City Of Souls (33 page)

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.

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.

Warren, who’d lied.

Because
he’d
told me Jacks was already in Midheaven, and Warren didn’t make mistakes that big. So why lie? What would be his true motive in sending me to a place where the cost of entry was a third of my soul, where women ruled ruthlessly, and where my powers were risked in games of chance? I decided to ask him as soon as I entered the sanctuary.

Meanwhile, Jacks had been even less helpful. He told me to kill Jasmine so that my
chi
could return to me. It was shocking that a former agent of Light could think such a thing, much less say it. If he were a Shadow agent, or worse, if he were the Tulpa…

What would he do if he were the Tulpa? What would I do?

I sat up so straight in the backseat that the cab actually rocked and the driver cursed.

“Strong winds,” I muttered, but he only frowned at me in the rearview mirror. I fumbled for my phone, again dialing Hunter’s number.

“The Tulpa doesn’t want me dead,” I said as soon as his voice mail allowed. “He needs me alive. If I die, my
chi
will unite again. In Jasmine.”

The energy would be reabsorbed in Jasmine’s body, the same way the energy of the people Jaden Jacks used for crossing into Midheaven was absorbed into that world.

“But the Tulpa can’t let that happen. Because then the manuals would be written again.” Our troop would be strong again. Skamar would have her recorded name. Li would be healed. Sure, he wanted Regan to bring me to him, he probably even wanted to punish me for all the trouble I’d caused him this past year—especially for siccing Skamar on him—but he didn’t want me dead. Yet.

“He needs me alive. He can’t touch me.” And I hung up without saying good-bye. There was a sonic boom in the distance, the tulpas warring over the black mountains, but I smiled grimly at the embattled sky. My powers had been taken from me, but I could walk freely on this side of reality, a power in itself. I’d cross over for now, work with the others to figure out how to use this knowledge to best the Tulpa, and we could all heal the Zodiac together.

After that, I thought, leaning my head back, I could truly rest.

I had the driver drop me at
Town Square
, a likely destination for Olivia Archer, with its upscale shopping and dining and nightlife. It was a straight shot down the Strip to the Peppermill, but also far enough away that I could approach by stealth. With my speed, one of the super strengths I’d managed to retain, I’d make it to the old-school Vegas lounge well in time for the dusk crossing.

But the low ceiling of cloud cover was throwing off my senses. The sun and sky were still there, somewhere, but the razored sheets of bulging gray obscured both. Gregor would have to sense the moment rather than using the light. I wasn’t worried. For us, the splitting of dawn and dusk was like the dissection of a vein. It might be a small thing, but we felt it when it happened.

I dodged onto
Koval Lane
, where a cluster of kids was hanging around outside a run-down apartment complex. They were bundled in clothing more suited to the East Coast than anything I’d ever thought to see in the desert, and one greasy-haired punk glanced up from blowing on his knuckles and hooted, obviously recognizing me as Olivia Archer. Grumbling, I rounded the corner and yanked a hooded sweatshirt from my bag—it would conceal my hair if not my shape—and slipped my mask on as well.

I cut through the parking lot of the Guardian Angel Cathedral, an unlikely dome created in the fifties, where visitors to the valley could go get their Catholic on before the day’s gambling began, and was just edging by the giant, and odd, odalisque out front when I heard the first whisper.

“Such a good day to die…”

The glyph on my chest shot to life, but when I whirled around I saw nothing.

“Over here…Archer.”

Shit, shit, shit
...The scent was that of Shadows…but I saw nothing.
They’re on the flip side
. Concealed behind a portal.

I backed up in a swift skipping beat, blinked once, then softened my gaze as if looking through the air in front of me.