Cheat the Grave (29 page)

“It doesn't matter.” Carlos said, again with that shrug. “
They
can't cross the line.”

“But Mackie?” I asked, because that's where the line blurred.

Carlos set his glass down. “And now you have come to the reason we're here.”

Because as a rogue, Mackie could cross into Frenchman's Flat as easily as the rest of us, and with the Light stalking the perimeter like wolves, it wouldn't be long before he pinpointed my location. My mind—so recently settled, and spinning with joy—cringed. This was why I wasn't drinking. Best to face fated truths sober. “Where is he?”

“We led him to the California state line. He's probably still in Barstow somewhere. Maybe he stopped at the outlet mall.”

My mouth quirked upward, but only at one side. “Can we stop him?”

“Sleepy Mac is our bunker buster.” Carlos gazed at the stars and blew out a deep breath. “He will plow through anyone and everything standing in the way of his quest to murder you.”

“Comforting, Carlos. Thank you.”

“I wish I could say differently.” He shook his head. “But I've never met a being so single-minded and strong.”

Yet he sat with me, sipping tequila in the starlight on the edge of an abyss, even though Mackie couldn't be stopped. It was forlornly comforting…and made me think again of Alex and Tripp and the rogue agents forming a family out of a bunch of paranormal misfits. Carlos should be running from me, but instead he was sitting.
Dining.
And the men downstairs were celebrating, even though fate might have plans as heinous as Alex's for them.

“So then what do you say we speed things up a bit?”

Carlos's eyes dilated, and I knew that beyond the liquor in his glass, he smelled something that excited him. “What do you mean?”

“I don't think we should allow Mackie to even attempt to breach the cell's crater.” It was the least I could do for those who'd stood, and sat, and lay dying, for me. “You guys need this place. It's your home.”

“And you suggest?”

“A show of boldness verging on the insane,” I said grandly, pouring him more tequila.

“I like it already,” he said in his liquid, rhythmic voice, though for the first time he looked uncertain.

Smiling, I reached over and squeezed his hand. “Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, and more importantly, the date of the grandest, most lavish wedding this city has ever seen. The papers have been announcing it for weeks. Dignitaries from all over the world are expected to attend. I'm a bridesmaid.”

He cocked a dark brow. “Which Mackie surely knows.”

“Which,”
I emphasized, “means I'll have to stick very close to the Tulpa.”

The irony in sticking close to one enemy to avoid another had one corner of my mouth lifting, but Carlos's considering exhale was a teakettle's hiss. “This is your grand plan? Kill the Tulpa in front of hundreds of guests, gain the aureole, then escape Mackie for Midheaven?”

And stop Suzanne from marrying a freakishly obsessed man with ties to a paranormal underworld. After that?

I was going to fucking ferry Hunter away from Solange and back into this world. Unless I died trying, I thought, shrugging. “You have a better one?”

“Wedita,”
he said, laughing humorlessly, “I never thought we would get
this
far. I have no plan at all.”

“Okay, then.”

Carlos reclined again, one arm over the back of his chair. “Of course, you're forgetting one grave detail. You can only attempt public patricide by first getting past one very pissed off leader of the Light.”

Ah, yes. Warren. I sighed and attempted Carlos's careless shrug, but he didn't smile. Instead he pursed his lips and stared off into the distance. “I don't think the other agents of Light will move to hurt you,” he finally said, voice a mere whisper. “Their confusion was obvious tonight, both at our appearance and your revelations about this man, Hunter. But what you couldn't sense was their flashing anger and mounting frustration. I know this tangled knot of emotions. It will turn them against one another.”

Yes, but would they move to
help
me against Mackie? Because none but Vanessa had done so during the tunnel fight. I frowned, mentally canvassing the scene at the border. I couldn't be sure, I'd been too giddy with laughter to notice, but I didn't think I'd seen her there. And if
I
noted her absence, along with her violent opposition of Kimber, Warren had too. A fist-sized worry unclenched in my belly, one I hadn't even known was there, as I realized one person in the troop remembered me.

I silently thanked Vanessa.

“You could still head that way, you know,” Carlos said, jerking his head in the opposite direction of the city. He was right. With Olivia's money I could change my mortal identity a dozen times a year, alter my locations at whim, and still never make a dent in anything but the interest.

But Suzanne's words on the night of Mackie's first attack swung my way like a pendulum marking the moments.
No gossip or naysayer—and certainly no asshole—is going to keep me from love.
The next moment brought Tripp's voice back to life, words so recently spoken I could almost feel the warmth of his breath on my cheek.

Everyone's got a right to their own damned reasons.

I glanced down and tentatively rubbed my printed fingertips over Carlos's. “There's no freedom in flight, Carlos.”

His smile took a long time to spread over his face, but when it did, it lit up the night. “And now you've discovered what all rogues eventually do. It is why at some point we settle somewhere, and battle for the right to remain where we choose.”

Which settled
that
. Tomorrow I'd head back into Vegas, risking Warren's wrath, the Tulpa's suspicions, and Mackie's blade, all because what I really wanted, my
reason,
was as valid as anyone else's. I wanted to get the aureole, enter Midheaven, and take back what was mine. More than anything? I still wanted Hunter.

“You still offering your full resources to protect me from Mackie's blade?” I asked, tilting my head.

“I'm here,
verdad
?” And the shrug was back, as was the gleam in his eye. What a fatalist. What a dreamer. “You should get some sleep.”

I nodded, then stood, and waited for Carlos to accompany me back into the cell. When he only held out his hand for my lantern, I realized he was standing guard.

“And while you're sleeping,” he went on, graciously ignoring my sudden tears, “send up a prayer that we find a way to get past your former troop leader. He's pretty pissed.”

“I'll take care of Warren.”

“Really? So again, you're going to take on Warren, the Tulpa,
and
Sleepy Mac?”

“All in a day's work.”

“You must be some sort of superhero.”

In response, I stepped forward and kissed both his cheeks, scented the slim vein of tequila coming off his breath, then briefly pressed to my lips to his. If I weren't in love with another man, and if Carlos didn't know that, we might have deepened the kiss into something more. I pulled back and saw that knowledge in his eyes too.

“No,
chilango,
” I said, cupping his cheeks. “But despite all odds, I'm alive, and that's enough.”

But it wasn't all.

So with my failures piling aboveground like a funeral pyre of mistakes, I headed off in search of Io instead of rest. I had an idea which might just set a torch to that pyre, but what the hell …

One way or another, life as I knew it was about to go up in flames.

“You sure you want to do this?” Io asked when I told her what I wanted. She remained ambivalent at my answering nod, those wide eyes searching, but ultimately shrugged, agreeing to put me under with the same drugs Carlos had previously used to send me to Midheaven. As long as she stayed nearby to pull me back out again, I assured her I'd take care of the rest.

She placed a condition on the favor, though, claiming she wanted to work on my body again since female anatomy had become more or less a novelty to her since joining the cell. Remembering Hunter's final, desperate kiss, I relented, telling myself her curiosity was professional, not unlike a doctor keeping up on her skills, yet I was still nervous about her fondling my organs…not to mention a little skeeved now that I knew that's what she was doing.

“Interesting,” she muttered after placing my pancreas back into its natural resting spot. Swallowing hard against the rise of bile in my throat, I rolled my eyes. Really, was there anything this woman wouldn't touch? “But what's that doing there?”

“What?” I asked, lifting my head, but she shifted her body to block my view.

“Let's see if we can't work it out…”

She rolled her fingers atop, along, and then into my lower abdomen, and I winced as she pulled and stretched in little striated motions, as if plucking harp strings. The motion caused me to alternately tense and relax, and while Buttersnap was lying passed out in her regular position at my right side, one particularly odd movement had me letting out a nauseated groan, causing the giant hound to lift her head and growl—almost like I was an agent of Light.

“Shush, you beast,” Io said, shooing the dog with one hand.

“Ugh,” I said, as she found the center harp string again. “Stop it!”

“No? You want it to stay?” Io asked, though she wasn't addressing me as much as she was my stomach. “Well, never mind then.”

She then began administering a more traditional massage, the magic of her fingers making fast friends with my fatigue. “Ready?” she asked, and I managed a nod. There was a needle's pinch at my upper arm, and suddenly I floated, like oil atop water.

“I'll be right here,” Io whispered from some far-off place. My fingers curled around the object that was as much a part of Midheaven as I was, clutching it to my chest like it was a life preserver. In some ways, I knew, it was.

My soft, velvet thoughts veered sharply then, a roller coaster downslope that plunged my veins into fire. My ears took on a frantic buzz, like I'd stuck my head in a hive as I dropped farther…and then suddenly I was sailing upright, walking on my own two legs through a heavy fog, like a spongy night in London or some other place that wasn't arid with desert heat. The haze was disconcerting, and I waved a hand before my face to push it away, still “walking” until lights appeared in front of me. The liquid boil of my blood evened out, and my footsteps took
on the scratchy reverberation I remembered from my last two mental visits in Midheaven. Once I spotted the outline of a pagoda lantern, the haze dissipated and static electricity whipped around me, the fabric of the world being unzipped.

“Home sweet home,” I muttered, each syllable skipping like a stone, my mouth lined in copper.

The saloon was exactly as I remembered. The long, polished bar stretched before me like a lazy feline, the staircase leading to the elemental rooms to the left, and the board with the myriad Most Wanted posters still staring eerily at me from the far right. Closer to the wall of pagoda lanterns, where I was standing, Sleepy Mac's piano sat in dust-covered silence, waiting for its owner's return.

As before, the entire room was devoid of color. Instead a sepia-toned coating washed out everything—the glossy bar, the mirrors reflecting back my hard gaze, the dozen poker tables eating up the room's middle. The sole exception to this ashen uniformity was a bright, glossy red door with a scrolled gold handle, rimmed in a fierce glow. It was the only thing holding back the heat siphoned from the sun's core on the other side.

Not that it helped much. Even in my dream I began to sweat. The bartender, Bill, was nowhere to be seen, but a single glass of elegantly cut crystal sat brimming with golden liquid on the otherwise empty bar. Even knowing how the liquid slowed actions and thoughts and time, catching it as if in molasses, I still couldn't help licking my lips.

There was absolutely nobody else in the room. No washed out men curled about the dozen or so poker tables, bartering for chips containing their personal powers—speed, strength, and soul.

You can still cash in the ones you wo… 
.

Tripp's words mocked me because I still didn't know how.

“Back so soon?”

Solange appeared like a Vegas stage magician, absent one moment and there the next, though I didn't applaud. Her face was what romance novels would term dewy, her hair pulled back into a slick brown plait, revealing the only adornment I'd ever seen her wear—simple gold chandelier earrings, ones she obviously cherished. She wore a long black coat with gold fur at neck and wrists, shining buttons lining the front to land at mid-calf, where black stiletto boots disappeared beneath the soft hem.

“You learn quickly. Already able to move about in the aetheric of your own accord.” She clapped her gloved hands once. “Bravo.”

“Forgive me if I don't take a bow,” I said evenly. “That would entail taking my eyes off of you.”

Her jaw clenched, prettily of course, and she tapped her chin with a finger. “I distinctly recall telling you, in no uncertain terms, to leave the Rest House and never return. Did I not?”

“Well, you have something that belongs to me.”

She lifted one slim brow then leaned back on the glossy bar, pushed with her palms, and was sitting cross-legged in an instant. “Just as well. We have some accounts that need settling. Join me for a drink?”

She blinked prettily. I crossed my arms and stayed where I was. The last time I drank something this woman provided, I awoke to her holding a sliver of my soul between a jeweler's tweezers. “I owe you nothing. You're the one who threw a shit fit and crushed your pretty glass room. Believe me, I had no desire to be there.”

“Of course you did,” she snapped, and her boots hit the floor. Fuck, she was fast…and her fuse as short as ever. I made a point of staying within reach of the pagoda lantern. “Our truest desires are always revealed in Midheaven.”

Exactly what Shen said. Where the hell had the little bastard gotten to anyway? “Yeah? So how many times
has
Hunter asked to leave?”

She pursed her lips prettily. “You mean my husband?
Jaden?” Her face rearranged into a sweet smile. “Joanna, he came here to
find
me.”

No, he'd come to find Lola, the daughter she'd saved from the Tulpa and stolen from Hunter by destroying another child's soul. But no reason to allow I knew that much. Solange's knowledge of me was already too great, and her next words proved it.

“How're things in Vegas?”

“I think you know,” I said, jerking my head toward the piano, but not taking my eyes from her.

“Jaden and I have been talking about going back. He's asked me to marry him again, you know.”

“Before, after, or during the waterboarding?”

She put a black-gloved hand to her chest. “You think he's here against his will? Dear Joanna. Or should I say Olivia? Look at you and then look at me.”

“Looks are deceiving.”

“Sure,” she agreed, eyeing me narrowly. “But I'm talking about power. It's what attracted him to me in the first place.”

“Hunter's not driven by the need for power.”

“But Jaden always has been.”

I shook my head. “No, he wants autonomy.”

She smiled beautifully. “He wants to be ridden into the next world.”

My jaw clenched. “I'm not going to argue with you over who knows him better.”

“Good, as you've no grounds to.” She lifted her chin. “He's with me, isn't he? Crossing over of his own accord? And don't forget, I tasted him first.”

Maybe it was the way she said it, her tone as she bit off that final word, or the quick jerk of her chin as she tossed her hair, but by the time I caught my reflection grinning fully from behind Solange's back, I knew. “But I'm the one who tasted him
last,
and that's what's got your silk thong in a bunch, isn't it? He doesn't love you. He doesn't even want you. Probably the only man in Midheaven who ever turned you down.”

“The only man anywhere,” she corrected, the bite alive in both her gaze and her voice. “And he didn't turn me down. Not before you. You have a hold on him, a connection the past can't sever. And it has nothing to do with who he prefers.”

A
soul
connection. The aureole tying Hunter to the last third of my soul, then—even between worlds. “And that's why you wanted me dead.”

“And because freeing the rest of your soul will finally finish my sky.”

I thought about leaving then, just calling out to Io and getting the fuck out of the O.K. Corral because Solange wasn't just batshit crazy—she had the power to back up batshit crazy. “And what does Hunter think of that?”

She didn't bother to correct his name this time. “He's going to love the idea. Soon.”

“I'd like to hear it from him.”

The almost beautiful smile visited her face again. “He's tied up at the moment.”

And there wasn't a thing I could do about it.

“Jaden told me they believe you are the Kairos in your world,” she said, like she'd never belonged there. Of course, she'd been here a long time, and despite her earlier taunt, had no desire to return to Las Vegas. Why would she? There, she was a rogue, on the run from both Shadow and Light. Here? A goddess.
The
Goddess. She crossed her feet at the ankles as she leaned back on the bar again. “It's why you once told me that you and Tripp were natural enemies, though you weren't exactly an agent of Light.”

“I'm not the Kairos.”

“Oh, I know.” She smirked but stopped short of saying she had birthed the fabled child, now hidden somewhere in the folds of this alternate reality. “Though there's something about you. Some power you possess which others don't. You should have died the last time you were really here.”

“You mean when you threw me down the stairs.”

Solange nodded absently. “You were somehow protected then…and when I tried to sliver away your soul to augment my beautiful night sky. That stone's deformed. It won't ever fit.”

“Guess you should give up.”

“Why? I get at least one more try.”

“You're not getting the last third of my fucking soul,” I said, widening my stance.

“Because you're still protected.” She sighed, and the sound grated like sandpaper against my spine. “I can feel it.”

Well thank goddess for small miracles, though I remained close to the lantern. She smiled like she found my wariness endearing. “By the way, learn anything more about the constellations since we last met?”

“I've been kinda busy,” I replied flatly.

“Then let me tell you about my favorite, Canis Major. It contains a star called Sirius, the brightest in the sky. It's part of a pattern we call the Winter Triangle.”

“Does this boring diatribe have a point?”

“In gemology,” she continued, shooting me a sly wink, “and you know I'm a fan…in gemology an asterism is an optical phenomenon reflecting the shape of a star on a precious stone's surface. So you see, I've decided a star as remarkable as Sirius needs just such a gem to do it justice in my rendition of the night sky. Something with the right amount of power and heat to fuel that Big Dog. The soul bits you gave upon crossing here twice came close to what I was looking for, but another third and my masterpiece will be completed. And I will finish it, Joanna. Once I do, my sky will hum with enough power to fuel multiple worlds…and I'll rule them all.”

“I told you—”

“I know what you said! But Mackie will either bring me your soul pierced on the tip of his blade, or I'll flash-cook ‘Hunter' until the connection between you burns.”

And waving her hand over her head, the pressed tin ceiling disappeared, the heat fell away with it, and I was sud
denly gazing directly into her sky of souls. No denying it, I thought, breath caught in my chest. It was stunning.

“Don't look for the Big Dog…you're not there yet. But can you find Ursa Major?”

The Big Dipper. I traced the luminous handle, gaze catching on the two stars comprising its scoop. They were bright but not completely luminous. The gems and the soul she'd stolen to form them contained some sort of impurities that made it appear like honey had hardened inside a crystal casing. Like her aforementioned asterism.

“Check out that dreamy nadir, those golden depths. They're perfectly identical, which is rare. Aren't they beautiful? Don't they remind you of…someone?”

And she beckoned the night sky down so the twin stars of the Dipper's bowl unhinged from the sky and lowered in a dizzying and unnatural 3-D display, the other stars fading until all that remained were …

“Hunter's eyes.” My voice cracked.

“The windows to the soul,” she agreed, motioning again. The gems lowered some more…and blinked. The rest of his body began to form out of the dark matter comprising the faux universe, like he was his own constellation, though his golden eyes remained fixed on me.

Solange was suddenly whispering in my ear. “The planets and stars are constantly evolving, Joanna. The universe is not a fixed entity, and it's not as gentle as it looks from afar. And the requirement of any phenomenal birth or death is a wild chaos. Do you know what my favorite kind is?” She smiled at me with a beautiful sweep of those lips. “Violence.”