Cheat the Grave (10 page)

“Joanna?”

Skamar's voice was as airy and far off as she'd once been, like she was still stuck in another world.

I rubbed at my eyes, the fire in my chest building. My rib cage began to ache, and I stumbled into Olivia's bedroom. Not a whole lot more to destroy there either. The same definitively careless lacerations scored every surface. I bumbled through the upturned furniture, tripping in my blind panic, and cut myself on the fragrant perfume bottles littering the floor.

“Joanna!” This time a hiss. My blood and panic must have reeked.

I ripped at linens and sheets, searching, the fire mounting, before I clamored over a halved mattress to the closet I'd fitted with a false back. Clothing—ripped, slashed, slit, torn—designer labels, and remnants of beauty mocking me with false value. I pushed it all aside, along with leather shoes and boots now made of fringe…and finally found Luna, wide-eyed, in a corner.

“No.”

Was that my voice? I wondered. Or an echo too from another world?

“No, no, no…”

Ah, that was keening. A death wail that straddled worlds. I recognized it because I'd lost loved ones to violence before. But never a being so innocent and small. Never a pet.

I hadn't thought wardens could be destroyed. Conduits only made them stronger, larger, and fiercer. Mackie's soul knife wasn't a conduit then, because Luna had faced a reduction—her form removed along with her life. I only recognized the feline face because of those great, unseeing eyes. Gathering the rest like kindling in my arms I folded over the fur and bone, wrapping it around her like a blanket, trying to put her back together.

And then she blinked.

“Oh God, oh God…” It wasn't me this time, but it was
just as unnatural. Beings imagined into existence generally didn't pray. “Come. Let's get you out of here.”

But I couldn't leave my warden. After all, she had never left me. I curled my own body around her as I was lifted in turn. The pyre in my chest flared, Luna and me caught in its center, bloodied fur and raw emotion mingling like our biology and spirits were one. Yes, I thought, a small piece of me dying.

“Hold tight,” Skamar whispered raggedly, but instead I tucked into myself and just let go. She jumped from the rooftop, Olivia's condo dropping away in a roller-coaster dip. Then the air pressed me back against the tulpa, her flight a shuttle takeoff. I curled in tighter. Burning on that pyre, I let go all the fear and sadness and horror I'd been trying so hard to keep from being scented by those in the underworld. The wind whipped away my screams before doing the same, eventually, with my manic laughter. I imagined Mackie crazed on the ground, trying to track those cries, but only stopped when my throttling gasps extinguished the fire behind my lids. Gradually the air lessened against me, and I slumped in those slim, tenuous arms. For a moment I could almost imagine Luna was warm, curled in my arms, purring and whole. Then Skamar landed. And the world was cold again.

 

My mind was clenched, registering only
tunnels, darkness, beneath the city…
but eventually a face appeared. Again, just eyes, though unlike Luna's, these weren't framed in a broken body. The skull housing them wasn't crushed. And they remained fixed on one spot, willing me into coherence.

“You could crush me like that,” I said, voice so flat it could've been ground beneath Mackie's boot too.

“Anyone in our world could crush you,” Skamar replied, truthfully. I winced, but didn't hold the lack of sentiment against her. She wasn't born like me. She didn't have a past, so how could I expect empathy to be part of her makeup?
It had to be learned, gained through experience. Skamar had never been weighed down with a personal history. No family or allies to betray her, while I'd had both. “But not like that,” she added, almost to herself.

So keeping a being alive beneath a pulverized body was a skill unique to Sleepy Mac. I swallowed hard, and though Skamar didn't move, imagined her doing the same.

“Help her.” My voice came out knotted. Hearing it, I had the urge to resume my wailing, but I squeezed my lips tight. That's how I held myself together.

“I already have.”

I frowned, and the glyph on her chest lit in response, delivering those deep-set eyes back into a face I'd helped create. Her mouth was rimmed in crimson, like she'd been smoking blood.

“What did you do?”

“Separated her soul from her body. Took her awareness out of that already rotting mess. I helped her,” Skamar added quickly, though she didn't sound happy about it.

I thought of the Tulpa leaning over to suck life from Xavier's body, and of the magic candle leading to Midheaven that yanked out soul bits along with a blown breath. I lunged for the darkness.

We remained silent long after I finished being sick.

“If it's any consolation, her fear and pain eased at the end. Her consciousness thanked me.”

A tear rolled down my cheek. “And now?”

“She's gone.”

Silence again, but I couldn't hear it over the screaming in my head. Finally Skamar sensed my panic settling. “I will watch over you when I can.” Reluctance edged every word. “I was built to battle the Tulpa, it is my reason in all things, but if there's enough left over…”

Meaning there were no promises. I might yet end up a bleeding sack of slivered organs and crushed bone, consciousness trapped in a postmortem stain.

Hours earlier I might have retorted smartly, but now I
only nodded and swayed. Skamar's arms steadied me, but I remained unaware of my body, so numb the command to wiggle my feet didn't register. I'd seen and even caused gruesome death before. People pitched into the afterlife with limbs wheeling to fight the inevitable. But I'd never seen something living reduced to such abject nothingness.

I angled my head to face her. “Do I smell like fear?”

Skamar hesitated, then shook her head.

“What, then?”

“Despair.”

“Will it encourage him?” I asked, because I knew Mackie would scent it eventually. That's why Skamar had taken me here, into the tunnels beneath the city, where emotions could be temporarily crushed between two worlds.

She glanced up like the answer was scrawled in graffiti on the tunnel's slope. Then she sighed. “It will fuel him.”

Another truth. I nodded woodenly, mentally chaining myself to it.

“Come,” Skamar said, holding out a hand.

That was the prod I needed to feel my body again. But I recoiled, lost my footing, and slid into a crouch against the curve of the tunnel wall. “Five more minutes. Just a little longer in the dark.”

Her hesitation was silent argument, but then her glyph lessened until it soundlessly snapped off. I heard a slide, Skamar reclining across from me, and we both disappeared again, drawing the thick silence around us like a quilt. I sat in the long ticking minutes without any idea of how to fight this, or even if it would help to turn and run. Mackie had crossed worlds to find me, and city limits meant nothing to rogues. I could flee to another continent, and he would still be able to track me. If he had the will.

I thought of what he'd willfully done to Luna's body, and swallowed hard.

“Goddamn Hunter,” I said. His name tasted like bile. I cursed his other one. “Goddamn Jaden Jacks.”

“That's right,” Skamar murmured in the dark. “Anger will help.”

And I'd need all the help I could get. I frowned, then scrambled to my feet, holding out my hand this time. I saw and sensed nothing, but knew Skamar's hyperkeen eyesight had me flooded, as though in a spotlight. Her loose, dry hand wrapped around mine, leading me forward, and together we headed out of the darkness, back into the city, hauling emotions strong enough to stoke an inferno.

I drove. Specifically, after Skamar dropped me at the guard-gated compound my not-so-dearly departed stepfather had left to me, I had the estate guard let me into the garages, left my black Porsche there, and took Xavier's gold-toned Bentley. I'm sure
that
had him squirming six feet under.

Sailing from the gates and out onto residential streets stained with neon and oil, the Continental GT was the opposite of urban camouflage, yet I didn't think Sleepy Mac knew the difference between a Bentley and a Buick. I figured he was aware of Olivia's possessions and routine, which was why I didn't head to Valhalla. Despite the army of security at the casino, I wouldn't be any safer there than at the death house. It would also be the equivalent of thrusting innocents into his homicidal path. Besides, companionship was an illusion. Despite Skamar's reluctant promise to watch over me when possible, I was as alone as when Warren had abandoned me on the shallow bank of the Las Vegas wash.

So I drove through the bold, bleak city, a landscape colored by my own problems, wanting to at least make
Mackie work to find me. And though still shaky from losing Luna, still horrified at the nature of her death, I was steadying. I'd long faced my personal demons head-on, and merely running made me antsy. Even if I did have a good reason for it. To temper my unease, and at least feign proactivity until I figured out what to do next, I pulled out my smartphone and surfed the Web for info on Arun Brahma. I hadn't forgotten that either he or someone around him was angling for me, or that they were using Cher's family—my only remaining family—to do so.

Rich as the proverbial Midas, untouched by even a remote whiff of anything resembling a recession, the international textile magnate Arun Brahma was also the kind of handsome some would call devastating. As someone with a good deal of experience in real devastation, I wouldn't go that far, but I could understand Suzanne's attraction. He had the gold undertones of his Indian descent, with the strange light eyes that relatively few in his culture were blessed with—which was why, I decided, they were so desired. People always valued more that which the masses did not possess. Stick the same eyes in the face of a Swede and they wouldn't be remarkable at all.

Yet combined with the dusky skin and perfect thatch of ink-dotted hair, they
were
remarkable. The photo I pulled up with his Wikipedia entry showed a man who knew it too. His smile was cool and wide, smug with the knowledge that he'd been born with reservations tapped out in his name.
Here is your palace, Mr. Brahma. Here is your empire. The world is your garden, everything in it yours to be plucked like fruit
.

I wanted to hate him. My knee-jerk reaction was to dismiss a man born to the lucky sperm club. Yet I caught the envious thought like a fly between two fingers, and just as swiftly flicked it away. Who was I to talk? From the outsider's perspective, Olivia Archer was a bubble-headed debutante with an entire empire also thrown at her rose-petaled feet. Everyone had some sort of substance to them,
even if it was only the clay that made up all of humanity. My purpose in studying Arun now was to find out what lay beneath the slick, playboy exterior.

Because there was more to Arun Brahma than that. Either he was an agent masquerading as a mortal, or he was a rogue agent who'd somehow made his way into the valley. I leaned toward the latter explanation, if only because he could travel so freely between countries and continents, something a real agent, Shadow or Light, could not do. But why his interest in me? And why now?

I looked up, and realized with a start that nearly an hour had passed. I'd been driving in circles both mentally and literally—getting nowhere on the streets or in my search for any real information on Arun. I also found myself skimming the warehouse district, and did a quick U-turn without stopping. The troop owned a building not fifty yards away, though the place had essentially been Hunter's. He had set the security system, laid the booby traps coiled inside, and run the tests to develop weaponry for the troop's battles with the Shadows. But now he was gone and there were only unfinished sketches inside, foam mock-ups for conduits he'd never make, and a ceiling of mismatched stars above a bed we'd once made love in. Everything he'd left behind in this world locked up tight. Everything but me.

“Damn him…” Running from the thought, the Bentley's engine growling like a low-slung predator on the streets, I wound up at another unexpected destination. It was probably just my research on Arun and the mysterious trunk left by someone in his party, but it was as if my subconscious was touring all the places haunting me. Idling before the dilapidated house Cher and I had visited the night before, I willed myself to keep driving until I either found a safe place or ran out of gas, whichever came first.

The neon green sign spelling psychic flickered on while I idled. Leaning forward, I peered through the windshield
at the boarded-up building. Nothing moved, and after another moment I slid from the car's high-tech womb and into the chill night. A man's harsh, rattling laugh sounded from the nearby apartment complex, an answering hoot rocketed into the night, and if I squinted, I could imagine myself in a bombed-out country with rubble and lean-tos competing to hide the most menace.

Sidestepping a stain that looked like it could rear up and bite, I fought the impulse to turn back. I'd done my best to honor Warren's wishes and stay away from the Zodiac world, but what he should have done was tell the Zodiac world to stay away from me. If he wasn't going to protect me, then I'd do what I'd always done…as Joanna, as the Archer and Kairos, and now as Olivia: arm myself.

My eyesight, always dim these days, adjusted slowly, but I spotted the spindly form of the clay pot and dead plant upturned next to the door.

And the man who wore bones on the outside of his skin was waiting.

Again, he was not dressed for company. The same torn, grubby jeans—too loose for the thin white body painted black. Thank God for the slivered light angling through the boarded-up windows like lines on a music sheet. If not for that, he'd have looked exactly like the skeleton he was pretending to be, the tattooed bones inky in relief, his sunken eyes twin voids of dark knowledge. His nails, living dead things, writhed slowly as he considered me.

“No mask this time,” he said, though I didn't know how he could tell with eyes sewn shut.

“You're a Seer.” I fought not to cross my arms. He'd know it for self-protection, not defiance, and I needed defiance. “You already know who I am.”

“And why you're here.” He swung the door wide to reveal a room bare but for the dust. And, I thought, the ornate chest marking its middle like a black hole. Holding my breath, I edged past the Seer, pretending not to hear
his inhalation, or his nails clacking as he shut the door behind me.

“That where the psychic part comes in?” I asked, struggling to keep my back to him. I wouldn't be able to stop him from killing me now. And why would I want to see death coming anyway?

“It's merely obvious. Question is, do
you
know?” He appeared in front of me. Just like that. One sharp clack of toenails like talons and his breath was on my cheek. He angled his head, his beard forking right. “Quick—what do you most desire?”

“Protection,” I said, sighing deeply. There was a relief in speaking openly again with someone about the underworld and my former place in it. It was like the first breath after taking off tight clothing worn too long. “To arm myself. I need help.”

“Then you shall have those things.” His lacquered nails glinted in the slanted light as he gestured to the chest. “We all manifest our true desires. As long as we name them, of course.”

Because desires were the emotions that most heavily controlled our thoughts, and the Zodiac world had taken the “it's the thought that counts” principle and turned it into a religion. Thoughts—precise, applied, fixed—determined action. They could create living beings and walls and plant life out of nothing. Our minds were our might.

I smiled wryly as I crossed the shadow-drenched room. I should have gone for the man, the munchkins, and the picket fence. I'd have made a kick-ass soccer mom.

Dismissing the pipe dream, I traced the symbol centered on the chest's carved and silken top. The one I'd drawn from memory and that had so interested the Tulpa. “May I?”

“Do you believe you are the Kairos?” he asked.

Jerking my head, I flipped open the lid. “I believe I still count.”

He made a considering noise in the back of his throat. “That's a start.” Then a pause. “My name is Caine.”

I nodded to acknowledge I'd heard, but the odd arsenal before me was a shadowy attraction, like death beckoning. All four weapons I'd seen before were here; maybe Arun Brahma was an ally. I tested the hinge on the trident, a thrill reverberating up my arm as the blades winged open with a definitive snap. It was older than me by at least two lifetimes, but still sharp, which was all that mattered.

It's also magical, I thought, retracting the blades and tucking it into my oversized bag. Conduits were allegedly taboo for me now. Most often they turned impotent in mortal hands, though in some cases they backfired. Seeing the gun with the coolly glowing liquid vials again, I was too juiced to care. It felt like a part of me, long buried, had just lifted the casket lid. Better to die armed than stand flatfooted against a magical blade.

I placed that into my bag too, though the saber with an additional firearm was too large to tuck away. Good thing it was winter. It could be concealed in a long coat. I decided to leave the cane, with a blade at its pommel, out. Carrying it as Olivia Archer would either be attributed to affectation or need. It was well known I'd only recently rehabbed from a near drowning. As to actually using it, or any of the conduits, I guess I'd test the backfiring theory when the time came.

“Don't forget the additional ammo,” Caine said, jerking his head. His beard did the pointing for him. “That's all there is.”

Because the weapons were so old. Their controlling agents were long dead…as were the weapons masters who'd created them. Every paranormal weapon was made for a particular agent, and most effective in its original owners' hands. However, they could also be inherited, which was how I'd once gained my palm-sized bow and arrow.

I sighed, still wishing for my conduit. Nothing else was so perfect an extension of my body, as if my skin wrapped around it to draw it closer to my bone. I glanced up to see Caine's attention on me, despite his sunken gaze. He would know of my losses. No reason he couldn't tell me about his.

“What happened to your eyes?” I asked, with the same directness most Seers used. People who could intuit others' designs and deeds before they occurred had no need or patience for pretense. I'd learned that from Tekla.

“Ironic, isn't it?” He shifted so his face fell into the fractured light. “My visions are gifts from the Universe, but a great gift requires a great sacrifice. As you know.”

I did. Tekla's gift had taken a good chunk of her sanity. She slept sporadically, mumbled to herself, obsessed over her charts. Screamed in the night. I used to feel sorry for her. Lately I'd found myself thinking, So what? She had more than enough power to compensate, and so did Caine.

I turned. “I don't want to give any more.”

“That's your problem.”

“My problem,” I snapped, “is that no one will leave me alone.”

He shrugged. “And that you wallow in self-pity.”

“Fuck you,” I said, drawing it out. It felt good to say to a person who could snuff me like a cigarette. I muttered it again, even lighter.

“Thank you for confirming it.” Caine's tone was taut, like it was threaded with a thin strip of wire. “But don't dare say that again. Your losses have nothing on mine.”

We had losses in common? Doubtful. But it'd been a long time since anyone wasn't patronizing me. “I'm sorry.”

“I understand your wish for less weight on your life,” he said, inclining his head. “But what you should really be wishing for is more strength to bear it.”

“Wishes don't mean shit.”

“True.” He closed the distance between us again, his nails clicking like children's jacks against the scuffed
wood floor. “You must take action. Which is why I sewed my eyes shut as soon as I began to See. I knew the narrowing of my sight would make me stronger than the distractions' full vision would allow.”

“You…did that to yourself?” I shuddered at his nod. Tekla had nothing on this guy's madness. “Let me rephrase my earlier statement. It's not that I don't want to give any more. I don't want to lose anything more.”

Including my eyesight. I turned quickly and headed for the door.

“Better to know what you
do
want than what you don't.” Caine clacked over to the window, and I wondered if he'd counted out feet from one side of the room to the next. Without touching the wall, he pointed between one of the boarded-up holes like the view was a good one. “Like him.”

My hand slipped from the doorknob. “Who—”

The homicidal whine started up then, a long, loud throat-burn that made me wonder how he, it, breathed. “Mackie.”

Caine stepped aside as I ran to the window, hunching to peer through one of the fist-width slits. Caine remained still, head tilted, the nails of his right hand clacking lightly against the wall, like mice fleeing up its sides. Meanwhile, Mackie tore into the Bentley. Face hidden beneath his inky bowler hat, he hunched on the shining hood, knife plundering sheet metal like scissors slicing rice paper. Ripping strips of the hood back with one hand, he then dropped inside, his guttural whine pitched high as he went to work on the oiled leather seats.

Shit. How'd he get there so fast? I'd never even driven the Bentley before. From the way Mackie was shredding it, I wouldn't do so again. “He wants to kill me.”