yelling obscenities at me, knowing I was up to something but not sure what. How could she? She didn’t have the capacity to even imagine what my Light side could create.
One final tweak: already naturally and conveniently bayonet-shaped, I reinforced the tapered leaves with iron, and made the spiraling clusters dense and tight and unyielding even under the full impact of a speeding car. As I finished off the last cluster, the Honda’s doors slammed behind us. I opened my eyes and stared straight ahead. I could make out the boneyard wall in the distance. It was still solid, and I took another moment to give the underground cactus an extra energy pulse, mentally softening the ground above it. Had any of the Shadows been looking, the shift in the wide swath of earth could be attributed to the wind, but the backseat doors were winging open, and the driver was already yelling.
“She’s doing something!” the woman screeched as sharp elbows and toxic breath suddenly hemmed me in. I knew them all, either from previous run-ins or, in the case of the newbies, from reading the Shadow manuals, an ability I possessed because I was half Shadow. I dampened my responding cough to their scent, forcing down bile, and continued staring straight ahead as Harrison slid in beside the driver. He shot me a little finger wave. The driver, still in animate cadaver mode, was like a snake spitting venom. “She’s up to something!”
“She’s trapped in a car with five Shadow agents and no conduit.” Harrison was talking to her but still smirking at me. I carefully envisioned an extra sharp barb arrowing into his skull. “Now watch the wall.”
Tariq leaned so close, his dump-site breath stirred my hair. “We’re going to cross over to the boneyard’s flip side and cut your troop down as they exit your sanctuary.”
“Looks that way,” I said woodenly, hoping no one would notice how much I was sweating beneath my hoodie and mask. It was harder to concentrate on creation with my eyes open. I’d never tried it that way before.
Sloane, next to me, was apparently looking for a greater reaction. She slapped my face so hard her nails raked the skin beneath the mask. Fortunately, she was too close to use her full power. I felt a tooth loosen at the back of my mouth and winced, which made her laugh. And that made my face burn.
“Don’t sit there like a statue,” she said as I lifted my chin and continued to stare at the wall. Dusk was splitting. The only good thing about this was that it divided and diverted their full attention from me. “You’ve gotta at least be getting excited.”
I lifted one brow. “Because murder and destruction are so thrilling?”
She slapped me again. I really hated being slapped. “You’re gonna lose that fucking hand,” I muttered.
She slapped me again. Now I had matching red cheeks…and matching red eyes.
“Wow, she looks just like-”
“Him,” Harrison said, and pointed at the sky.
The Tulpa was barreling toward us like a bull on acid. Damn it! The Shadows looked surprised to see him, so I knew it was my anger that had led him to us. He leveled out, going at least eighty miles an hour, swooping over the top of the car so it shook beneath his thundering cry. “Go!”
But it wasn’t yet time. The boneyard wall was beginning to ripple, like the shimmer of sun off asphalt, but it hadn’t softened yet. Impatient, the driver revved the engine, and everyone stared straight ahead, except for Tariq. He was watching the Tulpa behind us.
“Here it comes.”
“Gotta time it right, Adele.”
“I know what I’m doing, assholes.”
Sloane hit the Plexiglas in reply. At least she was no longer hitting me. I took a deep breath and waited. The softened concrete shimmied to wrap around the barrier like a ribbon, minute undulations making room for air, softening the wall enough to allow passage. As the motion slid along the final corner, the cab’s wheels spun against gravel before catching, and the car lurched forward. The Shadows were still looking at the slow wave as we sped forward, like it was a tsunami we wanted to meet head-on. I concentrated on the target, narrowing my eyes at the ground in front of the wall. That’s why none of us saw the Tulpa that dropped between the cab and the wall until it was too late. Dropped down to save me, I realized at the last, like an angel, like a martyr…like a fly caught between a flat surface and a swatter.
The cab impaled Skamar on the silver-edged tip of the cactus that had shot up from nowhere, its spongy base absorbing the cab’s impact but impaling its occupants on the barbed leaves. I barely had time to duck, much less gasp, but the screams of the Shadows around me joined the images from just before that: Skamar’s mouth going wide with pain, Adele’s blood coating the Plexiglas, the green and brown trunk of the Joshua tree folding like a marshmallow to cushion the impact.
The cab would have bounced backward on its wheels, but the bodies of the Shadows around me were pulled forward, and it merely shuddered as it jarred to a halt, lifting slightly off its wheelbase. I was bleeding; too numb to feel it, but I could smell it. Damn I was fragile! And the Shadows were still alive. They were momentarily struggling like worms on hooks, but they’d survive this. I leaned forward, kicking up at the soft flesh of cactus limb that would have impaled me had I still been sitting up. Careful not to let the barbed cluster fall atop me, I swung it around, burying it in Tariq’s back. As he screamed, I braced a foot on the seat and kicked out the back window. I kept kicking until the hole was big enough for me to climb through, and-making sure I had my bag with those valuable soul chips with me-I had nearly done so when I paused. Surely one second more wouldn’t kill me.
I leaned back and slapped Sloane across her bloodied face. She had a barbed leaf through her windpipe, so she didn’t have too much to say about it.
The Tulpa, however, laughed so loudly it again shook the car. He rocketed past us, skeletal smile wide as I ducked, but he ignored me to drop in front of all the destruction. Then, rabidly, he began pulling at Skamar’s body. Her screams were like scissors on silk, too breathless to hold any weight but telling of destruction. She was lanced through the stomach, so his formidable strength widened the already impressive hole.
The Shadows stilled, their pain nothing compared to Skamar’s agony. I froze, limbs gone numb, then shook my head and found my wits enough to will the Joshua tree gone. My emotions were nowhere near under control, and as I’d only discovered this ability the month before, it took some time. And I had to bolt as soon as the cactus dissolved; the Shadows stirred immediately. But it would take time for them to heal enough to give chase. I sprinted half a block, braced for the Tulpa’s pursuit, but when I glanced over my shoulder, he merely shot me a thumbs-up. With a now-freed and limp Skamar scuffed like a kitten in one claw, he shot into the air like a bottle rocket, screaming with wild glee, and after another moment, disappeared into the night.
I ran…and kept running. I ran until I’d left the city proper and was somewhere in the middle of the desert, panting hard, tears dried on my face. Glancing back, I saw Vegas glittering stubbornly beneath the bright hornet’s nest that was its sky, and I waited. I stood, slumped, waiting. I sat, and waited. But there were no storms or gales or howling winds that night. I sat for hours in the middle of a blackened void, and though the sky didn’t clear above the city, it also didn’t worsen. At one point I closed my eyes, bent my head, and sobbed for Skamar, cries slicing the air like razors, so the scorpions and snakes and lizards didn’t bother me, sensing the sharp pain. My sorrow was palpable, a heavy cloud marking my location. But the Tulpa didn’t come for me.
No one did.
The story spilled from me as soon as Warren answered his phone. My words tumbled over themselves like dice, cut up and spit out, but rolling up snake eyes anyway. With tears in my own I told him about how the Shadows had ambushed me and made a play for the boneyard, how Skamar had intercepted them, and how my created cactus had led to her capture.
“The Tulpa has her,” I sniffed. “I don’t know where.”
“Okay, calm down.” Warren’s voice was tight and wooden, but he wasn’t yelling. A part of me wished he would. I wiped at my nose and sniffed again. “Where are you now?”
Alone, was my first thought.
“I came back to the warehouse. To wait.” For anything. For anyone.
“So you and Hunter stay put. The rest of us will cross at dawn. Keep the alarms on until we get there.”
But I was still caught on the first thing he’d said. “Hunter?”
Warren paused. “Yes. Isn’t he with you?”
“No.”
Another beat of silence, then a soft curse. “I should have known this would happen.”
“What?” My heart skipped full beats before speeding up abnormally, and my knees actually buckled. Eyes wide, I looked around the outside of the building as if that would bring Hunter into view. Instead I saw visions of him bent over his drawing board, Hunter working, Hunter fighting…Hunter approaching me. “What happened?” I croaked,
