Cheat the Grave

body-slamming me onto the hard floor. My limbs were numbing but I still felt my face eat rubber as his full weight dropped atop mine. Pain arrowed through my right knee, tendons stretched and threatening to snap. Then he twisted again, loosening his hold on my neck. I choked on the fresh air, the soft tissue there already bruised and swollen. My larynx had either shifted to a place it shouldn’t have or was missing altogether. The pain brought tears to my eyes even as the oxygen worked to clear my vision.

Then screeching metal joined the panicked voices, and the bus rocked harder. I was still trapped beneath Tripp’s arm but glanced up to see the metal rooftop peeling open like an aluminum can. Tripp’s partner, was my first thought, because such bold destruction was the mark of a Shadow. Then he cursed, and my hopes soared.

One of the Light? A former ally watching over me after all?

The thought gave me strength, and I decided to buy myself time for whatever they had in mind. I whipped my head back and his nose crunched beneath its weight. Another curse, then his forearm tensed in the tightest grip yet. My vision deteriorated into stop-motion, but I made out three terrifying things in the next few seconds:

A skeleton’s face, wrapped in worn, leather skin.

The skeleton’s rotted grin and bright, curved blade.

A scissored cry as the skeleton leapt.

Tripp yelled, terrified, but sunk one booted foot into the falling man’s middle. The blade arced, and another scream followed, sounding red. Then there was more frantic jostling as Tripp fled with me, faster than a Chevy on drag night. On his way out, though, he thoughtlessly rapped my head into one of those sexy Lucite poles. Embarrassment flooded me as I thought, Death by stripper pole. Then I was out.

I’d been knocked unconscious enough times to be intimately familiar with the staggered return of hearing, the touch-and-go awareness of feeling returning to limbs, and the eventual need to open eyes and regain bearings… whether one wanted to or not.

“What fresh hell is this?” I murmured, even before I’d peeked. You were never bound to wake to something good after a violent kidnapping.

Despite a wave of dizziness, I recognized Tripp’s stocky, hunched outline, though his back was to me, his desk lamp angled low. He didn’t bother looking up.

Probably because of the Boy Scout/bondage thing he had going on. I tested my restraints, unsurprised when all I could do was tense my muscles. Overkill in restraining a mortal, but then Harlan Tripp wasn’t known for his generous nature…and he probably didn’t yet know I was mortal. I certainly wasn’t going to clue him in.

Studying the narrow glass surfaces around me, I realized I lay atop an identical one like some pending sacrifice. I wasn’t a virgin, though, so I reserved hope for escape. We were in a darkened jewelry store with bright surfaces and tiny custom cushions filling every available space in the glass interiors. I didn’t know how Tripp had circumvented the store’s alarm-the entire store was a vault, thus the jewels still safe in their cases-but there he was, relaxed as could be behind the jeweler’s desk. I didn’t ask what he was going to do with the cutters.

“Diamonds really are forever,” I finally quipped in the elongated silence, though the scratch in my voice belayed the forced tone. “But if you’re going to choke me, please use the emeralds.”

“Don’t tempt me… Olivia. ”

My purse was open next to him, my identification spread haphazardly over the desk. So he knew who I was, big deal. I was already mortal and bound like a rodeo calf. He didn’t need my cover identity to kill me, just a reason and the flick of his wrist.

“How’s the nose?” I asked cheerfully.

“Already healed. Bitch.”

Sticks and stones, I thought, but stayed silent…and wary. It’d been weeks since I’d seen him, though to him it might have felt like years. Time moved differently in Midheaven. But on that first meeting Tripp had referred to the place as “Mid-hell,” and I couldn’t argue that. Midheaven drained a man’s soul energy, using it to feed the desires of the chosen few-all women, and all with delusions of goddesshood.

I’d only been trapped there a short time, but Midheaven had served as Tripp’s prison for years. He’d fled there as a rogue agent, banished by his leader, but it was the classic case of jumping from the pan into the fire. He’d attempted escape before, only to find someone had locked the entrance from the other side. So…“How did you get here?”

“You should damned well thank your stars that I did.”

I didn’t thank the stars for shit anymore. “Yeah. I’m always thankful when I get knocked out, tied up, and tortured with ring clamps.”

He finally turned. The light even made him look marginally amused. “You could be dead.”

“I’m sure it’s on your to-do list.”

He shook his head, features sunken beneath his wide-brimmed hat. “Nope. Mackie’s the one lookin’ to settle up with you.”

Mackie. The name alone sent a shiver crisscrossing my spine. Also known as Sleepy Mac for his ability to fall into a comalike state to keep his energy from being drained by the women of Midheaven. A reported member of the Nez Perce tribe, he was the world’s oldest living agent. I didn’t know how he’d found his way into Nevada, or even if he’d started out as Light or Shadow, but I did know you didn’t get to be as old as he was by being merciful. “I thought I’d imagined him busting through the bus’s rooftop.”

But I remembered the skeletal face clearly. I’d seen the leathery visage in recurring nightmares, the screaming mouth a sharp whir in my mind, the deadened gaze that could burn holes of decay in my body with a mere glance.

“Carving through,” Tripp corrected, and shifted to reveal what he’d been working on. Himself. He’d been using a hand torch to cauterize a wound already festering with pus. He gestured with it, unnecessarily adding, “With his magic blade.”

And when an agent of the Zodiac said “magic” like it was a special thing, it was worth fearing. Mackie reportedly stored the last bit of his soul-the small part Midheaven hadn’t drained away-in his knife’s blade. He kept it protected there, always on his person, and it did his will almost independently of him. That was why Tripp wasn’t healing.

“What the fuck is Mackie doing outside of Midheaven? Who unlocked the entrance?” Someone who wanted me dead?

And why hadn’t that list gotten any shorter?

Tripp resettled his hat on his head. “I thought it might have been you.”

I shook my head.

Tripp shrugged. “Well, I didn’t waste time askin’. I saw Mackie go through the lantern on that side of the veil and waited till I was sure he was gone ’fore diving out myself.”

The pagoda lanterns were the exit on Midheaven’s side, while a pinched taper buried in Vegas’s underground sewer system marked this side. When the flame was extinguished, an agent’s body was wrapped in a solid wall of smoke, ferrying them to the other world. But even Mackie couldn’t have exited without someone removing the lock that secured the entrance on this side. And while entering Midheaven would still cost an agent onethird of their soul-the price of a round-trip ticket to another world, and no wonder there was no great rush- exiting meant freedom.

But who would allow that?

I bit my lip. “No one else got out?”

“You know how it is over there. No one even tried.”

Hunter hadn’t tried.

I frowned, but stopped following the thought when I realized Tripp was watching me closely.

“So how’d you find me?” I asked, clearing my throat.

Tripp’s shrug allowed it hadn’t been easy. Only true identities were revealed in Midheaven. I was Joanna Archer over there, my appearance reflecting the old me-muscular limbs on a slim frame, black bob and dark, un-amused eyes-rather than this bubble gum, Barbie Doll packaging.

“I didn’t,” he finally admitted, lighting a strange little cigarette. He blew out the smoke, and though yards away, it choked my pores. I shook against my bindings, which seemed to amuse Tripp. “Mackie tracked you and I tracked him. After eighteen years, I could pinpoint that mean fucker anywhere. His power tastes black.”

I couldn’t help it. The opening was too great and inviting, and though I was all trussed up, Tripp had forgotten