Cheat the Grave

“You don’t want rogues leaking from Midheaven. They’ll all be worse for their time there, even the Light.”

Yes, he’d already told me. A twisted place that twists people in return.

“Even Hunter?” I asked coldly.

If I was a sore spot with the troop, Hunter was an open wound. Pain bloomed on every face, and Riddick even staggered. No one in the troop had experienced Midheaven the way Tripp and I had, but no doubt they’d each done their research into the world since discovering it really existed, a fact Warren had only recently and reluctantly clued them in on. I didn’t know if they’d researched it with his now-blessing or furtively, on their own and behind his back-probably both-but from the collective look on the faces around me, they were actively imagining the horror their former troop mate and ally was enduring in a world meant to separate a man from his soul. Good.

Not that their imaginations could ever do the place justice.

An unreasonable pang struck me at their reaction-they should feel more for their lifelong troop mate than a woman they’d only known a year-but it was blunted by how clear it was that no one had forgotten. Not my sacrifice, not Hunter’s banishment, not the way Warren had locked his Aries of Light in a world where men were used as batteries. They remembered all, no matter how much Warren willed it otherwise.

Meanwhile, Warren had closed his eyes, falling immobile. I fought not to step back, but after another moment he only strode to the room’s center, gait powerful despite a pronounced limp. “The point is, it would unbalance everything. It wouldn’t be good for you or us.”

He just couldn’t resist differentiating me, disparaging me, in front of them.

“I’m curious, Warren,” I said, mimicking his indifference, right down to the placement of my hands on my hips.

“Did you feel this sort of disdain for my mother too? After all, she was an agent who also became mortal by giving up her powers.”

In a way, I’d simply expanded on the premise. She’d only done it for one person-me. Warren’s gaze darkened, a look that said my mother’s sacrifice hadn’t been worth it. “Your mother never attempted to re-engage in our world after leaving it.”

“I didn’t re-engage! I was kidnapped!”

“By a rogue, right?”

His single-mindedness made me want to scream. “Don’t ask me shit when you already know the answer! Harlan Tripp did this, and you’d better watch your ass because he’s after you next!”

I said it for Harlan’s benefit, to let him know that though I wasn’t handing him over to Warren, I wasn’t anywhere near on his side. If he thought I’d align myself with him against the agents of Light-that I was going to “re-engage” with this world at all-I’d disabuse him of that now. Getting a dig in at Warren’s expense was just a bonus. “All the rogues in Midheaven would be after you if they knew what you’d done.”

Warren lifted his chin, pulling the skin along his jaw tight. “Then don’t open the gateway to Midheaven again.”

“I didn’t do it this time. Mortals can’t. It hurts too much.” Warren’s gaze sharpened and I clarified, in case they’d forgotten: “The child I gave my life for in those fetid tunnels learned that the hard way!”

“Okay.” It was a grudging murmur, but sympathy was on my side, so there wasn’t much more he could say. And so as abruptly as he arrived, he turned back to the door, motioning to the others.

“Asshole,” I muttered, and he paused mid-limp.

I winced. Of course he couldn’t let it go, not with the whole troop watching. Pride was his personal Achilles’ heel. I forced my gaze from the floor because now wasn’t the time to back down, but when he turned, a rare flush colored his cheeks. “Remember your place, Joanna,” he said softly.

“You never let me forget.”

“But I can. With one command I can make you forget who you were, or that you were ever superhuman.” He spun on his heel and spat his rejoinder at the same time. “Remember that too.”

Survival instinct kept me quiet, but what stunned me into stillness was how the others followed without complaint, how Vanessa no longer met my gaze, and how not one of them said good-bye. Again. It’s okay, I thought, biting my lip when the door finally swung shut. I didn’t need to say anything. Let their shame speak for me. Let their guilt scream. Because after sacrificing my every power for their troop, I’d never be entirely absent from their lives. Not as long as I lived.

“You really got no power?”

I was slumped against the counter in sudden and complete exhaustion, but hastily wiped the tears from my face as Tripp drew closer. It was a pointless action. He could smell my every emotion. Besides, what did it matter if Tripp saw?

“I still play a mean game of tennis.” The aftermath of the confrontation had my stomach twisting on itself, but I bit back the bile threatening to overtake my throat. I wouldn’t allow them to turn my own body against me too.

“But you’ll have to find a different doubles partner for what you have in mind.”

Tripp tilted his head and frowned. “So they kicked you out?”

I massaged my arms where the bindings had chafed. “I’m no use to them.”

Which meant he now knew me as useless too. My greatest secret, my greatest weakness, in the hands of a Shadow. I glanced up at the clock on the wall, wondering exactly how many seconds I had left to live.

But Tripp remained where he was, faced off across from me like we were going to have a shoot-out. He nodded once. “So that’s why you got no aura. I thought it was my eyes. They just ain’t right over here.”

He rubbed at them like that might change, but made no move yet to kill me. “How did it happen?”

I told him about Jasmine, the child I’d given over my powers to save, and how doing so had restored balance to the Zodiac at a time when the Tulpa had been on the verge of gaining it all. “I had to give her everything-my powers, my aura, all but the last third of my soul.” I’d used the rest of it as payment to enter Midheaven twice. I sometimes wondered how I was still alive, never mind animate and able to stand upright. Wasn’t the loss of your soul like removing your aetheric spine? What was left of me but a mind and shell? And was that enough to keep me moving through the world? “But it saved her, her younger sister, the city. And my tr-the agents of Light.”

Squinting at me, he shifted on his feet. I braced for a blow, but he only said, “Like your mother did with you.”

“You know that story?” He’d been stuck in Midheaven for eighteen years, and my mother had given over her powers to save my life when I was sixteen, only a decade before. But Midheaven’s newest resident seemed to be angling for Mackie’s position-trading in other people’s stories for his own personal gain.

Yet I couldn’t think about Hunter’s abandonment right now. For some silly, stupid, girly reason it made me want to ask for that killing blow.

Tripp rubbed at his chin. “That’s fuckin’ crazy.”

“Says the man who just went up against Death’s blade.” And he’d done it to keep Mackie from slaying me. I took a tentative step forward. “Warren doesn’t know Mackie is here, does he?”

Because the leader of Light had spoken as if Tripp were this world’s greatest threat.

Tripp leaned back against the glass case, favoring his injured leg. “Don’t look like it’d matter if he did.”

I hunched my shoulders because he was right. “So why is he…here?” Why’d he cross worlds to kill me? “I mean, I know I pissed him off by escaping Midheaven…” By knocking that soul blade from his homicidal grasp, I remembered, swallowing hard. “But that was the first time I escaped. He didn’t even notice me the second.”

“Ha!” Tripp shook his head, like I was the village idiot. “Ol’ Sleepy Mac notices everything. He files it away. The knowledge lurks in his smile when he comes to kill a man later, like it’s been carved on his teeth.”

Carved like a marionette’s toy, I thought, remembering the way Mackie moved; seated and slumped one moment, pulled straight and erect the next. Pouncing in a full lunge after that, the leather of his skin shifting over his skull in lieu of any real expression. It was like the cross section of an old oak renumbering its rings. There was nothing natural about it.

“But that don’t mean he’s here of his own volition.” Tripp lit another cigarette, though this one seemed normal. My skin didn’t tingle, the smoke didn’t press against my pores. Thinking of Micah, I couldn’t help my relieved sigh. “No, ma’am. Mackie don’t have enough of his own willpower left to make them sort of choices. That’s what makes him so dangerous.”