City of Souls

I realized belatedly that Warren was yelling at me. “…if you would listen!”

I opened my eyes. “What?”

“You have to go.”

“Go?” My heart jumped again. Where the hell was I supposed to go? There were no safe zones any longer. No place to hide and heal and find refuge from our enemies.

“Go away, for one. The Tulpa will be able to track us because of you.”

Keeping the troop safe, then. As always.

He sighed, and worked to calm himself as well. “Look, I’m not just throwing you out on your own. Find Skamar. Make her tell you about Midheaven.”

“Midheaven?” Hunter turned to stare at Warren. The cab fell oddly silent.

Warren held Hunter’s look for a long moment, then blew out a breath and tried to tuck a tuft of hair behind an ear, a habit left over from the days when it was dreadlocked. It was an uncharacteristically nervous gesture. “Just tell her about the safe zones. She’ll tell you how to walk the line so you can get help, and do it without-”

He turned back at a sharp crack behind us, followed shortly by a sonic boom, as if the sky was made of ice floes, shifting and breaking apart. The Tulpa was having a fit. And he wasn’t far off.

I shivered when he raised a brow at me. He wanted me to leave now? “Wait-”

“We can’t.”

“But-”

“You broke the changeling, Joanna! You caused the fall of our safe zones! You’re the only one who can fix it, and the answer is in Midheaven!”

“But-”

“Look, we’ll find you as soon as possible. Let me get the rest of the troop safe first. You alone can fix this. Go find Skamar. Go be someone else-”

“Find her where?” The female tulpa had a habit of disappearing for days at a time, reemerging only to battle with my homicidal father. She was as elusive now as she’d been in her previous incarnation as my doppelganger. “Be who?”

Warren looked out the back windshield again. The Tulpa seemed to be dropping back.

“Anyone,” he finally answered, voice ragged with fatigue. “Just…don’t be Jo.”

I drew back, stunned. He turned back around, and the others refused to meet my eye. I stroked the butt of my Uzi like it was a security blanket.

Warren, finally realizing I wasn’t going to say anything, muttered one word. “Micah.”

There was barely any room for Micah to turn his head, much less his body, but he managed to shoot me a look of sympathy as he shrugged. “Sorry, Jo.”

“For wh-”

My ass hit the ground before my feet, as did my head and palms and right cheek as I flipped over myself. The cab was nothing but a wink of distant taillights by the time I looked up, and I cursed as I limped to the side of the road. Sure I was already healing from the fall. The push, I corrected, as I began walking in the opposite direction. But what the hell was I supposed to do alone, with an automatic weapon, and instructions to be anybody but me?

They threw me out at the north end of the Las Vegas Beltway, at the top of Charleston, near a chichi casino where savvy locals played and an upscale boutique mall housing independent eateries and one-off shops. It was late now, all the shops closed, and the indoor/outdoor restaurants were shut tight to the winter chill. I set my Micro Uzi on the wall of a marble white fountain, and figuring a head cold was better than a decapitation, climbed in to wash off the remainder of Vanessa’s blood and scent.

“Don’t be Joanna,” I muttered, flipping my mask atop my head like an oversized headband. I loosened my low knot and tried not to be offended by Warren’s parting remark-or the skid marks on my ass-and shook out my hair. It was fine, really. I impersonated Olivia the majority of time anyway. And subtracting my real name from the equation did nothing to diminish my status in the troop: the Archer of the Zodiac, the Kairos, and the chosen one of our entire world.

Right?

Sighing, I climbed from the fountain and kept walking. Like I knew. Spotting a hedge of struggling boxwoods lining the glossy, stamped sidewalk, I trailed my hand idly above them as I passed. A gentle pulse from my mind, then a moment where I could almost feel green in my fingertips, which throbbed as I forced energy downward. Bright leaves unfurled beneath my palm and the trunks wobbled then stilled, their roots strengthening. Birthing plant life from nothing-it was a skill, and mark, of Light.

“See?” I muttered, mollified by the show of power. I wasn’t a hindrance to my troop. I could control my temper. I could thrive as a superhero. I could help…at least when I wasn’t screwing up. I sighed again.

Besides, others could call me what they wanted-Joanna, Olivia, Kairos, Archer-what really mattered was how I saw myself. “Warrior.”

That word was the only thing that’d enabled me to keep moving through a world after the attack on my life as a teen, and in a world where much of the population had been larger and stronger and faster than me. It let me maximize the strength I did have, and had me honing abilities other women-and even men-never considered necessary. It’d taken years of intense martial training, but after a time I’d turned my weaknesses into weapons.

And that was before I became a superhero.

As for the Kairos designation, well that’s where things got a little more complicated. Being the underworld’s “chosen one” sounded wonderfully auspicious…until you realized it was all a big mistake. My mother, an agent of Light, had been sleeping with the Tulpa-getting in close, looking for a way to kill him-when a quick trip to the drugstore confirmed she was the proud new owner of a pregnancy stick sporting two pink lines. She was lucky I hadn’t popped out with fangs and claws.

For reasons known only to her, she then kept my existence from both sides of the Zodiac, so my metamorphosis into an agent a year ago had completely shaken up the landscape of Las Vegas’s paranormal war. Sure, I was reportedly destined to bring ultimate victory to whatever side I fought for, but that was tied to bringing certain signs, or portents, to life. So far I’d managed the first three through trial, and mostly error. The fourth one, though? I’d fumbled that completely.

As Drake had taunted, I’d inadvertently injured a changeling, Jasmine Chan, who was absolutely essential to our continued existence. Changelings were mortals who lived and died as any other, except for their childhood years, when imagination and belief extended to things unseen. Each side, Shadow and Light, had changelings who kept the secrets of the Zodiac, and passed them on to the next generation, while making sure mortal kids knew and believed in us as well. Those little minds were like fuel cells providing our troops with extra energy to fight the opposing side. Obviously the ability to suspend disbelief-to believe in superheroes-generally passed along with youth, which was why even the changelings eventually had to forget us entirely.

It was now time for Jasmine to do this; in short, it was time for her to grow up, but she couldn’t-or simply wouldn’t-which had effectively put the brakes on any flexible new minds reading and believing in our stories. The fear was that if I didn’t figure out how to fix Jasmine soon, our troop would gradually weaken. Our alternate realities would fade away, our portals would close, and we would cease to exist altogether.

But now, finding the elusive Skamar, and getting her to tell me how to “walk the line,” would supposedly help with that. I wondered why Warren wouldn’t instruct her to help me prior to this, or why it took the loss of our safe zones to light some sort of fire under his ass. Meanwhile I waved my hand over a cluster of star jasmine, which bloomed so fully, so immediately, that the air was honeysuckle sweet in seconds. I smiled.

See? I hadn’t broken everything. And over the past year I’d gotten used to the “superhero” designation too. It was my job and calling, and despite its dangers, and my repeated screw-ups, and the sacrifices required of me, it was one I’d begun to love.

Any warrior would.

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