“Because you want to appear more human to me? More relatable? Have a real touching father and daughter moment?”
“Because I want the story of my birth recorded,” he said in that velvet voice, before smiling. “But don’t worry. We’ll still have our touching moment.”
The sky squealed like rusted wheels above us. It wasn’t any sound a sky should make.
“See, the lack of a recorded name, the very thing this one sent you on a quest for,” he gestured to Skamar but didn’t look at her and refrained from saying her name, “has meant much of my story has, over the years, remained in the dark. It has robbed me of additional power…until now.” He smiled serenely as he glanced up at the cracking sky. “And that just won’t do.”
I imagined, as he obviously was, what the power a recorded birth would give him. He’d probably tried to get this history recorded before, but the manuals chronicled our dual sides in action. Telling the story at the moment Skamar died, or while he killed the Kairos, practically guaranteed its inclusion. Granted, we already knew the generalities of his past and creation, but the more of his story that was brought to life in the Shadow manuals, the more belief and energy he’d receive from the young minds who so eagerly devoured the tales within. He still couldn’t be named-only a tulpa’s creator, or a descendant, could do that-but coupling the story of his birth with the amassed energy swirling overhead would make his already formidable strength unrivaled. And I couldn’t imagine him more powerful than he was now. I didn’t want to.
Warren groaned beside me, clearly thinking the same thing. I could feel his desire to flee, his mind winging to the rest of the troop, muscles twitching with the need to get them to safety…wherever that might be. A quick death here-and the Tulpa would give him that; the slow one had a “reserved” sign on it for me-would mean leaving their fate unsecured and unknown. I glanced over to find him breathing heavily, the thought unbearable.
The rivulets of water were swiftly turning to inches, assailing the tunnels and pressing coldly against our ankles. Unconcerned, the Tulpa twirled his umbrella. “Did you know that a tulpa’s consciousness takes form prior to his body? It’s true, though it doesn’t happen all at once. No, it’s like that sky above, parts lighting up before burning out, awareness flickering, like an old television. There’s a gestation process just like for mortals, though the progress isn’t physical. You know when you can feel someone watching you?” He didn’t wait for a response. “Well, that’s what it feels like for another consciousness to take form in your mind. It crowds out the things you’d ordinarily think of, pushing some aside, like moving boxes into storage, and tossing out others altogether.”
The drainage from the entire valley was flowing over the Tulpa’s ankles by now, though he hadn’t altered his stance. We were lucky not to still be inside-the system was filling up far faster than a foot per minute.
“So you’d think that someone creating a person out of layered thought would clue in to the fact that the selfsame being could read their every intention. There was nothing my creator could hide. I knew why he was making me, how he planned to use me, when he needed to take a shit. I knew all of it practically before he did. Being unencumbered by a physical body has its advantages…right, doppelgänger?”
He still didn’t say Skamar’s name, even now that it would afford her little strength. She didn’t move. The Tulpa smiled again when he saw me watching her, though his face fell as his eyes landed on my troop leader.
“Going somewhere, Warren?” He said it just as Warren’s foot moved. We both fell still. The Tulpa took one step forward. “Because I’m not done with my fucking story.”
Above us the sky sparked, a tiny sizzle of electrified power singeing the air to escape, finding Skamar. It was only a fissure crack in the dam of clouds, but it arrowed through Skamar and into the Tulpa, the electricity enough to make her scream…and him glow.
Pulsing with the trace amount of heat lightning, he smiled. “Don’t worry. You’re not the only man who has thought of abandoning his charge.”
I looked at Warren too, but he wouldn’t meet my gaze. He’d been about to bolt? Without me?
Because he knows the Tulpa won’t kill me.
So he’d just leave me there?
“Yes,” the Tulpa continued, in a loud, clear storyteller’s tone. “My creator once considered the very same thing. He felt my power growing, and knew too well what thoughts had gone into creating it. Do you want to have a guess at what those elements were?”
“Snakes? Snails? Puppy-dog tails?” I gave him a bitter smile.
“Venom. Vice. And everything nice.”
Warren swallowed audibly next to me.
“When Wyatt Neelson tried to destroy me, when he tried to remove the layers of personality he’d given me and dissolve my consciousness back into the world, it felt like hot knives were carving my thoughts into slivers. When I resisted, he then tried imagining me differently. A kinder, gentler tulpa. He mixed up my personality traits, and tried to imagine them anew. But I was already too strong. I did a cross-feint in his mind, and then I wrapped myself around the coils of his gray matter and I squeezed. I could have killed him then and there. I could have brought on an aneurysm that would have created a crater in his mind, or sent him into early dementia.
“He begged. He couldn’t form words, but his thoughts were desperate.” He licked his lips, gaze faraway as he remembered. “He told me that he loved me, and thought of me as the son he never had. He said if I let him live he’d leave the city forever…or he’d stay put and act as a sort of gofer, whatever I preferred. That was the exact word he used too. ‘Preferred.’”
The Tulpa looked up at the sky. “What I preferred was for him to stop trying to kill me.”
Identical eyes found mine, and I knew he said it as a part of the story, to be recorded, but also for me.
“I made him a deal. I let him live, and he, in return, would spend the rest of his days reinforcing me. Chaste as a monk, as focused as Buddha himself, nothing and no one else would ever come between us. We sealed it in blood.”
“And then came Zoe.”
“Yes. Zoe then,” because she’d killed Wyatt Neelson, “and Zoe now.” Because she’d created Skamar. “What a bitch.”
“That’s my mom.” Odd, but under the straining sky, and standing before this demonic creation, I don’t think I’d ever been more proud.
The Tulpa shook it off. “So the moral of the story is, I have a right to be here. I fought for life the way nations fight for independence. I was birthed of blood.”
“If that’s your criteria for greatness, then you have no greater claim over it than anyone else.”
“True. I just have more power to back it up.”
And that’s what it came down to. For some people it wasn’t enough to simply have power over their own lives. They needed to assert themselves upon the living landscape of other hearts and minds. For some reason, power only mattered to them when it affected others.
The Tulpa twirled his umbrella, one hand shoved in his suit pocket. The water was at his calves now, a tiny river rushing around him, but he didn’t even sway. He was rooted to the earth, like an oak that had been planted there. “Don’t look so disgusted. Mortals do the same. It’s why monarchies work, democracies ultimately fail, and faith becomes a crutch. And that’s fine. Most people want to be told what to do, where to go, when to piss.”