The Taste of Night (12 page)

There was a final ripple to come, similar to an earthquake, but without the sound, and only the walls surrounding the boneyard were affected by the shocks. As light played over the concrete, similar to the way heat shimmers off an asphalt road, the aftershock snaked along the wall counter-clockwise and disappeared around the first corner. It would eventually return to the point of origin where I stood, panting, pained…and thoroughly pissed.

Forgetting my surroundings, forgetting everything but that final triumphant look on Chandra’s face, I lifted my conduit from my bag, and when the rippling appeared, traveling down that fourth and final wall, I fired into the shimmering oasis until the chamber was empty of arrows.

Childish, I know. It was wasteful and pointless, and I was already turning to leave, already thinking of how to spend the ensuing hours until dawn, when the rippling stuttered, then stopped short of the original mark. The passage incomplete. I could see through to the other side where rusted and toppled signage with burned-out bulbs and busted tubes of twisted wire littered the boneyard floor. I saw the old hacienda sign, and in the distance, like a beckoning mirage, the Silver Slipper.

Closer still, I saw the yellow cab.

Then the uppermost part of the wall began to harden, brick by brick, dropping lower to the ground, gaining in speed with each section. I dove, the weight of an entire wall crushed down on my ankles with the speed and density of a boulder falling from a cliff. Rolling, I came up on the other side missing a shoe, left leg scraped from mid-calf to ankle, but safely inside the boneyard.

It took a moment for that to sink in, then I laughed aloud, as I studied the newly constructed wall. My left shoe, lost during the dive to safety, was stuck, a permanent fixture with a large chunk of cement dried around it. My bag was half caught, half free, but the opening was on this side of the
wall. Good thing, I thought, stooping to examine it, because if the clothing, comics, and mask inside were found next to the Porsche—found, more specifically, by a Shadow—my identity as Olivia Archer would be known by all. But they weren’t, it wasn’t, and I was safely inside. I gave another small hoot, and started pulling at the bag.

Some of the clothes were bound to the wall and had to be left, and one of the manuals was glued about three-fourths down the page, but I ripped what remained and tucked it under my arm with my disks and the rest of my belongings. After wiping the remaining grit from my mouth and ears and blowing my nose on my favorite tank, I couldn’t help but laugh again. I was in the boneyard, right where I was supposed to be, if not exactly when. And feeling rather smug about the whole incident, I set out with one shoe…in search of Chandra.

When I’d first learned about my troop’s superhero hideout, a.k.a. the sanctuary, the only image I had to compare it to was the Batcave, a subterranean grotto filled with all the things a hero needed to become strong and super and invincible; unusual weapons and eccentric instructors and a diet that most likely consisted of Wheaties. I thought of a place of respite, a haven where agents could rejuvenate, train, and return refreshed to mortal reality, ready once again to face off against the Shadows.

And would you believe I was mostly right? See, that’s the thing: most of the superhero stories are true, though when presented as fiction in a form most widely read by children, they’re often dismissed as nothing more than some nerdy writer’s fanciful imagination. And that’s key. Skepticism is a far more effective deterrent to the determinedly curious than the best effort at concealing the truth. Nobody really thinks a man who dresses as an oversized bat is going to live beneath a mansion in a damp, high-tech cave.

And nobody thinks an entire troop of superheroes fighting to save Las Vegas from evils worse than Donald Trump’s arrival actually bide beneath a glorified junkyard, their sanctu
ary accessed by the giant heel of a dilapidated silver slipper.

I intended to head straight to the fifteen-foot slipper, slide from the heel directly into the toe—and the chute leading to the sanctuary below—and take up with Chandra the issues I had with vehicular manslaughter. I wore a mask to shield my Shadow side from getting fried by the light when entering the sanctuary, and was already fixing this over my eyes when I heard the laughter. Dropping it and my battered belongings next to a giant letter G, I followed shouts of encouragement and genial chatter to the center of the boneyard. As I peered around a rusted star, my mouth dropped open.

There, where I’d last seen the carcasses of the original sands sign and a handful of truck-sized silver dollars, was a garden of stone walls. From my slightly higher vantage they created an intricate pattern, like one of those fabled English mazes made of tangled hedges and turf. This one, however, was made of concrete slabs, six feet high and about as long, with gaps of about a half a foot in between.

In front of this strange garden was the entire Zodiac troop, as well as a young girl I didn’t know, and a half-dozen children sitting off to the side. On second glance, I saw Warren was missing, and so was Tekla, but Micah was there—which meant this was important enough to pull him from his precious lab—and so was Gregor, my errant cabdriver. Chandra was next to him. She’d replaced the murderous look on her face with one of perplexed innocence, shrugging as she explained something to Vanessa, our Leo of the Zodiac, and Felix, the Capricorn. They shot one another a questioning look, and my gut tightened in response. She was clearly talking about me. Saying I’d missed the crossing, perhaps, or that I hadn’t shown up at all.

“Bitch,” I muttered, and was about to step forward when Hunter strode into view, passing out an armful of guns.

“All right, guys. Warren wants this done before full dark, so let’s get started. Losers exit the game immediately. If there’s no winner declared tonight, the game will resume tomorrow.”

“Why can’t we finish it in the dark?” This question came from Riddick, a troop member almost as new as I. Built like a diver, all sinewy muscle packed tightly together, he came from a long line of accomplished Aquarians, and had taken up the sign after his aunt died of supernatural causes the previous fall. Eager to prove himself, he was a welcome member to the strengthening Zodiac.

The only less experienced member was the petite woman next to him. Jewell had unexpectedly inherited her star sign when her older sister was killed last winter after the sanctuary had been infiltrated by a mole. Jewell had lived her entire life within the confines of the sanctuary and believed she always would. Until her sister’s death, she’d operated as a sort of glorified valet for her stronger sibling, and she still hadn’t seemed to have reconciled herself to this new fate—that she was a heroine, expected to succeed where her sister had failed—but here she was all the same, the troop’s new Gemini.

“Because the object isn’t to stumble about until you happen to run into somebody, that’s why,” Hunter replied coolly, handing him a weapon. Riddick swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing beneath his ginger goatee. “The idea is to make it to the center of the labyrinth without detection, or at least without being struck by anyone else.”

“Yes, but why?” Micah asked, sounding like a petulant five-year-old. It was that question, however—perpetually asked—that made him such a damned good scientist. “What does a game have to do with battling Shadows?”

“The Tulpa, if you haven’t noticed, is extremely fond of games, especially puzzles. Particularly those on a grand scale.” Hunter replied, handing Micah a gun. “We’ve found blueprints of such a maze, and we think it may be located in his troop’s hideout.”

“And at the center of this labyrinth is…?” Gregor trailed off, accepting his own weapon with his good arm. The new girl, beside him, took her gun from Hunter with a nod of her dark, bobbing curls.

“Some say that’s where the Tulpa sleeps at night, where he gathers enough energy around himself to reanimate the following day. Others claim there’s an object those seeking the Tulpa’s destruction would covet, which we most certainly do.”

“The original manual?” Felix asked, cocking his weapon with a loud snap.

Hunter shrugged in reply. “The only thing known for certain is the Tulpa holds this place, and whatever it contains dear to his nonexistent heart. No one has lain eyes on its core before, and if he’s hiding it that thoroughly, you can be sure we want whatever’s in there.”

“Meanwhile, I’m assuming the maze is rather complex,” Micah put in.

Hunter smiled coolly. “That’s an understatement. And it is deadly to the player who enters, but does not exit, in less than twenty-four hours.” Hunter motioned to two of the children, who’d apparently been waiting for his signal. Clamoring down from a giant genie’s lamp, a boy of around eleven rushed to Hunter’s side, followed by a girl. He handed them both a gun, and positioned them back-to-back. “Our version, however, won’t be quite as fatal.”

In a maneuver they’d obviously practiced for this demonstration, the two children counted off ten paces, and froze. Hunter snapped his fingers, and they pivoted, turning the weapons on one another. It was unclear what happened to the boy’s shot. He’d obviously fired, but let out a startled yelp, eyes winging from his opponent to the gun in his hand. He took her shot, clean and true, directly in his midsection. Day-Glo green spread from his core like a poison, color seeping through every pore, up his neck, coloring his face all the way to the roots of his spiked hair like a baby Hulk.

The girl who’d won the contest began to point and laugh, as did the other children, hooting from the sidelines, and calling down from their perches atop the nearby signs. Green Boy held his arms out in front of him, studying his
hands and palms, flipping them back and forth, before he looked to his friends and shot them a wide grin of blinding Day-Glo teeth.

“Okay, Landon. Elena,” Hunter said, nodding to the children. “Show them how to exit the game.”

Roaring, the boy dropped his weapon to the ground, bent his knees, and was suddenly arcing through the air, arms cycling wildly as he directed his descent to land directly in front of his victorious enemy. Once down, he growled again. Elena squealed, dropped her own gun, and bounded to the top of the Slipper in an impressively elegant leap, ducking for cover behind her ward mother’s robes. I watched the horseplay and smiled. At least some things were normal around here.

“How long does that shit last?” Riddick asked, meaning the paint. The jump was something we all could do, and yeah, it came in handy.

“Twenty-four hours,” Micah answered, confirming my suspicions as to the paint’s origins.

Hunter crossed to the front of the concrete maze. “I’ll sit out so we have an even number of players—”

“Chicken,” Felix said, shooting him a boyish grin. Vanessa supplied the clucking sounds.

“Another piece of advice,” Hunter said, ignoring them both. “And this direct from Tekla. Sight is actually the least valuable sense here, so use your hearing, your sense of smell for tracking, but most importantly, use your sixth sense. That’s the only way to get out of this alive.

“As this is the first time running this, Warren wants to know operative times and where we all place, so remember the purpose of this exercise. There’s a way to get to the center of this maze in seconds, without detection. The Tulpa knows it, and he’s mastered it, which means you must as well.”

I looked at Riddick and Jewell, and could practically see nervous energy rising off them in waves. Riddick’s knuckles were white as they gripped the butt of his gun, and Jewell
had hers pressed against her heart. They had yet to encounter even a Shadow agent, so the mention of the Tulpa had gained their full attention. Then again, I’d run headfirst into the Tulpa, and the memory still had me waking up in cold sweats.

“Now, the guns won’t fire until I press this button, and in order to give you each time to spread out, I won’t do that for sixty seconds from…” Here he looked at his watch. “Now.”

They all stared at him.

Hunter stared back. “That means go.”

They scattered, pushing into one another, scrambling in effort to be the first into the maze, and looking less like a troop of superheroes than a gang of unruly schoolyard kids.

“Bang! Bang, bang, bang!”

I whirled, heart in my throat, to find two sets of fingers pointed like guns and trained on my midsection. I lifted a brow.

Little Marcus raised his own six-year-old brow in response. “We got her, mother Rena!”

How embarrassing. Caught snooping by a couple of rugrats. Linus, the one who’d shot me with his index finger, waved me out from behind the busted star, and into the clearing where I could be seen by Hunter and Rena, the only adults left in the boneyard.

“Someone wants to talk to you,” Linus said, maintaining his tough-guy stance, legs spread the way he’d seen the agents stand thousands of times before. “And she doesn’t take no for an answer.”

“Yeah,” Marcus said, clearly not wishing to be left out. “So we can do this the easy way or the hard way. It’s up to you.” They looked up at me expectantly, and for a moment I saw twenty years into the future when these two would take up star signs and hunt Shadows. Then, keeping one hand trained on me, Linus reached down and yanked up his drooping pants.

My lips twitched. “Uh…the easy way, please.”

“All right,” Marcus said, like he was doing me a grave favor. “But take it slow, sister. Any sudden moves and we’ll drop you like a used-up ho on the corner of Fifth and Bridger.”

“Marcus!” Rena chided from her spot in the clearing. She was standing now, head tilted our way, though her eyes weren’t trained on us. Probably because she didn’t have any. “I heard that!”

“Shit,” Marcus muttered.

“She probably heard that too,” I said, grinning at him.

“Silence, prisoner!”

“Gentlemen,” came another voice, this one as deep as they were imitating, and I reluctantly shifted to face Hunter. He nodded at me, then at the boys. My two guards trembled in their Keds. My knees were often weak in Hunter’s presence too, though not usually from awe. “What do we have here?”

“An intruder, sir!” Linus answered, prodding me forward with his gun finger. I stumbled a bit, and snickering erupted behind me.

“I see,” Hunter said, giving my disarrayed state a quick once-over. “And how did she get inside the compound unnoticed?”

“We don’t know,” Marcus admitted, but quickly put the troubling question behind him. “Should we kill her?”

Hunter did smile at that. “Not just yet.”

“Thanks,” I muttered, and heard Rena laugh from her perch on the Slipper. She might not be able to see, but her other senses were razor-sharp.

“Don’t thank me yet,” Hunter said, before turning back to my captors. “I propose we throw her into the game with our brave and noble agents, see how she fares against the finest of the Light. Hand her over to me now, and I’ll make sure she receives due justice.”

By giving them a choice, Hunter had made them co-conspirators in determining my fate, and the two boys looked at each other like they could hardly believe their luck. Besides,
there was only so much more they could do. Their fingers weren’t really loaded.

“Into the maze with her!”

“Yeah, let the agents of Light have their way with her!” And Marcus’s face began to glow, literally, like a globe lit from within. Hunter and I turned away as rays of light began to shoot from his face. Once I was secured at Hunter’s side, the boys went whooping and hollering back to Rena, who congratulated them on their catch and got Marcus to stop glowing like an oversized firefly so they could all settle in to watch the competition.

“Do I even dare ask what happened to you?” he said, plucking a chunk of cement from my hair.

I winced as it came free. “I’d rather you not.”

“Chandra said you didn’t make it over,” he said, leading me to the playing field. I shot him an irritated glance, knowing he found my ongoing spat with her amusing.

“She was wrong,” I said shortly. No way was I going to let him know I’d nearly gotten stranded at the Peppermill, run down by Gregor’s cab, and trapped in a brick wall. So I waved at the block maze instead. “When did this get here?”

“The museum cleared the space to make room for some new signage. It hasn’t arrived yet, so we thought we’d take the opportunity to run some outdoor drills.”

Opportunity, I thought, inhaling deeply. I located Chandra easily. She was left of the center of the maze, deep in the thick of it. Pulling my conduit from my waistband, I headed that way.

“Hold on,” Hunter said, and yanked my bow from my hand, replacing it with a bright plastic squirt gun. “No missiles more deadly than the paintballs.”

“I wasn’t really going to kill her. Just scare her.”

“The look on your face alone should do it.”

“Fine.” I cocked a fist on my hip, trying to look tough despite the toy in my other hand. “Any other rules?”