The Neon Graveyard

by Vicki Pettersson

  That was enough. “I’ve never been Shadow and you know it,” I said bitingly.

  “See!” Li stuck out her tongue.

  But I turned toward her, shaking my head. “But I’m not Light anymore either, Li. I’m not sure I ever was.”

  “Sheesh,” said Donny, scratching his nose. “No wonder you lost all your powers. You can’t make up your mind what you are.”

  I only frowned at him.

  Carl was suddenly behind us, mouth twitching as he leafed through a Spider-Man. “Nice job getting your ether back, though.”

  I froze, then tilted my head. “You can tell?”

  “We let you in, didn’t we?” he said, turning back to his comic.

  Ether is the sense that makes sense of it all.

  I turned back to the carousels.

  “Choose Shadow!” Douglas said, presenting his sides’ tower like a game show host. “It shows how the Tulpa is orchestrating his attacks against the Light!”

  That did sound good . . . though I hesitated, unwilling to lend the Shadows more energy by reading and believing this text. I was a mortal . . . and God knew I was a believer.

  “Choose Light!” said Li, widening her stance and placing her hands on her hips. “It reveals the sixth sign of the Zodiac.”

  “Really?” The signs of the Zodiac were really portents, weighty events that brought about huge shifts of power in the Zodiac world. Five had already come to pass, and we’d all been waiting anxiously to find out what the sixth one was.

  “Who cares?” Donny said impatiently. “Just because you know the future doesn’t mean you can do anything to change it.”

  I turned my back on all four of them, and after another moment’s consideration, reached for the Shadow manual. They were the more powerful of the two troops. Besides, Felix’s disappearance was weighing on me and I already knew the agents of Light had no idea what had happened to him. If I could put a timeline to the Shadows’ action in the past few weeks, maybe I could find out where he was . . . or had been last. There was no reason to share that with these kids, though.

  “See? She’s a Shadow at heart! Can’t fight your genes, dudes.”

  “Shut up, Dougl-ass,” I said, before turning to Li, her face crestfallen as she stared at the manual in my hand. “Sorry, Li. But this manual will at least tell me where the Shadows are concentrating their strength. They’re a greater threat right now than the Light.”

  “Okay, but when you return from Midheaven, triumphant over your enemies and with your one true love by your side, then you’ll consider rejoining the agents who battle for the good of mankind, right?” She paused, before adding, “I know some of them miss you.”

  I winced at that, and at the hope lighting her eyes, but I couldn’t lie. Kneeling in front of her, I reached out and wrapped my hand around hers. “I’m sorry, Li. But when I return, it won’t only be with Hunter. My hopes are that it’ll be with enough rogue agents to prevail over the warring factions of Shadow . . . and Light.”

  Her expression altered into abject sadness, like something inside her had fallen off a cliff, but then a sharp movement to my left had her straightening and me automatically stepping back. A shadow stretched, emerging from the hallway leading to the storage room, accompanied by a harsh clap. “Very admirable.”

  The eight changelings in the room shifted, an almost imperceptible shuffle to attention, morphing from lackadaisical slackers to a staggered formation of miniature soldiers. All but Douglas, I noted, swallowing hard. The Shadows’ changeling sat back to enjoy the show.

  Meanwhile, the newbie, Donny, remained by my side, looking bewildered. But Li shot one last sad glance back at me and reluctantly moved from my side to that of the room’s newest occupant, a true agent of Light.

  I moved, too, making sure my back was against the wall . . . which was how I found myself squared off against my former troop leader, Warren Clarke.

  9

  “Well isn’t this interesting,” Warren said, entering the room soft on his feet, despite the pronounced limp he’d gained in a long-ago battle. He was dressed as an indigent, his favorite disguise, though his trench had been replaced by a new-to-him marine’s jacket in deference to the warming weather. The faded and tattered black cargos were the same, though, and despite their thinning soles, so were his boots. His hair was ragged, looking as unpredictable as the rest of him, and though the grime beneath his nails and on his neck wasn’t authentic, it smelled like it . . . even to me. It was a look calculated, in whole, to make mortals both see him and not.

  Yet there was nothing of the man who’d brought me into the troop just over a year earlier. His carriage was stiffer, his jaw tightly clenched, and something hard, almost brittle, shellacked the gaze that had once regarded me with compassion. Of course there was a history between us now, but no acknowledgment that I’d ever saved his life, or vice versa. Certainly not that we’d once fought side by side to retain choice and freedom for the mortals populating this city.

  No, I thought, sighing heavily, something had broke inside Warren, something vital to his ability to take himself out of those blown-out boots and put himself in someone else’s shoes. And whatever it was, he clearly blamed me for its destruction.

  “A mortal allowed to peruse the stacks of Master Comics. To buy the sacred manuals, no less.” Warren glared at Carl, who had somehow lost all his bold teen swagger and retreated behind the relative safety of the counter. Only half of his head was visible over the cash register as he watched Warren sniff at the air. I watched too, and caught the stiff tilting of his head. “Or, wait . . . are you mortal?”

  But he didn’t wait. He lunged faster than I could blink, because despite some sort of power called ether, I was no different than any other living human.

  Except for those who were also changelings. The children around me reacted immediately, little limbs stretching like rubber bands, elongating like putty, their prepubescent bodies thinning like shields. Two flanked the entrance, guarding against chase, and against other agents entering the safe zone . . . now a war zone. Surprisingly, Donny moved in front of me, his outline shimmering like sun off a summer lake, his body ripping as it softened and thinned out to expand and cover me. I caught the awed horror in his wide gaze, and realized he’d never done this before. He looked as surprised at protecting a gray as at the way his jaw unhinged, elongated, and extended into a gaping yawn.

  Testing the monster-formerly-known-as-Donny, Warren launched himself forward, plowing into the changeling’s chest at full force. I cringed, but Warren dropped like he’d hit a brick wall. I’d have laughed if he hadn’t been so clearly willing to break his own neck in an effort to get to me.

  Li, sporting fangs and a body that was all loosened tendons and joints, and blackened to opaqueness, ambled to Warren’s side as he rose. I was no real threat to her charge, but Warren ignored her flat, outstretched palm and pushed himself to his feet.

  “Oh yes,” he said, flipping his hair from his eyes, and rubbing the bump on his forehead as he glared at me through Donny’s flattened form. “This is very peculiar.”

  Feeling my adrenaline bump, Donny growled, the guttural sound emanating from his throat that of a wildcat, not a child.

  “Now, now.” Warren said, using the voice of a lion tamer as he took a halting step closer, looking at me with a smile that was slyer and meaner than I’d ever seen. “So you seem to have some sort of power back. Though it’s small, and not nearly all of it.”

  “How can you tell?” I asked, lifting my chin.

  “Your aura is still missing.”

  “It was missing even before I gave up my powers to save the Light,” I retorted, reminding him that were it not for my actions, he wouldn’t be standing here. My aura, though, had been compromised even before that. I’d been through a lot of battles in one year. To think of them all at once was like considering the injustices of oils spills, abused animals, and the sex slave industry all at the same time. It was just too much.

/>   “This is different, though,” he argued, rubbing at his chin. “This is a blank spot surrounding your entire body. An aetheric black hole.”

  I glanced at Carl, the only kid who hadn’t turned into a seven-foot Gummi bear, but his expression was the equivalent of a shrug. “It’s like you’re a zombie, dude. Dead, but animate. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. She did it to herself,” Warren said harshly. “Besides, it’s a good analogy. The walking dead. That’s exactly what you’ll be if you try to bring those rogues back from Midheaven.”

  I felt my face go red. I hated being told what to do by people who had my worst interests at heart. “You can’t stop the grays, Warren. The days when you picked off rogue agents one by one are over. We’re a legitimate troop now.”

  His brows rose at that. “Then you count yourself among their numbers?”

  I didn’t bother answering that. “The days when it was only Shadow and Light battling for control over this valley are numbered as well.”

  “Sounds nefarious, Joanna,” he sneered. “Sure you’re gray and not Shadow?”

  “This has nothing to do with my heritage,” I spat back. He’d used that against me long enough. “I’m letting you know straight up what my intentions are. At least one of us can tell the truth.”

  “You’re only telling me because I already heard it upon exiting the storeroom,” he scoffed, arms hanging deceptively at his sides. “And good thing too. Because it gives me a chance to tell you a long-awaited truth.”

  I folded my arms over my chest. “So hell finally is freezing over.”

  He took a step forward. “Don’t call me a liar in front of all these impressionable young minds.”

  “No choice,” I said curtly, inching back, though Donny had shifted. “Since I once believed everything you said.”

  Lowering his chin, Warren licked his lips, and spoke very quietly. “First I’m going to take this manual,” he said, holding up one of the comics that had obviously been archived in the back, “and use the information inside it against the Shadows. Then I’m going to find the bastard child that Hunter managed to create with that abomination Solange—”

  “They’re all in Midheaven. You’ll never—”

  “And I’m going to raise her as Light,” he continued, only a touch louder, like I hadn’t spoken. “Then, when that’s all in place, and the true Kairos is secured in my troop, I’ll attend to every last rogue littering this place. I’ll scrub my city clean, as I always have. As the Light always will.”

  “It’s the grays’ city now too, Warren,” Carl blurted, then reddened, sinking back behind the counter as Warren and I both turned to him, incredulous. He swallowed hard, then lifted his head. “That’s why we write about them. They’re legit.”

  “You’re not supposed to take sides, changeling.” Warren’s words were so tight they were almost scrawled in the air.

  “I don’t.” Carl sucked in an uneasy breath. He was shaking too. “I pencil for both the Shadow and the Light. But I still call it like I see it.” Then he ducked back behind the register.

  “Meaning you choose gray,” Warren said flatly.

  Though I didn’t know why, I felt the need to pull the heat from Carl. Maybe because he was just a kid, just a mortal. Maybe because piling it on my shoulders wouldn’t really move the needle by even a degree. Warren’s hate for me was already absolute. “Meaning he doesn’t see me as being drawn down the middle, black and white, like some people I know.”

  Warren’s gaze moved back, less a sharp look than a tossed grenade. And I, I realized, had just pulled the pin. “It doesn’t matter. Not what he sees, or draws. This shop is going to close in a few hours, and do you know what that means?”

  The blood drained from my face, and I swayed. The changelings would leave. The doors would be locked. And every agent—Shadow, Light, or gray—would be forced outside the safe zone once again to fend for themselves.

  “I’ll wait for you outside, shall I?” Warren said, and for the first time since his appearance, he offered up a real smile. He almost looked peaceful as he gazed at me, knowing he had me trapped. I would have to leave. And once I did, there’d be no escaping him in my mortal state.

  I thought about it a moment longer, then reached into my pocket and speed dialed from my cell. Putting the phone to my ear, I glanced back up in time to watch Warren’s eyes narrow. “Hey, it’s me. Yeah, a spot of trouble. Warren Clarke is going to exit these doors in a couple of minutes. Yeah—yes. Right here in front of me. So, listen, if he lingers inside the perimeter, swarm him. No, it’s okay,” I said, gifting Warren with a real smile of my own. “He’s alone.”

  Warren’s nostrils flared as I clicked off the phone. “I can call my agents too, you know.”

  “But they won’t get here in time.” Because if he didn’t walk out these doors in the next two minutes, I would. Then the changelings would force him to wait inside until I was safely away.

  I tilted my head, waiting to see what Warren would chose. Sit on his hands and wait for me to be whisked from sight? Or leave first, dodging fast so that the grays didn’t converge upon him all at once?

  “Clever, Joanna,” he finally admitted, laughing wryly. “Someone taught you well.”

  “I think for myself.”

  “Which is what got you in this mess.”

  “No, that was you.”

  He frowned, as if considering my words, like this was a real exchange and not a verbal sparring match. Then the reflective look disappeared, the lines of his weathered face deepened back into stubbornness, and he turned to the door like he was stalking it. Li trailed behind dutifully, the suction noises of her Gumby-like limbs the only sound within the shop, save for Donny’s labored breathing.

  Hand on the door, Warren paused before pulling it open. “I understand that you and your troop of merry men like to think you concern us as much as the Shadows do, but you couldn’t be more wrong. You’re not a tenth of the enemy they are, and without even an ounce of their power. You’ll all be gone shortly, while our sides carry on, still surviving, promoting balance for those mortals who choose to implement it in their lives. Just as we always have. Just as it’s always been.”

  “Then why keep coming after us? If you’re so unconcerned, I mean?”

  “Sport,” he said, showing his teeth. “And I’m only after you.”

  Just the agent he’d found, trained, manipulated, threw away, attacked. Just a woman, a mortal. No more than that, but somehow less than those he was supposed to protect.

  He was crazy, I suddenly realized, studying those hard eyes. Unreachable too. The man who’d once shown me kindness and offered baby steps into the Zodiac world—granted, after throwing me into the deep end—was MIA, and in his place was an enemy as absolute as the Tulpa.

  What was it the Tulpa had said about betrayal? I thought, squinting. That it was expected of enemies. But that a betrayal of friendship was impossibly personal.

  Killing me was something Warren was taking very personally.

  “I will chase you from this city, then find a way to break you once you’re beyond it,” he said softly, madly. “I will relieve you of the notion you were ever the Kairos, and see your remains scattered over the four corners of this earth. You’ll go down in the annals of our history as the impostor you are and I, Warren Clarke, will be known as the agent, the man who finally broke through your resistance.”

  “Maybe,” I conceded, trying not to think about his words too much. Donny was already frothing at the mouth. I swallowed hard. “But you’ll also be known as the troop leader who can’t be trusted to stand behind his own agents.”

  The statement sat on the air—Hunter’s name, Felix’s likely death, and Vanessa’s defection all unspoken. “You’re not the man who brought me into this world.”

  He wasn’t at all who I thought he was.

  “You should talk,” Warren snapped, stepping toward me before he could stop himself. Donny roared. It sounded like a soprano cracking o
n the downswing, but it might be formidable someday. Warren ignored Donny’s elongated fangs, and sneered at me. “You, with all your identities. All your masks.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t wear masks anymore.”

  And maybe that was what he really objected to. It was hard to manipulate someone who’d laid themselves bare, who had no need or desire of pretense, and whose actions were backed up by solid, straightforward belief. He might want to kill me, but no matter how I died, I’d do it while truly being seen.

  Warren pursed his mouth. “I don’t know why you can still handle conduits. I don’t know why these changelings would help you, seeing that whatever power you’ve regained is sitting mute inside you like a lockbox with no key.”

  So he hadn’t heard the part about the return of my ether . . . though he was right about my inability to access it. I had no clue how to do that.

  “But I’m glad you’re making this a challenge, Joanna,” he said stiffly. “It’ll be that much more satisfying in the end. After all, how much better to prevail over someone who provides resistance than besting someone who just falls beneath your sword? Resistance, after all, makes life exciting. Puts the spring in your step when you get out of bed in the morning, gives purpose to your day.”

  He meant killing me was his life’s new passion. “I’m not resisting you, Warren. I’m surviving after you abandoned me. You lied to me. You used me.”

  “Tekla told me you’d see it that way,” he said, voice almost serene. She must have read his chart or cast lots or studied her beloved stars. The mishmashing of methods seemed to work . . . and it was another betrayal of me.

  “It’s not one of her predictions. You’d feel the same.”

  “Not a prediction, no . . . but a gift.” He looked even crazier, I thought, when not raging. “See, she also told me you appeared in my life to show me who I really am, and who I’m meant to become. So if I’ve changed, it’s because you changed me. If I act differently toward you, it’s because you facilitated it.”

  “Why would I advocate you trying to kill me?”