Cheat the Grave (28 page)

Warren's eyes narrowed and he licked his lips. He knew I was getting at something, but not yet sure what. Gratifyingly enough, the Taurean glyph on his chest began to glow faintly. “You've been keeping things from us again, Jo,” he had the nerve to counter. I almost laughed, except there was nothing funny about this man's need for control. “You failed to mention the appearance in the valley of Sleepy Mac.”

“Oh, you know how Midheaven is, Warren.” I shrugged the concern away. “You can't speak of things or people in that world to someone who has never been. In fact, there's
no explaining the absolute and debilitating horror an agent—and a man, especially—has to endure once there.” I clenched my jaw. “I mean
how
could you possibly understand the pain of being reduced to an object for someone else's use? How could I begin to even tell you what it costs in terms of mental and physical anguish to enter that world? Or,” I said, widening my stance, “the myriad of ways it might be achieved?”

I was depending on the troop at his back to regulate his composure, but if I thought my words would have him on his heels, I miscalculated. He was suddenly in front of me, a breath away though I hadn't even blinked. I suddenly realized, as I unexpectedly stared into a face of controlled fury, that here was the being without a conscience. “Let me see your fingertips,” he whispered, lips barely moving.

When I stayed still, he grabbed my palm so roughly the bones rubbed together.

“How sweet,” I said, matching his tone. “You want to hold hands.”

We held the stare as he rubbed the smooth pads of his fingertips over my newly printed ones. “The fuck you playing at?” he hissed harshly, pushing my hand away. It forced me three full steps back. “You're mortal.”

“And no use to you, right?”

A woman ain't put in any world for her usefulness. You got a purpose beyond the things you can do for others.

“Well, I count,” I told him, and raised my voice so Skamar and the agents behind her could hear me clearly as well. “And Hunter does too. We may not be agents of Light, but we have our own reasons for existing.”

Warren sneered. “Tell me your reasons, Joanna. I'd love to hear them.”

I smiled thinly. “Why? So you can strip them from me too?”

If someone's tryin' to keep you from your reasons…you'd do damned well to question theirs.

“It's enough that you know I can still touch magical
weapons.” And while Warren pondered that, my expression brightened as though I'd just remembered something, and I gave a signal behind my back. “And speaking of weapons, there's one other thing you might find of interest…animals love me.”

Buttersnap's low growl throttled through the tunnel and Warren jolted. His eyes darted from mine to the warden I'd retrieved from the warehouse, suddenly at my side and baring canines sharper than switchblades, salivating as she waited for my signal. Now his glyph fired like a lit wick.

“Don't,” Warren warned, barely daring to breathe.

I lifted my saber so the tip was touching his chest, and his heart thrummed through the long blade. Power pulsed through me in a heady rush. Sure, I'd probably die in this tunnel. Buttersnap could take Warren, but there were half a dozen other agents fanned out behind him, and a tulpa who'd already proven she didn't overly care what happened to me. But Tripp had told me to honor my own reasons, and if revealing the truth about Warren's actions wasn't a reason, I didn't know what was.

“I'm not afraid to die again, Warren,” I told him, weary as someone who'd just climbed from a car wreck. “There's nothing more to strip from me in this world. An unstoppable demon wants me dead, and not even one of those who call themselves Light—not even the tulpa created by my own mother—will lift a finger to help me. So
my
finger is on this trigger, poised there because
you
brought me into this underworld only to throw me away. In a way, as much as my mother and the Tulpa did, you created me.”

“Not for this.”

I tilted my head so a blond lock fell over my eyes. I blew it away. “No, because this is out of your control. You wanted someone you could manipulate, which makes you no different than the Tulpa.”

“Bullshit,” he said roughly.

“Really? How else would you explain why you erased the memory of a man—an agent of Light—from the minds
of an entire troop, just so you could reinvent him into a superhero more to your liking?”

“I discussed it with them ahead of time. They agreed it was for the best.”

“Though no one would remember
that.
”

His weather-beaten face hardened, the lines deepening. “You're making shit up, Joanna. I suggest you be careful.”

“Or what? You'll alter my memory too?” I laughed, and its harshness surprised even me. “What you—and the Tulpa, for that matter—don't seem to realize is that while thought can be manipulated and controlled, emotions cannot. They're willful. Unpredictable. They're what you really wish you could dampen and tame. Emotion threatens your authority. It inspires change.”

“Nothing's changing,” Warren replied, but his teeth were again clenched.

“You set Hunter up.”

Warren's eyes slitted, his nostrils flared, and his mouth went flat.
“Don't.”

“You let the troop believe Jaden Jacks was another man entirely, a Shadow even, and that he'd disappeared years ago. You arranged the Hunter identity, kept his past from everyone who trusted you to tell the truth, and ordered him silent as well. And when you found he was still searching for Solange, you decided to rid yourself of him for good by locking him in Midheaven.”

“Jacks cost a mortal child his life!” he said, protesting way, way too much.

“Solange tricked Hunter.” I raised my voice, using the name the rest of the troop associated with the man they'd once counted as their friend, ally, and brother. “She stole the child's aura from him, knowing he would never destroy an innocent. She used it to escape into a world the Tulpa could never follow, but let Hunter live.”

“Why?”

The voice popped up behind Warren, surprising us both. He half turned to shoot a warning look at Vanessa, who
was frowning like a kid trying to puzzle out a word problem. Her dark eyes darted from him to me. “Why wouldn't she just take Hunter…I mean, Jaden's life?”

“Because she really did love him, inasmuch as a Shadow can love anyone beyond themselves.”

And recalling Tripp and the lengths he'd gone to attain vengeance for his own family, I knew it was possible. Which made me fear for Hunter all the more. And to get to him, I was going to have to get others to believe it too. So I delivered the final truth. “And because she was pregnant with his child.”

Gasps rocketed into the air—even Skamar hadn't known that—and in the glare of the dimming flashlights, faces bloomed with shock. But none was more jarred than Warren's, and I was glad. It was nice to see the man who hoarded secrets outwitted by Hunter. It was fucking poetic.

“That's right, Warren. There's a girl child on the other side of your
impenetrable
lock.” I snarled those last words, letting him know it was anything but that. “A child who is, by all accounts, both Shadow and Light. And you know what that means.”

“Another Kairos,” Tekla whispered, and even in my weakened mortal state, I felt the shift in the troop. This was something they should have known, if Warren had trusted them enough.

“The
only
Kairos,” I said, before returning my flat gaze to Warren, who was still focused on me, though he'd gone unnervingly still. “After all, I'm just a useless mortal. Right?”

“And not even that for much longer,” Warren whispered, and I didn't even see him pull back his fist. The image was imprinted on the air in front of me, however, because that's where the impact between him and Carlos occurred. If I lived through this, the homicidal fury in Warren's frozen gaze, burning like a negative before me, would haunt my dreams. Then the image melted away and chaos overtook the small tunnel.

Rogue agents whizzed past me so fast the only way I
knew they were grays and not Shadow was because I still lived. Conflict sounded, face-to-face, hand-to-hand, because the rogue attack was sudden and unexpected, the agents of Light too crowded to even lift their conduits, much less fire them. But their chests were lit down to the last.

Without weapons, all the rogues had were their bodies, and those—visible during the spotlit collisions—were coated in Micah's protectant, which he belatedly realized when he plunged his surgeon's blade into Vincent's chest, only to receive an unexpected blow to the jaw in return.

The action was jammed, like dust devils banging into each other, so when one of the agents of Light wrested free—a sole glyph lit up in the foreground where the spotlights shone brightest—I saw only the lift of a deadly blowgun in my direction. Kimber, the Libra of Light who'd always hated me, sucked in a deep breath.

“No!” Vanessa screamed, pushing the weapon aside. The impact developed, then dissipated, before my eyes. A scrape against the curved wall behind me—Kimber had actually fired!—and I scurried behind Buttersnap, though it would've been too late had Vanessa not intervened. “It's Joanna!”

“She's not ours!” Kimber countered, pushing her away, pointing again.

Vanessa punched her so hard I expected the word “Pow!” to appear over Kimber's blond, dreadlocked head. “She's not theirs either!”

“Somebody just shoot!” Warren ordered, his voice choked beneath Carlos's tensile fingers.

But Buttersnap reared up in front of me and let out a ripping, ragged howl. Nobody shot, though I didn't know if it was because they were afraid to hit her—making her even stronger and larger than she already was—or reluctant to hurt me. I wasn't about to split hairs either way, and neither was Buttersnap. Lowering to all four paws, she corralled me backward in the direction the grays had appeared, and
away from the Light. The fight continued in front of me, sweeping gusts and flashing images, though the accompanying sounds of battle were constant.

But one thing stood out clearly: Vanessa, still immobile where she'd knocked out Kimber, grays on the defense around her, the stunned Light battling a foe they hadn't known existed. A curious look of pity and wonder marred her lovely face, and remained that way until I disappeared from sight.

At the roll of the dog's muzzle, and the accompanying rumble in her throat, I straddled the giant back, holding tight to the skin where a bitch might scruff her pup. Buttersnap raced forward, breaking from the tunnel like a Kentucky Derby winner. I kept my head low until I was sure we weren't being directly followed, then relaxed enough to look behind me. I tried to make out the tunnel entrance, the chaos inside, but it had vanished. Fleeing on the warden's back, the entire city was reduced to a blur of colorful outlines. Streetlamps whizzed by overhead, before smooth pavement gave way to rough, and then to the packed desert floor.

I felt good, I realized, as the cold winter wind numbed me. Sure, Mackie was still out there, and my threats against Skamar didn't amount to much more than a temper tantrum, but it was gratifying to know I'd finally tallied a mark in my favor against Warren's manipulative scheming. From the look on the faces of the rest of the agents of Light, he was finally going to have to provide some answers.

No, I wasn't a lot better off than I'd been that morning, I admitted, escaping into the desert, cactus and rocks reaching for me beneath a vast dark sky. But in a world ruled by beings who only paid attention to those who could move and manipulate and control events and outcomes, who had power and the means to use it, and who undeniably
counted
, I had come out of this altercation alive and on top.

And they were certainly paying attention to me now.

Of course, the agents of Light followed. Once over their initial shock, once they realized these were not Shadows they were battling, but rogues—also enemies, according to the law of Warren—they were human Scuds on our trail. My revelations about Hunter weren't enough to stop their pursuit, and I hadn't expected them to be. Mistrust of rogue agents was too deeply in-grained for them to dismiss us automatically, but eventually what I'd revealed would give some of them pause. For now, the weaponless rogues fended them off with a mixture of crafty defense and a good head start, though they made sure I was safely away before falling back.

What really saved us, though, was the troop's shock at our numbers. Almost a dozen rogues existed in the valley? For the agents of Light, this revelation was akin to discovering me a year earlier. There were as many rogues as agents of Light…and they didn't even know of the other four who'd left the valley. Thus, we numbered more than even Shadows, who boasted a full troop, one agent for each star sign on the Zodiac.

So, with a head start, and clear knowledge of where we
were headed—whereas the Light had to fan out, cover and cut off all angles, and try to anticipate our direction—we made it over the city line, crossing the invisible boundary so abruptly I didn't even know we'd done so until Buttersnap's gait slowed and she circled widely to return to Carlos's side. He was breathing hard but his face was alight. One by one every gray who'd entered the tunnels returned, safe, and Carlos laughed so long and loud the sound threatened to rip the sky.

I climbed from Buttersnap's back, giving her a tight squeeze around the neck, earning a giant, sloppy kiss as the others joined Carlos, whooping wildly into the night as Warren and company paced the invisible barrier like they were straining against leashes. I listened to the joyous laughter ringing about me and could almost scent the perfume of their giddiness at this unexpected victory. It would smell like fresh baked meringue, I decided with a small smile. Bright vanilla, morello cherries, a dessert served first after a miles-long marathon.

When Kimber fired a dart in an attempt to reach us despite the known boundary, I laughed along with the other rogues as the little missile dropped harmlessly to the desert floor. In fact, fatigue, relief, and the spent embers of righteous anger had me so wound up that I found I couldn't stop. I knelt on the desert floor, arms wrapped around my core as I tipped over. Gareth found this hilarious, and together we howled into the night, almost burping up jagged laughter as the agents of Light fumed only feet—yet miles—away.

Eventually, Carlos and Gareth helped me up, and I sent a final giggle spiraling over the invisible barrier while giving a fury-pale and trembling Kimber the finger.

Sure, the hubris might cost us all dearly later. But right now? The giddiness was amazing, the satisfaction at seeing Warren thwarted and fuming complete.

However, the celebratory mood was quelled once back at Frenchman's Flat. Io met us in the atomic anteroom with
reports of Alex's deteriorating condition. Sure, he'd only lost an arm, and sure, even mortals recovered in time from such an injury. But Mackie's magical blade was working quickly, and by her estimation, he wouldn't make it through the night. I thought of Tripp's leg wound, festering like gangrene. Maybe Alex was lucky.

“He wants to see you,” she told me, brows raised over those full-moon eyes. “All of you.”

So we proceeded to his sickroom in a funeral march, spirits dampened, the silence weighty. Yet we found Alex sitting upright in bed, a meal of chicken and rice on a tray before him while candles burned around and above him like he was in a cage of flame.

“I understand the Tulpa and I now have something in common,” he said, glassy-eyed, but with enough bite to allow he knew how drugged he was…and that he would soon die. For now, though, it seemed he'd decided to feast.

And so we all did. With the candlelight casting shadows over the beaten floor, we pulled chairs to his bedside, using it as a table as we told tales of the full battle in Xavier's study and of in the stinking tunnels where the grays faced off against the Light. Roland and Gareth re-enacted particularly good blows, while Vincent fended them off with a plastic spork, pretending to be Mackie. When they settled, Oliver mentioned his surprise that Vanessa would stand up for me against Kimber. I shrugged, uncomfortable with talk of my old troop, and it wasn't long before the subject returned to Mackie and his rampage as they led him away from the mansion. There was also collective awe expressed at the injury he'd inflicted on the Tulpa's hand. What kind of magic could defeat the most magical being of all, a tulpa?

Alex was drinking as well, throwing back tequila and beer chasers faster than any of us, and why not? He didn't have to worry about the hangover. He howled with laughter, doubling over as Gareth mimicked the reactions of the Light when the grays rushed the tunnel in my defense.

Oliver, in particular, did an award-winning imitation of Warren's face as Carlos pinned him against the wall, and though Carlos professed not to be their leader, their affection and regard for him as such sat bare on each face.

I looked around at the roomful of outcasts and outlaws, awed how a group of people who were so powerless, and who had so little compared to those aboveground, could find joy in the smallest victory. Yet the feeling was addictive, probably because I too had been living in lack. So I smiled and, as I licked the warming beer from my lips, enjoyed the moment. We were like medieval warriors come back from war—Vikings anchoring in some great northern port, celebrated as heroes by our loved ones, and returning with stories of battle and adventure.

“To Tripp!” Alex yelled, and the others took up the toast, lauding a man who'd been a part of this rogue group for mere weeks. Carlos had tears in his eyes, and even Vincent sniffled in the corner, head tucked against his broad chest. They didn't see Tripp as separate from themselves, I realized. His struggle as an outcast, a rogue, was theirs…and so was mine.

It was how the agents of Light should have treated me. I sank back into my seat, trying to tuck the emotion away before it could taint the air—Alex deserved to celebrate in his last hours among friends—but once the despondency took hold, I couldn't shake it. Maybe because only weeks earlier I'd lain in bed as helpless as he. Maybe it was because my troop had never gathered to celebrate my battles and heroism and
life
.

Maybe I was drunk.

I picked up my bag, and mumbled something to Io—closest to the door—about the bathroom as I backed from the room. Then I grabbed an oil lantern, and as Carlos and I had done only a day earlier, exited the rogue lair to seek privacy upon the desert floor. This time it was night, and I was as alone as I felt, so when I looked at the sky, wounded with stars, tears welled.

I couldn't figure out why I felt so deflated as I wandered across the brutalized terrain, but I wanted to sit down in some radioactive crater and be swallowed up.

Instead I found what looked like a moon rock, though it'd probably once lived deep beneath this desert floor, and was as surprised to find itself sitting upon this ablated surface as I was. The lantern wobbled atop it, then steadied, and I got right to business, doing what I knew I'd come all the way out here to do. I pulled out the manual with Hunter on the cover. He was penciled in silhouette, a hulking figure outlined against the tunnel that would ferry him to another world. I flipped it open to where I'd left off and read the rest.

The story Tripp had told me was all there, so obvious in black and white that it made me wonder how I hadn't seen it before. Solange had put scales on all our eyes, I supposed. A too-pretty face could do that. But the real reason this manual was stripped of color was because Solange had moved through Hunter's life—or Jaden, as he was known then—like a Nordic winter: dark, cold, fierce, and relentless.

After they'd met as children, after Solange tried and failed to rectify that night's choice to let him live, and after becoming his lover instead…she decided to use him. Love him or not, he was Light and she was Shadow, which meant a child between them would be this world's prophesied savior: the Kairos. Of course, in a matriarchal society this person's mother would be exalted.

How ironic that to bring the child safely into the world, she had to leave it. The Light would want to destroy it, the Tulpa would use it, and Solange wanted the power solely for herself, and so she used Hunter one last time.

Entering Midheaven required payment—a third of an agent's soul…or all of a mortal's. The manual didn't say why she didn't use Jaden's soul—maybe she thought it too risky. He was too big, too strong. Maybe she really did love him in part. However, the other part stole the soul of a child
who'd trusted Jaden, using it to cross into Midheaven. She killed the innocent, escaped from everyone else, and had been ruling Midheaven in the way the mother of the real Kairos would—utter omnipotence.

Meanwhile Hunter had lived with the guilt and consequence of her betrayal, just as he must now be living with the consequence of helping me escape.

Don't ever return. She wants your power, your ability t… 
.

I glanced back down at the closed manual and rubbed a thumb over his profile, then closed my eyes and imagined Solange sucking on a sliver of his soul; cold and diamond-shaped, like a sparkling lozenge.

Then I took a deep breath, picked up the lantern and headed back to the bunker, shaking. Yes, it was cold, but that didn't bother me. If things went my way, I'd soon return to a realm where this cold, blasted patch of desert would be as dreamy as a day at Laguna Beach.

Because Midheaven wasn't done with me yet.

And after reading this manual, I wasn't done with it either.

 

I was guided back to the rogue bunker by another hurricane lamp. It was a beacon leading me closer, and though the night hid all but his outline, there was no question who stood there. Yet I was surprised to also find a bistro table set up right behind the cell's cavernous mouth, complete with two battered chairs and a softly fluttering tablecloth. Less surprising were the two shot glasses and half-full tequila bottle perched atop, and when Carlos caught me peering at the bottle's glass bottom, he laughed as heartily as he had when escaping the Light. “Not this time,
mi molcahete
. Not this time.”

I took a seat. “A candlelit dinner in the middle of a nuclear blast site. Carlos, you do know how to romance a girl.”

He pretended to flip back the tails of an invisible tuxedo
as he settled across from me. “I'm trying to make up for the state of the place. Maybe entice you to stay…”

I looked away as his voice trailed off. He thought I might want to run after being attacked by a tulpa, a madman with a soul blade, and the entire troop of Light in the same evening. Shows how well he knew me. Though I had to admit, a fresh start elsewhere sounded good. But that wasn't my life. I turned back to him. “Alex will die.”

Carlos inclined his head. “By morning at the latest.”

“Faster than Tripp.”

“A more severe wound. Plus, I suspect Harlan picked up some vital immunities during his time spent in Midheaven. One can't go through a heated kiln without being changed. Strengthened.”

He raised his glass for a toast, brows lifting meaningfully at me as well. I ignored that. I didn't feel any stronger for having been in Midheaven. That place had stripped me raw. I also, for once, ignored the drink.

“Will they stay long, do you think?” I asked Carlos after he'd sipped.

“Of course,” he said, jerking his head in the direction of the city. “They'll pace the barrier until morning, trying to figure out a way around it and into our hideout. They are stunned by the bright new knowledge of our existence. It upends the world as they knew it…along with your own timely revelations, of course.”

So he'd been in the tunnels long enough to hear about Hunter, I thought, gazing at the tequila. Well, it only made sense. I ran my index finger along the glass rim, dipping my finger into the golden spirit, but still didn't drink. “Did you know the Jaden Jacks story, Carlos? I mean, had you ever read about it in a manual or even heard the rumor before?”

He shook his head, and sipped. “The ways of the written word are mysterious,
weda
. As great a magic as any power we possess.”

“But why are some things in the manuals while others
aren't? The open knowledge that Hunter was really Jaden Jacks could have saved him from having to enter Midheaven.”

“Maybe,” Carlos said, with less care than I'd have liked. “Or it could have led to his death. You can only trust that such information is revealed in its heralded time.”

Just like life. I leaned back on the chair, parked on the desert floor. I was nothing special out here on the edge of a crater. Another speck of dust piled on top of the rest.

“For example,” Carlos said, breaking back into my thoughts. “Take a mother in possession of a child's biological makeup. Maybe she waits some time to tell the babe of her alcoholic uncle, or the cancer riding rampant over her mother's side. It doesn't determine a person's entire fate, but it certainly marks their life. Yet are they to worry of it before misery even visits them? Or are they meant to live well, making the best choices they can, no matter what is fated in the future?”

I could feel my emotions passing like storms in my expressions. Doubt and bitterness and anger all made appearances in sweeping succession. It made me want to hide my face in the tequila until my lips were numb. But there was something—someone—else I wanted more. “So you're saying it's for our own good?”

“I only
trust
that it's for our own good.”

“So what about now? The Light knows where you are. It won't be long before the Shadow does too.” Because Warren would let the secret out. The Shadow and Light were enemies, but rogue agents were a common one. A third party would upset the balance between the two warring factions, and the Tulpa wouldn't welcome that either.