City of Souls

16

The panic room was entirely different than the last time I’d seen it. Obviously Vanessa was long gone, but the tank with the healing gel was also absent, along with all the hospital equipment. Pushing the door open, I blinked against the bright light, and at the weighty silence. I’d been too preoccupied by the chinks in my paranormal armor to note the hissing murmurs that’d accompanied my careful climb down the crow’s nest ladder-to be honest, I was on the verge of tears-and I wiped my eyes, pretending to rub sleep from them and acclimate to the fluorescent light. I knew the moment Warren and Hunter scented my mood. I couldn’t contain it fully. My grief at this lost power, the stolen ability to heal, was felt as keenly as if someone had died.

I silently admonished myself to pull it together, and studied my surroundings-not looking at the men-hoping that would ground me. The small, sterile room was suddenly depressing in its austerity, and though not normally claustrophobic, I knew that if I were trapped in here, I’d be begging for someone to kill me within days. The cure that was worse than the proverbial disease.

There were rations tucked away, additional sources of heat and light, although sieges meant something different to Zodiac agents than they did to even a mortal paramilitary troop. Those could last weeks, not mere days. Back in the late nineties, New York’s agents of Light had endured one lasting longer than the time it took to conceive, gestate, and birth a squalling child. Learning from that, our troop had installed a side bathroom with a small shower while constructing this one.

Hunter’s memory, which the aureole gifted me with earlier, had shown scattered papers, and there were indeed two maps lying side by side over the centered drawing tables. I tucked my hair behind my ear and bent over them, rubbing my arms, aware that Warren and Hunter were still eyeing me. The maps turned out to be identical, the original pristine but its twin copy marked up in a completely nonsensical fashion. What the maps detailed, however, was clear.

“The flood system?” I said as Hunter came to stand at my side. I heard his deep inhalation as he tried to ferret out my mood. I held my own breath and didn’t look at him. Instead I wondered how long he’d been studying this. Multicolored markings zigzagged and crosshatched the second drawing like an enthusiastic toddler’s art project.

“This is it in full.” I did look up then. His hair was disheveled, and bare-chested, he looked warm, but his eyes were shadowed. Not at all the sinking softness he’d turned on me hours before. I couldn’t tell if it was in reaction to my shuttered mood or in response to whatever he and Warren had been discussing. “Joanna was helping me chart her path into Midheaven.”

Warren gave him a look that said he knew exactly what I’d been helping him with, and we both shifted our gazes to the floor like teens caught after curfew.

“Where the hell did you get it?”

“The Flood Control District.”

Warren quirked a wiry brow. “They just handed you a map of the entire underground system?”

“I told them I was doing a story on the homeless living in the tunnels. Do you know that floodwaters can rise in there at the rate of a foot per minute?” When Warren only stared, Hunter shrugged and went to sit on a corner stool. “What? Your undercover identity is what gave me the idea.”

The strained silence between the men elongated, and I glanced back at the maps.

He’s already mapped the place out.

This was what I’d seen him working on in the shared aureole. The emotion accompanying it had been exhaustion and determination. But exactly what was he doing? The bright intersecting lines gave no clue.

Warren took Hunter’s place at my side, using a fingernail to trace the entrance I’d emerged from all the way to its intersecting point. All lines, I noted, met in the middle. So there really was only one entrance to Midheaven. “Did you make sure everything was as you found it?” Warren asked me.

“Sure,” I said sarcastically. “I even dusted. Right after I lost my powers and before being ambushed by Regan and the Tulpa.”

Warren’s head slowly swiveled my way. “Powers?”

I scrambled to think, before deciding to turn the blame on him. “Well, something was jerked from me upon entry, and it felt pretty powerful. What else could it be?”

I stared at him, daring him to tell me he knew he was sending me to a place that would strip my soul in three tries.

His gaze lingered on my face, and then he ran a hand over his spiky hair. “Well, it won’t be as bad the second time.”

I look at him like he was stoned.

He gave me the same once-over.

“Uh-uh.” I shook my head and backed up until I was leaning into Hunter’s knees. He opened them, giving me harbor in between, and I nestled in tight. Warren’s eyes flickered at the intimacy, but he said nothing. Both things gave me courage. “Not me. No way. That place is evil. The passage alone felt like it was going to kill me.”

“But it didn’t, and that which doesn’t kill you…”

It took all my self-control not to roll my eyes. I’d collected quotes as a teen, mental touchstones, wise words in an unpredictable world. But I hated clichés, and I certainly wasn’t going to spout empty bravado. I nestled in more tightly to the pocket Hunter created for me. I wasn’t feeling particularly brave. “Makes you weaker?”

“Leaves loose ends,” Hunter muttered, his voice stirring my hair. Despite my worry, it stirred other things as well. Sick, I thought, shaking my head slightly, but every bruise had been worth it.

Warren scowled, crossing his arms as his eyes darted between the two of us. “Might be a second chance at redemption.”

Something niggled at me, like a secret whispered in the dark. Someone had just told me something, but who? I leaned against Hunter and remembered his silhouette in sleep. I looked at Warren and the whisper echoed faintly.

“Why would I go back?”

Warren glanced at the maps beside him, then back at Hunter. There was something vaguely threatening in the action. “Hunter, would you mind leaving the two of us alone?” It wasn’t a question.

Hunter remained where he was for about a year under Warren’s direct gaze, before gently easing me forward to stand. A light brush of his fingertips trailed my belly as he crossed in front of me, and then he was gone. Warren and I said nothing for a long time; he allowing no indication of what he thought of this new development, and me making it clear I didn’t care either way.

Finally he leaned back on his elbows, crossing tattered boots at the ankles. “Hunter caught me up on what happened to you in Midheaven. As much as he could, that is. Is it true that it felt like you were gone only hours?”

While a week had passed here. Nodding, I pushed myself up on the stool. I recounted the conversation I’d overheard in the pipeline, that though still broken, Regan was once again back in the Tulpa’s good graces. That she’d been hiding in the pipeline, she still had my conduit, and that she was going to try to bring me to the Shadow leader alive. “She’s been following me everywhere, in both my daily life as Olivia and as the Archer. I know she followed me to Master Comics.”

He watched me with dull eyes, looking less surprised by this knowledge than I thought it warranted. How about this, then, Warren…

“She also claims to be tracking me with the help of someone in the troop. An agent of Light.”

“A bluff.” Warren shrugged, immediately dismissing the claim. “Not possible.”

He let that, and the surety with which he said it, sink in. His tone said he was in charge and I should be glad that he was. He must have realized how imperious it was because he shrugged one shoulder and smiled. “Tell me what you can about Midheaven.”

What I could. He knew, then, that I couldn’t tell him everything. But I frowned anyway, wanting to accommodate him. I saw a skeleton with a bowler hat. I saw inky masculine shapes and bright feminine ones. Images zipped by, a very few lingering like mental balloons in my frontal lobe, but when I opened my mouth, they slid away, leaving me with nothing but a fleeting sensory reminder. I shook my head apologetically.

“It’s okay,” Warren said, like he’d been expecting it. “You only remember the people and things linked to your own time and place. Like the man and woman you mentioned to Hunter. Harlan Tripp and Solange?”

I’d figured that out for myself, but I still shook my head. “I remember more than just them. I remember it all. But trying to verbalize it is like trying to tell a story without a subject or object or any linking verbiage.” I sighed. “But you already knew that too, didn’t you?”

He shrugged again. There were worlds to interpret in that one movement. “Midheaven’s vibration doesn’t register over here. It’s why the place is considered myth and why Zane can’t write about it in manuals. It’s a place that becomes known to you only when it’s time for you to know it.”

Warren hasn’t told you anything, has he?

I couldn’t shake Solange’s taunt from my head. He hadn’t. And I’d lost a third of my soul, power, time, and nearly my life. For what? To learn things he already knew? To feel like I was going crazy in my own mind? Or crazier?

Since I was having trouble voicing my own thoughts, I decided to pry out his. “Let’s play a little game, Warren. I’m going to start a sentence, and since I can’t finish any thought that contains knowledge gleaned in Midheaven, you’re going to finish it for me.”

Before he could protest, I started.

“Jaden Jacks is…”

“In Midheaven.”

The answer I was looking for was Light. I shook my head. “Jaden Jacks is…”

“A rogue agent like Harlan Tripp, who has also been gone a very long time.”

“Jaden Jacks is…”

Warren sighed. “Watch your temper-”

“Jaden Jacks is!” I pounded the wall so hard I felt the reverberation through my fist. Shit. I was going to have to relearn how to walk through this world as a mortal. I closed my eyes, fought not to rub my hand or wince, and calmed myself.

When I opened my eyes, Warren was watching me like I was crazy. “I should have known this would happen.”

“What, Warren? That I’d come back with a tattoo of the sun hennaed on my belly?” I asked bitingly, coming off my stool, pissed because he could have prevented all my losses. And because they’d been for absolutely nothing. “Or that I’d return with more questions about Jaden Jacks, agent of…”

I didn’t complete the sentence, I refused, but its start let him know exactly what I was driving at. Light.

“Jaden Jacks is in Midheaven,” he repeated. “And Harlan Tripp can help you find him.”

“That’s not what I hear.”

“Then someone is lying to you.” He straightened at my arch look. “And, no, it’s not me. Because I’m the one who put him there.”

I shuddered involuntarily at that, both at the way he said it and the thought of being forced through that passage. Of having to remain in that heat with Boyd and Bill and Mackie and a drink that slowed your senses to an impossible crawl. All because Jacks had broken a changeling?

I had broken a changeling.

I shook the thought free. Jacks had knowingly killed one. “You put a lock on the entrance, didn’t you?”

That indeterminable shrug again. He’d known that changeling was dead and he’d sent me in anyway!

“Goddamn it, Warren-”

“I do not have to explain myself to you!” he roared with such force that it rocked from the small room, and I imagined it ping-ponging off the warehouse walls. “Do you understand me? You may be the Kairos, but I am the leader of this troop!”

I swallowed hard, clenching my jaw. “Nothing short of death will make me go back there.”

“We need to heal our changeling. Our troop. Our world.”

There was hope in his eyes when I searched their dark depths again, a rabid hope that I’d do this thing without arguing, and the manuals would be written, Jasmine would move on, Li would be whole. Like my disappearance was a magic wand waved over the landscape of all these lives, making everything all right.

“Jacks killed that kid.”

“By choice. Which means he knows an alternative.”

“Then you go.” I sighed again, not caring if fear and exhaustion perfumed the room like the fields of Grasse.

Warren’s scuffed boots appeared in my sightline, and I raised my head. His deep brown eyes bore into mine. “How do you feel now?”

“Fine,” I said through clenched teeth.

“Jo.”

“It feels like there’s a piece of me missing here,” I put a hand over the sweatshirt, the hennaed sun beneath and what a more metaphysically inclined person would call my sacrum. My other hand, just my fingertips, went to my head, touching gently like it was an open wound. I didn’t know why-it didn’t make sense-but I softly added, “And here.”

“But do you feel lighter? Like something has been yanked up by the root?”

I swallowed hard. “How do you know that?”

One side of his mouth lifted. “Your scent, Jo. You smell lighter. There’s less Shadow there. That’s all it took from you, don’t you see? Your Shadow side.”

Is that what Solange had meant by me being armored, then? Was my Light side somehow being protected? But she’d talked about my soul…

“I don’t want to go.” Even if he was right.

“Then Li will die.”

“Don’t lay that on me!” I yelled, even knowing that it was true, and that was my fault. “There has to be another way.”

“And we’ll be working to find it while you’re there.” He was composed again; my rising emotion seemed to calm him. He put a hand on my bruised shoulder. “Do it for your troop.”

I shook it off. “Your troop,” I muttered, because that much was clear.

Warren looked away, sighed, then paced to the door. Did he deem me a lost cause? Not quite yet. He turned, hope still alive in his eyes. “We still have a little time. Keep thinking and you’ll see I’m right. For now, it’s good to have you back. Chandra has been working in your stead. Kimber has been trying…not that she can do much.” He shook his head, almost in disgust. “I’d send her back to her family if I could. She’s miserable, and we need someone stronger.”

Of course Kimber was miserable. Warren was horrible at hiding his feelings. He wanted to throw her away because of her weaknesses, get someone else to fill her sign. I self-consciously tugged Hunter’s sweatshirt over my bruised wrists.

“Meanwhile, stay away from Regan. No matter what she’s told the Tulpa, she may kill you out of spite.”

I sighed in relief. So he wasn’t going to push me into Midheaven, and he wouldn’t lock me in the sanctuary either. Giving me a choice might be an obvious ploy at slowly gaining my acquiescence, but it was the least of all evils. Still, he’d admitted to locking Jacks in Midheaven, and he’d sent me in as well, knowing what the passage would demand of me. He had his reasons-he was the troop leader; he was Light-but both decisions tasted of pure, uncut ruthlessness. So was it true that he believed I’d given up nothing but my Shadow side? Again, how could I tell? How could he?

“Who else have you seen since your return?”

“Just Hunter.”

He bit his bottom lip, mind working like a calculator. I could practically hear it clicking away.

I raised a brow. “Is that a problem?”

“Of course not.”

I nodded, then looked at the ground. “Look, about this…about Hunter-”

He held up a hand. “Please. The less I know, the better.”

My thoughts exactly.

“As for the others…” He just shrugged. “They probably won’t be as…incurious.”

I wanted to tell him that the others didn’t need to know of my relationship with Hunter yet, if ever, but then a shout sounded throughout the warehouse, Felix’s unmistakable whoop as he scented out the where, who, and most of the what of the previous night’s events. I closed my eyes with a low groan. When I opened them again, Warren was wearing an ill-concealed smile.

“You might want to put on something a little more appropriate,” he said, taking in Hunter’s crumpled sweats. I couldn’t really see the point as I could still hear Felix, now grilling Hunter in a playful tone. Even Warren rolled his eyes as he turned away. “Besides, it’s time to train.”

I wavered on my feet, and had to brace myself against the wall. I couldn’t train with these people! They’d kill me just deflecting one of my blows! But Warren left the room before I could think of an excuse, and almost immediately, Hunter stood in the doorway, looking more hesitant than I was used to.

I straightened, rubbing a hand over my face as I shot him a distant smile.

“What did he say?” He asked.

“He wants me to go back to Midheaven. He says Harlan Tripp can tell me how to find Jaden Jacks.”

Hunter stiffened as he eased toward me.

“I told him no.”

Surprise froze on his face. “And he was okay with that?”

I tried for bravado, hoping the effort would actually lend me some. “What’s he going to do, force me to give up pieces of my soul?”

“Good for you, Joanna.” But as he reached for me, I could tell what he meant was, Good for us. I’d told Hunter I wouldn’t leave again, and though I’d meant emotionally, I decided now that it would hold true for this world too. And I definitely wasn’t going to tell Warren about Ashlyn now. Even if the Tulpa did know of her. Don’t ask me why, but it somehow seemed the lesser danger. How messed up was that?

“Hunt, about these maps…” I pulled back, wanting to ask what he was doing or planning, and what he so clearly didn’t want Warren to know. What they were arguing about. Why?

“It’s not clear?” he finally asked in the wake of all these unasked questions. I shook my head. “I was trying to find my way to you, Joanna. Once it was clear where you’d gone, I decided to come get you. I wanted you back. Safe and sound.”

His hands fell again over my back, reminding me of the bruises there. Sound. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against his chest. I wasn’t that…but as he pulled me close, dropping a kiss to my temple, smoothing back my hair with his smooth fingertips, I almost felt safe.

Then he spoke again. “C’mon. Let’s train.”

And he pulled me to the door, not knowing that what awaited me on the other side was the exact opposite of safe and sound.

“We have to drop back ten and punt, my friends,” Warren was saying as Hunter and I joined the rest of the troop in the shooting range. I scanned the cavernous room, quickly noting who was there and who wasn’t. Vanessa was absent, of course, probably given over to Chandra’s care since Micah was here, and a quick scan told me that Kimber had been omitted again. Dammit. My first thought had been to stick close to her, the weakest in our troop, during this training session. Though perhaps her absence was for the best. Her dislike of me had shifted into unconcealed hatred, and she would have probably used the opportunity to settle scores.

Not, I thought, something I could currently afford.

I turned back to Warren as I leaned against the plastic screen Felix, Jewell, and Riddick were clustered in front of, and fought to keep my thudding heart in check. It was beating too fast, and, though they didn’t seem to notice, I glanced back to find Hunter-arms crossed, one brow lifted-staring right at me. I jerked my head and turned away. Tekla was to the right of him and, though she had her eyes closed, she was always aware of her surroundings. Shit, we could probably communicate by mental telepathy, and she’d still know it.

Of course, our appearance together-and mine in particular-was also noted. Micah and Gregor managed to nod and merely look away, though Felix wiggled his brows, and Jewell blushed for me. Riddick looked more like he wanted to question me about Midheaven-they all probably did-but Warren had obviously already filled them in or told them to drop it until later. Probably both.

I crossed my arms self-consciously, and pulled Hunter’s sweatshirt tighter about me. Warren ignored the curious undercurrent and knowing glances that met our joint arrival, returning the group’s focus to the point at hand.

“Safe zones,” he said, positioning himself in the cavernous room’s center, “have now become the least safe places for us in this city. Therefore, we need to rethink our place in this valley-indeed, in our entire world.”

“You mean now that there’s no place for us to hide outside of the sanctuary.”

I automatically cringed. Gregor hadn’t meant it as criticism, but I still felt it as such.

Warren, though, uncharacteristically shrugged it off. “It doesn’t matter.”

I tilted my head, unsure that I’d heard him right. “What?”

Warren fisted one hand on his hip, the other raking through his short, choppy hair. “Obviously I’d prefer if the Shadows were the ones hamstrung by a lack of safe zones, but we feel it as a loss only because we’ve known the alternative. This is what I mean by reconceptualizing our world. We must now reimagine our territory.”

“I’m sorry. Are you telling us to…think cheery thoughts?” Felix clearly hadn’t forgiven him for keeping them in the dark about Midheaven’s existence. “What? And it will all go away?”

“I’m saying check the attitude, son. Change your mind, and you can-”

“Change the world. Yeah, yeah. Got that memo.” Felix crossed his arms. “And we still have no safe zones.” He shot me an apologetic look when I ducked my head again, because his anger wasn’t for me. But Warren was too obtuse and stubborn and focused to note it, or care. “So what’s your suggestion, hide out in our sanctuary?”

“I suggest,” Warren said coldly, “that we don’t hide at all.”

An appropriately dead silence met that proclamation.

Warren’s mouth lifted at one side. “Inside the safe zones, we are vulnerable to our enemies’ weapons-”

“While they remain impervious to our own,” Tekla added, opening her eyes. I realized she already knew what Warren was going to say. However, the rest of us were still in the dark.

“But outside of those zones…”

Warren trailed off, waiting. And, slowly, one by one, understanding crept over each face. Outside of those zones, our weapons still worked. We could still fight. Hunter was the first to voice the new thought. “We just don’t enter the safe zones. We meet them, only and always, in our city.”

“That’s where we take our stand,” Riddick added, punching a fist into his opposite palm. “On the streets.”

“That’s our even ground,” Jewell added, with a lift of her chin.

“But we don’t do it alone. We do it back to back. In teams.” Warren jerked his head at our surgeon…and scientist. “Micah.”

Micah had moved to a table containing what looked like a fire extinguisher, and we all watched as he pointed the hose and nozzle toward himself. “This is a fortifying preservative. Chandra and I have been working on it for some time now. It defends against attack.”

He demonstrated by spraying his thigh with a mist that fell like a spider’s web over his frame before disappearing. Then he whipped his conduit, a pristine scalpel that caught light as if drawing it in…and plunged it into his leg.

Jewell screamed.

The scalpel bounced off of him…and the webbing rippled with the after-effects, then fell away, dissolving on the floor.

“And now I can be injured again.”

“So it’s a shield?” Gregor asked, touching the nozzle. A shimmering strand adhered to its tip like a piece of chewing gum as he pulled his finger away.

“More like a fire retardant over clothing. You’re safeguarded for exactly one strike.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “I mean, I can see its use if we’re ambushed, but why do we need a protective layer in training?”

“For the same reason Tekla just walled in the entire warehouse,” Warren cut in, joining Micah, and crossing his arms. “We’re in an all-out war, but right now the stakes are higher for us than for them. Right now we’re off-balance.”

“And in order to regain our footing,” Micah said, motioning with his reclaimed scalpel, “we need to train harder than they do.”

I was happy to don all the protective layering I could-I’d wear a hazmat suit everywhere but the shower if it meant unconditional safety-still, I was missing something. “But we’ve never worn protection while training before.”

“Because we’ve never done a live-fire exercise before.” He gestured to Micah and smiled. “Suit up.”

The others lined up to be sprayed like bugs, but I just stood there. Live fire. That meant full force. And that meant training with the intent to kill.

Friendly fire, live fire, playing with fire…I couldn’t afford any of it. So while everyone else crowded Micah like they were being crop-dusted, I slipped behind the plastic partitions and joined Warren. “I don’t have a conduit.”

He shrugged as he busied himself with what looked like a brand new iPhone. He hadn’t missed a beat in dropping his hobo cover. For some reason, it made me want to iSmack him. “Then work on your defense.”

Sure, no big deal to him. Throwing walls up into the air, like Tekla had when covering my retreat in Chinatown, was as important as remembering to hold your breath underwater. But if I missed? If I threw something up even a nanosecond late? Bye-bye defense, and bye-bye Jo.

“Jo! C’mon, it’s your turn!”

Warren turned his back to make a call, effectively shutting me out. So I trudged over to Micah, still searching for a way out of this without letting on that I wasn’t much more than a fast, bitchy mortal. “How protective is this coating?” I asked, as he sprayed my skin, clothing and hair. It felt like roll-on antiperspirant gliding over my entire body. I sniffed, expecting to smell powdery.

“It’ll deflect any conduit once, no matter how hard the impact. Don’t worry.”

“Can I have two layers?”

He gazed down at me from his seven-foot height, and gave a fatherly sigh. “Now that’d be cheating, wouldn’t it?”

“But I’m the only one without a conduit,” I argued. “Two layers will even the playing field…and it’ll be better for my partner, too.”

“Nice try. But your partner can take care of him- or herself.”

He looked less sure of this when Warren named him as my partner, but it was too late. The preservative was back on the other side of the partitions. Meanwhile, Gregor and Jewell had paired up-a senior agent with a junior-as had Tekla and Riddick. Hunter was paired with Felix…two senior agents, and the strongest team here.

Warren, as usual, took the center spot in our huddle. “I want full force contact here, kids. Don’t hold back. These are Shadow agents. They’re trying to kill you, weaken your troop, and overtake your city.” He made eye contact with each of us before turning away. “Tekla will run the drill.”

“Wait,” I said, stepping forward. “Where will you be?”

“Back in the panic room.”

“Why?” Hunter asked, sounding wary.

Warren’s answer was a flat look. Without another word, he turned and walked away.

Riddick twirled his conduit, a pencil-thin steel rod with hooks on the end, and everybody cringed. Dental tools. Fuck, they were scary. “So, um…once the protective layer’s breached, stop attacking?”

Tekla smirked, as she pulled out a weapon similar to my crossbow, though with a retracting chain and anchor. I’d seen her remove hearts with that, leaving behind a warm body, still standing. “We’re battling Shadow agents for the welfare of our city. A little reminder of what a conduit can do under controlled conditions won’t hurt anyone. Just be sure to pull that punch.”

A pulled punch, I thought with a sigh. Just a little something that could maim me. I dropped my head to my hands as I thought about battling my allies…for my life.

“What’s wrong with you?” Hunter asked, coming up behind me as I tried to decide if I was going to center myself so that I could fight effectively…or run for my life.

“Nothing. Why?”

“You’re tense all of a sudden.” He dropped a hand to my shoulder and I flinched, underlining his point. “You look worried about something.”

I glanced around. “No one else seems to think so.”

He leaned so close his breath stirred my hair. “No one else was living inside you a few hours ago.”

I swallowed hard, and looked away. Not just my body. My bloodstream and marrow. My heart and soul. We could all intuit moods more easily than mortals-with most people it was as simple as reading a magazine. Flip a page and the emotion was simply revealed there. Agents had the ability to disguise their emotions more easily too, synthetic compounds and strong wills helped with that-but he was right. I could still feel his warmth inside me, and I didn’t doubt it was the same for him.

“That’s why I wanted to be partnered with you.”

“Micah will have your back.”

Micah didn’t know my life was in his hands. Hunter felt my anxiety spike again at the thought.

“Why are you suddenly so afraid?”

Just tell him.

Tell him that I could now be injured and killed? And then he’d report it to Warren, who’d lock me away and treat me as shittily as he did Kimber. Like a nuisance, something that gave drag, deadweight to be discarded at the first given opportunity. And in spite of my wishes and the soft feelings Hunter had for me-perhaps even because of them-he’d support it. No, thank you.

I shrugged, but the movement was too jerky. “I just wish I had a conduit, you know?”

“The best offense is a good defense,” he said, unfurling a black, barbed whip. It was as wicked looking as the other conduits, though it gave Hunter a reach they didn’t have. Great. Now I had to keep from getting killed by my lover.

“Then a good offense,” I muttered, as he left to confer with Felix, “is massive artillery.”

We paired up, taking on cross-angles in the giant room, and I worked on settling myself. I could do this. This was training. Not remotely as difficult or dangerous as the battles I’d survived over the past year. I’d fight, deflect, and gain ground for Micah, and if it looked like I was going to be hit or overpowered, I’d either duck behind the giant man, or call the match. None of my allies was going to keep pounding at me if I called a truce, right?

We turned our back to the others, and Micah stretched, lifting his arms over his head. I looked straight up at ten feet of agent of Light. And Hunter thought he had reach.

“You’ve just gotta cover me,” Micah reassured, as if I didn’t know.

I gave him an obvious once over, from head to toe. “That’s a big fucking wall.”

We turned, looking at Tekla, as did the others. She remained supremely still, waiting until everyone was steeled in their stances, conduits palmed.

“Make the walls invisible,” Micah muttered from the side of his mouth. “That should buy us some time, and an advantage.”

Tekla jerked her head, a short nod, and we were off. Suddenly bodies whipped through the air, sticking in pairs as Warren decreed, individual strength doubled. As the weakest team, Micah and I were the biggest targets but this surprisingly worked to our advantage. Two of the three teams collided on their way to beat me down, which left Gregor and Jewell for us. I timed my first invisible wall perfectly and Gregor face-planted like a cartoon character. Micah actually laughed before lunging at the junior agent.

You had to give it to Jewell. Seven feet of big, mean motherfucker coming at her, and she only flinched a little. She had to wait until he got in close; her cover in the mortal world was that of a schoolteacher…and a party girl. In both instances, a set of fisted keys were not out of place…but Jewell’s keys locked around her knuckles once laced together, and each was honed to a lethal point. It still wasn’t an even match, not with Micah’s experience making his blade work extra dangerous, but she was fortunate enough to also be considered paranoid in the mortal world. So she had two sets of keys, one for each fist, in contrast to Micah’s sole weapon. In his mind, this clearly made them even. He swiped.

But by this time Gregor had ducked my wall, and his eyes flicked from Micah to me, first assessing…then knowing. Knock me out, and Micah would be his. Fortunately, Riddick came from nowhere to cut Gregor off with a leap and an agile slash of his hooked blade, which connected…and pulled Gregor’s web of protection free. It shimmered as it stretched from his body…then fell. Gregor leapt to safety, calling out his apologies as he left Jewell alone, and I turned my attention to Riddick.

“Box him in!” Micah called, as Jewell backed up. Riddick heard Micah’s orders, of course, but it was still a good idea. He, too, had to get in close, as his conduit wasn’t anything he could risk throwing.

The biggest problem now was Riddick’s partner, Tekla. Sure, this aptly illustrated the effectiveness of working in teams, but I was too busy trying to stay alive to appreciate it. She pointed her weapon at me, and the anchor imbedded in my wall so fast I was surprised I managed to raise it in time. She retracted the anchor, my wall fell, and we countered again. My wall shook this time. Fuck, she was strong. I doubled up, bent and crossed over my own body to shield Micah from Riddick…and that’s when I hit my groove.

If you’ve trained hard enough-and if you last long enough-there’s a point in every altercation where muscle memory takes over. It’s like a pilot getting everything set, then giving the plane over to autopilot. Make the right move at the right time and suddenly your whole being-body and thought and will-snaps into alignment. It’s the same feeling athletes get when they’re “in the zone.” I whirled, feinted, and suddenly my body was singing.

My stance was wide, arms extended full length, and I circled Micah, keeping close as I deflected left and then right, crossing arms, and at times, not even glancing in the direction of my deflections. I put up a wall so strong Tekla’s anchor got stuck. I held it, and another, while delivering a back kick that sent Jewell barreling into Hunter’s range. I erected walls that were both vertical and horizontal, climbing them, leaping twenty feet in the air…certainly no longer the weakest link.

Riddick decided to follow my lead, and drove up a wall between himself and Micah, then dropped it before charging the bigger, slower man. I raised another at the last second, buying Micah time and space to fall back, and when Tekla tried to do the same for Riddick, I flipped my wrist so that my wall spread horizontally, splicing her visible one so that it rose only to waist height. She gasped and turned on me, wide-eyed. Micah leapt, I kept the surface as strong as a table, and he dispatched Riddick with a single, deft slice.

Then Hunter’s whip appeared out of nowhere, and I screamed. The reaction was inappropriate-I was nowhere near the conduit, but had yelled as if I were-so Hunter’s head jerked my way, but it was already too late. The whip snapped and Micah’s protectant went down. Hunter, seeing the vulnerability, stood down so that Micah could clear the floor without mortal injury. Micah leapt, dropping f-bombs as he soared from the battle area, and Felix-Hunter’s partner-immediately began advancing upon me.

“Shit.” I backed up, knowing my fear was pumping out pheromones inappropriate for a training exercise, but I wasted no energy trying to stop them. Felix scented it, and like a Viking berserker in the throes of battle-lust, his eyes glazed over with martial fury. I slammed up three vertical walls in quick succession, which was a drain on my energy, and with every additional shield, the previous ones weakened. I whimpered.

“Jo?”

It was only a murmur, but Hunter’s concern cost him. He should have been covering Felix-and his own ass-but Jewell saw it and struck.

She caught him at his wrist, following up quickly, clearly expecting to miss. But she didn’t miss, and his whip dropped, skittering behind us like a sidewinder. That was enough to pull his web of coating away…and the follow-up nicked his arm. Jewell blanched as blood bloomed in the room, and looked as if she wanted to apologize. Someone gasped on the sidelines. But Hunter’s gaze was for me. He couldn’t stay, of course. Live fire was now as dangerous for him as it was for me, and Tekla and Felix, battling hard, probably hadn’t seen his disarmament.

By the time Hunter was gone, so was Felix, shot through with an anchor in his side, and cursing Tekla with a bald lack of respect. Meanwhile, she’d also woven between my three walls, and I created a fourth on the fly, just to buy myself time. I was too tired to make it invisible, but my mind was still clicking at warp speed, and that gave me an idea.

My next one was opaque, black as a Shadow’s heart and as wide as the room. I pivoted and ducked behind it…then realized I was three feet from the warehouse wall and running out of space.

“Tekla…I give up!”

“Push yourself, Jo.” She answered, and the wall behind me shook.

Shit. “No, I can’t-”

“Agents of Light don’t ever quit!” And her anchor plunged through the concrete barrier at my back, barely missing my shoulder.

Yelping, I ducked. She wasn’t going to stop. So I pleaded. “Tekla, I can’t be hit!”

“Oh, I bet I can hit you,” Jewell said, from my other side. I whipped my left arm out just in time. My wall didn’t rise to full height-it was too hurried for that-but it halted her momentum and she tumbled over its top. By the time she somersaulted into a standing position, I had another wall erected. I couldn’t see the impact, but I heard her groan.

And then back to Tekla. Dammit! I was too unfocused now. I was getting tired, my eyes darting around as quickly as my thoughts, and I wondered why these bitches weren’t taking each other out instead of closing in on me.

That’s when I saw it. Lunging without hesitation, I grabbed Hunter’s barbed whip-the conduit of an ally who was still alive-and squeezed its handle. Its weight felt awkward as I whirled it around, but it lashed out like a lightning rod, and took down Jewell with a resounding snap. She screamed, though whether from pain or surprise, I couldn’t tell…or care. I whirled and again, the whip responded as if it was my own.

Maybe it was due to the aureole Hunter and I had recently shared again. Maybe it was because, as he mentioned earlier, he’d lived inside of me only a short time before. But I wasn’t just holding his weapon, I was using it effectively, and the more I moved-erecting walls with the torque of my palm, leaping atop them, now hunting Tekla-the more I reveled in the ease of my armament, even while I wondered at it.

Hunter was alive. This conduit was an extension of his body. And yet it was responding agilely to my touch.

I let out a battle cry and leapt to the rafters, whip hissing from my palm.

“Kairos!” Someone yelled from the sidelines, and I thought, yes. Maybe that was it. I was the Kairos. I couldn’t replace my own conduit-not with the original still out there, still a part of me, and still yearning to be united with me as I did with it-but I could use those of my allies. Because as I caught air, I felt the way Hunter looked in battle: confident and lithe…and scary as shit.

“That’s bullshit!” Someone else said, echoing my next fleeting thought. So I pivoted at the apex of my flight, took the whip’s handle in both hands, and wheeled it around like a discus. I caught Tekla’s anchor right at its release, and pulled, yanking her from her feet…

“Stop!”

The cry rocked the building, rippling in the air like a physical blow. Tekla, still sprawled on her stomach, cursed under her breath-a rarity for her-and shut her eyes, probably to reinforce the mental walls she’d put up around the building. I dropped to the ground with a soft bend of my knees, breathing hard, but smiling inside. I was still fast. My wall work was improving. Keep that bitchy edge, I thought as I straightened and turned to the others, and I might be okay yet.

But Warren was not smiling. “Jo, you’re with me. Bring the whip. The rest of you, clean this place up.” And he stalked back to the panic room while the others continued silently staring at me.

“Why’s he pissed at us?” Riddick muttered, kicking at the debris of one of my walls that had collapsed under Warren’s cry. It ricocheted into another, and both disappeared in a puff of smoke.

“How did you do that?” Jewell asked as I passed. I shrugged and swallowed hard, risking a glance at Hunter who, ominously, hadn’t moved. He just stared as he held his bloodied forearm tight to his side, eyes flicking to his whip before winging back up at me. I kept walking…and once inside the panic room, Warren posed the same question.

“How did you do that?”

I shrugged uncomfortably as he shut the door behind me. “I-I don’t know. I wasn’t able to use the replacement conduit that he was making me at all.”

“Because yours still exists.” Warren nodded impatiently, already knowing that. “Have you used or practiced with this whip before?”

I shook my head. “Never.”

He frowned. “So maybe it’s this bond between you two. Maybe because you just-”

“Okay!” I held up a hand just to keep the thought from passing his lips. I hated my relationships, or my emotions, being displayed so openly. Still…could that be it? Were Hunter and I somehow linked now? Share a body and bed…share a soul and conduit?

A quick rap at the door and Hunter peeked in, still looking disturbed, and I could understand why. Touching someone else’s conduit-using it as your own-that was like reaching inside a body and shifting around a person’s organs. An apology was already on my lips when Warren snapped.

“Not now, Hunter.” He waved him away and motioned for him to shut the door.

“There’s a call-”

“Ignore it!”

“It can’t be ignored!” Hunter held out the phone, his good arm steady in the air, eyes leveled on his troop leader’s face. Warren frowned at the text on the screen, then crossed the room for a closer look. Once there, he stilled altogether. “Oh.”

Hunter’s gaze shifted to me.

“What?” My first thought was that Vanessa had been captured again…or maybe one of the others. But Vanessa was safe in our underground lair, and everyone else was here. So…“What?” I said louder.

Warren finally looked back at me. “I don’t know whether to tell you that I’m sorry or not.”

“Why? What happened?”

“It’s your father, Joanna. Or…not your father, but Xavier.” He swallowed hard.

“What about him?” I stepped closer.

“He died, Jo,” Hunter said, stilling me again. “In the middle of the night.”