The Neon Graveyard Read Online Free PDF Page B

likes of you.”
    No. The being who’d cut two fingers off the Tulpa’s left hand hadn’t been “the likes” of anyone. But the means by which he did it? I lifted the blade. I possessed it now.
    The Tulpa composed himself by glancing again at what remained of Neal. Then he offered the whole of us a bland smile, and turned back to the city.
    “Hey, Daddy?”
    He turned and cocked a brow.
    “You’ve got something right here.” I pointed to my own face, indicating his nose. Then I lowered my chin, narrowed my eyes, and used the only power left to me—that of my mind.
    A smile began forming on the Tulpa’s face when nothing happened, but then there was a small twitch. The left side of his nostril twitched again. He frowned . . . and the entire center of his face shifted, and for just one moment, his nose vanished.
    The gust from the Tulpa’s sneeze would have knocked me flat were it not for Carlos’s hand steady at my back. As it was, thirteen grays rocked back on their heels, but the thunderstorm of anger that rode the Tulpa’s brow was worth it.
    “How did you do that?” Gareth whispered, awestruck and now behind me.
    I ignored him, preferring not to wonder how . . . and really not knowing. I was the Tulpa’s daughter, but Zoe Archer’s daughter too, and she was a woman with a nuclear power plant for a mind. Though gone, she’d left me with instructions, and admonitions, on the power of a mortal mind.
    “You’re not the only one with extraordinary abilities, Pops,” I said, arrogant despite everything I didn’t know. “Don’t forget it.”
    “And you should know,” he warned, lifting two feet into the air with the ease of a helium balloon, “I never forget.”
    Yet he jerked as he tried for greater height, zigzagging one way and then the next. I’d rattled him, I thought, smile widening. He recovered fast, though, and his body shot up like a rocket, hurtling across the desert with the thrust and sound of a fighter jet. He was a speck above the Las Vegas skyline a moment later. Another, and he was gone.
    “I was wrong.” Foxx said woodenly. I turned to find his eyes wide, gaze locked on my face. “You’re not just mortal. You’re crazy.”
    I returned my gaze back to the city I refused to leave, and the fight I just couldn’t seem to quit.
    “It’s hereditary,” I said.

3
     
    U nable to enter the city without attracting notice, or achieve the death we sought there anyway, we gathered up Neal for burial and returned to our cell to regroup. Located on the far reaches of Frenchman’s Flat, best known for Nevada’s infamous nuclear testing projects, the blasted terrain was unreachable by the agents bound to the city, as well as mortals easily discouraged by electric fences and unsmiling men with big guns.
    The government patrols had orders to shoot any unauthorized trespassers on sight, but they never caught sight of us. Like ghosts, we were the movement caught from the corner of their eye, the itch between their shoulder blades, the feeling that made the hair on the nape of their neck stand on end. A rumor had also begun circulating at the nearby test site that beasts the size of small SUVs haunted the night terrain, making even the most steadfast soldier wary of the area at the hour we were most active.
    All in all, it was the perfect hideout for the grays—throwaway agents who’d banded together and were now forming a troop of their own.
    Now that this previously guarded secret was out in the supernatural world, I was shocked at the number of rogues who’d trekked across the Mojave to find us. It’d only been weeks since Las Vegas’s warring troops had learned of us, but our existence was already being reported in manuals across the nation. Eighteen rogues had arrived so far, including Foxx and Neal, the physically imposing Gil, and a star- and sky-loving geek named Kai. We didn’t keep everyone—after all, there was a reason each had been driven from their home troops, and some