The Neon Graveyard (23 page)

I glanced over at Chandra, caught her eye, and gave a small nod. She had been right to tell them to come.

After hesitating for a long moment, Vanessa finally lifted the lid. Those directly behind her gasped, the sounds slithering into the night like rattling snakes. Even I winced upon glancing over, and I’d known what to expect.

Vanessa’s breath took on a wheezing note, and I was suddenly thankful I couldn’t scent emotions. Fresh tears rolled from Jewell’s eyes at the sound, and Micah’s great shoulders began to shake. Gregor and Riddick took a step forward, but sensing it—somehow feeling it through the ripples of her own pain—Vanessa jerked her head. Gregor put a hand on Riddick’s shoulder, and both remained where they were.

Meanwhile Vanessa pinned dark and deep eyes, abyss eyes, on my face. “Will he be in there?” she asked, jerking her head at the mask folded in Felix’s stilled hands.

So Chandra had told her. I’d mentioned on the phone that Felix’s soul was holding on, hiding out, and still alive and aware in that mask. I’d admitted that I’d freed it from his face by speaking of duty, and how he could gain vengeance upon those who’d killed him, even from beyond the grave. But what really did it was a second mention of Vanessa. I’d whispered into the mask that only by letting go of his earthly body would he have a chance to also say good-bye to her. And so he did. And now he would.

I swallowed hard because I knew what was coming next, but wrapped my arms around myself, and nodded at Vanessa.

The strongest stars above us twinkled randomly in the night. The roar of a far-off engine floated in the air. And a group of men and women who’d once been united as a troop held their breaths as if, for only a moment, they were still one. Sucking in a deep breath that blotted out the stars, the city, the rest of the world, Vanessa put the mask on.

The sound was like nothing I’d ever heard before. Even battle cries, even the Tulpa’s, had never sent a shiver down my spine like the one that Vanessa let out upon encountering her love. I ducked, hunching instinctively, defensively, against it. I didn’t even know someone so strong could make such a broken sound, though surely I’d done the same when I’d finally mourned my sister. Such pain didn’t feel and look the way it did when coming from another. It was alien, monstrous, and Vanessa’s mournful cry was a full-frontal attack.

It was a true death cry. Tulpas, shrunken heads, soul blades . . . nothing was as haunting as this. The same thought crossed the faces of those across from me. Riddick’s eyes glazed as his brows collapsed, Gregor’s face twisted, while Micah only dropped his head back to the sky, imploring and helpless despite his size and strength. Jewell gave in and crumpled to her knees, while Chandra’s fists clenched in impotent fury.

Yes, I thought, blinking away tears as jagged sobs rose to cut at the urban skyline. It was good that they were here. It was better to weep for Vanessa’s loss than for theirs. They, after all, had to continue on as if Felix’s death changed nothing. Like it was one more loss in a world where violence was a given.

But there was no violence as brutal as destroyed love. And no matter what came next for any of us, things had changed.

This moment, especially—this shared grief in particular—changed everything.

T
hey did not follow as I made my escape into the night. I didn’t know how much Carl had seen or heard of the rooftop vigil—Vanessa’s scream, certainly—but it was enough that he was alert because he appeared almost as soon as I tapped on the skylight. I expected manic questioning on his part, but he only nodded at me wordlessly as I made my way back down the ladder, through the loft, and out into the restless cover of darkness.

Two blocks away, but still within sight of the shop, I stopped and leaned against the plate glass windows of a pawnshop, pushing a hand tiredly through my hair. It wasn’t smart or safe, but I closed my eyes and sagged against the cool glass for a moment. We’d been on that rooftop less than an hour but all of it had been spent lost in chasm between accepting Felix’s death and still wishing it otherwise. It felt like I’d been up there for days.

“Put it away for now,” I murmured, opening my eyes and straightening. I’d done what Felix had needed in order for his soul to accept death. My own acceptance of it could wait. Right now I had to keep moving. One foot in front of the other. Because there was another man, living and breathing, who needed me still.

And I could do it, I thought, sucking in a hard breath, nostrils flaring. Look what I’d done in the past twenty-four hours: escaped Midheaven, destroyed the Tulpa’s access to it, and seen Felix honored, if not properly, then wholeheartedly. Yet all those things might have been accomplished anyway, and Felix would still be here, if Warren had simply allowed us all, Light and gray, to work together against the Shadows.

If only he’d listened, I thought, crossing the cracked asphalt against a red light. The neon sign of a local’s bar was only half lit, the sandy stucco badly chipped, but the door buzzer and accompanying camera had me moving to the building’s shadowed side. If only Warren had been less rigid, and could entertain a new way of doing things.

We could have worked together, if not side by side, then in tandem. A tag-teamed bait-and-switch to augment each other’s causes against the Shadows. Because what Warren wanted wasn’t so different than what Carlos desired. Not at the heart of it.

Yet had it been a gray who was soul-sacrificed in the Tulpa’s hidden room, had it been Warren who’d found him instead of me, I knew he’d have left his perceived enemy to hang. Yet Carlos had carried Felix on his own back. Io had bathed his battered body. And I’d returned him to his people.

And, I noted, their so-called leader couldn’t be trusted to release his hate for anything not identifiably Light long enough to mourn one of his own. My anger flared at the thought, but cold reason pinched it out. Warren was well out of my reach. Steadying my breath, I kept walking. Strong emotions, ones that could be scented, could hurt only me now.

Evidenced by the figure that momentarily sidled alongside me, matching my pace.

“I was hoping you’d follow.” I glanced over at Vanessa who looked more like a cyborg than a person. She stood tall and resolute, same as she had in all the time I’d known her, but there was something steely about the way she moved. She was still flesh, blood, and breath, but the lack of emotion on her face made her seem mechanical, like I could flip a switch at her back and she’d cease existing altogether.

No word of the rooftop scene, or the emotion—rage, sadness, horror—that had her shaking minutes earlier, and when she answered, her voice was strong. “Of course I followed. Felix told me.”

I licked my lips, and nodded once. The magic in wearing an animist’s mask was a strange thing. I could at least thank Warren for teaching me that. I had no idea what Felix told Vanessa, but it was enough to erase the maniacal look from her gaze . . . and have her joining me now.

“He told me what you planned, matter-of-factly . . . which is not like him at all. But he said the best way to honor him, and see that he gains immortal fame was to help you, and make his death count. And that in order to do that I had to keep your plans from the Light. So how could I not follow?”

I jerked my head back at the shop. “They’re not.”

We turned and looked back at far-off rooftop together. It wasn’t so far off, however, that we couldn’t make out the five figures lined along its ledge, backlit like a living skyline, apropos for the agents charged with protecting this city. Vanessa finally sighed. “They can’t.”

And maybe it was the light, maybe it was the dark, but the weight of their responsibility suddenly looked burdensome, like it held them down even though they stood atop it all. Still, none of them moved. To mourn Felix was one thing. Following two rogues—worse, former members of their troop—would be a direct violation of troop law.

Vanessa tilted her head, and for a moment a bit of craziness eked back into her gaze. “You think they know what we’re going to do?”

“Probably, but I’m going to pretend they don’t.” I’d rather fool myself into believing they couldn’t smell the need for vengeance and action bleeding through our pores than think of them sitting by and doing nothing. Especially since I knew they felt the same inflamed impulse themselves.

“And what about
your
troop leader?” she asked, tilting her head. “Does he have any thoughts on your self-appointed vigilantism?”

“We don’t have a troop leader, but if you mean Carlos, then no. He thinks I’m merely doing what Felix would wish. He believes I’m still the Kairos. I have my ether back, you know.”

“I know. I can sense it.”

I raised a brow, but nodded. Of course she could. “It’s my personal power. The ability to create the world as I want it to be.” I laughed, and it came out more bitterly than I expected. Vanessa said nothing. “Still, Carlos also told me before I left the cell to steer clear of Midheaven.”

She pursed her lips. “But Hunter is still there.”

Jaw clenched, I gave a single nod.

Slowly Vanessa nodded too. “So when do we leave?”

“Is immediately okay with you?”

“I’d prefer a bit sooner, but it’ll have to do.” Then she held out her hand, offering me the mask that had, until recently, held what was left of her great love. Our eyes met as I reached for it, and she gave a small nod—of thanks, of relief, of something darker that I’d never be able to understand. But she didn’t smile. It was unlikely she ever would again, but for the first time since Felix’s disappearance she looked sane.

Well, homicidally sane. Sane like a loon. Yet for what we were about to try, it was exactly the sort of sane I needed.

“You know, if I really knew what to do with that power, I’d create a world where this couldn’t happen. I’d create one where someone as good as Felix wouldn’t have to wear a mask. Where none of us would.”

She didn’t say anything for a long while. Then she sighed. “Your world sounds . . . wonderful. Unfortunately, we’re stuck with this one.”

We paused for just one more backward glance. Then, wordlessly, we turned our backs on the entire troop of Light, leaving them gazing after us from their rooftop perch, their uncertainty so profound it almost stained the air.

18

W
e reached the mansion just after midnight. The home itself was pristine, the lawns still sprawling and green, the topiaries trimmed, the giant fountain in the circular drive bubbling with good cheer. Inside, lights burned low as if a family of four—or four hundred, given its size—were tucked in around the dinner table. The stupa had been located in the home’s center, no doubt to draw all the energy inward and up, so the fire damage was imperceptible from the outside, and all looked normal from the street. All, that was, but for the guard at the gate, who wasn’t mortal.

“That’ll teach me to keep my pyromania in check,” I said wryly, recognizing Tariq’s dark hair, stocky build, bushy brows. And his cockiness, of course. Who else would be bold enough to fall asleep on the job? Yet I remained wary. He was alone in the open? Fair pickings for any agent, or rogue, who came along?

“They’re careless,” Vanessa whispered, a low growl in her voice.

“They know there are only seven agents of Light left in the valley, and those are overwhelmed with both grays and Shadows now.” All while still trying to protect a mortal population. Thankfully the Shadows had momentarily lost interest in baiting mortals and using them as pawns, preferring instead to press their newfound advantage against the Light. If they could eliminate all, they’d have the entire city as their personal playing board.

“They’ve left more foot soldiers to patrol the city for Light,” she told me, staring at the guard box like she could torpedo it with her eyes. “Though if this egotistical prick is positioned at the home front, then whatever’s in there is worth protecting.”

We briefly held each other’s gaze before one side of my mouth lifted wryly. “Looks like Daddy’s home.”

And if the Tulpa was in residence, Lindy would be too.

“Still,” I said, blowing out a breath as I turned and pressed my back against the wall, “no reason to storm the castle.”

I jerked back at Vanessa’s hard look. I’d already told her about the tapes, that Lindy had tracked Felix through them, and undoubtedly captured him herself. Though Vanessa could surely sense my guilt over not remembering to erase the tapes before Lindy viewed them, and though she might eventually blame me for it later, right now she had someone else in her sights. And leaning forward, looking at me as I tried to dissuade her from her rightful vengeance, she looked positively honed.

“Who killed Felix?” Her tone was so low it could have been a death rattle.

“Vanessa, be reasonable. The Shadows are all . . .”

But I trailed off, knowing my words would make no difference.

“We leave Tariq where he is,” she ordered coolly. “Once we’re inside, once Felix is avenged and we’re gone, the Tulpa will take care of his lackadaisical watchman.”

True; if that was the way the next few moments worked out, the Tulpa would skewer Tariq like a kabob. Still, I glanced back at the guard shack. “But I need—”

“I know what you need,” Vanessa snapped, her earlier sanity instantly gone. She widened her eyes, her face pressed close to mine. “And I’ll give it to you if it’s the last thing I do. But you promised me vengeance for Felix. That’s what
I
need.”

I nodded, and not only because I didn’t have a choice. Were it Hunter lying in a rooftop coffin, her need would be my own. “It was Lindy. Even if the Tulpa ultimately trapped Felix’s soul within the mask, she caught him. Brought him here. She’s a foot soldier that way. Does what he says and worships him for it. There’s nothing she desires more than his favor.” His
love
, I thought, raising my brows at Vanessa.

Like a whetstone, my words sharpened her. Her eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring as she cut a glare back at Tariq, who’d shifted and drawn his hat down to cover the whole of his face. Then she turned, just as watchful and considering, back to me.

“I don’t think I like the way you’re looking at me.”

The next thing I knew, I was trussed up in the garden hose, and laid out on the center lawn like a yard gnome. If Lindy had been looking at the tapes just then, she’d have seen a dark figure, Vanessa, dart on the premises, drop me there like a housewarming gift, then ring the door and flee. If Tariq had been awake in his guard box, he’d have seen the same.

Dammit.

I was left to shiver in the wet grass, the night sky sprawled above me like a widow’s veil.

“You’ve got one job,” Vanessa had said, wrapping me tightly, suddenly as lucid and decisive as a commander. “You lie there and create. Remember the wall? The barrier Tekla taught you to imagine out of nothing?”

Of course. It’d helped bring down my first enemy, Joaquin.

“No wonder you were so good at it,” Vanessa muttered, giving the hose a sharp tug. “It’s your individual power, your ether. We should have seen it sooner. No matter. It’s the only power you’ve got.” She finished wrapping me. “Use it.”

Locate it in yourself, harness it, and use it to get what you want out of life.

“Glad you got such faith in me, V,” I murmured, just as a staccato rap literally shook the mansion’s double door. Lindy would check her beloved tapes before venturing outside, though, which gave me a few more minutes. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

It’d been a long time since I’d put Tekla’s lessons to use. There’d been no reason to try to create things from thought in the months since my returned mortality, and for a time the mere memory of my powers had been too painful to dwell upon for long.

However, my avoidance of those memories in the day hadn’t been enough to stop them from playing out in my dreams. I’d run them in my mind like a ballplayer envisioning his pitch. Sports psychologists claimed the mind didn’t know the difference between an action repeated in the mind and one performed in the body, and it was a good thing, too. As my body languished in mortality, my mind had continued to dream of my former abilities—being able to create concrete walls, invisible shields, and even birth plant life with the flick of my wrist—and the mental defiance was paying off now.

The last time I’d built invisible walls around me as a form of protection, I’d been trapped in a maze with Joaquin, right before he died. I’d like to say it was my impressive mental acuity that’d contributed to his downfall then, and that my invisible walls had held up under his superior skills and experience, but it wasn’t and they hadn’t. Tekla, and a totem left to me by my mother, had been the primary causes of his downfall.

Yet I’d been replaying those events since then, mentally reconstructing them like splicing film on a reel. I ran the memory in my mind right up until the point where things started to go bad—Joaquin using bare knuckles to bust through those wobbly, invisible barriers—and then I stopped and replaced the defeating images with one of unilateral success.

That’s how I’d come up with my new defense; not a shield boxing in my enemy that they could power through with enough blows, but one encasing my body like a carapace, a shell or second skin. One without the annoying inability to resist punctures or slashes or wounds. It was easier to imagine my body as a well-guarded island than to think I could ever impose my will on the outside world.

So I always imagined this unseen, and barely felt, shield as being as strong as bulletproof glass, but flexible as rubber. And since I knew how it felt to create a wall from nothing, from the ether—
my
ether—it was an easy mental sell. After all, a person confined to a wheelchair could still remember how to walk. If given back their mobility, they’d learn to stand and do it again.

So like Tekla’s walls, my new shield materialized first in the mind, rippling into existence like a brain wave before solidifying around my body. And every time I dreamed of this, I told myself that next time I’d be ready.

Like now.

The estate door cracked against the foyer wall. I smiled, thinking of all the times I’d wanted to stand up to Lindy and hadn’t. I realized I was looking forward to taking her on. But would my untried and newly imagined defenses be enough to hold up under the onslaught of
two
Shadows? Because when I turned my head, that’s how many figures darkened the double doorway, and were, even now, bounding down the steps, right toward me.

K
nee-jerk panic had me shifting on the lawn before I forced myself to still and fight it back. It would do me no good . . . though at least now the scent of fear would lend authenticity to my surprise visit.

Just concentrate on keeping the new wall strong, I thought, closing my eyes. Flexible around my frame, but absolutely impenetrable. One chink in my armor and they’d find it. Once found, I was a goner.

Don’t think about that.

“Well, what do we have here?”

“Hello, Helen,” I said, invoking the name she’d used as her cover in the Archer household, but giving it a sour twist I’d never dared before. I opened my eyes. “Can’t say it’s good to see you.”

She loomed over me, her thin frame making her look like a scorpion eyeing her next meal. “But lovely of you to stop by anyway. To whom do we owe the honor of this visit?”

I kept my eyes steady on her squared, delighted face as a figure slipped into the mansion behind her back. Adele, a Shadow who proved that sometimes beauty really was only skin deep, stood at Lindy’s side. Were all things equal, I could best her in any battle, but they weren’t even close to that. Gritting my teeth like the answer pained me, I turned my head back to the sky. It was easier to imagine the shield cupping my body without looking at their faces.

The silence earned me a kick in the gut. It made me want to break into laughter—power, where I’d thought I had none!—but I forced a pained exhale from my gut. The rest of my response didn’t have to be faked. The blow cast my body half across the lawn, like a mallet striking a croquet ball, yet thinking me fragilely mortal, Adele had kept the blow from being a killing one.

Confidence whipped through me, reinforcing my shield like rebar, and I curled into myself as she stalked across the lawn. I faked a strangled cough as she loomed, shoving me to my back with her foot. Manicured, I noted. And in Louboutin heels.

“Answer the lieutenant,” she commanded, one red-soled heel planted on my chest.

“Th-the wha?” I asked in fake breathlessness.

Lindy opened her mouth to silence Adele, but the latter was a Pisces and from what I could tell, those born under that star sign rarely shut up. “You heard me,” she said, lifting her chin. “Maguire is now second-in-command.”

I barked out a laugh before I could stop myself, and before I could infuse it with even a hint of pain. “He gave you a
title
?”

Lindy swallowed hard. Infatuated women, women in love . . . women who’d given their entire lives over in service to a man in hopes that he would someday simply
notice
them . . . they wanted to be recognized with flowers, a ring, breakfast in bed, a private moment . . . or if a title was needed, as a
wife.

Lindy might be a Shadow, a
lieutenant
for God’s sake, but she was still a woman. I lifted my head, catching her eye, and let one corner of my mouth lift in a knowing smile. “So do you get a badge or something? Like, I don’t know, a big gold star?”

Adele pulled back her foot again, and my smile fell as she aimed for my face. No way would she miss my big mouth. But Lindy calmly stopped her backswing, a move befitting a lieutenant, I supposed, though her grip was so tight the other woman winced. “Not out here. We’ll see who’s laughing . . . once inside.”

So Adele ripped the hose away, tossing me to her shoulder like she was King Kong and I was Fay Wray. I shut my eyes on the short journey to the mansion, reinforcing my shield, steeling myself as she began climbing the wide marble steps leading into the foyer. This wasn’t going to be a methodical or tactical invasion. Vanessa wouldn’t wait for them to gain their bearings, their weapons, or their wits. She also wouldn’t risk them scenting her rage or bitterness or sorrow. Which didn’t mean she wouldn’t use the emotions. She’d use them all right. A fury awaited . . . at best, only ten feet away.

And since I was expecting attack, the shining movement caught my attention first. First Lindy was standing, striding. Then she was flattened, crushed by a fallen chandelier, crystal splinters spraying the foyer in unlikely, sharp missiles. Vanessa hadn’t just dropped the chandelier, she’d thrown it.

Lindy vanished beneath the direct hit, while Adele managed a lucky backpedal—lucky for us both—before dropping me. We looked up in time to see Vanessa falling from the vaulted ceiling—snarling and crying out in a voice I’d never before heard. After that, the air blurred. The specifics were lost to my mortal vision, but I knew Adele tried to run. Vanessa anticipated it and plowed into her, whipping them both down the short steps into the formal family room.

Adele didn’t have a chance, I thought, backing into the corner. Unlike me, Vanessa possessed full strength, the element of surprise, and the drive of someone with nothing to lose. One thing she didn’t possess, however, were eyes in the back of her head. Lindy was up, tearing across the foyer before I could make a sound. Smoke trailed behind her, the classic battle sign of Shadows, and impeded my already poor vision, though I heard the impact of the two women.