The Neon Graveyard

by Vicki Pettersson

  Later, though. Right now we were busy running for our lives.

  Milo—wiry and quicker than the others—was carrying me, which I hated. Bouncing and backward, I risked raising my head but wished I hadn’t. The bullet-sized speck was now a rocket, the Tulpa’s hard, pointed expression clearly visible. I didn’t know how many miles were left until we reached the boundary he couldn’t cross, but it was too many. As if sensing it, the Tulpa jerked up, head and body tilting slightly, before launching himself forward with a renewed sense of purpose . . . right toward me.

  I cursed, and Milo found another burst of speed. The fleeing bodies and labored breathing of the other rogues briefly dropped behind me, then Milo finally slowed. We made it, I thought, as Milo settled me on my feet. We were safe on the other side of the boundary only rogues could cross. I smiled gratefully into his dark opal eyes, struck with the sudden urge to kiss his black, bald head. He smiled back, just as grateful.

  But Neal Saito wasn’t as lucky.

  The Tulpa struck like a tornado, and Neal screamed, reaching toward the rest of us, toward safety, as he was plucked from the ground.

  “Oh God,” I whispered, taking a step forward. Milo stopped me with one hand, so I knew the boundary was close.

  “So. There really are quite a few of you,” the Tulpa said conversationally, touching down softly, Neal scruffed in his right hand. “I was going to have my troop flogged for lying.”

  Gone was the smooth, unlined skin I’d last seen him wearing. Absent too was the colorless hair and long unmarred limbs. Instead ashen gray skin covered a hooknose and hairless skull, where ears rose into spearing horns. Talons the length of my middle finger made his wide right hand look deformed, though his left—victim of the blade I now carried at my side—was made harmless by a black glove. Unfortunately it was the right hand that had Neal, and he was pierced like he was hanging in a slaughterhouse.

  I tore my gaze away from Neal’s pained expression and forced myself to meet eyes that glowed like hot coals even in the full day’s light. I’d once had eyes like that. It was the only thing I didn’t miss about not having powers.

  “Aren’t you going to ask how I’ve been?” he said in a smoky voice, the corners of his mouth curving into arrows. He’d told me once that this appearance was a mask, but now I knew it for a lie. Who would choose to have veined spikes rising from their back? “What I’ve been up to?”

  “We already know,” Carlos answered flatly.

  “I doubt that.” Head pivoting my way, his brow quirked like a dart, his every expression honed. “Curious to take a guess, daughter?”

  He studied my short black bob, which was new, and my Playmate body, which was not. Though I preferred my original lean, athletic form, I hadn’t had the time or inclination to rid myself of the appearance I’d been forced to don upon entering the Zodiac world. I’d made peace with that, though. I no longer saw weakness in Olivia’s feminine form. Besides, my pregnancy would change me again yet.

  Providing, of course, I survived the length of it.

  So my birth father and I stared at each other across the invisible barrier, neither liking what we saw. His monstrous strength made me hope I’d spent more time in my mother’s gene pool. My mortal weakness probably had him hoping the same.

  “What you’ve been doing?” I finally said, summoning hubris from my position of safety. Maybe, in concentrating his ire on me, he’d forget about Neal. “Probably forging chaos in the black smithy of your soul. But . . .” I snapped my fingers. “That’s right. You don’t have a soul.”

  The Tulpa’s brows cut low, and he carelessly flicked out his right index finger. Neal screamed and grabbed at his face. I decided to hold my tongue.

  The Tulpa made no such resolution. “Come.”

  His mind pulled me forward. I felt its drag, his will trying to exert itself over mine, and knew any other mortal would find it irresistible. I’d seen the robotic response his suggestions elicited, an impulse so strong it overrode confusion and fear so that one inexplicably found oneself doing his bidding. Agents could resist it—the only movement on this side of the line was Fletcher and Milo inching closer together—but as a mortal I shouldn’t have been able to. Carlos believed I possessed a natural immunity as the magical creature’s daughter.

  And then there was Neal. Dangling like a hooked worm, and even with pain threatening to overtake his mind, he still managed a small shake of his head. He didn’t want me crossing that line, no matter what the Tulpa did to him. I blew out a hard breath and returned my gaze to the monster holding him. “No.”

  “Worth a try.” The Tulpa shrugged.

  His arm elongated unnaturally, the flesh extending like another joint was hidden inside. Neal rose higher in the air, and even the seven-foot creature gazed up at him. “You were once Light. I can smell it on you, though it’s now faint, like dried herbs. What’s your name, young man?”

  “Fuck you,” Neal managed, though his face was caught in a grimace. It was a look repeated in empathy, if not intensity, on the thirteen faces around me. Vincent even made a move forward, but the Tulpa’s black-eyed gaze halted him in his tracks.

  “Well, unfortunately for Fuck You,” the Tulpa went on, with a bland nod, “there’s a much more powerful law at work here.” And now he turned back to me.

  “See, enemies are one thing. You expect them to stab you in the back, to stab you in the front, and you don’t even call it a betrayal.” He shifted quickly, and a barbed nail caught Neal just beneath his shoulder. Crying out, he arched his back. Carlos made a pained sound to the right of me. “See? An enemy’s strike? Why, it’s practically the most truthful thing that can lie between two people.

  “Yet former allies? People who were once of the same breed, the same pack? Those you once trusted to have your back, whom you invested time and secrets in, and maybe even a bit of that fair emotion called love?” He drew Neal close, patted him none too gently on the head with the gloved hand, then lifted him even higher. Neal’s body swayed with the movement, agony lacing his moan. The Tulpa merely raised his voice to be heard. “Well, those are the betrayals that hit the hardest. A rift between enemies is nothing personal, after all. But a mishandling of friendship, kinship, loyalty? Why, that’s nothing but personal.”

  Though Neal was the one pierced above him, the verbal jab was for me. Everyone had read the manuals documenting my poor treatment by the Light I’d trusted. Yet I’d since been accepted by others—I’d accepted myself—so the Tulpa couldn’t hurt me with that now.

  Carlos attempted to redirect the conversation. “None of the grays, even our former Shadows, ever belonged to you.”

  “They’re all mine.”

  “Not on this side of the line.” Carlos said, stepping forward.

  “Well, Fuck You didn’t make it, did he?” And as the Tulpa held Neal’s body straight to the side, he closed his eyes, and fell completely still.

  “What’s he doing?” I heard Foxx whisper.

  “He’s in a trance,” Vincent said, his voice a low rumble next to me.

  Gareth stepped up to the other side. “Or he fell asleep.”

  “No,” I said softly, though they were both nearly right. I withdrew my gun, cocked it, and stepped as close to the invisible boundary as I dared. “It’s a lesson.”

  Neal, sensing the odd stillness, squinted over at us, saw my stance, my new weapon, and winced. He blinked once, a flash of gratitude and good-bye, before his entire body began shaking.

  The howling hit us first, scratchy growls and snaps ferried across the desert floor on an unseen wind. The coyotes themselves appeared from nowhere, rising from the desert floor, made from the sand. They blazed over the selfsame terrain, a half dozen in all—dusty and craggy, gritty bodies swirling with debris, the thorns from tumbleweeds comprising their ribs, sandstone chips forming their teeth. Their snarls were the sound of winter wind howling over the desert, though rolled up and rounded off in snapping syllables of fury.

  Neal m
ade no move to defend himself as the six beasts drew close, and at first I thought it was because he wanted it over quickly. My second thought was that he trusted me to put him out of his misery. But then I realized the Tulpa had drawn back, arm still outstretched, barbed fingers still splayed, his muscles tensed as he gradually forced Neal to arch back, exposing belly and arteries and neck. The death he’d manifested would be fast, but he was going to make sure it wasn’t painless.

  Somehow—despite the horror in the act, the terror at seeing those dust devils barreling our way, and the fear that hadn’t yet settled from my own frenzied flight through the desert—I managed to lift my gun, steady my sights on the chest of my ally gray, and fire four clean shots into his core.

  Neal jolted with each—it was fast, but it was still a death—and someone cried out behind me. And I couldn’t stop shooting. Knowing better than to aim at the Tulpa—any weapon only made him stronger—I fired at the beasts. Heads and limbs blew up, dust clouds exploding into the sky before settling harmlessly back to earth. A firm hand landed on my forearm, causing a hiccup in my shot. “You’re wasting ammo.”

  I swallowed hard, but relaxed at Carlos’s touch, though a shudder went through me when I found Neal, prone on the desert floor as if the Tulpa had flicked him away. But the sand coyotes hadn’t gotten one bite.

  A slow, staccato clap shattered the shocked air. I glared at the Tulpa, and felt the anger I’d inherited from him start to burn. Were I my old self, my supernatural self, my eyes would be as black as his now were.

  “Impressive,” he said, still clapping. “And so gratifying to see that the rumors are true. You can still touch the magical weapons.”

  “You already knew that,” I said tightly.

  “We were told.” He shrugged and tucked his gloved hand behind his back. “But you know those agents of Light. Can’t trust a thing they say.”

  “You lie.” The Light wouldn’t have told him that. Not even my former leader, Warren, the man who’d discovered me, lied to me, discarded me . . . now hunted me.

  “You should be thanking me, daughter. I’ve taken up your grievances with your former allies. I’m bringing to account those betrayers of your trust and heart.” He winked, which pulled his sooty skin in odd directions, and added, “Daddy has your back, baby.”

  A vision of Lindy’s earlier smile flashed in my head, along with the taunt that’d hung in the air like grave marker. Those who hang around Joanna Archer tend to get left hanging. Forget Neal’s quick death. Disembowelment would be getting off easy for any agent of Light who fell into the Tulpa’s hands.

  “Speaking of the Light, conveniently, leads me to the real reason I’m here.” He glanced back at Neal. “Though that was fun.”

  “I will save you the trouble of asking,” Carlos said coolly, sunlight catching the deep flecks in his eyes like minerals mined from the earth. “We will never align with you against this valley’s Light.”

  “Oh.” The Tulpa feigned disappointment. “How will I ever get on?”

  Carlos’s jaw clenched. “Then what?”

  The Tulpa’s mouth thinned into a sharp line. “I want you out of my city. All of you. I will soon wipe the Light from this valley, that’s inevitable, so my advice to you is to run, and far. Especially you, my poor outcast, erstwhile daughter.”

  I risked a glance at Carlos, who’d fled his native Mexico in exactly those circumstances. Mortals had long attributed that country’s rising problems to drugs and the overlords that profited from them, but the real issue lay in the Shadow troop’s steadfast control of Mexico City. When an entire troop of Light was annihilated, another could never assemble . . . at least not formally. If the Tulpa could do the same in Las Vegas, the entire southwestern United States was in for some major paranormal turbulence.

  “You can be killed too, you know,” Carlos said lowly.

  The Tulpa laughed. “An unsubstantiated claim.”

  “You’ve been injured,” I reminded him, darting a glance at the gloved hand he’d allowed to fall to his side.

  This time he growled. “Not by the likes of you.”

  No. The being who’d cut two fingers off the Tulpa’s left hand hadn’t been “the likes” of anyone. But the means by which he did it? I lifted the blade. I possessed it now.

  The Tulpa composed himself by glancing again at what remained of Neal. Then he offered the whole of us a bland smile, and turned back to the city.

  “Hey, Daddy?”

  He turned and cocked a brow.

  “You’ve got something right here.” I pointed to my own face, indicating his nose. Then I lowered my chin, narrowed my eyes, and used the only power left to me—that of my mind.

  A smile began forming on the Tulpa’s face when nothing happened, but then there was a small twitch. The left side of his nostril twitched again. He frowned . . . and the entire center of his face shifted, and for just one moment, his nose vanished.

  The gust from the Tulpa’s sneeze would have knocked me flat were it not for Carlos’s hand steady at my back. As it was, thirteen grays rocked back on their heels, but the thunderstorm of anger that rode the Tulpa’s brow was worth it.

  “How did you do that?” Gareth whispered, awestruck and now behind me.

  I ignored him, preferring not to wonder how . . . and really not knowing. I was the Tulpa’s daughter, but Zoe Archer’s daughter too, and she was a woman with a nuclear power plant for a mind. Though gone, she’d left me with instructions, and admonitions, on the power of a mortal mind.

  “You’re not the only one with extraordinary abilities, Pops,” I said, arrogant despite everything I didn’t know. “Don’t forget it.”

  “And you should know,” he warned, lifting two feet into the air with the ease of a helium balloon, “I never forget.”

  Yet he jerked as he tried for greater height, zigzagging one way and then the next. I’d rattled him, I thought, smile widening. He recovered fast, though, and his body shot up like a rocket, hurtling across the desert with the thrust and sound of a fighter jet. He was a speck above the Las Vegas skyline a moment later. Another, and he was gone.

  “I was wrong.” Foxx said woodenly. I turned to find his eyes wide, gaze locked on my face. “You’re not just mortal. You’re crazy.”

  I returned my gaze back to the city I refused to leave, and the fight I just couldn’t seem to quit.

  “It’s hereditary,” I said.

  3

  Unable to enter the city without attracting notice, or achieve the death we sought there anyway, we gathered up Neal for burial and returned to our cell to regroup. Located on the far reaches of Frenchman’s Flat, best known for Nevada’s infamous nuclear testing projects, the blasted terrain was unreachable by the agents bound to the city, as well as mortals easily discouraged by electric fences and unsmiling men with big guns.

  The government patrols had orders to shoot any unauthorized trespassers on sight, but they never caught sight of us. Like ghosts, we were the movement caught from the corner of their eye, the itch between their shoulder blades, the feeling that made the hair on the nape of their neck stand on end. A rumor had also begun circulating at the nearby test site that beasts the size of small SUVs haunted the night terrain, making even the most steadfast soldier wary of the area at the hour we were most active.

  All in all, it was the perfect hideout for the grays—throwaway agents who’d banded together and were now forming a troop of their own.

  Now that this previously guarded secret was out in the supernatural world, I was shocked at the number of rogues who’d trekked across the Mojave to find us. It’d only been weeks since Las Vegas’s warring troops had learned of us, but our existence was already being reported in manuals across the nation. Eighteen rogues had arrived so far, including Foxx and Neal, the physically imposing Gil, and a star- and sky-loving geek named Kai. We didn’t keep everyone—after all, there was a reason each had been driven from their home troops, and some rightly so—but our numbers were steadily
growing.

  As with Neal, we lost some to battle, while others had been lone-wolfing it for so long that they found the structure of troop life, as loose as ours was, too stifling. Those agents would fall silent in our meetings, nod at our plans to enter the city—to enter a place called Midheaven and free the men trapped there, bringing them into our fold—but would inevitably be gone by morning, the only sign they’d been there at all a smudged footprint as they slipped into the night.

  It didn’t matter. The more active we were, including those stealth comings and goings, the more the manuals spoke of us. The comic books would otherwise be filled with the actions of the Tulpa and his troop, or Warren’s battle for Light. Our mere existence stole coveted page space from the troops, along with the energy from the young minds reading them. The Shadows, especially, were still stronger, but thus far there was nothing either side could do about it. Meanwhile, the rogues just kept coming.

  “We’ve got company,” Gil muttered as we approached the sinkhole, finding two such men waiting outside the clearly booby-trapped entrance. They shuffled uncomfortably from foot to foot as a team of thirteen grays—bearing one dead—swooped their way. The men around me sniffed at the air as we slowed, reading everything their acute sense of smell could tell them about the duo: were they once Light or Shadow, how long had they been here, what did they have for breakfast . . . did they mean us harm?

  Upon sighting me, one of the men nudged the other, and though Vincent had already set me on my feet, he and Oliver drew tight around me. Fletcher and Milo, holding Neal’s body between them, shifted to take up the rear. Meanwhile Carlos led a forward flank of nine to greet the newcomers. As we drew to a stop before them, and Carlos began to speak, the second reason they hadn’t entered the sinkhole rose like a black cloud from within it, ambling directly toward me.