City Of Souls by Vicki Pettersson Read Free Book Online Page A

eyes and thought of grassy fields and fuzzy bunnies and shit. But my anxiety had spiked and the fields were burning up behind my lids, the bunnies turning into blood-splattered carcasses.
    I realized belatedly that Warren was yelling at me. “...if you would listen!”
    I opened my eyes. “What?”
    “You have to go.”
    “Go?” My heart jumped again. Where the hell was I supposed to go? There were no safe zones any longer. No place to hide and heal and find refuge from our enemies.
    “Go away, for one. The Tulpa will be able to track us because of you.”
    Keeping the troop safe, then. As always.
    He sighed, and worked to calm himself as well. “Look, I’m not just throwing you out on your own. Find Skamar. Make her tell you about Midheaven.”
    “Midheaven?” Hunter turned to stare at Warren. The cab fell oddly silent.
    Warren held Hunter’s look for a long moment, then blew out a breath and tried to tuck a tuft of hair behind an ear, a habit left over from the days when it was dreadlocked. It was an uncharacteristically nervous gesture. “Just tell her about the safe zones. She’ll tell you how to walk the line so you can get help, and do it without—”
    He turned back at a sharp crack behind us, followed shortly by a sonic boom, as if the sky was made of ice floes, shifting and breaking apart. The Tulpa was having a fit. And he wasn’t far off.
    I shivered when he raised a brow at me. He wanted me to leave
now
? “Wait—”
    “We can’t.”
    “But—”
    “You broke the changeling, Joanna! You caused the fall of our safe zones! You’re the only one who can fix it, and the answer is in Midheaven!”
    “But—”
    “Look, we’ll find you as soon as possible. Let me get the rest of the troop safe first. You alone can fix this. Go find Skamar. Go be someone else—”
    “Find her where?” The female tulpa had a habit of disappearing for days at a time, reemerging only to battle with my homicidal father. She was as elusive now as she’d been in her previous incarnation as my doppelgänger. “Be who?”
    Warren looked out the back windshield again. The Tulpa seemed to be dropping back.
    “Anyone,” he finally answered, voice ragged with fatigue. “Just…don’t be Jo.”
    I drew back, stunned. He turned back around, and the others refused to meet my eye. I stroked the butt of my Uzi like it was a security blanket.
    Warren, finally realizing I wasn’t going to say anything, muttered one word. “Micah.”
    There was barely any room for Micah to turn his head, much less his body, but he managed to shoot me a look of sympathy as he shrugged. “Sorry, Jo.”
    “For wh—”
    My ass hit the ground before my feet, as did my head and palms and right cheek as I flipped over myself. The cab was nothing but a wink of distant taillights by the time I looked up, and I cursed as I limped to the side of the road. Sure I was already healing from the fall. The
push
, I corrected, as I began walking in the opposite direction. But what the hell was I supposed to do alone, with an automatic weapon, and instructions to be anybody but me?

    They threw me out at the north end of the Las Vegas Beltway, at the top of Charleston, near a chichi casino where savvy locals played and an upscale boutique mall housing independent eateries and one-off shops. It was late now, all the shops closed, and the indoor/outdoor restaurants were shut tight to the winter chill. I set my Micro Uzi on the wall of a marble white fountain, and figuring a head cold was better than a decapitation, climbed in to wash off the remainder of Vanessa’s blood and scent.
    “Don’t be Joanna,” I muttered, flipping my mask atop my head like an oversized headband. I loosened my low knot and tried not to be offended by Warren’s parting remark—or the skid marks on my ass—and shook out my hair. It was fine, really. I impersonated Olivia the majority of time anyway. And subtracting my real name from the equation did nothing to diminish my