“Is there a convention in town?” the old lady finally asked.
I slid my gaze her way. “I don’t know.”
“No, Mildred. She’s in a show.” The man bent nearer like a gnarled old tree. “What show are you in, honey? One of those preposterous circus things?”
I glanced up, wishing the elevator would go faster. “I’m not in a show.”
The man waited, giving me a slow blink.
I sighed. He was breaking my concentration. I decided to find out if anything in his seventy-plus years had prepared him for the truth. “Actually, I’m with a group who’s trying to free mortals from the persecution of those who’d like to see them forever enslaved.” There. Succinct and true. And it explained the bullet belt at my waist.
They both backed against the wall so quickly you’d have thought I’d pulled out a rattler. “You’re the bastards who picketed Michael Jackson’s funeral, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“And Mister Rogers.” The man had grown alarmingly red in the face. “And Comic-Con!”
“Those Baptists,” the woman added with a hiss. “That so-called church that waves around those God hates the world signs.”
The man shook his bony fist at me. “Who the hell let you in Vegas?”
“No.” I squinted, holding up a hand. “No. We’re . . . a different group.”
When the elevator doors slid open a second later, they moved so fast I could have sworn they were half my age. But before I could do the same, the woman turned on me and spat. “There! I’ve set the evil eye on you. If you come within twenty feet of the Colosseum, you’ll be sorry. I’ve been waiting thirty years to see Elton John live. If you ruin ‘The Bitch Is Back’ for me, I’ll send you to your maker myself.”
Her husband gave a righteous geriatric fist pump and they scurried out of sight. I held the door of the elevator open with one hand and waited, half considering telling them to stick around for a real show-stopping performance of “The Bitch Is Back.” Instead I gave them time to get out of Valhalla, and into the cab headed for the Colosseum. The last thing I needed was yet one more evil eye.
26
Working hard to look a little less Baptist, I managed to make it all the way across the main lobby without attracting any other undue attention. One man did watch me stride through the adjoining atrium, narrow-eyed gaze caught on my thigh holster, but then a bachelorette party flowed by in the opposite direction, and his attention swiveled like a battle gun. A few other tourists took note of triggers and steel, but only angled to the side as I passed. When I stepped onto the slot floor, the attendants didn’t look up at all.
You’d think that after glimpsing a woman armed like a female Rambo, some primitive part of these people’s brains would override the sensory overload, the alcohol, and the ennui, to at least do a double-take. Not that I was surprised. A casino fire had once claimed the lives of a half-dozen slot zombies who refused to leave “their” machines because they were hot.
Guess that’s what ammunition is for, I thought, tucking my back against the last row of slot machines before reaching the pit floor. I pulled out an assault rifle left to me by my mother, and took a final steadying breath.
Then I rounded the slot bank, already firing.
The mayhem was instantaneous, the crowd’s primal brain finally kicking into gear. Oddly, it was those people farthest from me who reacted first. I kept shooting, aiming high as they fled, leaving screams and drinks and shopping bags behind. For some reason, the tourist closest to me—a wide-eyed, -bellied, and -mouthed man with a slot card hanging around his neck—didn’t move at all. Unsmiling, I tilted my head at him. “Go.”
As he broke for the main exit, I pivoted and aimed higher. Draped across the craps pit, like a luminous blanket, was a chandelier. I sighted its ceiling mounts and fired. As onetime heiress of this casino, I happened to know the gaudy monstrosity was composed of hand-cut Bohemian crystals with eight hundred LED lamps brought all the way from Prague at Valhalla’s opening. The five-ton chandelier dropped twenty-five feet and I crouched and covered as it became gorgeous shrapnel, exploding on the garishly carpeted floor.
The automatic bells and jingles of the nearest slots were phantomlike in the resulting silence, and my breathing was shaky and loud. Finally a voice, quiet and wry.
“Subtle.”
“Yeah, I’m famous for that,” I told the Tulpa, and straightened to face him across the vast expanse of Valhalla’s main casino floor.
He was elevated, sitting straight-backed and cross-legged atop a pedestal where, five times nightly, a Valkyrie would sing operatically and point to the men chosen for admittance into the mythological Valhalla. She’d do this while writhing enticingly around a pole, of course.
In contrast, the Tulpa was stock-still, his pale face blank of any expression or mark, but for the black eyes pinpointed on me. He looked bland and lifeless sitting there, but that was less comforting when you knew those insipid features could shift with a mere thought, transforming his face and him into a new being altogether.
That malleability is his weakness, I reminded myself, swallowing hard. The hallmark of a soulless being.
His long, elegant fingers—save the two that had been cleaved from his body—were folded around khaki-clad knees, and he wore a button-down shirt, his hair combed, gelled. He also reeked of decay; a noxious fermentation of stomach acid and sewer fumes. My acute sense of smell hadn’t been one of the powers returned to me, but it didn’t have to be. He wasn’t even trying to hide who or what he was anymore.
That probably should have scared me most.
I lifted my rifle and took aim at his chest.
“By all means,” he said, cracking a smile. “Fight me.”
I swallowed hard but held my fire, knowing a direct hit would only give him the energy he craved. Besides, I didn’t want to fight him, just distract him long enough for Hunter to reach the stupa, plant the bombs, and make his escape. All the better if I could save Tekla and the remaining agents of Light in the process. Yet it was hard to follow up such a spectacular entrance, so I pretended to look around for other dangers.
I didn’t have to fake my shock. Everyone was here. The agents of Light weren’t a surprise. Just as he said, they were trapped, each shackled to an individual blackjack table. Also unsurprising was the presence of the existing Shadow agents, who stood behind the tables as pseudo dealers, though since the troop of Light comprised only six star signs, there were Shadows to spare.
The extras, I quickly noted, had been assigned to guard the grays. And that was the true wonder. How had the Shadows trapped them all? I wondered, seeing Carlos, Kai, Vincent, and all the others gathered around a craps table in the lofty room’s center. The chandelier had missed them by inches, and blood trailed from their already healing injuries, but none moved to wipe it away. None moved at all. They were obviously bound, though I couldn’t see how. I tried to catch Carlos’s eye, but his expression remained blank.
How had the Shadows, the Tulpa, managed this?
And how the hell was I going to save them?
“You can’t,” the Tulpa said, reading my mind. “You won’t.”
“What have you done with them?”
“Masks,” one of the Shadows answered, unable to help himself. Not noting the Tulpa’s annoyed glance, he tucked his hands in his front pockets and snickered. “They’re all wearing them.”
I looked back at Tekla, but she was still blank-faced, still not looking at me. In fact, none of the Light or grays were. My direction, yes. But it was as if they’d been angled that way, like dolls arranged on a mantelpiece.
“Invisible masks,” added a female, who looked like the first man’s twin. Maybe the Tulpa had gotten a two-fer. “But just as powerful.”
“Why?”
“Because I need soul energy in order to enter Midheaven. And a lot of it.”
So his failed experiments with Felix, and who knew how many others, hadn’t put him off rulin
g this world, or the next. Or from gaining control over the child he still didn’t know had been born soulless, like him. There was no Kairos there, but that didn’t matter right now. What mattered was that failure had made him more ruthless.
“What about the energy you get from the people in this valley? The children won’t read of you anymore. Kill all the Light and there will be nothing to put in the manuals because there will be no one left to fight.”
“There’s always someone to fight,” he replied, and unfortunately he was right. Other Shadows, other Light, would creep into the valley. And if they stopped? Well, there were always the mortals.
“I won’t let you take them. Upstairs, I mean. Into the stupa.” I shook my head, and lifted the old gun. “I’ll kill every agent of Light, every gray, before I allow that.”
Because I knew they’d all rather die than be hung upside-down and drained of their souls. I certainly would.
“Oh, dear Joanna,” he said chidingly, gesturing to the empty casino. “Familiarity really does breed contempt.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you know where you are?”
I frowned. I was at the Valhalla Hotel and Casino. The city’s most lavish gambling destination, which I’d briefly owned. But something in the Tulpa’s tone had me looking closer . . . and had the snickering Shadow agents falling silent. We all looked around the eerily empty casino, ignoring the slot bells now tolling for nothing. He was right. I was too familiar with this casino. So I disregarded everything that was similar to other properties, and concentrated on what made Valhalla different. The Tulpa, I suddenly realized, was here—and had always been here—for a reason.
But it was just a casino. Gambling kept this mecca running, so the focus had always been on the machines and tables. The Viking theme meant there were longboats jutting from walls, as well as ferrying guests to their rooms via a lazy river, and yes, the gilded walls bowed inward in a dramatic rendition of a heavenly Viking temple, but so did the Luxor’s and that was just . . .
A temple. I gasped, and looked up. The chandelier, which had obscured my sightline before, had left a gaping hole in the ceiling, and it was now clear that the walls didn’t arrow straight up as I’d previously thought. They inclined slightly, pulling ever toward the middle until they disappeared from sight. I did a quick count along the edges, and found thirteen.
“Shit.” The whole fucking building was a stupa.
And every agent in town had been lured into the base of it.
The Shadow agents seemed to collectively realize this at the same time I did, though another second passed with no movement at all. Then one of them cursed. Two others broke for the door, but the Tulpa waved his hand over the room as if casting a net. Eleven Shadow agents stiffened, pivoted toward me, and fell utterly still.
I’d seen him do this with mortals before. He could wholly control their thoughts, read their minds, and do what he pleased with their bodies. But never with an agent. Never his own. And never so many.
“You know, I don’t follow the stars the way the rest of you do. All this nonsense about reading the sky, being children of the stars, destiny and fate . . . it all smacks of desperation, you know?”
I did, but I wasn’t going to agree with him.
“Tekla and her ilk did get one thing right, though. You must bide your time. Wait for the slim opening where all that you’ve worked for builds to the point where ‘fate’ must give way to force. If you can sense it, recognize it, you can seize it.”
He meant the kairotic moment.
“They missed theirs,” he said, in a voice that warned he wouldn’t do the same.
“Y-you’re going to sacrifice them all?”
“Oh, darling girl. Aren’t you cute . . . excluding yourself from their numbers. But first . . . you’ve got something that belongs to me.” The Tulpa’s smile cut through each side of his face until there was an audible crack, and he finally rose, moving from seated to standing so smoothly it was like a waterfall running up.
Where the hell was Hunter?
“You might not be the Kairos, but there’s no arguing you can do things other agents cannot. I’m speaking of one strength in particular. One vital offensive skill. Do you know what that is?”
“The conduits.” Being able to wield any other agent’s weapon was the greatest offensive weapon I had. It was the only reason I was alive now. I blinked, and the Tulpa’s expression darkened as he saw me make the connection. “Oh my God. You can’t touch the magical weapons.”
I realized then I’d never seen him with one. He could resist them, but he couldn’t use one. In effect, my greatest strength was his greatest weakness.
Not that it did me a lot of good just now, I thought, watching his black eyes begin to glow.
“That’s my power that lives inside of you.”
I jerked my head. “No . . . conduits are made for specific individuals. They’re like limbs. They speak to an agent, react to their—” To their soul, I realized.
The Tulpa growled, cutting me off. “I obviously gave it away in siring you. And now I want it back.”
And ropy, veined muscles popped onto his thighbones as he leaped from the pedestal. The ground shook when he landed, and knifelike talons popped from his shoes, nail beds growing as he began walking my way.
“Stay back,” I said, raising my bow and arrow, pointing it at his chest, suddenly bulging with gray muscle.
“No.” He strode across shattered Bohemian crystal, barefooted.
I knew I shouldn’t shoot him. I knew that every ounce of energy spent countering him was absorbed for himself. Yet I couldn’t just let him keep coming.
So I frowned and envisioned his features shifting on his face. I’d done it before in the desert. His impermeability was a weakness. I could move things on his body, confuse him, use it against him.
He paused, face twitching, and I knew he felt what I was doing. He gave me a razored smile. “Oh, that’s right. I guess I don’t need this anymore.”
And he brushed his hands over his head like he was smoothing back his hair. Instead he came away with clumps of it, which dropped wetly to the floor. The entire scalp fell with the next swipe, and he flicked away blood until all I was staring at was blackened bone. As he began shedding the rest of his mortal flesh, swiping from neck down, I wondered again what was taking Hunter so long.
Meanwhile the Tulpa continued speaking to me, as if layers of skin, vessels, and muscle were supposed to be piling up around him on the ground. “This is much more comfortable. Especially as I mean to consume you wholly. Thank you for the idea, by the way.”
I hadn’t given him the idea, though I knew where he’d gotten it. I’d caused an agent to die in just that way, his body and power consumed from head to toe by another tulpa. Literally eaten alive.
“Hunter,” I whispered, praying he’d hurry. I was the one in need of a distraction now.
The Tulpa misinterpreted my cry. “Longing for one last kiss? Even after he deserted you? My, aren’t we loyal.” He laughed, sending the scent of graveyard rot to burn the lining from my nose. But even as I gagged, I didn’t cover my face. Instead I lifted my gun and fired it into his heart.
He angled his onyx skull until his neck cracked, and his whole body expanded a foot in circumference.
“Bide your time, silly girl,” he chided darkly. His mortal vocal cords had clearly snapped in his throat because his voice had altered and now resembled nothing so much as ash and smoke. The Tulpa’s ears had long sloughed away, but the canal they’d been hiding in elongated with a straining slide. It sounded like bone being sanded as they moved into honed points.
“You shot too soon and now look what happened . . .”
I fired again, shutting him up, then pulled my saber free as I lunged. The moment for biding my time was through. Thrusting, I harpooned him like a whale. I would go through him. I would kill him. I was of him. I was the one.
He cried out, more surprised than hurt
, then again as I fired the gun at the old saber’s hilt. I used all the strength I had to yank, which was also a surprise, as he knew nothing about my returned powers.
Yet he was a fast learner. He let loose a war cry that rippled outward with his rapidly expanding body. Sweating, I swiped with my regular blade, slicing through his newly knit gray skin like shears through silk. He yanked away, still harpooned, and grabbed at his arm. For a moment he looked like he was going to backhand me. Instead he smiled.
And grew another two feet in circumference.
That’s when the blast hit, rocking thirteen walls. Gaming tables shuddered while the floor thundered, and a few of the agents trapped in the animist masks fell to their sides like chess pawns and didn’t get up. The Tulpa’s gaze arrowed up and he stared, momentarily stunned, trying to put together the impossible. It finally dawned: there was one agent he hadn’t managed to mask. One not trapped at the base of a stupa, choking on his own soul. One who not only hadn’t abandoned me, but was somewhere at the top of this building, destroying the Tulpa’s most prized room, along with his greatest shot at ruling dual realms.
The Tulpa’s eyes flared, flaming red from upper lid to lower. I jerked back, and though I imagined a wall—a shield, a barrier between us—it was too late. His arm shot out, and my nose broke under the weight of his great palm. My cry was muffled and I immediately began choking on rancid flesh and my own blood. I still felt the talons break the skin at the back of my skull. Then he dragged me across shattered crystal by my face, out of the casino.
I flailed as he raced faster, whipping corners so quickly my body careened into walls. My organs took the brunt of the blows—walls, corners . . . even the ceiling as he fled up. Up, into the heights of Valhalla. Up to see what remained of his own sacred hope.
The Neon Graveyard Page 32
