City of Souls

by Vicki Pettersson

  Jacks’s eyes flickered, watching my tongue. “You can’t.”

  “I have to,” I said, stepping closer. “Otherwise the Tulpa will win. The Light will snuff out. The world will collapse.”

  “Only part of it.” He lifted a shoulder, but otherwise remained still. I continued my advance.

  “My world,” I said as blithely. I was so close that had I still been encased in Olivia’s flesh, my breasts would have been brushing his chest. “My home. Tell me how to fix her.”

  He swallowed hard. “Haven’t you figured it out yet, Archer? Human beings are fragile creatures. What do you think happened to that girl’s chi the very moment yours invaded?”

  I drew back a tad at that. “Invaded? My powers have been funneling into her, making her stronger.”

  “Yeah, and if you pull them back now, there’ll be nothing to keep her upright. It’ll be like removing her etheric spine. Her soul energy is long gone, departed for deep outer space. Not destroyed, of course, but reabsorbed, re-imagined into the fabric of the Universe.”

  “No.” I shook my head and swallowed hard. “Her death is not an option.” Nor was Li’s. Nor the city’s.

  That careless shrug again, and he moved in, suddenly taking me up on my advances. I stiffened, wanting to vomit on his shoes. “It all depends on what you think of as death. Energy is always transmuted, and used for something new.”

  I jerked away from his hand on mine, pulling back again when his index finger trailed my wrist. “Is that how you justify murdering that changeling? A child? And the woman, whomever she was, whose soul power you used for passage this time?”

  He grinned, and it wasn’t at all handsome. “I was wondering how long it’d be before you snapped. It takes a lot of energy to pretend to be something you’re not. To feign being in love with someone you’re not.”

  As if I could ever love a poison like you. “What would a murderer like you know about love?”

  “Because that’s why I crossed over too.”

  And as if on cue, the door opposite the entrance swung wide. Solange stood in silhouette, delicately draped in deep-plunging, sophisticated black, posed like Erté’s muse.

  She stepped forward so that her features took focus just in time for me to catch the narrowing of her eyes. She scanned Jacks, me, the way our bodies were angled toward each other’s. She inhaled deeply…and her features grew even more pointed.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Her arms dropped to her side. She advanced upon me, the seductress suddenly replaced by a warrior princess, and I stepped back even though I had nothing to feel guilty about. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

  “Well, Jacks and I—”

  Her earrings, the same fine fragile hoops as before, swung at her lobes as she jerked her head. “Jacks and you nothing! He’s here to see me, and it took him long enough.”

  I held up my hands. “No. I mean, yes. I just—”

  “Get out.” She pointed one slender arm at the door, black silk pooling to the ground.

  “But—”

  Jacks was suddenly by her side. “My wife wishes for you to leave.”

  “Wife?” Shock made my voice too loud.

  “Out!” Solange repeated, matching the tone.

  “Not now,” he said, and there was nothing seductive left in his touch as he dragged me to the door.

  “But you didn’t answer my question!” I jerked my arm away, and he grabbed it again. “I need to fix the changeling of Light and only you can tell me how.”

  He spun me toward him after depositing me on the other side of the doorway, and still holding tight, leaned close. “You can’t. All you can do is take back your own energy.”

  “What?”

  “Kill her, Archer. It’s the only way to save everything you love.”

  And he slammed the door in my face.

  Only a moment of stunned silence passed, perhaps two, before I was pounding on the locked door, demanding reentry. I didn’t care who heard, what sort of energy I was expending, or who wanted it for their own. I was so desperate to get back in that room that I was only marginally aware of the women gathering to watch me at the other end of the banister. Meanwhile, my mind whirled.

  Kill Jasmine? That couldn’t be the only way.

  I continued pounding and yelling, therefore missed the rapid footsteps approaching from the other side, though that also could have been because they belonged to the smaller of the two persons who’d thrown me out. The door jerked wide, and I briefly saw Jacks’s silhouette by Las Vegas’s viewing window, but then Solange thrust her face in mine, her features contorted with fury.

  I was clearly ruining her long-anticipated reunion with her husband.

  Jacks was Solange’s husband!

  She pushed into my space until she was halfway out the door, and I didn’t think I’d ever seen a woman so close to a blinding rage. Not Regan, when I’d taken the life of the last person who meant anything to her, and not even me when my bones baked closely to the surface of my skin, eyes glowing in a crimson replica of the Tulpa’s.

  Because I was only part Shadow, I thought, swallowing hard. And for the first time I saw past Solange’s borrowed beauty—the adornment she put on using everyone else’s life energy—to the woman, the Shadow, that lay beneath.

  Her bones were liquid, and rolled beneath her flesh. Her gaze was so white-hot it nearly sliced open the air on the way to me. Solange, I suddenly realized, was not left alone in this room and deferred to because she was especially beautiful. She owned it because she was especially dangerous. Power pooled around her like an electrical current, and I instinctively took another step back. She’d amassed more energy for herself in this world than I’d ever possessed, and it looked like she was about to unleash it all upon me.

  Seeing my retreat for what it was, she inhaled sharply to rein in her anger. Clenching her jaw, those liquid bones rearranged themselves again, and she blew out a breath as hot as the air drying out the men below. It scared me more than if she’d screamed. “I’ll tell you what you want to know if you promise to leave. Immediately.”

  Gladly, I thought, sighing as well. I nodded.

  “To fix a displaced aura, to mend a broken human being, you must merely hold fast to one basic tenet. It’s both simple and hard. It’s also essential to your changeling’s—and your troop’s—continued existence.” She licked her lips, formulating words that I knew would be truth…but as slight and obscure as she could make it. I waited. “Put her, always, physically and otherwise, above yourself.”

  I swallowed and shook my head. “I don’t know what that means.”

  “That’s not my problem.” She began to shut the door again.

  No, I thought, jamming my foot inside. I was too close to just leave now. “Just tell me—”

  “Nobody gets anything for free here!” Her eyes fired again, like light catching on the facets of diamonds. “Now, leave!”

  She thrust out a palm in my direction, and though it never touched me, a bolt sliced through my solar plexus, the shove staggering pieces inside me like a puzzle coming undone. A breeze swept over places air should never touch, and my mind, my emotion, my thoughts, and all the intangibles that made me me were pushed from my body. It was nauseating to both be there and not, and while my feet were bolted to the ground, everything that truly animated me flew backward, whistling against the wind, tumbling down the staircase to end up in a heap at the bottom of the stairs.

  My body arrived a moment later. I sat up quickly—too quickly—and heard an audible snap. Sure enough, I wobbled, hesitated, then leaned over and puked on the floor. Still dizzy, room spinning, I remained on my hands and knees long after the howls of laughter and groans of disgust faded away. My vision was blurred and I had to pinpoint a solid object in order for it to clear, though when it finally did, I was sad to discover the object on the scarred wooden floor was the pendant Suzanne had given me, now broken down into four separate pieces. Slowly I gathered them up in my
palm, and by the time I finally looked up, the women who’d gathered along the banister were gone, and most of the men had returned to their cards.

  Not the dealers. They’d created a tight circle around me, eyes spinning like silver reels.

  I used the curved banister to help gain my feet, letting go as soon as my knees would hold. It looked like I was about to get my ass kicked, because no way was I going back up those stairs. I was still dizzy, but the heat wasn’t going to make it any better, so I pocketed the jewelry, widened my stance, and readied myself to take on a handful of angry dealers.

  Eyes still whirling, Boyd only held out his hand.

  I glanced over at Bill. He was stroking his chin, looking amused. I took a testing step in the direction of my lantern. The circle shifted around me. Bill leaned his elbows on the bar and gave me a small shake of his head. “Solange says you aren’t to be touched.”

  I took another testing step to the side, and swallowed back a second bout of nausea as the ring of men shifted with me. “Then what’s up with the dealers o’death?”

  My words were sharp, but my voice was tinny and echoed in my ears. My spirit or soul or whatever it was that Solange had loosened from within me was back, but I wasn’t sure it had all settled in the right place. For the first time I became aware of a high ringing in my ears. I’d have shaken my head, but I didn’t want to be sick again.

  “She wants you to leave, but she wants to teach you a lesson as well. And Solange generally gets what she wants.” He shrugged as I thought, No kidding. “One of your gaming chips will gain you passage home.”

  I swallowed hard. Nobody gets anything for free here.

  Despite Solange’s parting words, and being outnumbered, I might have fought it. It was the heat that decided things for me, though. I could either hand one over, or wait until I was too weak to stop them from picking my pockets clean, and though I hated the way the fight drained from me, intuition told me not to choose this battle. “Can I pick it?”

  “She didn’t specify, but if you sit down for a game with the boys, I’ll throw it in the pot.” Giving me a chance to gain this chip back, along with the others.

  I sighed, pulling my chips from my pocket, shaking my head as I looked them over. “I grew up in a gambling town, Bill. I know not to chase my losses.” And I needed to get out of here quickly. Thirst and heat fueled desperation, and desperation led to bad decisions.

  “That’s okay.” Boyd dropped the chip I handed him into his front pocket. “Next time.”

  Still wary, I sidestepped toward my lantern, surrounded by my own personal retinue. The ringing in my head pounded like a heartbeat with every step. “No. I’m never coming back.”

  I’d faced multiple attacks on my life, the most recent at the hands of both the Tulpa and Skamar, but I’d never faced anything as intrinsically frightening as what Solange had just done. And that, I thought with my raised hand shaking, had only been her warning.

  Bill began his endless round of polishing pretty crystal glasses again, unconcerned. “You will. Then Mackie will finish his ballad, your other name will be revealed, and we’ll own you.”

  “You’ve caused us a lot of trouble, Olivia,” Boyd said, his strange eyes fixed like lasers on me. “Maybe we’ll just kill you upon your next passage and give your power over to Midheaven in one big bump. Use it to create something interesting for ourselves.”

  “You mean the women will create something for themselves.” Harlan Tripp had returned to his seat, his hands empty of all but playing cards. Apparently my words had provided him with the resolve he needed to resist that drink. For now.

  Boyd ignored him, and simply raised his bushy black brows above those still spinning eyes. Apparently he was in a hurry to return to his table, to slice away bits of other people’s souls one sliver at a time.

  Shen, one of the divided souls, grinned. “And then Mackie will slit your throat.”

  My eyes darted to Mackie, but he was motionless and slumped like a sack of bones. I paused at my lantern to take one last look over the Rest House. Why had the First Mother, that dark twin, created this place? What need compelled a person—thing, goddess, monster, whatever she was—to take human energy to fuel a world where men were forced to languish in their vices? Because though none of the men down here could voice their objections, I could feel them, restless as ghosts, in my mind. Like a city of souls, I thought with a shiver, all the emotion bottled up. Inside, though? They were screaming like banshees.

  As for me? I might be the Kairos in my world, but over here I was as expendable as a wad of tissue. I felt that in my cells, a knowledge as instinctive as flight or fight. Today I chose flight.

  Boyd pulled my chip from his pocket again, holding it up so the etched denomination caught light. I looked at it regretfully, and he smiled. “Not bad. I’ll have your line of credit waiting when you return.”

  I shook my head, but said nothing, already mute with dread, anticipating that power being ripped from me. Fortunately, the heat dried the moisture welling in my eyes before it could give me away. At least I was still keeping up the appearance of being tough.

  I was just about to blow the wick out, already bracing myself for the pain of the passage home, when I caught the gaze of the one man down there that was from my time. A Shadow agent, yes, but the only one fighting the effects of this place as fully as I. It was enough to make me feel he was a sort of ally.

  “Hey, Tripp,” I said, lifting to my toes. He blinked, lifting his eyes from the cards. “Eighteen years.”

  There was only his shocked gasp before the smoke from my extinguished lantern billowed and built, solid enough to ferry me back to my world, thick enough to dampen my scream.

  21

  I arrived back in the pipeline, fists clenched, trying to hang onto the intangible. But by the time I recognized the deep well of curving concrete beneath my booted feet, the chip I’d given Boyd—my ability to create walls from thin air—was gone. Alone, there was only my breathing, shallow and uncertain. And thank God, because the last time this tunnel had been peopled with enemies. As I calmed, I sucked in the silence and cried, just a little, in the dark.

  Pushing past that inconveniently timed weakness, I then went in search of my shoulder bag. The depthless black of the pipeline enveloped me as if I were going farther in, rather than out, but after retrieving the bag—and dumping my remaining, dwindling chips inside—I continued to inch along in the darkness, unwilling to light the glyph on my chest and turn myself into a walking target. I knew where I was, but not when.

  Disoriented, I dug in the bag and turned on my phone. There were another dozen messages from Cher, which I skipped, but what was really important was the date. Three days after I’d left. Not too bad. I’d traveled to a whole new world and still made it back in time for Thanksgiving. I called Hunter, still got his voice mail, and realized he’d probably be “working” at Valhalla, so left a message for him to call me back on his break.

  Not trusting that I was steady enough yet to drive, I caught a cab. I didn’t care what Warren said, after dying from thirst, I needed a cool glass of water at my side; after Solange’s separation of my body from my soul, I needed refuge; after days where I’d had nothing but worry, and a heated night of passion, I needed to be in a place where nothing was required of me but to be. In short, I needed the sanctuary.

  It was downtown, buried beneath the discarded remains of our city, in the Neon Boneyard. The entrance sat kitty-corner to the restored La Concha Motel lobby, a mid-mod building with a wavy roof I used to point and laugh at as a kid, but was now considered historic. My, how things change. Our lair was surrounded by a brick wall, which also divided two parallel realities.

  The exact split between dawn and dusk lasted the scant moments it took the sun to evenly split the sky, and in that time the wall surrounding the Neon Boneyard became a murky, swirling coagulation of liquefied matter. If you knew how to look, you could see parts of it thinning, the discarded signage of
Las Vegas’s yesteryear visible through shifting patches on the other side.

  Still, you’d think the booming crash of a three thousand pound vehicle regularly hitting concrete would attract the Neighborhood Watch, but despite the explosion of cinder block and debris, and the squealing crunch of metal meeting wall, the dust acted as a sort of buffer. It didn’t absorb the sound as much as it sucked it in.

  Even with erratic, supernatural winds buffering this cab, and with four of my powers stripped away—the two odd triangles I’d lost at the tables, the power to heal taken by Shen, and the one I’d just given over to escape a second time—the thought gave me peace. Entering the sanctuary would be like stepping back into the womb, so with every mile gained, Midheaven faded like a nightmare, something I’d endured mentally but not physically. The soul slices and abilities taken from me had yet to show their effects, but I imagined this was what a surprise cancer diagnosis was like; the sudden, dark knowledge that something was wrong inside of you warring with a feeling of familiar, if not perfect, health. The awareness that the worst was soon to come.

  As for those beings peopling the twisted magical kingdom, I was happy to have escaped them. Jacks and Solange deserved one another…though her sudden show of jealousy had thrown me. How a woman like that could see me as a threat was boggling. Yet since Jacks himself claimed he’d returned for love, I was sure they had it all straightened out by now.

  And still no real way to fix Jasmine. I sighed heavily. Solange’s advice was to put her above myself, something I didn’t really need to be told. I’d gone there, hadn’t I? Risked my soul. Lost my powers. I had no idea what else “put her above yourself” could mean.

  “But I’ve heard that somewhere before,” I muttered as we pulled onto Flamingo. We passed Money Plays, the neon green sign reminding me of half-yard beers and games of table shuffleboard. Maybe the advice had come from Hunter, I thought, glancing wistfully at Money’s attached pizzeria. Possibly Warren.