The Neon Graveyard (5 page)

Looking at me, he licked his lips. “They didn’t even try to kill you when they had the chance. I’m not sure we could have withstood that ambush if they had . . . certainly not all of us. Even Harrison pulled his punch there at the end. I saw him hesitate.”

It was a valid point. Lindy hadn’t attempted to kill me outright, and she hated me more than did anyone else, save the Tulpa.

The proverbial light flicked to life in my mind like a fat neon sign. If the Tulpa captured me, he could harness the last third of my soul, enter Midheaven and wield my female energy once there. And he didn’t even need to draw me close to the underground entry to do it. Capture me alive and he could just put his mouth to mine in reverse resuscitation, suck out the remains of my slivered soul, and race there himself. It would also rid him of my presence in this world so that I was no longer a thought, much less a threat to him, his goals, and his troop.

“He wants her alive,” Carlos finally said. “
That’s
how he plans to take over Midheaven.”

W
e’d circled around the issue after that, and while there was a lot of speculation about the varied ways the Tulpa could strip my soul from my body and use it to take over the female-dominated underworld—each more gruesome than the other—we got nowhere. By the time Gareth suggested our enemy might ingest my soul by literally consuming my beating heart, my frijoles were threatening to climb back into my throat.

I rose quickly, and the sudden movement had the effect of quieting the room, but it was only after shutting the door behind me that I took a deep breath. Though maybe that wasn’t the wisest decision considering the atomic radiation coming off all the anteroom debris. The collection had grown so greatly that there was barely room to walk around the sinkhole scarring its center. I skirted car parts, twisted girders, and household riffraff from headboards to china . . . all shattered and scorched within an inch of existence.

“Hey, Marge,” I muttered, passing a charred mannequin, but Marge didn’t answer. The bitch.

At any rate, I thought as Buttersnap loyally joined my side, what more was there for
anyone
to say? Despite our efforts these past weeks, we were back to square one, and still with no way to get into Midheaven. Without the ability to quickly increase our numbers, we couldn’t survive in this valley . . . or anywhere else. And soon I’d be too far along in my pregnancy to walk without a waddle, never mind kill a Shadow as I had today. Forget about rescuing Hunter.

God. Hunter.

Sighing as I maneuvered down my wing’s dirt passageway, I ran a hand along the rough, brutalized walls. It was getting harder to wait, and harder to think of Hunter trapped in that other world. Though he was a superhero, though he was still stronger than me, I had to fight the urge to rush into those tunnels and take up his defense. Something had shifted inside me since learning he was trapped there.

No, that wasn’t quite right. Something had shifted upon our first touch, the first taste. And now that I knew Hunter had never betrayed or truly left me, my mind was locked and loaded on him with a near-violence. Which was surprising if only because the fury arose from considering him precious.

In short, Hunter was mine. Not in the possessive, I didn’t believe people belonged to each other that way, but in the part of me that had shifted to make room for him, much like my body was shifting to make room for the child we’d created together. I needed to get to him. I didn’t care how much stronger than me he was . . . strong people needed soft places too.

So that’s what had shifted. I could now be someone else’s soft spot.

I sighed again, letting my fingertips trail over the embedded stones, glass shards, jewelry, and bits of clothing—talismans placed there by grays in homage to their respective pasts. There were parts of everyone’s life, it seemed, that were better left behind. So when my hand passed over my talisman, I didn’t give it any more weight or thought than the others. The photo I’d cemented there—the people in it too—belonged to another time and place.

The electricity didn’t run as far back as my room, so the candle wax coating the walls spilled over onto the floor, making it necessary for Buttersnap and me to stagger our steps. My room was similarly utilitarian. All it contained were five squat candles waiting to be lit, and a bed still stamped with my imprint from the previous night. The walls appeared to have been carved with dull spoons, and the floor had been given even less consideration than that. I waited for Buttersnap to lie down, and after lighting the candles, settled against her.

“Good girl,” I said, patting her hubcap-sized head, and dodging her responding lick as I leaned forward to open a stainless steel toolbox. Forget solitude and rest. This was what I needed to calm me. My mother had given me this box only weeks earlier, before fleeing the Las Vegas valley for good. At that point, her long-held cover identity had finally been blown, and having done all she could to protect me, she had a new charge to care for: my birth daughter, Ashlyn. A future agent of the Zodiac.

I’d gotten no further than settling the box in front of me before a knock sounded at the door. “Come in,” I called, unsurprised, because I already knew who it would be.

“I brought you another plate,” Carlos said without preamble, giving me a smile too sweet for a leader of an underground band of brigands. I took the food with a murmur of thanks, rolling a tortilla before giving a sheepish shrug.

“Guess I did leave rather abruptly.”

“I don’t think anyone could blame you,” he said lightly, closing the door, though he remained standing. As his eyes darted to the toolbox, I realized I wanted to talk to someone about my mother. Carlos knew of her, had even met her once, and respected her as well. He’d certainly be a captive audience. More than that, though, the conversation with the grays had shaken me. There were so many people trying to kill me. Carlos, at least, wasn’t one of them.

Sure, he had his own reasons for wanting me on his side, but unlike Warren—who’d manipulated me into joining the Light—Carlos had been completely upfront about them. In return, I’d been honest about helping him as long as that got me to Hunter. So far we’d both kept our word . . . though neither of us had met our goal.

“It’s okay, you can look,” I said, when his gaze lingered on the box. I motioned for him to look through it. “I decided that if the Tulpa is after my soul, I need to arm myself as thoroughly as possible.”

He dropped cross-legged across from me and eagerly opened the box, though he frowned up at me almost immediately. “And this will help you do that?”

I didn’t fault his uncertainty. Inside was the most unassuming and unlikely cache of weapons ever seen. Glittery and girly, there wasn’t a honed blade in the bunch, though that made sense. Men were generally direct in dealing out treachery, but a woman’s bag of tricks was an endless supply of smoke and mirrors; strengths disguised as weaknesses, agendas hidden three layers down. Infinite flexibility that, if mastered, could be applied to everything: appearance, identity, home.

“My mother lived a long time as a mortal. It makes sense that most of her weapons were defensive.”

“Yeah, but . . . what the hell is this?” Carlos said, wrinkling his nose as he pulled out a small bag of dry, green powder. When mixed with lemon juice it created the paste needed to apply the intricate designs in henna tattooing. Nothing overly special, much less magical, about that. What was notable were the accompanying design templates, one of which had been applied to my skin at a bridal shower shortly before my first journey into Midheaven.

Who armored you?
Solange had asked me then.

“I hadn’t known then,” I said to Carlos, explaining all this, “and neither could Solange, but the intricate mandella my mother had chosen for me was actually a protective charm.”

She’d left the henna unsealed so the visible design would immediately wash away, but the imprint left behind had allowed me to escape Midheaven before Solange could effectively rape my soul.

“Did she give you this too?” Carlos asked, holding up a solid gold pendant, now broken in four separate pieces. I’d worn it to my stepfather Xavier’s funeral.

“Mother said it would shield me from the evil eye.” What it protected me from, again, was Solange—this time as she threw me down a flight of stairs, momentarily dislocating my aetheric spine. Though no longer useful in its current condition, its bright gold scrollwork design was important. Known as a kundan, or hand flower, it was similar to the mandella in that it was a protective emblem. “See?” I said, pointing to the seven multicolored gems. “Those represent the planets, and the enduring strength, perseverance, and triumph of the soul.”

“That’s why you wear that,” Carlos said, pointing at my wrist, and nodding. “I wondered. It’s so . . . girly.”

I glanced down at the matching gold bracelet. He was right. It never left my body. “This was a supposed thank-you for throwing my mother’s wedding rehearsal dinner.” A dinner turned horror show, I thought, shuddering with the memory.

“All these baubles,” Carlos murmured, gazing back into the box.

All this time. All these gifts. I finally nodded. “Quiet weapons for a fierce woman.”

Carlos looked up. “A mother
.
”

After a moment I smiled. “Yes.”

Carlos nodded to himself and replaced the broken kundan back in the box. “You know, I was only half kidding earlier, when I said I’d expected this pregnancy to slow you down.”

“I believe your exact words were ‘make you softer,’ ” I said wryly, stroking Buttersnap’s head. The animal felt like a warm bearskin rug.

“Nothing wrong with being soft,
weda,
” he said, soft lashes curling up as he lifted his gaze. “But if we don’t find a way to get you back into Midheaven soon, we’ll have to wait until after the baby is born.”

“No,” I said immediately. Forget the Tulpa’s power, the Shadows’ dominance, the way the Light had abandoned me. Forget my mortality or that I was supposed to lead the supernatural underworld. Midheaven held a man who dominated
my
dreams, yet he was still more real to me than even the life forming in my belly.

Yet time
was
an issue. My pregnancy left me both jumpy and exhausted at the end of each day. The chance to enter and exit Midheaven with additional grays—with
Hunter—
was slipping away like hourglass sand. “No,” I said again, panicking. “No way.”

“I don’t want to take unnecessary risks,” Carlos said, shaking his head. “Not now. And certainly not after you just played pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey with the Tulpa’s nose.”

“Ah, but the look on his face was priceless.”

“Jo.” The single word was light, but I knew a command when I heard it, and I dampened my grin. Unless I wanted to be locked in this room for the next few months, I needed to choose my words carefully.

“Look, Io once told me a secret about the Tulpa,” I said, referring to the ward mother down the hall . . . the one who’d once been charged with rearing this valley’s Shadow agents. There was a time I’d have killed her without blinking, but outside of Carlos, Io was now my closest—and only female—friend. “She said he doesn’t hate the grays because we stand up to him, or despise humans because he considers them weak. He doesn’t even hate the Light more than the Shadows. He hates us all, down to the last.”

“Because we’ve all made our way into this world through blood and bone.”

I nodded. “The Tulpa has no mother, and in a matriarchal society like ours, that’s true power. So he knows he has no real claim as troop leader, not if someone with more power and a true lineage pops up.”

“He hates us precisely because we live.”

“That’s right.”

“But hates you more than everyone else,
amiga.
”

“Not everyone.”

Carlos shook his head. “Your mother? Zoe Archer has fled the valley. This toolbox alone is proof of that. She is forever out of his reach, while you are not. So forgive me if I don’t find that overly comforting.”

But I did. My mother was out of harm’s way, and so was that first child I’d borne and given up for adoption a decade earlier. She too had needed to escape the Tulpa’s relentless pursuit.

And now I had a second child to protect.

“I’m going to take a catnap,” I said, leaning forward and closing the toolbox. Buttersnap growled at the word
cat
but I shoved my plate her way and that shut her up. “I need to be fresh for tonight’s rave.”

Illegal desert raves had become our best way of finding new rogue agents.

“Rest as long as you need,” said Carlos, standing. “I can take care of the recruiting.”

I narrowed my eyes. “I thought you said it would help for me to be there. That it’d convince any uncertain rogues that we’re more than talk.” Had he changed his mind because of today’s close call? Or because the talk down the hall had unsettled me?

“Ah, Joanna.” He reached out to help lift me to my feet. “Always so hard on yourself. Let me figure out how to deal with these new developments. You don’t have to take everything on your shoulders.”

“But—”