Cheat the Grave (3 page)

“It's not mine,” I answered with clenched teeth.

“I thought you'd be taller,” he said, waving an envelope at me that was too pristine for hands with such gnarled knuckles. I wondered how he'd picked it up. I didn't even want to know how he went to the bathroom. But what he held was clear: the next clue on the treasure hunt.

Damn.

I didn't move to take it. He could have me pinned against the wall before I blinked, mask removed before I cried out, dead before I'd taken another breath, but I wasn't going to extend myself to him in any way. It was vital, I somehow knew, that I didn't do that.

“Warriors are supposed to have some height to them.”

The inky divots where his eyes should have been remained pinned on me, and I shuddered, feeling my nausea return. For a moment it looked like the darkness was spreading from his body, like an airborne stain. I shook my head. “I'm just a girl now.”

“Olivia?” Cher's concerned voice echoed up the stairwell. I swallowed hard. I did not want her back up there.

“Let me feel your fingers.” He reached out with his free hand, palm up, his fingers five branchless black trees angling in tangled growth from his nail beds.

“I don't know you,” I said, as an excuse not to touch him, not to extend or accept…not to reveal the smooth fingertips that would give away my past. My future lay somewhere else. Even if it turned out to be in the chest behind me, a coffin.

Cher's voice again. “Who are you talking to?”

I had to keep her down there. “Hold on! I'm coming.”

“You don't know me yet,” he corrected, slowly lowering his arm. The nails on his right hand clacked together. “But you will soon.”

And he flicked the envelope onto the landing, backed up—arm straight out to the side—and slammed the door shut before I registered his first movement. Another larger chunk of plaster fell at my feet, and I dove for the clue, and then the staircase as the entire ceiling creaked. He wasn't the creepiest thing I'd ever seen, but that's why I moved so quickly. I couldn't combat even the slightest form of creepy.

Once outside, I shook chunks of dust from my hair, sucking in deep gulps from the crisp winter air. Now shiv
ering in earnest, Cher sneezed next to me. I tilted my gaze to a boarded window, wondering if I only imagined seeing movement between the slats. Just in case, I kept the mask pressed to my face. Damn. Why'd I have to knock on that door?

“Oops. I guess we broke it.” Cher sniffled as the old neon sign sizzled and abruptly snapped off. The house sunk further into shadows, the darkness a quicksand, and I took another step back. I could
not
get sucked back into that world.

“That's okay. I've got the next clue. Let's just go.”

We scurried away at a fast clip, both happy to be away from the decaying house.

My glances around the hunchbacked streets were less furtive now than before. Whether I was just wired from the encounter with the psychic, or if we really were being followed, I waited until we found a brightly lit street corner without a prostitute on it to lower my mask and wipe my brow. That man had been expecting me, and as I'd never seen or met him before, it was unlikely he was working alone. Hopefully he would tell whatever allies he had that I refused their…what? Offering? Gift?

Meanwhile, Cher sneezed, pushed her boa feathers aside, and opened our next clue.

“Looks like a strip club,” she said, studying it.

“Good,” I sighed in relief, and turned toward Glitter Gulch and away from the house, its war chest, and its living skeleton. “I'm ready for something normal.”

 

It took four hours, and a mixture of happenstance and luck, but thrice more we found our baubles, and thrice more weapons were tucked behind or beneath or beside the awaiting adornment. Each time I imagined breath on my neck, and had to fight not to whirl. Each time I felt eyes in the shadows.

And each time I cursed under my breath. I managed to distract Cher twice by telling her to look out for the guides
handing us clues. I then ignored the conduits, and gingerly, hurriedly, picked up beads and bindis instead. Okay, so I paused to study the antiquated gun and its bubbling liquid vial bullets. And reaching for the saber with a firearm welded to its hilt was an involuntary reaction to such a fine piece of warfare. But by the time I spotted the cane with a pommel blade, Cher was over the fear she'd shown in the little shack of horrors, bored with the entire hunt, and sneezing uncontrollably in her sparkly dress. So despite the promise of a warm, tropical cruise, she only flicked an irritated glance at our fourth guide…thus catching sight of the last weapon before I could sweep up the studded bangles and shut the BMW's trunk.

Sneezing, she turned an accusing gaze on me. “What the hell is going on?”

I had no intention of telling her, and shot her Olivia's most stunning smile instead. She lifted a brow. I batted my lashes. She batted her own. I thought about lying, but even Cher wasn't likely to fall for something simple, and a complicated lie took too much time and energy. Not to mention you had to remember later what you'd lied about. What would happen, I wondered, narrowing my eyes, if I just told the truth?

You'd piss off any paranormal creature who might be lurking in the shadows
.

What the hell? I was kinda tired of being pissed off all by myself.

“Okay. It's like this. There are, like, these people who believe I'm the savior of a paranormal underworld based on the signs of the Zodiac. See, they think my real mother was Light and my father Shadow, which makes me both, and
that
makes me the Kairos.” I paused, but Cher only stared, and no one attacked me, so I continued talking. “Except it doesn't. See, I sacrificed all my powers ten weeks ago to save a mortal child's life, along with the entire Vegas population. So now I'm mortal, and re-engaging with that world, including all these weirdo weapons, would obvi
ously be very dangerous for me. So let's just pretend we didn't see them, okay?”

Cher remained still for almost a whole minute, model-perfect face characteristically blank. Then, with just as much seriousness as I'd shown, she sneezed and said, “I think I'm allergic to my boa.”

“Really?” Sympathetically, I linked my arm in hers as we headed back to the bus.

“I blew out my nose ring back there.” She sniffled. “You didn't even notice.”

“Oh, honey.”

She remained stiff, and for a moment I was afraid she was going to bring up the weapons again. “It's hard to be a diva when you're allergic to your boa.”

And as I murmured in sympathetic agreement, we donned our trinkets and masks and finally reboarded the party bus. To fanfare and music, but also to discover we weren't the first team back. Terry had beat us to it, reportedly mouthing the word “yacht” like a guppy gumming air right before he passed out. Bummed about the loss, Cher wrapped her boa around his neck, which I loosened as soon as she headed for the bar.

Good, I thought with a relieved sigh. Maybe alcohol would make her believe she'd imagined my explanation of Zodiac warriors and a woman who became a mortal to save the city. I certainly could use a drink after safely traversing the night. With any luck it would also blot out the knowledge of a man with a dead forest of fingernails and unwanted omens.

One, I knew, who waited inside a house of shadows for my return.

The other teams returned by midnight, exhausted from the hunt and disappointed by their loss. Those who could be easily bought by free booze and food—the majority of the partiers, it turned out—were appeased by the sight of the newly arrived caterers, though a few poor sports flounced off in sore-footed pique. I never understood that response to disappointment. If you didn't have a yacht before and you still didn't have one, what had you really lost?

Shaking my head as Suzanne hurried off the bus to coax them back, I turned back to Cher. “Who planted the clues for the treasure hunt?”

She was holding up a hand mirror as she fiddled with a replacement nose ring, while sitting third in line for a real piercing. Now that she'd taken off her boa, she'd returned to her healthy, mildly blitzed self. “What? Oh, one of Arun's people. He's got an army of them apparently.”

“Apparently?”

A squeal sounded behind us, and she slid along the velvet bench, still gazing at her reflection. “Well, I've never actually seen any of them. They're like elves. They work
in the night. Even when I stay overnight at the compound, my cocktails appear out of nowhere, or I'll enter the dining room to find my food set, and still steaming. But his servants? They're nothing but shadows. It's kinda creepy…in a decadent sort of way.”

No, it was kinda creepy in a
creepy
sort of way. Was someone from my old life using Arun and his wealth to get close to
my
mortals? The coincidence was certainly uncanny, though I couldn't think of who it might be. As far as I knew, only the agents of Light were aware of the connection between Cher's family and me, and they were charged with protecting all mortals. Besides, if the Shadow agents knew, these bubbly socialites would already be sleeping in a shallow grave.

Still, my mind winged back to the feeling of being stalked while on the scavenger hunt. I looked back at Cher for signs of concern, but she was busy tousling her hair. I might have to warn her of impending danger later, but I decided against it now. She needed to be steady for her piercing.

Glancing over, I saw Terry holding statue-still, clearly waiting for a new earring. All I could see of the piercer was his hands and forearms as they rubbed alcohol over the area, but Terry was leaning forward into the light, his face ashen with anticipation.

“Are you sure you want to do this? Terry looks like he's going to pee himself.”

“Terry's a wuss.” Still peering into the mirror, she gave her newly tousled hair an experimental toss. “I have my Momma's strong constitution.”

I thought of Suzanne running after a handful of spoiled debutantes, all huffy because someone didn't hand them a yacht. It made me want to order her into therapy where someone could talk to her about being a chronic people pleaser.

“I mean my real Momma,” Cher said, catching my look and wincing in return. At least she recognized the disorder.
“She wrote me letters when she found out she was dying. Loads of them filled with all sorts of advice. I still have them.”

“Wow.” Cher's birth mother had passed away around the time Cher hit double digits, when a girl would need a mother most. Her father met Suzanne not long after, but because it'd been a May-December romance, he too had since passed. In all the years since, it'd been Cher and Suzanne going it alone, more girlfriends than mother and daughter, with Olivia a steady and welcome third wheel.

Slowly, Cher nodded to herself. “She thought of all the things I'd most need to know—the names of the best plastic surgeons in town, her personal shopper's home number—and wrote them all down. My father accidentally stored them with her belongings, so I didn't find them until recently.”

“What a wonderful gift.” Why couldn't my mother have left me with a treasure trove worth of knowledge and advice? I could have used a straightforward lesson on paranormal espionage and politics. “You're very lucky.”

A high-pitched squeal sounded as Terry's earlobe came under fire. Cher glanced back and gulped, her Momma's constitution getting a test-drive. “Guess it's time,” she said as a pasty-faced Terry wobbled past. The bus wasn't even moving.

“Want me to come with?” I asked as Cher shot him a finger wave.

“Accompanying one's best friend in all things that will eventually be attributed to a misspent youth is in the BFF contract. You know that.”

“I misplaced my copy.” I said, but held out my hand.

“I'll send you another.”

We strode to the bus's dark back corner with as much boldness as we could while holding hands. The piercer was reclined, sucking back an entire bottle of water like he'd just run a marathon. Cher's brows pinched as she took in his scuffed boots, workman's jeans, and shiny black vest,
but he didn't note it from beneath the low brim of his Stetson. My guess was that he came from one of the rougher ink parlors, and I whispered as much to Cher. “He probably has a name like Tank or Bruise or Bomb.”

We giggled and she settled in the L-shaped corner. When I dropped down next to her, the piercer raised his head and my smile dropped like a stone.

“Hello, Archer.”

Harlan Tripp leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees and cracked his knuckles. I blinked twice, my mind needing an extra moment to catch up as I stared at the rogue Shadow agent I'd both mocked and left frying in another world.

Trapped there,
I corrected, swallowing hard. His body set to a slow burn in a world closer to earth's core than this one. I wouldn't have recognized him as Shadow if we hadn't met before, but knew full well a charred skeleton lurked beneath his exterior of flesh, as did breath so rancid it could billow from hell's belly itself. I couldn't smell it now, but memory alone had my palms sweating.

My first impulse was to throw myself in front of Cher. My second was to run…though realistically I couldn't save either of us. Tripp could catch me, kill me, without breaking a sweat. Even a rogue, stripped of troop status, could blow a hole through a mortal's life with a rap of his fist…and Tripp was famous for loving to do just that.

I was fucked.

“Can't say I like whatcha done with the place,” he said conversationally, motioning to the fat painter's splats of neon outside the bus, like he saw it everyday. Telltale neon bulged from the desert floor, but beyond that there was little that remained of the Vegas he'd left. As proof, he said, “Was that a fucking pirate ship settin' anchor in the middle of the Strip?”

“The light show's a nice touch, though,” Cher said, oblivious to the tension between us.

He ignored her. “Even the grand ones—the Trop, Fla
mingo, Caesar's—they all look different. And what the fuck did you do with the Hacienda? And the little Glass Pool Inn?” Tripp still looked hard and mean, but also confused.

I shrugged…though I was melancholic about that one's destruction, too. “Eighteen years is a long time to be gone,” I said stiffly. “Though not quite long enough.”

Tripp shook his head. “Looks like a new Vegas got built up over the old.”

“Can't stop progress.” I shrugged.

“Can't stop much,” he agreed.

“How'd you get out?”

Tripp's feral grin returned. “What you should be asking yourself is if I'm the only one who did.”

No, I'd ask
him
, I thought, relaxing a bit. It looked like he was just here to talk.

“Now git up.”

Or not.

“Let me put it this way, Archer,” he said when I didn't move. “Throw up the sponge now, and I'll murder you gently.”

Despite the deafening beats of my heart, I managed a sarcastic drawl. “Harlan, you sure talk mighty funny.”

His sharp, black eyes darted from me to Cher. “Eighteen years of frying like bacon has made me a mite impatient. You'll come…or she will.”

“Silly boy. I don't come for just anyone.” The retort was classic Cher, though her voice shook as she spoke. No wonder Terry had been white-faced while having his lobe pierced. A mortal facing a Shadow was like a rat facing a hungry snake. Even if you'd never seen one before, you instinctively knew which side of the predator/prey relationship you were on.

Tripp knew it too. “Fine.”

One moment I was seated, the next I'd been hauled up, neck trapped beneath an unyielding forearm. “You still stink,” I managed before my eyesight grew spotty. I knew
he heard me over Cher's screams because his clinch tightened. Would he really kill me in front of all these people?

He loves to blow holes through mortal lives.

Yes, he would.

The partiers nearest us took up Cher's chorus, a call-and-response of ascending fear. Terry flat passed out again. At least I think it was him. I was busy blacking out, so didn't note the finer details. Unlikely relief came in the form of Cher launching herself onto Tripp's back. His grip on my neck loosened enough for me to suck in one great breath before he resumed an even tighter noose as he angled from side to side. I let that last, lovely bit of air go in a futile warning. “Let go, Cher!”

He could dislodge her by throwing her through a window, squeezing her neck until her arteries popped, caving her head in against the minibar. Sure enough, after another second a thwack sounded before a soft limb fell into view, and Cher sprawled unconscious on the bench beside me. I had no breath left to scream.

The bus swayed, partygoers scrambling for the door in full riot. Tripp surprised me by stumbling as well, before body-slamming me onto the hard floor. My limbs were numbing but I still felt my face eat rubber as his full weight dropped atop mine. Pain arrowed through my right knee, tendons stretched and threatening to snap. Then he twisted again, loosening his hold on my neck. I choked on the fresh air, the soft tissue there already bruised and swollen. My larynx had either shifted to a place it shouldn't have or was missing altogether. The pain brought tears to my eyes even as the oxygen worked to clear my vision.

Then screeching metal joined the panicked voices, and the bus rocked harder. I was still trapped beneath Tripp's arm but glanced up to see the metal rooftop peeling open like an aluminum can. Tripp's partner, was my first thought, because such bold destruction was the mark of a Shadow. Then he cursed, and my hopes soared.

One of the Light? A former ally watching over me after all?

The thought gave me strength, and I decided to buy myself time for whatever they had in mind. I whipped my head back and his nose crunched beneath its weight. Another curse, then his forearm tensed in the tightest grip yet. My vision deteriorated into stop-motion, but I made out three terrifying things in the next few seconds:

A skeleton's face, wrapped in worn, leather skin.

The skeleton's rotted grin and bright, curved blade.

A scissored cry as the skeleton leapt.

Tripp yelled, terrified, but sunk one booted foot into the falling man's middle. The blade arced, and another scream followed, sounding red. Then there was more frantic jostling as Tripp fled with me, faster than a Chevy on drag night. On his way out, though, he thoughtlessly rapped my head into one of those sexy Lucite poles. Embarrassment flooded me as I thought,
Death by stripper pole
. Then I was out.

 

I'd been knocked unconscious enough times to be intimately familiar with the staggered return of hearing, the touch-and-go awareness of feeling returning to limbs, and the eventual need to open eyes and regain bearings…whether one wanted to or not.

“What fresh hell is this?” I murmured, even before I'd peeked. You were never bound to wake to something good after a violent kidnapping.

Despite a wave of dizziness, I recognized Tripp's stocky, hunched outline, though his back was to me, his desk lamp angled low. He didn't bother looking up.

Probably because of the Boy Scout/bondage thing he had going on. I tested my restraints, unsurprised when all I could do was tense my muscles. Overkill in restraining a mortal, but then Harlan Tripp wasn't known for his generous nature…and he probably didn't yet know I was mortal. I certainly wasn't going to clue him in.

Studying the narrow glass surfaces around me, I realized I lay atop an identical one like some pending sacrifice. I wasn't a virgin, though, so I reserved hope for escape. We were in a darkened jewelry store with bright surfaces and tiny custom cushions filling every available space in the glass interiors. I didn't know how Tripp had circumvented the store's alarm—the entire store was a vault, thus the jewels still safe in their cases—but there he was, relaxed as could be behind the jeweler's desk. I didn't ask what he was going to do with the cutters.

“Diamonds really are forever,” I finally quipped in the elongated silence, though the scratch in my voice belayed the forced tone. “But if you're going to choke me, please use the emeralds.”

“Don't tempt me…
Olivia.
”

My purse was open next to him, my identification spread haphazardly over the desk. So he knew who I was, big deal. I was already mortal and bound like a rodeo calf. He didn't need my cover identity to kill me, just a reason and the flick of his wrist.

“How's the nose?” I asked cheerfully.

“Already healed. Bitch.”

Sticks and stones, I thought, but stayed silent…and wary. It'd been weeks since I'd seen him, though to him it might have felt like years. Time moved differently in Midheaven. But on that first meeting Tripp had referred to the place as “Mid-hell,” and I couldn't argue that. Midheaven drained a man's soul energy, using it to feed the desires of the chosen few—all women, and all with delusions of goddesshood.

I'd only been trapped there a short time, but Midheaven had served as Tripp's prison for years. He'd fled there as a rogue agent, banished by his leader, but it was the classic case of jumping from the pan into the fire. He'd attempted escape before, only to find someone had locked the entrance from the other side. So…“How did you get here?”