Cheat the Grave (34 page)

It was a good question. I kept my weapon on him, though my arms were shaking, and looked at Zoe.

She smiled. “I asked nicely.”

“You mean you fucked him.”

“Oh my gawd. Different note, but still the same fucking song.” Zoe didn't sound one bit afraid of him, and he sagged so greatly with her words that his toes hit the water.
“I told his creator what I wanted him for. I'm not the only one who thinks you need to die.”

“The weak,” spat the Tulpa.

“The Light,” said Warren.

“The righteous,” Zoe said, arrowing a hard look at Warren, correcting them both. “I'm not Light anymore, and haven't been for a long time. I'm an independent, though independent even from the rogues. I like it that way.”

“How can you say that?” Warren was at the edge of the pool, as dumbfounded as I'd ever seen him. “You dishonor your family by disavowing us.”

“What would you know about honor? You've treated my daughter like shit, you bastard. So don't talk to me about who has failed to live up to their word.”

Warren jolted as if slapped. “Zoe—”

“After I entrusted you with her care, no less. If I'd known, I'd have schooled her myself. She wouldn't be here now. The identity we secured for her would still be a secret from
it.
”

The Tulpa dipped farther, and he had to fight, arms pinwheeling himself back into the air from his calf-high immersion. There was still no sign of Mackie.

“Why didn't you?” I asked hurriedly, because I didn't know if I'd get a chance again. The Tulpa might kill her once fully recovered. Or me. Or she could, so easily, just disappear again. “School me yourself, I mean.”

“Because the agents of Light have conduits, a troop, and a sanctuary.” Zoe spoke so quickly I knew she'd prepared this defense long ago. The speed also told me she shared my concerns. “But I contributed in my own way. I haven't stopped fighting since the day you were attacked. I haven't rested in years, not for a moment. I gave all my power, my family, and then stayed away. All I have left is this mortal life.”

The Tulpa floated higher, looming at us from a forty-five degree angle. My arms shook almost uncontrollably as I forced my weapons to follow. “I can help relieve you of that,” he said.

Zoe followed him too. “You'll have to if you want to get to her.”

“Gladly,” he said, and lunged.

“No!” Warren threw himself at Zoe, deflecting the Tulpa's blow…but not stopping it. Zoe flew backward like she'd been spat from his fist, without even getting off a shot. That was for the best—struck with a conduit, the Tulpa would only grow stronger. Her head hit the pillar behind us with a force that left her sprawling awkwardly on the floor. I raced for her while a battle I couldn't see raged behind me.

Zoe was flattened. I checked for a pulse and found one—fucking strong too—so moved her head to my lap, lifted her bazooka again, and vowed to blast anything that even hinted at coming our way. Was it too much to hope that Warren and the Tulpa would destroy each other? That they'd rip each other to shreds in the effort to get to the woman who had betrayed and left them both?

Of course it was.

Even at his weakest the Tulpa was more powerful than a single agent. The other agents of Light were probably on their way, drawn by the turmoil and the rising scent of battle, but so were the Shadows. I had precious few minutes to get Zoe out of there. I caught a rare glimpse of the fight going on over the water as the Tulpa rammed Warren into the platform. The impact must have momentarily severed his spine because all his limbs flew wide, like a starfish, and when the Tulpa kicked him over the side, he sank with a numb expression of horror and deep sorrow.

Then the Tulpa charged me so fast the sound was sonic. A flash of light, the impact of two powerful beings imprinting on the air, and I raggedly exhaled. Skamar had arrived. Finally. Their growls and blows were a sandblasting, and sent me scrabbling backward, pulling Zoe behind the giant floral arrangement.

“Mom?” I supported her back and neck as she struggled
into an upright position and tried to untangle her legs from her dress.

“I'm okay, I'm okay.” She put a hand to her head as if trying to hold it on.

“Can you stand?” Because I couldn't carry her. Frustration at my mortal frailty rose from me in a low-pitched growl.

As if to underline that, Warren—dripping but healed—was suddenly at my side. “I'll take it from here,” he said, reaching for her.

“No!” both Zoe and I yelled, automatically pulling into one another, voices and limbs locking us together.

For the first time since I'd known him, Warren looked injured. He could just take her from me, of course, but he wanted her to come willingly. Like the Tulpa, he very simply wanted
her
. “Please. Let me help you.”

Some silent thing passed between them, some old conversation that had probably ended unresolved, because there were feelings there I couldn't understand. Slowly, Zoe shook her head. “Save Jo. That was the agreement.”

Warren gazed at Zoe with a mixture of confusion and softness, and licked his lips, eyes on hers. Oh my God, I thought, surprise rocketing through me. He
loves
her.

Then, probably scenting my shock on the air, he looked at me. There was no confusion in that look, and certainly no softness. Just bitterness for causing his love story to come to this, as if it was both my doing, and purposeful.

“Warren…” Zoe's voice was a warning.

He lunged, and my hands were empty before I blinked. Zoe was suddenly gone—tulle and touch, strength and frailty—the only thing remaining behind were gold flecks and elongated screams. “No! Go back! Joanna! Jo! Help her!”

The cries faded quickly, Warren fleeing as fast as he could. I had a moment to wonder what exactly he was trying to outrun, but then the Tulpa froze, head jerking up.
Determination rode his face like a stampede, and he shot to the sky like a reverse comet. Skamar didn't hesitate. She followed in an equally earsplitting blast.

I slumped, dazed, to find myself alone on the dais, my raspy breath breaking the eerie silence of what looked like a mass suicide. Yet the Tulpa's absence released the mortals of his magic. They began popping up from the pool bottom like colorful mushrooms, coughing and sputtering as they swam to the pool's edge, helping others do the same. The water, in turmoil, appeared shark-infested, and sure enough, no sooner did I have that thought than a roiling pressure ruptured the surface.

Out of that—stiff, dripping, and bloody, but with bowler hat firmly in place—Sleepy Mac rose like a specter. His blind, mad gaze was already fixed on me.

Every person asks themselves how they're going to die. Most people wish for something gentle and in the night, a scant few petition the skies for adventure, to go hard and young, guns blazing—sometimes literally, sometimes not. Over the past year I'd faced the question a number of times, not because I wanted to, but because it presented itself to me like an unwanted hooker in a lineup. I mean, once the choices were narrowed down, you had to pick something, right?

So this was how it would happen: Mackie would lunge, carve into my mortal flesh with that blade, and what remained of my soul would join his, trapped inside that fisted iron, while my body finally fell to dusty silence.

Well, it wasn't
exactly
how it would happen, I thought, easing my hand around to the gun at my back.

But then, like a crosscurrent, she landed. Positioning herself at the point where the aisle met the pier, one foot on each side, she halved the distance between Mackie and me. Pointing her nose straight into the air, Skamar sniffed, then angled her head my way. “Smell that, Jo?”

I didn't move, fearing whatever I did would be wrong, she'd leave, and I'd be headed for the glue factory again. Yet I was screaming inside.
Scoop me up! Take me away! Deliver me from this particular evil, and I'll never take your name in vain again!

But Skamar was preoccupied with something other than escape. “It's not your fury, nope. Not like the last time we met. That smelled like the aftermath of a traffic accident. It's got quite a nice hook to it, actually.”

“Skamar…?” I ventured, seeing Mackie list her way, and thinking it was an odd moment for philosophical musings.

“Nope, not even the despair I sensed when this walking miasma killed your cat.” She ignored the grating metallic whine rising from Mackie again, but I couldn't. It was a noise associated with homicide.

“Skamar.” Maybe intoning her name would snap her out of it.

Inexplicably, she closed her eyes and tilted her sharp, slim jaw up to the sky. “No, this is fresh and floral, like spring's blossoms and green wood. This,” she said, turning her back on Sleepy Mac, “is
life.
”

“What are you doing?” I said, panicked as Mackie's head lowered, blade lifting.

She continued to foolishly ignore him, opening eyes both determined and sad. “I've decided you're right. It is time for something to touch me. To prove I'm more than animated flesh. Not like this half-life behind me.” The sadness left her eyes. “It's time, in other words, to pick some bones.”

Mackie clearly had other ideas. He grinned so widely his black stub of a tongue showed between his teeth. His laughter was ground iron. Skamar's smile didn't meet her eyes, sincere, severe, and still fastened on mine. “But you might want to look away. 'Cuz when I pick 'em? I pick 'em clean.”

She pivoted as Mackie lunged, and for a second's frac
tion pulled back, as if bracing herself. Then she dove forward so quickly it was like she expected to move clean through him. She didn't, of course. Sleepy Mac didn't give ground, had never needed to before…though seconds later I bet he wished he had.

His scream rose like a tornado siren, jagged and uncertain, but too late. I cupped my hands over my ears—countless people behind the dueling creatures did the same—but stayed focused on the whipping dervish just as Skamar bit down and ripped the nose from Mackie's face. She didn't spit it out, didn't even chew. Just swallowed it full and swung back down for another bite. First one bony cheek disappeared, then the other. She had his wrists pinned, and though he didn't let go of his blade—he'd never do that—he flailed in panic, jerking his head from side to side as he tried to avoid the tulpa's barbed teeth. He was struggling too hard for her to get a good bite, so I shook myself to my senses and shot him twice. That enabled her to find his throat, and his grunts and screams gurgled into silence.

That's when his arm started swinging.

Skamar lifted her head, blood blanketing her chin as she stared right at me. “Shoot me!”

I wasn't sure I'd heard right, and kept my aim on his body. “What?”

“Shoot me,” she repeated, head lowering. “Quick!”

As she began shredding fingers from his free hand, I remembered what happened when you shot a tulpa…and lunged for the bazooka. Narrowing my gaze, I pointed the giant barrel at her middle and fired. She grew a foot with the first rocket, and another six inches with each additional shot. It didn't sound like a lot, but it was six inches in
circumference,
and after the first two strikes, Mackie sure as hell knew the difference. He turned his head on what remained of that sinewy neck long enough to growl at me, hate naked in his black-socketed stare, the skeletal face now missing so many of its features.

The warning movement cost him. I shot again and Skamar engulfed him with her jaw, crunching down on his skull like a nutcracker. His expression literally shattered before me. His black tongue lolled from his mouth, then fell, severed by his own teeth.

But his flailing blade finally found a home in Skamar's side. I shot him again, but it was too late. She twisted, her face scrawled in agony, but dove in once more. I turned the weapon back on her, causing her to jerk but also causing her to grow.

Her jaw was the size of my head now, and she easily engulfed the whole of Mackie's crushed skull, right down to the base of his neck. And she bit. After snapping it, after his muffled cries fell silent in her mouth, she jerked back, ripping it from his body. Mackie's shoulders slumped, his posture both defeated and confused, and from there it was an easy thing for Skamar to dismantle the rest of his body.

“Motherfucker,” I whispered, lowering my weapon. She ate every bit of him, every bone, dried jerky muscle and gristle, and she licked her fingers when she was done.

“Old habits die hard,” she finally said, offering me a bloody, lopsided smile. It was how we'd met. She had been a doppelgänger—
my
doppelgänger—and so hungry for life she was willing to eat me.

Then Skamar convulsed and let out an agonizing scream. Jerking back and forth, she forced herself to stop with visible effort. A moment of stillness.

Then, like a shark's fin breaking the surface, the knife burst through her belly.

“Spit it out!” I screamed, wanting to go to her, but knowing well enough to stay away. The man was in pieces inside of her, but he was somehow still alive.

Skamar winced, clearly wanting to, but slowly shook her head. “I can't.”

And screamed again.

Because Mackie's soul was in the blade, I realized. She had to swallow him whole, masticating his body, blending
it with hers until she totally blotted out his existence…which meant the blade too.

And
that
, I suddenly realized, meant Skamar would end up like Luna—a fully conscious being trapped in a body of flattened nerves and destroyed tissue. Sentient, but with no way of communicating with the outside world. A bright mind in a decaying body. It's why she'd hesitated, and I couldn't blame her…yet it was also why she'd returned. No one else could stop Mackie, and he would
never
stop.

“When he's done,” she said, seeing my understanding, “suck the last breath from me. That's where the soul resides. Th-That should do it.”

I swallowed hard. “But I'm mortal.”

She winced. “You're alive. You…count. Please.”

I nodded at first, unable to get any words past my thickened throat, but I owed it to her not to leave her to a fate of conscious death, just as she hadn't left Luna. “I promise.”

Skamar's eyes were wistful and she was breathing hard. “Tell Zoe…I love—”

The blade reared up inside her throat then, severing vocal cords to poke through the white flesh, the shark's fin trailing blood behind it. The last bit of Mackie's soul fought for escape, but she punched her middle, breaking her own ribs as she pummeled him into submission. She gurgled loudly, defiantly, and finally, pitifully.

Simply watching was the bravest thing I could do. But I cried as I did so, choking down vomit numerous times, and at some point my knees numbly gave in. Mackie's frenetic thrashing gradually ceased, and after a while the deft flicks forcing Skamar to jolt and twitch turned into lethargic slices that only caused more blood to trail from her body. In desperation, or maybe his last hoorah, he gave a final energetic swipe at her heart, and the still-beating thing popped from her chest, pulsed over the top of splintered ribs, pounded a handful of times, then slowed.

The breath stilled with the blade. When neither Skamar nor Mackie moved, I climbed shakily to my feet and
crossed to the pulpy mess. Hesitating, I licked my lips before leaning close. Skamar was flattened, destroyed. But her eyes, tucked deep but still whole, swung my way.

“Oh, God…oh, God…”

I fell forward, ignoring the squishing slide of destroyed flesh beneath my knees, and found the carved ruin of her lips. Mackie's blade had cut through the flesh of her lower jaw, but most of her skull was intact, which was probably why she was still able to exert her will over him. Knowing she was still there, thinking and feeling and simply
being
alive, actually made it harder to kill her, but it was also the only way to destroy him. Besides, she'd already forgiven me for the death. She wouldn't forgive me for letting her live.

So bending down, I placed my lips against hers, already cold, and I sucked. The dry coil of breath worked its way into my mouth like rising steam, surprising me and reverberating strangely in my throat, like it was someone else's voice…and it was. Skamar's dulcet pitch smeared my esophagus on its way into my lungs.

Mackie's black fanged timbre clawed at it.

I pulled away, coughing, the throbbing in my chest threatening to make me ill. Out went Skamar's soul, a taste of creamed blood, and out went Mackie's soured one. Skamar's consciousness thanked me as it sailed free, but when the last of Mackie's deadened soul was hacked from my body? It screamed.

A gelatinous shudder rolled along the entire pulpy mass beneath me then, followed by a long, gentle sigh. The whispered exhalation probably wasn't a whole lot different than the way Skamar first entered the world. Just the flip side of a lone, fateful breath taken by a woman begun as a vision. One given life by a powerful woman's mind.

My mother.

Zoe.

I sat back on my heels, wiped my bloodied mouth with the back of my hand, and closed my eyes.

Suzanne.