You took a vow-all of you!-to follow me and obey me in exchange for my patronage and power.” Despite the pattering rain and rising wind and twisting bolts firing above our heads, despite Regan’s screams of agony, the Tulpa’s voice remained conversational, slipping around us from every side. The ultimate ventriloquist’s trick. I hated it when he did that. “Have I let you down in some way? Have I not delivered all I promised and more? Have I failed to bring the agents of Light to their knees time and again?”

“No!” The Shadows yelled it as one, living up to their name, nothing more than a series of blurred outlines above us. Their sole distinguishing feature was the smoke billowing from their chests, refusing to be extinguished in the heightening torrent.

“No…” Regan’s pain-filled wail sounded a moment too late, a belated attempt to return to her leader’s good graces despite the flesh hanging from her in ribbons.

“Then please recall that while your service to me is voluntary,” he said to the rest of the troop while he continued gazing at her like she was a beetle under his boot, “once committed, your loyalty is not.”

He beckoned a final time, and Regan screamed until her vocal cords either snapped or split, and even the thunder couldn’t drown out the fracturing of all two hundred and six bones in her body.

I wanted to look away. The mask had merely revealed a truncated version of these events; it hadn’t shown the blood puddling beneath her bare heels or the carved organs peeking through her pink, tattered skin, or the way dust and grime and rain pummeled that brutalized flesh, each drop of rain a world of agony on its own.

“Vanity is something I normally endorse. But yours, Ms. DuPree, has been your downfall.”

Her downfall, but not her death. She wouldn’t expire from these injuries…but she wouldn’t recover from them either.

“Lindy. Dawn. Escort Regan to the other side of the ravine.”

“Halfway is fine,” I said, unable to hide my revulsion. He smiled.

Despite the carnage done to her body, of the humiliation of being reduced to nothing more than a lesson in subservience, and of the downright cruelty of his actions, Regan began to shake as she found herself suddenly flanked. “Sir, if you’ll just let me-”

“One more word and I’ll rip that lying tongue from your mouth with my teeth.”

The only sound she made after that was a soft squeal as her two guards grasped her tattered wrists. Chandra leaped from the canyon’s edge to drop with Zell behind me, and I almost began to breathe normally beneath my wooden guise. It was going to work.

Yet as Regan neared, the mask surprised me by flaring to life. Something was fluid in this situation again. Some decision had been made that could put my plans in jeopardy.

Wishing for my conduit despite its absence in the mask’s vision, I glanced sharply at Regan, but she was beyond any ability to form expression or thought, her glassy eyes fixed on Dawn. The Shadow Gemini had paused, searching the discarded clothing long enough to locate Regan’s conduit. She laughed as she threw the ice pick at the Tulpa’s feet, and Regan jolted, though her gasp was lost in a clap of thunder. I couldn’t help but empathize. I knew how it felt to have your conduit taken from you. It was like losing a limb.

I was watching Regan so closely, I almost missed the stare of the other Shadow, Lindy, as she and Dawn dragged the former Cancer closer. The mask suddenly sang to me in colors, obscuring my peripheral vision and admitting a sound as shrill as a home alarm. This wasn’t good.

I widened my stance, readied for a physical attack, but gasped when Lindy’s hooded eyes met mine. Thank God the mask concealed emotion as well as thought, because Lindy was none other than my longtime malevolent housekeeper, Helen Maguire. I hadn’t recognized her because I’d never seen her dressed in anything but frumpery, and was surprised to find she actually had a figure hiding beneath those loose black dresses. Blood pumping hard in my chest, I wondered how greatly it would screw things up if I reached out and snapped her neck.

My vision clouded again, but this time with a smoky heat that hardened my gaze. I glared at her with my father’s eyes, and suddenly the color in the mask died. Whatever thoughts she’d been having, any recognition or speculation she’d been entertaining, had suddenly been redirected. I still had an edge.

Time to hone it to a point, I thought, the exchange made, Zell safely behind the Tulpa, Regan held at arm’s length by Chandra behind me. “One final thing,” I told the Tulpa.

“Of course,” he said wryly. He was losing patience.

“I want your pledge that none of your agents will touch Kimber for as long as she’s immobilized by the impact of metamorphosis. The rest are fair game”-I shrugged-“as is she the moment the paralysis leaves her, but I’m Light enough to still want an even playing ground.”

“Joanna!” Warren’s voice was curdled with disbelief. His fear stank. “Think about what you’re doing!”

But the Tulpa already had. “I swear it.”

The remaining Shadow agents dropped to the ground, fanning around the Tulpa in a half moon but for Zell, who fell back as if afraid his leader might turn around and punish him for his capture. But the Tulpa’s eyes were shining, brightly fixed on the agents of Light, who continued to hold their circle around Kimber. Stubborn. Loyal. Practically helpless.

Just as I’d seen in my vision.