City Of Souls (36 page)

She gave us all a tattered smile, her mouth winging upward in jigsawed pieces to reveal spaces of gum, oozing and receding from the bone. She knew how macabre she was, how grotesque, and she played it up under the full glare of the fluorescent lights. “And what are the agents of Light celebrating tonight, huh? I mean, what could you all possibly have to celebrate?”

Nobody answered or moved. She was dead, the knowledge of her inability to escape this room now that she was in it drawn across her gaze like a toddler’s scrawl, but she was suicide-bomber dead. The question was, who did she intend to take with her?

That scribbled gaze fell on me.

“Just tell us what you want,” Hunter said, again showing why—though he was the one closest to death—he was the one everyone looked up to. Warren might be troop leader, but it was Hunter who acted when the rest of us wouldn’t. He spoke while everyone else remained mute. He’d been out there canvassing the city for Jasmine while we huddled in safety.

And what did he get for his troubles? A mummy-worthy wrapping in his own conduit, barbed spears from the whip burrowing into his flesh.

Regan’s head swiveled unsteadily on her neck as she turned to look at him, her smile opening up, red-tinted pus oozing to stain her lips.

“Oh, I believe I want the same thing you do, my friend. Some good, old sat-is-fac-tion.” She drew out the word, like in the song, and pushed Felix with the tip of my crossbow. He backed away slowly because she still had Hunter, and she pulled him along behind her as she sauntered into the center of the room. Crossbow still aimed at Felix’s heart, finger on the trigger, her gaze fell down. “Mmm. Cake.”

“How did you—”

The weapon swung Riddick’s way, so close it crossed his eyes and his mouth fell shut.

“Shh,” Regan said, reaching forward. “I like cake.”

Felix took a step back, toward Vanessa. Regan sensed the movement—the tiniest breeze probably felt like a sandstorm when you’d been skinned—and directed the bow back his way.

Warren held up his hands. “Everyone hold still.”

Keeping her hands steady, Regan leaned down. Her tongue was divided in four separate slices, but each found a bit of birthday cake, and though the white frosting disappeared in her mouth, I was able to follow its journey down her throat.

“Mmm,” she hummed, straightening. “See, now that’s satisfying.” It was unclear whether she meant the cake or having the entire troop at her mercy. She turned back to Hunter. “Have you tried this yet, my friend?”

Why did she keep calling him that? My friend. It was the exact phrase she’d used in the pipeline with the Tulpa…

My new friend.

My sharp inhalation brought Regan’s gaze back my way. “Ah,” she said, sounding satisfied. “And now you see.”

She
was the person he’d been meeting with in the Shadow manuals, the hidden contact lurking in the dark. The one he’d been talking to weeks ago when he said everyone should be allowed their greatest desire.

And her desire, her satisfaction, was in seeing me realize it. Me, also, on a hook. Betrayed. Brokenhearted. All of the above. Regan was only satisfied when destroying other people’s loves, their futures, their
possibilities
. Her mother had done this with her father, turning him into the worst sort of criminal. Regan had tried to do the same with Ben.

And she had apparently succeeded with Hunter.

Suddenly, little incongruities began to add up: how Regan had slipped past Hunter during the chase in the pipeline. How, in her current state, she’d ever managed to get her hands on him now.

Oh my God, I thought, the realization hitting me afresh. He’d been
working
with my greatest personal enemy for weeks! And he still made love to me. I let him lay his head on my shoulder, find rest in my arms. We were lovers, and friends…and now enemies too.

“Joanna.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t even look at him.

Regan laughed, a tattered chortle, and dug my conduit into the cake, licked frosting from the tip.

“I see nothing,” Warren interrupted, brow furrowed. “I see a rogue agent trying to bargain her way into a better situation.”

“Then let me elucidate.” Regan chuckled, and yanked on Hunter’s whip. “Your star superhero here has been working with me. I give him what he wants, he gives me what I want.”

“Bull.” Riddick looked at Hunter with the same sure expression he always had.

Hunter gazed straight ahead, looking at no one.

“It’s true,” Regan continued, shrugging so the flesh on her shoulder wobbled. “How else have I eluded you for this amount of time? I mean,
fuck
!” Her face went wide with the enraged word, and literally split. Part of her tongue darted out to lick the blood on the side of her mouth. “Even I can smell myself. Yet I continue to get away. Slip through holes in your defenses. Disappear into the wild night.”

Still staring at Hunter, Riddick finally winced, like it was painful. He clenched his jaw when he saw me looking, and turned to face Warren.

I didn’t blame him. Even I, having long known that Hunter was up to something, that he was meeting with someone he shouldn’t be, that he had a secret identity and agenda, had never fathomed that his contact had been Regan.

And he’d slept with me after what she’d done to me, to Ben. He entered me while helping this…. this walking carcass. This being I hated so very much.

The shock sizzled in my brain, clouding it, making it heavy on my shoulders. I felt the additional weight of Hunter’s gaze. He knew that with every passing minute I was putting more and more of his betrayal together. Right now it seemed endless. A long road, and I was riding in a car that would never stop.

“Is this true?” Tekla spoke up from the far corner of the room, and though her arms were folded across her body as usual, the wall looked like it was holding her up.

“I had reasons,” he told them all, still looking at me. “Good ones.”

“Your reasons are
my
reasons!” Warren pounded at his chest, and we all jolted as if from a stupor. Tekla straightened. Everyone else looked at the floor.

Regan tucked my conduit beneath her right armpit and stuck her index finger directly in the center of my cake, swirling it, blood mingling with the white frosting.

Hunter glanced at me and I wanted to shake him. Instead I looked away. But Warren had words enough for us both.

“Hunter, did you help this—this—” He finally gestured at the center of the room, the former Shadow now smashing the cake between her fingers, a child in her own sandbox, “—
this
, escape us? Even knowing she had Jo’s conduit?”

I cleared my throat before Hunter could answer. “Hey, Regan.”

Her sugarcoated hand stilled.

“How’d you know we were here?”

Vanessa was shaking her head. “You told her about this place too, didn’t you, Hunter? Damn it, I used this safe-house
last week
!”

“We did,” Felix said flatly, stepping to her side. Regan tilted her head at the couple, another considering smile growing on her face.

“Stop looking at them and get your hand out of my fucking cake.”

“Shut up, Jo!” Warren’s eyes were on my conduit. Regan’s were again on me. “This is about Hunter.”

“I never put Jo in danger,” Hunter said stiffly. She yanked on his conduit in warning. His mouth snapped shut.

“Except that Regan is still alive,” Warren said.

Hunter glared at him.

“And here now,” Regan added, still focused on me.

“How did you get here?” I wanted to know. I knew I was probably in shock, but something just wasn’t adding up.

“By trusting nobody but myself.” She pointed my conduit at my heart. “Now get your ass up over here. You and I are going for a walk. Bring the cake.”

Hunter frowned, and beneath his brows I saw shock and fear and shame, and possibly even the need to keep me from walking out that door.

But he couldn’t move. Because Regan, his “friend,” had turned to watch his reaction.

And that was when Warren moved. Not to the Shadow—no, that would have been certain death for me, him…maybe both—but in front of me, using his body as a shield and with a bargain on his tongue.

“Not her.” He said it calmly, as though bartering.

“Her,” Regan insisted.

“
Not
her,” he repeated. “Hunter.”

“No,” I said without hesitation.

Regan laughed so hard her guts tore through, shining and pink among the blood and shredded flesh. She used an elbow, grunting as she pushed them back in, but kept laughing. “What is this? Puppy love? Could you really care for a man who made a deal over your flesh?”

“I did not—”

She yanked on his whip. Hunter winced involuntarily.

“In return for what?” I wanted to know. What was so important that it would cause Hunter to betray me? All of us?

“It doesn’t matter,” said Warren, Mr. Black-and-White. But it mattered to me.

Regan licked her lips, her tongue darting out in four different directions. “Come with me and I’ll tell you everything.”

I nodded for a moment, then took a step forward. Felix stepped in front of me, beside Warren, creating a wall. Then Tekla was there. They were lined up like ducks, waiting for Regan to pick them off. She began to laugh again.

I too saw what they were doing. Sacrificing themselves for me, their Kairos, if need be. Regan could squeeze off one shot before someone tackled her. But the one agent she shot, they’d all determined, wouldn’t be me.

“Fine,” she finally said, dropping back from the table. “It’s better this way anyhow. As long as I’m alive, I’ll find her. For now, I’ll take her lust-puppy.”

She began backing up, crossbow pointed straight ahead.

“No—”

“Jo, let him go!”

“In return for what?” I demanded again, looking at Hunter now. “What were you going to give me over for?”

“I wasn’t. Not ever.”

Regan answered for him. “A free trip to Midheaven. A few ounces of my soul. About all that’s left.”

“If that,” I snarled. She laughed again and bled some more.

“Why would you do that?” Warren was as incredulous as I. “After I expressly ordered no one to go there.”

I frowned. No one but
me
.

“After the measures I took to keep this troop safe from that evil place.” Warren shook his head, disbelief oozing from his pores. “You would go against that, after I’ve practically raised you, after all I’ve taught you, after I gave you a home and a place and a name in this troop? You put our Kairos at risk? You put this troop at risk!”

Hunter’s jaw clenched. “I was only going after what was mine.”

Warren’s chin lifted at that. “So go. Because what’s here is yours no longer.”

Regan sighed happily. “Guess you won’t need this,” she said, and let Hunter’s whip go slack before giving it a momentous yank with an enthusiastic growl. The torque jerked him from his feet, each barb in the whip’s length ripping from his torso and taking skin with it. I think it was the first time most of us had ever seen Hunter injured, and it was like something had been defiled. Regan tossed his conduit in the corner, took a bow in the wake of our collective gasp, then picked him up in a headlock, the tip of my conduit buried in his forehead. A line of blood began to trail between his eyes. His level gaze remained fixed on Warren.

“Wait,” I said, voice cracking. Things were happening too fast. I couldn’t begin to guess what was held in those heavy glances passing back and forth between Warren and Hunter, what had happened in their shared past, but somehow I knew I couldn’t let Regan’s appearance here break the alliance between these two men. I couldn’t let her break Hunter.

But Warren had made up his mind. Everyone else recognized his characteristic stubbornness, and they closed rank, filing in front of me until only Hunter and Regan stood across from us.

Hunter, bloodied and hunched over, said to Warren, “Don’t do this.”

“I said go.”

“Wait!” I tried to push past Warren. He pushed back.

“This is pathetic.” And Regan Dupree pistol-whipped Hunter with the butt of my crossbow, flipping the weapon around in her palm as he fell, before centering back in on Warren. Her physical destruction hadn’t taken away any of her speed.

“Go,” he told her.

“What?” My voice came out in a feeble shriek, but no one else made a sound or a move, and Regan began a slow, backward retreat, dragging Hunter’s dead weight with her.

“Happy Birthday,” she said to me, winking as she pulled him through the doorway. Through the glass enclosure I could see his limbs bumping against table legs and chairs, and then—as suddenly as she’d arrived—both of them were gone.

Nobody moved for so long it was as if the entire room had been paralyzed. When someone finally breathed—Gregor or Micah or Riddick letting a curse loose on the air—everyone else seemed to deflate. Whatever it was that’d been holding them up seconds before disappeared, and the entire troop sunk to the nearest surface—wall, tables, floor—looking more like rag dolls than superheroes.

I stared at them all, but my incredulity was met by blank stares. I spoke so loudly in the dumbed silence it was like a slap in the face. “We have to go after him!”

Warren, slumped in the corner, put his head in his hands. He shook it mournfully. “Joanna. He’s gone.”

My eyes winged so wide they felt like flying saucers. “What do you mean gone? He’s right outside those doors!”

I pointed, but Warren said nothing.

I spun on the others, letting my arm fall. “Riddick, Vanessa?” Neither of them looked at me. I goggled again. “It’s
Hunter
!”

Micah pushed himself into a standing position. He was so tall and wide it looked like a chunk of the wall was moving. I almost sighed in relief, but before he could take even one step forward, Warren rose as well.

“He betrayed you, Jo.” Warren shook his head sorrowfully. “He betrayed us all.”

Micah paused…then bent his head.

No arguing, Warren was right. Betrayal lay everywhere, but I’d seen the look in Hunter’s eyes, and I knew that in some way he’d also betrayed himself. I needed to find out why. “So that erases all the good he’s done before that. His friendship? His past deeds?”