The Touch of Twilight

enough to still want an even playing ground.”

“Joanna!” Warren’s voice was curdled with disbelief. His fear stank. “Think about what you’re doing!”

But the Tulpa already had. “I swear it.”

The remaining Shadow agents dropped to the ground, fanning around the Tulpa in a half moon but for Zell, who fell back as if afraid his leader might turn around and punish him for his capture. But the Tulpa’s eyes were shining, brightly fixed on the agents of Light, who continued to hold their circle around Kimber. Stubborn. Loyal. Practically helpless.

Just as I’d seen in my vision.

29

I centered myself with a breath so deep I felt like an athlete preparing for an impossible physical feat. Then I squared on the Tulpa, strode two feet forward, and looked directly into those swirling silver eyes. “And I, Joanna Archer, pledge to use the primordial force of universal life to bind together the roots of your origin, faster than light, the whole to the half, reclaiming the essence of your original mind and subjecting it to my own.”

It was the spell he’d given me, twisted back upon himself, and I recited it precisely three times, just as he’d ordered, right down to the inflection he’d used in relaying it to me. He was a tulpa, not a doppelganger, and therefore too strong for the spell to hold for long, but it would secure him long enough for the troop to realize their advantage, at least if the glowering Shadow agents didn’t catch on first. Their leader had fallen unnaturally still.

“Not too long ago you spoke to me about a legend,” I said loudly, stalling for time, and motioning meaningfully in Chandra’s direction. Regan stilled beside her, the only one to note it, but Chandra felt her stiffen, and responded swiftly by whirling and burying Zell’s ax in her tattered thigh. That took care of that. Regan crumpled to the ground, sobbing again, but nobody on either side of the Zodiac protested. The rain drew down more relentlessly now and I had to yell to be heard. “A person born equally of the sun and moon who could freely choose her fate, her allies. The first sign that this person and her allies would come to power was her discovery-the Kairos actually exists. The second was a plague in her city of birth, which she would overcome with the help of her troop.” I inclined my head. “Anyone care to tell me about the third sign?”

Chandra, steadier and with Regan at her feet, spoke up. “The third was the reawakening of her dormant side. For the bearer of the Archer sign there would be a death, a rebirth, and a transformation into that which she once would have killed.”

“Her Light eclipsed, her solitary descent into darkness, an ability to see the unseen.” Dawn’s words were loud as the rain suddenly shuttered off. She looked at the sky as she untied Zell’s hands. He continued staring at me, unblinking, as if in a trance. “Tell us something we don’t know, please.”

“All right,” I said slowly, watching her bend to unbind Zell’s feet. Lindy was snapping her fingers in front of his face, frowning as he stared through her. I smiled, not because of his lethargic response, but because they were both so preoccupied with him that they’d taken their eyes, their energy, off their leader. The Tulpa, however, was watching me closely. He was furious, eyes charred marble, hatred rolling from him in bilious waves to join the low ceiling of clouds, but otherwise totally incapacitated under his own spell. “That sign has nothing to do with me.”

Dawn’s head shot up as Zell flexed his fingers and shook away the numbness that had them tingling back to life.

“Dormant doesn’t merely mean lying at rest. It can also mean lying in wait.” A small shiver rolled up my spine as elemental madness funneled into a fat, swirling vortex above us. The crackle of lightning and growl of thunder streamed into it, and I had to yell again. “The third sign of the Zodiac heralds the return of my mother to the paranormal battlefield. The death you speak of is the decade-old loss of her otherworldly powers. Her rebirth came when she fully embraced her mortality and all its gifts. But time is fickle and fluid, and her full transformation has taken until now to complete.”

“She’s a mortal. She no longer has any influence in our world.” Lindy turned to the Tulpa for confirmation, but he could only glower in return. She took it as chastisement, swallowed hard, and turned away.

I smiled.

“It’s true that at their worst mortals are simply pawns, fuel to be thrown away when their useful resources are depleted. But at their best?” Pride and anger powered my words, and I paced like a caged lion between the two opposing factions. “They’re agents of free will, and the mortals who know what that really means are also purveyors of energy through the power of thought.”

Spoken words, written language, action-and my mother, Zoe Archer, was most certainly a woman of action- could all be channeled into visualizing matter into life. She would be conscious, as most mortals were not, of moving through this mortal plane both physically and mentally, constantly creating and recreating her world, building on what was already constructed or tearing it down. Either way, the constant flux of reality was an opportunity, and like my mother, I saw it all as I never had before. We could all mentally manipulate different aspects of vibrational acuity. Because wasn’t vibration nothing more than matter?

And wasn’t matter all that mattered?

“A tulpa is made from thought,” Chandra provided, and I could hear the smile in her voice.

I smiled too, and this time the animist’s mask responded to my will by tilting evilly, cheekbones flaring with the grin. “And so is a doppelganger.”

Lindy’s expression blanked. The others shifted on their feet, still waiting for the Tulpa’s orders. My troop had gone still as well, sensing a shift as imminent as the sky’s eruption. I looked up to see a visible mass of power swirling in the funnel, looking as if it was ready to fall in around our ears. The animist’s mask didn’t contradict the thought.

“A newly born tulpa gains power in one of two ways. The first is by consuming the heart of someone with a concentrated amount of will and mental strength.”

A gasp from someone in my troop’s circle. The Shadows shifted, almost as one, again, but the Tulpa still didn’t move. I hurried on before he did. Not long now. “Eat enough hearts and their strength becomes boundless. The only upkeep required? A regular diet of soul sacrifice.

“Yet there’s a second, less bloody, but more powerful way to do this. A means by which you can instantaneously create a strong, fast, smart, and fully realized tulpa. And that is done simply by bestowing a name.”

Not a formal name, but a proper one. Informal. Common. Given.

The Tulpa’s fetters began to loosen. Color flashed across the pane of the animist’s mask, and a rumble escaped the funnel, a fractured warning from the sky. I paused, the mask fell blank, and I remembered to pace myself. The exact moment of Kimber’s metamorphosis. Not a moment sooner or later. Not yet.

“My mother has spent the past decade channeling the fuel of her mortality into the creation of a doppelganger, the evolutionary predecessor of a tulpa. She could have been the one to provide it with a name, but she’s patient and she’s good. Well…good-ish.”

Tekla was up to speed now, and she joined me to face the Shadow warriors. “And a name would be so much more powerful if provided-”

“By a living Zodiac member,” Warren finished, and he too stepped forward, next to me. The agents of Light flanked me, save Kimber, who was oath-sworn as off limits. “One with the same blood of its creator, no less.”

“One little noun,” I said to the Tulpa, watching as the body he’d donned began to shake. Silver zigzagged so furiously beneath his eyes that it leaked from his tear ducts and into the watery-thin layer between muscle and flesh, causing him to shine, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if his physical mold exploded into a million splintering pieces. “Two aspects, a sense and a referent. Something you were never given.”

The Tulpa’s face twisted as a lightning bolt escaped the sky’s low funnel, and a howl tore from his throat, probably ripping it from the inside. The Shadow agents jumped as if waking from a trance, and fire erupted in the sky, lightning searching out Kimber like she was a living rod. Agents, both Shadow and Light, shifted on their feet- my allies automatically pulling in tight as the Shadows bent their knees, weight shifting to the balls of their feet-but still waiting for their leader’s command. And when my pulse was so strong I tasted the bloody beat in my throat, I