Cheat the Grave (14 page)

“Because you've become an independent.” It hadn't come to life in his hands either.

“You mean a rogue,” I said, raising a brow, testing him.

“I mean a part of this valley's prophesied revolution. The woman who will rise from ash to become the leader of a new world order.”

“Gee, why does
that
sound familiar?” I tapped my chin like I was really considering it, then brightened. “Oh, yeah—because I already did that. And failed.”

Carlos only lifted a dark brow. “Tell me. What is Warren's stated agenda for the agents of Light? Defeat the Shadow agents for good? Annihilate them from the valley?”

I shook my head. “Balance. He said a true and continual balance between the two sides will allow mortals the greatest choice in their own lives.”

“Yet he continues to seek the Shadows' destruction.”

“As they seek his.”

“There is no balance when destruction is the goal. It's like adding a fat kid to your end of the seesaw. The other side is forced to overreact.”

“There's no other way with the Tulpa.” The leader of the Shadow side had long made it known that any Light in the valley would be exterminated. His position was as inalterable as Israel versus Palestine. The only way to stand firm against attack was to preempt it yourself.

“Ah, but there is. True balance in life comes only when there is total freedom of choice…from either side.” Carlos sat back so suddenly my mortal eyes only picked the movement up in panes. “Let me ask you something. What do you see when you look at me?”

My eyesight blurred as it trailed his features; cinnamon face, hair a soft, black blot. “You're the Latin archetype. The one they write songs about.”

“Thank you,” he said, beautiful smile widening. “But I meant, what do you see of my intent? My nature?”

“Oh.” I flushed, but then chalked it up to the drink, and shrugged. The idea of a flirtation or romance was about as attractive as a harelip. “Well, you're Light. I'd be able to tell even if I hadn't been an agent. I bet even lifelong mortals flock to you.” Especially the women.

His smile went closed-lipped, modest and knowing, and he lifted his chin, angling his eyes over my shoulder. “And what about Tripp?”

“Clearly Shadow. Even Fletcher and Milo would have been easy to spot.”

“Once, you would have been right. But things are different when you're reduced to gray, and that's what being a rogue truly means. We walk the line between both sides, accepted by neither. We are all gray.” He laughed then, which made no sense to me until he explained, “That's what we call ourselves. Grays.”

“So what about me?”

“Born gray,” Carlos replied immediately. “A natural blending of Shadow and Light.”

“Natural?” I laughed so loud and long that disapproving mumbles rose between my decidedly unfeminine snorts.

“What, you had to work for the ability to enter the sanctuary of the Light? Or bring to life the glyph on your chest? To leap to rooftops? To survive man-made weaponry?”

“I had to learn,” I remembered, thinking specifically of the way my glyph, a bow and arrow, burst to life in glowing brilliance upon my chest when in danger. That didn't happen anymore.

“A different thing altogether.” He waved the protest away. “And now you have the added ability to walk the line between superhuman and mortal.”

I began to scoff, but he cut me off with a lazy flick of his wrist. “Oh, I can tell you think you have nothing by the way you carry yourself. There is a fatalism about you that says you expect to be attacked and killed and there's noth
ing you can do about it. But do you know what I see when I look at you?”

“A pin-up with attitude?”

He didn't smile. “I see a woman with
everything
.”

“I'm not the Kairos.” I said flatly.

He surprised me by agreeing. “Not right now.”

“So what can I be to you?” What exactly was Carlos after?

“You can be saved. Join our cell, or at least consider it, and I promise our full resources in protecting you from Sleepy Mac.”

“You're rogues. You have no resources.”

He lifted a brow. “You didn't know of our existence until now, right?”

I bit my lip. True, nobody in the troop had mentioned it. And Warren was obsessed with the subject. If he thought a splinter group of former agents was living in his domain, he'd blow the whole place up.

I glanced back at Tripp, Milo, and Fletcher. These people—Shadow, Light, gray and
super—
still had a
use
for me. Sure, they'd bred chaos the world over, but they were already working to change that—at least if Carlos was to be believed. And while I wasn't sure I did believe him, I could go along with it for a while, at least until Mackie was subdued. Then I'd get back to my mortal life.

“What about Mackie? True death to the monster, or just a one-way ticket back to Midheaven to get him out of your hair?” I thought about the men in Midheaven, and what Mackie's absence might mean to them. Each would have a better chance of escaping that twisted world without the knife-wielding piano player there to intercept. That Hunter was over there still had nothing to do with it.

“Oh, no.” Carlos's dark brows creased low. “Most of the men in Midheaven are rogue agents. Tripp wasn't able to tell us about them”—because what happened in Midheaven stayed in Midheaven, I thought wryly—“but he could tell
us of Mackie's purpose there once he began interfering with this world's mysteries.”

He meant once Mackie came after me.

“Okay. Get rid of Mackie,” I said, turning back to Carlos. “And I'll try to keep an open mind.”

Carlos allowed only a small twitch to his lips. “And may I ask why?”

I thought about my drowning, about being abandoned in a desert wash along with broken bottles and stripped tires, and left with a body too weak to hold its own weight. Yet I spoke of my most recent loss. “Because the bastard killed my cat.”

I stood, my chair bumping over the aged floor, wondering if we'd leave via one of the cabs at the neighboring yard or if we'd walk. Or, I thought, amused, maybe one of these grays would pick up their new “amiga,” fling me across their shoulders and vault into the night. Mackie was probably free by now. He'd start tracking my scent as soon as I was on the street. He could be tracking it now. I shuddered…then shuddered again when I saw what Carlos, still sitting, had done.

“You're joking, right?”

He leaned back, a full smile branding those soft wide lips as he motioned toward the last of the mescal he'd poured into my shot glass…along with the worm. “
Gusano rojo.
It's the ingredient which lends the true complexity to the drink.”

I crossed my arms. “I'm more than happy to keep it simple.”

Carlos nodded, but I could see he was enjoying this. “It's a delicacy.”

“It's a fucking worm.”

“Larvae, actually.” He laughed at my grimace. “But don't worry. It's nonparasitic.”

“I don't want it.”

Carlos fell still. “This one is…special.”

I studied his smooth face like a map, then picked up the stunted glass for a closer look. The worm looked like a moth with no wings. It was bloated and soft from marinating so long in the alcohol, its destroyer and preservative all at once. I wondered if it'd sunk to the bottom of the bottle thrashing and alive, fighting in inelegant bends and sweeps, or if it had sunk resignedly to its fate. It might have been palatable stewed with some garlic or sweet onion, but sushi style? I didn't think so.

I followed the length of its velvety sides, which ribbed outward and wide, until my eye caught on an unnatural bulge in the middle. Some sort of device. “Tracking?” I asked, glancing back up at Carlos.

He nodded. “It's old technology like most of our weaponry, but it works surprisingly well. The sensors inside react to adrenaline and body heat, so even if we're not near you, we'll know when you're in trouble and be able to swiftly pinpoint your location.” He motioned for me to drink again. “Please. I've been saving this bottle for a long time.”

I stared at his hands, the liquor I'd already consumed making them appear larger than they were. Yet they tapered nicely, almost elegant in their jointed shape and warm skin. Not at all like the worm.

“Trust me, Joanna,” Carlos said, somehow both composed and imploring, strength and vulnerability living in the same melodious tone. “It will open your eye to things previously hidden.”

I sat the glass back down. “I'd prefer my taste of the forbidden in the form of an apple. Tradition, ya know.”

He pursed his lips, eyes lowered on the small glass containing the large worm.
Larvae.
I shuddered again.

“Did you know worms have been around for more than 120 million years?”

“This one in particular?”

Ignoring me, he leaned forward to explain. “They evolved along with dinosaurs. They have no brain, eyes, or feet, yet they have burrowed through centuries while those greater, grander, and larger around them have fallen.”

The bigger they are …

Which was the not-so-subtle point he was trying to make about the troops—the Tulpa and his relentless pursuit of power, Warren and his equally determined fight for the same. I sat down again, keeping my eyes averted from the glass. It was an invite to keep talking, but I still wasn't biting.

“Night crawlers travel underground, hunkered deep and unseen by those who walk the surface. They help with decomposition, eating away the dead, aerating the earth with their movement, enriching the environment through this lowly work. Ask any biologist, and they'll tell you everything on the surface thrives because of them. They ingest the old so the new can be born.”

I slid lower in my chair and eyed the drink warily. “All right. I get the analogy.” Worms and rogues, both underground, both working beneath the sight of those who ran the world. I'd have still asked if I could skip it, if not for the tracking device. Why couldn't they have planted it in a chimichanga?

Carlos was gazing at me, dark eyes luminous in the tanned face, beautiful hands still as artwork on the tabletop. I knew he could force it down my throat, but he was waiting for my acquiescence. Not running me down with his desires and demands. “First rule of the cell. Do not underestimate the lowly.”

I see a woman with everything.

Why? I wondered, biting my lower lip. Because I was on my heels, back to the wall, helpless as a being without brains or eyes or feet, but somehow surviving still? The comparison didn't repulse me as much this time around. Not with Carlos's gaze on my face and his dark head dipped toward mine. He was a realist, rogues had to
be, and my weaknesses were already laid before him like burnt offerings.

It made me feel more seen than at any time since donning Olivia's flesh. My flaws were my only defenses now that I had none, but I suddenly felt myself lowering my guard willingly. Maybe they weren't defenses after all, but pretense. Like a child sticking her fingers in her ears and saying she couldn't hear.

I picked up the glass, eyed the death inside. Would sucking on it draw out the power to burrow to safety as well? If I chewed it into little pieces, could I then ingest the discarded bits of this world, pump life back into them, and create something new?

In the end, I swallowed it whole. Carlos was right about one thing. It was delicate, but for the device buried inside. That stood out like a wire ball of fury. It pierced the worm, took root in my throat, and stuck there like a metal spider until I forced it down. The tears along my esophagus were cold when I breathed. When my eyes had ceased watering, I looked up.

Carlos smiled, holding out a hand. I pushed to my feet again, then lunged for him as the room began to spin. I was in trouble, a teetering dreidel on the inside, but all Carlos did was hold my hand. Remembering the myth about tequila worms having hallucinogenic properties, I slurred, “Is this laced?”

And weren't drugs supposed to make you feel a high before you hit a low? This one pulled me down to my knees, like a slap from on high. Right before my limbs numbed out, Tripp reached my other side. I imagined I could scent him as I once had in Midheaven, when he'd been sweaty and defiant and smelling of old burnt cedar.

Carlos, so forthcoming about the rogue agents and their desire to help me, about being the one to give me a chance to become “who I was meant to be,” not to mention a detailed history of the worm, simply dropped a silken kiss
upon my lips, setting them to buzzing as he braced my arms. “Repeat after me, one word only: Midheaven.”

He whispered it into my opened mouth, his breath touching my tongue, tickling my throat. My lips moved around the sound, briefly touching his as they formed the word. Then my eyes crossed, there were three of him before me…and then there were none.

 

I hadn't dreamed since Olivia's lesson in trusting the T-Rex brain, and the knowledge that I was doing so now would have surprised me awake were it not for the narcotics sizzling in my system. They caught me like a firefly in a jar, and there was nothing I could do but wait until they wore off. So I opened my dream eyes…and found myself facing an endless ocean of desert terrain.

Not my beloved Mojave, I thought, looking around as the drug-induced sizzling increased. Blood was snapping in my veins, but the foreign landscape of sand sheets and shifting dunes was enough to distract from that. Ridges and mountains of filmy grit angled hard in the spotlight of a red sun. I shielded my eyes and took a step into the ever-shifting softness. I'd have felt weightless if each step didn't shuffle beneath my feet. Licking my lips, I tasted lead, as if my body was made of metal.

Then a sound as bright and faint as a rainbow stretched overhead. I looked up, twisting as it whipped by, but it was gone as quickly as it came. “Hello?”

My voice echoed, but unnaturally so. Less of a reverberation off canyon walls than a CD that kept skipping until the volume was turned down. Meanwhile, the sand continued to snake around my feet, each fine, pretty grain winking as it shifted. Every once in a while I'd hit a sinkhole and was forced to flail just to remain standing. Was it possible to be buried alive in a dream? If I died here, would I still wake?

I slipped, abandoning the thought to catch myself with
my palm, the imprint blending into nothingness as soon as I'd scuttled back to my feet. A moment more gave me back my balance, and I held very still, though individual grains still threatened to give way beneath my weight. Then there was the full pregnant sound again, like ghosts whispering over the dunes.

“So you're back.”

Whirling at the scratchy echo, I found a Chinaman perched directly in front of me. Blinking, I rubbed at my eyes.

Yes. Chinaman.

He was dressed in silk, a green brocade that lay sallow against his skin. His wide-brimmed conical hat hid most of his features, but the brown skin at his neck and jaw was wrinkled with age, his braided queue shot through with strands of thick silver. He was curled tightly over himself, a walking question mark, and jutted his chin to peer up at me.

“You!” I accused once he did, but fear rushed me all the same. I'd left this man in the Rest House the last time I'd fled Midheaven, neither expecting nor especially eager to see him again. Shen hated me.

Panicked, I turned again, searching for a way out—and succeeding in only sinking some more. Though the desert terrain was unique, the magic in this place was known to me. Only Midheaven took something normal and turned it on its head. “I do not want to be here. I don't, I don't…”

I pinched myself as my voice scratched the air, but the chemicals in the worm kept me under. My bloodstream was burning, while my thoughts were vicious jabs, needles trying to wake me up. It wasn't the first time my dreams had been invaded this way—and I didn't mean my mind's hopeful conjuring of Olivia either.

No, the Tulpa had visited me in my dreams before too, months ago, also under the influence of sleep-inducing drugs. Something about the altered state made the mind more susceptible to influence and suggestion. And, appar
ently, gave the spirit the ability to travel between worlds.

“I don't want to be here!” The echo married with the metallic taste, and I bit my lip to keep from screaming.

“Of course you do. One's truest desires are always revealed in Midheaven.” I'd have thought the sand would mute Shen's soft clipped voice, absorbing it like a sponge, but his dismissive tones stood up well, bright as bells. He hadn't liked me since we sat together at a table of soul poker and I accidentally gambled away some of his personal information.

That's what Midheaven ran on. Names, desires, attributes, powers and skills—all the building blocks of a viable life-form. I had to admit, I'd probably still be irked too. But I'd paid him back with a chip of my own, and the power he'd taken was more than a revealed name. Shen had stripped me of my ability to heal quickly, like a superhero.

Not that it mattered now.

I could tell it also didn't make us even in his eyes. He scuttled over to me like a bug, a sourceless wind catching the sandy dunes behind him, making them shimmer and slide in the cold red light. “If you didn't want to be here in some small part of your thieving heart, then you wouldn't be…and neither would I. So just tell me what you want. I have to get back to my game.”

“I'm the reason you're here?” I asked as he came to a stop in front of me.

“Men are never allowed into the elemental rooms without invitation.”

Because women ruled Midheaven. Gazing around, I wondered which element this room represented. The last time I was here, I'd visited only one of the four rooms upstairs—Solange's fire room. It'd been remarkably absent of fire, but for the stars burning up the night sky of her makeshift planetarium.

Yeah, makeshift. Comprised of people's friggin' souls
.

But what could a vast expanse of arid desertscape be? The earth room? Or was that too straightforward?

“Am I really here? I mean, I was drugged. I didn't cross here via the line.” I swallowed hard, hopeful even though my body continued to buzz like a live wire, and the question rebounded back at me.

Shen tilted his head, looking at me like I'd just gotten off the short bus. “Your ignorance is appalling. Drugs allow incorporeal passage for those with the ability to interact with this world. If you didn't want to be here, you shouldn't have taken the drug. Or called forth the world in your mind.”

Carlos, I thought, gritting my teeth. That's why he'd had me repeat the word he whispered into my mouth. But why? What was I supposed to do here? And, more importantly, how the hell did I get
out
?

“And you're going to help me?”

“I am a man. You are a woman.” Shen rolled his dark, jaded eyes. “And the task would be infinitely easier if you actually told me what you want.”

But I had no orders to give him. I had no idea why Carlos would send me here, or what I was supposed to do now.

Then the other sound rolled over the sky again, not in the tinny tones of my voice's echo, but the whipping arch from before, like the bright sweep of a lionfish's tail as it sped along the ocean floor. It sounded like color, and moved like it came from within me. I followed it, neck craning from one side of the “ceiling” to the other, though the room sat like an island between red horizons. “What is that?”

“Finally,” Shen muttered, as if I'd made a wish. He reached into his robe, and I braced for the appearance of a weapon, wondering if he could go Jet Li on my ass in my own dream. The question became moot when all he did was pull out a forked branch and held it in front of him.

I palmed my hip. “What are you doing to do, poke me in the eye?”