The Harvest

by Vicki Pettersson

  The drop was short, and she hit solid concrete, unsettling enough dust to have her coughing in the complete dark. Her first hint that she wasn’t alone was the threatening growl that came from her left. As if she didn’t already feel threatened enough. She swung around as an insistent whine and heavy panting emerged, closer to her right.

  Wardens.

  Fear reared instinctively. The animals sensed it, and the whining strengthened. But fear can still be attributed to my humanity, Zoe thought, whirling blindly again. Who wouldn’t be afraid, trapped in a dark underground pound?

  “Uh … babe?” she tried, revealing her fear and all-too-human nerves in the shake of her voice.

  “Still alive, then?” the Tulpa asked casually from directly above. Zoe looked up and saw his slim outline blocking the dim light from the children’s classroom.

  The question was telling. It meant he hadn’t expected her to be. She felt a sniffling along her arm, a wet nose, then the tentative lick of a very large tongue. The Shadow wardens were dogs, paranormal pets that could scent out enemy agents and rip them apart in seconds. They were the only things, other than conduits, that could actually kill an agent. Well, thought Zoe, looking up again, conduits, wardens … and the Tulpa.

  “Clearly. But, and this is just a wild guess, I take it you have some other questions for me?”

  “I have one.” Then his voice was in her ear. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

  And one after another, four giant spotlights boomed to life, flooding the cave with light so bright Zoe had to cover her face. The wardens whimpered, their claws scratching as they scampered blindly away. Zoe fished for the shades she’d dropped in her pocket and slipped them back on. Her eyes still teared as the light assaulted her from beyond the lenses, but she could finally make out the perimeter of the room … and it chilled her to the bone.

  It was a stupa, a building in the Tibetan tradition meant to honor Buddha. The Tulpa had always meant to build one … but his, he’d said, would be dedicated solely to himself. Zoe had researched the subject when she’d lived with him, so she knew there were three types of stupas: ones to commemorate events or occasions in Buddha’s—or, in this case, the Tulpa’s—life. Ones erected to gain favor … but those were generally small and this was anything but. Finally, there were those used for the burial of relics from a funeral pyre. Zoe felt the grit caked beneath her fingernails from her abrupt landing and swallowed hard.

  Yep, she thought, looking up. The room was cone-shaped, indicating solar worship. There was also an altar to her right. And while most burial stupas held vessels containing the bones and ashes from a crematorial fire, Zoe didn’t look for them. The entire room was the vessel. All that was missing was fire.

  “I mean, you must think I’m stupid,” he went on, voice circling her like a vulture from above. He was circumambulating, walking in a clockwise direction, reflecting the movement of the sun and rotating planets. Zoe fought back the whimper that wanted to come. “I have to admit you caught me by surprise, just waltzing up and knocking on the door that way. That was a stroke of brilliance, as was the way you’ve obviously clothed yourself in humanity. But it only means you’re that much easier to break … I’ll have to be careful if I want our time together to last.”

  She wrapped her arms around her middle. “So you don’t believe me.”

  The understatement of the year.

  “Believe that you went to my creator intending to free me? To name me?” Outrage made his voice shake, but his outline above had gone unnaturally still. “No, Zoe. I know you went there believing that his life, and death, was linked to my own.”

  She jerked her head. “But you’d broken free of him! You already had enough consciousness and ability to rule the mortal and supernatural plane. I knew that. So why risk killing the creator only to leave behind my signature scent?”

  “You didn’t know. You expected me to weaken and die.” He paused and his exhale rolled over Zoe, pushing her hair back from her shoulders. “And you never loved me.”

  Sweat broke on Zoe’s forehead, though only part of it had to do with nerves. “Then what am I doing here now?”

  Three of the spotlights powered down, and his voice was again in her ear. “That’s what I intend to find out.”

  Zoe whirled, but he wasn’t next to her. He was across the ash-strewn chamber, outline obscured, but eyes glowing red.

  “Why can’t you just believe me?” she asked him, shaking her head.

  “Because look at me!” he bellowed. “I look exactly as I did before! You have created me in the same image, even the same fucking clothing! Which means your intentions are the same as well. But you will die for your betrayal this time, and your death will benefit me.”

  And as the temperature suddenly soared in the spherical chamber, she knew there was no way to sway him. He’d sought a way to get to her for too long now, and she’d just walked in and given it to him.

  Zoe lowered her head, bit her lip, then slowly lifted the glasses from her face. She looked at them for a long moment, then threw them to the ground in front of her. When she looked up, her face was resolute. Slowly she began to walk toward him, the mirrored lenses splintering beneath her heel.

  “I gave it all up; my chi, my place, my legend and legacy among the star signs of the Zodiac.” She swiped a damp tendril of hair from her forehead as she came to a stop in front of him. She ignored his blatant anger as he ignored the bitterness coating her words, and reached out to take his icy hands in hers. They felt wonderfully cool in her sweaty palms, and she lifted them gently and dropped them around her neck like an executioner’s noose. She shrugged in the confused silence. “What is my life in comparison? Take it, as I took Wyatt’s. Because I no longer want anything to do with this world if I don’t also have your love.”

  For a moment his face remained impassive, a blank slate. She thought he was making her wait, prolonging the moment, making her suffer. But then that petrified stare twisted, first with fury, then anguish, and finally a wild and open need. Those icy fingers splayed wide, bracing her from her hairline to the base of her sweaty neck, slipped lower to her collarbone, beneath her shirt, rising to grasp her damp shoulders. He pulled her to him so quickly she lost her breath, and continued to fight for air as his icy lips found her heated ones, cold tongue probing in her warm mouth. She managed one great inhale of that icy breath, and it shot through her like quicksilver, freezing her lungs, and then she was kissing him back, pouring heat into him, both of them fighting for balance, and equilibrium. They clung to one another the same way they both clung to life, with a greedy and self-centered zeal, a perfect match in that respect.

  When Zoe finally opened her eyes again, she gasped aloud. There was the man she loved.

  It was Warren’s face she caressed, the homeless mien she’d seen most recently. His cheeks were the ones she lovingly ran her smooth-tipped fingers over, catching on the stubble, curving at the jaw. They were his lips that her eyes caught upon and his Adam’s apple bobbing under the weight of her gaze. It was Warren alone that she saw, even as soulless black eyes flared beneath the bones.

  “You do love me,” she told him, her whisper choked with tears and truth. “And I love you. And living without that love is a far worse fate than any momentary pain. I welcome death over the half-life I’ve been living. I’ll burn, and I’ll do it with your name on my lips.”

  The Warren-face winced.

  “And my bed?” he rasped, the Tulpa’s icy breath blowing her hair back again from her shoulders. It felt like a welcoming spring breeze. “Do you return there willingly as well?”

  “Not just willingly,” she whispered back, her eyes drinking him in as her hands moved lower. “Desperately.”

  She didn’t add that she’d have to be desperate to return to him at all. He had immediately turned and she was too busy following and reimagining him, erasing Warren’s image before anyone else caught sight of him. And too busy wiping away her tears. If only she’d
said those words to Warren while she’d still had the chance.

  It was only after she’d already gone through with the unthinkable, allowing him on top of her and inside of her as she had all those years ago—that he wanted to talk. Zoe was huddled beneath the covers, shivering with cold from her core on out, though she told the Tulpa it had to do with relief … and because she’d barely touched her food earlier. So he brought the cornucopia she’d made to their bed, the gesture showing Zoe how much he wanted to trust her again. The sentiment made her smile wobbly, and moistened her eyes. He was like one of the children he stole off the streets, curious and hopeful … and so very gullible.

  “The timing is curious, though,” he was saying, as he popped a ripened fig into his mouth. He was propped up beside her on his elbow as she lay with her dark hair splayed on his pillow, her image reflected back at herself from above.

  It turned out it wasn’t only his reflection he liked to watch in the mirror.

  “What’s curious about wanting to be with the one you love on the holidays?” Zoe said, running a hand along the fine hairs of his arm. He fed her a bloodred berry, approval in his eyes as he watched her eat, and she nibbled lightly on his fingertips. “It’s a time to be with family. I wanted to come home.”

  “I don’t mean that.” He smiled down at her, looking infinitely younger. “I mean that after years of no word or sighting of you, you pop up after reports of your capture and death.”

  She had no idea what had been reported back to him, so kept her response deliberately vague. “I told you. I’ve been trying to find a way back to you for a long time now. If I’ve been sighted lately it’s because I’ve been working toward that. Toward this.”

  He almost grinned as she continued to stroke him, but shook his head. “Not a sighting of you, not like this. Reports had you posing as a young girl who was caught and killed in the desert.”

  They thought she’d been posing as Joanna, Zoe realized and almost shuddered at the easy way he spoke of her death. “And did you believe them?”

  “Oh, no. I knew you were still alive. I felt it in my mind and core, no matter what Joaquin said.”

  Joaquin, she repeated, committing the name to memory.

  The Tulpa mistook her silence for confusion. “He’s always been one for hyperbole.”

  “Then you’ve … reprimanded him?” she asked, hopefully.

  “Oh, yes. He knows how I love children.”

  And the reminder was all she needed to shore up her nerve. “Fruit,” she asked sweetly, holding out an apple. He smiled down at her and took it willingly.

  Zoe watched him bite into it, imagined it as the juiciest and sweetest fruit he’d ever tasted, the crisp skin smooth against his tongue, the juice trickling down his throat. She put all her energy into envisioning this as she watched his eyes flutter half-shut as he swallowed and she rose up to her elbows, placing the cornucopia—the horn of plenty—on his belly as he reclined, trance-like, the scent of ripe fruit rising to permeate the air.

  He came back to himself slowly, so that by the time he realized what was happening it was too late. The cornucopia, once a tool of the Greeks, the pagan farmers, was now a tool of Zoe’s will, melding with the traditions of the past. The wicker unraveled as those ancient powers merged and the straw was once again a living thing, slipping around the Tulpa’s body, burrowing through the bed and deep into the earth. The growth was slow at first, but it sped up as Zoe’s excitement soared … and the Tulpa’s spirit was enslaved in the narrow tip of the horn.

  His eyes flew open, black searing to red, only to be snuffed by Zoe’s power. She smiled, closed-mouthed, then rose— fruit and nuts, pomegranates and gourds, peppers and artichokes all spilling over the bed and floor. Each grew stems and spines and burrowed into the earth, both rising and falling, vines weaving among themselves to bind the Tulpa where he lay. Zoe knew the fruit he’d already eaten was doing the same to his insides and smiled again, feeling his eyes follow her as she dressed. When she was done, she turned.

  The Tulpa’s throat worked, visibly paining him, but he managed a deep breath, even as an emerging leaf shot from his mouth. “But … you’re … mortal.”

  Zoe brushed the remains of someone else’s ash from the crease in her slacks. “You forget what mortals are capable of, Tulpa dear. We can use belief to create, imagine, wish, and will things into being. And those of us with extremely powerful minds believe anything is possible.”

  She leaned in close to whisper in his ear. “You asked me before ‘Who do you think you are?’ But I never got to answer, did I?” She licked her lips and despite himself, the Tulpa’s gaze flickered down before he drew it back to her eyes. She smiled knowingly. “Well, I’m Zoe Archer, dear. The woman who can break you at will. And the real question—you nameless, formless fuck—is who the hell do you think you are?”

  His enraged howls were muffled as a miniature gourd spilled over his tongue.

  “I’m leaving now. I’m going to bring in your so-called harvest and return those children to where they belong, but keep one thing very clear in your mind.” She flipped her hair back from her shoulders, knowing she was planting another seed, this one in his mind. “I can and will get to you again. Mortal or not, on this plane or another, anytime and anywhere.”

  Dozens of images of her smirking saluted her as she turned to leave the room, but before she did she glanced over her shoulder one last time. “Oh, and next time, babe? You’d better have a castle and a moat. Because I’ll have learned how to kill you by then. And I won’t be stopped by a mere kiss.”

  And with that she strode out the door to find Lindy slumped, anchored against the wall by the woody growth of a cranberry vine, the hard bitter fruit spilling like bright marbles from her mouth. Immobile, her eyes alone followed Zoe as she stooped to meet those hate-filled orbs. “You’re lucky, Lindy. The cornucopia’s powers won’t hold you all long enough for me to both kill you and still get away.” She paused as relief played across Lindy’s face, then shrugged. “So I’ll just let the agents of Light take care of that for me. Have fun.”

  Lindy’s protests were berry-choked as Zoe strode down the long silent hallway, back to the classroom where the children were now sleeping, curled up in the same even rows they’d occupied before. The ward mothers awoke when she entered, stood in tandem, but did nothing to stop her. They weren’t warriors, and that wasn’t their job. Zoe wove through the children, searched out the one she wanted, and lifted her sleeping granddaughter from her crib.

  “He’ll find you, you know,” one of the mothers spat. “He won’t stop this time. Not until your blood runs like a river.”

  “Yeah,” Zoe said, drawing out the word as if considering it. “That’s what you said the last time.”

  Then she left the room, and threw open the front door of the Tulpa’s house. Chaos erupted behind her as the alarm sounded, the house coming to life too late, and a piercing whistle rang through the night as Light descended on the mansion. Her former allies, felt rather than seen, rushed past her, war cries pealing like bells in the cool air, but Zoe had already fought her battle. She turned her back on it all, and gratefully, thankfully, finally took her granddaughter home.

  Chapter 8

  She laid low for an entire week. Her cornucopia’s magic had held long enough for her to get away, and since that was all she wanted—and all she believed was possible—the agents of Light and Shadow had fought yet another epic battle. She’d pick up a manual at one of the comic book shops later so she could get the Cliff Notes version of what went down, but she already knew the Tulpa had escaped with his life. Like him, she could sense his existence in her marrow, and knew she always would. She didn’t waste time regretting it, though. She was already plotting how to double back and give him the “next time” she’d promised. She might be mortal, but the word that still summed up Zoe Archer best was single-minded.

  The McCormicks paid daily visits to the facility the agents of Light had set up just on the
outskirts of town until Ashlyn was strong enough to return home with them. They had no problem forging the new identity papers Micah had prepared for them, and immediately put their home on the market as Phaedre instructed. They were still under the assumption that Phaedre, Gregor, and Zoe worked for the government, that Ashlyn was at risk and needed to be placed in a witness protection program, so they told no one where they were going, and left no forwarding address. But Zoe knew it, and she planned on keeping a close eye on them, as she had the night the moving van came and they loaded up all their belongings. She couldn’t be there for her daughters any longer, but she could at least watch over Ashlyn.

  But what she really needed to do was finally, fully, embrace her humanity. There could be no more dipping into the paranormal world she’d left behind, no lamenting all she’d lost. In order for her to be a whole woman, and a person who could act and move through the world with purpose, she had to accept her limitations, just like anyone else. She had to release once and for all her knowledge of what went on beneath the veil separating this reality from the next.

  But this time she would say goodbye.

  So the following Thursday found her pacing the walkway of an apartment building just one block from the Guardian Angel Cathedral, hands shoved deep in the pockets of her black slacks, the collar of her winter coat turned up to shield her face from the whip of an angry wind. The weather had turned suddenly, and the streets were empty because of it. Zoe inhaled a deep breath of the biting wind, and as she blew it back out she thought of the Tulpa, naked but for the vines and leaves canvassing his body like living entrails. It was so satisfying, even now, that her laughter stilled her in her tracks.

  “You went blonde.”

  And even though she’d been prepared for him, Zoe jumped. Warren grinned when she turned.

  “And you took a shower,” she said, noting his smooth cheeks and shorn hair. He was dressed like her, in black, his peacoat flapping open in the wind. He motioned to a stairwell next to the apartment manager’s office, and Zoe ducked beneath it.