The Neon Graveyard (8 page)

“I was trying to get my head straight for that day’s campaign. It’d been a late night. Some of us met in the cantina to talk about Felix,” she explained, “so I was surprised when I heard someone emerge from the chute.”

Chandra was going to call out when she saw Vanessa, but thought of the way she must have been grieving, and left her alone. “She walked straight to the retaining wall. By the time I got the nerve to yell, it was dawn, and she was walking through it.”

Because if you knew when and how to look, you could pass into the yard magically.

“She didn’t say anything?”

Chandra shook her head, long bangs slapping at her cheeks. “She didn’t even turn her head, just kept walking like she never even heard me.”

I bit my lower lip. “When was this?”

“A week ago, Tuesday.”

I tried to think of all the places I knew of that Vanessa might find comfort; retreats and hidey-holes where she couldn’t be found unless she wanted to, but there weren’t a lot of options. Either she was alone in places accessible to Shadows, or in safe zones and havens that the Light would check. The latter had already occurred if Chandra was searching me out, so I shook my head. “I haven’t seen her.”

Her shoulders slumped, her outline breaking against the distant city lights in a way that made me want to reach out to her, this frenemy of mine. “But she can’t go far, right? I’m sure you’ll find her soon.”

“She left this.”

Vincent suddenly appeared next to me. I startled at the movement, but Chandra didn’t react at all. She’d known the grays would be watching us, and slid the weapon forward until it lodged itself against the invisible barrier. Then, because I could, I reached over and took it.

It was a pretty steel fan with flanged blades that flared to reveal a steel clawed tip. A debutante’s homicidal flirtation. I swallowed hard, though not at its elegant deadliness. I’d never before seen it outside of Vanessa’s hands.

“You think she’s gone rogue?” I asked, and Vincent grunted in surprise behind me, though he’d fallen back into the shadows.

“She’s gone somewhere,” Chandra said sadly, the shock in my voice helping her recover somewhat. “And with your new connections, you have the best chances of finding her.”

“I told you. I haven’t seen her.”

“But you can ask around, right?” She looked up hopefully. “You know people now . . .”

Ask around. Yeah, right. And then I’d ask the Tulpa out for a nice round of golf. “I have my own problems.”

“Please.” She didn’t lower her head or look away, the plea a straight volley toward my heart. There was a time when this woman would have cut off one of her own limbs before showing me weakness. But I wasn’t the only one to suffer heavy losses this past year. I recognized that . . . for the first time, recognized myself in Chandra.

Could she be doing the same with me?

She watched me silently, just waiting with those dark circled eyes. I finally sighed. “Does Warren know you’re here?”

“He won’t care if I can bring her home.” She shook her head hard, convincing herself. “Warren feels guilty over the way things were left between them. He doesn’t say it but I see it. He’ll take her back if we can just find and talk to her.”

Of course he would. He couldn’t afford to lose another agent. Even their loyal sister troop in Arizona would start refusing to send valuable second daughters and sons to a troop that was clearly flailing. His resources were rapidly dwindling, and I couldn’t help but be glad.

Chandra knew exactly what I was thinking. “Look, I know how you feel about Warren, and his views of you are pretty much the same. But when it comes down to it, the Tulpa’s increasing power isn’t good for any of us.”

It was true. Forget the Neon Boneyard; if the Tulpa reigned with impunity, the whole city would be a neon graveyard.

And Warren hated me for that too. Though my every choice had been for the Light—live with them, fight with them, save them—each had inevitably weakened their position against the Shadow. I had no doubt that at this point even battling the Tulpa took a backseat to washing the city streets with my mortal blood.

“Warren’s not asking to work with us, Chandra. He wants us out of the picture more than he does the Shadows.”

At least with them he’d always strove for balance between the two sides. His philosophy regarding their place in the valley was very yin/yang. Can’t have the good without the bad, and all that. Rogues, though, were unpalatable in every way. A good rogue, he’d always said, was a dead rogue.

“Vanessa won’t last long on her own. Not without her conduit, not in this frame of mind. We’d just like her back with us so we can help her heal. At the very least, we want to know she’s safe.”

I stood and dusted the dirt from my jeans. I hated that the troop’s worry over Vanessa made me melancholic over their complete abandonment of me. Carlos’s open acceptance was gradually helping me realize I’d never really belonged with them, but I just wished that fact didn’t hurt so much.

“I don’t assist the Light anymore,” I said stiffly, tucking Vanessa’s conduit into my pocket. Why not? No one else could use it.

“I’m not talking about helping our cause,” she said, her own reply gone cold. “I’m talking about Vanessa.”

I shrugged. “It would be the same thing.”

Jaw clenched hard, she lowered her head and shook it. “You know, Warren’s right. You’re our troop’s greatest problem.”

I turned back to the bonfire, and the other outlaw grays. Back where I belonged.

“Let me finish.” Chandra jogged to catch up on her side of the line. “He’s right. Rogues can’t be trusted. Anarchy can’t be allowed in this valley. But, at times, he might just be a little obsessive.”

“You don’t say,” I said wryly, still walking. Vincent’s footsteps sounded closely behind.

Chandra darted a glance backward, then spoke more hurriedly. “He gets tunnel vision when it comes to the troop’s safety even in the best of times, and we’re far from that now. But he’d die for us if he had to. Same as always.”

I whirled on her, my finger jabbing so close to her chest it was probably on her side of the boundary. “Because ‘same as always’ is all you know, Chandra! But I knew something different before Light dropped into my life like a bomb, and I know something altogether different now!”

“What does that mean in terms of helping Vanessa?”

“It means gray is the new black,” I snarled, and started walking again. It meant you couldn’t do what you’d always done once you discovered a new way, a better way, existed. It meant that if Vanessa had gone rogue I’d welcome her to the grays with arms open wide.

Chandra stilled, then sighed. “Warren won’t stop until you’re all dead. You know that, right?”

“You can tell Warren that this time
I’m
the one who won’t stop.”

“Oh, he knows,” she said, turning away. “And he’s ready.”

And with both Felix and Vanessa gone from the troop—something Warren would undoubtedly find a way to pin on me—there was more reason than ever for him to wish me dead.

“Chandra?” I called after her. “You never said how you found me.”

She shot a bitter look over her shoulder. “Felix was watching out for you. He patrolled this goddamned boundary without Warren knowing. He told Vanessa about the raves. Vanessa told me.”

My gaze winged to the crowd of dancers swaying on the night wind, half expecting to see Warren emerge from the flashing laser sheets and flickering flames. I looked back at Chandra, confused.

And she hadn’t told Warren?

Still shaking her head, she turned away.

“Wait!” I yelled, taking a step after her. “How does it feel?”

She didn’t move.

I licked my lips. “Finally being the Archer of Light, I mean.”

She turned slowly, her silhouette washed out at the edges, and though the night and firelight competed for the planes of her face, her frown was plain. “Not like I thought it would.”

And before I could ask what that meant, she rocketed forward and was gone.

6

“W
e can look into it,” Vincent said, suddenly behind me, causing me to jolt. I was staring at the place Chandra had stood only seconds earlier, now nothing more than a smudged footprint on the unforgiving earth. He’d heard every word between Chandra and me, so there was no need to recap the discussion about Vanessa. “Maybe another manual will help us piece together her whereabouts.”

“And Felix too,” I said, because that had been Warren’s critical mistake. Chandra wouldn’t have traveled miles alone otherwise, risking her own life against the grays to talk to a woman she’d long resented. He should have recognized his troop’s need for closure when it came to someone as greatly loved as Felix. It didn’t matter if he was dead. What mattered was that he’d
lived.

I certainly wasn’t going to abandon his memory to the Shadows, allowing his missing status to be his last defining act. Future agents would know that someone cared about him, dammit. Even if it wasn’t his own troop.

“You miss them?” Vincent asked, probably scenting my emotion.

I shivered. It’d grown colder out in the high desert’s black crevices . . . or maybe the question had just taken me by surprise. “I never really fit in with them, I guess,” I finally said, as we headed back toward our camp. “I mean, I tried, they tried. But the fact remained, I wasn’t full Light. I liked them though . . . some of them anyway.”

“Not Chandra.”

I hummed, unsurprised that he could sense the residual emotion remaining between us. “Not at first. And there really wasn’t much time after that.”

“But this Vanessa? And Felix?” He knew the answer even before I nodded. “Even though they abandoned you completely?”

I glanced up at his expression, half obscured, though he stood close. “You think I’m foolish to miss people who betrayed me?”

He shrugged, more admission than judgment.

I blew out a long breath. “Maybe I am. I wanted so badly to be who they wanted me to be.”

“It’s hard pretending to be someone you’re not.” He offered up a rare smile, fleeting and wry. “Then again, some friendships aren’t meant to last forever. They carry us through a certain time in our lives before being relegated to the past. Things change.”

“Nothing changed,” I muttered, half to myself. “I kept my part of the supernatural bargain. I sacrificed my life to save a young girl. To save them.”

“And became a different person because of it.”

“I’m the same as ever.”

“Really?” He stopped dead, forcing me to do the same. “So you’re the Joanna Archer of a couple years back, the vigilante mortal who once sought to kill the man who attacked her?”

“Sort of,” I answered, because I wasn’t sure. That woman—defiant and angry and disconnected—had to be a part of me still, though it felt like Vincent had described someone else, or a foreign land I’d once visited.

“Olivia Archer, then? The glossy socialite who used her looks as a shield and a mask?”

No, I’d never altogether been her. I’d taken on enough of Olivia’s identity to stay alive.

“And now you’re neither of those two women, yet you’re both. Again you’re something this world has never seen, and again trying to fit into a troop you’re supposed to lead. And you know what? Next year you’re going to be someone else again.” He jerked his head down toward my belly. “A handful of months into being a mother, and you won’t even recognize the woman who stands in front of me today. I think that’s why Warren is really pissed off.”

Tilting my head, I frowned at that. “What do you mean?’

“You changed the rules on him. Whether you meant to or not, and in a way nobody anticipated, you changed the entire world of the Zodiac.” We were almost back at camp, so near we could make out the expressions on the other grays as their heads turned our way, so Vincent stopped to finish what he wanted to say. “But that Warren? He’d rather see you dead than risk changing himself.”

My mind raced back. Warren had once dug fingers into my skin and told me that I was a wild rosebush that needed pruning. That he wouldn’t hesitate to cut off anything that threatened to weaken me . . . or the troop. I bit my lip. Maybe my new status as a gray wasn’t the problem. Maybe Warren’s resistance to a reality he couldn’t control was what needed refining. I looked at Vincent. “What about you? Do you miss your troop?”

Squinting into the sky, Vincent took a deep breath of the crisp, cool air. “Sometimes I miss who I was with them.”

I nodded. There were times I’d have done anything to change the fact that I wasn’t really the Kairos, or the chosen savior to the agents of Light.

“Well, I like who you are now,” I told him, patting his arm.

The rare smile flashed again. “I like you just fine too.”

Whoever I am, I thought as we turned back to camp. “Hey, Fletch,” I called out, holding out my hands as I approached the fire. “Did Carlos ever make it?”

Fletcher only glanced at Milo, who pursed his lips, but neither said a word.

“Come on, guys. You know Carlos. Dark hair. A little bossy. Can’t hold a tune worth a shit. Carlos?”

Milo finally sighed, his big chest deflating by degrees. “Just give it to her.”

“No,” Fletcher answered stiffly. “He said morning.”

“Give what to me in the morning?”

“What’s the difference?” Milo countered.

“In what?” I asked sharply, stepping forward.

Fletcher arrowed Milo with a last hard look, then shook his head as he dug around in his pocket. He handed me a folded letter over the low flames, and I felt the others gather around me. Storytime, it seemed. Though as I unfolded the paper I had a feeling most of them had already heard this one.

I’m afraid, mi amiga, that you were right when you said we could wait no longer. I don’t know a lot about pregnancy, but the early days of your second trimester will soon give over to the late ones, and then it will be rest that is needed, not action. More than that, the Shadows’ decision to cease carrying conduits means there’s no way for you to gain the immortality you need to enter Midheaven and free our ally rogues. At any rate, the Tulpa’s actions today have convinced me that it’s too risky to try. You are both a female and a part of him, and it’s your soul he covets in order to trump Midheaven’s matriarchs. And because soul power is what’s needed to approach Midheaven’s entrance, I have decided to use my own . . .

“No . . .” And, too late, I saw that Carlos had been planning this all along. This was what he’d been talking about when he said finding a way into Midheaven was not my worry, and that he’d figure out how to deal with the “new developments.” It was why he’d suggested I remain behind at the bunker instead of going to the raves, and said he’d been considering backup plans for a while now.

This, I thought, with panic bumping in my chest, was his backup plan. Sacrificing a third of his soul in order to enter a world where men were tortured and enslaved. Yet as unreasonable as that was, as much as I’d been able to tell him about the horrors he’d have to endure there, he’d clearly thought it out.

And because a third of one’s soul is needed to enter, I will still have two-thirds to spare . . .

“Dammit!” I crumpled the paper in my fist. Solange would trick him out of the rest of his soul, either through drink or gambling or feminine guile, and then she’d fashion the pieces into jewels and string them up in a makeshift sky. That’s why the men were trapped there. That was their purpose—to fuel that female underworld with their souls.

“You idiots!” I yelled, taking my frustration out on the men surrounding me. “You didn’t try to stop him? You just let him
go
?”

“We let him, Joanna, because you can’t go.” And, of course, that’s what they were all banking on. If I couldn’t gain the aureole in order to access Midheaven’s entrance, then they’d never have a large enough troop to succeed against the Shadow and Light. They’d forever be outlaws, banished to a desert bunker, scarcely better off than before. It was more than they’d ever have as paranormal outcasts, but the whole point of the grays was to provide choice. Carlos’s dream was for every gray to live openly, where and how they chose, and he was willing to risk anything to achieve it. Shaking, I smoothed out the note and forced myself to finish.

Our run-in with the Shadows today was informative but, if anything, it drove home our need for reinforcements. The entry is open, yet no rogues escape, so I must find out why. I promise, wedita, I will be careful, and I’ll find your baby’s father as well. What I need you to do is stay safe . . .

“That’s not going to help,” I answered aloud, panicked. He had no idea what awaited him in Midheaven. He was walking into a situation, a literal world, he didn’t understand. Worse, if Solange got ahold of him—and she would—what she’d force him to tell her would forever fuck up my chances to save Hunter. So it wasn’t enough for me to stay put, safe. I had to go after him.

Of course you’ll want to rush after me [the note continued, because he knew me], but remember this: While the Shadows and Light believe balance is key to survival, grays know that choice is what creates our fate. Balance yourself; survive. And I will choose my own fate.

“Fuck balance,” I spat out, crumpling the note in one hand as I looked up. “Go after him.”

“Joanna—”

I pulled my blade on Vincent, nearest, but the entire group had clearly scented my growing anger and I was immediately faced off against a baker’s dozen of wary rogues, all grouped on the other side of the fire. “Go, goddammit, go! Why are you all just standing here?”

But none of them could fathom Midheaven’s horrors either, and I was met only by silence.

My panic and anger grew. I knew I looked rabid, but I had to stop Carlos.
They
had to. “You don’t know what it’s like over there,” I said, swallowing down the heat scratching at my voice, trying for reason. “Midheaven will rip out his soul, and strip him bare. The longer he’s there, the less he’ll resemble the man you know. Listen to me!”

“Calm down, Jo.”

“I will not calm down,” I said lowly, gritting my teeth. Carlos was going to cost me my last chance at Hunter. “In a minute I’m going to get so riled up that—”

“That what?” Fletched risked a step toward me . . . though left with only mortality keeping me upright, it wasn’t such a great risk. “You’ll slay us all with your soul blade? Or head to the tunnels yourself with the Tulpa needing you alive and Warren wanting you dead? And do it all without backup?”

They wouldn’t go with me?

“Don’t you understand? We have to hurry,” I whispered, eyes wide. “Or I’m going to have to save him too.”

No one answered.

For a moment I considered running. It was how I used to move through the world . . . barreling forward with weapons and fists cocked, righteous determination flattening everything in my path. But Vincent was right. The Tulpa, the Light—agents on both sides—were all looking for me. I couldn’t afford recklessness. Not with Hunter’s life at risk. And now Carlos’s. Not, I thought, with a child growing in my belly, a fact I was finding harder and harder to ignore.

So, clenching my jaw, I tried reasoning with the grays again. “Look, the Tulpa has sent three of his most valued Shadow agents into that world and none have returned! They can’t . . . and Carlos will be no different. We have to stop him.”

“Stop Carlos?” Fletcher shook his head, and turned away.

“He knows what he’s getting into,” Milo said, but he didn’t sound so sure. He could sense my rising panic, they all could. They knew I’d seen things in that magical underworld that they could never imagine, so I let the scent of my emotions erupt from my pores like a volcano. I entertained the thought of Carlos burning, his soul enslaved, sliced to bits, his body discarded once fully relieved of that precious fuel. Worse, I actually allowed myself to think that Hunter might already be gone, and I just didn’t know it. Even I almost scented my anguish.

And still nobody moved.

I was about to start screaming when another thought stilled me as well. Someone else could help me get to Midheaven. She’d done so before, I thought, biting my lip. It was unusual . . . and dangerous, but it could be done. Besides, there was no choice. Carlos would perish quickly over there, and so would Hunter—if he hadn’t already—once Solange learned about us—and our baby. How ironic that in trying to keep me safe, Carlos had actually thrown me upon Midheaven’s doorstep.

Sheathing my blade, I stalked toward Vincent. “Take me to Io.”

I
’d recovered enough from my shock by the time we reached the bunker to apologize to the other grays for my angry outburst, and thank Vincent for gallantly helping me back. Biting the hand that fed was one thing. Biting the only helping hand offered you was just plain stupid. Yet instead of heading directly for Io, I returned to my room one last time. I was still going to see the cell’s unofficial den mother. I simply had to arm myself first.