City of Souls

body as usual, the wall looked like it was holding her up.

“I had reasons,” he told them all, still looking at me. “Good ones.”

“Your reasons are my reasons!” Warren pounded at his chest, and we all jolted as if from a stupor. Tekla straightened. Everyone else looked at the floor.

Regan tucked my conduit beneath her right armpit and stuck her index finger directly in the center of my cake, swirling it, blood mingling with the white frosting.

Hunter glanced at me and I wanted to shake him. Instead I looked away. But Warren had words enough for us both.

“Hunter, did you help this-this-” He finally gestured at the center of the room, the former Shadow now smashing the cake between her fingers, a child in her own sandbox, “-this, escape us? Even knowing she had Jo’s conduit?”

I cleared my throat before Hunter could answer. “Hey, Regan.”

Her sugarcoated hand stilled.

“How’d you know we were here?”

Vanessa was shaking her head. “You told her about this place too, didn’t you, Hunter? Damn it, I used this safe-house last week!”

“We did,” Felix said flatly, stepping to her side. Regan tilted her head at the couple, another considering smile growing on her face.

“Stop looking at them and get your hand out of my fucking cake.”

“Shut up, Jo!” Warren’s eyes were on my conduit. Regan’s were again on me. “This is about Hunter.”

“I never put Jo in danger,” Hunter said stiffly. She yanked on his conduit in warning. His mouth snapped shut.

“Except that Regan is still alive,” Warren said.

Hunter glared at him.

“And here now,” Regan added, still focused on me.

“How did you get here?” I wanted to know. I knew I was probably in shock, but something just wasn’t adding up.

“By trusting nobody but myself.” She pointed my conduit at my heart. “Now get your ass up over here. You and I are going for a walk. Bring the cake.”

Hunter frowned, and beneath his brows I saw shock and fear and shame, and possibly even the need to keep me from walking out that door.

But he couldn’t move. Because Regan, his “friend,” had turned to watch his reaction.

And that was when Warren moved. Not to the Shadow-no, that would have been certain death for me, him… maybe both-but in front of me, using his body as a shield and with a bargain on his tongue.

“Not her.” He said it calmly, as though bartering.

“Her,” Regan insisted.

“Not her,” he repeated. “Hunter.”

“No,” I said without hesitation.

Regan laughed so hard her guts tore through, shining and pink among the blood and shredded flesh. She used an elbow, grunting as she pushed them back in, but kept laughing. “What is this? Puppy love? Could you really care for a man who made a deal over your flesh?”

“I did not-”

She yanked on his whip. Hunter winced involuntarily.

“In return for what?” I wanted to know. What was so important that it would cause Hunter to betray me? All of us?

“It doesn’t matter,” said Warren, Mr. Black-and-White. But it mattered to me.

Regan licked her lips, her tongue darting out in four different directions. “Come with me and I’ll tell you everything.”

I nodded for a moment, then took a step forward. Felix stepped in front of me, beside Warren, creating a wall. Then Tekla was there. They were lined up like ducks, waiting for Regan to pick them off. She began to laugh again.

I too saw what they were doing. Sacrificing themselves for me, their Kairos, if need be. Regan could squeeze off one shot before someone tackled her. But the one agent she shot, they’d all determined, wouldn’t be me.

“Fine,” she finally said, dropping back from the table. “It’s better this way anyhow. As long as I’m alive, I’ll find her. For now, I’ll take her lust-puppy.”

She began backing up, crossbow pointed straight ahead.

“No-”

“Jo, let him go!”

“In return for what?” I demanded again, looking at Hunter now. “What were you going to give me over for?”

“I wasn’t. Not ever.”

Regan answered for him. “A free trip to Midheaven. A few ounces of my soul. About all that’s left.”

“If that,” I snarled. She laughed again and bled some more.

“Why would you do that?” Warren was as incredulous as I. “After I expressly ordered no one to go there.”

I frowned. No one but me.

“After the measures I took to keep this troop safe from that evil place.” Warren shook his head, disbelief oozing from his pores. “You would go against that, after I’ve practically raised you, after all I’ve taught you, after I gave you a home and a place and a name in this troop? You put our Kairos at risk? You put this troop at risk!”

Hunter’s jaw clenched. “I was only going after what was mine.”

Warren’s chin lifted at that. “So go. Because what’s here is yours no longer.”

Regan sighed happily. “Guess you won’t need this,” she said, and let Hunter’s whip go slack before giving it a momentous yank with an enthusiastic growl. The torque jerked him from his feet, each barb in the whip’s length ripping from his torso and taking skin with it. I think it was the first time most of us had ever seen Hunter injured, and it was like something had been defiled. Regan tossed his conduit in the corner, took a bow in the wake of our collective gasp, then picked him up in a headlock, the tip of my conduit buried in his forehead. A line of blood began to trail between his eyes. His level gaze remained fixed on Warren.

“Wait,” I said, voice cracking. Things were happening too fast. I couldn’t begin to guess what was held in those heavy glances passing back and forth between Warren and Hunter, what had happened in their shared past, but somehow I knew I couldn’t let Regan’s appearance here break the alliance between these two men. I couldn’t let her break Hunter.

But Warren had made up his mind. Everyone else recognized his characteristic stubbornness, and they closed rank, filing in front of me until only Hunter and Regan stood across from us.

Hunter, bloodied and hunched over, said to Warren, “Don’t do this.”

“I said go.”

“Wait!” I tried to push past Warren. He pushed back.

“This is pathetic.” And Regan Dupree pistol-whipped Hunter with the butt of my crossbow, flipping the weapon around in her palm as he fell, before centering back in on Warren. Her physical destruction hadn’t taken away any of her speed.

“Go,” he told her.

“What?” My voice came out in a feeble shriek, but no one else made a sound or a move, and Regan began a slow, backward retreat, dragging Hunter’s dead weight with her.

“Happy Birthday,” she said to me, winking as she pulled him through the doorway. Through the glass enclosure I could see his limbs bumping against table legs and chairs, and then-as suddenly as she’d arrived-both of them were gone.

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