Cheat the Grave

14

Much of the Zodiac world was hidden beneath the known one. Midheaven was locked in the water and sewage system built to relieve our bowl-like valley of the seasonal floodwaters. The sanctuary where agents of Light were born, raised, and trained to battle Shadows was hidden below the Neon Boneyard, where the famous signage of Las Vegas’s yesteryear was put to rest. The Shadows too had a place of sanctuary, though it had yet to be revealed to me. Following Io, I wondered about that. Surely Warren knew, or at least suspected its location. Had he said nothing to me, and ordered the others to do the same, because of the Shadow in me? Had he trusted me so little from the beginning? Did he think I’d go knocking on the door and ask to join their troop after he so thoroughly tossed me out of his own?

I wouldn’t, of course. Accessing the sanctuary of Light had nearly killed me the first time I tried it, and the only way I could safely pass the security system unharmed was by donning a mask Hunter had designed to shield my Shadow side from the system’s defensive light. The undoubtedly painful necessity of trial and error aside, I had no desire to experience the Shadow side’s equivalent, or hang out with a bunch of rotting, homicidal demons in my copious spare time.

But it was obvious from Io’s unblinking, wide-eyed stare that the Shadows made their home belowground as well. A mutation like hers wasn’t created in a vacuum. Basic biology demanded a reason, use, and purpose for everything in the world, and following this former Shadow ward mother-alongside a warden that would have eaten me whole a scant few weeks earlier-I couldn’t help wonder at mine.

“What do you think?” Io asked, motioning with one great arm at the remnants of nuclear fallout like it was her own Buckingham Palace, half turning to me as she continued walking.

I thought it looked like the place had been bombed, but kept the snarky comment to myself. “You said the cell has only been here a decade?”

Because despite the postapocalyptic feel, the bunker was rather homey if you didn’t mind living like a mole. Though the passageways were narrow in some places and wide in others, hollowed out shelves housed scentless white candles, and the walls beneath these were caked in mounds of wax. The ground was worn smooth, and looking up, I noted the ceilings had been sanded into roundness. It was as cool as a wine cave, though not cold, which I found surprising. Winter nights were as fierce in the desert as the summer’s heat, the flat Mojave terrain welcoming of extremes.

In addition to the candles, cables ran along the passageways, metal hooks securing them into place, though where they started and ended, I didn’t know. There were also objects cemented in the walls-pens, stones, medallions, broken pottery, silver rings-certainly nothing that would be out of place in a trash heap, though each was fastened with obvious care. I wiped my sore fingertips along a Scrabble tile caked in what was probably fallout, and Io paused, answering my unasked question.

“Every rogue carries a sort of talisman from wherever it is they’ve escaped. That’s Melania’s. She…she wasn’t here very long.”

I frowned at the tightness in Io’s voice, but she’d moved on. “This is Cedric’s. He fled the valley last year. And you know who this one belongs to. See the flag?”

A patch from an item of clothing, the colors dropped vertically in green, white, and red. An eagle devouring a snake atop a prickly pear cactus. “Carlos.”

I felt rather than saw her nod. “Most agents don’t even know they’re carrying around pieces of the lives they’ve fled. It’s an unconscious impulse, a way of staying connected to the home and family they’ve always known. But when they truly become a member of the cell, they’re able to give up the old.”

She looked sharply at me here and I looked sharply back. I had no such object to release. I was still home.

“Don’t worry,” she finally said. “Carlos doesn’t force the issue and there’s no ceremony to mark the occasion. When the time is right, each rogue simply picks out a spot on the wall that feels right and claims it as their own.”

I gazed along the length of rough hallway, gaze catching on dozens of talismans. “How many rogues are here?”

Io shrugged. “The cell shifts as people come and go, though each member changes the makeup of the whole. Even when they’re gone, they leave a bit of themselves behind.”

“Are there really that many displaced agents in the world?” Warren had made it seem there were only a few…and those were alone, broken, dangerous, or crazy.

“As long as there’ve been societies, there’ve been people on the fringe of them.” Io motioned me forward and we entered an anteroom that dipped dangerously in the middle, blown out rubble still trapped in the bottom of the bowl. A wire net crisscrossed the opening, ostensibly to keep people from falling through, but I shuddered, thinking it could just as easily be someone, or something’s, cage.

“A sink within the sink.” Io jerked her chin at the hole. Her tone was dismissive, so I relaxed enough to turn my attention to what was by default the most interesting part of the room.

“More talismans?” I asked, though the objects in here weren’t embedded in the walls, just piled along them. The wall candles were planted haphazardly by necessity, and the shadows they cast caught the strange objects in bumpy relief. It was light enough to see that everything was burned, twisted, melted, or savagely mutilated, and would have been unrecognizable if they hadn’t been so patently mundane.

There were car doors, ripped from their hinges, with shattered windows and bubbled, peeling paint. A scorched tabletop missing all of its legs. Steel girders so gnarled they couldn’t support their own weight. Giant slabs of concrete, plaster, an airplane propeller, front doors, and a mishmash of smaller debris caught in jars like fireflies made of rubble. The place was packed, floor to ceiling, with the scorched remains of every material known to man.

“It looks like Ali Baba’s junkyard.”

Io snorted. “Welcome to Doom Town. And Survival City…at least what remains of them.” She shot me a wry smile as she reached atop a teetering pile of scrap metal and punched blackened keys on an old fashioned cash register. “Atomic cities. Fictional, except that they were real, down to the smallest detail. They used to piggyback on the nuclear tests, building homes, military operations, shelters…all in varying distances from ground zero. Then, boom!” She made an explosion with her strong hands.

“They built entire cities just to blow them up?” I asked, running my hand along what looked like the front of a train.

“Survivability testing.”

Looking for the rest of the engine, I peered around the train’s nose before jerking back, letting out an involuntary squeak. A charred face stared back at me, the skin bubbled and blackened on one side. A single blue eye locked on my face, and Io chuckled behind me.

“I see you’ve met Marge. She was reading the paper and listening to the radio at the time of attack. The scientists wanted to see what a thermal pulse would do to a human being, depending on where the bomb was dropped.”

“So they used mannequins?”

She picked up her pace as she crossed the room, no novelty to her. “And pigs.”

I shuddered, thankful I’d run into Marge instead of the pig. “But why is all of this here?”

“Shits and giggles, mostly,” she said, placing her hand on a perfect iron door. “It was Roland’s idea to start the collection-he’s inside-but we all joined in. Let’s just say it can get monotonous on Yucca flat.”

And with that she yanked the iron door open. Carlos’s voice reached out to wrap around me even before I saw inside. “She did it?”

Io nodded once.

“Fantastic!” Carlos clapped his hands once, then held out his arms as I ducked through the doorway.

“Welcome.”

I said nothing, noting eight other pairs of eyes studying me. Tripp, hunched in an outcropping of the circular room was one of them. Fletcher and Milo sat together at a wider sandy bench, also outfitted with dark hemp pillows. The room was as sparse as the other had been cluttered. Yet five other men sat in similar alcoves. Some of the seating areas looked like they’d been blown away, while others like they’d been dug out with a spoon. All appeared positioned around an invisible round table. I met each gaze boldly, memorizing faces, trying to intuit thought, but it was useless. The men were naturals at hiding their emotions-both the physical expression and the accompanying scent. I wouldn’t be able to scent them anyway, but if I were a betting woman, I’d pin them all as Shadows.

Former Shadows, I corrected, with some effort. Grays.

Tables made of barrels and flat-topped sawhorses sat to the side of each alcove, topped off by actual china settings, mismatched but shining. I’d clearly interrupted dinner, and my stomach growled, recognizing carne, tortillas, beans and rice.

“Come. Your meal is waiting,” Carlos gestured, indicating one of the empty alcoves. “As is your place in our circle.”

The other men remained silent as I eyed the seating more closely. The benches weren’t just smoothed out, but sported glyphs and symbols as mysterious and meaningful as those I’d seen in Midheaven and on the chest at Caine’s shack. And someplace else, I thought, furrowing my brow. Why couldn’t I remember where?

“This drugged as well?” I asked sarcastically, pointing at the food as I sat.

Carlos shrugged, unapologetic. “I took the opportunity to see if you could return to Midheaven via your dreams…even without your powers. This proved you can.”

“Is that why you said gnawing on your little night crawler would open my eyes to ‘that which was previously hidden’?” I lowered my voice an octave, and put on an accent as I picked up a tortilla. Warm, fresh…delicious. Okay, so they lived somewhat better than moles, I thought, settling back, surprised to find the natural dirt alcove comfortable.

“Sí, mon. I needed you to stay under long enough to determine you were still a part of that world. And you are. Entwined in its fabric, you have changed it as much as the knowledge of it has changed you. What do you expect when you gave up a portion of your soul to get there?”

Two-thirds, to be exact, I thought, chewing. Not that the remaining third was a worry. I was never going near the real entrance again. Especially after that dream. “And why would you want to see that?”

Why had he given me a tracking device that reacted to body heat and adrenaline? Why return prints to my fingertips? Why coat my organs with an armor that made them impervious to all but the most magical of weapons? What exactly, I now wondered, did Carlos want out of all this?

He didn’t pretend not to know what I was asking. Instead he smiled so broadly, teeth blinding against his honeyed skin, that I was momentarily startled. Could the leader of an underground rogue cell, with a past tailored to bitterness, really be so guileless? Even as I had the thought, he spread his arms, as if inviting me inside. “First, let me introduce you to your fellow grays.

“You know Tripp from before, and you’ve already met Milo and Fletcher.” Carlos strode to the center of the room like a lion tamer in a cage. “To their right are Alex and Oliver. On the other side we have Gareth, Roland, and Vincent.”

“Not Vinnie,” the last man said, in a voice that screamed old school Bronx. I let my gaze pass over him with disinterest before landing on Roland. The collector. He looked at me like I was the one who blew up Marge.

I looked back. “Met your girlfriend outside.”

Oliver snickered from the other side of the room, and when Roland’s gaze returned to me, it was as narrow as not-Vinnie’s had been. “Pretty, ain’t she?”

“I think you make a beautiful couple.”

Carlos cleared his throat, a too-bright smile widening his face. Well, what did he want? Pom-poms and a spirit song for waking up in a nuclear crater with a bunch of leukemia breeding trash? Not that it mattered to the non humans in the group, I thought wryly.

“There are currently four more of us,” he said, “but they’ve gone on a recruiting trip to Salt Lake.”

I nodded to indicate I’d heard, but took my time looking not-Vinnie over, then did the same with each man in turn. Alex was obviously Mexican, like Carlos, though shorter and rounder. Oliver’s genetic background was indistinguishable, probably some Americanized bastardization of British and German and Irish. Roland was as black as Io, while his tablemate was what one would expect from a not-Vinnie from the Bronx. I paused on Gareth, who was lanky, not even into adulthood, and sported spiky dishwater blond hair that reminded me of a rooster’s comb. I’d wager he was less than a handful of years past his second life cycle. Obviously used to the speculation about his age, and sensitive about it, he thrust out his chin and took a menacing step forward. I ignored the implicit challenge and studied each face again. Interesting.

Carlos anticipated my question as I turned my gaze back upon him. “There are no female rogues in the cell. The nature of a matriarchal world means women are the first and most targeted of us. When a female rogue is discovered, both Shadow and Light dispatch as many agents as it takes to destroy her. We lose them as quickly as we gain them, so you’re the only one.”

“Um, I hate to bring up the obvious-” Wasn’t joining the cell going to make me even more of a paranormal pariah than before?

“You’re already targeted,” Carlos interrupted, with less concern than I’d have liked. “You already know the history of the struggle between rogues and agents in this valley. You know the laws as laid down by the ruling troops, and the dangers we face as independents. We’ve also given you some of the tools to survive those dangers, and trust me, they’ll come to good use.”

“When?” I asked warily, not entirely sure I wanted to know.

“When we overthrow the current regime of Shadow and Light, of course,” Gareth snapped, still stinging from my earlier observation.

I’d have told him to chill, except his words stalled me cold. “Overthrow?”

Carlos cleared his throat, then ducked his head as he shot me that beautiful, and now sheepish, smile. “That is the purpose of the cell. By unifying the independent agents into a third, larger troop, we will wage our battle for the right to live aboveground. We will fight for the right to live as we choose. And this emerging troop, Joanna Archer,” he said grandly, gesturing at the ragtag men again, “is your army.”

My eyes went almost as wide as Io’s, and I waited for someone to laugh. Roland and Gareth only scowled more deeply. I sighed. Well, of course they were an army. What else could they be?

“Surely you’re joking.” I had swallowed a worm because Carlos promised to stave off Mackie’s attacks if I’d keep an open mind. But an open mind to what? Leading my own troop against those I used to count as allies? In my mortal flesh?

“You’re right. There aren’t enough of us yet. Only fourteen with you,” he said, shrugging as I opened my mouth to protest. That wasn’t what I meant. “But once we open the threshold to Midheaven and free the others from their bondage, we’ll outnumber both of the existing troops, two to one. Maybe more.”

My mouth stayed open. Holy shit. An entire army of rogues. “What about individual star signs?”

In the existing troops there was only one agent for each sign of the Zodiac, twenty-four in total between both sides. Rights to the star sign were guarded fiercely, passed down through the mother’s lineage.

“Fletcher and Milo are both Pisces.”

I glanced at the two men, sharing a bench and alcove. A meal of meat and beans. From the way they touched, lightly and comfortably at the knees, probably also a bed.

I crossed my arms. “Okay, so what about Warren’s lock?”

He’d placed it over the entrance to Midheaven as soon as Hunter crossed over. Though Mackie and Tripp had since escaped, I knew there’d be another barring the entrance by now.

Carlos shrugged. “We’ll break it again.”

Because he was no longer worried about the valley’s agents knowing what they were up to. Building an army.

“Don’t worry,” Alex said, misinterpreting my silence. He lacked Carlos’s discernible accent. “Between the defenses we can offer you and the weaponry left to you by your mother, you’ll be well protected while in this world.”

While in this… “My mother?” My head jerked up and I swallowed hard.

“Why, yes.” Carlos glanced at Io, whom I now realized was more of a den mother than a ward mother. “The treasure chest. Didn’t Io tell you?”

Io held her hands in front of her, an uncharacteristically defensive motion. “She didn’t even know I could feel the past living within her.”

“She’s disconnected,” Tripp said. I couldn’t tell if it was accusation or excuse.

“Bet she never even knew she possessed a sixth sense!” Fletcher dragged from a long-necked bottle.

Milo hit his leg. “That’s not the problem. I told you. She’s chased death before. She has a taste for it now. She’d rather die than live.”

Carlos held up a hand, halting the discussion. I took the opportunity to jump into the fray, ignoring the comments of men who’d never known me. “Let’s go back to the part about my mother.”

“She’s the one who set it up so we could find you. Told us where you’d show up, when, and to leave the weapons until you found them. Once she learned of Mackie, she knew she could no longer protect you on her own. She’s never involved us in her affairs to this extent before, so she must realize it’s time.”

My mother had left me weaponry. I was willing to bet she’d left me the warning note on the day of Suzanne’s bachelorette party too. She’d also created Skamar to rival the Tulpa in power. Before that, she had taught me to make a fist. I shook my head as all this new knowledge flooded it. “Time for what?”

“The Shadow to bind with the Light.”

The fifth sign. I’d stumbled right into the portent…just by trying to avoid it.

And Zoe had known what happened to me too! How could she not, when she knew all this? That I’d given up my powers as she once had, the pain and struggle in that…and how Warren had left me in the world, alone. Yet she remained hidden, waging a solo war on the Tulpa, her sole obsession and care. I mattered…but only if I could help her with that goal.

Io, who had touched me on the inside, took my hand with her own. “You’ve got your own vigilante guardian angel. Always have.”

I gritted my teeth. All I’d wanted was a mother.

“Let’s go for a little walk,” Carlos said, and I realized the rest of the room had fallen silent. I wondered belatedly what my bitterness smelled like, and tried to dam up the emotion before these strangers learned anything more of the woman who was supposed to somehow lead them into a new existence. Yet holding it back was like trying to stop floodwaters with a single sandbag. Besides, my dreams had been invaded, my insides fondled, and my body told the secrets I’d long denied to myself. I had a daughter in the world. She would need to know about her fate. I had a mother too.

And though absent from my life, she somehow unfailingly continued to manipulate mine.