City of Souls Read online

  But Hunter’s face slid into a marble smoothness. I sighed and put my hand on his arm. And though he didn’t respond, he didn’t pull away either.

  “I remember what you said about making a decision and not looking back, and I know I screwed up. I’m sorry. Give me a chance.”

  He opened his mouth, began to shake his head from side to side.

  “Please,” I said softly, stopping him cold, but I didn’t see pleading as a weakness. On the contrary, desire was also a powerful strength. Couldn’t he see that? I wondered, eyes searching his face.

  He looked away, saying nothing.

  I sighed. “Hunter, I don’t know how to do this. I mean, I veered off the path to normal a long time ago, and never really quite found my way back. Everyone before Ben—”

  “You don’t have to tell me this.”

  The thought that he might not feel the same struck dread through me. The moment felt full and weighty, like this was my chance to step into a present so vital it could finally, once and for all, put all the tragedies in my past to bed. If I didn’t go on, and quick, I’d definitely turn and walk out of there. And if I did that, I knew I’d never be back.

  But I needed space to tell this story. Hunter’s physicality wasn’t just distracting, it was overwhelming. I searched for a place to sit, settling on the chair that held his shirt. Careful not to wrinkle it, I leaned back and looked at my hands. “Before last year I saw dating as a personal challenge rather than a relationship between two equals. I selected men to test my strength and determination and self-reliance. Most men instinctively ran from that—I mean, who likes feeling like an emotional litmus test?—and I’d congratulate myself when they did. I told myself they were weak. Wrong for me. Unworthy.”

  I ran my index finger around the tip of my opposing thumb, the printless pads rubbing against each other with an unnerving smoothness. I still hadn’t gotten entirely used to the feeling.

  “Ben was different because of our shared past, and because we’d loved each other first.” We’d shared friendship, then love. There was no going back after that. Unfortunately, though we didn’t realize it at the time, there was also no going forward.

  I sighed, letting Hunter see this memory playing out in me, letting him feel it if he must. It was truth, and he should know it all. “So that’s why it took me a while to realize I didn’t know the man he’d become. The boy I’d loved a decade earlier didn’t exist anymore. Nowhere but in my own mind, anyway.”

  I wondered how many relationships were like that. One person hanging on to a memory of what once was, the dream more alive than the reality had ever been…more real than the actual relationship, now wilting, unseen, on the vine.

  Always one to see clearly, Hunter remained silent. I looked up at the ceiling, then realized I was doing it only to avoid his gaze. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I took what I needed from you on a night I’d been left emotionally bankrupt—and that’s not an excuse, just a fact—but mostly that I left you in the morning. That I left you at all.”

  I’d made a mistake and would take it back if I could, but that was something people said when they knew they could not. So I fell silent, watched him soak in the information, his brilliant mind whirring beneath the face I was starting to crave, the olive skin I longed to touch, the mouth that curved dangerously when considering some private, dangerous secret. I was addicted, I realized. One taste of this man and I’d become a junkie.

  “I’m sorry too, Joanna,” he said, and this time he was the one who looked away. “But I can’t.”

  An invisible foot planted itself into my chest. I was actually surprised the air didn’t whoosh from my chest. I shook my head. “But—”

  Hunter held up a hand.

  I thought about knocking that hand out of the air, controlled myself and only flinched instead. “You still want me. I can feel it. I can sense it like a second heartbeat.”

  “Yes.” And, suddenly, it was there. The desire I’d been looking for bloomed so round and full I felt like I could take a bite from the air, come away with a mouthful of emotion that would warm my belly…and still be ravenous for more. I thought about kissing his eyelids until they softened, and took a step forward. I’d seen them that way before. That softness, ironically, accentuated his strength.

  I bit my lip, narrowing my eyes at I watched him not watching me. “But there’s something else, isn’t there? Something you want more.”

  He hesitated. “Yes.”

  I flinched. “Someone?”

  He sighed. “Joanna.”

  I didn’t look away. “Does it have to do with that callboy identity?”

  “I told you. I’m no longer doing that.”

  I tilted my head, studying him. So had he found her, then? Because he’d been looking for a woman, I was sure of that much. And she’d been dark-haired and dark-eyed. She’d been someone he didn’t want anyone else to know about.

  I should tell Warren.

  But even as the thought visited, I showed it the door. I wouldn’t. Hunter had kept the secret of my daughter—a girl destined to follow me as the troop’s Archer; one Warren still didn’t know about—and I owed him for that.

  “Hey, Jo!” The voice shot across the warehouse, startling us both. I turned to find Felix motioning me from the doorway of the panic room. He looked much better, a flush in his cheeks and a familiar spark in his eye. “She wants to see you.”

  I nodded and he disappeared back inside. By the time I looked back, Hunter had turned away. I hesitated, then headed for Vanessa. I couldn’t help wondering what would have occurred between Hunter and me if I’d been raised in the sanctuary too, safe from desert predators, with a knowledge of what and who I was. Would we have had an easier time forging a relationship without old griefs standing between us? Maybe not, I thought, glancing over my shoulder. We seemed destined to butt heads—one of us high when the other was low; one positive while the other nursed bitterness like an addictive brew. If only I could turn my mind from him altogether, I thought, swallowing hard.

  But addictions, I knew, didn’t work that way.

  There were other places we could have taken Vanessa. Micah worked as a physician at one such hospital, where supernatural fallout wouldn’t attract the attention of the mortal population. That’s where they’d first taken me to alter my looks so I could live convincingly as my sister. Yet given the disappearance of our safe zones, we couldn’t be certain the Shadows hadn’t infiltrated the hospitals as well. Besides, precautions or not, if a person showed up with Vanessa’s kind of injuries, someone was going to notice.

  So in the small, windowless panic room of the secured warehouse—where Micah busied himself in the early hours with stabilizing Vanessa—Hunter and Felix had gathered the supplies needed to turn it into the strangest one-person, mini-E.R. I’d ever seen.

  “Wow.” I knew I should be more attentive to the room’s sole patient, and possibly more discreet about my awe, but the giant, clear Plexiglas tank positioned in the center of the room wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen. I bent over, peering inside, to see Vanessa’s silhouette suspended in a baby blue substance more viscous than water, air bubbles caught mid-rise. The room’s dim lighting couldn’t filter fully through the thick gelatinous substance, but I could see well enough to follow the length of her left calf to where it abruptly ended in a stump. There were bones growing from it, but they were newly formed and too small for her body, more like the talons on a bird of prey. Obviously there was still a ways to go before the foot fully regenerated. Straightening, I turned my attention to her head, which had received most of the destruction.

  She looked like she’d been hit by a wrecking ball, eyes so swollen her irises were almost rimmed in red, newly grown right ear and nose tomato red, so the pigment didn’t yet match the rest of her face. This was actually preferable since the rest of her face was an unsightly mass of bruises and swollen tissue, and though she smiled, she did so with a mouth that looked overly stuffed with cotton.

/>   Of course, the worst damage had been delivered to her skull. Drake had partially scalped her while cutting her hair, and though the skin was already healed, her entire head had to be shaved down to nothing so her beautiful mahogany curls could grow back in evenly. Though she couldn’t move much, she tilted her head slightly on her neck cushion, and rolled her eyes in my direction. “I’m not quite there yet, though my tongue has grown back nicely.”

  No complaint, no anger, no blame. I clenched my jaw to hold back tears.

  “More’s the shame,” Felix said, stroking the side of her head. It was the only part of her body not submerged in the gooey blue substance.

  “Shut up, honey,” she said lightly, then stuck out her tongue in demonstration. “No taste buds yet, though. It feels like I gargled with habaneros.”

  “That’s because you’re not drinking your reparative. I don’t care if it does taste like moldy ash.”

  “Tekla!” I hugged our troop’s Seer before either of us expected it. I couldn’t help it. I hadn’t seen her since the battle in Chinatown. “Oh my God, you made it. How’d you escape the Tulpa?”

  She’d been so focused, I remembered now. Her small features drawn tight on her face, like a balloon pinched together in the center. Though I’d long learned not to underestimate Tekla due to her small stature—a bird’s foot would fit better on her tidy frame—her ability to single-handedly hold off the Tulpa using nothing but her imagination and will had been outstanding.

  “You were amazing,” I said, indulging in a bit of my own hero worship.

  She shrugged, but I could tell she was pleased, if surprised, by my reaction. Maybe she was just used to people who were used to her. I was still new enough to this world that I recognized unusual martial skill when I saw it.

  “No, really.” I touched her arm, forcing her to look at me. “You amaze me.”

  She actually blushed at that.

  And speaking of amazing talents…“Where’s Micah?”

  “Resting in the crow’s nest,” Vanessa said, her swollen tongue giving her a bit of a lisp. “He’s been working on me nonstop.”

  “And he’ll have my hide if I don’t continue to do the same.” Holding a glass in one hand, Tekla cupped Vanessa’s chin in the other and gently tilted it back. I sniffed. Water, herbs, and some sort of chalky substance I didn’t recognize.

  “Not too much,” Tekla murmured, pulling the drink away. “You’re still healing on the inside too.”

  “What exactly are you lying in?” I asked, bending over again.

  “Sanative gel, shot with numbing cream. I’d never be able to sit still, much less manage lucidity without it.”

  Frowning, I straightened. “Vanessa, I’m so sorry.”

  She made a sound, halting me from speaking further. “Felix told me you’d say that. When are you going to learn? A battle-born death is always written in the stars, Jo.”

  Yeah, I thought wryly, but the handwriting had been a little sloppy this time. “Then I’m happy it wasn’t meant to be.”

  “And speaking of fates,” Tekla said, “Felix, if you’ll excuse us?”

  Felix and I stared at her, both surprised by this abrupt, and obvious, dismissal. His need to argue—to stay put and protect and just be with Vanessa—slipped from him in waves, almost as visible as a bright pulse from a lighthouse. But Tekla raised her brows, and he finally nodded and left.

  “He’s worried about you,” I told Vanessa, her gaze following him until he disappeared.

  “He’s been so sweet.” She lowered her eyes and swallowed hard. “I hate for him to see me this way.”

  I frowned. “You were ambushed by an entire Shadow troop. He’s not going to think anything less of you for succumbing to that.”

  “No, I mean…” She ducked her head so it reminded me of a turtle retreating into its shell. In this case a very blue, viscous shell. “I mean, I look awful. Silly, huh?”

  “Oh.” I was taken aback but tried not to show it. “No. It makes sense.”

  She sniffed. “No, it doesn’t. I mean, all the things they did to me, and you know what I keep thinking?”

  I shook my head.

  “When’s my hair going to grow back?” Her voice cracked.

  “It’s only because you know it’s going to take the longest to return to normal,” Tekla said reasonably. Worrying about a haircut after surviving a brutal attack wasn’t reasonable, but it was understandable.

  “It’s okay,” I added, forcing a smile. “I would too, if I had your hair.”

  But watching her nod, I knew it wasn’t okay. Like those men who threw acid in the faces of women who rejected them, this mutilation had been extremely personal, and of course it was designed to shame. However, unlike those mortal victims, Vanessa would blessedly heal from her injuries.

  Even no-nonsense Tekla had to respond to the self-pity filling the room like waterlogged roses. At least, she tried. “Micah can make you a gorgeous hairpiece in the meantime. Nobody will know the difference.”

  Vanessa closed her eyes, but a tear slipped out anyway. Sensing her embarrassment along with her sorrow, I changed the subject. It’s what I would have wanted. “So, why did we just get rid of Felix?”

  “Because there are some things you can explain over and again to a man,” Tekla said, “and he still won’t understand.”

  Vanessa sniffed. “Like the hair thing.”

  I nodded. Because a head understanding was different from a heart understanding. I expected there were times the reverse was true as well.

  “Like how you need to arm yourself differently when entering a world where women rule.” Tekla smiled as my head predictably shot up.

  Even Vanessa managed a small grin. “Look, even threats of a scalping won’t deter her,” she said to Tekla, about me. “The girl does love a fight.”

  “There won’t be any scalping in Midheaven. Women fight differently…in any world.”

  “You don’t say,” I said dryly, thinking of Regan DuPree. Shadow agent. Leo. Bitch.

  Regan had most often eschewed a direct martial approach, at least in dealing with me, taking a circuitous path instead by attacking those I loved. Fortunately, she was no longer an issue. A rogue was utterly alone. She was also a walking advertisement for skin grafts gone bad, because when the Tulpa discovered the deception, he’d raked the skin from her body in wounds that would never heal. I might have felt bad about this except that she’d once gotten me captured, tortured, and nearly killed by my greatest enemy. She’d also slept with my boyfriend.

  Tekla read my mind. “You think you know what I’m talking about, but hear me when I tell you: stealth and subtlety are the most powerful weapons in our world, but they were honed on the fires of Midheaven’s core. If the myths bear out, you haven’t encountered women like this before, so don’t enter lightly. Don’t be lulled by soft looks or voices, no matter how familiar or natural they may seem.”

  “Don’t worry. Femininity has never felt normal to me.” It was a joke, but it was also true. I hadn’t been raised in a female-dominated culture. The honor and respect these two women took for granted was foreign to me. I’d always had to fight for my power.

  Tekla shook her head. “Those are two different things. Normal is simply what you’re accustomed to. Natural is what is, in spite of what you’re used to.”

  “So, you’re saying don’t go in swinging?”

  “It’s a bit…obvious,” she said diplomatically.

  I tilted my head. “I think I’m offended.”

  “What Tekla is trying to say,” Vanessa interceded quickly, “is don’t be fooled into thinking you’re not at war just because you’re not blowing things up. Yet don’t be intimidated by it either. You have the ability to utilize the more indirect tactics too.”

  I snorted. I had the ability to fake it until I made it. “So let me get this straight. You guys are worried I can’t hold my own against, what, some chicks?”

  “Chicks powerful enough to rule an entire
world.”

  “With a glance alone,” Tekla added.

  “Looks that can kill?” I asked.

  “No.” She smiled. “Just stun. Or so that’s the myth.”

  I didn’t roll my eyes because that would earn me a stunning look in return. Instead, I blew out a long breath. “Well, I don’t have to worry about it at all if I can’t actually find the place. And even then I don’t know how I’ll find Jaden Jacks. I don’t even know what he looks like.”

  All I had to go on were cryptic orders from Warren, part of a silly song, and useless advice about fighting like a woman instead of a man.

  “I do,” Tekla said. I looked at her sharply. Unsmiling, and suddenly too serious, she stepped forward and handed me a picture.

  Whoa. Not a picture, I thought, studying the man on it. A ripped out page from a Shadow manual. “Damn, he’s huge.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Vanessa said reassuringly. “You’re the Kairos.”

  And I was getting tired of that being the one thing I had going for me. I sighed again as I tucked the folded page in my back pocket.

  “By the way,” Vanessa said, changing the subject, “Felix told us about Xavier’s housekeeper, Lindy. Helen. Whatever. Thanks for stopping him. I’d hate for all that work to be undone just because of me.”

  Hiding my own disappointment at not having Helen out of the way for good, it was my turn to shrug. “We’ll get another shot at Lindy. Plenty of them. In fact…maybe you’d like to do the honors?”

  “Still fighting,” Tekla muttered, returning to her chair in the corner, but Vanessa laughed, truly laughed for the first time since I’d seen her. It drew Felix into the room like a siren’s call. Her smile remained as she caught his gaze. “I think maybe I would.”

  “Good. Then when I return from Midheaven,” I said, smiling, “I’ll hand you the keys to Archer castle myself.”

  9

  My parting words to Vanessa sounded a lot more hopeful than I felt, both because I didn’t want her worrying and because the question still remained: How was I to find Midheaven? All I had was a mishmashing of cryptic advice that, even together, still didn’t form a complete picture. Yet with nothing else to go on, with no certain means of finding Skamar, and my troop leader’s directive still weighing on my shoulders, I had no choice but to leave the security of the warehouse and keep searching. So after a shower and a quick bite to eat, I did what I’d always done when feeling restless and lost. I put on my steel-toed boots and began walking.