The Neon Graveyard by Vicki Pettersson Read Free Book Online

entry into that world. It was hard to impart empathy to someone who’d never been in a vulnerable position, and the Tulpa had been powerful from the first thought.
    “No.” Foxx stepped away from the table. “It don’t make sense.”
    I looked at him. My impression so far was that he was impatient, edgy, but shrewd. Yet he’d been subdued since returning to the cell, and in a normal, well-adjusted person I’d say it might have something to do with Neal’s death. However, I couldn’t give a former Shadow the benefit of either of those things. Still, something in the calculated way he spoke, the furrowing of those dark brows, made us all perk up. “What?”
    Looking at me, he licked his lips. “They didn’t even try to kill you when they had the chance. I’m not sure we could have withstood that ambush if they had . . . certainly not all of us. Even Harrison pulled his punch there at the end. I saw him hesitate.”
    It was a valid point. Lindy hadn’t attempted to kill me outright, and she hated me more than did anyone else, save the Tulpa.
    The proverbial light flicked to life in my mind like a fat neon sign. If the Tulpa captured me, he could harness the last third of my soul, enter Midheaven and wield my female energy once there. And he didn’t even need to draw me close to the underground entry to do it. Capture me alive and he could just put his mouth to mine in reverse resuscitation, suck out the remains of my slivered soul, and race there himself. It would also rid him of my presence in this world so that I was no longer a thought, much less a threat to him, his goals, and his troop.
    “He wants her alive,” Carlos finally said. “ That’s how he plans to take over Midheaven.”
    W e’d circled around the issue after that, and while there was a lot of speculation about the varied ways the Tulpa could strip my soul from my body and use it to take over the female-dominated underworld—each more gruesome than the other—we got nowhere. By the time Gareth suggested our enemy might ingest my soul by literally consuming my beating heart, my frijoles were threatening to climb back into my throat.
    I rose quickly, and the sudden movement had the effect of quieting the room, but it was only after shutting the door behind me that I took a deep breath. Though maybe that wasn’t the wisest decision considering the atomic radiation coming off all the anteroom debris. The collection had grown so greatly that there was barely room to walk around the sinkhole scarring its center. I skirted car parts, twisted girders, and household riffraff from headboards to china . . . all shattered and scorched within an inch of existence.
    “Hey, Marge,” I muttered, passing a charred mannequin, but Marge didn’t answer. The bitch.
    At any rate, I thought as Buttersnap loyally joined my side, what more was there for anyone to say? Despite our efforts these past weeks, we were back to square one, and still with no way to get into Midheaven. Without the ability to quickly increase our numbers, we couldn’t survive in this valley . . . or anywhere else. And soon I’d be too far along in my pregnancy to walk without a waddle, never mind kill a Shadow as I had today. Forget about rescuing Hunter.
    God. Hunter.
    Sighing as I maneuvered down my wing’s dirt passageway, I ran a hand along the rough, brutalized walls. It was getting harder to wait, and harder to think of Hunter trapped in that other world. Though he was a superhero, though he was still stronger than me, I had to fight the urge to rush into those tunnels and take up his defense. Something had shifted inside me since learning he was trapped there.
    No, that wasn’t quite right. Something had shifted upon our first touch, the first taste. And now that I knew Hunter had never betrayed or truly left me, my mind was locked and loaded on him with a near-violence. Which was surprising if only because the fury arose from considering him precious.
    In short, Hunter