The Neon Graveyard (9 page)

Pulling my short, dark hair back into a slick club, I inserted my razor-sharp chopsticks into the blunt ponytail, even though I knew they probably wouldn’t make the transition into Midheaven. Weapons made outside that world, conduit or mortal, never did. My clothes were already tightly fitted, hugging the smooth S-curves that had been sculpted onto my boyish frame in order to turn me into my younger, more voluptuous sister. The cover, like my mother’s, had worked wonderfully for a while. No one looked at an airheaded debutante and expected to see a sharp mind, never mind honed edges.

Though I wasn’t as comfortable in soft, round flesh as I’d been with my own stronger, leaner lines, I hadn’t bothered to alter them yet. My body was going to change yet again with the life growing inside it. Besides, the latent strength that was
me
was still underneath, and always would be, no matter what I looked like on the outside. I knew that now.

After donning the kundans from my mother’s toolbox, I took a moment to meet my own gaze in the mirror, mind-blanking in a way I hadn’t since I’d begun hiding in this bunker. For some reason it gave me confidence. I didn’t look as worried as I felt. And it was the warrior’s mind that I needed now, I thought, studying my narrowed eyes.

“Though the weapons don’t hurt,” I muttered, strapping a knife sheath to my right thigh. The soul blade had been forged in Midheaven and was composed of the same worldstuff as the rest of that place. So it would make the crossing just fine. One couldn’t be too careful when going head-to-head against someone who owned a piece of every soul who entered that realm.

Which brought me to the weapon I’d used the last time I’d done so. I pulled out a bag of gray-brown cigarettes, quirleys
,
and withdrew two, immediately tucking one away in my hip pocket, but holding the second long enough that my fingertips tingled with the contact. Putting the unlit stick to my lips, the tingle immediately jumped to my tongue, and even with mortality dampening my senses I smelled something curdled; the potential death in its smoke.

When I finally reached Io’s room, she scented it too, though she didn’t bother glancing up from the dissection she was performing. “You won’t get an opportunity to use that against Solange again. She’ll be ready.”

I instinctively winced at the memory of beautiful flesh burning from the inside out as the quirley’s smoke attacked Solange’s pores, soaking in like sulfuric acid. I still heard her scarred screams when I dreamed.

“I know. But they’re too powerful not to take. And there are others who wish to harm me there. You don’t seem surprised to see me.” I managed coolly, trying to discern what sort of animal she was working on. It looked like a mix between a starfish and a cucumber, but was undoubtedly neither.

Then again, I silently mused, Io probably wouldn’t be surprised to see every crack on the moon’s surface with her bare eyes. Black pupils took up the whole of her lidless sockets, and that unblinking stare caught everything.

“It wasn’t exactly a matter of ‘if’ you’d show up,” she said, giving one last frown to her work before covering it with a blue cloth. Snapping off her gloves, and wiping away the light powder dusting covering her dark hands, she finally looked up. “I know what you want here.”

To travel to Midheaven without my body. To astral-project into a world waiting to harm me.

“Did Carlos know I’d come to you?”

“Of course.” She shrugged one large shoulder, ropy with muscles, then patted at the cloud of hair that surrounded her head like a black halo. “He just hoped to get a good head start before you did anything rash.”

“Let me guess. He said something annoyingly cryptic like, ‘Fate will see to the rest,’ ” I said wryly, earning a short nod.

“I don’t have to tell you he’d prefer you not attempt to go after him at all.”

“I’d have preferred for him to discuss this with me first,” I said, throwing the letter down in front of her.

Io only shrugged. “I guess he knew neither of you were going to bend.”

And she turned away and began cleaning her tools in a rubber basin in the corner. Clenching my teeth, I leaned against the table centered in the room. I was getting tired of being so easily dismissed. “So you didn’t even try to stop him?”

“Should I have?” she asked lightly, scrubbing.

“After seeing me return from there with a gem Solange had fashioned from a man’s soul?” I said, feeling the shape of Hunter’s gem next to my heart, in the lining of my shirt. I carried it ever with me now. “Fucking A, you should have!”

I was backed up so fast my heels hit the wall before I knew I’d moved. Io, herself named after both a moon and a goddess, leveled me with that moonscape stare. “Look here, missy. The menfolk may be treating you with a soft hand because of your ‘condition’ but I know all about a woman’s body and the strength it holds. Creating something miraculous with blood and bone requires the same strength it takes to keep breathin’ on the hard days. It might be brave, but it still comes natural. Don’t curse at me again.”

I swallowed hard, nodded, and was allowed back on my feet. Normally I liked Io’s inability to mince words, but we were usually on the same side of things. Still, she was right, so I softened first. “I’m sorry.”

Besides, Io wasn’t named after just any moon. I’d looked it up. She was named after Jupiter’s worst moon, one that was bathed in sulfuric fumes, and that grew so cold each night it collapsed the atmosphere around it. It was best to stay on the good side of a woman with that violent namesake.

“Look, I understand you’re worried. I do,” she shot over her shoulder, altercation already forgiven and forgotten as she returned to her tools. “But Carlos knew what was at risk.”

“No, Io. He couldn’t know.” No one ever knew what the stakes were in Midheaven, not until they’d crossed over, and by then it was too late. I couldn’t speak of it, and they couldn’t dream of it. “And you’d have stopped him if you did.”

Because despite
this
world’s dangers, it was upon entering Midheaven that the real risk taking began. The invite was simple enough. Sit down in what looked like an Old West saloon. Play a hand of poker dealt by dealers with spinning eyes. Have a drink on the house from a bartender with unnatural speed and strength. But both the game and drink were never ending, and the very act of barter became the energy that fueled that woman’s world.

Meanwhile, as the men sweated in the pseudo gambling hall, atrophying in body and soul, the women lived at the top of a winding staircase where they created their own versions of nirvana. Four doors, four rooms representing the basic elements: earth, water, fire, and air. Each room was a tiny paradise created for and by the women who acted as goddesses there, indulging in pleasures both exotic and plain, entire micro-worlds fueled with the energy derived from a man’s soul.

Men, I thought, swallowing hard, like Carlos. Like Hunter too, though Solange had something special planned for him.

“Ever think he might have just done it anyway?” Io asked, drying her hands as she turned to me.

“Gone over there by himself? Knowing what I know?” I asked, immediately shaking my head. “No way.”

She smiled her disagreement. “Carlos sees you as the key to a new life for those of us who once believed ours was over. You’re hope for those who thought it lost, the bringer of a new world order and prophesied revolution. But with a target on your chest, and that child growing like a weed in your belly, fate remains in flux. He couldn’t just sit here and allow the probable to turn into the possible.”

Yes he could
. I clenched my jaw against a scream. “He’d be safe.”

“He’d be miserable.”

Even through my worry, I knew she was right. That’s what hiding away did, whether it was from the world or yourself, your past, or even your dreams. It took absolutely no effort to have a miserable life. But building a glorious one? A life worth living and sharing with others? That’s what was hard.

“I should have anticipated this. I’ve been too complacent as well.” I gave my head a small, sad shake. I mean, had the Universe given me a lobotomy along with removing my powers? Why was I waiting for Carlos or Io or anyone else to give me a thumbs-up before blasting my way back into that world? To the life I wanted?

Because it felt so good to have someone on my side, like Carlos, who didn’t see me merely as a means to an end?

Because I didn’t want to lose the grays’ support by acting according to my own intuition and knowledge of that homicidal underworld?

No.

It was because I was scared shitless of losing the small remaining hope that Hunter was still alive, well, and also longing for me.

“Honey, biding your time ain’t the same thing as cooling your heels. You’ve gotten yourself into some pretty hairy situations by venturing out on your own in the past.”

“Rookie mistakes,” I muttered, looking away because it was true.

“Impulsive ones,” she said, knowing it.

“And I learned from them.”

First, I’d learned I could be powerful without being so hard.

Second, I’d discovered a former love didn’t necessarily mean a lost one.

Third, I’d discovered that naming something made it real and gave it power.

Fourth, there was a strength in being vulnerable.

And finally, I’d learned that as long as there was breath in the body, it was never too late to choose a new life path.

But what good were all those hard-earned lessons, I thought now, if I didn’t put them to use? “I’m the only one who can save those men, Io. And it can’t wait.”

Time passed differently in Midheaven. It ran backward or sideways . . . by some other means than that which flipped the earth around its axis. Carlos could already be well into his third pulse-slowing drink, and his fourth hand of poker. Soon he’d forget his reason for entering that realm altogether, or at least cease caring. He’d be spiritually bedridden, too sick and weak to get any better. And forget about finding Hunter. Once Solange learned everything from Carlos—and she would, she would—she’d sacrifice him just as readily.

Again, there was no explaining this to Io. She was a woman, yes, but she’d never been to Midheaven either. If she had, she would be helping me instead of lifting one disbelieving brow above her saucer stare.

“Listen up good, girly. I’m not helping you so you can go off and risk your hide for that man Solange thinks is hers. Or so you can settle old scores. You’re to help Carlos so that
he
can then help save your baby daddy . . . along with all the other rogues locked in that blasted underworld.”

But she
would
help me. I nodded, swallowing my relief. “That’s exactly what I plan to do.”

So Io prepped a needle. “Got your focus too?”

“You know I do,” I said climbing onto her worktable. A person needed someone or something to focus on in order to reach Midheaven astrally. Mine was always the same. Always Hunter.

“Just remember that you’re someone else’s focus point too. Solange wants you dead.”

It was a good, if unnecessary, reminder. Underestimate Solange, even in dreams, and it would be the last thing I managed to do. “It’s okay. I have something she wants.”

She wants your power, your ability to . . .

Damn, I wished Hunter had been able to finish that sentence before I’d been yanked from that world.

“Yeah? Well, just don’t forget she has something
you
want too,” Io said, turning to me with the syringe. “No telling what she’ll do to him if you cross her. Again.”

“Guess it just comes down to who wants it more,” I told Io as she swabbed my arm, and I blew out a steadying breath.

“Usually does,” she muttered. I rested one hand on my sheathed blade and the other on the destroying cigarettes, then closed my eyes. Feeling the needle’s telltale pinch, I simultaneously brought to mind a saloon, a man, and a homicidal goddess—willing myself back into Midheaven. Then I waited for the frantic buzz, the weighing fog, and the coppery taste of ozone cracking, all of which would mark my arrival in another world.

7

T
he biggest question, and one that had been asked of me countless times by the incoming grays, was that if I could astral-project into Midheaven, why didn’t I do it all the time? Why risk life and limb against the valley’s troops of Shadow and Light by trying to reach the actual physical entrance? Why not just cross via my mind, have a little chat with the men languishing there, and scoot them all out the door and back into the valley like good little rogue agents?

Good questions . . . with good answers.

Three things were necessary to accomplish incorporeal passage. First, you already needed to be a part of that world, woven into its fabric in a way that bound you submissively to the women who ruled there. With two-thirds of my soul currently fueling its fires, I certainly qualified. Second, you needed a means to transport you, a sort of magic carpet for your subconscious. Meditation could work, but loosening the stranglehold of the conscious mind was difficult when you knew war waited for you on the other side. That’s why Carlos had initially drugged me in order to see if I was indeed still a part of that world. I’d almost died proving it.

In fact, I’d almost died each of the three times I’d attempted projecting myself into Midheaven this way, which was why I hadn’t done it again since letting Solange know, in no uncertain terms, that I was coming for Hunter, and I’d willingly go through her to get him.

Of course, now that Solange knew I could access her realm astrally, I desperately needed the last of the three tools necessary to enter that world: Io. Because if push came to shove, and it always did, someone had to be there to pull me back out.

In the real world and with a physical entry, the crossing was facilitated by the snuffing of a candle buried deep in the underground tunnels. The resultant smoke screened in the body and sucked out the breath, along with the requisite soul payment. To leave Midheaven, you blew out the wick on an antique pagoda lantern, situated between era-appropriate oils of nudes lying in states of various repose. It was one of those burning lanterns that I’d last used to light my quirley, and attack Solange.

I focused, despite the floating sensation, on calling forth the world in my mind, envisioning the saloon, a room entirely washed in sepia, a solid visual marker that I’d entered another dimension entirely. Yet I was ever-aware of Hunter lingering at the periphery of my mind, like a coal at the foot of the bed. It warmed me, but I didn’t dare get too close. He was most likely trapped in one of the elemental rooms, where he’d be the hardest to reach, and where Solange was at her most powerful. I’d almost drowned in the water room, had been strangled in the earth room, and had been violently cast from the fire room where Solange dwelt alone. It was where she felt safest, and where I was sure Hunter would be.

And that’s why I’d brought along the knife.

The taste hit me first, a leaden bar coating my mouth, weighing me down and telling me I’d arrived. Then the rest of my senses returned, amplified, just as when I still possessed my powers. The air smelled of old charcoal and spent fuel, and felt like a sauna, drying to my wide eyes. I waited, expecting to see the saloon—the shining mahogany bar top directly across from me, poker tables sprawled about like a green felt forest, and a board with most-wanted posters containing the photos of all the men who’d entered, and expired, there. Hopefully Carlos’s image wouldn’t be among them.

Yet there was no light here, certainly no fire. Maybe something was wrong with my eyes, as it was the only one of my senses that hadn’t seemed to return to full capacity. My vision blurred as if my eyes watered, though my irises felt baked. And though dry, the cool lightness in the air was also disconcerting. It was not the choking haze associated with the room where men sweltered and burned, but a caressing sweep that felt less like a breeze and more like being licked.

The entire sensation put me in mind of June gloom on the California coast, and I waved my hand in front of me, watching the vapor undulate.
That’s it.
I was surrounded by mist. And there actually was some sort of light, though nothing direct or near. Nothing, for example, that I could use to light my quirley, and fire into the face of a goddess.

“Shit.” I had to be upstairs in one of the elemental rooms again. Probably the air room, the only one missing from my repertoire of near-death experiences.

But how the hell had I gotten here? I could access the elemental rooms because I knew where they were located, because I could envision them, and because as a woman I was free to move about as I wished in the twisted underworld. Yet when crossing astrally into Midheaven, you gravitated to your strongest mental connection, and I’d been thinking of the saloon . . .

“Joanna?”

No, I’d been thinking of . . .

“Hunter?” My heart began to pound.

A sigh, and the delicate wisps obscuring my view bent, curling outward like rolling carpet, and Hunter appeared, not five feet away. His unveiling was quiet, like a dream or a magic trick. Something I couldn’t trust. But God, I wanted to. He looked the same as when we’d first met; healthy and strong, gold-skinned, honey-eyed, with glossy black hair pulled back in a short club. Gorgeous, self-contained, powerful.

But his evident health made me trust his appearance here all the less, and I remained where I was. For weeks now he’d been deprived, punished, tortured. If the clouds were some sort of optical illusion, then so was he.

Besides, Solange had known him when he was a man called Jaden Jacks—a bigger, bulkier, blonder version of the man standing in front of me. She hated to be reminded that he’d ever been, or been with, anyone else.

Still, tears threatened to form in my eyes as he gave me that old wry smile. “How many times do I have to run you out of the same place?”

I gave a bitter laugh at the reference to my last astral foray into Midheaven. He’d saved my life then by risking his own, but I knew he paid for it in flesh afterward. His scream had chased me out of this world. So I’d have smiled at his exasperation if the false playfulness didn’t have me so fully on guard. Hunter’s natural inclination was to be serious and guarded. This was not the way he’d have normally greeted me.

My eyes darted to the cloud cover around me, but nothing else moved. “Don’t be silly,” I responded lightly, warily. “I’ve never been in the air room before.”

“But you’ve been in all the others,” he said, and that was my first hint . . . a subtle reminder that the element was different but the room was the same: dangerous.

“So can I move about?” I asked, waving my hand in the air. The thick mist around me kissed the movement, hanging from my fingertips like fringe before falling away. Then it re-formed. “Or am I going to fall off a cloud or something?”

“It’s all cloud. Cirrus and stratus right now. And as long as you’re in here, so are you.”

“Really?” I glanced down at my limbs, which looked normal enough. I did have the distinct feeling of floating, though. I took a step forward and watched the vapor shift around me, then another, this time catching the way it moved to support my body in an effortless roll. It was like fluid bones forming outside my body. In my world clouds were amassed by water vapor and frozen crystal. They scattered light and their color deepened with density. I didn’t know what these clouds were made of, but they were both dense and light—and, of course, pulsing with metallic ions. In any case, if I was as untouchable as a ghost, then movement wasn’t where real danger lay.

But there was danger here. I felt it like a field mouse under a hawk-strewn sky.

“That’s why the goddesses love the air room,” Hunter continued. “There’s no door. No windows, no walls. It’s totally devoid of shape or even ornamentation, yet they consider it the most feminine of rooms.”

“Why?” The water room had been alive, tinkling with sound and light. The earthy room was lush with greenery and verdant life. The fire room held a planetarium, and burned with the mysteries of the Universe. But Hunter summed up his case for this basic elemental room in one simple, irrefutable sentence.

“Because clouds are like women. Malleable, ever changing, and reflective of the world around them.”

They could also be tempestuous, barriers to clear-sightedness, and distinct indicators of a storm. So as hungry as I was for the sight of Hunter, I stayed attuned to the suspicious, shifting formations. “But you’re here,” I pointed out, taking a step forward. God, he was so close.

He paused, seemingly unnerved by the movement, then swallowed hard before saying, “I’m a man.”

A clear distinction in Midheaven. And as he’d been placed in the air room for me to find, it was a message from Solange as well.
I might not be able to get to you but I can mark this man any time I want.

“Can I touch you?” I risked another step.

The expression that passed over his face was acute. I couldn’t tell if the pained look meant he wanted me to, or didn’t. “Actually, what I really need is for you to let me go.”

I couldn’t stop the wince, though what
I
needed to do was put emotion aside, and figure out why Hunter was saying this now. Was she hurting him? Was he brainwashed against me? Had he finally given up on us?
Or was someone listening to us now?

“Really?” I nodded once. “That’s what you want?”

“It’s what I want for you,” he said softly.

The light dropped from the clouds like a victim of gravity, and the room darkened. It was a roiling response to his words, which gave me the answer to my unasked questions. I moved my right hand to my side, where my soul blade lay sheathed, but that was mostly for comfort. If I couldn’t be touched, neither could Solange. Either way, I thought, noting how resolutely Hunter had lifted his chin. I didn’t think that admission had been in the script, which meant he’d pay for his honesty later.

Unless I could somehow get him out of here now. This room
did
have a door. I’d seen it from the outside.

I decided to keep him talking. It would give me more time to figure something out, and hopefully learn if Carlos was here. Besides, if someone
was
feeding him lines—if someone was listening—I should give them something to listen to.

“You know,” I told him, in a falsely bright voice, “I never expected to see you again. Even the last time I was here, in the earth room, your arrival took me by surprise.” I huffed out a laugh. “At least that’s consistent.”

My words surprised him as well, and he frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You. Or at least your appearance in my life.” I shook my head. “It has been a surprise from the first.”

Not a cloud stirred. Yes, we had a very attentive audience. “I remember the very first time I saw you. The first instant, actually. No one has ever looked more heroic.”

“I don’t need to hear this.”

“Maybe I need to say it.”

“I want you to go.”

I gave him a small smile. “You were leaning against the wall of our training dojo, studying me with that dark-eyed gaze, the one you reserve for people you
want
to feel uncomfortable in their own skin.”

One corner of his mouth actually turned up at that, but quickly returned to a frown.

I hurried on. “You challenged me from the first. A lot of men would have gone easy on a woman, but you wanted to see what I was made of instead. Now that I know the kind of company you were keeping,” I said, referring to Solange, “I can’t say that I blame you.”

His half amusement turned to full alarm, but I cut off his reply by holding up my hand. The air around us shifted only slightly. “But you didn’t just challenge me that first time. You studied me. You dissected me.”

He’d told me then that people would look at my exterior—my shape, my curves, my softness—and underestimate me. “I hated you for that.”

“I know.”

“Yet you never underestimated me. We fought, hand-to-hand, and you didn’t hold back.”

“I saw even then who you were,” he acknowledged, his customary seriousness back. That’s how I knew these words were truly his. “Besides, I had to fight all-out. You told me straight up that you always used the weapons available to you.”

“Still do,” I said darkly, but that was a mistake. His expression closed and suddenly we were no longer back in the relative safety of the past.

“Just get out. Please. And don’t come back.”

“I wish it were that simple. I do. It would certainly be easier for me. But this is not like entering a dojo where the battle is contained, even if we are in one elemental room. And we’re not on opposing sides anymore. If you’re here, then so am I. If you’re injured or
being
injured, then so am I.”

He looked angry at that, but it wasn’t anything Solange didn’t already know. She was already using him against me.

“I would stay away from you if I thought it meant you would suffer less,” I added, to let him know I wasn’t ignorant of what he was trying to do—still being heroic in the only way left to him.

“I’m fine,” he said, teeth gritted.

“If that were true, baby?” I shook my head. “You wouldn’t be begging me to leave.”