The Neon Graveyard

by Vicki Pettersson

  “Because you need killing.”

  I clenched my jaw. “Is that right?”

  “It ain’t no lie,” he said, showing teeth. Then he turned, swung the door wide, and with a whipping gust and the sound of a far-off Cessna, was gone.

  “Why are you guys suddenly helping me?” I asked Carl once I’d choked down scalding tears—angry and indignant ones; not sad—and, of course, made sure Warren had really left. I felt silly, as if asking revealed some sort of vulnerability to the little twerp, but really, what was there to hide? As penciler of the valley’s entire Zodiac series, he knew more about me than any agent who, for all their powers, could read only one side or the other of the manuals. I had to believe that drawing a person’s actions somehow imbued you with a deeper knowledge of their emotions, and a greater understanding of their personality and actions.

  Besides, with Zane taking a siesta, there wasn’t anyone else to ask. The other kids were impressive enough in monster mash mode, but they were rank-and-file. They knew what they were told, and did the same. As proof, Donny was hyperventilating on the floor now that he’d returned to his regular form, and though I adored Li, she could never truly align herself with me, not when it came right down to it. So as the others gathered around Donny, both congratulating and teasing him about popping his changeling cherry, it was Carl’s gaze that remained fixed on me, his expression a cross-section of pity and doubt.

  Or maybe indigestion. It was hard to tell with him.

  “You sure you don’t have any idea what your ether does?” he asked, voice quiet and almost hopeful. He was nudging me, which made it clear, once again, that I’d have to figure it out by myself. If only I could figure out how.

  The power to imagine things into existence.

  I leaned across the glass countertop. “Solange just gave me back that power so I could cross physically into Midheaven.”

  “A woman who thrives on other people’s soul power gave some back to you? Without demanding anything in return?” He shook his head, and blew out a hard breath that had his hair standing up even more. “I don’t like it. Maybe going over there isn’t the best idea.”

  “No choice, my friendly little mutant. Those men trapped in Midheaven will never make it out on their own. They’ll remain on a slow boil until the last of their energy has been consumed to create Solange’s dreamland. Then they’ll be tossed like refuse on the molten core of that world.”

  “And you’re going to save them?” he asked, doubt pinging through every syllable. “With what? Bravado? Wishful thinking? One sole power that you don’t even know how to use?”

  “I’m just going to be the helping hand I wished had once been extended to me.”

  “How very maternal of you,” he said pointedly, eyes skimming my stomach.

  Jerking back, my mouth fell open, though my throat wouldn’t work. Carl grinned. He knew. Somehow this little shit knew that I was pregnant. Which meant it wouldn’t be long before everyone else did too.

  He saw me glancing at the other kids, and after doing the same, making sure none was listening, he leaned in close. “You’re running out of safe zones, Archer. Maybe you should listen to both troop leaders. Leave town while you still can. Start a life somewhere where you’re not surrounding by those who want to cleave your head from your body.”

  I gave him a smile. That had been almost sweet. “Do I seem like the white-picket-fence sort of girl to you, Carl?”

  “No, you seem like the blood-soaked-walls kind of girl to me.”

  That wasn’t as sweet.

  “Just sayin’, you might want to amend your ways. You’ve more enemies than friends right now.” He pushed to a seated position atop the cabinet across from me, sitting on Zane’s most precious collection of superhero figurines. “Do you know I spend almost fifty percent of my work day penciling the grays these days? You guys are draining the energy from both Shadow and Light.”

  So no matter what Warren said, I still had the power to influence the war in this city. I smiled when I told Carl that.

  “That’s one way to look at it,” he said, huffing and pulling at his tie. “Another way is to acknowledge that you have a big fat bull’s-eye between your eyes.”

  I sighed. “Can I go now?”

  He shrugged. “The boys should let you pass.” I looked over at the two guard changelings battling for a headlock next to the front door, grunting and arguing over who would have come out on top had they been tested. At least their fangs had retracted.

  I threw some bills onto the counter for my chosen Shadow manual, then strode to the door before they changed their minds. “Thanks, Carl. Later dweebs. Li.”

  “Hey Archer?” Carl stopped me as I hit the door, the same place Warren had paused before. Yet when I looked back, he waffled uncertainly, words jerking from his mouth like tugs on a fishing line. “Study the signs.”

  I drew back. “The signs of the Zodiac?”

  What did they have to do with anything? I mean, they were important heralds as to our world’s events, sure, but they were too cryptic to be useful as guides.

  He shook his head. “That’s all I can tell you . . . and only because you brought the others to pass.”

  I glanced at Li, then back at the locked cabinet where the sixth sign was locked in the manual of Light. Carl was already shaking his head. “Sorry. You’ve already made an official purchase. You’ll have to wait until next week if you want the Light.”

  The dweeb bots and their stupid rules. “Fine. Tell Zane I hope he feels better soon.”

  “Sure.” His face twisted like he’d just tasted something new and was uncertain whether he liked it or not. “I’ll do that.”

  I peeked out the door cautiously, finding the street empty, though the changelings wouldn’t have let me pass were Warren still outside. Still, I kept my stride even because, as Carl warned, there were still other enemies afoot. Enemies in this world, enemies in the next. Maybe I could imagine some allies into existence, I thought wryly. That would be nice for a change.

  10

  Study the signs.

  Carl’s parting words trailed me as I headed back to the waiting grays. As he’d said, the signs of the Zodiac were all portents I’d helped bring to pass. They were also cryptic, mysterious, and open to a multitude of interpretations.

  Contrary to what one might initially believe, the signs of the Zodiac had nothing to do with the astrological wheel. Instead, as portents, they were indications that one side in the fight between good and evil was finally gaining dominance over the other.

  The first “sign” of the Zodiac, then, had been the rise of the Kairos. A year ago everyone had been saying that was my unexpected arrival on the paranormal scene. Imagine my surprise when, out of nowhere, I’d learned I was a superhero charged with protecting mankind from the overt influence of the Shadows.

  Imagine my further disbelief when told I was the legendary Kairos, or the savior of whatever side I chose to fight on. That was before I’d been reduced again to a mortal, of course, and long before we all learned of Solange and Hunter’s fated love child.

  The second and third signs followed quickly. The fourth portent of the Zodiac was my own near-death drowning, while the fifth sign was the most recent development: The Shadow would bind with the Light. Bind with it, I thought, stepping into the mouth of the alley, to create gray. The rise of the rogues as a legitimate troop also renewed both the Shadows’ and the Lights’ desire to see us wiped from the earth’s surface. They might be sworn enemies, but they had a common enemy in us.

  Or, more specifically, in little ol’ mortal me.

  Because now it was time for the sixth sign of the Zodiac to be revealed, and while Donny was right, knowledge wouldn’t allow me to alter fate, it might help to anticipate it.

  Study the signs, I thought . . .

  Then my back struck the Dumpster eight feet behind me. I wheezed even though I’d never had a chance to take a breath, and hoped whatever just popped in my spine was
n’t important. I also scented something rancid that had nothing to do with the garbage behind me. I had a moment to think, Warren, before a face filled my line of vision, so close my eyes nearly crossed.

  “Is he in there?”

  The whisper was cracked, the breath soured. Wild eyes—not Warren’s—searched mine, and I had time to see the mouth opened again before another collision wiped the face away. I whirled with the motion, but steadying hands found me and I screamed before my vision righted itself. If I waited it would be too late.

  “Don’t hurt her!” I yelled, straining forward. And when the world finally stopped spinning, I ran for the woman who’d once laughed, fought, and cried with me. She was pinned beneath Milo and Fletcher, seconds from the beating of her life.

  “It’s okay.” I stilled them with a hand on each shoulder. “It’s Vanessa.”

  Yet I was only sure of the latter of those statements. It was definitely Vanessa, though it took me a moment to really recognize her. She was warm flesh hanging off bone, rumpled clothes hanging off that, and little else.

  “Don’t hurt her,” I repeated, jerking loose of Vincent’s restraining grip. He was only trying to protect me, but I shook him off and bent close anyway. No, I couldn’t be sure she wasn’t here to kill me, but the blow that’d knocked the breath from my lungs could have done so much more. She’d come out of nowhere, and yet I lived.

  Is he in there?

  “Vanessa?” I said, but that failed to get her attention. Her head lolled from one side to the other, eyeballs following a second later like they were loose, rolling in their sockets. She looked everywhere except the faces crowded around her. “Hey, V?”

  It was Felix’s pet name that caught her attention. She lifted her head, eyes rolling to a stop on my face. Then her lower lip, thinned and chapped and pale with dehydration, began to wobble. “Felix . . .”

  A murmur of sympathy escaped me, and I put a hand on her cheek. “I know.”

  She searched my face a moment longer before her head dropped to the pavement with a sickening thwack. I winced when she hit it again, even harder, and Milo suddenly used his restraining hand to create a cushion between her and the pavement. It didn’t matter. Vanessa was beyond caring what anyone else might do to her. I’d seen it in that brief look. The worst had already happened in her life, and she had no desire to see any more.

  “Help her up,” I told Milo. Foxx made a sound beside me like he was going to object but I cut him off with a sharp look. He had to scent the desperation, exhaustion, and grief on this woman. As a rogue he’d felt all those things at one time too. His jaw clenched, he still didn’t like it, but he stepped back with a sigh. Vanessa was no threat to any of us.

  Milo and Fletcher lifted her gently to her feet, where she wobbled before leaning against the wall, doing the minimum necessary to remain standing on her own. My heart broke as I stared, remembering the first time I’d met her—a vibrant, powerful, bronze-skinned warrior, with a head of soft, full curls and honey-lit eyes. Yet these last months had been unkind. She’d been tortured, and though the only remaining evidence of that was her shorn hair—those once-gorgeous curls were now worn pixie-style—shadows passed behind her gaze in unguarded moments.

  And then, Felix.

  My memories of them together must have scented the air because she refocused her dulled gaze on me, hope like a painful stain in her eyes. “Are you sure he wasn’t there?”

  I shook my head. “He wasn’t, honey. I promise.”

  Vanessa winced, then seemed to note the other grays for the first time. She straightened, wiping her palms along her hopelessly wrinkled shirt, as if to smooth out both it and herself. “Well, did Zane say anything? Maybe he let something slip? Or maybe there’s something about Felix in the Shadow manuals?”

  Her eyes darted to the manual I still held, but I managed to regain her attention by answering her first question. “Zane wasn’t there either.”

  “That’s what Chandra said.” She tilted her head, thinking on that, which would have been reassuringly normal if it wasn’t done as slowly as a bug considering its prey. Geez, I thought, holding my breath so she didn’t scent my alarm. And I thought I’d lost a few mental steps after Hunter had left.

  “You’ve seen Chandra?” I asked, trying to keep her focused.

  She nodded, but her gaze had wandered back in the direction of Master Comics. “But that’s strange, right? Zane should be there. There are just so many people . . . not where they’re supposed to be.”

  I didn’t blame her for being shell-shocked. Everything she knew of the world, all she’d taken for granted as true and right, had just been upended on its head. Her troop leader hadn’t protected them; he had, in fact, lied to them all. The war for the city wasn’t really about the mortal right to choose between good and evil, or even balance between the two warring sides as Warren claimed. It was about power, plain and simple, and who had more of it.

  Guilt stuttered through me because I too was something that shouldn’t exist in Vanessa’s world, less a mixture of opposing forces split evenly down the middle than a blending of the two sides. Like some stubborn weed, I thought, that flourished in the happenstance cracks of a dry lakebed, a miracle for existing at all. Vanessa, though, was a hothouse flower. So used to being surrounded and protected by sanctuary and Light that the lack had to be a shock. Even when young, I’d known shadows existed. But Vanessa? She’d only ever known Light.

  “Come with us, V,” I said, holding out my hand. “We’ll get you some food, shelter. A warm bed and bath. You won’t be alone.”

  “No. I have to stay away.”

  “From the grays?” I asked, saddened.

  “From ties that bind. I need to be loose. Move quickly. Stay flexible.” Her eyes darted demonstratively. “Felix always said I was the one who settled him. I made things right, no matter what. And I can’t do that, I can’t find him, if I’m tied down.”

  “Is that why you ran away from the Light?”

  Her brow drew down. “It’s why I dream about him out there, alone, waiting for me. Everyone tells me he’s dead just because his glyph went dark back in the sanctuary, but so did yours, you know. And you’re still alive.”

  I fought to keep my expression from altering. That was different. I’d pushed my powers into another person, a sacrifice of the spirit as much as the body, though now it seemed powers remained in Midheaven still. Maybe that’s why I’d survived.

  But Felix had likely been ambushed by the Shadow agents and dispatched of his life in the following seconds. Vanessa knew that because when I didn’t answer, she swallowed hard and looked away. “Nobody can prove he’s gone. Maybe he defected from the Light without telling me. His glyph would have died then too. But if not . . .” She winced considering the option before mentally brushing it away. “Well, you wouldn’t like being left out there alone, would you?”

  I just looked at her.

  Her face flushed then broke. “I’m sorry,” she said between tears, shaking her head. “It wasn’t me. Felix didn’t want to leave you out there, neither did Gregor. Micah was trying to concoct something in his labs that would allow you to enter our sanctuary even though you were a mortal again. You know Micah.”

  Ever the physician, I thought, smiling slightly. Somehow it helped to know that as I was mourning the loss of my place in the troop, they had been doing the same for me.

  “Even Tekla argued your case at first. Said the stars had taken on a novel pattern in the sky.” Vanessa nodded when I drew back in surprise. “It’s true. She said we had to be open to new ways of viewing both the heavens and the earthly events they influence. But you know how Warren is.”

  I nodded. Brave. Stubborn. By the book. A total prick.

  Vanessa shot me a watery, wobbling smile. “So when it looked like you were going to be okay, or at least able to get on with your mortal life, we all thought maybe it would be best. And then you found the grays.”

  No, then I’d been attacked by a
madman from another world—an attack the Light refused to prevent, which was how I met Carlos and the grays. Weaponless, troopless, with no allies or defense, they had stood with me when no one else would—were doing so now, even as I had a conversation with my past.

  But there was no point in arguing with Vanessa. She hadn’t made the rules that’d kept her from reaching out to me. She’d only followed them. But she wasn’t even doing that anymore . . . and when someone tossed out the moral underpinnings that upheld their entire world, it was a reason to worry. Especially when there was nothing to replace it with.

  “Chandra was looking for you,” I told her, knowing how much it meant to have someone who cared. In case it helped, I added, “Both of you.”

  “Chandra is bound by troop law. They all are.” Her face hardened. “Please don’t forget that we only knew what we saw in the manuals and were told by Warren and Tekla. You were lucky, Joanna. You escaped to another world and life. Literally.”

  I shook my head, amazed how different our perceptions were of the same events. “I was trapped in Midheaven. Hunter still is.”

  Vanessa’s eyes narrowed on my face. It was as focused as I’d seen her since being knocked into a brick wall. “So you’re going back?”

  My kneejerk reaction was to clam up, even though I knew Vanessa no longer reported to Warren. Not that it mattered. He’d already heard of my intentions while lurking in Master Comics’ storage room. I cursed myself silently for that. No doubt he’d doubled his attention on the tunnel entrances now. “There are other men over there too.”

  Vanessa’s brows furrowed as she looked around at Vincent and Milo and Fletcher. At Foxx and Gareth and the half dozen other men that she’d been taught didn’t count. It looked like she was seeing them for the first time as people, rather than a minority that needed to be exterminated. Finally, almost imperceptibly, she gave them a small nod. “Do you think Felix might be there?”

  I doubted it, though the possibility couldn’t be ruled out. Everything about Midheaven had been considered a myth until recently. “I don’t know.”