The Neon Graveyard (24 page)

It sounded like a train hitting a bus.

I rushed through the smoke toward the sound of thrashing, pulling an antique conduit from my pocket as I ran. How ironic. The weakest person here and I was the one with all the weapons.

I glimpsed Adele first, probably because she wasn’t moving. Her chest was as neatly caved in as a sinkhole. I shot her anyway.

The blast caused a hiccup in the fistfight whipping across the tall French windows, and the pause gave me a chance to aim my weapon at Lindy’s surprised, and bloodied, face. I only intended to hold her captive there—I’d promised Vanessa the kill—but my trigger finger twitched as the gun was knocked from my hand, and plaster exploded over the women’s heads.

Tariq had finally woken from his catnap.

The blow that rocketed my head back was a direct hit, too fast for me to see, much less stop. Lifted from my feet, I sailed back through the foyer, and ricocheted off the gold and marble console. Hands found my neck before I was fully slumped, and were it not for the shield coating my body like a second skin, my windpipe would have been crushed in seconds.

Instead the effort—and the confusing lack of results—gave me time to slip a trident from my arm holster and skewer Tariq between the ribs, up close and personal-like. I thrust my hips up, toppling him as he jerked away, then rolled to my knees as I fired my other conduit into his skull.

Then, whirling, I trained it back on the family room entrance.

Needlessly, I realized, a smile overtaking my face as I lowered my arm and rose to my feet.

Vanessa smiled back, though Lindy couldn’t do the same, even if inclined. Caught in a headlock that had her turning the color of a fresh plum, her eyes rolled back, and her body went lax. Vanessa kept her grip tight on the lieutenant’s neck. “You’ve got blood on your face.”

I shrugged. “It’s not mine.”

She raised her brows, the Vanessa I used to know emerging for a few scant seconds. “Not too bad for a mortal.”

I grinned back. “I have my moments.”

19

W
e left immediately. Someone would undoubtedly attempt to contact one of the newly deceased Shadows soon or, just as likely, show up at what had clearly become the Tulpa’s unofficial headquarters . . . maybe even the Tulpa himself. Either way, the empty guard box would put them on alert, and we needed to be far from the estate when that happened.

Yet carrying the body of a full-grown woman through the valley’s streets had a tendency to raise a few brows, even in Las Vegas . . . and especially when Vanessa kept choking out said woman every few minutes. Fortunately my deceased stepfather had left behind a fleet of luxury cars in which to kidnap the unconscious Shadow. I plucked the keys to a discreet Mercedes from a pegboard in the pristine garage, and we were spiraling out the gravel drive within minutes of our kills.

Kill spots, I thought, causing another shiver of adrenaline to rip through me. Whoever entered that mansion first would not only scent their allies’ deaths, but the mark of the hands that caused them. And, despite all odds, I would be one of them. It was just the hit of confidence I needed to ferry me on to my next task: Midheaven. Solange.

Hunter.

That was if I could keep Vanessa from murdering Lindy on the short drive to the nearest tunnel entry, I thought, glancing nervously at her through the rearview mirror. The way she held Lindy, the way she stared down at her, was different from anything I’d ever seen before.

It’s another type of mask
, I realized, skidding to a stop on a gravel pocket, and grabbing the wooden mask from the passenger’s seat. Had I looked that way after my sister’s death? I wondered as we traversed the slope leading into the concrete tunnel’s mouth. Wearing an expression so hard it was nearly brittle? Had I possessed the same leashed violence, an anger that, at the slightest provocation, could easily turn rabid?

My inclination was to say no, that my actions—from erasing a man’s memory to chasing down the predator who’d victimized me—were reasonable. But Vanessa had a pretty good reason too. I mean, what better reason was there than avenging true love?

And violence changed you, there was no doubt of that. You
had
to don a mask when you lifted a weapon. It was necessary to shield the part of you that was human when relieving someone else of their humanity.

Knowing all that, I still didn’t miss a step as I strode into that tunnel, toward Hunter . . . and Solange. Yeah, I’d changed a lot in the past year and a half. But, I thought, touching the firearm in my pocket, not entirely.

I hadn’t been in the city’s drainage tunnels since my near-drowning there four months earlier. The underground system kept runoff from the valley’s mountain ranges from flooding the city, eliminating the threat flash floods posed to the world’s most glamorous casinos. Unbeknownst to the tourists—usually too busy looking up at the flashing lights to note the dark, sunken inlets punctuating the valley floor—over fifty miles of concrete wound intricately beneath the city streets. Few mortals ventured inside the cavernous maze, and those that did were usually homeless, often addicts, and always lost.

But no matter how far inside the system they were willing to go, no mortal could ever access its true supernatural core. The pipeline wound differently for mortals than those with supernatural powers, taking only the impossible turns, inclines, and curlicues for the latter, which was the most practical reason I hadn’t been back until now. I’d never have been allowed to find it without this power.

Yet since I didn’t possess Vanessa’s speed or strength or super senses, she canvassed the tunnel system for danger while I was forced to linger a mere ten feet inside the tunnel’s entrance with Lindy. So close to my goal, I thought, trying to temper my anxiousness, and still so far away.

Recessed enough to be hidden, but still benefit from the low glow of the nearby streetlights, I kept my gun at Lindy’s temple in case she woke, while Vanessa raced through the tunnels’ inner depths for any other occupants. The search was perfunctory. We were pretty sure where most everyone was—the Shadows called to the estate, the Light taking Felix home. So Vanessa returned before Lindy could stir again, tucking the woman under her arm like a rag doll, and jerking her head at me.

“No . . . Light?” I had to ask. Vanessa might not naturally consider them dangerous, and I was pretty sure our former allies wouldn’t hurt her, not yet, not without giving her another chance to return to them. But I was a known enemy of the state, and had been the moment I stepped from our rooftop truce at Master Comics.

“No one.”

Lindy mumbled, head rolling, and Vanessa tightened her grip until the muttering stopped. Sighing, Vanessa wandered the few feet back to the tunnel’s entrance, leaning against it with one arm, Lindy still clasped in the other at her hip. It looked like she was standing in a hollowed-out moon, the lights behind her lending her frame an unnatural neon glow. Though superimposed, she and the city appeared as one, as if she’d sprung fully formed from this smeared-at-the-edges, supernatural Vegas. I fixed the image in my mind. It might be the last time I’d see either her or the city again.

Then she turned, her profile a flat silhouette as she glanced down, giving Lindy’s neck a perfunctory squeeze. The limbs that had begun twitching to life stilled again. “Come on.”

The stagnant and stinking water at the pipeline’s entrance dried up as we ventured further in, and sound was reduced to a pressure, like palms cupped against the ears. Using the glyph on her chest to reveal the way, Vanessa lit our path five feet at a time. A buzzing, like bees trapped between skin and skull, let me know when we’d finally branched from the manmade portion and into the magical system. From there it was a mishmash of short passages leading nowhere, steep slides back into the tunnel depths, and a whorl of descending medieval stairs I thought would never end. We dead-ended once, dumped into a concrete clearing I didn’t recognize. Then I looked up.

“There’s the opening.” No matter what path the pipeline’s twelve supernatural entrances took in getting here, they all halted at an upward facing entrance, Midheaven’s doorway pinned at the core.

“It’s not too warm or humid this time, is it?” Vanessa said, dumping Lindy.

Because the vicious heat which had always emanated from Midheaven no longer existed. I wanted to explain to Vanessa that Solange had siphoned her world’s energy in order to incubate her monstrous child, but that world’s activities was still off-limits to this one’s. I just shrugged as I began removing my weaponry. No need to lose them in the passage over. They couldn’t be used there, and I might need them if I returned this way with Hunter. Vanessa would stay with them until then . . . or until it was clear that I wouldn’t be returning at all.

A new voice jarred me from my thoughts. “Let me guess. Finally putting the last third of that broken soul to good use?”

“Hey, Lindy,” I said in a friendly voice. Then I kicked her in the gut. “You’re finally awake.”

“So rude of me to sleep so long.”

“Well, you’ve never been known for your good manners.”

“So let me guess,” she said dryly, looking around. “You’re still looking to gain the aureole?”

I shrugged. “I wouldn’t turn it down.”

“Well, I don’t have my conduit. The Tulpa was right in confiscating them. So you won’t gain it through me.”

“Then it’s lucky I have an altogether different ending planned for you.” And I showed her the mask she’d used to kill Felix. The knowledge of her own death slid over her gaze like a lowered shade and she sank as if recoiling from the thought.

I handed the mask to Vanessa.

Surprised, Lindy looked at Vanessa, though realization, followed by recognition, quickly dawned and she finally looked into Vanessa’s face and really saw her, really
scented
her. “Oh, I see,” she said softly. “A regular kill spot then. More vengeance. How mundane.”

She forced a bored yawn. Well played . . . had she not begun to shake.

In contrast, Vanessa was the epitome of composure. “Felix died upside-down, right?”

“That’s right,” Lindy answered the question like she was enduring a police interrogation. If she had to die, she was going to do it stoically. “In order to harvest the entirety of the soul, we drain the body of all its essential fluids.”

They’d done it with my stepfather, Xavier, as well. Just more slowly in deference to his mortal fragility.

“And how many lives did the Tulpa blow through on his quest to enter Midheaven via his stupa?”

She sneered. “Enough to know he was on to something.”

“But not enough to accomplish it,” I said smugly.

“I’m surprised you never offered up your soul for passage, Lindy,” Vanessa interrupted, sneering back. “Or did you? I mean, you’ve been in love with the creature for years, right?”

“That
man
,” Lindy corrected, “is too transcendent to entertain something as base and unnecessary as love. His focus is on mystical supremacy, and rightly so.”

“Barf,” muttered Vanessa, rolling her eyes.

I pointed out, “He chose my mother.”

“A mistake he learned from,” Lindy snapped back.

“Oh, sure. After a dozen times or so.” It was hyperbole . . . but not by much. My mother had played the Tulpa like the world’s oldest fiddle.

“Your mother was a lying whore.”

I laughed. “My mother is free and alive, and destined to remain that way, which is more than I can say for you. Not only that, if the Tulpa actually did have a soul, we all know he’d have given it up—worshipfully, willingly—for her.”

“Maybe for her death.”

“But definitely for her life.” I leaned so close to Lindy’s face her breath could have been my own. “Admit it, Lindy. That vile creature loved her, and longed for her love in return. Meanwhile you had to sit by and watch as he chose her over you, time and again.”

“I have no need for him to choose me over her,” she spat back, though her vehemence—and her use of the present tense—contradicted her. Realizing it, she flushed, then lifted her chin. “I live to serve. I’ve been useful.”

I shook my head. “Oh, Lindy. Haven’t you heard? A woman isn’t put in this world for her usefulness.”

I caught Vanessa’s eye over Lindy’s head, and we shared a smile.

Lindy’s face, already long, drooped. “It doesn’t matter. I’m special to him.”

“Yes,” I said reasonably. “You’re a
lieutenant
.”

Her brows fisted. “He loves me in his own way.”

Amazing, I thought, even as I shook my head. “He didn’t even see you,” I said, straightening.

Vanessa stepped between us, free hand on my shoulder, the one holding the mask hanging at her side. “It’s okay, Lindy,” she said, and I frowned. “You did your best. You served him well until the end. Nobody has been more faithful to him than you.”

Lindy’s eyes bulged as she let out a strangled cry. “I did everything!”

Vanessa made a pitying sound in the back of her throat as she knelt. “It’s true. You were always there for him. Yet he never, even for a moment, appreciated you at all.” And she put a hand on Lindy’s shoulder as the other woman lowered her head, giving in to sobs I’d bet she’d never before released. Vanessa waited, touch light, like some benevolent evangelist comforting a member of her flock. When the sobs finally lessened, but hadn’t altogether ceased, she crooked her index finger under Lindy’s chin, lifting it so they were eye to eye. “So I have an idea.”

The tunnel fell silent.

Vanessa lifted the mask. “Let’s see if he appreciates you when you’re gone.”

I
looked on with envy as Vanessa vaulted fifteen feet to the opening above us, Lindy’s convulsing body raised above her shoulders in order to access the single-file passage. I couldn’t currently swipe the bottom of a basketball net, never mind make that leap.

Vanessa’s head appeared in the opening a second later. “Good news. It’s unlocked.”

I let out a relieved sigh. I’d been afraid Warren might have come along after Carlos and locked it up yet again. That he hadn’t said two things. First, that the agents in the valley had quickly realized trading a third of their soul for entry into Midheaven was a raw deal. Second, and more importantly, Warren probably saw it as an easy way to get rid of me. After all, relieve the grays of the person he had once considered a weapon, and balance would be returned to this valley’s Zodiac. Either way, after all that’d happened since this entrance was discovered five months ago, a person would have to be crazy to enter now.

I sighed, hating that I fit the description.

“You’ll have to help me up,” I told Vanessa.

“Oh, right.” She immediately dropped back onto the concrete clearing, Lindy no longer a worry. She could struggle all she wanted, but the animist’s mask had been forced on her. She’d suffocate without end, her mind and body numb and tingling, her lungs ever on the verge of bursting.

Vanessa lifted me, and we landed lightly upon a planklike shelf, as roomy as a broom closet. The light from Vanessa’s glyph was amplified in the small space, and Lindy, propped in the corner like a mummy in a museum, looked spotlit.