The Neon Graveyard

by Vicki Pettersson

  “I did not fall asleep.” She lowered her chin and I got a glimpse of the woman I better knew. Though employed as a housekeeper, she’d never possessed a subservient attitude. In addition to being a supernatural bitch, she was a petty counter of slights, she hoarded information to use against others later, and she was obsessively proud. “I knew everything that went on in that house! Or learned of it all, sooner or later.”

  “Mostly later.” I muttered, and Oliver—who’d leaped in front of me with that sprinter’s grace—growled a warning. I checked my attitude. It was the gray’s asses that were on the line here.

  “Even belated knowledge can be deadly, Joanna,” Lindy shot back, again offering up that brittle smile. Yet she still didn’t lunge. The other Shadows ringed us like the walls of the Colosseum. So why weren’t they pressing their advantage?

  Then, spotting movement, I flicked a glance over their heads. When I returned my gaze to Lindy, I offered up a secretive smile of my own. “So true.”

  A Shadow cursed, startling the others, drawing their heated focus away from me. They quickly spotted what I had, a second ring of grays as unexpected as Highland mist as they appeared over the cracked desert terrain. Gil and his crew, who hadn’t waited for Carlos’s signal after all.

  The look on Lindy’s long, sallow face was priceless, and I beamed as her gaze darted from one gray to the next in a silent, stunned count.

  “There can’t be that many,” she muttered, but she was still counting. Shadows could have only twelve agents in their troop—one for each star sign on the Western Zodiac. But as outcasts, grays weren’t bound by that law. “It’s a trick.”

  I made a considering noise in my throat. “Then it’s a deadly one.”

  And Carlos dropped his hand. The grays snapped like bands into three distinct flanks, though surprisingly, Foxx remained behind with me. The Shadow agents all had conduits, while the grays only drew mortal guns, so while we couldn’t kill them, we’d certainly give them pause.

  “You dare?” Lindy’s enraged snarl was for us all, though her eyes were back on me. “You would fight us? Take us on for some worthless, trampy, troublesome mortal?”

  “Don’t call me worthless,” I muttered, slowly moving my hands to my pockets.

  “Fine. Hang with her.” That word choice again. That smile again. “Die with her.”

  And the Shadows swarmed. I dropped to the ground, fumbling at my cargo pocket. The soul blade was fearsome, but it was a close-range weapon. Against a Shadow, I’d be dead before I could swipe. Finally I withdrew a gun with liquid vials for bullets.

  Softening my vision as Carlos had taught, I let the sky, the rock face, and all the figures around me—both those moving and those holding their ground—blur into a two-dimensional landscape, like a photo on the wall. We’d practiced this on the pancake terrain of Frenchman’s Flat, where our cell was hidden. Thank God too. If not, I’d never have seen the breach in my wall of allies, the sawed-off javelin pointed my way. I fired into that blank space, flying backward at the gun’s report, and heard a scream slap back. It was accompanied by the scent of charcoal and hot bile. Even I could scent the Shadows this close.

  “Again!” Oliver yelled, and I found another hole. The grays were playing chicken with my weapon, having to trust I wouldn’t drive a projectile through their backs. I tried not to think about the even bigger hole that would appear if I did, and fired again.

  Another breath of vomit hit me, this one wheezed from the chest of someone too surprised and slow to avoid the liquid bullet. The Shadows stuttered. Only seconds had passed, yet they suddenly realized someone here had the ability to wield a conduit. Unfortunately that somebody was stuck behind a group of grays who couldn’t.

  So why weren’t the Shadows using their conduits?

  “They’re running!” Wonder threaded Gil’s words as he shifted and gave chase.

  I didn’t dare lift my head, instead focusing on the holes of bright blue sky. But the circle of men protecting me loosened and, like autumn leaves, they too began falling away.

  “Go for Harrison!” Carlos yelled. “He’s hit!”

  So that’s who screamed, I thought, as Roland shot forward, leaving only his reply behind. “Hate that fucker . . .”

  Alone within moments, I’d have backpedaled like a crab if there was anywhere to go. But as battle cries burst like invisible bombs in the air, all I could do was make myself as small as possible, guard my mortality, and wait to see who—Shadow or gray—returned for me first.

  2

  I didn’t have to wonder for long. Foxx must have been ordered back, because he yanked me into a sitting position, then turned his back, alert, while the other grays gave in to their lust for the chase. It wasn’t often that rogue agents got a chance to flex their offensive muscles. Defense was the heart of our existence. Yet even with Foxx parked in front of me, there was suddenly too much space. I could choke on all this air, I thought, my panic attack hitting belatedly. Were it not for Foxx’s chiding earlier words, I might even have given in to the unsettling roll threatening to overtake my stomach. Instead I swallowed hard against it and kept both hands on the antiquated gun. He turned only briefly, eyeing me with narrow-eyed incredulity.

  “So you can really do it? Hold anyone’s conduit?” He hadn’t yet been with us for the practice sessions, and his look questioned my nod as he scanned the perimeter again for Shadows. “Even if they’re alive?”

  Every rogue asked me the same thing. I wasn’t sure why I could handle the magical weapons when no other rogue could. For them it was like holding a live wire that’d misfire, malfunction, and generally act like a two-year-old hopped up on soda and Pixy Stix, though with more ominous, painful results. But not me. I could even handle those the Shadows left behind.

  “Even if they’re holding the other end,” I said, voice tight.

  “Then how about taking this one,” said a voice, rising victoriously behind me. Gil leaped to the rock face, the Shadow troop’s Virgo, Harrison, wedged into the crook of his right arm like a walnut in a nutcracker. The other hand held Harrison’s black leather jacket . . . wrapped around a serrated poker.

  “Hello, Mr. Lamb,” I said, finding my feet and a smile as Gil dumped him in front of me. Harrison lunged, but the other grays were swarming again, and surrounded the injured Shadow, fourteen to one. Oliver pushed him into our circle’s center where he ricocheted off Vincent before falling to his knees. I glanced up, squinting as I searched for movement, but the only thing surrounding us was that same blue sky.

  Harrison was alone.

  I glanced back down. “You know what happens next, right?”

  “Sure,” he said, trying for nonchalance, though his voice shook through the syllable. It tended to happen when faced with one’s final living moments. I’d been there enough to know. “Question is, do you?”

  “Of course. I kill you with your own weapon,” I said, just to see his Adam’s apple bob, “and in doing so gain the power to walk this world as an immortal.”

  And render my frail humanity a nonissue. Then I’d use the temporary power to enter another world. A woman’s world.

  “The aureole won’t last forever.” He tried to lift his chin, but I could tell the thought depressed him. He probably wished his death would amount to more than providing me with a short span of immortality. I wished the protective magic would last forever too, but alas. You took what you could get.

  “No, just twelve hours. Long enough.” And it couldn’t happen soon enough. His allies might return.

  I unwrapped his poker from within the folds of his jacket, keeping my movements sharp and steady, aware that all eyes were trained on me. I took an extra second to glance Foxx’s way; he shifted when he saw me looking. Then, as fast and hard as mortal strength would allow, I speared Harrison through his soft belly.

  A pained grunt, a collective groan as the decaying scent of his stewing organs was released into the air, and Harrison went limp. I waited for the power of t
he aureole to overtake me, closing my eyes when it did not, trying to remember how the magic felt as it’d washed over me the previous two times I’d managed it. But there was nothing, and at Harrison’s soft chuckle, I opened my eyes again.

  “The aureole is a great magic,” he said, tucking his hands behind his head as if lounging at a resort pool. The poker lodged in his middle wobbled, looking odd and causing a wince, but nothing more. “But do you want to know what my favorite kind of magic is?” he asked, grin spreading. “Sleight of hand.”

  And he yanked the poker from his center.

  “Shit!”

  By the time I’d been thrown to the ground, the blow was a memory. Carlos’s weight kept the knocked breath from reentering my body, and I groaned to let him know it. Shifting, his own reply was pained. “It’s not a conduit.”

  And he yanked the weapon from his side.

  His speed saved me. How ironic would it be to survive nearly a year and a half in the supernatural underworld, only to get taken out by a mortal weapon? I sat up, still reeling from the protective blow, shaking and confused. “What the hell was that?”

  Harrison cocked his head, the only part of his body visible beneath the mound of grays who’d tackled him. “Something that can flay you to the bone, but has no effect on me whatsoever.”

  Carlos, too, was holding and handling the poker to absolutely no ill effect.

  Why on earth would Harrison carry a mortal weapon instead of his conduit? I shook my head, trying to clear it, but disbelief ruled, despite what I could so plainly see with my own eyes. “You’d never go far without your conduit.”

  Dirt smeared his face, blood caked his shirt—already drying and disappearing, his body healing fast—and still I saw the stark nakedness stamping his gaze. As unbelievable as it was, he really didn’t have his conduit.

  “You’re not the only one trying something new,” he said, bitterness carved into each word. The false conduit had been a neat trick, but it was spent now, and the only one up his sleeve.

  Carlos straightened, heart-shaped lips pursed as he stroked the slim line of his mustache with forefinger and thumb. “The Tulpa ordered you out on the streets without your weapons?”

  Harrison jerked his chin defiantly. “He knows what you’re trying to do.”

  Carlos and I looked at each other, my own concern reflected in his dark eyes. If that was true, we were screwed. How would I ever gain temporary immortality if I couldn’t kill Shadows with their own weapons?

  Despite being supine on the ground and recovering from a chest wound, Harrison began to laugh. “You really don’t get it, do you? The Tulpa doesn’t care that you’re his daughter. Not any more than he cares that I’m his agent.” That bitterness leaped into his face again, strangling his laughter. “All he cares about is power.”

  He hiccupped, shook his head, then dropped it and fell silent. Feeling Harrison’s surrender, Vincent rose from straddling him, and pressed a boot to his chest, while Carlos and I went to confer.

  “What do you think?”

  Carlos shrugged. “No reason for him to lie.”

  No. Harrison knew he was going to die.

  “It’s clever,” Carlos went on. “We need to turn an agent’s personal weapon against them in order for you to gain the aureole. If the only agents in the valley carrying conduits are agents of Light, then it forces us to go after them.”

  I shook my head, and took a step back. My old troop may have turned their back on me, but I couldn’t kill one of them in cold blood. I couldn’t even see doing it in the heat of battle. We’d shared meals and laughter and tears together as allies. Maybe they could easily forget that, but I could not.

  Carlos rubbed his hands over his eyes, his face and head. “So what do we do? Change tactics? Wait for the Shadows to take up arms again and find us?”

  I jerked my head, hand automatically rising to my belly, which was happening more and more these days. “No time. Besides, I’d rather be hunter than prey.”

  Carlos shook his head, his shoulders relaxing, his gaze softening to a liquid caramel. “I keep thinking this baby will make you softer, amiga, more vulnerable. If anything, it’s been the opposite.”

  I looked at him for a long moment, dangerous in black, which matched his hair, his mood, but somehow, never those shining, expressive eyes. Sometimes his unwavering belief in me was what made me feel most vulnerable. I cleared my throat. “Weird. I’m, like, famous for my soft side.”

  Vincent’s harsh, raised voice broke into our conversation. “What are you doing?”

  He was straddling Harrison again, knees pinned against the Shadow’s shoulders, one great hand circling his throat. Harrison tried on another laugh, but it came out strangled beneath all that compressed weight. “Just lying here,” he rasped. “Trapped beneath you.”

  “No, you’re doing something.” Vincent said, and Carlos and I stepped closer. “Don’t forget, I was a Shadow too.”

  “What’s to do?” Harrison asked, but his eyes were sparkling as he gazed up at him. “No. I’m all yours. Take me away.”

  I glanced up at the bland sky. The city was visible in the distance, a fuzzy mirage of spearing, glinting buildings, but that was all. Yet I glanced back down at Harrison with narrowed eyes. “Pick him up.”

  He was too relaxed, too resigned. Too still.

  “Where is it?” I asked, as he hung like a rag doll between Vincent and Gil. The original leg wound, where I’d struck him through the wall of protective grays, oozed freely. Harrison only stared past me, and through me when I shifted.

  “Where is it?” I repeated, my voice stiff and low as I took out the gun I’d originally shot him with and pointed it at his other leg. His jaw clenched, but he said nothing. Carlos, though, was immediately by my side.

  “What?”

  “In your gut?” I asked Harrison, angling the gun’s barrel up. Then I lifted it higher, letting it trail his skin just enough to make him shiver. “Your throat, maybe? Your fucking brain?”

  Planting myself directly in front of him, I forced him to finally look at me. “Where,” I asked coldly, “would the Tulpa put a tracking device in one of his own agents?”

  Harrison closed his eyes, a smile rising wide upon his face. Vincent sucker-punched his kidney, but that wouldn’t help. We’d get nothing more out of Harrison today, or ever.

  I looked back at the sky. Levitating Shadow agents were an impressive show of their side’s increasing power, but the Tulpa could actually fly. So if this smug fucker had a tracking device somewhere in his body—and the other Shadow agents had already reported back to their leader—it wasn’t going to be long before Daddy Dearest made an appearance.

  I put a hand on Harrison’s shoulder. “You can stop smiling now.”

  “Don’t tell me how to die,” he said, jerking away from my touch. Vincent and Gil, a good degree less gently, forced him back to stillness. “Just make it fast.”

  “Don’t tell me how to kill.”

  I dropped the gun to the ground, and while his gaze followed it, pulled out my soul blade and plunged it through the bulging blue artery in his neck. He screamed as the poison of countless trapped souls attacked his bloodstream, while every gray around me flinched. I twisted the blade, eliciting another wild howl. Someone gagged behind me. They could smell agony and death in the blade, as easily as gangrene in a Ziploc baggie.

  Harrison was too heavy for me to hold, and since Vincent and Gil had both taken two full steps away from the olfactory destruction, I fell with him, collapsing atop to yank out the blade, before plunging it in again, quickening his death, taking care to miss bone. It made things easier on us both.

  When I finally stood again, my knife dripped blood, its handle griddle-hot in my palm. I didn’t have the aureole, but Harrison’s soul had been pulled into my blade, so there was no energy for the Tulpa to track. Wiping its edge clean against my pants, I safely sheathed it again, and turned to face the others.

  Gareth, our youngest,
was grinning. “Still wondering if she’s yellow, Foxx? ’Cuz you look a little green.”

  But Oliver’s breath hitched next to him, his gaze fastened on the sky, same as Foxx. “It’s not her. It’s him.”

  The furied scream hit us like a whip, cracking in the air around us, and making the ground shake. I pivoted to find a speck, no larger than a bullet, soaring over Vegas’s horizon. Carlos, Milo, and Fletcher all grabbed me before I could curse, and we all did the only thing possible with the Tulpa bulleting our way. We ran.

  A tulpa was a person, a being imagined into existence through the strength and will of an extremely powerful and focused mind. Think of Buddhists lying for hours on a cold, marble floor without so much as twitching a muscle. Think of monks dedicating every waking moment to training their minds into single-tasked submission. That was the kind of person and focus required to birth a tulpa into being.

  But the Tulpa was more than a mere thought-form. Once he’d gained a physical body and enough power, he’d loosed himself from the tethers of his creator’s mind, and taken on free will. And what he’d willed was to rule over what he saw as the most powerful paranormal organization in his dusty, desert birthplace, the Shadow side of the Zodiac.

  Yet my mother had killed his creator before the Tulpa had been gifted with a proper name, and naming something was what really gave it a place in this world. Unfortunately she’d also had to get up close and personal with the Tulpa to do so, which unexpectedly landed her knocked up with me.

  And I thought my pregnancy had been a surprise.

  So while the Tulpa had extraordinary powers—like the ability to alter every aspect of his appearance, and mind control over mortals—many of those selfsame strengths spoke to a limited strength. The constant morphing into any physical form actually underscored his inability to manifest permanently in the world. His managed control of mortal minds only showed that he couldn’t manage agents, outside of those Shadows he ruled. Limits meant weaknesses. Weaknesses meant he could be killed. We just needed to figure out how.