The Neon Graveyard

by Vicki Pettersson

  Not that we were doing anything wrong. We were just saying good-bye.

  Chandra had done most of the heavy lifting. Carl and I wouldn’t have made it down the hallway leading to the storeroom on our own, never mind up the staircase. We then maneuvered carefully through Zane’s living quarters, careful not to bump the twin bed with the snoring blob bundled up tight, and then up onto the rooftop. Now Felix was settled, and all there was to do was wait for Vanessa.

  “You can go now,” Chandra told Carl, when it became clear he was intent on waiting as well. Even in the dark his quick flush became apparent, and he opened his mouth to spout what was sure to be some foul retort. Yet he changed his mind at the last minute. “Just don’t mess the place up.”

  “Yeah,” I scoffed, kicking at a stray soda can. “ ’Cuz it’s a fucking palace now.”

  Something moved behind his gaze, a knowledge perhaps that we didn’t have, which in my case wasn’t exactly breaking news. It was nice not to have to fight him, though, and when he turned without another word, the lock to the sunroof catching with a firm click, Chandra and I both blew out a relieved sigh.

  Then we settled into the most uncomfortable silence known to mankind.

  It wasn’t that I hated Chandra. I never truly had, and I didn’t think she’d ever really hated me either. Real hate, I thought, grew out of full-blown wrongs and betrayals. In that sense, the Tulpa knew what he was talking about when we’d squared off on the desert floor.

  What Chandra and I were doing here, joining forces from opposite sides of a divide we could have reached across at any time, was not that monumental . . . yet it was altogether new.

  I glanced over at her, and she stiffened under my stare. I tried anyway. “How’d you find Vanessa?”

  She gave me a look of surprise, like I’d grown another head rather than initiated a conversation, but I held her gaze, softly, which had her own fluttering away. “She found me. After she met with you, she gave me a single-use cell number and said to call her if we found anything. She also said she’d kill me if I didn’t.”

  “She’s just not herself,” I said, earning another surprised glance. Believe me, I found it hard to believe I was trying to spare Chandra’s feelings too. I folded my arms around my shins. “Don’t take it personally.”

  Leaning against the rooftop’s edge, our backs to the alley, not too close to each other but not too far away either, we gazed out at the neon sky. The city lights twinkled like there was no recession, no death, and no battle for its glowing soul.

  I tried again. “What happened to your hand?”

  Her severe mouth turned down. “What do you mean?”

  I jerked my head at her left palm, tucked behind her, though it was clear her right arm was supporting all her weight. “You’re favoring it. You carried . . . him with the other. It’s also wrapped. I saw it peeking out beneath your shirt.”

  “Observant, aren’t you?” she said, meeting my gaze for the first time.

  “It’s been rather helpful in keeping me alive,” I answered in kind. And as agents couldn’t sustain injury through mortal weapons, it was clear Chandra had encountered some sort of conduit. If the agent wielding it was still after her, it would be nice to know what it was.

  But Chandra just frowned at me a moment longer before returning her gaze to the roofscape. For a moment I thought she was going to remain as forthcoming as she ever was with me . . . which was to say not at all. But after another, she turned to face me fully, her dark hair swinging over her shoulders to frame her face. “You know, I’m not like you. I’m not special. Not extraordinary. I never have been—not in lineage or talent or looks or skills. All I’ve ever wanted was to be an agent. To be considered worthy of the title Light.”

  I sighed softly. “And then I came along.”

  “Yes.”

  And in the Zodiac’s matriarchal world, lineage always won out over training, desire, or fairness. Chandra had known that. I had learned.

  “I’m glad it’s you,” I said suddenly, almost before I knew I was thinking it. I ducked my head, but it was too late. Her gaze was arrowed in on me now, and her breath had caught. “The next Archer, I mean. You’re made for it. It should have been you all along.”

  For a moment it looked like she’d agree, but then her shoulders slumped, and she shook her head. “It wasn’t your fault. Destiny, and all that shit. Whether I liked it or not.”

  “Whether I liked it or not.”

  “And you didn’t?” she asked, squinting over at me in disbelief. She’d held the desire to be the Archer of Light close to her chest for so long that it was clearly inconceivable that I didn’t covet the same.

  “I wanted to fit in, of course. To do my part, to make—” I was going to say Warren, but I’d cut out my tongue before his name passed my lips favorably again. “I wanted to make my mother proud. But for me alone? Now that I’m out of the situation?” I shook my head. “No. I never wanted that position.”

  “Not even the Kairos?”

  I shook my head. “It’s too much like being the president. People pin their individual hopes on you, then tear you down when you either can’t deliver, or don’t do it in the way they desire.”

  “Then what?”

  Tilting my head, I pursed my lips. “I’d just like to be myself, I guess. I’d like to carve out my own place. Somewhere new if I must, but it would be nice to freely choose what my future looks like. And what it holds.”

  She scoffed. “It doesn’t work that way, Joanna. Agents are born to a life of duty.”

  “Then I guess it’s a good thing I’m not an—”

  But I never finished because a gust of wind whipped over the rooftop, a rustle of clothing sounded, and soft-footed landings whipped me to my feet as four true agents of Light dropped directly across from me.

  I made a surrendering gesture, palms up, though I had no plans to surrender as I backed away. Only to escape.

  “I told them you were here.” Chandra’s voice was apologetic.

  No shit. I didn’t even look at her. And to think I’d been feeling sorry for her seconds earlier.

  What remained of this valley’s twelve agents of Light stared back at me. Micah, Riddick, Gregor, Jewell. Another, Kimber, had been given a bus ticket back to her birth troop in Arizona once Warren deemed her insufficiently powerful. So save Warren and Tekla, that was the whole of the troop.

  Except for Felix and Vanessa, I amended, sidestepping toward the skylight Carl had locked. Still, it was four against one. Five if you counted Chandra’s two-fucking-faces. Bad odds even if I weren’t a mortal.

  Or a gray.

  “Joanna—” Micah, the most senior of this group, held out a hand the size of a large brick to stop my lunge. I stopped, but mostly because I caught the way shadows roiled and shifted like liquid marble beneath his skin. That was a result of getting an indirect face full of smoke from a quirley like the one I’d attacked Solange with. Yet Micah’s eyes were clearer than the last time I saw him. A talented physician, he’d figured out a way to master the living smoke’s accompanying pain.

  “We won’t hurt you,” he said, his voice a charred rumble as he stepped forward.

  I took another step backward. “Gee, I think I’ve heard that one before.”

  “Joanna—” Chandra reached too.

  “Shut up.”

  Jewell, careful not to move in my direction, clasped her hands in front of her. Though nonthreatening, it was a calculated gesture. She posed as a schoolteacher in the valley, and conservatively dressed the part. But no mere schoolmarm could pull the limbs from my body with her bare hands, so I remained wary.

  “We just want to be here”—her eyes darted briefly to the coffin—“for Felix and for Vanessa. We’d like to comfort her, if we can.”

  “You can’t,” I said shortly.

  “But at least let us . . .” A tear rolled down her cheek, and she couldn’t finish.

  “We need to grieve too,” Gregor said, and when I tur
ned to face him, my own hard expression broke. One-armed, bald-headed, tattooed, and fierce, he stood across from me with puffy eyes and a tear-streaked face. The stricken look made me take another step back, but they all held where they were, including Chandra—weapons sheathed, hands where I could see them.

  And they all looked exhausted.

  I cared. God help me, I did. Like a battered wife remembering a time when her husband seduced her instead of struck her, I still remembered what it was to be one of them. Just because I knew it was irrational to trust those who’d betrayed me didn’t mean I didn’t wish I could.

  Yet I remained wary for Hunter. For the child alive inside me. For the grays and even those wretched shrunken heads stuck in a world everyone else was happy to merely forget.

  Fuck these guys and their belated sorrow. I had things to do.

  But then—eyes on the coffin that held their troop brother and friend—Jewell spoke again. “Felix . . .”

  Her voice broke on the second syllable, rising like a question, punctuating the air so that the sole note held all our unspoken thoughts and sorrows . . . and in those, I realized, we were still united.

  You had so much to live for.

  It’s too soon.

  Why?

  We could have stopped it.

  Could we have stopped it?

  Oh my God. No.

  Not Felix.

  I sagged against the air-conditioning unit. Seeing it, the agents of Light relaxed in turn, each shifting their gazes from me to the rooftop’s center, where the coffin lay like a sacred altar.

  Then, suddenly, their gazes shifted again.

  She appeared as silently as a ghost, rail-thin from the weight she’d lost even in the short time since our last meeting in the alley not far from here. Her body wavered in the gentle breeze as if spineless, and her limbs were wiry, and looked eerily long. The only part of her that remained inflexible and hard were her eyes, which darted around like she didn’t know where to aim, but she’d start shooting randomly if anyone so much as twitched.

  No one moved.

  “Where?” she finally said, voice even smokier, raspier than Micah’s. “Where’s my Felix?”

  The sudden and odd cock of her head told me when Vanessa spotted the coffin. She was perched on the rooftop ledge, high enough to loom over everyone save Micah, and the city lights glared behind her as if she were backlit on one of Vegas’s main stages. Detaching herself from the illusion, she dropped silently to the rooftop. She then straightened, and strode directly to the rooftop’s center. Everyone else stepped back. And when she finally put her hand to the coffin lid, we averted our eyes.

  Yes, we were all gathered here for the same reason. But in some ways this was not a loss that could be shared. Grief was a place every person had to go alone, a lonely country populated by mistakes and a futile desire to turn back time for an impossible “do-over.” We all felt such regret to varying degrees now—acutely and honestly—but none so much as Vanessa.

  I stared hard at a peeling spot on the roof’s bumpy surface. It wasn’t something that should have had to play out before others, on a city rooftop, in an open location. Yet how often had our private moments been displayed in comic books for the entertainment of young minds? After all, the most emotional moments were fantastic fuel, evoking intense reactions and belief. This was vital in sustaining the Zodiac world, so in all probability this moment would live on in the minds of thousands anyway. At least for now Vanessa was veiled beneath the stars that ruled our world, and ringed by those who understood as much of her grief as anyone could.

  I glanced over at Chandra, caught her eye, and gave a small nod. She had been right to tell them to come.

  After hesitating for a long moment, Vanessa finally lifted the lid. Those directly behind her gasped, the sounds slithering into the night like rattling snakes. Even I winced upon glancing over, and I’d known what to expect.

  Vanessa’s breath took on a wheezing note, and I was suddenly thankful I couldn’t scent emotions. Fresh tears rolled from Jewell’s eyes at the sound, and Micah’s great shoulders began to shake. Gregor and Riddick took a step forward, but sensing it—somehow feeling it through the ripples of her own pain—Vanessa jerked her head. Gregor put a hand on Riddick’s shoulder, and both remained where they were.

  Meanwhile Vanessa pinned dark and deep eyes, abyss eyes, on my face. “Will he be in there?” she asked, jerking her head at the mask folded in Felix’s stilled hands.

  So Chandra had told her. I’d mentioned on the phone that Felix’s soul was holding on, hiding out, and still alive and aware in that mask. I’d admitted that I’d freed it from his face by speaking of duty, and how he could gain vengeance upon those who’d killed him, even from beyond the grave. But what really did it was a second mention of Vanessa. I’d whispered into the mask that only by letting go of his earthly body would he have a chance to also say good-bye to her. And so he did. And now he would.

  I swallowed hard because I knew what was coming next, but wrapped my arms around myself, and nodded at Vanessa.

  The strongest stars above us twinkled randomly in the night. The roar of a far-off engine floated in the air. And a group of men and women who’d once been united as a troop held their breaths as if, for only a moment, they were still one. Sucking in a deep breath that blotted out the stars, the city, the rest of the world, Vanessa put the mask on.

  The sound was like nothing I’d ever heard before. Even battle cries, even the Tulpa’s, had never sent a shiver down my spine like the one that Vanessa let out upon encountering her love. I ducked, hunching instinctively, defensively, against it. I didn’t even know someone so strong could make such a broken sound, though surely I’d done the same when I’d finally mourned my sister. Such pain didn’t feel and look the way it did when coming from another. It was alien, monstrous, and Vanessa’s mournful cry was a full-frontal attack.

  It was a true death cry. Tulpas, shrunken heads, soul blades . . . nothing was as haunting as this. The same thought crossed the faces of those across from me. Riddick’s eyes glazed as his brows collapsed, Gregor’s face twisted, while Micah only dropped his head back to the sky, imploring and helpless despite his size and strength. Jewell gave in and crumpled to her knees, while Chandra’s fists clenched in impotent fury.

  Yes, I thought, blinking away tears as jagged sobs rose to cut at the urban skyline. It was good that they were here. It was better to weep for Vanessa’s loss than for theirs. They, after all, had to continue on as if Felix’s death changed nothing. Like it was one more loss in a world where violence was a given.

  But there was no violence as brutal as destroyed love. And no matter what came next for any of us, things had changed.

  This moment, especially—this shared grief in particular—changed everything.

  They did not follow as I made my escape into the night. I didn’t know how much Carl had seen or heard of the rooftop vigil—Vanessa’s scream, certainly—but it was enough that he was alert because he appeared almost as soon as I tapped on the skylight. I expected manic questioning on his part, but he only nodded at me wordlessly as I made my way back down the ladder, through the loft, and out into the restless cover of darkness.

  Two blocks away, but still within sight of the shop, I stopped and leaned against the plate glass windows of a pawnshop, pushing a hand tiredly through my hair. It wasn’t smart or safe, but I closed my eyes and sagged against the cool glass for a moment. We’d been on that rooftop less than an hour but all of it had been spent lost in chasm between accepting Felix’s death and still wishing it otherwise. It felt like I’d been up there for days.

  “Put it away for now,” I murmured, opening my eyes and straightening. I’d done what Felix had needed in order for his soul to accept death. My own acceptance of it could wait. Right now I had to keep moving. One foot in front of the other. Because there was another man, living and breathing, who needed me still.

  And I could do it, I thought, sucking in a hard
breath, nostrils flaring. Look what I’d done in the past twenty-four hours: escaped Midheaven, destroyed the Tulpa’s access to it, and seen Felix honored, if not properly, then wholeheartedly. Yet all those things might have been accomplished anyway, and Felix would still be here, if Warren had simply allowed us all, Light and gray, to work together against the Shadows.

  If only he’d listened, I thought, crossing the cracked asphalt against a red light. The neon sign of a local’s bar was only half lit, the sandy stucco badly chipped, but the door buzzer and accompanying camera had me moving to the building’s shadowed side. If only Warren had been less rigid, and could entertain a new way of doing things.

  We could have worked together, if not side by side, then in tandem. A tag-teamed bait-and-switch to augment each other’s causes against the Shadows. Because what Warren wanted wasn’t so different than what Carlos desired. Not at the heart of it.

  Yet had it been a gray who was soul-sacrificed in the Tulpa’s hidden room, had it been Warren who’d found him instead of me, I knew he’d have left his perceived enemy to hang. Yet Carlos had carried Felix on his own back. Io had bathed his battered body. And I’d returned him to his people.

  And, I noted, their so-called leader couldn’t be trusted to release his hate for anything not identifiably Light long enough to mourn one of his own. My anger flared at the thought, but cold reason pinched it out. Warren was well out of my reach. Steadying my breath, I kept walking. Strong emotions, ones that could be scented, could hurt only me now.

  Evidenced by the figure that momentarily sidled alongside me, matching my pace.

  “I was hoping you’d follow.” I glanced over at Vanessa who looked more like a cyborg than a person. She stood tall and resolute, same as she had in all the time I’d known her, but there was something steely about the way she moved. She was still flesh, blood, and breath, but the lack of emotion on her face made her seem mechanical, like I could flip a switch at her back and she’d cease existing altogether.