The Touch of Twilight

29

I centered myself with a breath so deep I felt like an athlete preparing for an impossible physical feat. Then I squared on the Tulpa, strode two feet forward, and looked directly into those swirling silver eyes. “And I, Joanna Archer, pledge to use the primordial force of universal life to bind together the roots of your origin, faster than light, the whole to the half, reclaiming the essence of your original mind and subjecting it to my own.”

It was the spell he’d given me, twisted back upon himself, and I recited it precisely three times, just as he’d ordered, right down to the inflection he’d used in relaying it to me. He was a tulpa, not a doppelgänger, and therefore too strong for the spell to hold for long, but it would secure him long enough for the troop to realize their advantage, at least if the glowering Shadow agents didn’t catch on first. Their leader had fallen unnaturally still.

“Not too long ago you spoke to me about a legend,” I said loudly, stalling for time, and motioning meaningfully in Chandra’s direction. Regan stilled beside her, the only one to note it, but Chandra felt her stiffen, and responded swiftly by whirling and burying Zell’s ax in her tattered thigh. That took care of that. Regan crumpled to the ground, sobbing again, but nobody on either side of the Zodiac protested. The rain drew down more relentlessly now and I had to yell to be heard. “A person born equally of the sun and moon who could freely choose her fate, her allies. The first sign that this person and her allies would come to power was her discovery-the Kairos actually exists. The second was a plague in her city of birth, which she would overcome with the help of her troop.” I inclined my head. “Anyone care to tell me about the third sign?”

Chandra, steadier and with Regan at her feet, spoke up. “The third was the reawakening of her dormant side. For the bearer of the Archer sign there would be a death, a rebirth, and a transformation into that which she once would have killed.”

“Her Light eclipsed, her solitary descent into darkness, an ability to see the unseen.” Dawn’s words were loud as the rain suddenly shuttered off. She looked at the sky as she untied Zell’s hands. He continued staring at me, unblinking, as if in a trance. “Tell us something we don’t know, please.”

“All right,” I said slowly, watching her bend to unbind Zell’s feet. Lindy was snapping her fingers in front of his face, frowning as he stared through her. I smiled, not because of his lethargic response, but because they were both so preoccupied with him that they’d taken their eyes, their energy, off their leader. The Tulpa, however, was watching me closely. He was furious, eyes charred marble, hatred rolling from him in bilious waves to join the low ceiling of clouds, but otherwise totally incapacitated under his own spell. “That sign has nothing to do with me.”

Dawn’s head shot up as Zell flexed his fingers and shook away the numbness that had them tingling back to life.

“Dormant doesn’t merely mean lying at rest. It can also mean lying in wait.” A small shiver rolled up my spine as elemental madness funneled into a fat, swirling vortex above us. The crackle of lightning and growl of thunder streamed into it, and I had to yell again. “The third sign of the Zodiac heralds the return of my mother to the paranormal battlefield. The death you speak of is the decade-old loss of her otherworldly powers. Her rebirth came when she fully embraced her mortality and all its gifts. But time is fickle and fluid, and her full transformation has taken until now to complete.”

“She’s a mortal. She no longer has any influence in our world.” Lindy turned to the Tulpa for confirmation, but he could only glower in return. She took it as chastisement, swallowed hard, and turned away.

I smiled.

“It’s true that at their worst mortals are simply pawns, fuel to be thrown away when their useful resources are depleted. But at their best?” Pride and anger powered my words, and I paced like a caged lion between the two opposing factions. “They’re agents of free will, and the mortals who know what that really means are also purveyors of energy through the power of thought.”

Spoken words, written language, action-and my mother, Zoe Archer, was most certainly a woman of action-could all be channeled into visualizing matter into life. She would be conscious, as most mortals were not, of moving through this mortal plane both physically and mentally, constantly creating and recreating her world, building on what was already constructed or tearing it down. Either way, the constant flux of reality was an opportunity, and like my mother, I saw it all as I never had before. We could all mentally manipulate different aspects of vibrational acuity. Because wasn’t vibration nothing more than matter?

And wasn’t matter all that mattered?

“A tulpa is made from thought,” Chandra provided, and I could hear the smile in her voice.

I smiled too, and this time the animist’s mask responded to my will by tilting evilly, cheekbones flaring with the grin. “And so is a doppelgänger.”

Lindy’s expression blanked. The others shifted on their feet, still waiting for the Tulpa’s orders. My troop had gone still as well, sensing a shift as imminent as the sky’s eruption. I looked up to see a visible mass of power swirling in the funnel, looking as if it was ready to fall in around our ears. The animist’s mask didn’t contradict the thought.

“A newly born tulpa gains power in one of two ways. The first is by consuming the heart of someone with a concentrated amount of will and mental strength.”

A gasp from someone in my troop’s circle. The Shadows shifted, almost as one, again, but the Tulpa still didn’t move. I hurried on before he did. Not long now. “Eat enough hearts and their strength becomes boundless. The only upkeep required? A regular diet of soul sacrifice.

“Yet there’s a second, less bloody, but more powerful way to do this. A means by which you can instantaneously create a strong, fast, smart, and fully realized tulpa. And that is done simply by bestowing a name.”

Not a formal name, but a proper one. Informal. Common. Given.

The Tulpa’s fetters began to loosen. Color flashed across the pane of the animist’s mask, and a rumble escaped the funnel, a fractured warning from the sky. I paused, the mask fell blank, and I remembered to pace myself. The exact moment of Kimber’s metamorphosis. Not a moment sooner or later. Not yet.

“My mother has spent the past decade channeling the fuel of her mortality into the creation of a doppelgänger, the evolutionary predecessor of a tulpa. She could have been the one to provide it with a name, but she’s patient and she’s good. Well…good-ish.”

Tekla was up to speed now, and she joined me to face the Shadow warriors. “And a name would be so much more powerful if provided-”

“By a living Zodiac member,” Warren finished, and he too stepped forward, next to me. The agents of Light flanked me, save Kimber, who was oath-sworn as off limits. “One with the same blood of its creator, no less.”

“One little noun,” I said to the Tulpa, watching as the body he’d donned began to shake. Silver zigzagged so furiously beneath his eyes that it leaked from his tear ducts and into the watery-thin layer between muscle and flesh, causing him to shine, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if his physical mold exploded into a million splintering pieces. “Two aspects, a sense and a referent. Something you were never given.”

The Tulpa’s face twisted as a lightning bolt escaped the sky’s low funnel, and a howl tore from his throat, probably ripping it from the inside. The Shadow agents jumped as if waking from a trance, and fire erupted in the sky, lightning searching out Kimber like she was a living rod. Agents, both Shadow and Light, shifted on their feet-my allies automatically pulling in tight as the Shadows bent their knees, weight shifting to the balls of their feet-but still waiting for their leader’s command. And when my pulse was so strong I tasted the bloody beat in my throat, I opened my mouth.

The first arrow of heat lightning struck Kimber, searing her image on the canyon floor-back bowed, limbs twisted awkwardly, mouth open and splayed to the sky. I screamed, but my voice was lost in the hail of lightning ripping at Kimber’s prone form.

Nobody heard.

My mask burst into a kaleidoscope of color. I felt, rather than saw, the Tulpa draw on the reserves of power he’d stored to chase the doppelgänger-power afforded him by the loyalty of his agents, the soul energy of his mortal worshippers, and the lives he’d stolen to fortify his own-and suddenly, on the back of the mask’s face, screaming into my own, was an image of him finally, painfully, willfully opening his mouth. “Kill them!”

Lindy was the first to move, barking out a command as she unsheathed an edged weapon and lunged at Vanessa. Our Leo’s bladed fan whipped open and they were off in a shower of sparks and smoke, cold darkness gobbling them whole. Felix and Riddick and Gregor all lunged, clashing with the other Shadows in the center of the canyon. Warren, more circumspect due to the lack of a conduit, took a more circuitous route, weaving between bodies before pouncing from overhead. Chandra ferried blows from behind with Zell’s ax, while he continued to cower behind the Tulpa.

I too hung back until my allies could clear the path to the Tulpa, and they did gradually break up and scatter-sparks flying every time one conduit met another, glyphs fired, battling mano a mano, like we were in the Dark Ages all over again. The charged sky continue to pummel at Kimber, but no one took note, limbs and cries and weapons whipping in martial fray.

“Joanna!”

I’d been so focused on securing a defensive position that I didn’t hear Chandra until she used my real name. “Jo!”

I whirled to find her alone in a rain-drenched crevasse. “She’s gone!”

Regan.

I glanced back at the Tulpa, whom I could see staring at me, silvered eyes unblinking in the whipping gale, and as yet, unmoving.

I can have them both, I thought, and the mask stayed still. I can have it all.

I charged-three running steps-and leaped to the ridge of the battered little canyon, following the trail of blood until the storm wiped it away. Then I used my nose to scent out Regan’s desolate agony, and chased her farther into the darkness. My glyph lit up a mile into the chase, lighting my way only enough to see one foot in front of the other, though if Regan looked back, I knew the wobbling light would alert her to my approach. And I was gaining on her. I could taste the coppery rawness of her blood in my throat. After another half mile, the scent was so strong I knew she was only feet away.

But in those few feet between us dropped a fully animated, and thoroughly pissed, Tulpa.

I skidded to a halt, backing up in almost the same motion. “Um. Hi.” I kept backing up, ankle twisting sharply as I tripped over a boulder, though I righted myself in time to see a figure limping away into the inky night. “Can you just give me a minute here?”

I don’t know what reserve of strength he’d drawn on, but his response was to bellow so loudly he counteracted the gale all around us. My hair blew back from my face, and I tripped backward again. Okay, so he was more than pissed. I’d ruined everything for him, revealed what must have been long-held plans to both the Shadows and the Light, and pulled Zoe from his reach once more. I wondered if there was a chance he’d let me live in spite of it. The way his hands fisted kind of made me doubt it.

Then a circle of calmness surrounded us, stillness falling like an A-bomb, unnatural after the gale whipping around us. The enclosure-for I had no doubt that’s what it was-was large enough to allow movement, though still not wide enough for my liking. My glyph lit the whole thing like it was a mini-amphitheater.

“Call the doppelgänger to you.”

Oh, I thought with some surprise. A reprieve.

“Why?” I asked, licking my lips, the image of Regan being shredded like paper reliving itself in my mind. “So you can use her to locate Zoe? I don’t think so.”

Regan had gotten off easy compared to what he had in mind for my mother.

I swallowed hard and backed up, though I didn’t run into a wall of resistance. The invisible enclosure of calm simply moved with me. Fuck. “Besides, calling her would mean I’m working with you, and I’ve already told you the third sign of the Zodiac is not the rise of my Shadow side. If you haven’t noticed, there was nothing wrong with it to begin with.”

“Brave words, Joanna. And brave actions too. But I can taste your fear. So let’s skip the formalities and just give you what you expect. A beating…Tulpa style.”

He raised his claws like he had with Regan, and I winced as I turned away, putting my hands out in front of me even though it wouldn’t help. I thought he was stalling-playing up the anticipation-but when the moment lengthened into seconds, I couldn’t help but crack open an eye. Frustration twisted his face as he gazed down at his upturned palms.

“She doesn’t belong to you, tulpa,” came a voice from the darkness, and then Chandra sidled up next to me, Zell’s conduit clenched in her fist. She said his title like I’d instructed, as if he was a thing and not a person, and with more than a little disdain. The Tulpa still wasn’t moving well, most of his energy yet bound by the spell he’d given me, and the rest expended on the boundary of stillness around us. The one Chandra had just waltzed through.

I stared at her in wonder…as did the Tulpa.

It didn’t take him long to figure out what was happening, and when he drew himself upright, settling in, I realized he was going to try and keep me talking long enough for the rest of the spell to wear off and his full powers to return. It was an obvious ploy, but as Zell slid up beside him to face off against Chandra, I let them both have their way.

“How long have you known?” The Tulpa asked with forced calm. It fooled nobody. It was the same calmness that encased me against my will.

“That my mother is the doppelgänger’s creator? Or that a doppelgänger is a precursor to a full-blown tulpa?” My narrowed eyes were sharp as they ran back and forth between him and Zell. “All that matters is I know it now. But you’ve known it all along, haven’t you? You said the double-walker smelled like me, but what you really meant was similar. You also said she was a twin…but I didn’t understand until later that you didn’t mean my twin. You meant yours.”

“She tried to eat your heart,” he reminded me, like my defensive position was her fault.

“You tried to microwave me and throw me into a black hole.” My voice deepened at the memory. Zell inched closer to his leader.

He shrugged one slim, scholarly shoulder. “Think of it as a little belated parental discipline.”

“Then this would be my adolescent rebellion,” I said bitterly. “Now, Chandra!”

Chandra whipped back the ax and sent it whistling through the air, head over tail, in a move so quick, you’d have to be superhuman to even spot it. Zell lunged in front of his leader to take the blow beneath his breastbone, and staggered backward, mouth falling open in a cry that was lost in another crack of thunder. I shifted my attention back to the Tulpa, but even though Zell had just surrendered his life for him, even though being impaled with his own conduit would erase his existence from the entire annals of our mythos, the Tulpa ignored the sacrifice.

Thus he saw Chandra hand signal me, and watched us both lift our arms while imagining the same thing into existence. The lesson she’d given me as we left the city was still fresh, but she was the experienced one and did most of the work. I was just here to reinforce her imagination, to believe in the strength and height and solidity of the giant cacti spearing from the ground like Jack’s beanstalk. Tit for tat, I thought, as the Tulpa and Zell were enclosed in a sharp jutting circle of imagined life. Zell fell behind his leader, still clutching his chest. Meanwhile, the Tulpa’s face finally betrayed alarm, then a confusion that lasted only moments before shifting to amusement.

“A mind can create life. You know that better than anyone, don’t you?” I said as the sky above paused to take a breath between rounds. The Tulpa looked a little less amused as thistles from the wall of fleshy giants corralled him into the center of the circle, a bleeding Zell edged in tightly behind him. “And, in some cases, two minds are better than one.”

The only reason he hesitated to blow the thorny barrier apart was because it would deplete the precious energy he’d been rebuilding to turn on me. His pinched expression betrayed his impatience, though, and I knew that when he finally did get free, there’d be no more chatting.

“Now where were we?” I hurried on, drawing as close as I could to the ring of cacti and still remain in his line of focus. I needn’t have worried; my words were compelling all on their own. “Ah, yes. A name. Proper, informal, common, given; one noun, two aspects, a sense and a referent…a name like…Skamar.”

Rain gusted around our tight rings, the sky fired above, and smoke ballooned from the Tulpa’s feet like he was a shuttle about to rocket into space. It had been a jolt, probably because it was what he dreaded most, but nothing else happened, and he lifted his chin, straightening again.

“I looked it up,” I told him, before he could interrupt. “I took it from the Tibetan language. It means Star. You told me when you gave me the mantra that a name wasn’t needed, but you lied. A name is everything, isn’t it? A name is all.”

In spite of my important and devastating discovery, he actually relaxed. “Fool. She has to be here to receive it.”

While the sky erupted behind me again, where Kimber was still pinned to the canyon floor, I inched forward until all that separated me from the Tulpa was a single jutting thorn. In the pause between fire and thunderous crack, I tilted my head. “Fool. She’s right behind you.”

And Zell rose up behind the Tulpa, yanking his ax downward so that flesh fell open in a perforated line all the way from his pubis to his throat. Fresh blood poured over his chest, and a hand that was only partially materialized-the lower half still shining like the light off an iridescent bubble-reached out to strangle the Tulpa. The doppelgänger-now a tulpa via the power of a given name-shed Zell like a snakeskin…then leaned over the Shadow leader to take a ravenous bite.

She had the advantage of position, surprise, and the power of a recently consumed organ to give her strength…even if the heart had belonged to a Shadow. Yet experience, a violent will to live, and, yes, finally fear, powered the Tulpa into action. The bubble of stillness around us popped as they fought for the offense, blood flowing from the fleshly bodies they’d been so sure they wanted.

The succulent wall didn’t hold for long; the cacti ripped away in fleshy chunks, barbed darts impaling themselves on wheeling limbs and soft cores. Chandra and I backed up as the two tulpas whipped past us and back toward the canyon now flooded with water and blood…and unfortunately, Kimber.

We glanced at each other, then bolted after them.

The Tulpas fought like snarling dogs, whipping over their own malleable bodies to re-form in superior position. Evenly matched, they fell into the gorge and churned across the canyon floor like a snarling dust devil, so out of control that our fear was realized just as we skidded to a stop at the canyon’s lip. They careened into Kimber so hard she was knocked from place, and the bolts of lightning were riveted to them instead. Screaming in liquid voices of agony, they loosed themselves, then continued their homicidal tumble through the arroyo, around stained glass bends, leaving only shards in their wake. The lightning found Kimber again, and Chandra and I breathed a sigh of relief.

The Shadow and Light had scattered, no one left in the crevasse of earth where the fight had originated. I pulled off the now-useless animist’s mask, gasping as cold stormy air whipped over my sweaty face. Chandra licked her lips, her own face pearly with rain, hair plastered to the sides of her head as she squinted against the whistling wind. I realized, too late, she was watching the metamorphosis she so longed for, and she turned in response to my stare.

“You should go.” She had to yell it, and I nodded to let her know I’d heard.

I should. Skamar would take care of the Tulpa. The other agents were battling elsewhere, but if any Shadows returned I’d have no way of defending myself. Yet…

“Kimber-”

“I’ve got her.”

And I knew she did. With nothing but a stolen conduit, dreams of a future in this troop, and a whole heap of imagination, Chandra had helped to save us all. So I nodded, then ran, leaving her as the protector of the canyon, and letting her go down in her rightful place in the manuals. The last woman standing.