The Scent of Shadows

15

I’d once thought myself a stranger to darkness, but as I drove back to Olivia’s apartment I thought back to my encounter with the construction worker earlier that day—cursing myself for remembering his name, Mark—and of the pain that had bloomed in his face as realization struck. At my words. Words Olivia would never have uttered. I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable with myself. Darkness, I was finding, came in many forms.

And what about what had happened in the comic store? Carl had seemed not only genuinely surprised that I could pull from both the Light and Shadow series, but I’d recognized that flash of fear as he looked from me to Zane and back at the comics in my hand.

So you’re the one, Zane had said.

The only one. Micah’s words hurtled back at me.

And then Warren’s, you’re the first sign.

I parked in Olivia’s spot in the underground garage, grabbed the comics from the trunk, and decided to read through them all tonight. I needed to fill in the holes Warren and Micah had left in my supernatural education…and in my life.

The phone was ringing as I slid the key in the door, and smelling nothing out of the ordinary, I jogged to the bedroom and grabbed the portable from its hook. Luna wound her silky body between my legs, nearly tripping me up.

“Hello.” I perched on the edge of the bed and leaned to stroke Luna’s head. She arched fluidly under my hand just as Warren’s voice reached my ear.

“Olivia, it’s time. We’ve got to get you out of here, to the sanctuary.” He sounded panicked and out of breath.

My hand froze on Luna’s back. “You said I wasn’t ready.”

“No choice. Every agent is ordered off the streets.”

“Why?”

“I don’t have time to tell you…hold on.” There was a muffled sound, like he’d placed his hand over the receiver or muffled it against his chest. After half a minute he was back. “Remember when I told you the Shadows had found a way to kill off our star signs? One by one?”

I nodded, though he couldn’t see it.

“Well, they’re tracking us; I don’t know how, but they have their next target. That’s why we all have to go.”

“Who are they after?”

There was another silence. “Me.”

I stood and paced to the window, where shadows, once again, were soaking into crevices along the valley floor. “But why do I have to go? You said I wasn’t ready. And remember, Olivia is an Archer. They won’t touch her, or me, right?”

“Joanna Archer,” he said, surprising me by using not only my real name, but my full name, “they don’t want me for my sterling personality. They want me because of you.”

Oh.

“Meet me at the Peppermill on the Boulevard. Walk, don’t drive. We don’t want Olivia’s car anywhere near the pickup point. There will be a cab waiting out back. Pack like you’re going to summer camp, and bring only what you need.”

I looked around the room, with no idea where to start. “How long will I be gone?”

“Long enough to learn what you need to, but not long enough for anyone to miss you.”

“That narrows it,” I muttered to myself. “What about Luna?”

“She’ll be taken care of.”

I paused as the image of Mark and his naked pain and disbelief crowbarred its way back into my brain. “I need to tell you something, Warren. Or ask you—”

“Later. There’s a window of opportunity for the crossing, but it’s short. We must hurry.”

“The crossing?”

“From your world into ours,” he explained impatiently. “It can only be executed the exact moment day turns into night, or vice versa.”

I drew back and actually looked at the receiver. “That’s called dusk, Warren. It lasts more than a moment.”

“Not the point at which the light and shadow are divided evenly in the air. Be there, mid-dusk sharp.” He hung up in my ear.

I scowled at the phone, then down at Luna. “Bossy for a homeless man, isn’t he?”

I packed swiftly, only throwing in items I was comfortable with…or relatively so, considering Olivia’s wardrobe. Nothing silk, nothing with heels, and no lace. Sure, the jeans I stuffed into the duffel bag were Sevens rather than Levi’s, and the sweats were velour lined with satin rather than simple cotton, but at least they were items I could move in. I could run. I could fight.

Figuring discretion was the way to go since Warren had been specific about not using Olivia’s car, I donned a turtleneck and loose slacks, both black, though I decided to bring her crystal-studded cell phone along; after all, Olivia couldn’t just drop off the face of the earth, could she? Then I started throwing in the usual toiletries.

Underwear, socks, hairbrush, toothpaste, lotion…camera.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered, freezing with the cheap cardboard camera in my hand. I held it in my palm as gingerly as I would a baby bird. On it were the last images I’d taken as myself; the images I’d snapped in those early morning hours before returning to Warren to tell him that yes, I would accept his offer to become a superhero.

The ones of Ben, smiling in his sleep because I was alive.

I looked at the clock. Did I have time? My heart thudded at the prospect of viewing these photos. I’d have liked to develop them myself, to play with the shadow and light in the confines of my own dark space, but I knew that wasn’t an option. My home was being watched, and even if it wasn’t, Warren would never agree.

Still, there was a one-hour photo shop located inside a Quik-Mart only one block east of the Peppermill. If I drove that far and hurried, I might be able to make it.

The drive was a short one. I parked a block away, then crossed an intersection and three stop signs on foot to get to the store. I was only harassed by one motorist and one panhandler, so I figured my day was improving markedly.

I was greeted inside the Quik-Mart by a sleepy-eyed girl who looked barely old enough to vote. Perhaps greeted is too strong a word because she actually looked disappointed to see me, like I’d interrupted her life-in-progress and she wanted only to go back to her regularly scheduled programming. I wanted to tell her I could relate.

“How fast can you develop this?” I asked, handing her the camera.

“The sign says an hour.”

“I need them in half that.”

“So does everyone else, lady. Can’t do it.” She pushed the camera back at me and turned away.

“This says you can,” I said, sliding a hundred beneath the box. She looked from the money to me, and returned to the counter.

“You’ll have ’em in twenty.”

She may have been lazy, but she wasn’t stupid.

I decided to wait outside, thinking twenty minutes was enough to get started on at least one comic. The November air was sharp, but freshly so, and comfortable enough with the turtleneck on. I sat with my back against a stuccoed pillar and pulled the stack from my duffel bag, wondering where to begin.

Light, I decided. Definitely. I chose the one with the earliest date—volume two, number twenty-five—and flipped it open to learn more about the “independents” Warren had so distastefully mentioned the night of my metamorphosis. Apparently independents—also known in less flattering terms as rogue agents—were a constant threat to a troop’s equilibrium. In a world where lineage meant everything, the competition for open star signs was fierce, and even those of the Light had been known to take out their matching star sign just for the opportunity to usurp them in the Zodiac. That meant the independents weren’t liked or trusted by established troop members, and were rarely tolerated within city boundaries.

Fortunately, most of the time there was no disputing a star sign’s lineage; it went from mother to daughter, or if there was no younger female left, to the eldest son. But every once in a while a sign opened up with no obvious heir, and according to the manual, that’s when things got “interesting.”

I grimaced and flipped the page, remembering the way Warren’s mouth had curled when he spoke about the independents. Why did I get the feeling “interesting” was a euphemism for “deadly”?

I also had to wonder how my ascendancy into the Archer sign would be viewed by the star signs in his troop. If the Archer sign had been empty since my mother’s disappearance, might some of them liken my sudden appearance to that of a rogue agent? At the least, wouldn’t it be seen as “interesting”?

Not having these answers, and not liking the direction my questioning was taking, I quickly flipped that manual shut and picked up another. This time I ignored the chronological ordering and just snagged the one with the best-looking superhero on the cover, shoving the rest back into my pack. Stryker, it was called. Agent of Light.

“Stryker is striking,” I murmured, settling back. The rating on it was PG-17, and I could see why; leather clung to the man’s thighs, snug in all the right places, and a loose-knit cashmere sweater revealed tremendous biceps…as well as the glyph pulsing like a heartbeat on his chest. It was, in fact, pulsing on the page. Though no expert in astrology, I thought it might be the glyph for Scorpio, the sign and month before mine. Stryker was holding what I assumed to be a weapon, bent like a crossbow, but with a chain attached. Its use was totally unfathomable to me.

“I’d be willing to find out, though,” I said, my eyes grazing his figure again. Note to self: side benefit of being a superhero? Getting to know other superheroes.

I paused as my eyes caught the author’s name stretched across the top band in black stencil. Zane Silver. The same Zane who worked in the shop? I wondered, before my eye caught the second name illustrated there. Carl Kenyon, penciler.

“Wookie-boy?” I wondered aloud, shifting so the comic was lit from the streetlight above the store.

Ten minutes later I had a tenuous grasp on some of the events that had plagued me recently. I followed Stryker—a character, or a real person?—through a series of events leading to his metamorphosis. He’d been taken to an empty warehouse on Industrial and Pollack, and was surrounded by eleven other men and women, though it was difficult to tell one sex from the other. Each person wore a loose-fitting robe, white and dotted with what I took to be golden-threaded constellations.

“Nice job, Carl,” I said, placing a finger on one of the sparking star clusters. It pulsed warmly beneath my hand. I smiled and continued reading.

“Your first life cycle ended at puberty, and the second ends tonight.” The words bubbled up from a man who looked suspiciously like Warren. Only it couldn’t have been Warren, I thought, tracing the image with my fingers, because Warren had never been this clean-shaven. “To enter the third life cycle, you must go through metamorphosis and be willingly initiated into the seventh house of the Zodiac, under your mother’s sign of the Scorpio. Do you accept?”

“Crap dialogue,” I muttered. “Who wrote this shit?”

“I accept,” Stryker said with dignity befitting the gravity of the ceremony. “As my mother did before me.”

“And you do so of your own free will?” the man asked, a slash of lightning outside the warehouse sinking him into silhouette. The storm clouds, I knew, were gathering outside. I could almost hear them erupting in my head the way they’d once erupted around and above Olivia’s apartment.

“As my mother did before me,” Stryker repeated, inclining his head. Behind him the windows had begun to streak with rain.

“At least you knew what you were choosing,” I muttered, turning the page. A shaft of light shot up from the pages. It was like a paranormal pop-up book! The manual trembled between my fingertips, and the words, panels, and dialogue bubbles dissolved in an explosion of thunder. I watched as Stryker was pummeled by the same force that had entered me not long ago, dropping him to his knees and turning him into a helpless supplicant. The other star signs made a tight wedge around him—their bodies shown from above to create the symbol of his star sign—Stryker at the center. The book was more of a screen now, revealing images that flashed and burned away in turn, only his bright star immobile in the middle of the page.

There was a crack so great it shook the pages between my fingers. I almost dropped the whole thing as the sound of the sky rending in two joined the stabbing light, and with it a cry as horrible and intensely feral as I’d ever heard.

“No!” I heard a voice, perhaps Warren’s, scream in response.

The symbol was broken, its bright points—the other agents of Light—splintering and turning outward to face an invasive red glow. I couldn’t follow, the action was too chaotic and confused; like I too was caught in the turmoil. Blows rained down around my head, the air filled with words I’d never heard before…nd screams I wished I hadn’t. Every so often the action would slow, like a tape being caught in a recorder, and a clear image—one more reminiscent of a traditional comic—would pause, burning on my retina, before being swallowed again into chaos.

I saw Warren slaughter a man with nothing more than a rope and his fists.

I saw Micah use his surgeon’s hands to slice first the scalp and then the face from an attacker’s falling frame.

And I saw, with a sort of disbelieving numbness, the man who’d attacked me as a teen. A name bubbled up through the air in long capitalized letters—JOAQUIN, followed by SHADOW AQUARIAN—then it popped, the lettering cracked into shards and shooting out beyond the confines of the pages, gone.

“Joaquin,” I said aloud. I knew him. I knew the look of death on his brow.

And I knew, as I turned the page, that he would kill Stryker.

And there he was. Gorgeous and helpless and immobile in the center of this maelstrom, his head grasped between Joaquin’s large hands. The Shadow Aquarian began to pull, and I watched, horrified, as the strong but tenuous cording in Stryker’s neck stretched, the tendons beneath straining, a cry catching in his throat. Then, in what seemed like slow motion, his flesh gave. A horrible gurgle was yanked from a newly rent hole in that throat, and his head, popping, was hauled from his body. The light in the center of the page blinked out and was no more. The red glows dissolved and were simply, suddenly, gone. And the cacophony of martial voices died until there was only one.

A woman, dressed in the same robe as Stryker’s, rushed forward and sobbing, lifted Stryker’s head—just the head—into her lap. It lolled there, and she bent to it, crying and stroking his hair. I could see the familial resemblance through the tears and faint lines webbing her face.

Our lineage is matriarchal.

“God.” Unable to bear the scene any longer, I turned the page.

The woman was still there, but she was standing now, fists clenched, eyes burning, her shift sodden with her son’s blood. “There’s a traitor among us,” she said in a destroyed voice.

Jesus, I thought, slamming the comic book shut. This was a Light comic?

And was that what I was up against? Beings who appeared out of nowhere to rip heads from bodies? Off of superheroes?

“Ex-Excuse me.” Jolted, I looked up to find the photo clerk staring at me, eyes wide, face pasty, a scattering of photos at her feet. She swallowed hard, and I didn’t have to wonder how long she’d been standing there. “Th-These are the f-first few. I thought you might want them immediately.”

I tried out a smile on her. She took a step back, not that I could blame her. I sat forward, gathering the photos. “Go finish,” I said.

She ran back inside with a whimper, all the teen defiance gone. I leaned back again, wondering how I’d explain this away, and tried to catch my breath. Good thing too, because one glance at the handful of photos from the ground had the air fleeing my body again in an involuntary cry.

These images didn’t flash. They didn’t blur or glow or shoot light from the paper they were printed on. My photographer’s eye saw a dozen different ways to improve the composition, but there was absolutely no way to improve upon the moment. I lifted the top one close to my face, unable to keep my hands from shaking, and studied the one-dimensional and utterly heartbreaking image captured there.

I knew my man.

I’d known how to angle myself in the encroaching dawn so as to maximize the lighting without using the flash. I knew every angle and smoothly sculpted plane of his sturdy face. I knew the length and breadth of his fingertips, and the way they felt stroking my own. I knew what color his eyes were in the morning, their intensity deepened by dreams.

And I knew, at the moment this shot had been taken, Ben Traina had been thinking of me.

It had been just before full sunrise, and dawn was breaking beautifully over his face. The smile was secretive, too small to cause his eyes to crinkle up at the corners in the way I loved, but it was the contented smile of a man who was expecting to wake up and face the first day of the rest of his life. He thought I was alive. He didn’t yet know of a man named Butch and bodies tossed out plate-glass windows. I compared the image with the man who’d stopped me earlier today, and knew he’d never be this happy again. And neither would I.

A gust of air, carrying the scent of a nearby Dumpster, brought me back to the present. I looked up, mildly surprised to find myself still in front of the Quik-Mart. I’d been unaware of the passing time. I glanced at my watch, heard laughter—probably a man stumbling from the bar down the street—then shut it out, sighing over the sound.

Perhaps Warren could help Ben, I thought, turning my attention back to the photo. If he could change an identity, maybe he could erase a person’s memory so they no longer mourned a loved one. I bit my lip. Did I want to be forgotten? Did I want him to get over me, and turn those smiling morning eyes on someone else?

I recalled kissing him and I didn’t. Then I thought of how I’d seen him look after he thought me dead and I did. I thought of the lust that had ignited so effortlessly between us again, and I didn’t. Then I recalled the fury I’d seen on his face this afternoon, and I did.

“God, Ben,” I said, pressing the photos to my chest as I closed my eyes. “We’re never going to be this innocent again.”

Laughter sounded behind me again, closer.

The fear that punched at my heart was a physical blow. I rocked into a standing position instantly, my legs braced wide, head up, and I sniffed. Rot on the air. Decaying hate, bloodthirsty hunger. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Ajax. I don’t know how he’d found me, but he was coming, and quick.

I shoved the photos and comics into the duffel bag, zipping it as I raced into the store. I ducked down the first aisle and zigzagged to the back of the store, past cosmetics, lotions, shampoos, candy, and condoms, the security globe above capturing my every move. I fled past aisles stocked with visors and cheap T-shirts, there only because the words Las Vegas were splayed upon them in some manner, and quickly discovered that among the mundane and the kitsch and the items that made life oh-so convenient, there was one thing missing. A place to hide.

I should have run, I thought, blood churning. I should have taken off in the opposite direction of the stench and laughter, and run all the way to the Peppermill. To the safety of Warren or someone else who might know what to do.

Nobody can know who you really are, do you understand?

I looked again at the mirrored globe, and cursed Olivia’s reflected image. If Ajax didn’t kill me, Warren was surely going to do the job.

The automatic doors at the front of the store slid open. Through the security globe I saw a figure slide inside like a wisp of smoke, then disappear. He was following my scent, the fear now, and whatever emotion or pheromone that had alerted him to me in the first place. Seconds ticked by like bombs, and I felt the frantic despair rats must feel in a maze. There was, very simply, nowhere to hide. Then my eyes fell to the clearance bin in the middle of the aisle. Nowhere to hide, I thought, except in plain sight.

Tossing my duffel aside, I dove for the mishmashed items; remaindered Halloween costumes made of colored felt and cotton meant to wear away in one washing. All I needed was a mask. I tossed aside bear bodies, bumblebees, superheroes—ha!—and butterfly wings, and finally unearthed a cheap plastic mask. It would only cover half my face, but it’d fit. Fumbling it over my head, I snagged a baseball cap sporting the famous Welcome to Las Vegas sign on it, and tucked Olivia’s golden locks up inside. Then I turned, breathing hard, and waited.

His laugh, the one I’d mistaken for drunken mirth, was the first thing to reach me. But if Ajax were drunk, it was with the intoxication of anticipated success and unrestrained violence, not hard alcohol.

When he appeared, the first thing I noticed was his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, then the anticipatory twitch of his long fingers; those effective, effeminate hands. His lanky skeleton pressed beneath his skin as he moved, and I was almost surprised his bones didn’t clack together when he walked. Already in place, his feral grin widened when he saw me.

“I have to hand it to Warren. This is his best disguise yet…other than his own, that is,” and his laugh was so cruel it was clear he wasn’t speaking of Warren’s vagrant persona. “I’d have never guessed it was you.”

My eyes, beneath the slit of plastic, flickered up to the mirrored ball. A pink pig’s snout protruded from beneath the rim of the hat, but my face—Olivia’s face, and her hair—were perfectly hidden. Dignified it wasn’t, but it did the job.

“I’m guarding my identity,” I said, unnecessarily.

“I see that.” Ajax took a step forward, his long coat swirling around his ankles. I mirrored him, taking one step back. “But, very soon, neither your plastic mask nor your veil of flesh and bone are going to matter. I’m going to rip your head from your body and swim in your blood.”

I thought of Stryker and shuddered. Ajax laughed. “God, but your fear is delicious! It’s like an aperitif…a promise of delights to come. Can you see it the way I do? Every emotion emanating from your body in a silvery wave, rolling in sheets of phosphorescent emotion. See, there goes a particularly strong one. Like the tide rushing from the sea, nice and foamy at the edges as it roars for escape.”

I clenched my teeth and brought a mental barrier slamming down in front of me, the way Micah had taught. I held my breath until I was sure I could control it, then exhaled slowly. Ajax frowned. “Quick learner, aren’t you, Jo? I didn’t expect you to find your glyph so quickly either, but of course you’ve had help.”

I glanced down. The symbol that had been sprayed on my chest earlier that day was suddenly pulsing with light, a white heat throbbing beneath my black turtleneck. Damn it, I thought. I bet that Yulyia bitch wasn’t even from the Ukraine.

The rip of steel through air had my head whipping up. Ajax had his poker gripped in both hands, point down, poised in front of him like a walking cane. One with extremely sharp teeth.

“Tell me, do you also have your conduit?”

“Yes,” I lied.

“Let’s see it.”

I swallowed hard, motioning with my chin. “It’s in that duffel bag.”

Smiling, he sheathed his weapon and lifted the bag by its soft handles. “Never leave your conduit unattended, Joanna. You, more than anyone, should know the power in turning an enemy’s own weapon against him.”

He lifted the bag, but hesitated, brows drawing in closely, nostrils working like a rabbit’s. He was sensing my lie. I had to distract him, fill the air with an emotion other than anxious hope.

“Powerful,” I agreed, “and Butch’s scimitar was particularly fun. Do you know I began by chopping his hands off at the wrists? I think the majority of blood loss occurred there, but I also forked his tongue and watched him choke on his own blood. I’ve never seen so much blood,” I said, shaking my head, and that was true. Remembering, I was able to conjure up the taste of molten vengeance in my mouth. I exhaled the memory in Ajax’s direction.

He reflexively lifted a hand, shielding his face, and glared at me from over the top of it. “He was like a brother to me.”

“Well, Ajax,” I said, and leaned forward, “your brother pissed himself when I used his own blade against him. Now that’s what I call a wave of fear.”

I braced myself in case he was going to rush me, but rage had him ripping into my duffel, blindly searching for a weapon that wasn’t there. It also had his fingers inadvertently running across the weapons that were.

Carl, the little wookie, had been right. Getting zapped by an enemy’s manual wasn’t pretty. I had the five agent of Light comics stacked on top of the Shadows, and Ajax, it seemed, got a good handful. He dropped the duffel bag immediately, but the damage was already done. The skin on his right palm charred before my eyes, his eyes rolled so far back in his skull that they were snowy white orbs, and his hair sizzled down to within a half inch of his skull.

I was already turning, ready to run like an Olympic sprinter, when I saw the photos of Ben scattered in the aisle.

Shit. Ajax would recover. Ajax, I thought, swallowing hard, would see them. Then he’d hunt down the one man I’d ever loved, and torture him the way I’d tortured Butch. He’d do it to spite me, or bait me, or lure me. And I, of course, would come.

The fingers on Ajax’s good hand were already beginning to twitch to life, and his eyes were rolling back into place, independent of one another, like twin reels on a slot machine. He’d have himself a jackpot if I were still kneeling at his feet when they hit home.

I lunged for the photos, gathering them quickly. He groaned and staggered forward. He bumped my arm with his left foot and I cursed as he fumbled for his weapon. Springing forward from a crouch, I wrapped my arms around his spindly but strong legs and sent his body crashing forward. His chin landed with an audible crack on the hard linoleum, and he nearly impaled himself on his own poker. Nearly, but unfortunately not quite.

Pivoting, I reached for the poker, but his hand closed around the grip first, so I redirected and kicked the duffel from his reach. I leapt over his body just as three feet of barbed supernatural steel came arching my way. Scooping up the bag, I felt fire graze my right hamstring, but I was already moving away, stumbling, then breaking into a full-fledged sprint.

I was nearly out the door when a fresh scream sliced the air in two. Safety was feet away, but there was no escaping the horrible stuttering sobs behind me. There was nothing heroic about it; just a slight pivoting of the feet as I turned back around, and the still-fresh memory of the way my sister, also an innocent, had died at the hands of another Shadow agent.

The photo girl’s eye makeup ran down her cheeks in black streaks. Her blue eyes would have seemed transparent in comparison, but they were weighed in their sockets with tears and congealing fear. I probably couldn’t save her. I hadn’t been able to save Olivia, and I sure as hell didn’t know how to save myself, but if I ran from this—and God knows I wanted to—I wouldn’t be able to live with myself anyway. The duffel dropped from my hand with a dull thud, and I stepped back in the store.

Ajax began to laugh.

“You move fast, Archer,” Ajax said, his voice merry with observation. The girl whimpered.

“Don’t,” I said, taking another step forward.

“You should’ve run when you had the chance. It’s one thing I can’t quite understand about the Light signs. Putting your lives at risk for mortals when there are just so many of them about.” He waved his poker in the air like it was a wand. “When are you going to realize they’re expendable? They’re nothing. Just flesh, weakness, and stench. That the agents of Light would care for them at all boggles the mind…and makes you so much easier to kill.”

I read his deadly intention before he moved, and dove half a second before he flipped the poker in his hand. The weapon, a missile now, sank home exactly where I’d been standing, its steel tip buried in a pyramid of Coke cases, sending sodas exploding in the air as it burst into flame.

I began to sprint toward him before the smoke could clear, darting across aisles with no particular plan except to close the distance between Ajax and me and bring that terrified clerk within arm’s reach. I crossed two aisles and raced up a third, to end up behind him. He pulled another poker from beneath his jacket, and this time there wasn’t enough distance to duck, dive, or even blink. Ajax laughed.

“Yes, you’re very fast,” he repeated, turning the hilt of the blade over and over in his hand. “But let’s see if you’re fast enough.”

He didn’t throw it. I knew he wouldn’t, even before he inverted the tip and plunged it into the teenager’s heart. Her screaming cut off into a gasping whine, then a gurgling sigh, and finally an irregular sucking noise, like she was breathing through a bent straw. Ajax twisted the poker, making no move to dislodge it from her chest cavity, just twisting and turning like he was stirring soup. As she died, his eyes never left mine.

“Why?” I asked, my breath, body, and mind going utterly numb. I pulled my remaining energy inward, knowing if I didn’t that I’d collapse right there, weighed down by guilt and revulsion, and the knowledge that I’d caused this. Again. “Why do you kill innocent people?”

He dumped the girl’s body on the floor and wiped his hands on his jacket. “Pain amuses me. Death amuses me.”

“Then you’re going to find this hilarious.” Ajax found out just how fast I was, and it was fast enough.

We hit the floor with a loud smack, rolling together behind the photo counter. Smells became colors behind my eyes; yellow-tinged chemicals, dusky blood, tar-thick smoke, and Ajax’s breath, putrid as pus, audible in my ear. The taste of him was sour as my teeth found flesh and bit down hard. He howled, anger laced with pain, and pulled away, his blood joining the noxious feast. I smiled as he cried out again, only vaguely aware in some still sane part of my mind that I was still wearing the pig’s mask, and with another human’s blood running down my chin, I must have looked like an animal indeed.

We leapt at each other again.

He should have been too fast for me, at least the “me” I’d been nine weeks earlier, but I was countering his moves; meeting blow with blow, and each parry with feint. My training, coupled with the strength I’d been gifted with during metamorphosis, was the most delicious melding of power I could ever imagine. Aggression fused with streaming adrenaline, unadulterated hate, and manifested in a speed I never knew I possessed.

I reveled in it. My strikes were preemptive. I landed punches first and hard. I gained stronger footing. I swung out with my legs. I was confident…and that, of course, was my mistake.

I landed a blow to the thigh designed to take out his left leg and Ajax seemed to stumble. When I moved in for the follow-up, he wrong-footed me, and plowed a right hook into the exposed part of my lower face. He was on me before I recovered, and we hit the ground again, this time my body taking the full impact of our combined weight.

My breath was driven from my chest, and a hollow snap accompanied by an acute shot of pain told me at least one rib had cracked. Ajax flipped me easily, mounting me at the waist and settling his weight on my tender midsection. I struggled for breath, but it wasn’t coming. Ajax laughed…as he had upon scenting me, and upon killing the young, innocent clerk. I was getting sick of that dry, bone-rattling sound.

I swiped the back of my one free hand over my mouth, and came away with blood. When I repeated the motion, it came away dry. I was healing faster than ever. Unfortunately, Ajax noticed this too.

“What? No more tricks, little Archer?” He placed his palm on my chest in what could have been mistaken for an intimate gesture…until he leaned forward. I groaned as pain bloomed behind my lids and the freshly healed rib popped again.

He chuckled under his breath, and I could see where this was heading. Sitting back, his weight still pinning me down, he tilted his head and considered me more closely.

“Did you know, I almost felt sorry for you when we first met? I remember thinking, ‘This poor little girl has no idea why she exists, never mind what she can do or who she might become.’ It was pitiful, really. All that ripe, raw power beginning to glow beneath your skin. All that pent-up ability straining to burst free, trapped instead by that stupid, ignorant mind. Not to mention this fragile wall of flesh.” He popped the rib again, and my head swam with pain. I closed my eyes, afraid I was going to pass out. Ironically enough, his voice kept me anchored in the present.

“I am not, as you might expect, totally void in my feeling for others.” I opened one eye to see if he was serious, but had difficulty seeing through the slits in my tilted mask. His voice sounded serious. “Butch, for example. I cared for him.”

Great. He’d once cared deeply for another psychopath. I wanted to tell him it didn’t necessarily qualify him for sainthood, but I could actually feel my rib stitching together again in my chest and didn’t dare.

“I went on that first date,” he continued conversationally, “intending to kill you quickly. Mercifully.”

“So what changed?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even. Trying to breathe through the pain so I could think of something else to do.

Ajax wasn’t fooled by my question. Leaning forward again, he popped that fragile rib easily. “You opened your mouth.”

He caved in another of my ribs just for pleasure. I cried out at the fresh break, unable to stop myself this time.

“Look at me, Joanna. Look at me,” he repeated patiently, like speaking to a child. He sunk his fingernails into my jaw, forcing my gaze straight. His face was somewhat obscured through the mask, but I caught his eyes probing mine. “I want you to know who I am, deep down, when I kill you.”

“I know who you are,” I managed as his fingers sunk deeper into my cheeks. “I’ve seen you without your mask before.”

“In the restaurant, yes, but seeing is not knowing. Observation is no match for experience.”

Oh God. This didn’t sound good.

“They lied to you, Joanna.” He almost looked pained as he said this. “There is no precious balance between good and evil. No yin and yang. No good or bad. Light or Shadow.”

“Apparently your mother disagreed with that.”

Ajax froze momentarily, then patted my cheek, hard. “She was wrong. Misguided. She never learned, or must have forgotten, that all there really is in this world are varying degrees of evil. That, and the point at which every human being breaks.”

“She didn’t believe that.”

He grinned sadistically. “She did in the end.”

“Well, I don’t.”

He leaned closer, eyes gleaming. “I’ll make you a believer too.”

I recoiled, but there was nowhere to go.

“Let’s both remove our disguises, shall we?”

He gouged his fingertips through the eyes of my mask so forcefully only the narrowness of the slats saved my eyesight. Just as quickly as he lifted the pig’s snout away, however, it snapped back into place, the plastic edges stinging my skin. His weight was gone so suddenly it was as if he’d been lifted straight into the air. A wild war cry, accompanied by a flurry of wind, swept through the building.

Freed, and desperate to stay that way, I backpedaled until my head slammed against the photo counter. Ripping the mask from my face, I strained to see where Ajax had gone, as well as who, or what, was in here with us. The answer was immediate. I was lifted to my feet, none too gently, and found myself facing an angry set of brown eyes.

“Warren,” I gasped. My eyes darted away from him, searching for Ajax, finding him in a crouch atop an aisle barrier facing two other men. The first was stocky but obviously strong, the other lithe as he leapt the entire seven feet in height to square off against Ajax. Both were armed, and both their chests were glowing, pulsing vibrantly. I pushed at Warren’s hands, but he jerked me back into place, yanking my ball cap low.

“Don’t let him see your face.” Cuffing me by the neck like a mother cat with her kitten, he forced my head lower again. Then he half dragged me to the exit, shielding me with his own body. Even so, I felt the moment Ajax’s eyes lit upon my back. I felt their probing, their impotent fury, and the oily slickness of his thoughts just behind that stare. Outnumbered, he turned away with an outraged cry.

“I’ll find you out, Archer!” he called out. “I’ll discover your true identity and when I’m finished with you, you will believe!”

Warren’s fingers tightened on my neck, squelching my instinct to turn, and he blew what I took to be a raspberry at Ajax while ushering me out the door. The last thing I heard was the report of feet pounding across linoleum, a back door slam, and two other pairs giving chase. We headed in the opposite direction, back toward the Strip, where the light bled into the street.

“My duffel!” I said, halting suddenly.

“Don’t stop,” he ordered, pushing harder. “Felix will get it.”

“Can you at least let go of my neck? I’m getting a kink.”

Warren released me so abruptly I stumbled. He glanced side to side, pivoting so he was walking backward, then turned again before taking off in a trot. “Hurry. The time of crossing is near, and we’re not safe yet.”

We ran, Warren openly vigilant, and me trying to breathe through the ache in my side which was finally, if slowly, receding. The silhouette of the Peppermill loomed closer, contoured from the other side by the setting sun, and I could see people dining through the long plate-glass windows, oblivious to our plight. It was unsettling how normal everything looked. The foot tourists hardly glanced up as we wove between cars in the restaurant’s asphalt lot. Perhaps they thought it normal in Vegas for an unshaven bum in a leather trench coat to be jogging with a girl whose sweater was half singed from her chest.

“This way.” We darted around the building’s far corner and into a narrow alley that reeked of urine. A cab waited there, lights off, and a couple stood at the window, arguing loudly with the car’s sole occupant.

The man loomed over the driver, one hand propped on the hood, irritation coating his voice. “Look, are you on duty or not?”

“I want to go to the Luxor,” the woman whined.

The headlights flipped on to illuminate us in their beam.

“He’s waiting for us,” Warren said sharply. The woman took one look and whimpered. I didn’t know what I looked like, but Warren was striding toward them at a decidedly aggressive pace, limp exaggerated, his coat billowing around his ankles. The couple backed down the alley, not exactly the safest choice of exits, but at least it was away from us. The cab inched forward, and the doors on each side swung open.

“Get in,” Warren ordered, skirting to the opposite side. I did, wordlessly, wincing as the leather seat caught the gash in the back of my thigh. Leaning my head back, I closed my eyes, and sighed as the door shut and the car began to move.

“I smell Ajax,” the driver said, singsonging the name. I peeked to find him regarding me through the rearview mirror. All I could make out of his face were his eyes, but they were wide and crinkled at the edges as he laughed at some private joke. I didn’t see what was so funny, and neither did Warren.

“That’s because Ajax somehow tracked her,” he answered, shifting to face me. “Tell me, Olivia, because I feel like I’m missing something here, but what part of ‘meet me at the Peppermill’ means ‘go fight Ajax at the corner drugstore’?”

I turned my head away. “He started it.”

“Do you know what you’ve done? What you could have undone?”

I clenched my teeth and my jaw ached where Ajax’s fingers had dug into bone. I knew the feeling would fade, that I would soon heal, but the knowledge alleviated nothing right now.

“What did you do to call him?”

I glanced at the driver who was still staring at me, a lucky rabbit’s foot swinging beneath his mirrored image, his eyes still amused, then turned to Warren. “Nothing.”

“You did something,” he said, squaring on me in his seat. “He found you despite the masking agent we administered, and in less than two weeks. I want to know how.”

Apparently I hadn’t gotten to that comic yet. I shrugged.

Warren stared at me, his face stony and cold, eyes unblinking. “Did you invoke his name?”

I shook my head.

“Did you go after him yourself?”

“No.” I clenched my teeth again. The pain was gone.

“Damn it, Olivia!” He punched his fist into the seat in front of him. “You’re not going to keep getting this lucky! What did you do?”

I leaned toward him and spaced my words evenly. “Don’t. Yell. At me. Anymore.”

“Warren’s right,” the driver said conversationally. “You are lucky.”

“Not just lucky…stupid lucky!”

I looked at him, and I swear his outline was singed in red. This manipulative fruitcake thought he had reason to be furious with me? While my sister was dead, my life was over, and my bones were stitching together inside of me, again?

“I said don’t fucking yell at me!”

The words ricocheted like shots off the inside of the cab, shaking it on its wheels. The driver gripped the steering wheel, eyes on the road and no longer smiling, and the smell of singed hair hung in the air. I glared at Warren, and realized he’d backed up in his seat.

I knew then my Shadow side was showing. That hadn’t been my voice. It was deeper, lower than my natural range, the vocal cords scorched by fury. I swallowed down the anger, the heat scalding my lungs, and turned away again. Tears boiled in my eyes. Shit. Shit! What was happening to me?

“Jesus,” the driver said, exhaling deeply. It was the last thing anyone said for a long time.

“Did you kill someone?” Warren finally asked.

I looked at him in blatant disbelief, shocked to the bone. “Well, it was on my to-do list right after get pedicure, but, no, I hadn’t quite gotten to it yet!”

Warren shook his head, looking a lot older than I’d ever seen him. “This isn’t a joke.”

“Wrong, Warren! This whole thing is a joke! A supernatural organization is protecting Las Vegas? Give me a break! Information passed on through comic books…and m-my goddamned chest lights up like a Christmas ornament when someone wants to kill me!” Now I just sounded panicked, frightened rather than frightening. “It’s all a fucking joke, and guess what? Me—my life!—is the fucking punch line!”

I felt laughter bubbling up in my throat, bitter as bile, and I held it back because I knew it’d come out in a scream, and I was afraid it would never stop. Swallowing hard, feeling light-headed, I said, “Don’t tell me what to think about what I’ve seen since you entered my life. Don’t tell me what to laugh at, or what’s funny and what’s not. I’ll fucking howl at the moon if I feel like it. And,” I added, pointing my finger at his chest, “don’t ever, ever tell me how to feel!”

And then I really did start laughing. I laughed and laughed until the manic sound soured and turned to tears. Then I cried and cried.

And then I cried some more.