Cheat the Grave

13

I awoke to a heavy wet rag being dragged across my face. A foul heat and the stench of the unwashed dead accompanied the sensation, and though there was intermittent relief-brief moments when the rag was removed and my air passage freed-I’d barely filled my lungs before it started up again. It was a slow torture, and a terrible way to die. I was so concerned with catching my breath, I didn’t realize I’d been feeling disembodied until the tingling started up in my limbs. Immediately, and clumsily, I lifted my arms to push the rag away…which was when I touched the attached teeth. Jerking back, wiping forearms over my eyes, I squinted into the face of a dog as large and black as a tornado. One come to eat me whole.

Screaming, I scrambled backward, though since I was lying down, there wasn’t really anywhere to go. The mutant animal jolted, shook his muzzle back and forth, and advanced on me again.

“Now now. Don’t go and scare the baby girl.” An arm, just as black, came out of nowhere to calm the nowwhining animal. I squinted around splayed fingers-puny defense against nail-head fangs-in an attempt to see who the arm belonged to. “Interesting, though. She don’t usually like you mortals.”

“Th-That’s a warden,” I stammered, lowering my arms, staring into the dark. I was laid out like a sacrifice beneath a black light, which wasn’t as blinding as a bulb’s full glare, but still made it virtually impossible to see beyond the soft ultraviolet bubble. The last time I’d run into a Shadow warden-dogs, as opposed to the cats serving the agents of Light-the rabid bastard had tried to rip out my throat. Actually, there’d been two of them…though neither had been this big.

And because I’d made the mistake of releasing an arrow from my conduit into the first beast’s gaping maw, I also knew wardens grew instantly stronger and larger-not to mention really pissed off-when struck by the magical weapons. It seemed this fiend had seen plenty of battle. She ambled closer and I shielded my eyes and tried to sit up. “She probably doesn’t like agents of Light either, right?”

“Oh, she loves them.” Those strong dark hands reached through the violet rays and pushed me back down. A wide, round face followed them into view. “Bone in, still warm, and medium rare.”

Wincing, I tore my gaze from the dog to study the now-cackling woman, so dark she seemed kiln-fired, like some glossy, smooth-faced fertility goddess. Her curves were nothing like Trish’s. Those had been inviting, whereas these were daring. She wore ornamentation like Diana, but the true adornment was her skin, shoulders shining over a strapless orange dress, muscles thick and defined like giant ropes of black licorice. She had nothing at all in common with Nicola’s goth glamour. Her hair was a wild black moon, and hid nothing of her exotic face…including eyes like disks with onyx pupils filling the whole of the socket.

I’d only seen depictions before of such women in the manuals. She was, or had been, a ward mother, but unlike those I knew, she had reared the Shadow children. She cared for them until they reached full maturity at the time of their metamorphosis and left the Shadow lair. “I always wondered what one of you would look like up close,” I told her. I was mortal, naked beneath a black sheet, and obviously under her care. Why mask my words? I didn’t have a whole lot to hide.

She smirked, motioning down her body, and stood back, caressing the head of her strange pet as I took a closer look. “Just as you thought?”

“Not really,” I admitted, though the eyes were more disturbing than expected. Where the “mothers” who raised the initiates of Light had a sunken and violent cross-hatching of scars over their eyes-a product of raising children whose glyphs were as powerful and unpredictable as a solar flare-the ward mothers for the Shadows lived a rayless, shaded existence. Exposing them to the smallest amount of natural sunlight would be like forcing their face into the core of the sun. It would kill them outright.

I thought of Carlos’s worms, burrowing through centuries, hunkered deep and unseen, their work impacting the entire world.

“Why do my hands hurt?” I finally rasped, leaning back. It didn’t look like either of these Shadowy beings were going to kill me. In fact, the ward mother brought me a clay tumbler of water.

“Oh, I worked on those first. I was hoping they’d be done before you woke.” I finished sipping from the cool, fresh water, and studied my throbbing right hand. Prints had somehow been applied to my fingertips. I used my thumb to try and flick one off-that was an old trick-but they ached too much, like individual hearts lived in each tip. The woman shook her head, tsking as she pulled my arm away. “Hold on, now. You don’t want to undo all my handiwork. Let it set. Another hour and it’ll look like the real deal.”

I swallowed hard, dropping my head back again. The light was a vibrant purple halo around her dark cloud of hair. “What are you doing to me?”

“Giving you the tools you need to live, my girl,” she said, and shrugged, one large shoulder moving up and down. “Or at least to hide in plain sight. Rules are different when you’re gray.”

That’s right. That’s what the rogues called themselves. I’d have to get used to it. I looked at my body, laid out beneath a black sheet and the dark light. Get used to being gray.

She must be like Micah, I thought, which made me wonder how the physician was doing. I winced, thinking of the damage Tripp had caused him, and how odd and pained he looked with soot roiling beneath that first layer of skin. I would have never wished that upon him. Micah had only ever been kind…right up until the moment he turned his back on me. I sighed.

The dog took it as a sign to resume licking my face. After three wet smelly licks, I got up the nerve to push it away.

“Back off, Buttersnap.” The woman tapped one finger on Buttersnap’s haunches, and the animal sat. Four times larger than a Great Dane, dozens deadlier, and it responded to this woman’s index finger. I shook my head.

“Was it you who pulled me back?” I asked, noting the scratchy echo of my voice was gone as she nodded. My blood once again moved about in my body unfelt. The water and wakefulness had washed the metallic taste from my throat. I was home again…wherever home was. “You guys drugged me.”

“In more ways than one,” she said, not bothering to deny it. “We also have you on a drug that coats your organs and larger arteries like armor in case you’re assaulted, though there’s only so much we can do since you’re mortal.” Reaching forward, she inserted her hands beneath the dark sheet and stared into nothingness with those strange disc-like eyes. Her fingers, warm and strong, began to work along my abdomen, touching me in long strokes like she was smoothing out my skin. “Still, we can use other means to help stimulate your cells so they rebuild faster. As long as you don’t receive a life threatening blow by a conduit, or this so-called soul blade, you should be fine.”

So I was only vulnerable to the most dangerous weapons on the planet. How comforting.

Her massage turned circular, fingertips just short of painful on the sensitive flesh of my stomach. I glanced over to find Buttersnap gazing at me with apparent pity. Dogs didn’t like their underparts exposed to probing fingers either.

“I’m Io, by the way, and thank you for asking. Mine is the gift of touch, if you haven’t noticed.” I jerked my head upright at the chiding tone, catching an eyeful of ultraviolet. The wide fingers pressed me again into stillness, before resuming their circular probing.

“I’m sorry. I just…it was just…” The dream and then the dog and then the woman without eyelids. “Where am I?”

“Just outside city limits. In a burnt-out crater off of Frenchman Flat.”

Anticipating my reaction, she pushed me back down-again, using fingertips alone. “The friggin’ Test Site?”

Io saw my reservations. Shit, with those eyes, she probably saw my tonsils. But Frenchman Flat was famously the first detonation site for the nuclear facility. Back in the day, they had mushroom cloud parties, the lethal explosions used as their fireworks sequence before they knew you could die from the exposure…or the radioactive waste left behind.

“I understand your concerns. Brought it up to El Jefe himself.” She grinned, flashing me a row of square pearly teeth, “He said that sort of fallout is the least of your worries. Besides, you’ll learn right quick, a rogue takes sanctuary where they can find it.” She gestured around the jet void of the room like it was a plutonium palace.

“The cell has been in this sink for a good decade, and I can tell you straight up there’s no freer place. Certainly not in the fiery world you just journeyed from.”

I braced my elbows behind me, refusing to be put down again. Staring with eyes nearly as wide as hers, I shook my head. “So I was really there?”

“Of course. It’s all here, I can just follow your body to see where you’ve been.” And she grabbed. I made a strangled sound as those tensile fingers pinched something vital, rubbing the organ like it was a spa specialty. Whatever massage she’d done had turned my skin to putty, stretching and pulling it to allow access by those strong, knowing fingers. I dizzied as she slid her fingers along the kidney-shaped mass, and though it didn’t technically hurt, it was as foreign as first time sex. Then I burped up a surprising dry wad of sand, right onto the cloth covering my chest. My mouth remained hanging open, though shock kept me from letting out the scream leapfrogging through my brain.

“I can tell from touch whose daughter you are as well.” She grabbed for another internal organ with those searching fingers, but I blocked, pushing her away. I didn’t like my insides being fondled like cuts at a butcher’s shop. Yet Io was as strong as she looked. She nailed me with that unblinking gaze, held both of my hands over my head with only one of hers, and found my pelvic bone with the other. Damn near wrapping her fingers around it, and far less gently this time, she gave it a little tug. “This tells me you’re Zoe Archer’s daughter, born of both Shadow and Light, also of deceit, which is the real shadow clouding your life.”

She let go and, just as abruptly, resumed the gentle massage. Sweating, I dropped my head back and whimpered. Buttersnap slobbered all over my right cheek.

“You know my mother?” I asked when I finally found my voice.

“Felt your imprint in her once,” she confirmed. “Along the backside, though.” And this time, when she slid her fingers under me, she ran one right up the connecting vertebrae. “Right there, see? That’s her.”

And an entire concert of near-forgotten scents filled my nose. It was the mixture of emotions one would expect when remembering an absent mother, lemon-bright happiness accompanying a memory of bouncing on a knee. It was herbal also, fresh as green paint, as she instructed me on how to ride a bike. Then ginger hair swung over one shoulder as she bent over my homework, taught me to thread a needle, tie a knot…make a fist.

Make a fist? Where had that memory come from?

The question, though, was chased from my mind by an earthy musk, almost masculine, my mother’s strength as I recalled her standing up to others-teens who drove too fast on residential streets, women who snarked at each other over tea. Xavier, when he dared to malign me.

“God.” I was surprised into tears. It’d been so long since I breathed in that scent. Of course, I’d never experienced it so strongly before, but Io was right-sometimes the body knew what the mind did not, including how very much I missed Zoe Archer. I nearly lunged for another whiff, but the dog was back, bearskin breath obliterating the lemon-herb musk.

“And here, just below, is your daughter.” And she scooped up my womb firmly, but gently, still encased safely beneath my skin, which wrapped around it like warm stretched dough. I opened my mouth to object…and another scent and memory I’d not had in over a decade careened through my consciousness. A newborn’s wail, unmasked before they whisked her from the room. It was accompanied by a simple scent-wet and without hooks, just a smooth slide into my gut. Ashlyn. The accompanying memory, buried like a time capsule, was of perfect hands and legs flailing, a brief brush of warm pink skin against my thigh as the umbilical cord was cut. Experiencing it again was so powerful I almost said her name aloud.

“Stop,” I whimpered. “Please stop…doing that.”

Her hold lessened, though she didn’t release me entirely. “What? Making your mind remember things your body holds as its secrets?” She shook her head, pressing more firmly again. “A woman should know her own body, at the least.”

A burst then, powdered rose blooming as her fingers inched higher. “Feel this, where the base of the fallopian tube sits? That tells me the whole world is going to know about your hidden little gem pretty soon too. You were late to your second life cycle, but this one here takes after your Momma.”

The second life cycle. Puberty. When the rest of the supernatural world scents a future agent coming into the first of their powers. It was what had caused the first attack on my life as a teen by a Shadow agent.

I shook my head side to side, causing the dog to wag his tail. “She’s not my daughter.”

“Oh, okay.” She pushed with her pinky finger. Again I heard the newborn wail.

“She’s not. Never was. She was placed with another family at birth.”

She pulled her hands from beneath the sheet, then cocked them on her hips. I wrapped my arms around my middle, not daring to touch my stomach, feeling hollowed out, and strangely empty. “Baby, that child was comprised of your cells, conceived in your body, and nourished with your blood. Once she’s been in you, she’s always of you. Same with you and your Momma. You see the connection? That’s why our world is matriarchal. Every person, no matter how powerful, is dependent on the matriarchal link.”

“Not the Tulpa.”

“Which is why he’s so hard to kill.”

Hard? I thought, with an inward scoff. Impossible was more like it. More impervious to attack than the beast next to me.

Io leaned forward, so close violet light sparked in her hair. “And it’s also why he hates us all, Shadow and Light.”

Now that was a new thought. Was that why she, a ward mother of Shadows, had left the Tulpa’s compound?

But I couldn’t follow the thought to conclusion, not right now. I was suddenly a stranger in my own body and surprised to find those links Io spoke of, ones I’d tried so hard to forget these long years-were still there. No matter what I did, their mark was inside me, like some sort of injury.

Same as everyone else, crybaby. I thought again of the first Shadow agent I’d ever met and battled, Ajax. His mother had defected to the Light side, leaving him embarrassed, outraged, and haunted by the betrayal. But if what Io was saying was true, he’d been dependent on the link as well, as attuned to his mother as a concert violinist’s ear to the string. He’d used it to find her, and when he did, killed her. I glanced back at Io, shuddering and wondering if she’d unlocked those secrets in his body, and somehow helped him.

Io was holding her palms over me, not touching my skin, though heat from her hands radiated into my body, like flat lasers searching for signs of life below a bleak sky. She tsked, shaking her head. “Your chakras are blocked. Your spleen is almost entirely comprised of black bile. How do you even walk upright? You need to start allowing yourself to feel the things that have shaped and formed you, my girl. The ones that have de formed you. Once you accept them, you can present your new shape to the world.”

My mind winged over my long ago rape, my mother’s abandonment, my sister’s death, my ejection from the troop. My deformities. I paused a little too long on the thought of Hunter, probably because of his appearance in my not-dream, and whisked a tear away. Disconcertingly, Buttersnap ate it from my new fingertips.

“You need to make this old world conform to your new curves.” She tilted her head up at me, even though she was working below, and gave me a conspiratorial wink. “A confident woman’s body…a most dangerous terrain.”

I nodded like I understood, but I really just wanted her to look away.

“By the way, he’s over here. Want to feel him?”

“The Tulpa?” I shook my head. She could feel my father in me. How gross was that? She’d probably wrap her hands around the organ telling his story and come away with acid fingertips.

Io stared at my face, observing every pore with those unblinking eyes. “Well yes, him too. But I meant the other. The one you been trying to tell yourself is not meant for you.”

And she pushed without permission, moving aside ribs and lungs with a necessary gentleness. She could kill me, I realized, with a mere twitch of her thumb. My heart pulsed in her palm, faster when I realized she was cradling it, and then it expanded, opened to her. Opened to me too.

I smelled a doused campfire, wet wood and tobacco, soapy suede, sunset heat. I closed my eyes, dizzied, and breathed in Hunter-the way he was when he moved inside of me, when he bent his head to mine, when he met me halfway, then kept coming. My heart beat faster, my palms begin to sweat, my mouth parted, and I swallowed hard.

Then I thought of him pursuing Solange. “Dreams are the only place that man, that scent, exists.”

But even as I said it, I heard his dream voice-wrapped in hot tobacco and suede-calling. Oh my God. What are you doing here? I’ve been trying-

Trying to what? Say he was sorry? Forget me, maybe? Trying to come back to me?

No. I’d seen his face before he left for Solange, and Midheaven. He was resolute in what he wanted, and that was her. What he’d probably been trying to do ever since was sever this so-called soul connection the other women had been taunting me over. We’d shared a unique magic once, called the aureole. For a brief time he’d known my thoughts and I’d shared his. Swapped them as if we’d lived them. Took individual experience and made them our own.

Solange was obviously angry about this, so he was working to appease his wife.

Fine. I’d happily agree to cutting the cord if it meant her calling off Mackie.

So I didn’t care if he resided in my body like Io said. Like I’d just scented. Those campfire logs were really driftwood disappearing around a river bend. The heat of sunset was the end of our affair, and my job now wasn’t to remember, but to excise him. If I just kept moving, maybe he’d work his way out like a splinter under the skin.

Io finally put my heart back in its place, like tucking an egg in its nest.

“Are we done?” I asked. This emotional prodding was worse than the dream. Buttersnap licked a tear from my cheek. This time I let her.

Io smoothed damp hair from my forehead and offered me a surprisingly kind, and yes, motherly, smile. “I know you feel weak right now, but you know what Carlos would say?” She straightened and donned a perfect Mexican accent. “Don’t underestimate the lowly. You’re a night crawler now.”

And a gray. Frowning, I glanced back up at Io. “What does that mean?”

She smiled, and held out a strong hand. “Why don’t you come see for yourself?”