Cheat the Grave

8

After beaming some overly cheery farewell, and donning my shades, I took a private, recessed elevator down to my personal garage, where Kevin was already waiting. I had to admit, certain aspects of Xavier’s lifestyle were easy to get used to…and after the last few moments spent holding it together, I was grateful not to have to single-handedly battle rush hour traffic.

Instructing Kevin to head to the hospital where Cher was recuperating, I dropped my head back against the soft leather seat. I waited until we’d flipped onto the boulevard…then I began to shake.

Mind control. Holy shit.

I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised. A tulpa, in the traditional sense of the word, was a thought-form. Where the rest of us poor sots had to crawl into this world through blood and bone, a tulpa was a being birthed from another person’s imagination. This tulpa, however, developed enough free will to loose himself from his creator’s reigns, and then took over the Shadow side of the Zodiac. That he’d done so with barely a dust-up was a testament to his brutality and power. Unfortunately for that still-growing power, his creator had died before providing the Tulpa with a proper name, so “Tulpa,” though meant only as a title, was what he was called, and what he’d forever remain.

Thus while being a tulpa granted him extraordinary abilities, like adjusting his appearance depending on the viewer’s expectation-and friggin’ mind control!-it also hamstrung him. Without a proper name to cement him in the real world, to ground him and allow him to manifest permanently, there was a limit to his power.

One that might yet lead to his downfall.

Because there was another tulpa in town, this one created by my mother specifically to battle him. And the work she’d begun, sinking the past decade into visualizing his enemy into existence, I had recently finished by giving the creature a name: Skamar. In doing so, I’d redoubled her energy, and her power.

So you can imagine how peeved I was when, entering the hospital, Skamar appeared from nowhere, sneaking up behind me to give me the equivalent of a paranormal wedgie. Squealing as she sniffed at my neck, I put a hand to my thudding heart. “Damn it, Skamar! You trying to kill me?”

“Not anymore,” she murmured, remaining close. Thin, small, and pale, she’d have been plain too, were her features not so sharp. Her short hair was blunt and red, her matching lashes so light they made her look baldeyed. Yet her lips were defined even without color, and her nose arrowed between cheekbones so high you could hang laundry from them. She looked like a Victorian lady who’d been misplaced in the ages, which was deceiving. Skamar had once been so hungry for life, she’d been willing to take mine. And right now she was inching forward in a liquid glide, still impossibly and preternaturally graceful…and still sniffing at me. “You’ve been with him. ”

I smirked. “That’s right, Sherlock. He waltzed into my conference room at Valhalla this afternoon. Where the hell were you?”

“Permanence has its limitations.” Meaning she could only be one place at a time.

“Okay, then how about a warning next time you sneak up on me?”

“Well, I would have called first,” she said sarcastically, “but I didn’t know I was tracking you. I thought I’d found him.”

She wouldn’t say the Tulpa’s title, I knew. Every utterance about another being gave them a degree of energy, reinforcing their position in this world, and their right to move about in it. Skamar’s raison d’être was directly opposed to that.

“Nope. Just little ol’ mortal me.” She averted her gaze, and I let my tone turn sarcastic. “How’s Mom?”

Skamar shrugged. Sure, now she clammed up. As the only one who knew of my mother’s true identity, she also knew I-like everyone else in the Zodiac world-was angling for it. Obviously she’d been instructed not to tell me who Zoe was, but knowing my mother was in the valley, watching me, and actively augmenting the agents of Light in whatever capacity she could manage as a mortal, I couldn’t help myself. Sure, the woman had given over all her powers to save my life a decade earlier. I knew better than anyone what that felt like. But I had trouble understanding why she hadn’t contacted me once in the years since. At least Warren had thrown me a fucking phone.

“Valhalla, huh?” Skamar sighed, mind already working on how to approach the fortress without the Shadows noting it. “Fine, I’ll start there.”

“Wait!” I put my hand on her arm before she could leave. Another second and she’d be a fistful of miles away. That’s how powerful she was. “I-I need help.”

Her expression immediately shuttered. “I can’t.”

“But-”

“It’ll put you in danger.” She raised her voice, her tiny nose stubbornly upturned. “You should get on with your…life.”

“I know, I’m trying-” I rambled quickly, so she’d hear me out. I hadn’t slept in two days, and everything I owned was at Olivia’s midtown penthouse. Sending someone to pick up things for me was like handing them a death sentence, yet Mackie would have all of Olivia’s information by now so I didn’t dare return alone. I needed to grab private disks and journals, and retrieve Luna as well. Funny how the wealthiest woman in the Las Vegas valley valued only a few small, priceless items. “Please. I’m blind here, Skamar. There’s a man, a monster, looking for me. He could be behind me and I wouldn’t know it.”

Her eyes flicked over my shoulder. “He’s not.”

“Give it another minute,” I retorted wryly.

She said nothing, which caused me to tilt my head, a hand cocked on my hip. “You already knew about Mackie, didn’t you?”

She widened her eyes in innocence. “Only since last night.”

I stepped forward. “Then you know what I’m up against.”

My mother conceived of Skamar in Midheaven because the Tulpa couldn’t access that realm without a soul. When Skamar was actualized enough to take on a personality and self-will, yet still malleable enough to pass through the threshold between the two worlds, she relocated here…and found me.

After I’d named her, she was free to take on her own identity and life, and had been battling the Tulpa ever since. With the small exception of once being pinned to a makeshift cross, she’d mostly prevailed, and now, with her name recorded in the Zodiac manuals, she had the additional power of mortal minds behind her. The manuals, seemingly innocuous comic books, were critical to the Zodiac world. They recorded each side’s actions in graphic titles, both Shadow and Light, putting it in print for young, nubile minds to read, dream about…and, in turn, provide the energy fueling their chosen side’s battles. So if anyone could protect me from Mackie, it was Skamar.

I opened my mouth to say as much, but she cut me off with a jerk of her head. “And you know what I’m up against as well.”

“The little ol’ Tulpa?” I scoffed, fisting one hand on my hip. “You’re winning, Skamar! He was in a wheelchair today. He’s conserving energy like a starving python.”

“That’s right. I’m winning!” She punched her chest so hard I felt it. “And I intend to keep on winning. I know who he is, what he is, and how he formed. I know what it’s like to hunger for more substance in this world, and I can anticipate what he’s willing to do to get it. But Sleepy Mac?” She shook her head. “I don’t know how to fight him.”

I didn’t blink, and I remained silent until she again met my eye. “I’ll die, Skamar.”

She just looked at me.

“Oh.” I got it. It wasn’t her problem. I was no longer the Kairos, or a part of the world she considered her own. I couldn’t help her…therefore she saw no reason to help me.

Seeing my realization, she shook her head. “That’s not it. I need to conserve my energy too. The Tulpa may be weakened, but he’s resourceful and established. I can’t rest until his last cell is stamped from this earth.”

“You wouldn’t be able to tap your fucking toe if not for me,” I whispered lowly. And though I hadn’t known the sentiment was there until it was out, my fury flared with it. “I gave you a name. I’m the one who fought to get it recorded.”

“And so I owe you?”

“Fucking right, you do.”

It was a stupid thing to say to someone who could pulverize me with one fist, but if she didn’t help me, I was dead anyway. We locked gazes for a full raw minute, visually arm-wrestling, the one area where I was as strong and willful as she.

Finally, she sighed. “Once, but then we’re even.”

It didn’t feel even. I had sacrificed all and she had gained all, but with the Tulpa closing in on the only remaining Archer in his dynastic cover, and Sleepy Mac determined to carve me up like holiday meat, I could only nod. Right now, I thought, leading her back to my car, I’d take whatever help I could get.

Skamar fell into sleep as soon as we settled in the car. It was hard to impart a sense of paranoia in a being with no equal in power. Yes, she understood the gravity of my plight on one level, but it was like a virgin’s understanding of sex. The textbook explanation could only get you so far.

When we arrived at the Greenspun Residences, Skamar roused herself enough to scan the perimeter of the highrise condo. She returned in time to place herself before me when the lobby’s elevator doors opened, moving ten times as fast as a mortal. The doorman hadn’t even known she was gone.

“What do you remember about Mackie?” I asked, fishing Warren’s phone from my pocket, thumb hovering over the panic button.

Skamar snorted. “What do you remember of your birth, Archer?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, my gestation in Midheaven was like your evolution in the womb. The right components in the right environment leading to a rising consciousness. But I had no words to put to my existence while there, and without words, images are meaningless. Without meaning, they fade. I simply can’t remember.”

I blinked, momentarily forgetting my fear. “Then how did you know about Mackie? You weren’t a bit surprised when I said he was after me.”

She quirked a fine brow and waited.

“Because my mother knows.” Of course she did. Zoe Archer had been in Midheaven long ago, and Sleepy Mac was the oldest semiliving being there. But if she’d known of his escape, why hadn’t she alerted Warren?

Why wasn’t she helping me now?

“Don’t ask me,” Skamar said, reading my thoughts. “I can’t get involved.”

“I’m mortal too.” I hated how injured my voice sounded. I hated to beg for information about my own mother.

“She knows, and she’s still working on your behalf. She still…believes in you.” While Skamar’s tone said she clearly did not.

“Then why won’t she-”

“She doesn’t tell me why.”

“So make her!”

She turned her gaze back to the panel where the floors ticked by. “I don’t care enough to make her do anything.”

I angled myself before her, putting myself in potential danger when those doors snicked open. “If you thought I was the Kairos would you care?”

“If you were the Kairos,” she said, using one finger to push me aside, “I wouldn’t be here.”

The bell chimed at our floor and the doors opened. The hum of empty air stretched, and trailing Skamar, I thought maybe this would be a nonevent.

That hope died as soon as the giant French doors swung open. “Oh my God.”

The phone nearly slipped from my hand as I stared at the gleaming foyer, the remnants of Olivia’s physical life strung over it like confetti. Skamar whizzed from room to room, leaving a whistle in her wake, but I simply pushed the door shut and slumped against it.

Every item Olivia had collected on vacations, sprees, and whims…destroyed. The Swedish crystal she valued for its thickness and curves was smashed on the marble floor. The built-in shelves housing them were carved up, symbols scratched into the surfaces, though it was mostly a cross-hatching of random, furious scrawls that left wood shavings scattered among the broken glass.

The antique scrolled daybed in the room’s center was dumped on its side, the gorgeous wood equally bladeraped. Its silken throws and pillows hadn’t been spared either, and soft down, cotton, and wool lay in destroyed puffs and strips. Graffiti marred the entire room-glass tops and walls, ceiling and marble floor-though it wasn’t paint scrawled over every surface, but the mark of that deadly blade. Each score was a warning even though the damage was already done. I didn’t know what sort of strength was needed to make marble scream, but knew if Mackie had his way, there was a death cry waiting in my body too.

Lifting my head, I stared at the floor-to-ceiling windows revealing the penthouse’s money shot-an unobscured view of the famous Strip. It was an even better view now, I thought sadly. Because every plate-glass window bore a jagged hole the size of a doorway in its empty middle. Cold air rolled in uninvited, though that wasn’t what had me shivering as Skamar returned to my side.

“Check the ledge outside, please.” Mackie could literally be hanging there, waiting in ambush. I’d once traversed that ledge as well.

While Skamar investigated, I repocketed the phone and forced myself into action, stepping over shattered picture frames, littered flowers-already wilting-and vases near impossible to replace. Every step forward was an invitation to panic, so I deliberately slowed my breathing to match my footsteps, not daring to release any strong emotion. Mackie could be close enough to scent it. He’d return eventually, and of course Tripp was right. The monster wouldn’t stop until I was dead.

Something inside of me lifted its head at the thought. It was as if logs were being thrown on a newly lit pyre, and each one choked back a scream. I held my breath even as my heartbeat quickened-panic attack, I realized, bracing my weight against a wall. That’s what people had when they were up against something far stronger than themselves. Shuttering my eyes, I tried to ignore it, but it flared behind my lids in a blinding orange-red, and heat struck at my heart.

“Joanna?”

Skamar’s voice was as airy and far off as she’d once been, like she was still stuck in another world.

I rubbed at my eyes, the fire in my chest building. My rib cage began to ache, and I stumbled into Olivia’s bedroom. Not a whole lot more to destroy there either. The same definitively careless lacerations scored every surface. I bumbled through the upturned furniture, tripping in my blind panic, and cut myself on the fragrant perfume bottles littering the floor.

“Joanna!” This time a hiss. My blood and panic must have reeked.

I ripped at linens and sheets, searching, the fire mounting, before I clamored over a halved mattress to the closet I’d fitted with a false back. Clothing-ripped, slashed, slit, torn-designer labels, and remnants of beauty mocking me with false value. I pushed it all aside, along with leather shoes and boots now made of fringe…and finally found Luna, wide-eyed, in a corner.

“No.”

Was that my voice? I wondered. Or an echo too from another world?

“No, no, no…”

Ah, that was keening. A death wail that straddled worlds. I recognized it because I’d lost loved ones to violence before. But never a being so innocent and small. Never a pet.

I hadn’t thought wardens could be destroyed. Conduits only made them stronger, larger, and fiercer. Mackie’s soul knife wasn’t a conduit then, because Luna had faced a reduction-her form removed along with her life. I only recognized the feline face because of those great, unseeing eyes. Gathering the rest like kindling in my arms I folded over the fur and bone, wrapping it around her like a blanket, trying to put her back together.

And then she blinked.

“Oh God, oh God…” It wasn’t me this time, but it was just as unnatural. Beings imagined into existence generally didn’t pray. “Come. Let’s get you out of here.”

But I couldn’t leave my warden. After all, she had never left me. I curled my own body around her as I was lifted in turn. The pyre in my chest flared, Luna and me caught in its center, bloodied fur and raw emotion mingling like our biology and spirits were one. Yes, I thought, a small piece of me dying.

“Hold tight,” Skamar whispered raggedly, but instead I tucked into myself and just let go. She jumped from the rooftop, Olivia’s condo dropping away in a roller-coaster dip. Then the air pressed me back against the tulpa, her flight a shuttle takeoff. I curled in tighter. Burning on that pyre, I let go all the fear and sadness and horror I’d been trying so hard to keep from being scented by those in the underworld. The wind whipped away my screams before doing the same, eventually, with my manic laughter. I imagined Mackie crazed on the ground, trying to track those cries, but only stopped when my throttling gasps extinguished the fire behind my lids. Gradually the air lessened against me, and I slumped in those slim, tenuous arms. For a moment I could almost imagine Luna was warm, curled in my arms, purring and whole. Then Skamar landed. And the world was cold again.

My mind was clenched, registering only tunnels, darkness, beneath the city… but eventually a face appeared. Again, just eyes, though unlike Luna’s, these weren’t framed in a broken body. The skull housing them wasn’t crushed. And they remained fixed on one spot, willing me into coherence.

“You could crush me like that,” I said, voice so flat it could’ve been ground beneath Mackie’s boot too.

“Anyone in our world could crush you,” Skamar replied, truthfully. I winced, but didn’t hold the lack of sentiment against her. She wasn’t born like me. She didn’t have a past, so how could I expect empathy to be part of her makeup? It had to be learned, gained through experience. Skamar had never been weighed down with a personal history. No family or allies to betray her, while I’d had both. “But not like that,” she added, almost to herself.

So keeping a being alive beneath a pulverized body was a skill unique to Sleepy Mac. I swallowed hard, and though Skamar didn’t move, imagined her doing the same.

“Help her.” My voice came out knotted. Hearing it, I had the urge to resume my wailing, but I squeezed my lips tight. That’s how I held myself together.

“I already have.”

I frowned, and the glyph on her chest lit in response, delivering those deep-set eyes back into a face I’d helped create. Her mouth was rimmed in crimson, like she’d been smoking blood.

“What did you do?”

“Separated her soul from her body. Took her awareness out of that already rotting mess. I helped her,” Skamar added quickly, though she didn’t sound happy about it.

I thought of the Tulpa leaning over to suck life from Xavier’s body, and of the magic candle leading to Midheaven that yanked out soul bits along with a blown breath. I lunged for the darkness.

We remained silent long after I finished being sick.

“If it’s any consolation, her fear and pain eased at the end. Her consciousness thanked me.”

A tear rolled down my cheek. “And now?”

“She’s gone.”

Silence again, but I couldn’t hear it over the screaming in my head. Finally Skamar sensed my panic settling. “I will watch over you when I can.” Reluctance edged every word. “I was built to battle the Tulpa, it is my reason in all things, but if there’s enough left over…”

Meaning there were no promises. I might yet end up a bleeding sack of slivered organs and crushed bone, consciousness trapped in a postmortem stain.

Hours earlier I might have retorted smartly, but now I only nodded and swayed. Skamar’s arms steadied me, but I remained unaware of my body, so numb the command to wiggle my feet didn’t register. I’d seen and even caused gruesome death before. People pitched into the afterlife with limbs wheeling to fight the inevitable. But I’d never seen something living reduced to such abject nothingness.

I angled my head to face her. “Do I smell like fear?”

Skamar hesitated, then shook her head.

“What, then?”

“Despair.”

“Will it encourage him?” I asked, because I knew Mackie would scent it eventually. That’s why Skamar had taken me here, into the tunnels beneath the city, where emotions could be temporarily crushed between two worlds.

She glanced up like the answer was scrawled in graffiti on the tunnel’s slope. Then she sighed. “It will fuel him.”

Another truth. I nodded woodenly, mentally chaining myself to it.

“Come,” Skamar said, holding out a hand.

That was the prod I needed to feel my body again. But I recoiled, lost my footing, and slid into a crouch against the curve of the tunnel wall. “Five more minutes. Just a little longer in the dark.”

Her hesitation was silent argument, but then her glyph lessened until it soundlessly snapped off. I heard a slide, Skamar reclining across from me, and we both disappeared again, drawing the thick silence around us like a quilt. I sat in the long ticking minutes without any idea of how to fight this, or even if it would help to turn and run. Mackie had crossed worlds to find me, and city limits meant nothing to rogues. I could flee to another continent, and he would still be able to track me. If he had the will.

I thought of what he’d willfully done to Luna’s body, and swallowed hard.

“Goddamn Hunter,” I said. His name tasted like bile. I cursed his other one. “Goddamn Jaden Jacks.”

“That’s right,” Skamar murmured in the dark. “Anger will help.”

And I’d need all the help I could get. I frowned, then scrambled to my feet, holding out my hand this time. I saw and sensed nothing, but knew Skamar’s hyperkeen eyesight had me flooded, as though in a spotlight. Her loose, dry hand wrapped around mine, leading me forward, and together we headed out of the darkness, back into the city, hauling emotions strong enough to stoke an inferno.