The Neon Graveyard (28 page)

“That wasn’t for you to decide, Joanna.” Warren’s hard voice was a cracked whisper.

“Wait, why the fuck are we talking about this?” Micah said, and his voice sounded like there was thunder rising up inside him. I tried to remember another time when I’d heard him curse, and came up empty. “That girl wasn’t a part of our troop. Vanessa was. So was Felix. And . . .” He hesitated now, but plunged forward like a man diving into a whirlpool, knowing there was danger but forced by something outside himself to go on. “And so were Hunter and Joanna. What no one has told me yet—and by no one, Warren, I mean you, our leader—is
why.
Why the fuck are they all dead?”

Warren stared like he was hearing another language. Then something about him shifted, subtle, cobra-like. I wouldn’t have been surprised if his neck actually flared.

But Micah’s bravery, and righteous anger, was catching. It was a good question, and everyone wanted Warren to answer it. But just in case the subtext was unclear, I leaned forward.

“I think what Micah is asking,” I said softly, “is who you’re going to so blithely sacrifice next?”

“Don’t question me, you half-breed! If anyone has led us to this place—these deaths!—it’s you! I had it all firmly under control until you came along!”

“We know,” Hunter muttered.

“I’m troop leader!” Warren hollered, so enraged that chunks of earth fell from the sandy walls.

I gave a small head shake. “Not mine.”

“You’ve got that right,” he snarled, and reached into his pocket. Hunter widened his stance, and Tekla raised her anchored crossbow in response. Warren jerked his head. “Hold her, Chandra.”

She was behind me before I blinked.

“Bitch,” I whispered, feeling her hands on mine.

“I’m going to throw you both back into Midheaven,” Warren said, his fury barely contained. “And this time you’ll stay there.”

I glanced down at the shining key held between his dirty fingertips. In his other hand was a strange lock.

“It’s a new one,” he affirmed, as I squinted at the globe. It squished between his fingers, glowing, but possessing a definite keyhole center. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Warren glanced coolly at Hunter. “Invented by our new weapons master.”

“Let me guess,” Hunter said. “You’ve had one made for the tunnel entrance as well.”

“Already there.” He nodded, a cruel smile twisting his face even further.

“There are other ways to exit Midheaven,” I told him, as Chandra shifted behind me, securing both of my hands with only one of her own. It was humiliating.

“To other realms,” Warren replied, shrugging. “Not my problem.”

So just as he’d done since we first met, Warren was offering me an impossible choice . . . then making it for me.

Chandra shifted behind me.

I jolted in surprise, then fought off a cold, calculating smile.

Warren whirled away. “I’m going to tell you—all of you—just why I’ve been able to keep this valley so clean.”

Go for it
, I thought, widening my stance. Because something phenomenal had just happened. Something that was textbook
kairotic
.

“Haven’t any of you ever wondered why rogues don’t flourish in this valley as in other major cities across the world?”

I snuck a glance at Tekla as Warren began his customary, exaggerated pace, making sure I was angled so we were all faced off against each other. For a moment I thought I’d gotten it wrong, but no . . . there. She shifted as well.

“It’s no great secret,” Warren continued, conversationally if not for the dagger in his voice. “But it is interesting. See, most rogues—and I suspect this is the case with you, Joanna—set themselves up to be caught. I mean, true agents can go thirty, forty years without having to alter so much as one cover identity. This is the kind of agent I am. The kind that true Light is.”

He glanced at Hunter, letting him know he was excluded from this group. I leaned into him, ostensibly to soothe, but hoped my actions said,
Stay put
.

“But most rogues leave little clues lying about to their secret roles. Ones that any canny enemy could pick up and study like the flawed facets of a jewel. And do you know why?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “Because deep down they loathe who they are. Their self-hate is so great that they’d rather be taken down by an enemy than live with their flawed natures.”

“Believe me, Warren,” I said, keeping him talking because I saw what he didn’t: Riddick frowning, Jewell gaping, Gregor clenching his one good fist. “The hate I feel right now has nothing to do with me.”

He shrugged off my contempt like an old coat. “You have to say that. It’s the classic example of protesting too much. Most rogues go to great lengths to explain away their bad luck when what they’re really describing are their faults. They, in essence,
are
the failures.”

“Well, you’re right about one thing. Vanessa is dead because of me.” I nodded, registering the surprise of the rest of the troop. “But she’s also dead because of you.”

Warren stepped forward, and I tensed, but his left foot nicked the Serpent Bearer symbol and the room bowed with black light. He jerked back, catching himself, then narrowed his gaze at me. He might hold the key to another world, I thought, adjusting my weight, but he had no interest in visiting there himself.

Yet his misstep was good. Our triangle with Tekla shifted into a single line. “You’re no leader,” I said, goading him on, and picking up the mental thread Micah had left lying out in the open, just waiting for a little tug. “At least the Tulpa directly attacks those he hates.”

“So you admire his hard-on for world dominance?”

“It’s better than your masturbatory leadership,” I replied, the cool one now.

“I’ll remember that tonight while I’m safe in my sanctuary and you’re locked in a world devoid of anything but what you create.” He tossed the key in his palm, and glared at Hunter. “If I were you, I’d start with food and shelter. You know,” he said, lips curling, “the basics. Bring her here, Chandra.”

“It’s not my fault she no longer loves you.”

I didn’t even know I was going to say it until the words tumbled from my mouth, but when the room fell still, I knew we’d reached the tipping point. I wondered if anyone had dared to mention my mother to him since they’d last met. Though they’d once been in love, the emotion had suffered. Like a porous cliff facing the sea, it had been worn away by time and events and the small acts that drilled holes in any life.

Of course Warren didn’t see it that way. Instead he’d fixated on a sole event, one that had harsh words flying between them because of me. His back, already ramrod straight, stiffened further, his hand white-knuckling as it closed over the key.

“Never mind, Chandra,” he said. “I’ve got this one myself.”

He started for me with a smile. Hunter tensed, but I smiled back. And faster than he could blink I whipped my conduit from behind my back, aiming for his shoulder, striking his chest.

“Oops,” I said, as he staggered backward into the wooden trestle, and dropped the key. “Rusty, I guess.”

Meanwhile, Hunter lunged for Tekla, but she wasn’t there. She was on the room’s other side, her anchor pointed at Warren as well. Hunter halted, dumbfounded, and Tekla and I stared at each other over extended arms. Slowly she lowered her weapon.

I directed mine at Warren’s chest for the killing shot.

“No, Joanna. It’s not your fight.”

I looked back up, finding Micah. He was standing stiffly at his full seven feet of height, again battling back tears. I thought of everything Warren had done to me—the manipulation, the lies, the way he used me as a pawn and then a weapon—and I realized he’d done that and more to Tekla. To Chandra, too. To all of them.

But it was Hunter’s hand on my arm that kept my trigger finger still. I pretended not to notice Warren watching me with a hate verging on madness, and allowed Hunter to draw me back.

“Oh, this is rich,” Warren said, letting out a long, bitter laugh, finally turning his attention to Tekla. “First you foretell of anarchy in the troop. And then you lead it.”

The prophecy Vanessa had told me about. The one that sent Warren into his war room, and that had made Felix run off for good.
It’s anarchy, Joanna. It’s Warren’s worst fear. It’s the dismantling of the troops as we know them.

So who had really brought this about? Me? Or Tekla?

She lifted her sharp chin, and for a moment, lavender sparked before my eyes. Her aura, I realized. She was so affronted that even I could see it. “Don’t act so surprised Warren. I know you’ve had your eye on me. You’ve always thought me dangerous.”

“I’ve always thought you had a screw loose,” he shot back, but sticks and stones couldn’t hurt her now.

“But dangerous all the same.” Her tone turned censorious. “You should be careful not to so easily dismiss those you see as weak.”

And Chandra stepped forward, bending to pick up the magical key with burned palms. Warren and I saw them at the same time, and both our eyes widened. She’d been the one to steal my conduit—a rogue’s weapon—from him. Suddenly Warren wasn’t looking at Chandra like she was weak. It might have been the first time he’d truly seen her at all.

Then his calculating gaze darted between her and Tekla, trying to discern a way to break up this unlikely team. Finally his gaze landed on me.

“Stop.” Micah said, shaking his great head. “Before you even start, just stop.”

For a moment, all breathing ceased in the room.

“I was there, remember?” Micah went on, tears rolling down his face, unheeded. “I helped you strip this girl down to nothing and turn her into something she didn’t want to be.”

“I could have made her into the Kairos! If she weren’t flawed. If she weren’t—”

“If she weren’t already the Kairos,” Tekla said. “All on her own.”

Warren’s disbelief was perhaps the only thing we had in common.

“Look at her,” she said, jerking her head at me. “Look, and see something other than what you want or expect. Better yet, look
around
her.”

Warren’s gaze slid to me reluctantly, but after a moment his muddy eyes widened. “How did you do that?”

I looked down, wondering what they were all staring at.

“It’s your aura, baby,” Hunter finally said, voice awe-filled. “You’re awash in red.”

And suddenly I saw it. “I am, aren’t I? It’s my power.” My ether. The essence, or quintessence, that made me . . . me. The same worldstuff that arose at Creation to comprise the stars. I looked up, amazed.

We are all, literally, children of the stars.

But it didn’t matter to Warren. To him I was just a rogue. I realized then that no matter what I did or regained or created, Warren would never look at me and see anything but fault.

As if on cue, he spat on the ground. “Well, she isn’t Light.”

“And neither are you,” Gregor said, joining Micah. Jewell was crying in the corner, not that I could blame her. I felt much like doing the same. But Riddick had crossed his arms, and Tekla was dead calm as she took the key from Chandra.

“Your obsession has changed you, Warren. In refusing to recognize that power isn’t all that defines an agent, or a person, you have drifted from the Light.”

“I would never ally myself with the Shadows!” Spittle flew from his mouth as he pointed at me with his good arm. His left, now streaked with blood from the high chest wound, hung uselessly at his side.

Tekla lifted her chin. “Yet you have become one of them all the same.”

“According to whom, Tekla? You?” he snapped, fully enraged. “You aren’t exactly blameless. You’re the one who told me to send Jo to Midheaven!”

I looked to her. Yeah, what about that?

Not long ago, she’d refused to help me escape a madman named Mackie. She and I had taken a long, lonely road trip back into Vegas from the rogues’ boundary of safety, and she made it clear that she’d lost all belief in me.

Or maybe just let me think so.

“It was the lesser of two evils,” she said simply now. “If Joanna hadn’t entered Midheaven, she wouldn’t even have one power linking her to our world. You would have forced her to give it all up.” And now
her
tone turned bitter. “Just as you do with all of us.”

“I demand no more of you than I do of myself!”

“True.” Micah again, closing in. “But instead of demanding, my old friend? You should have asked.”

Warren flailed for an answer to that, but I couldn’t enjoy it. I was looking at Tekla thinking,
As should you
. The last few months had been the most painful of my life, and here she stood, telling us that she had known what would happen all along?

Had she really allowed me to risk my life time and again because fate “decreed” I was the Kairos?

Had she let me lose part of my soul because
she
believed it was for the best?

Warren wasn’t concerned with any of that now. His only concern was himself, and what happened next.