Vicki Pettersson - City of Souls

“So you’re not the almighty savior of the Zodiac,” Harrison pushed, with a lift of his chin. “You’re a hindrance to your troop.”

Though I’d gotten better in recent months at controlling my anger, I decided Harrison could use a reminder of just whose daughter I was. So I opened the darkness in my heart, locked in the middle of the light one, and lifted my lids to reveal a gaze as smoldering and bright as the sun’s flashing core. I let my cheekbones rise to press at my skin, and felt it pull tight across my forehead. I imagined my skull gleaming, almost glowing white against my skin, while the rising pressure and the smoke from my pores brought to life a pounding headache. I ignored that until I knew my dark eyes-the only thing visible beneath my mask-had completed their transition into glowing red coals. When Harrison shuddered involuntarily, violently, I smiled sweetly and let the demonic mask fade.

Yet he recovered quickly…and came back for more. “That’s just a parlor trick. We’ve no real use for you.”

“Then why do you want her so badly?” Hunter piped up, arms folded over his chest. His expression was shuttered, like he was observing events that didn’t involve him, but I knew better. Hunter was a tactician and warrior, and wasn’t so much at rest right now as he was coiled and waiting.

Meanwhile, Felix was finally sitting up, head hanging forward and mouth open, like his power was pouring from his throat.

“ I don’t.” Harrison began idly picking through the pastry case, lifting and considering a good half-dozen sweet buns before replacing them, leaving a trail of Vanessa’s blood on each one. He turned his attention back to me. “But your daddy does, and he’s been doing everything in his power to get to you.”

I thought of what I knew about the Tulpa’s power: the ability to touch people in their dreams, take over his agents’ bodies and turn them inside out, and how he could stud the sky with black holes, insert someone inside them, and make it all disappear. And those were only the homicidal abilities I’d seen firsthand. He’d been at rest for much of the time I’d known him, trying to court me into joining his troop, and abandon the Light for the Shadow. He was beyond that now, and as lethal as his wrath had been in the past, it was nothing compared to the complete, unbridled hatred he felt for me since our last encounter. Great.

“Then what do you want?”

“Right now?” He stuffed a moon cake in his mouth and spoke around it. “A cappuccino.”

Felix struggled to his feet but didn’t move forward. “You prick-”

“Shhh…” Harrison put a bloody finger to his lips. “He’s coming…”

And in a strange unspoken harmony, agents of both Shadow and Light turned toward the wall of windows to watch the Shadow leader, the Tulpa, drop as if from the heavens, landing onto the false pagoda patio like a descending UFO. Of course, a living being that had been created rather than birthed really was as otherworldly as all that. I swallowed hard and stepped forward to face him because he was also my opposite on the Zodiac. The Shadow Archer. Their troop leader.

My birth father.

A tulpa was a thought-form; a being so vividly imagined it became an actual person. Tibetan monks had honed this skill for centuries through visualization, meditation, and extreme discipline, though this tulpa had been birthed from the mind of a westerner…and a twisted one at that. Once actualized, the Tulpa had become unnaturally powerful. There was no known way to kill him. In fact, if we attempted to do so with one of our conduits, the energy put behind the attempt actually funneled more power into him. So we battled his agents, while searching hopefully for his invisible Achilles’ heel, but steered clear of direct battle with him whenever possible.

Yet we’d recently discovered that the nature of his birth was also his weakness. His creator had been killed before he could gift the Tulpa with a name, so his title was his name. His ability to alter his appearance entirely was a power, but it was also a sign that he lacked permanence in the world, and that was a weakness.

His appearance today was a cross between a Wall Street executive and a construction worker, interesting, as he took the physical form of a person’s expectations. I’d seen him as a casino mobster, a suave college instructor…and a hairless, spine-horned demon. To be honest, that was the visage I preferred. At least I knew exactly what I was up against when staring into the face of a demon.

My allies pulled in tighter as a result of his arrival, but we held our ground. As powerful as the Tulpa was, even he couldn’t violate a safe zone.

“My gawd, Harrison. You’ve practically dismantled that agent. And yet her allies are just standing around talking.” He sauntered into the entry, hemmed in the doorway like he was both posing for a picture and caught in its frame. He smiled slyly at me. “And you call yourself the Kairos.”

That’s what they called me. “I call myself the Archer.”

“And Joanna,” he said lightly, tilting his head. “What else?”

“Nothing I can repeat in such polite company.”

His eyes traced the mask covering my eyes, temples, and hairline, and his fingers twitched reflexively, causing me to smile. He’d been angling for my Olivia Archer identity for months now.

Reining in the need for a little while longer, he folded his hands before him and settled into himself. “Well, you should check the temper, daughter. That’s how I pinpointed you.”

That brought my black humor to an abrupt halt. “My temper?”

“Anger is a gift. In this case, my gift to you. It lurks in your heart as surely as my blood resides in your veins. It’s how I found you.”

“Bullshit.” I was not linked to the foul nonhuman being. Not in any way that mattered. “You orchestrated this.”

He shrugged. “Of course. But I can’t stand around waiting all day for my troop to capture an agent of Light, torture her-bonus points for inventiveness, Harrison-”

Harrison smiled, and both Felix and Micah strained forward like they were leashed.

“-and draw the rest of you in. I’m a busy man.”

“Yes, your dates with Skamar must keep your calendar quite full,” I said.

Finally, a barb that hit home. His overly pleasant expression fell and his nostrils widened. Skamar was the Tulpa’s nemesis, enemy, and equal. Also a tulpa, and as such, she was the first being he’d never been able to completely overcome. And though new to the valley, she also had a power he did not: she was named.

Where was Skamar, anyway?

The Tulpa settled himself, pulled at his jacket sleeves, then sniffed once as he lifted his nose into the air. His placid gaze landed directly on me.

“Kill them,” he said softly. The glyphs on every agent of Light’s chest shot to life. Depicted in comic books as a superhero’s lettering across the chest, they only did so when in danger, but we were in a safe zone, so for a moment no one moved.

Then the Tulpa tilted his head and the Shadows surged forward. I saw hands go up all around the room, the Light deflecting the advance and turning the Shadow agents’ powers upon themselves. But they kept on coming. Vanessa managed to force a scream past her tongueless mouth, and it hit me then, as it did all the Light: she hadn’t been struggling so vehemently to get free. She’d been struggling to warn us. We were not safe here.

I only had one second to return my attention to the Tulpa, catching the anger and hatred in the red flare of his eyes, before the order of the world turned upside down. He flicked a finger, and even though I was twenty feet away, I was catapulted through the air to slam head first into an ornate concrete pillar. On one level I was aware of the activity around me-the Light fleeing, conduits useless, no offense available to them but a good defense; the Shadow chasing, battle cries in their throats; Vanessa struggling, screaming and forgotten on the far side of the bakery-but blanketing all that concern was one greater than the rest.