The Touch of Twilight

my dry throat, I’d have to let Vincent drift away in a slow death to cement that choice. “Look, someone else is causing the vibrational outbursts.”

“Bullshit!” He spat and his eyes sparked red.

“I don’t know how to manipulate matter!” That was it; my voice was gone, drier than dust, and fatigue began to smother me. There was no more sweat.

“Your scent is all over it, Joanna! I want you to dismantle her energy, and maybe then I’ll consider sparing your life.”

“Her?” I croaked.

He growled, and I cooked.

I struggled past the literal heartache, past my desire to rip my mask and clothing from my body, to rend my very skin from my bones if it meant relief, and focused all my remaining energy into building a cocoon around me, constructing a place inside this inferno where I could safely disappear. But as my walls began to shimmer, a mocking look passed over the Tulpa’s face, and I knew the big, bad wolf didn’t even need to puff to blow my house down.

“You’d trade my life for the destruction of…” I pretended to falter, waiting for him to fill in the blank. At best I could relay the information to the rest of the troop later. At worst I’d know what I’d died for.

But the Tulpa wasn’t in a helpful mood. “I’m not offering a trade. I’m telling you to come with me and begin the systematic breakdown of the double-walker-”

“The wha-?”

“Or make yourself comfortable.”

Think, Jo. Think or fry. “But it’s not-”

“Liar!” He didn’t even let me finish, and his red eyes gained heat, twin coals fired by unyielding fury. I knew how that felt, the blinding anger fueling that gaze, so I also knew he was past reason. Heat soared, burning and agonizing, and my litany of prayers dissipated until only one word remained. Please, please, please…

“Break down the double-walker!”

My mouth was so parched I had to be spitting ash. I tried to speak again and choked. My sandpaper tongue was expanding in my mouth. My organs shriveled inside me. “Don’t know how-”

“I do.” And with those two words, air rushed over me, lifting sweaty strands of hair from my neck as two hands clamped down over mine. Relief was immediate, like I’d cannonballed into a cold plunge pool.

I sucked in a delicious breath, as deep and thorough as I dared, then did it again. On my next inhalation, I glanced up to find that the Tulpa was no longer fixed on me. I twisted to follow his gaze, and discovered a surprisingly slight woman just behind me.

She was short, barely five feet tall, and so pale her skin sparked off itself, causing her to glow with a soft radiance. If she was wearing clothing it was spandex-tight, merely rounding out her curves and muting her sex like a naked Barbie. Her hair swung down her back, snapping in effervescent waves, and I watched as a droplet fell to the floor, where it reflected the light blazing from the Tulpa’s eyes before it sizzled and was gone.

Behind me the Tulpa roared. “Break it down!”

The woman smiled…with sparkling spiked teeth. “I have a better idea.”

And though she looked too fragile to resist a blown kiss, much less the Tulpa’s anger, she effortlessly scooped me up at the waist, her translucent, shiny fingers winnowing their way down to my ankles. I was so disoriented-and so relieved to no longer be cooking from the inside out-it took me a moment to realize I was floating. “Shit- wait!”

The Tulpa protested too. “You can’t-!”

“Just did.” Her voice, like her hair, was effervescent and snapping sharp, the syllables of her words running together in churning ripples to reverberate off one another.

“It’s a law!”

“Meant to be broken.” She waved the Tulpa away, and flashed those pointed teeth again, more pearl than white. She glanced up to find me watching. “Come. We must hurry.”

“The mortal-” I began, flailing as she shifted her feet.

“-is already dead.” She was studying the distance between the floor and the top of my head, and said it without emotion. “The Tulpa is animating him with residual energy.”

“It’s an illusion?” I took my eyes off her long enough to gaze up at Vincent again. He was still rotating slowly, drifting closer to the center of the black hole, but too far removed now for me to make out the expression on his frozen face.

“Yes, but the heat melting this building is not. Let’s go.” I’d floated higher, and she pulled me beneath the center of the black hole, straight-armed, like I was a kite. Wait a minute…

The Tulpa objected as well. “You can’t shield her forever!”

“Don’t need to,” she muttered, almost sounding bored. She grabbed my other ankle, steadying me, the coolness from her palms spreading through my body, though I knew it was unbearably hot. Even the steel beams looked to be sweating. “Creating and sustaining a black hole burns a massive amount of fuel. You’re running out of energy at an alarming rate, am I right? Besides, I could just take her back to Midheaven with me. You’ll never touch her there.”

I didn’t think it was possible for the Tulpa to blanch, but he did, and wondering what, and where, Midheaven was, I looked up.

That’s how I saw Vincent’s body suddenly stretch like spaghetti, his head whipping back in a sharp centrifugal swirl. For a moment I thought the rest of him would follow, but people weren’t meant to enter black holes, and in the next instant his body was rent by the tides of gravitational force, snapping, dissipating, destroyed so thoroughly, it was as if he’d never been. I swallowed down a scream. The woman and the Tulpa seemed not to notice.

“Now scoot along, tulpa,” And she said his name like she would say cat or dog, like he was a thing and not a person. The black hole wobbled in the sky, and the Tulpa let out an infuriated but hollow yell.

The woman turned her back on him and whispered to me, “Are you ready for this?”

“No, no, no!” I said, suddenly panicked, knowing what she was thinking. “I was never good at science, but I know if you get too close to a black hole, there’s no escaping it. So maybe we can talk about fighting or shooting our way out of here instead. I-I’m really good at that.”

“Okay, shooting. We’ll do that.” She turned her wicked grin on me. “I’ll be the propulsion. You’re the rocket.”

And she bent her shimmering knees and shot into the air with an explosion to match the Tulpa’s initial blast. I-we, because the woman was still anchored to me-shot past him so fast, he was still staring at the spot where we’d been standing, and the vertebrae in my neck cracked with the pressure of our ascent. There was a sucking sound, the breach and subsequent burst of the black hole disintegrating behind me, and then we were free, darting through the crisp night, Vegas spread below us like a hard, glittering pool. Wind whipped my hair and whistled in my ears, and through the weight of the night air I could hear the woman screaming delightedly behind me. At least someone was having fun.

And then, as we slowed to an apex, the Tulpa’s words revisited me. Glancing down, I realized what basic universal law this woman had broken.

Gravity, I thought frantically, and immediately began falling.

4

The great planets revolving around our sun are subject to the same basic law that had an apple thrumming Newton on his brilliant beaner. We-an iridescent woman who scoffed at the Tulpa’s empowered rage, and me-had broken that law, and while I was sure there’d be cosmic hell to pay for the breach, I was hoping it wouldn’t be due until well after we’d landed.

And yet I couldn’t help but be awed. Supernaturals could jump-damned high too-but we couldn’t fly. Outside of a steel bird, I’d never seen the entire town spread below me like a bright LEGOLAND replica, and my cannonball