The Scent of Shadows

20

An hour passed before they got Tekla settled. Afterward, Chandra was sent to tell the others the training session in Saturn’s Orchard would be postponed, and the rest of us gathered in Greta’s office, where she busied herself with making yet more tea, though her hands shook as she stole nervous glances back at me. For the longest time Warren didn’t look at me at all.

We were trying to figure out what had happened to Tekla. I was relieved because they too had seen the Tulpa leering from Tekla’s vacant face, but my relief was diluted because even Warren didn’t know how it’d happened. But after I told them about the night before, and how a memory had turned into a nightmare—the Tulpa speaking to me as clearly as if he’d picked up a phone—he was pretty clear on the why.

“Obviously Ajax has told him about you,” Warren said, pushing his teacup aside. “He knows you’re his opposite, the new Archer. He’s letting you know he’s targeted you.”

“He wants vengeance for Zoe’s betrayal,” Greta said softly, shuddering.

“Okay,” I said slowly, not liking it, but following easily enough. “But how’s he getting in my dreams? In the sanctuary?”

“Well, he’s not really in the sanctuary, dear,” Greta answered, steadier after my explanation, the suspicion that Tekla’s accusations had raised in her seemingly tucked away, if not entirely forgotten. “Dreams are simply psychic energy, and the one you had last night was linked to a particular past trauma. My guess is that you had a hard day yesterday, and like Tekla, that left your mind more open to his influence.”

“So he can get to me? At any time?”

“Not physically.” Warren shook his head adamantly. “You’re safe in here.”

“So why was there a woman with a demon’s face straddling me, Warren?” I said sharply.

But he merely stared back at me, and the suspicion was still clearly alive in his face.

“Look,” I said, rising from my chair so quickly it nearly tipped backward. “I didn’t do this! I didn’t even touch her. I said my name and she charged me. She looked right at me and she told me…” I trailed off, remembering exactly what she told me.

“That she ‘sees’ you,” Greta finished for me, almost reluctantly. “And then she called you a traitor.”

She had. And though Warren was silent as we left Greta and headed toward Saturn’s Orchard, he didn’t need to say anything. His anger arrowed inside of me in white-hot flashes that burst in my core, rippling outward to die in my limbs. What remained, though, was a shard of well-hidden guilt that the anger had encased like a hard, protective shell.

Warren shot me a quick glance as we ascended a stout stairwell, his jaw clenching, and the feeling immediately subsided.

I looked away, pretending I hadn’t noticed, but it made me wonder. What did Warren have to feel guilty about?

There was a single door facing us as we reached the top of the landing, and Warren stepped aside so I could peer through the window. After a moment, despite it all, I felt a smile slip over my face. There were people; a few I recognized, a few I didn’t, but that wasn’t why I was smiling. In a room of unrelieved white, mats lined the floor and lower walls, and punching bags dangled from steel beams set at cross purpose to one another. Along the far wall were baskets of ropes, pads, and mitts, full to overflowing. It was a dojo. Sure, it was shaped like a pyramid, and its walls were mirrored from floor to pointy little tip, but it was a dojo all the same. For the first time since yesterday I felt at home.

The tight handful of people—and tight they were; you could read it in their closed expressions, their crossed arms, their wary attentiveness—seemed to have been waiting for us. Greta’s tea turned acidic in my belly as I looked at them, the mirrors in the room making it appear there were more of them than there were. I didn’t even have to sniff at the air to know Chandra had already relayed what had happened in the sick ward.

“Attention, please,” Warren said unnecessarily. “This is Olivia, the new Archer of our Zodiac.”

Nods and murmured greetings met this, which I answered with one of my own. I let my eyes pass over Chandra, who’d begun scowling the moment we’d stepped through the door, and settled on Vanessa’s face, open and friendly by comparison, though I noted a wariness there that I hadn’t seen in the locker room.

Micah was hunched in the corner, on a bench that looked like it might give at any moment under the towering bulk of his weight. Felix was stretching, and he sent me a little hand wave from the center of the mat. There was another man I didn’t recognize leaning against the incline of the far wall, one leg propped behind him, arms folded over his chest as he openly studied me with dark eyes.

One by one I began to do the same, sizing each of them up, quickly filing them into three categories. Possible allies; Micah, Felix and Vanessa. Adversaries; certainly Chandra. And the X factor, the man I had yet to meet. There was Warren, of course, but sometimes I just couldn’t tell with him.

“As Olivia hasn’t been raised in the Zodiac, she doesn’t yet know where her talents lie, she doesn’t have a personal conduit, she can’t track Shadow agents, and for now she can’t leave the sanctuary…”

“Some superhero,” Chandra muttered.

“We’ve already found her to be athletic and a quick learner, but she knows nothing of our history or the way we wage war so she has a lot of catching up to do. I expect all of you to help her, and in time I have confidence she’ll live up to her…potential.”

He’d been about to say something else. I caught the syllables wanting to form on his lips, but he’d changed his mind at the last moment. Still, we were connected, and the words neatly formed themselves in my own mind. Lineage. Legacy. Legend.

So he still wanted to believe, I thought, glancing over at him. What’d happened with Tekla hadn’t changed that, at least.

“If she’s so helpless, how’d she kill Butch?”

All heads turned to the man across the room. His brown eyes flickered when they met mine, but his face remained otherwise expressionless, no emotion skimming the surface of that still exterior, no judgment one way or the other as he looked at me to answer.

Well, two could play at that game. I batted my eyelashes, folded my hands in front of me, and answered as Olivia would. “He tripped.”

“Tripped?” Chandra repeated coldly.

“Over my cat.”

It was more in keeping with Olivia’s image than, say, Oh, I tortured the bastard until he keeled over and bled out at my feet. To my surprise, they all began to nod. Except for the lone man I didn’t know. He just continued to watch me with that cool and steady gaze. Probably not in the ally category, I thought wryly.

“So, you had a warden even before you knew you were a member of the Zodiac troop?” Felix asked. “That means you’re highly intuitive.”

“Intuition is a talent we all share,” Chandra muttered.

Vanessa, either missing or ignoring the venom in her voice, added, “We augment that with other talents that complement our place in the Zodiac.”

“What other talents?” I asked, fighting to keep my eyes from straying to the corner man. With him, I couldn’t even fathom a guess.

“Start with your talisman,” Micah said, standing. “What is it?”

“Your glyph,” Warren said, nudging me.

“Okay.” I unzipped my fitted jacket.

“One guess where her talents lie,” Chandra muttered.

I faltered, cheeks flushing hotly, and began to zip it up again.

“No, it is a talent,” the man told her, and this time when I looked at him, I saw something other than mild disinterest. He pushed off from the wall, moving lithely, almost sliding toward me. In the way of most alpha males, he took up a lot of space.

“People will underestimate you,” he said, coming to a stop in front of me. “They’ll see only the shape of you, the curves and swells and softness. It’s as much a camouflage as fatigues and face paint in the Amazon, because people will see what they expect to see.” He gave me a smile that said, But we know different.

I had a sudden urge to slap that look off his face. Whatever he thought he knew about me couldn’t compare to the reality of who I was, or who I’d been. He didn’t fucking know me at all. But I held still, watching carefully as he reached out and lowered my zipper for me. “And you are?”

“Hunter,” he supplied, as respectfully as a man could when he had a hand on your top. His skin, I noticed, was that pale gold that couldn’t be bottled or bought; the hair, glossy and black and gathered in a low, blunt ponytail. As contained, I thought, as the rest of him. After opening my jacket, he moved to the side so the others could see. I kept my hands steady as I stretched the sport tank down, but it was an effort. The places where his fingers had skimmed my flesh were warm, like little pilot lights had been ignited beneath the surface.

I kept my eyes firmly away from Warren. I didn’t want to see his smirk, or that knowledge in his eyes, because I knew he could feel the effect this Hunter was having upon me. So I just kept my head down as I revealed the skin just above the point where my cleavage began to rise.

“Hunter’s our weaponeer and head tactician,” Warren supplied, a smile in his voice. Bastard. “Anything martial lies in his sphere of expertise.”

I decided a little animosity would go a long way toward helping me regain my equilibrium, so I tilted my head and glanced back up at Hunter. “Anything?”

Hunter shrugged, the slightest of movements. “I’m Aries. Physicality is where my talents lie.”

“Hand combat?” I asked. I tried not to sound challenging. Really, I did.

Okay, no I didn’t.

“Why?” he said, rising to the bait, and I saw what he meant about his physicality. He’d barely moved a muscle and yet there seemed to be less space between us than before. “You like to fight?”

I ignored Warren when he cleared his throat next to me, and shrugged, just an innocent lamb waiting to take instruction from Mr. Martial Arts. I quirked a brow at him. “I like to win.”

“At what? Candyland?”

I whirled to give Chandra a fist-sized example of “at what,” but Warren was there, blocking me with his body, eyes burrowing into mine. “I have to leave now. I have a session with Greta. I trust you’ll be fine without me, Olivia?”

The memory of Warren’s suspicion as it roiled hot in my gut flashed in my mind. One guess, I thought, pursing my lips wryly, as to what this “session” was about. “Then trust must be one of your major talents,” I said, so low only he could hear, turning my animosity on him.

He shot me a look of bland disapproval, which I returned with a wrinkle of my nose and a little finger wave. Just like Olivia.

“So what is it?” Micah said, leaning forward to look at my glyph after Warren’s strange slap-and-slide gait had receded from earshot. I used the opportunity to back away from Hunter, glancing down as the others crowded in closer. The shape of it was pale against my skin, a birthmark in reverse, and I shuddered, recalling how it had burned on my chest, pulsing there like a second heart. “It’s a stiletto.”

Chandra scoffed. “It’s not a stiletto. It’s a fucking bow and arrow.”

I looked again and saw that she was, just possibly, right. Oh, God. Peroxide poisoning. Already. I glared at Micah as embarrassment washed over me. This was followed by a surprising flash of disappointment. A part of me, it seemed, had wanted it to be a stiletto.

“It’s just smeared,” I said stubbornly, and turned to the mirrored wall behind me.

“Chandra’s right,” Hunter said, slipping behind me. Studying him through the mirrored surface, I decided my first impression of him had been wrong. He wasn’t devoid of expression at all. The quirk of his mouth gave away a little spark of humor, and intelligence swam beneath hooded eyes. There was something commanding in the way he’d used up the room when he’d crossed to me, noting everything and nothing at the same time.

And despite the warning bells pealing through my mind, I had to wonder, Was there anything more alluring than a dangerous man?

Hunter reached out, broad shoulders blocking the view of the others, and lifted a hand to trace the lines of my glyph, lighting little arrows of fire along my flesh. “It is a bow and arrow. See?”

Olivia’s voice, a happy twittering bluebird, bounced off the soft tissue of my mind. How lucky am I? It sang. First day on the job and I get a superhero boyfriend!

Meanwhile my own voice had fled me entirely. I just stood there, staring at my chest. Total nipple hard-on. Great. I glanced up into Hunter’s face, now clearly amused. “And what’s your talent?”

He smiled. “I have many.”

I’ll just bet.

“A bow and arrow is a strong talisman,” he continued, his gravelly voice louder now. “Obviously it’s the Archer’s symbol, but it’s a personal motif as well. I’ll bet one of your talents is honesty—”

“To a fault,” Micah chimed in.

“Determination. Loyalty. Pride.”

“Don’t let Hunter charm you,” Chandra broke in. “All Archers have those qualities.”

I turned to find myself facing hollow eyes, and knew then that she and I would never be friends. I raised one slim brow. “Do you?”

“In spades,” she said, her upper lip curling.

“What do you know so far about conduits?” Hunter asked, moving to stand between us.

Conduits are conductors of energy; conductors of the agent’s express will. Each conduit is specifically made for its handler; to compliment his or her talents, and channel his or her will through means of violence, death and gore. Though Olivia, of course, would never have put it that way.

“Uh, well, most of them are pretty sharp,” I said, drawing laughs from Micah and Felix. Hunter narrowed his eyes, Chandra rolled hers. “I know they come in different shapes, sizes, some of them are pyrotechnic, and each one is made to complement the strengths of its owner.”

There. That was a nicely balanced answer. Not too embarrassing.

“That’s right. When I design a weapon, I take into consideration the agent’s particular physical and mental strengths, then fashion a conduit specifically for their hands. It takes on a life of its own that way. Becomes your companion, your match. Of course, that means I need complete honesty if the weapon is to maximize all your gifts. Do that, though, and I’ll create something to suit your temperament, your mind, and your heart.”

“Something that blows bubbles from its tip, perhaps?”

“Jesus, Chandra.” Felix dropped his head into his hands. I could tell he, and the rest of them, thought I wasn’t going to be able to handle this angry little hermaphrodite. Laughable, though it meant I was doing my job at being Olivia. I picked lint off my jacket, as if I hadn’t heard.

Hunter unsheathed—or unraveled, rather—his own conduit, and offered it to me. It was a twelve-foot-long whip, with barbed tips studding the lower half of the slim black leather.

My heart began to pound. Down, girl.

“What else do you know about their use?”

I took the whip in hand, studying it carefully, and this time pride had me elaborating a degree. “I know if you’re struck by an enemy’s conduit, you’ll die, even if you’re more than human. But if you use a conduit against its own agent, its companion,” I said, using his word for the weapon wielder, “you win a little something in their death. A bit of their power, and a rush of energy, a temporary high. They die, and you have twelve hours to walk this earth undetected. Nobody can find you; human, Shadow, or Light. It’s like you don’t even exist.”

Hunter held out his hand. I glanced at it as I handed his conduit back. You could tell a lot about a person by studying their hands. His were tanned and elegant, despite the calluses studding his palm.

“Butch?” he asked, coiling the whip.

I nodded.

“How did it feel?”

I glanced at Vanessa. “I felt invisible. Invincible.”

The room was silent. “No one else has ever done that. Used a conduit against its own Shadow companion. It’s a powerful magic.”

“It fits the legend—” Felix said, looking at Hunter.

“Oh, come on,” Chandra said abruptly. “This? This…cream puff is the Kairos? The gifted individual on whom all our fates hinge? I mean, get real!”

Nobody said anything, though, and she folded her arms over her chest. “Didn’t any of you hear what I said about Tekla?”

“And didn’t you hear me say that if you were going to start that up again you should do it in front of Warren?” Micah answered sharply. “You know how he feels about…her.” He motioned my way, and for the first time I saw a shadow flicker across his gaze. I straightened with a jolt as it struck me that Micah might not fully believe in me himself.

“Warren was there! He saw Tekla accuse her!” Chandra said, challenging me to deny it. “She did, didn’t she? She called you a traitor!”

“Oh, and your perception wouldn’t happen to be skewed in any way, would it, Chandra?”

“Shut up, Felix.”

“Shut up, Felix,” he mimicked.

I’d stopped paying attention to the two of them, though. The room had darkened, and I felt a shift as though the ground itself was moving. Then color swirled over the mirrored walls, psychedelic waves turning the room into a cavernous love shack. Charles Manson’s love shack, I thought, shuddering as an onyx wave washed over me.

“It’s a mood room,” Vanessa said in answer to my unspoken question. “It reacts to emotion. When we train it follows the battle, tracking who’s winning. See those circles over there?”

I did. Through the colorful spears of light bounding across the mat, two diametrically opposed ovals faced off against one another.

“Go stand on one,” she urged.

I stepped forward and found the surface spongy, rather than firm like a normal dojo mat. But there was no risk of twisting an ankle. It just seemed to move with my feet, reaching up through my arches to support my movement. Gaining the first circle, the colors suddenly whipped away from the floor and walls, replaced by infinite blackness, as if I was standing on a platform in the middle of the universe. Thus, I realized, the spongy floor. If not for the support, I’d have lost all sense of equilibrium. Then tiny lights popped up, stars pricking the universe, and floating among them was a tilted cross with an arrow on one end.

“Huh. The Archer’s glyph,” Felix said, looking pointedly at Chandra. “Never seen that before.”

“Fuck yourself…” she muttered, but the jab seemed to take some of the wind from her sails. “You didn’t see it. You didn’t see him.”

“All right. Enough.” I stepped out of the circle and the universe flickered, then died away. The mirrored walls of the pyramid reappeared, blinding, but only for a moment. “How can I possibly be a traitor? I just got here. I didn’t even know about the Zodiac or this troop until a few weeks ago…right, Micah? I certainly didn’t know about Stryker.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Chandra insisted before Micah could speak. “Tekla is psionic, and she’s psychic…or she was. She can see what you’re going to do. She knows it even before you do.”

“So she was telling the future back there? That I was going to betray you all?” I looked around for a reaction. No one answered yes, but no one said no either. I shook my head in exasperation and disgust. “Why would I? I have nothing to gain from it.”

“Your father does.”

“You mean the being that’s trying to kill me?” I shot back, whirling toward Chandra. “The one that just used Tekla to attack me in the hall?” I scoffed. “Yeah, I’m totally working on his behalf.”

“Well, I believe you,” Felix said, coming to stand at my side. “We knew the Kairos was going to be both Shadow and Light. It was foretold. So now we deal with it. Besides, Warren wants you here.”

Well, he had, I thought wryly. But I didn’t share that with Felix. It felt good to have someone on my side.

“Too bad it doesn’t matter what you believe or what Warren wants,” Chandra said, and a blue-green spark shot out across the ceiling. It bounded overhead, and her grin looked gaseous, evil in the receding light. “We still get to vote.”

“Vote?”

And that was all she needed to shore up her confidence. She lifted her square jaw and fisted her hands on her hips. “That’s right. You weren’t raised in the Zodiac, and you learned nothing in your first two life cycles. Your mother’s actions, or inaction, has displaced you and unbalanced the rest of us. Just like a rogue agent.”

“This is Zoe Archer’s daughter!” Vanessa sounded outraged.

“Yeah, what’s your lineage, Chandra? And drunken pity fucks that follow failed assignments don’t count.”

My brows rose at that, and I expected another “Fuck you, Felix,” but Chandra simply clenched her jaw against the jab—one she’d obviously heard before—and kept her ire trained on me. I’d have tolerated this—until she stepped into my personal space.

“All I’m saying,” she said, angling her head up so she was staring me dead in the eye, “is that the Kairos should at least be someone who can track the moon’s rise and fall without first referring to a map.”

“Someone as handsome as you perhaps?”

The oxygen was sucked from the room on a group inhalation. Clouds coiled over the walls, gray building upon gray, until the slanted ceiling was thick with them, walls obscured, the floor snaking with mist. Mood room, indeed.

“I’m going—”

“To kick my ass. Yes, I know. Then what? Climb a tree and start thumping your chest? Scary stuff, She-Man. If you can back it up.”

I thought I’d have time to brace and block. But apparently I still wasn’t up to superhuman speed. Chandra slapped me so quick and hard—palm flat, but nails curled to score my left cheek—that my head whipped to one side and I staggered back. I lifted my hand. My face throbbed in burning ribbons and I came away with blood. “You cut me.”

She sneered. “You’ll heal.”

I stood for a moment, hand pressed to my cheek, doing nothing. Then I burst into tears. The loud, snuffling kind with crocodile tears and a wide, open mouth. Through one slitted eye I saw Chandra drop her arms, half turning to the others with a bemused expression. She’d probably never faced a tearful superhero before.

Hunter’s warning cry was only half uttered when my foot plowed through her chest. I leaned back, putting my hips and thighs into the motion, and Chandra flew the entire length of the mat, crashing against the opposite wall, the back of her skull kissing her reflection with a gratifying crack. Greta had said Chandra needed time and space to grieve over the loss my arrival had cost her, but I decided a little ass-kicking would take her mind off it as well.

I touched my hand to my cheek. Chandra was right. I’d healed before she even hit the floor. I began to advance on her, but found myself blocked by Hunter’s not insignificant frame.

“Like to fight dirty, Archer?” he asked, backing me into the circle again. The Archer glyph shot across the walls again…until he stepped into the circle opposite me. Spearing from the apex of the pyramid came a giant glyph of curling horns that arrowed down into a sharp V. It exploded into a shower of smaller horns, the quantity instantly overtaking the Sagittarian glyph.

Definitely not on my ally list.

“I use the weapons available to me,” I told him, and this time I didn’t back down from him as he used up all my space.

His eyes narrowed to earthy brown slits. “Want to try them on a full-fledged star sign?”

Let’s see…a straightforward street fight versus an emotional game of “he says/she says”? I didn’t even have to think about it.

My palm shot out, but he was ready and caught it, twisting so it would have broken if I hadn’t relaxed and flipped with the motion. I cartwheeled through the air, landed again on my feet and sent him a jab, a knee, an elbow, and a bitch slap…all met and blocked in turn.

We disengaged, circling; me breathing hard, Hunter barely breathing at all. The room was a kaleidoscope again, the emotions of the onlookers merging with the glyphs now wheeling around the sky like mad fireflies. I took a moment to steady myself, then tried another tactic. Inhaling deeply, I threw a line of energy around his body like Warren had taught me, an invisible lasso between his intent and mine. No emotion crept up the invisible rope. If my eyes had been closed I wouldn’t even have known he was in the room. Impressive.

He knew exactly what I’d been doing, and white teeth flashed as he smiled. “Figure out my talent yet?”

“Yodeling off-key while standing on one foot on a pile of hot coals?” I sidestepped as he changed directions. The walls shifted with us, and the night sky above was clear again, cloudless.

“Close,” he said, and lunged. He was as lithe and compact as a mountain lion, as single-minded as well, but I’d convinced myself long ago that it was better, safer, to fight a skilled warrior than a street brawler. Less chance of accidental injury. Of course, there was a greater chance of calculated injury, but that was what defensive skills were for. I threw myself backward and kicked out a leg. Our shins met with a resounding crack. The knowledge that I’d heal made me a bit more reckless than usual, so I pivoted immediately, stayed close, and crushed his left cheek with a flying elbow as he turned.

A chorus of surprise lifted from the others as arrows shot over the walls and we disengaged again, him retreating this time. His exertion was coming off him in waves, manifesting itself in a coppery-smelling band that wrapped around me, linking me to him for as long as I remained his target.

He wasn’t holding back either. He really wished to overtake me. One part of me was thrilled with this deadly dance, the chance to test myself against someone strong, someone new. I was a fighter, that hadn’t changed, and this is what fighters did. Asaf always said the first encounter with a new foe was the most exciting, the most heady and the most dangerous, and he was right. I swam in Hunter’s adrenaline. I floated in my own.

Another part of me, however, was wondering how I’d ever thought this man attractive. He was looking at me like Ajax had; a quick sizing up of body and limbs, a predator searching for the weak, old, or inexperienced in the pack. Hunter was like this: patient, and absolutely feral as he waited for his opening.

He was also uncoiling his whip. The room was suddenly painted in giant ram horns again, not a Sagittarian glyph to be found.

“That’s cheating,” I said between breaths. He knew I didn’t have a conduit yet.

Pitiless, he shrugged and snapped it at his side, his wrist flicking expertly. “I use the weapons available to me.” Asshole.

I didn’t even need to see the walls to know I was in trouble. Bodies, even male against female, were one thing. Surprise could still be used to my advantage. But this was too much like my encounter with Ajax; ominously one-sided, frightening, and full of unknown risks. Alarm prickled along my skin, and was released, to my chagrin, through my pores.

I backed to the center of the mat to give myself room to maneuver away from the length of the whip, noting nobody else had spoken up in my defense. No That’s enough or Leave her be. Not even Micah, and that hurt. If there’d been any question before as to my place among these people, it was answered now. Hunter stalked me, and the others merely watched.

“You’re afraid,” he observed, lifting his arm.

“No shit,” I said, and jumped as the whip licked at my heels, a barbed tongue. Landing, I glanced around for some sort of shield, finding only a practice pad that covered the length of my forearm and not much else. I secured it as he swung at my head, and lifted it in time to have the whip shearing off the top of it with only a flick from his wrist.

The next snap coiled around both pad and forearm, grazing my shoulder on its second rotation. I whimpered as a barbed tip sunk deep into my flesh, then braced myself and pulled, surprising Hunter by dragging him closer. Using my other arm, I yanked, and closed the distance between us. I had no idea what I was going to do. I only knew the farther I was from his body, the more dangerous it was for me.

“Look! Her glyph’s engaged,” Felix said, pointing. I felt the pulsing in my upper chest cavity, but kept my eyes on Hunter. His eyes flicked down, and I saw surprise shadow them before it was erased, the expressionless mask returning. His arm wavered, then lowered. The walls cleared abruptly, stark whiteness blinding us all. He had disengaged.

I ripped the barbs from my flesh before I could think too much, and smelled my own blood flowing freely.

“That’s only supposed to happen when facing a true enemy,” he said, tone low and suspicious.

“Then you might want to put the whip away,” I said coolly. I let the barbed end drop, tossing the destroyed pad aside only when he began to coil it. I rubbed at my arm and backed away from them all, feeling achingly vulnerable.

“How are you doing that?” Felix said, looking at my chest.

“It’s the Shadow, see? She can’t control it.”

“Shut up, Chandra, you had that coming.” Vanessa sent her a steely glare, and came to stand next to me before also turning on Hunter. “And you. You’ve wanted to test the new Archer ever since you heard she defeated Butch…something you never managed to do. What do you expect when you gang up on her like that?”

Hunter turned so stony he didn’t even blink. “I was making a point.”

Yeah, I thought, rubbing my arm. Literally. But suddenly it was clear why no one had intervened on my behalf. Why a whip had to score my flesh and I had to bleed. They needed to know I could.

“I get your point.” Only Hunter would meet my eye, and that was fine; I’d focus on him. “Here’s Warren, telling you I’m this…this Kairos, that I have more potential than regular star signs, that I’m more powerful than the rest of you because of who my father is. I guess you just decided to see for yourselves, huh? But you didn’t have to whip me, you know. All you really had to do was ask.”

And, though they hadn’t, I opened up a little and let them see what I’d felt when I’d gone up against Butch. How the dark side of moonbeams could bathe the soul too. How freeing it felt to let go of what was right, and think for once only of what you wanted. How vengeance burned like sulfur in every pore, and hatred like an ulcer in the stomach. And how death drew closer with every passing moment, and fury was the cancer that could take you there. They needed to see it, I thought, because they needed to know the difference. I let it go on for a time, then I sucked it all back in.

“Happy?” I asked all of them. “Scared?” And I turned back, pressing my face into Chandra’s, invading her space this time. “Or do you wanna take a vote on it and get back to me?”

Chandra took a giant step back, jaw clenching tightly, and the others shifted on their feet, none looking at me, and barely looking at one another. I laughed hollowly and figured if they wanted something to mistrust so badly, I wasn’t going to make them search for it.

So I turned back to Hunter, forced him to meet my eye, which he did with an empty gaze of his own. “You’re going to have to do better than that,” I told him.

“Better than what?”

And with the same power I’d used to punch holes in the life of a construction worker, I told him. “If you don’t want the Shadow side to know about her—the one you love and cherish above all others—you’re going to have to control that thread of desperation coiling in your psyche. I can taste it on my tongue, as fresh and sweet as sherbet. What’s her name, anyway?”

I felt surprise sprout throughout the room and realized I’d just sensed something no one else had known. So even the full-fledged star signs kept secrets from one another, I thought wryly. So much for a unified troop. Hypocrites.

“Her name is Lola,” Hunter finally answered, and his voice was steady, though a shudder had gone through his able body. At his admission, in fact, it had gone through them all. “And if you go near her, I’ll kill you.”

I looked around then, forcing every person in the room to meet my eye. “I thought I wasn’t the enemy. Don’t any of you trust me?”

“I don’t know you.”

“I don’t trust the Shadow in you,” Chandra said.

“Micah?”

He swallowed hard. He, whom I’d once thought was so firmly on my side. “I think you’ll be presented with a choice before Ajax and the Tulpa are done with you. A real test, made in the heat of battle, and one where you’re forced to choose what’s right or…”

“Or?”

He looked away. “Or what you want.”

And with those words I realized Chandra was right. No matter what Warren wanted, I could be cast out of the troop and sanctuary, left in the city, unguarded and alone. I’d be saddled with powers I didn’t know how to use or control, more of a target than some unnaturally gifted hero.

“There’s only one thing I want.”

“Revenge?” Hunter asked. “For your sister’s death?”

I nodded, unsurprised that he could sense it, knowing they all could. It was the one thing, I thought, that I could never hide.

“And what will you do to avenge her?”

“Anything,” I swore. “Everything.”

He nodded slowly, and then turned away. “And that’s what I don’t trust.”

We obviously didn’t train that day. In fact, all the members of Zodiac troop 175, paranormal division, anti-evil, gave me a wide berth after that. The easy camaraderie between Vanessa and I dissolved like a sugar cube after I’d shown my Shadow side, and she left the room frowning with uncertainty. Felix still grinned at me, but it was tight around the edges and didn’t quite reach his eyes. Micah mumbled something about lab work before disappearing, though he did give me a gentle once-over just to be sure his handiwork had held up against Hunter’s whip.

Even Chandra, so full of sting and swagger, couldn’t muster a glare, and just shoved her hands into the pockets of her fatigues, shaking her head as she exited the room. Hunter followed without a word or backward glance, which left me alone in the spacious dojo, staring at my foreign and baffled reflection in the mirror, the emblem on my chest still pulsing gently.

So that went well.

I thought about finding Warren and asking him when he’d planned to tell me about this democratic little voting process, but he was probably still in his so-called session with Greta. Besides, while we were seated in Greta’s office, pretending to be civilized as we glared at one another across our teacups, I’d decided there was something Warren wasn’t sharing. Either that or something in his recent past that he didn’t want to face. Something, I thought, remembering the guilt sitting like a cold stone in my belly, that had to do with Tekla. So what was it he was unwilling to face, or know? More, what didn’t he want the rest of us to know?

These questions consumed me as I wove alone through the hallways, halting every so often to scratch the heads and cheeks of escaped cats. Wardens, I thought, correcting myself. None of them hissed or growled or swiped at my hand as I’d seen Luna do with Butch, so that was a small comfort. They just looked at me with unblinking eyes, pushing against my fingers with their lithe little bodies, and moved on when they were finished, tails raised in a parting salute.

Finally, I returned to my mother’s windowless, concrete room to regroup, thankful there was at least one place in this underground labyrinth where I could be alone and feel safe. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until I’d tucked myself into bed, drawing my knees high to my chest, that I realized trust couldn’t even be extended to my own mind.

The dream was like wind gradually picking up in slack sails, so I knew it was coming. If I’d acted early enough, I might even have been able to stop it. Still, I wasn’t braced for the feeling of invasion; like someone was picking through the folds of my mind, searching and excavating the forbidden parts. And what they found was bedrock; granite, and caliche, and a petrified memory I’d never dared touch before. But it chipped free now, sharp-edged, banging around inside of me. Slicing at my sanity. A nightmare come back to life.

The biggest nightmare of my life.

I was a teen again; fifteen, to be exact. Sneaky and smart, and needing to escape a world that neither knew nor understood me…as all teens feel the need to do, I suppose. But there was one person who did understand me, and he knew and loved me better than anyone else.

Ben Traina lived across a narrow but elongated patch of desert, long since converted into another thoroughfare for impatient motorists, but marked at the time by a sole footpath which bisected the desert floor. Ben and I probably wore that one away in this summer alone.

Though relatively close in proximity, our homes were worlds apart. The Archer mansion fanned coldly across an entire city block, a massive complex with so much faux work and gaudy detailing it looked like a Victorian ball-gown. In contrast, Ben’s house was like an old tattered sweatshirt. Low ceilings, small windows, a fireplace made out of rock they’d, thankfully, stopped making in the seventies, and the original green shag carpeting blanketing the concrete floor.

For all these differences, though, our families were remarkably similar. There was the overbearing patriarch—gaming mogul versus military man; the mousy wife—society maven and the housefrau; and the two point five kids, two girls on my side of the tracks, three boys on his.

His parents were out of town for the weekend—one brother was already out of the house, and the second was in basic training—so, unsurprisingly, their vacation had become ours. We were in love, a first for us both, and we experienced all the firsts that go along with that. We hid from the world that entire weekend; talking, laughing, eating. Watching movies. Kissing. Stroking. Making love for days.

Sunday morning marked the end of our lovers’ tryst. His parents would be home by noon, but it was my sister who arrived first, breathless and fresh from a predawn flight across the desert. We were forced to leave our cocoon of sheets and limbs and flesh just to silence her insistent pounding at the door.

“Mom’s looking for you,” Olivia announced, without preamble. “She’s so freaked she wants to call the police. And Dad says this time you’re going to juvenile hall.”

Regretfully, I turned to Ben. “I have to go.”

He sighed sleepily, smelling like me. “Will you get in trouble?”

I smiled. “It was worth it.”

“Come on! I am not going to juvi with you,” Olivia said, then shuddered delicately. “They make you wear paper shoes.”

We fled as fast as our limbs would carry us, into the abyss of darkness, across the swath of hard desert earth I knew as intimately as the vein at my wrist…or Ben’s. Olivia was younger than me, and at the time quicker too. I can still see her flying through the night, golden hair lit by the moon’s eye, streaming behind her like ribbons cutting wind. Even at thirteen she’d been beautiful, the woman inside her already outgrowing the child. I, though older, still looked like a girl.

The man came from nowhere, hurtling from the darkness like a dust devil, catching Olivia from the side. She didn’t even have time to scream before she struck the boulders and tumbleweeds of the desert floor, pinned helplessly beneath the weight of her stronger adversary. Then there were only sounds of struggle. Clothing torn. Flesh beaten. Anguished cries for mercy.

A voice, twisted and irrational, snaked up from my subconscious. You deserved what happened that night.

Even as I groaned in my sleep, shaking my head, I knew I did. Olivia was only there because of me. Those meaty fists rained down on her body and face, knuckles reporting like shots as they made contact with her soft flesh, pummeling fragile bone. And because it was my fault, I reacted the same way again.

“Run!” I screamed, latching onto the man from behind. I didn’t have the skills then that I did now. I didn’t have the strength to overpower a man of any size, and nothing to enable me to stand up to a human predator. Olivia ran, and even after I’d lost sight of her I could still hear her feet crunching over gravel and rock, her sobs streaming, like her hair, behind her. Then I heard nothing at all.

But that was then.

“I should’ve killed you the first time,” said the man I now knew as Joaquin. I felt my eyes open—eyes like Rena’s, there but not—and I stared into a face as cruel as I remembered. Thin lips wrapped around a full set of evenly spaced teeth; a smile for me, I realized, as the smell of rancid honey spilled out of his mouth. A five o’clock shadow, too perfect and precise to have been by accident, studded his cheeks and chin, and despite his position, looming over me, not a hair on his head was out of place. It was slicked back, tight and sleek, the individual lines from the teeth of his comb clear in the meager moonlight.

“No,” I managed, before his fingertips dug into my windpipe, strangling me again. His other hand ricocheted across my face, whipping it to the right. On the returning backhand, I felt my nose collapse. How had I ever forgotten that sound?

“Oh, yes,” he replied, arching into me, mimicking orgasm, writhing above me like a rattler. “Yes, yes, yes.”

I head-butted him, causing him to jerk back, his face registering surprise as blood began to seep from his nose. I hadn’t done that the first time. He slapped me again, but it was too late. A new thought had already burrowed into my mind.

“I don’t have to be this again. I don’t have to do this again.” And I shifted my hips, forcing space between us, and managed to free a leg long enough to ram a knee into his ribs.

“Oh, but you do,” he said, and he planted himself widely over me, like a Greco-Roman wrestler, doubling his weight on top of mine.

I almost gave in. I felt my lungs creaking with need for air, felt his hands fumbling between my legs, but my training and my will kept me struggling. “No…I’m not that girl anymore. I’m the Archer.”

“Yes,” he snarled, face leering into mine, “I could tell by your stiletto.”

I blinked, then felt a smile spread over my broken face. “I’m the Archer…and this is my dream.”

“But we can reach you in your dreams,” he said, grinding into me again. “I can fuck you in your dreams.”

“No,” I said, struggling. “I don’t want this.”

“Fight all you want, but you can’t change who you are…who I’ve helped you become.”

“I’m not like him!”

“Oh, look in the mirror, dear girl,” he said, giving me a sly smile. “You’re exactly like him.”

There was a rustling from behind us, and Joaquin looked behind him, then jerked his head back to look at me. “Fuck,” he said, and disappeared.

And feeling lighter, the weight of both his body and sleep being yanked from me, I really opened my eyes.

The blankets were tangled around my feet, sheets soaked in the outline of my body, and as I sat up I immediately saw the one thing that hadn’t been in the room before; the item that had called me from my sleeping state. A newspaper had been slipped under my door, the sound somehow sneaking through the web of my not-dream. I rose, left it lying on the floor, and opened the door to peer into the hallway. No one was there.

Running a hand through my hair I noted my nose felt tender, though not broken, and my throat was raw, and probably red. But I bent to retrieve the paper, silently thanking whoever had used it to chase away my demons…until I saw the lead article.

“Oh, my God,” I said, and the words from my dream raced again through my head. You’re exactly like him. Slowly, I sank to the side of the bed. Oh, my God, I thought again. Maybe he was right. Maybe they all were right.

The article was brief, a dispassionate assemblage of facts and figures; time of death, the age of the victim—God, only seventeen—what officials thought had happened. I read over it half a dozen times, trying to reconcile the memory of my confrontation with Ajax with the words appearing on the page. A meaningless and random attack, it reported, by what was, most likely, a gang of teens. One of whom had a blade. The statement from the girl’s mother was no more than a single sentence, but it summed up the only real known fact: “My daughter is gone, and my life will never be the same.”

So maybe they were right.

I knew this was what whomever had slid the newspaper under the door wanted me to feel. It was spiteful and obvious, yet it still made me want to bury my head in my hands and never look up. I had failed this girl. I’d put her in danger, just like Olivia, and they’d both paid the price with their lives. So maybe they were right. I was exactly like him.

I was about to toss the paper aside when another column caught my eye. I was holding the whole of the Metro section, the bulk of the day’s bad news in my hands, and today it featured a story of an early morning shooting, a love triangle gone wrong. A woman named Karen was shot by her husband as she tried to leave their apartment. Moments later one Mark Davis had turned the gun on himself.

I closed my eyes, and for a moment I didn’t even breathe. I just sat there, chaos swirling inside me like some nauseating psychedelic drug. The store clerk had been an accident, an innocent I’d never meant to injure. But this. Ajax had nothing to do with the dissolution of this marriage, these lives. This was all me. I had fired up my new powers and blasted through the walls of Karen and Mark Davis’s lives.

I managed to stumble into the bathroom, and splashed cold water onto my face over and over, until I gasped, and realized I was crying. Leaning heavily on the sink, I lifted my head to face the mirror. Olivia’s lovely face, with my haunted eyes.

And the dark shadows that lingered beneath them? I’d created those—and the reasons behind them—myself.

“Who do you think you are?” I whispered at the mirrored image. I watched the reflected lips move, then fall still, with no answer.

I returned to the bedroom, picked up the newspaper and studied the image of Karen Davis smiling up at me from an undated photo. After a moment I shoved it in my duffel bag for safekeeping and left. I wanted to find out for sure if, maybe, they were right.

Even while hoping against hope that they were wrong.