City Of Souls (26 page)

Riddick decided to follow my lead, and drove up a wall between himself and Micah, then dropped it before charging the bigger, slower man. I raised another at the last second, buying Micah time and space to fall back, and when Tekla tried to do the same for Riddick, I flipped my wrist so that my wall spread horizontally, splicing her visible one so that it rose only to waist height. She gasped and turned on me, wide-eyed. Micah leapt, I kept the surface as strong as a table, and he dispatched Riddick with a single, deft slice.

Then Hunter’s whip appeared out of nowhere, and I screamed. The reaction was inappropriate—I was nowhere near the conduit, but had yelled as if I were—so Hunter’s head jerked my way, but it was already too late. The whip snapped and Micah’s protectant went down. Hunter, seeing the vulnerability, stood down so that Micah could clear the floor without mortal injury. Micah leapt, dropping f-bombs as he soared from the battle area, and Felix—Hunter’s partner—immediately began advancing upon me.

“Shit.” I backed up, knowing my fear was pumping out pheromones inappropriate for a training exercise, but I wasted no energy trying to stop them. Felix scented it, and like a Viking berserker in the throes of battle-lust, his eyes glazed over with martial fury. I slammed up three vertical walls in quick succession, which was a drain on my energy, and with every additional shield, the previous ones weakened. I whimpered.

“Jo?”

It was only a murmur, but Hunter’s concern cost him. He should have been covering Felix—and his own ass—but Jewell saw it and struck.

She caught him at his wrist, following up quickly, clearly expecting to miss. But she didn’t miss, and his whip dropped, skittering behind us like a sidewinder. That was enough to pull his web of coating away…and the follow-up nicked his arm. Jewell blanched as blood bloomed in the room, and looked as if she wanted to apologize. Someone gasped on the sidelines. But Hunter’s gaze was for me. He couldn’t stay, of course. Live fire was now as dangerous for him as it was for me, and Tekla and Felix, battling hard, probably hadn’t seen his disarmament.

By the time Hunter was gone, so was Felix, shot through with an anchor in his side, and cursing Tekla with a bald lack of respect. Meanwhile, she’d also woven between my three walls, and I created a fourth on the fly, just to buy myself time. I was too tired to make it invisible, but my mind was still clicking at warp speed, and that gave me an idea.

My next one was opaque, black as a Shadow’s heart and as wide as the room. I pivoted and ducked behind it…then realized I was three feet from the warehouse wall and running out of space.

“Tekla…I give up!”

“Push yourself, Jo.” She answered, and the wall behind me shook.

Shit
. “No, I can’t—”

“Agents of Light don’t ever quit!” And her anchor plunged through the concrete barrier at my back, barely missing my shoulder.

Yelping, I ducked. She wasn’t going to stop. So I pleaded. “Tekla, I can’t be hit!”

“Oh, I bet I can hit you,” Jewell said, from my other side. I whipped my left arm out just in time. My wall didn’t rise to full height—it was too hurried for that—but it halted her momentum and she tumbled over its top. By the time she somersaulted into a standing position, I had another wall erected. I couldn’t see the impact, but I heard her groan.

And then back to Tekla. Dammit! I was too unfocused now. I was getting tired, my eyes darting around as quickly as my thoughts, and I wondered why these bitches weren’t taking each other out instead of closing in on
me
.

That’s when I saw it. Lunging without hesitation, I grabbed Hunter’s barbed whip—the conduit of an ally who was still alive—and squeezed its handle. Its weight felt awkward as I whirled it around, but it lashed out like a lightning rod, and took down Jewell with a resounding snap. She screamed, though whether from pain or surprise, I couldn’t tell…or care. I whirled and again, the whip responded as if it was my own.

Maybe it was due to the aureole Hunter and I had recently shared again. Maybe it was because, as he mentioned earlier, he’d lived inside of me only a short time before. But I wasn’t just holding his weapon, I was using it effectively, and the more I moved—erecting walls with the torque of my palm, leaping atop them, now hunting Tekla—the more I reveled in the ease of my armament, even while I wondered at it.

Hunter was alive. This conduit was an extension of his body. And yet it was responding agilely to my touch.

I let out a battle cry and leapt to the rafters, whip hissing from my palm.

“Kairos!” Someone yelled from the sidelines, and I thought, yes. Maybe
that
was it. I was the Kairos. I couldn’t replace my own conduit—not with the original still out there, still a part of me, and still yearning to be united with me as I did with it—but I could use those of my allies. Because as I caught air, I felt the way Hunter looked in battle: confident and lithe…and scary as shit.

“That’s bullshit!” Someone else said, echoing my next fleeting thought. So I pivoted at the apex of my flight, took the whip’s handle in both hands, and wheeled it around like a discus. I caught Tekla’s anchor right at its release, and pulled, yanking her from her feet…

“Stop!”

The cry rocked the building, rippling in the air like a physical blow. Tekla, still sprawled on her stomach, cursed under her breath—a rarity for her—and shut her eyes, probably to reinforce the mental walls she’d put up around the building. I dropped to the ground with a soft bend of my knees, breathing hard, but smiling inside. I was still fast. My wall work was improving.
Keep that bitchy edge
, I thought as I straightened and turned to the others, and I might be okay yet.

But Warren was not smiling. “Jo, you’re with me. Bring the whip. The rest of you, clean this place up.” And he stalked back to the panic room while the others continued silently staring at me.

“Why’s he pissed at us?” Riddick muttered, kicking at the debris of one of my walls that had collapsed under Warren’s cry. It ricocheted into another, and both disappeared in a puff of smoke.

“How did you do that?” Jewell asked as I passed. I shrugged and swallowed hard, risking a glance at Hunter who, ominously, hadn’t moved. He just stared as he held his bloodied forearm tight to his side, eyes flicking to his whip before winging back up at me. I kept walking…and once inside the panic room, Warren posed the same question.

“How
did
you do that?”

I shrugged uncomfortably as he shut the door behind me. “
I—I
don’t know. I wasn’t able to use the replacement conduit that he was making me at all.”

“Because yours still exists.” Warren nodded impatiently, already knowing that. “Have you used or practiced with this whip before?”

I shook my head. “Never.”

He frowned. “So maybe it’s this bond between you two. Maybe because you just—”

“Okay!” I held up a hand just to keep the thought from passing his lips. I hated my relationships, or my emotions, being displayed so openly. Still…could that be it? Were Hunter and I somehow linked now? Share a body and bed…share a soul and conduit?

A quick rap at the door and Hunter peeked in, still looking disturbed, and I could understand why. Touching someone else’s conduit—using it as your own—that was like reaching inside a body and shifting around a person’s organs. An apology was already on my lips when Warren snapped.

“Not now, Hunter.” He waved him away and motioned for him to shut the door.

“There’s a call—”

“Ignore it!”

“It can’t be ignored!” Hunter held out the phone, his good arm steady in the air, eyes leveled on his troop leader’s face. Warren frowned at the text on the screen, then crossed the room for a closer look. Once there, he stilled altogether. “Oh.”

Hunter’s gaze shifted to me.

“What?” My first thought was that Vanessa had been captured again…or maybe one of the others. But Vanessa was safe in our underground lair, and everyone else was here. So…”What?” I said louder.

Warren finally looked back at me. “I don’t know whether to tell you that I’m sorry or not.”

“Why? What happened?”

“It’s your father, Joanna. Or…not your father, but Xavier.” He swallowed hard.

“What about him?” I stepped closer.

“He died, Jo,” Hunter said, stilling me again. “In the middle of the night.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

My loss, I thought, staring at the suit of yet another man smiling placatingly in front of me. I’d arrived at Xavier’s compound directly from the warehouse, and had to push aside the thoughts of my relationships with Hunter and my ability to use his conduit as if it were my own, for the time being. But the fact was, all my thoughts seemed to be sluggish right now, and I finally gave up on trying to remember this man’s name—or even care—and simply nodded. This pattern repeated itself as I moved on through the sitting room, the family room, the living room…all the misnamed rooms in Xavier Archer’s house, while I avoided the sympathetic gazes of the strangers around me and thought about my
loss
.

The man who’d despised me practically since birth was dead. The man who blamed me for my mother’s abandonment was dead. The man who treated people as usable objects, and siphoned his soul to the Tulpa in return for unlimited power and money was, finally, dead. I looked around at all that remained.

I’d lost nothing.

But strangely, I didn’t feel I’d gained anything either.

“My condolences, Ms. Archer.” I did recognize this man. This was John, Xavier’s closest confidant, and a man who moved like an offensive lineman instead of a lawyer. He’d never given either Olivia or me a second glance, but that had changed now. I could see him developing plays as he looked at me, looking for weaknesses, figuring out if I needed to be double-teamed, trapped, or cross-blocked. And why not? Once a Playmate, a plaything—arm candy to be given a second glance but not a thought—Olivia Archer was no longer simply an heiress. She was a mogul. John, I knew, had strategies for dealing with moguls.

I made my way to the winding staircase and the upstairs corridor under the watchful eye of John and the army of sycophants Xavier had left leaderless, though I knew I wouldn’t be followed. They thought I was in shock. Xavier’s personal physician had already offered me soothing sedatives, so I’d take the path of least resistance and play the part of the frail princess until I could get out of there and back to searching for Jaden Jacks. I didn’t feel bad about the hypocrisy, pretending to care when I knew I did not. Xavier had gotten what was coming to him. He was an ass, he was greedy, and I’d never loved him.

So why was my heart heavy, as if I did?

I dodged two maids who averted their eyes, arms filled with linens, their Spanish whispered once they thought I could no longer hear. The household staff had returned upon Helen’s orders, and were putting things back to order, dusting and scrubbing and wondering what I was going to do with all this space and belongings, with their paychecks and all their lives. Their gazes were just as assessing as John’s, which was probably how I ended up in Xavier’s vacant wing. There was no other reason to be there. But it was quiet, and with Xavier’s body still in residence, no one seemed ready to tread there yet.

Exactly what I needed.

Yet I hesitated until the soft dulcet tones of Spanish arose again behind me, then pushed the door open and slipped inside.

The first thing I noticed was that the flowers sent by well-wishers were no longer moldering in lukewarm water, the table once holding them now a bald spot among the rest of the ornate tableaus of the sitting room. I crossed to the window where thick curtain blotted out the sunlight and shoved it open. Xavier was dead. He couldn’t say a thing about it.

As if approving of this belated rebellion, the storm clouds that’d been dogging the valley last night had thinned and parted, revealing a tender blue sky and a sharp morning sun. I saw John step outside on the patio below me, the bald spot on his head a perfect O from directly above, a phone to his ear as he lit a cigarillo. Unlocking the window, I slid it open an inch, all I’d need to hear his end of the conversation even though I was thirty feet above him.

“Of course she’s incompetent,” he scoffed on a thin stream of smoke. “A figurehead is all…with the emphasis on her figure…”

He laughed, and so did the person on the other end of the line. I did not.

“...an easy mark for anyone with the intelligence above that of a soybean. I’ve called an emergency meeting with the board of directors. Yes, we’ll handle that now. And her…”

He disappeared under the back portico, totally unaware that I was there…and I was a woman who disliked being handled. Guessing he was going to take this conversation into the inner courtyard, I crossed into the bedroom, where I could watch and hear him from Xavier’s window. I was so preoccupied by listening in that I forgot about Xavier’s body, lying like an empty shell on the linen shore of his crisp bedsheets. I was also halfway through the room before I realized I wasn’t alone.

“He underestimates you.” The voice was strong and low. Charbroiled.

My gut reaction was to run. I jolted, automatically reaching for the mask in my bag, though the reaction could be attributed to the shock of finding someone else in the room. I played it off that way…and turned around to face the Tulpa.

He was seated in a straight-backed chair next to Xavier’s bed, looking neither large nor small, not overdressed or under, but as comfortable in this clothing and body as he was in any other. The skin he lived in today was pale, but a blank-slate pale, without a freckle to mar the entire canvas. It made him look as lifeless as the corpse next to him, and made me wonder if he’d hidden in the dark long enough to gather enough power to willingly take on these features, or if they’d been superimposed upon him by the mind and expectation of one of his followers. Perhaps Lindy—or Helen—as she was downstairs? I forced myself to calm. My scent was masked; I’d injected the pheromones before leaving the warehouse. I was here as Olivia, so Olivia I would be.