There were no tire marks from Chandra’s homicidal attack, no broken bricks piled at my feet. By this time I had enough breath back to curse again, and did so freely since there was no one around to hear me.
There was a final ripple to come, similar to an earthquake, but without the sound, and only the walls surrounding the boneyard were affected by the shocks. As light played over the concrete, similar to the way heat shimmers off an asphalt road, the aftershock snaked along the wall counter-clockwise and disappeared around the first corner. It would eventually return to the point of origin where I stood, panting, pained…and thoroughly pissed.
Forgetting my surroundings, forgetting everything but that final triumphant look on Chandra’s face, I lifted my conduit from my bag, and when the rippling appeared, traveling down that fourth and final wall, I fired into the shimmering oasis until the chamber was empty of arrows.
Childish, I know. It was wasteful and pointless, and I was already turning to leave, already thinking of how to spend the ensuing hours until dawn, when the rippling stuttered, then stopped short of the original mark. The passage incomplete. I could see through to the other side where rusted and toppled signage with burned-out bulbs and busted tubes of twisted wire littered the boneyard floor. I saw the old hacienda sign, and in the distance, like a beckoning mirage, the Silver Slipper.
Closer still, I saw the yellow cab.
Then the uppermost part of the wall began to harden, brick by brick, dropping lower to the ground, gaining in speed with each section. I dove, the weight of an entire wall crushed down on my ankles with the speed and density of a boulder falling from a cliff. Rolling, I came up on the other side missing a shoe, left leg scraped from mid-calf to ankle, but safely inside the boneyard.
It took a moment for that to sink in, then I laughed aloud, as I studied the newly constructed wall. My left shoe, lost during the dive to safety, was stuck, a permanent fixture with a large chunk of cement dried around it. My bag was half caught, half free, but the opening was on this side of the wall. Good thing, I thought, stooping to examine it, because if the clothing, comics, and mask inside were found next to the Porsche-found, more specifically, by a Shadow-my identity as Olivia Archer would be known by all. But they weren’t, it wasn’t, and I was safely inside. I gave another small hoot, and started pulling at the bag.
Some of the clothes were bound to the wall and had to be left, and one of the manuals was glued about three- fourths down the page, but I ripped what remained and tucked it under my arm with my disks and the rest of my belongings. After wiping the remaining grit from my mouth and ears and blowing my nose on my favorite tank, I couldn’t help but laugh again. I was in the boneyard, right where I was supposed to be, if not exactly when. And feeling rather smug about the whole incident, I set out with one shoe…in search of Chandra.
9
When I’d first learned about my troop’s superhero hideout, a.k.a. the sanctuary, the only image I had to compare it to was the Batcave, a subterranean grotto filled with all the things a hero needed to become strong and super and invincible; unusual weapons and eccentric instructors and a diet that most likely consisted of Wheaties. I thought of a place of respite, a haven where agents could rejuvenate, train, and return refreshed to mortal reality, ready once again to face off against the Shadows.
And would you believe I was mostly right? See, that’s the thing: most of the superhero stories are true, though when presented as fiction in a form most widely read by children, they’re often dismissed as nothing more than some nerdy writer’s fanciful imagination. And that’s key. Skepticism is a far more effective deterrent to the determinedly curious than the best effort at concealing the truth. Nobody really thinks a man who dresses as an oversized bat is going to live beneath a mansion in a damp, high-tech cave.
And nobody thinks an entire troop of superheroes fighting to save Las Vegas from evils worse than Donald Trump’s arrival actually bide beneath a glorified junkyard, their sanctuary accessed by the giant heel of a dilapidated silver slipper.
I intended to head straight to the fifteen-foot slipper, slide from the heel directly into the toe-and the chute leading to the sanctuary below-and take up with Chandra the issues I had with vehicular manslaughter. I wore a mask to shield my Shadow side from getting fried by the light when entering the sanctuary, and was already fixing this over my eyes when I heard the laughter. Dropping it and my battered belongings next to a giant letter G, I followed shouts of encouragement and genial chatter to the center of the boneyard. As I peered around a rusted star, my mouth dropped open.
There, where I’d last seen the carcasses of the original sands sign and a handful of truck-sized silver dollars, was a garden of stone walls. From my slightly higher vantage they created an intricate pattern, like one of those fabled English mazes made of tangled hedges and turf. This one, however, was made of concrete slabs, six feet high and about as long, with gaps of about a half a foot in between.
In front of this strange garden was the entire Zodiac troop, as well as a young girl I didn’t know, and a half- dozen children sitting off to the side. On second glance, I saw Warren was missing, and so was Tekla, but Micah was there-which meant this was important enough to pull him from his precious lab-and so was Gregor, my errant cabdriver. Chandra was next to him. She’d replaced the murderous look on her face with one of perplexed innocence, shrugging as she explained something to Vanessa, our Leo of the Zodiac, and Felix, the Capricorn. They shot one another a questioning look, and my gut tightened in response. She was clearly talking about me. Saying I’d missed the crossing, perhaps, or that I hadn’t shown up at all.
“Bitch,” I muttered, and was about to step forward when Hunter strode into view, passing out an armful of guns.
“All right, guys. Warren wants this done before full dark, so let’s get started. Losers exit the game immediately. If there’s no winner declared tonight, the game will resume tomorrow.”
“Why can’t we finish it in the dark?” This question came from Riddick, a troop member almost as new as I. Built like a diver, all sinewy muscle packed tightly together, he came from a long line of accomplished Aquarians, and had taken up the sign after his aunt died of supernatural causes the previous fall. Eager to prove himself, he was a welcome member to the strengthening Zodiac.
The only less experienced member was the petite woman next to him. Jewell had unexpectedly inherited her star sign when her older sister was killed last winter after the sanctuary had been infiltrated by a mole. Jewell had lived her entire life within the confines of the sanctuary and believed she always would. Until her sister’s death, she’d operated as a sort of glorified valet for her stronger sibling, and she still hadn’t seemed to have reconciled herself to this new fate-that she was a heroine, expected to succeed where her sister had failed-but here she was all the same, the troop’s new Gemini.
“Because the object isn’t to stumble about until you happen to run into somebody, that’s why,” Hunter replied coolly, handing him a weapon. Riddick swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing beneath his ginger goatee. “The idea is to make it to the center of the labyrinth without detection, or at least without being struck by anyone else.”
“Yes, but why?” Micah asked, sounding like a petulant five-year-old. It was that question, however-perpetually asked-that made him such a damned good scientist. “What does a game have to do with battling Shadows?”
“The Tulpa, if you haven’t noticed, is extremely fond of games, especially puzzles. Particularly those on a grand scale.” Hunter replied, handing Micah a gun. “We’ve found blueprints of such a maze, and we think it may be located in his troop’s hideout.”
“And at the center of this labyrinth is…?” Gregor trailed off, accepting his own weapon with his good arm. The new girl, beside him, took her gun from Hunter with a nod of her dark, bobbing curls.
“Some say that’s where the Tulpa sleeps at night, where he gathers enough energy around himself to reanimate the following day. Others claim there’s an object those seeking the Tulpa’s destruction would covet, which we most certainly do.”
“The original manual?” Felix asked, cocking his weapon with a loud snap.
Hunter shrugged in reply. “The only thing known for certain is the Tulpa holds this place, and whatever it contains dear to his nonexistent heart. No one has lain eyes on its core before, and if he’s hiding it that thoroughly, you can be sure we want whatever’s in there.”
“Meanwhile, I’m assuming the maze is rather complex,” Micah put in.
