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“Morning, sunshine,” the man said again today, pointedly regarding her copper red hair. His ubiquitous coffee cup steamed fragrantly, his feet were propped on the patio railing, and his otherwise handsome face was marred by a shit-eating grin.
She’d have snarled that Skamar was Tibetan for star, not sun, but she never furnished her proper name to anyone. That was like giving permission to use her personal power, and she’d worked too hard to allow that.
“Vaughn,” she said stiffly, because he’d given his name freely, insisting she use his first. Vaughn Rhett. His obvious attraction crept over her amplified senses and was a heady combination attached to that slim build and open face. It made her skin crawl.
“Join me for a cup of coffee?” he asked, as always.
“No.” She only acknowledged him at all because she wanted to keep a low profile. It was the same reason she walked from the complex rather than soared. A redheaded woman circling like an eagle overhead would certainly attract attention. And the Tulpa, she thought, glancing at the crucifixion wounds in her wrists, would easily pinpoint her then.
“Just one?” Vaughn gave her that killer smile again, and his warm, dry scent pulsed over her to pool in her gut. “It’s French pressed.”
Skamar clenched her teeth and sped up. What the hell were you supposed to feel when someone so clearly wanted to stick his tongue down your throat? It would be so much better, she thought, if the man merely meant to stick a knife in her gut. She’d know exactly what to feel, and do, about that.
“You’re going to join me for coffee one day, sunshine,” he called after her, voice filled with such teasing laughter that it actually did remind her of the sun. “I promise you that.”
But by the time she exited the parking lot and hit the wide stretch of Flamingo Road, thoughts of Vaughn, the scent of his coffee and interest, and his meaningless promises dropped away. She stood taller, awareness expanding. Her body temperature was already marrying with the biting December air, a skill not unlike a chameleon’s ability to change color . . . and one specific to tulpas. As she walked, Skamar turned her mind to Zoe Archer and why her creator would summon Skamar in daylight hours, and to such a public place.
Yet an uncomfortable tingle, similar to what Skamar had felt under Vaughn’s clear gaze, rode the nape of her neck. Her first instinct was renewed annoyance at a fleeting wish for a cup of joe.
Her second was to duck.
The Tulpa’s frustrated cry arched banner red above her as she kissed pavement, and he halted in the next second, redirected midair, and sprinted back while she still sprawled. His flesh was molded into a thin, wiry, unassuming form today, but that was for mortal benefit. Snarling, she countered the steel-spined demon that lurked beneath.
He’d caught her fresh. Maybe he didn’t yet know that her biorhythms had taken on mortal flow once she’d achieved permanence in this world. How would he? He was still unnamed, only a half-realized entity, forced to describe who he was—the Tulpa—by what he was—a tulpa. Sure, his followers had to call him something, but it would never afford him the formidable kick of power she enjoyed with a given name.
So their next collision had Skamar’s fist blasting through his false visage, surprise spreading over a face that distended so far it should have cracked. Impermanence made the fucker hard to fight, but he still grunted and fell back. Before his features could rearrange themselves into the correct places, her fist plowed through his chest, penetrating all but the last thin membrane.
His scream was a mourner’s wail, though to Skamar it was a lover’s sigh. Unsurprisingly, he reverted to what had become his standard MO—ambush and retreat—and the wind cut in sharp whistles around their bodies. Panicked, the Tulpa glanced up at the empty expanse of baby blue sky, but Skamar knew he wouldn’t risk the small sonic boom triggered whenever they set to flight. Not in the middle of town. Those in Vegas’s underworld would converge in minutes, and neither of them wanted to face off against each other and their respective troops.
So they angled close to the closed restaurants and office buildings, leapt to rooftops in straight vertical shots, and ran the narrow walking paths like drag racers. When the distance actually lengthened between them, Skamar knew the Tulpa’s followers—worshippers whose energy could be summoned at will—had been ordered to gift him with thoughts providing greater speed.
But the gift, the energy, came at a price.
Halting, she hefted a boulder the size of her skull and launched it at his retreating form. The rock plowed into his neck, distending his head so far forward that it hung like a loose tooth off its last thread of gum. Knocked to the ground, he rolled, and Skamar broke into another sprint. Yet the Tulpa—somehow able to think despite near deca
pitation—allowed the rotation to propel him forward, and he resumed running. When the distance again increased and he disappeared onto Desert Inn Road, then around the Wynn Resort, Skamar slowed.
That’s okay, she thought, breathing hard. She’d learned something new of him. The fool had given up power for speed, and that was knowledge she could capitalize on. Every encounter aiding that was a success. And though she was now late for her meeting with Zoe, she had to smile at the memory of the Tulpa running from her, head literally held in his hands.
Ten in the morning and the Valhalla Hotel’s pool was already busy, with music more suited to a nightclub pulsing from hidden speakers and bikini-clad cocktail waitresses ferrying morning mimosas and Bloody Marys to hotel guests. Some, Skamar noted as she followed the perky blond attendant across the expansive deck, had clearly not slept for nights. She squinted against the pool’s reflection, amazed that even in the winter, even at Christmas, tourists thought lounging around a pool in Las Vegas was a hedonistic pleasure. The pools were heated, and the guests might feel like rock stars, but really . . . the outdoor Christmas tree was absurd.
“Ms. Belie is just over there, in the VIP cabana.” The blonde smiled back at her as they wound through a maze of marble pools, saunas, and outdoor showers. A row of elevated cabanas loomed above the lounge area like the tents of Roman generals. And in the last, reclined like a goddess, was a woman with a general’s steel spine. Zoe Archer.
“Ms. Belie?” Skamar said with a raised brow, dropping into a chair opposite Zoe when the attendant had gone. “Why didn’t you just choose Ms. Conceal this time? Ms. Disguise, Ms. Pretense?”
Zoe always used some variation of the definition—Sham, Beard, and Twist being favorites. And she did it because . . .
“It’s more fun this way.” She waved a manicured hand in the air, sending the soft scent of spiced gardenias and warm vanilla wafting Skamar’s way. And after giving up her family, a life among the agents of Light, and all her powers with it, Zoe took her fun where she could get it.
“The Tulpa attacked again this morning,” Skamar said, noting Zoe had the poolside look down pat. Tanned limbs, a trim blue bikini, and a wide-brimmed straw hat over a long blond wig. In contrast, Skamar’s own thrift-store black and spotlessly pale skin clearly marked her as a poolside neophyte. “Ambushed me right outside my complex. Not what I would call fun.”
“You didn’t have to come,” Zoe said, sipping an icy red cocktail.
Ruthlessly unemotional. Typical Zoe. Skamar allowed a wry smile, remembering what it was like to live in the coiling gray matter of that one-track mind. To expect sentimentality from Zoe was to expect the sun to set in the east. She might appear pampered on the outside, drinking her frozen cocktails and nibbling on a fruit platter, but her actions and thoughts were as focused and militant as Skamar’s.
“You wouldn’t call unless it was important,” Skamar conceded, leaning back, though she didn’t have to come. She was no longer a thought-form, a doppelgänger birthed via the fierce concentration of Zoe’s mind. No, now that she was named, and a full-blown tulpa—willful, conscious, immutable—she was the most powerful being in the valley. Yet resisting Zoe’s call was still difficult. If Skamar were a magnet, Zoe would be sheet metal.
Zoe responded by tossing her a manila folder. After catching it midair, Skamar pulled out three photos, each of a preteen girl smiling with some degree of uncertainty. Personal information was stapled to a sheet on the back. “The Shadows are abducting girls of a certain type. A certain age.”
