left. I swallowed, felt my throat working painfully, and was careful not to let my eyes stray to any of the walls surrounding him. He continued to stare me down as he stood.
“I have to confess, it has been fun watching you chase your tail, Joanna. More fun than simply killing you.” He kicked at my feet playfully, then stopped playing and slammed his boot down on my kneecap. I heard the crunch of bone and cartilage shattering, and even though I felt nothing, the need to scream welled up inside me. I clamped my teeth together, squeezed my eyes shut, and refused to let the tears come. That’s how I caught his next words, the most telling. “I know the Tulpa thinks he can lure you to our side, but I don’t. A monarchy is all good and well, especially given no choice, but nepotism rubs raw.”
I swallowed down another bout of nausea, my head now pounding, which meant the physical abuse was registering somewhere, despite my numbed limbs. Voice rasping, I said, “You don’t sound very afraid of your leader.”
“He acts independently of his maker; we act independently of him.” Joaquin shrugged, folding his arms over his chest. He was almost fully recovered now.
“The Tulpa’s creator is dead,” I reminded him. If I could keep him talking I could get a fourth wall up and trap him inside. And if they all held, I could heal and figure a way out of this maze. But damn, that was a lot of ifs.
“Yes, and we have your mother to thank for that,” he murmured, nudging my other kneecap. I winced instinctively. “If only she’d finished the job.”
I blinked, swallowed hard, and then it was done. All three walls were erected, and either my work would hold, those walls would stand, or they wouldn’t. And there was no reason to prolong this any longer. Besides, his fucking stench was getting to me.
“So we have a pretender to the throne, is that it?” I said, gazing up at him. The fourth wall began to shimmer at the edges, but gave away as he stepped forward. Either he hadn’t felt it or pretended not to, because he only had eyes for me. How romantic.
“I’ve a greater right to it than you,” he said coldly.
“And I’m sure Regan told the Tulpa you said so,” I said, and got to watch him flinch. “No wonder he sent you in here with me.”
“No.” Joaquin straddled my shoulders, forcing me to look straight up at him. “If he knew, I wouldn’t be here now. He wouldn’t have given me a shot at his precious Kairos. You wouldn’t be walled up in a maze I’ve already walked through, or lying on the ground with my boot print on your spleen.”
“Now why does everything you say come out like a line in a B-grade spaghetti Western?” I said, feeling my limbs start to tingle to life. Too bad, because this was going to hurt. “You’re so conscious of being recorded in the manuals…Joaquin, the Shadow Aquarian, the big star.” I scoffed as his expression tightened again. “You’re so fucking wooden you make Keanu Reeves look like a method actor.”
And then his expression blanked. I was beginning to recognize this as a bad sign, but as he stepped back to regard me from a distance, he unexpectedly backed into my trap. I scrambled to get the fourth wall up while there was space between us, and his face remained impassive as the air shimmered between us. Maybe, just maybe…
“Let me speak more plainly, then,” Joaquin said slowly. “Your walls can’t hold me.”
Or maybe not.
And he rammed his fists outward, one to each side, and my walls materialized, shining briefly, before disintegrating altogether. In what was almost the same movement, his right fist plowed through the front wall, the weakest, and it wobbled, then evaporated. He was on me so fast-fingers around my throat, spittle raining on my face-that my gaze had barely found his before he spoke. “I’m going to rape you raw, Joanna Archer. I’m going to shove myself so far down your throat I’ll tear your lungs. And after I’m done with you, I’m going after Ashlyn. Is that clear enough for you?”
A flash of fear arrowed through me like heated quicksilver, stronger than any physical pain so far, mightier than the Tulpa’s walls or Joaquin’s fists or even my long-held hatred, and my vision blurred-from lack of oxygen or Joaquin’s words, I didn’t know-but inside my head the images were clear as polished glass.
A baby squalling as it was lifted from my body.
A photo of a family I didn’t know, now complete, and a card sent to me in thanks.
Ben’s curls on a child’s head.
All this mingled together in a collage of color and action and sound, and then…nothing. Not even light. Just a blank canvas in my mind where clarity and intention finally found a resting place, and I saw what Tekla had really been trying to teach me.
That, I thought, and a way to write my own future.
“How about that?” I managed, voice strangled. “Tekla was right.”
“That loony bat?” Curiosity had Joaquin’s grip loosening. “I thought she stopped making predictions the night I tore her son’s head from his neck.”
I shook my head, my skull rubbing against the pavement beneath me, but Joaquin yanked my hair back to still the motion, though he did allow me to speak. “No…she saw this. You and me, here.” I gasped out a strangled laugh, amazed I hadn’t seen it all along. “God, how could I be so blind? I was going to get what I wanted all along. I just had to be patient and not fight it.”
Joaquin, unhappy with my digression, slapped me hard. Strangely enough, that restored my vision. “And what did batty ol’ Tekla say? That we’d meet again in the warehouse where I murdered her only child, both of us trapped until one of us dies? That you’d end up victorious? Because it doesn’t look that way to me. Did she also see you unarmed, sprawled beneath me, unable to move?”
I looked up, blinked. “Yes.”
Joaquin looked as if he couldn’t decide whether I was joking or not. Then he laughed, the sandpaper sound coarser and sharper than his nails at my neck, harder than the thighs pinning me in place. It was such a strange thing to behold, a wide, delighted grin on a face I’d only ever seen hooked in a sneer, and the thought of joy penetrating the wasteland of this man’s life was so startling I nearly froze. Nearly.
“It’s not you on the outside,” I continued speaking, almost conversationally, as the printless pad of my thumb aligned with the smooth gem sitting on my ring finger. “It’s you on the inside that I want gone.”
I said it like I was making a wish, and depressed the stone into its setting.
Joaquin, kneeling in front of me, sneered like he didn’t already know he was dead.
“Don’t give me that psychological mumbo-jumbo, or act like you’re made entirely of Light. If that were true, I wouldn’t have been able to string you along, using your thirst for vengeance against you.”
“I know. Which is why I’m letting it go.” And I pinky-swore that to the Universe. “I have better things to do with the rest of my life.”
He leaned down, chest touching mine, and I stared into his eyes, startled by the sudden realization that they were actually a dark moss color, almost pretty. Crazy the things you realized when you were no longer afraid for your life. “With the next five minutes, you mean? And what’s that?”
I ignored the heat of his breath, the pungent sulfur rising from his soul, and tried to read his mind, wondering when he’d realize he couldn’t touch me anymore. “Helping others. Fighting for those who can’t fight for themselves. Giving voice to those who can’t speak.”
He saw how earnest and honest I was, and doubt flickered across his face. It was fleeting, contradicted by the facts as he knew them, which he spelled out, though for my benefit or his, I didn’t know. “You’re pinned beneath me like a butterfly to a board. You’ll never do any of that.”
Too bad he didn’t know all the facts.
“I already have,” I said simply, and let my gaze slip past his shoulder. Joaquin turned.
She stood, solitary and small, just outside the maze, half obscured by the shadows of the warehouse. She didn’t look like an agent of Light, I thought, as Joaquin’s weight eased off me. In fact, right now Tekla looked like the least heroic agent I’d ever seen. I didn’t know how much Joaquin could really see of her-the aura that was usually a steady soft lavender was now crackling around her in sharp violet snaps-but he couldn’t take his eyes off her, and he didn’t move as she stepped into a moonbeam, the light making her look ghostly and one dimensional.
She was wearing a robe of crimson red, a weapon like a crossbow with a chain attached to it, held at her side.
