City of Souls

by Vicki Pettersson

  I didn’t move, nor did any of the other agents of Light. I’d been warned against trying to help someone who’d breached a safe zone…warned too that no one would help me if I did the same. The bond between troop members was so strong that the negative energy would be transferred, and we’d both end up being strangled by our power.

  No, not strangled, I thought, watching Felix heaving. Drowned.

  “Anyone else want to try?” Harrison asked lightly as Felix continued to gasp. I swallowed hard. At least the gasping was an improvement. And his limbs had fallen still, so the power was abating, being reabsorbed. “How about you, little Kairos? I mean, you’re the cause of all this. Want to take a long shot at redemption?”

  “Why don’t you give it a go, Harrison?” I said. “I mean, take out the Kairos, the woman of legend, and you’ll go down as one of the most powerful, badass Shadows of all time.”

  His eyes flickered like he was briefly considering it, but a sneer quickly replaced the look. “In a safe zone? Do you think I’m stupid?”

  “Yes. Ugly, foul-smelling, and inbred too.”

  His gaze flat-lined. “Well, I’m not the single-handed cause of my entire troop’s collapse.”

  “Nor am I.” I wasn’t responsible for someone else’s evil, even if I was the target.

  “Oh, but you are. You broke your changeling, right? And breaking the changeling of Light, that one special little child, is what caused the manuals of Light not to be written. So now the children of the world can’t read of your antics in comic book form. Their fertile little minds don’t birth the dreams and power that give you the energy to fight us. Your entire troop is weakened.”

  “We’re not getting weaker.”

  He held out his bloodied hands. “We’re getting stronger, so it’s the same thing.”

  Because their manuals were still being recorded, detailing the battle between good and evil, and sold in comic book shops all over the nation. The fact that manuals vital to our survival were masquerading as comic books wasn’t as oxymoronic as it might seem. There was something to be said for hiding in plain sight, and though truth might be stranger than fiction, in this case they were one and the same.

  So Harrison had an ugly, foul-smelling point. Despite our demigod status in this smoggy, bright valley, our micro-universe was as fragile as a rain forest’s. Knock out one little organism, and suddenly the whole ecosystem was thrown off balance.

  “So you’re not the almighty savior of the Zodiac,” Harrison pushed, with a lift of his chin. “You’re a hindrance to your troop.”

  Though I’d gotten better in recent months at controlling my anger, I decided Harrison could use a reminder of just whose daughter I was. So I opened the darkness in my heart, locked in the middle of the light one, and lifted my lids to reveal a gaze as smoldering and bright as the sun’s flashing core. I let my cheekbones rise to press at my skin, and felt it pull tight across my forehead. I imagined my skull gleaming, almost glowing white against my skin, while the rising pressure and the smoke from my pores brought to life a pounding headache. I ignored that until I knew my dark eyes—the only thing visible beneath my mask—had completed their transition into glowing red coals. When Harrison shuddered involuntarily, violently, I smiled sweetly and let the demonic mask fade.

  Yet he recovered quickly…and came back for more. “That’s just a parlor trick. We’ve no real use for you.”

  “Then why do you want her so badly?” Hunter piped up, arms folded over his chest. His expression was shuttered, like he was observing events that didn’t involve him, but I knew better. Hunter was a tactician and warrior, and wasn’t so much at rest right now as he was coiled and waiting.

  Meanwhile, Felix was finally sitting up, head hanging forward and mouth open, like his power was pouring from his throat.

  “I don’t.” Harrison began idly picking through the pastry case, lifting and considering a good half-dozen sweet buns before replacing them, leaving a trail of Vanessa’s blood on each one. He turned his attention back to me. “But your daddy does, and he’s been doing everything in his power to get to you.”

  I thought of what I knew about the Tulpa’s power: the ability to touch people in their dreams, take over his agents’ bodies and turn them inside out, and how he could stud the sky with black holes, insert someone inside them, and make it all disappear. And those were only the homicidal abilities I’d seen firsthand. He’d been at rest for much of the time I’d known him, trying to court me into joining his troop, and abandon the Light for the Shadow. He was beyond that now, and as lethal as his wrath had been in the past, it was nothing compared to the complete, unbridled hatred he felt for me since our last encounter. Great.

  “Then what do you want?”

  “Right now?” He stuffed a moon cake in his mouth and spoke around it. “A cappuccino.”

  Felix struggled to his feet but didn’t move forward. “You prick—”

  “Shhh…” Harrison put a bloody finger to his lips. “He’s coming…”

  And in a strange unspoken harmony, agents of both Shadow and Light turned toward the wall of windows to watch the Shadow leader, the Tulpa, drop as if from the heavens, landing onto the false pagoda patio like a descending UFO. Of course, a living being that had been created rather than birthed really was as otherworldly as all that. I swallowed hard and stepped forward to face him because he was also my opposite on the Zodiac. The Shadow Archer. Their troop leader.

  My birth father.

  A tulpa was a thought-form; a being so vividly imagined it became an actual person. Tibetan monks had honed this skill for centuries through visualization, meditation, and extreme discipline, though this tulpa had been birthed from the mind of a westerner…and a twisted one at that. Once actualized, the Tulpa had become unnaturally powerful. There was no known way to kill him. In fact, if we attempted to do so with one of our conduits, the energy put behind the attempt actually funneled more power into him. So we battled his agents, while searching hopefully for his invisible Achilles’ heel, but steered clear of direct battle with him whenever possible.

  Yet we’d recently discovered that the nature of his birth was also his weakness. His creator had been killed before he could gift the Tulpa with a name, so his title was his name. His ability to alter his appearance entirely was a power, but it was also a sign that he lacked permanence in the world, and that was a weakness.

  His appearance today was a cross between a Wall Street executive and a construction worker, interesting, as he took the physical form of a person’s expectations. I’d seen him as a casino mobster, a suave college instructor…and a hairless, spine-horned demon. To be honest, that was the visage I preferred. At least I knew exactly what I was up against when staring into the face of a demon.

  My allies pulled in tighter as a result of his arrival, but we held our ground. As powerful as the Tulpa was, even he couldn’t violate a safe zone.

  “My gawd, Harrison. You’ve practically dismantled that agent. And yet her allies are just standing around talking.” He sauntered into the entry, hemmed in the doorway like he was both posing for a picture and caught in its frame. He smiled slyly at me. “And you call yourself the Kairos.”

  That’s what they called me. “I call myself the Archer.”

  “And Joanna,” he said lightly, tilting his head. “What else?”

  “Nothing I can repeat in such polite company.”

  His eyes traced the mask covering my eyes, temples, and hairline, and his fingers twitched reflexively, causing me to smile. He’d been angling for my Olivia Archer identity for months now.

  Reining in the need for a little while longer, he folded his hands before him and settled into himself. “Well, you should check the temper, daughter. That’s how I pinpointed you.”

  That brought my black humor to an abrupt halt. “My temper?”

  “Anger is a gift. In this case, my gift to you. It lurks in your heart as surely as my blood resides in your veins. It’s how I found you.
”

  “Bullshit.” I was not linked to the foul nonhuman being. Not in any way that mattered. “You orchestrated this.”

  He shrugged. “Of course. But I can’t stand around waiting all day for my troop to capture an agent of Light, torture her—bonus points for inventiveness, Harrison—”

  Harrison smiled, and both Felix and Micah strained forward like they were leashed.

  “—and draw the rest of you in. I’m a busy man.”

  “Yes, your dates with Skamar must keep your calendar quite full,” I said.

  Finally, a barb that hit home. His overly pleasant expression fell and his nostrils widened. Skamar was the Tulpa’s nemesis, enemy, and equal. Also a tulpa, and as such, she was the first being he’d never been able to completely overcome. And though new to the valley, she also had a power he did not: she was named.

  Where was Skamar, anyway?

  The Tulpa settled himself, pulled at his jacket sleeves, then sniffed once as he lifted his nose into the air. His placid gaze landed directly on me.

  “Kill them,” he said softly. The glyphs on every agent of Light’s chest shot to life. Depicted in comic books as a superhero’s lettering across the chest, they only did so when in danger, but we were in a safe zone, so for a moment no one moved.

  Then the Tulpa tilted his head and the Shadows surged forward. I saw hands go up all around the room, the Light deflecting the advance and turning the Shadow agents’ powers upon themselves. But they kept on coming. Vanessa managed to force a scream past her tongueless mouth, and it hit me then, as it did all the Light: she hadn’t been struggling so vehemently to get free. She’d been struggling to warn us. We were not safe here.

  I only had one second to return my attention to the Tulpa, catching the anger and hatred in the red flare of his eyes, before the order of the world turned upside down. He flicked a finger, and even though I was twenty feet away, I was catapulted through the air to slam head first into an ornate concrete pillar. On one level I was aware of the activity around me—the Light fleeing, conduits useless, no offense available to them but a good defense; the Shadow chasing, battle cries in their throats; Vanessa struggling, screaming and forgotten on the far side of the bakery—but blanketing all that concern was one greater than the rest.

  I lifted my head slowly and found the Tulpa staring at me, his eyes as glittering and hard as our city’s night-soaked grid of lights. He bared teeth of chipped granite…and he charged.

  I froze amidst the pile of crumbled plaster, knowing I’d never escape that wheeling vortex of limbs. He was a rocket, faster than anything I’d ever seen, and when a scream escaped that decaying mouth, the building shook, plaster and tiles fell from the ceiling, bulbs shattered in their sockets, and I ducked.

  A wall of sheet silver appeared between us, too instantly for the Tulpa to avoid. The crash was like a car wreck, and I looked over to find Tekla with both arms outstretched. So we weren’t entirely powerless.

  “Get Vanessa!” she yelled, flinging up wall after wall as the Tulpa, screaming now, continued to punch through them. I bolted. We were lucky; Vanessa’s opposite was Regan, now an outcast, and Tekla’s had been Zell, whom I’d helped kill last month. But the Cancerian Shadow, Drake, had heard Tekla’s cry, and was reaching for Vanessa along with me. Without thinking, I pulled out the Micro Uzi—the weapon I’d thought useless—and rolled off an ear-shattering round from arm’s distance away. No, mortal weapons wouldn’t kill him. But as evidenced by Vanessa—they were still effective. He jerked backward, spraying blood.

  I didn’t waste time on Vanessa’s ropes. I just swung the Uzi to one side and picked up the entire chair with the other hand. It wasn’t heavy, just awkward, and with Tekla covering my back, thrusting up walls to cover my retreat, I ran. Outside, I vaulted over the ornamental wall, silently apologizing to Vanessa for the rough landing, but kept spraying bullets at anything that moved…or moved too fast. I was one of those things, of course—fleeing so fast that all the mortals would see was a blur—but fast and fast enough were two different things.

  With our lives depending on it, I put on the speed. I needed to be the latter.

  4

  My phone rang in my pocket.

  “Peppermill. Cab. Hurry.”

  Warren. Without preamble. Or good-bye.

  Carrying Vanessa as gingerly as possible, I headed to the Peppermill Lounge, formerly another safe zone. Gregor masqueraded in the mortal world as a cab driver and regularly parked behind the classic Vegas lounge. So I knew both he and Warren had made it there safely.

  Fifteen minutes later, Hunter and Felix gingerly took Vanessa from my arms. Micah patted the space next to him in the cab, which meant there wasn’t a lot of it, and I clamored into the backseat, practically on his lap as I pulled the door shut behind me.

  “We’ll have to circle because of all the blood,” Warren told Gregor, who took off in a screech of rubber and exhaust. Vanessa’s blood was already scenting the air.

  Gregor nodded. “I’ll hit the beltway from the Strip. It circles the entire valley.”

  “One pass,” Warren agreed. “Then we drop Micah, Hunter, and Vanessa at the warehouse.”

  Located in industrial Vegas, the troop’s warehouse wasn’t a safe zone, but right now it was as safe as we were going to get. Hunter, our weapons master, crafted our conduits there, but more importantly, there was a panic room where Vanessa could hide.

  “I’m going too,” Felix said in a tight voice. Warren drew in a breath, but only hesitated momentarily before nodding. Felix would be a wreck if he was trapped in the sanctuary, not knowing how Vanessa was doing. He was a wreck now, arms hanging helplessly, afraid to touch her anywhere. She groaned as we hit a speed bump.

  “Where’s Tekla?” I asked as we flew up the on ramp.

  No one answered.

  “Where’s Tekla?” If she’d gone down while saving me…after Vanessa had endured this because of me…

  “Calm the fuck down!” Warren yelled, half turning in his seat. “He’s following us!”

  “I’m trying.” But the thought of the Tulpa tracking us had the opposite effect of calming me. Gregor glared at me through the rearview mirror.

  “Jo!”

  “Shut up!” I closed my eyes and thought of grassy fields and fuzzy bunnies and shit. But my anxiety had spiked and the fields were burning up behind my lids, the bunnies turning into blood-splattered carcasses.

  I realized belatedly that Warren was yelling at me. “…if you would listen!”

  I opened my eyes. “What?”

  “You have to go.”

  “Go?” My heart jumped again. Where the hell was I supposed to go? There were no safe zones any longer. No place to hide and heal and find refuge from our enemies.

  “Go away, for one. The Tulpa will be able to track us because of you.”

  Keeping the troop safe, then. As always.

  He sighed, and worked to calm himself as well. “Look, I’m not just throwing you out on your own. Find Skamar. Make her tell you about Midheaven.”

  “Midheaven?” Hunter turned to stare at Warren. The cab fell oddly silent.

  Warren held Hunter’s look for a long moment, then blew out a breath and tried to tuck a tuft of hair behind an ear, a habit left over from the days when it was dreadlocked. It was an uncharacteristically nervous gesture. “Just tell her about the safe zones. She’ll tell you how to walk the line so you can get help, and do it without—”

  He turned back at a sharp crack behind us, followed shortly by a sonic boom, as if the sky was made of ice floes, shifting and breaking apart. The Tulpa was having a fit. And he wasn’t far off.

  I shivered when he raised a brow at me. He wanted me to leave now? “Wait—”

  “We can’t.”

  “But—”

  “You broke the changeling, Joanna! You caused the fall of our safe zones! You’re the only one who can fix it, and the answer is in Midheaven!”

  “But—”

  “L
ook, we’ll find you as soon as possible. Let me get the rest of the troop safe first. You alone can fix this. Go find Skamar. Go be someone else—”

  “Find her where?” The female tulpa had a habit of disappearing for days at a time, reemerging only to battle with my homicidal father. She was as elusive now as she’d been in her previous incarnation as my doppelgänger. “Be who?”

  Warren looked out the back windshield again. The Tulpa seemed to be dropping back.

  “Anyone,” he finally answered, voice ragged with fatigue. “Just…don’t be Jo.”

  I drew back, stunned. He turned back around, and the others refused to meet my eye. I stroked the butt of my Uzi like it was a security blanket.

  Warren, finally realizing I wasn’t going to say anything, muttered one word. “Micah.”

  There was barely any room for Micah to turn his head, much less his body, but he managed to shoot me a look of sympathy as he shrugged. “Sorry, Jo.”

  “For wh—”

  My ass hit the ground before my feet, as did my head and palms and right cheek as I flipped over myself. The cab was nothing but a wink of distant taillights by the time I looked up, and I cursed as I limped to the side of the road. Sure I was already healing from the fall. The push, I corrected, as I began walking in the opposite direction. But what the hell was I supposed to do alone, with an automatic weapon, and instructions to be anybody but me?

  They threw me out at the north end of the Las Vegas Beltway, at the top of Charleston, near a chichi casino where savvy locals played and an upscale boutique mall housing independent eateries and one-off shops. It was late now, all the shops closed, and the indoor/outdoor restaurants were shut tight to the winter chill. I set my Micro Uzi on the wall of a marble white fountain, and figuring a head cold was better than a decapitation, climbed in to wash off the remainder of Vanessa’s blood and scent.