opened my mouth.
The first arrow of heat lightning struck Kimber, searing her image on the canyon floor-back bowed, limbs twisted awkwardly, mouth open and splayed to the sky. I screamed, but my voice was lost in the hail of lightning ripping at Kimber’s prone form.
Nobody heard.
My mask burst into a kaleidoscope of color. I felt, rather than saw, the Tulpa draw on the reserves of power he’d stored to chase the doppelganger-power afforded him by the loyalty of his agents, the soul energy of his mortal worshippers, and the lives he’d stolen to fortify his own-and suddenly, on the back of the mask’s face, screaming into my own, was an image of him finally, painfully, willfully opening his mouth. “Kill them!”
Lindy was the first to move, barking out a command as she unsheathed an edged weapon and lunged at Vanessa. Our Leo’s bladed fan whipped open and they were off in a shower of sparks and smoke, cold darkness gobbling them whole. Felix and Riddick and Gregor all lunged, clashing with the other Shadows in the center of the canyon. Warren, more circumspect due to the lack of a conduit, took a more circuitous route, weaving between bodies before pouncing from overhead. Chandra ferried blows from behind with Zell’s ax, while he continued to cower behind the Tulpa.
I too hung back until my allies could clear the path to the Tulpa, and they did gradually break up and scatter- sparks flying every time one conduit met another, glyphs fired, battling mano a mano, like we were in the Dark Ages all over again. The charged sky continue to pummel at Kimber, but no one took note, limbs and cries and weapons whipping in martial fray.
“Joanna!”
I’d been so focused on securing a defensive position that I didn’t hear Chandra until she used my real name. “Jo!”
I whirled to find her alone in a rain-drenched crevasse. “She’s gone!”
Regan.
I glanced back at the Tulpa, whom I could see staring at me, silvered eyes unblinking in the whipping gale, and as yet, unmoving.
I charged-three running steps-and leaped to the ridge of the battered little canyon, following the trail of blood until the storm wiped it away. Then I used my nose to scent out Regan’s desolate agony, and chased her farther into the darkness. My glyph lit up a mile into the chase, lighting my way only enough to see one foot in front of the other, though if Regan looked back, I knew the wobbling light would alert her to my approach. And I was gaining on her. I could taste the coppery rawness of her blood in my throat. After another half mile, the scent was so strong I knew she was only feet away.
But in those few feet between us dropped a fully animated, and thoroughly pissed, Tulpa.
I skidded to a halt, backing up in almost the same motion. “Um. Hi.” I kept backing up, ankle twisting sharply as I tripped over a boulder, though I righted myself in time to see a figure limping away into the inky night. “Can you just give me a minute here?”
I don’t know what reserve of strength he’d drawn on, but his response was to bellow so loudly he counteracted the gale all around us. My hair blew back from my face, and I tripped backward again. Okay, so he was more than pissed. I’d ruined everything for him, revealed what must have been long-held plans to both the Shadows and the Light, and pulled Zoe from his reach once more. I wondered if there was a chance he’d let me live in spite of it. The way his hands fisted kind of made me doubt it.
Then a circle of calmness surrounded us, stillness falling like an A-bomb, unnatural after the gale whipping around us. The enclosure-for I had no doubt that’s what it was-was large enough to allow movement, though still not wide enough for my liking. My glyph lit the whole thing like it was a mini-amphitheater.
“Call the doppelganger to you.”
Oh, I thought with some surprise. A reprieve.
“Why?” I asked, licking my lips, the image of Regan being shredded like paper reliving itself in my mind. “So you can use her to locate Zoe? I don’t think so.”
Regan had gotten off easy compared to what he had in mind for my mother.
I swallowed hard and backed up, though I didn’t run into a wall of resistance. The invisible enclosure of calm simply moved with me. Fuck. “Besides, calling her would mean I’m working with you, and I’ve already told you the third sign of the Zodiac is not the rise of my Shadow side. If you haven’t noticed, there was nothing wrong with it to begin with.”
“Brave words, Joanna. And brave actions too. But I can taste your fear. So let’s skip the formalities and just give you what you expect. A beating…Tulpa style.”
He raised his claws like he had with Regan, and I winced as I turned away, putting my hands out in front of me even though it wouldn’t help. I thought he was stalling-playing up the anticipation-but when the moment lengthened into seconds, I couldn’t help but crack open an eye. Frustration twisted his face as he gazed down at his upturned palms.
“She doesn’t belong to you, tulpa,” came a voice from the darkness, and then Chandra sidled up next to me, Zell’s conduit clenched in her fist. She said his title like I’d instructed, as if he was a thing and not a person, and with more than a little disdain. The Tulpa still wasn’t moving well, most of his energy yet bound by the spell he’d given me, and the rest expended on the boundary of stillness around us. The one Chandra had just waltzed through.
I stared at her in wonder…as did the Tulpa.
It didn’t take him long to figure out what was happening, and when he drew himself upright, settling in, I realized he was going to try and keep me talking long enough for the rest of the spell to wear off and his full powers to return. It was an obvious ploy, but as Zell slid up beside him to face off against Chandra, I let them both have their way.
“How long have you known?” The Tulpa asked with forced calm. It fooled nobody. It was the same calmness that encased me against my will.
“That my mother is the doppelganger’s creator? Or that a doppelganger is a precursor to a full-blown tulpa?” My narrowed eyes were sharp as they ran back and forth between him and Zell. “All that matters is I know it now. But you’ve known it all along, haven’t you? You said the double-walker smelled like me, but what you really meant was similar. You also said she was a twin…but I didn’t understand until later that you didn’t mean my twin. You meant yours.”
“She tried to eat your heart,” he reminded me, like my defensive position was her fault.
“You tried to microwave me and throw me into a black hole.” My voice deepened at the memory. Zell inched closer to his leader.
He shrugged one slim, scholarly shoulder. “Think of it as a little belated parental discipline.”
“Then this would be my adolescent rebellion,” I said bitterly. “Now, Chandra!”
Chandra whipped back the ax and sent it whistling through the air, head over tail, in a move so quick, you’d have to be superhuman to even spot it. Zell lunged in front of his leader to take the blow beneath his breastbone, and staggered backward, mouth falling open in a cry that was lost in another crack of thunder. I shifted my attention back to the Tulpa, but even though Zell had just surrendered his life for him, even though being impaled with his own conduit would erase his existence from the entire annals of our mythos, the Tulpa ignored the sacrifice.
Thus he saw Chandra hand signal me, and watched us both lift our arms while imagining the same thing into existence. The lesson she’d given me as we left the city was still fresh, but she was the experienced one and did most of the work. I was just here to reinforce her imagination, to believe in the strength and height and solidity of the giant cacti spearing from the ground like Jack’s beanstalk. Tit for tat, I thought, as the Tulpa and Zell were enclosed in a sharp jutting circle of imagined life. Zell fell behind his leader, still clutching his chest. Meanwhile, the Tulpa’s face finally betrayed alarm, then a confusion that lasted only moments before shifting to amusement.
“A mind can create life. You know that better than anyone, don’t you?” I said as the sky above paused to take a breath between rounds. The Tulpa looked a little less amused as thistles from the wall of fleshy giants corralled him into the center of the circle, a bleeding Zell edged in tightly behind him. “And, in some cases, two minds are better than one.”
