"Don"t wait up for me, kids," Gregor said, exiting the car.
"Call if you"re gonna be late," Warren said.
"Nag, nag, nag."
The doors shut behind Chandra, and she slammed the car into gear.
"s.h.i.t," I heard Felix mutter.
"Got your belt on?" Warren asked. The car revved, tires squealing and spinning over gravel before finding purchase and jolting forward. I was thrown back into my seat, my gaze fixed straight ahead, but from the corner of my eye I saw Gregor"s diminishing bulk in the sideview mirror. However, the solid concrete wall standing twelve feet before us seemed a more pressing issue.
"Women drivers..." Warren said, sounding weary.
Perhaps the car could fly, I thought as the wall loomed closer. Or maybe the wall moved or disintegrated or we"d disappear right through it like it wasn"t even there. But then Warren braced himself beside me, and I knew that wall wasn"t going anywhere.
We struck it going at least sixty-five miles an hour. The impact propelled me into the seat in front of me, and the angry screech of metal kissing concrete married burning rubber and dust-filled air. Bricks sc.r.a.ped against the sides of the car, slamming atop the roof before we came to a halt as violently and abruptly as any normal car would. When I opened my eyes, however, I saw the sh.e.l.l of the cab was undamaged.
"I hate that part," Warren muttered, unbuckling.
I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth and came away with fresh blood. "What the h.e.l.l was that?"
"What?" he said, raising a brow. "You thought crossing over to an alternate reality would be easy?"
"You"ll get used to it," Felix said, smiling as the doors swung open. "Helps if you have a c.o.c.ktail first."
"You mean I"ll have to do that again?"
Chandra smirked at me through the rearview mirror. "Welcome to our world," she said, and got out of the cab.
b.i.t.c.h, I thought, watching her stalk away through debris.
"Come on," Warren said, waving me along. I sighed, shook my head, and went ahead and followed him into his world.
I stepped from that cab in the same way other adventurous humans once stepped onto the moon. A small step here, another tentative one there; gravel and cinder block and gla.s.s crunching beneath my boots. It seemed we were in a dusty, debris-scattered courtyard, with oddly shaped sheet metal stacked and leaning at every angle and high walls ribboned with whorls of cyclone wire. Glancing back, I tried to see Gregor through the breach in the wall, but all the dust stirred by our vehicle"s impact had wafted toward that opening like smoke to a chimney flue, and it was congealing there somehow, as thick and unyielding as cinder itself, swirling like concrete being poured through air.
The others were in front of me, walking single file, Warren"s gimpy gait even more p.r.o.nounced as he picked his way around the sheet metal. As I rushed to catch up with him I realized the steel pieces in the yard weren"t sc.r.a.ps of metal at all, but signs sporting words like Normandie, Photo Shop, and Le Cafe. There was a life-sized cactus with chipped green paint and holes where bald and broken bulbs protruded like thorns, and a six-foot martini gla.s.s outlined by clear gla.s.s tubes. There were acres more of shattered incandescent lamps, fluorescent paint, and the historic signage that had dotted the Vegas skyline when Italian men were still running the city and flashing neon drenched the streets from dusk to dawn.
"Where are we?" I asked, glancing at scripted individual letters someone had lined up to spell Casino.
"Neon Boneyard," Warren shot over his shoulder, picking his way past the Landmark and Dunes signs. Each letter was larger than he.
"Where the lights go to die," Chandra said, smirking as she twirled to face me.
"Where the Light goes to rest," Felix corrected, suddenly appearing beside me. He smiled again, and I was gratified. "It"s as close to home as you"re ever going to get again."
We followed Warren past the Aladdin"s original genie"s lamp, and took a left at a sign that said Thunderbird in script. About an acre in we stopped in front of the largest, gaudiest piece in the yard, still magnificent, even with all its lights busted and burnt out. "Here," Warren said.
I gazed upward, nonplussed. "The Silver Slipper?" Next to the Foxy"s Firehouse and the hundred-foot clown still standing in front of Circus Circus, the Silver Slipper had been my favorite neon landmark as a kid. As I got closer, I saw the bulbs that had once studded the bright evening shoe were long gone, their threads rusted, maintenance halted after the property was demolished. I was surprised to see it was only fifteen feet high-it had always seemed larger looming above the property on its rotating axis-but it looked to weigh at least two tons, and I watched as the others crossed to the back of the giant shoe and began to climb a rusted staircase attached to the heel.
At first I just stood there, craning my neck upward, gazing from the ground as three superheroes became silhouetted in the waning evening light. Chandra was first. She didn"t look at me or anyone else as she reached the top, but sat down unceremoniously and slid down the great, bulb-stamped pump. Just before she slid off the front of the curved toe, a light flashed and she disappeared.
"Come on," Felix yelled down to me. "You"ll fall behind."
Which was the last thing I wanted. Slinging my duffel over my shoulder, I scurried to the staircase and began to climb. I arrived just in time to see a path light up, much like a landing strip for an airplane.
"What do we do?" I asked, though Felix was already kneeling for his slide, which meant I was about to find out.
He smiled at me over his shoulder. "Just follow the light. It"ll lead the way." And he let himself go, sliding down the giant slipper until-flash!-he disappeared into the toe.
"It"s like anything else," Warren said, stepping onto the narrow platform. He extended his bad leg out in front of him first, then the good. "You take the first step with the faith you"ll end up where you want to be." Without waiting for a reply, he too disappeared.
"Where I want to be," I repeated, though there was no one left to hear. I was no longer sure exactly where that was...though I was relatively certain it wasn"t a hole in the ground beneath the Silver Slipper in the Neon Boneyard where discarded Las Vegas signage went to die.
Just take the first step. I did, and a preternatural landing strip lit up before me. That had to be a good sign, I thought, eyeing the beacon at the end. I took another step. Suddenly the Slipper exploded with light, the small landing strip disappearing into a void so bright I had to shield my eyes, locking them tight. If anything, the light grew brighter.
I stepped back, trying to feel my way off the platform. I was afraid I"d fall but I couldn"t take my hands from my eyes long enough to look because they were tearing up in defense. I heard a sizzling sound and smelled burning. Then I tasted it, hot and cloying at the back of my throat, and realized it was coming from me.
Agony jigsawed through my skull, drilling at my temples, and I cried out and rushed forward blindly. I had no choice but to move. I was incinerating on that platform, like I was shut in a microwave, organs heating within me, roasting from the inside out.
I stepped, slipped, and slid into oblivion. The incline was like a greased luge run, and me without a sled, I thought hysterically. And while the drop into the toe was not unexpected, my breath was sucked away. Light, brilliant but miasmic, streamed past me, surrounded me...and instead of illuminating me, infected me.
I choked on the white-hot heat as it rolled like lava into my mouth, rising into the soft tissue of my brain as I fell. I was being vacuumed down into a trough of invisible flame, fire biting at my cheeks and ears, sinking in like pokers behind my eyes. I screamed, but the sound was wrenched from my mouth.
"What"s taking her so long?"
The sweltering words slid past me as I continued to fall. More heat invaded me, radiation now; attacking my fevered flesh, piercing my veins, seeking bone.
"She"s coming now. Hear that?"
Hurry, I thought, knowing I was near to blacking out. Charred. I grew dizzy and my lungs felt close to imploding. Only when I landed with a hard thud did I realize there was any air left in my chest to lose. I crumbled, but sucked in air like I was Nessie coming up from the bottom of the loch.
"That was graceless," I heard Chandra say.
I rolled onto my hands and knees, facedown, gulping down air, thinking I"d never breathed in anything so crisp, cool, balmy, or sweet in my life. It set the sores in my mouth to drying, and they crackled as I winced. They were on my lungs too, where they remained wet and aching.
"Olivia?" Hands on my shoulders. I whimpered and jerked away, and not just because my flesh sizzled at the contact. I was p.i.s.sed off and feeling vulnerable; exposed and lost, dizzy and disoriented, and betrayed by the very people who were supposed to be protecting me.
And I was so very f.u.c.king hot.
Why hadn"t anyone told me what to expect? Or what to do? Why had they just left me up there, alone and burning? I couldn"t get the question out, though; not past the air I was trying to suck in. I started shaking, an improvement over the stinging paralysis, but not by much.
"What"s wrong with her?" Felix this time, voice hesitant and low.
My eyes, scalded, refused to see-I couldn"t even tell if they were open or closed-and my head throbbed where it had whipped back against the top of the slide. But that was nothing compared to the pulpy blisters I felt rising in my brain. I knelt on my haunches, curled into myself and wished for death.
"A little dramatic, don"t you think?"
"Shut up, Chandra."
"Olivia?" Warren"s hands again. This time I let him turn me over. There was a collective gasp...which probably wasn"t good.
"What happened to her?"
"G.o.d. I"ve never seen anything like it."
"Get Greta," I heard Warren say. "Hurry."
"We could have killed her ten times over by now," Chandra muttered, and I felt Warren shift. "I"m just saying! It"s a weakness. The Tulpa will find out about it. He"ll use it against her."
"He won"t find out if n.o.body tells him. Besides, he shares the weakness."
"What happened?" I finally managed. The words were catching like splinters in my throat. I pushed them out anyway. "Why did that hurt so much? Why won"t my eyes stop tearing up?"
"They"re not tears," Chandra said, and this time she sounded apologetic. "It"s blood."
I touched a hand to my face.
"I"m so sorry, Olivia." Warren"s voice was low but panicked, and alarm beat at my chest as I felt him hovering over me uncertainly. "It"s my fault. I forgot, and it"s my fault."
"Forgot what?" I asked, raising my face, as blind as a baby chick. I could only imagine how I looked.
"The Shadow in you. It can"t take the Light."
I didn"t know what to say to that.
And then there was another voice, a scent like rainwater and sage, and a cool, feminine palm on my shoulder. A wet cloth with herbs was pressed gently over my eyes. "Shh, honey. I"m here. It"s going to be all right."
"She"s hurting, Greta." Warren sounded scared.
"I know," the woman answered. "Bring her to my rooms. I"ll take care of her."
Strong arms lifted me. There was the click of heels leading the way. And there was Warren"s breath, cold and small, in my ear. "I"m so sorry."
I felt a tear fall, imagined its crimson path as it trailed over my cheek, and thought, So am I. I leaned into Warren, still smelling burning flesh. So was I.
17.
The woman, Greta, asked if she could give me something to knock me out, and I whimpered my agreement, thinking she could knock my head clear from my shoulders if it would just stop the pain. Such drastic measures, thankfully, were not needed, and she administered a shot that had me slinking blissfully into the ether within moments.
When I woke, the room was pitch-dark, but crowded. The darkness I quickly attributed to cloth bandages wrapped loosely around my head. The crowdedness was because...well, there was a crowd. But over the voices rising and falling around me, I thought I heard birds chirping-did the Silver Slipper have an aviary?-and I knew I smelled at least two dozen roses, which I identified as Double Delights from the slight spice wafting from each petal. My eyesight might have been questionable, but the sniffer was still in top form. Yippee.
"We can"t let her leave the same way she came in," Felix was saying. "It could kill her."
The thought of crossing through that big, rounded, silver toe again immediately set my pulse to throbbing.
"Well, she can"t stay here forever."
"Greta never leaves the compound," Micah pointed out.
"Greta"s a psychic," Chandra muttered. "Not a superhero."
They"d been going on like this, I took it, for a while. The forces of evil may have been hard at work in Vegas tonight, but the superheroes of Zodiac troop 175 were arguing back and forth like opposing teams on a baseball diamond. They were also speaking about me as if I wasn"t there. Worse, like I was, and couldn"t understand a thing they were saying.
I did understand, of course. I was a superhero, and superheroes didn"t die. I almost had, and they were all scared to death because of it.
I shifted against what felt like a veritable sea of pillows, and all chatter ceased. "So basically what you"re all saying is that I"m trapped here?" Five pairs of eyes, felt rather than seen, landed on me. "Trapped in the Silver Slipper, right?"
"Uh," said Warren, after a bit. "Yeah."
I nodded as if to myself and pursed my lips. "But I"m safe?"
"Safe, but not very useful," Chandra muttered from my right.
"Safe and useless sounds just fine right now," I replied.
"The point is, we can"t let her out of the sanctuary anyway until we figure out how Ajax found her so quickly," Micah said. "I implanted her new olfactory scent myself, right after Chandra blended it. It was fresh, and completely enshrouded her natural scent. I even underscored it to link her to Warren."
I hadn"t known that.
"Micah"s right," Warren said. "I still say we should hypnotize her, find out that way-"
"Warren, we"ve already discussed this." Greta"s voice grew sharp. There were steel edges behind that soft exterior, it seemed. "She"s been through enough."
"But Ajax should"ve had to go through me."
That statement was met by silence. I remembered Warren"s angry words once we"d safely reached the cab. What did you do to call him?
"Well, I didn"t ring him up and ask him to meet me there, if that"s what you"re thinking." I could just hear that conversation.
Ajax, darling, let"s begin again. I need to make a quick stop first at the Quik-Mart, but we can murder an innocent girl while we"re there, just for old times" sake. I know how you like that. Got anything sharp and pointy to play with? Something that bursts into flame upon impact, maybe?
Cool fingers touched my skin, and the bandages were gently lifted away. I blinked like a newborn into the light. Actually it was quite dim in the room, but my vision felt raw. It worked well enough, at least, to fix upon the two wide brown eyes smiling into mine. Attached to them was the scent I"d already mentally filed under Greta.
"Thank you," I told her.
She responded by alighting on the bed beside me, her weight barely making a difference. "Perhaps you can tell us what exactly you were doing when Ajax found you. Start from when Warren contacted you, all the way to Ajax"s appearance."
I glanced around the room, frilly and feminine and filled with roses, and saw that the others, save Gregor, were all gathered at the foot of my bed. The chirping I"d heard earlier came from a large gold cage on a pedestal across the room, two bright lovebirds resting inside.
"Well, I packed and walked over to the Boulevard like Warren instructed, but there was this film that I needed to develop, and there seemed to be enough time, so-"
"So you disobeyed direct orders," Chandra said.