The Scent of Shadows

26

I met the others at the launch pad near dawn, approaching by stealth, testing myself…and the weapon Greta had given me, albeit unwillingly.

“Jesus!” Felix jumped as my hand landed on his shoulder.

“Olivia!” Vanessa whirled next to him. “I didn’t hear you arrive.”

“Neither did I,” Hunter said, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. I tried out Olivia’s most innocent smile as they all looked at me.

“Are you all right?” Micah asked, brows drawn, studying me.

“Peachy,” I said, my blood still whirlpooling in my veins, power still screaming through my ears. I didn’t try to read anyone’s aura. I didn’t need to now. “Though you guys seem a bit wound up.”

“You look different.”

“Brushed my hair,” I said smartly.

“Not physically,” Felix said, beginning to circle me. “Different beneath that. Under the skin.” He ran a finger along my nape and I stiffened visibly. I was strung drum-tight. “Feel different too.” After a moment he let his hand fall and, though it was almost imperceptible, backed away.

“We were just discussing tactics,” Gregor said, oblivious. All of his energies were focused on healing, but the others felt it. They’d begun to circle the wagons, so to speak, and were standing shoulder-to-shoulder across from me, a half-moon to my lone star.

“I’ll be staying behind for obvious reasons,” he continued, managing a wry smile from where he sat in a wheelchair. “Chandra will remain as well.”

I glanced at Chandra, who didn’t meet my eye. She couldn’t go, I knew, because as long as I was alive she couldn’t be a real and active member of the Zodiac.

“I’m staying too, because if you—” Micah cut himself off, clearing his throat. “I mean when the rest of you return I may be needed in a medical capacity. We’ve deemed that more important than my offensive skills.”

He meant he expected most of us to come back wounded. If we came back at all.

“So here’s the plan,” Hunter said, stalking over to me, his movements once again reminding me of a cat. A very large, very patient cat. “Felix will flank your left side and Vanessa your right.”

“Provided I can get out of here, you mean.”

His mouth quirked as he pulled his arm from behind his back, holding out an answer to my challenge.

“What is it?” Felix said, inching forward.

“A helmet?” I asked, taking it. I flipped it over in my hand. It was pliable, made of distressed leather on the outside, but with a strange crisscrossing of wires woven tightly beneath. It was designed to cover the eyes—twin mirrors shot my reflection back at me—and arched across the temples and over the soft tissue behind the ears. A leather toggle secured it around the base of my skull, or beneath a low bun like the one I was wearing now.

“A mask?” Micah said.

“No,” I said. Not a mask, though it would probably be drawn that way in Zane’s comics. My eyes lifted. “It’s a shield.”

Hunter inclined his head. “Try it on.”

Securing it over the bridge of my nose first, I slid it along my skull and fastened it below the bun. I shook my head side to side.

“How does it feel?” Vanessa asked.

“Like it was made for me,” I answered, thinking Warren would approve. Not only would it shield my eyes from the lights within the chute, but it would conceal my identity for as long as I wore it.

Spotting a full-length mirror to the left of the launch pad, I stood in front of it and studied the reflection. It smiled. For the first time since taking over Olivia’s identity, I recognized myself. “It’s perfect.”

“Of course,” Hunter said with his usual arrogance. You can also use it to freely enter and leave the sanctuary in the future, just like the rest of us.”

“Good thinking,” Vanessa said.

I inclined my head, giving him his due credit, and because I was grateful. Now I could hide my Shadow side, at least in this one small way.

“I just don’t get it!” Felix exclaimed, and began circling me again. “It’s like there’s a wall around you. I can see you, but I sure didn’t hear you come in, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t scent you, even though you’re only two feet from me.”

“Doesn’t bode well for tracking down Shadow signs, does it?” Vanessa said.

Felix gave her a steely look.

Hunter stepped closer. He leaned in as he had in the dojo, crowding my space, taking up all the room. I unlaced the shield and lowered it from my eyes as he scratched his chin.

“Figure it out yet?” I asked in a low voice, gaze steady on his.

Vanessa gasped just as understanding dawned, widening Hunter’s hooded eyes. There was an uncomfortable shifting in the room, like wind lifting suddenly in a tree.

“Greta?” Hunter asked, face unreadable.

I smiled.

“Oh, my God! You possess the aureole again!” Micah said, up to speed now. “The needles?”

“You used her own weapon against her,” Hunter said, his voice considering. “Like you did with Butch. So you could walk the mortal world like a ghost. That’s why none of us sensed you.”

“God,” Felix breathed from behind me. He had backed away.

“You killed Greta?” Vanessa asked, her voice small. “In cold blood?”

“No. I was still pretty pissed when I did it.” Then I held out a hand to stave off any more comment. “The point is, I have the ability to walk around completely undetected for the next twelve hours.”

“All night,” Gregor said, and excitement lined his words.

“No, the point is she murdered someone who was half Light in order to gain power!” Vanessa pointed at me, and I was surprised to see her hand shaking.

“You’ve got it wrong, Vanessa,” I said, turning on her. She swallowed hard but didn’t back away. “What I did was take the power from someone who used to be half Light, and now I’m going to use that to battle the Shadow side. See the difference?”

She opened her mouth to argue, then let it snap shut again. After a moment, she nodded. “You’re right. It’s a powerful weapon.”

“Wish I’d thought of it,” Felix said, his voice wistful.

“If you’re all done chatting,” Hunter said, moving back to the launch pad, “perhaps we can get to the fighting now?”

“Isn’t there a way to test this first?” I asked, holding my shield out in front of me.

“No time,” Hunter said, flexing his fingers, rolling his neck. There was no hesitation in his voice, but I was gratified to see his movements actually appeared nervous. Even superhumans were human. “Fifteen minutes until the light splits.”

Felix clapped his hands together. “So let’s go kick some preternatural ass.”

“On my signal, cowboy,” Hunter said, earning a scowl. “Once you’re through the chute, move aside because I’ll be coming up fast. Vanessa, take the left flank. Olivia, you go up last.”

“But—”

“Last,” he repeated. “They won’t sense you so maybe they won’t see you. Besides, when was the last time you felt Warren stirring inside of you?”

I thought about it. It’d been a while.

“I don’t want that connection severed. He may be too weak without you.”

“Thanks for your concern,” I muttered, earning nothing more than an arched brow.

“Whatever you do, don’t hesitate. These bastards are fast.”

“Not as fast as we are,” Felix said, earning a high five from Vanessa. He rubbed his hands together, his boyish enthusiasm turned deadly.

“Wait,” I said, suddenly nervous. “What if I accidentally shoot one of you? I mean, what if I can’t tell the difference?”

“Can’t tell the difference between Shadow and Light?” Felix scoffed. “Impossible.”

Have you looked at me? I wanted to say. Have any of you really seen me?

“It’s too late to worry about now,” Hunter said, and motioned Felix forward to stand on a large X. Raising his left hand, Hunter placed his right on a chrome lever. “Felix, go.”

With a whoosh of air, he was gone. Hunter took his place and, without hesitation, or even a backward glance, shot from mid-crouch up the chute.

Vanessa flipped open her conduit, the blades of the fan locking violently in place. Then she whipped it shut again, holding it ready in her right hand. She looked straight up, back slightly bowed, like she was beseeching the heavens. Throwing back the lever, she whispered a final word. I couldn’t hear it, but I read her lips, and it was, indeed, an invocation. Stryker’s name.

And suddenly I was alone.

I swallowed hard, and tried to think of my mother—what would she think if she could see me now?—but she and all of my other soft memories had been locked up tight, and to access them now would mean revealing my light to the world. I touched my chest where Warren’s second heart had, until recently, resided, but he too seemed to have abandoned me. Or did he think we’d abandoned him? The thought put some resolve into me. I didn’t know what I was about to face, but at least I knew why.

Finally, I knew why.

Slipping the shield over my eyes, I let Greta’s fresh death course through my blood, and the other death I’d caused poked its head, Butch-shaped, above the murky swamp of my darkest thoughts. I let the images surface, and my palms itched as I recalled slicing a tongue, severing hands, pushing a syringe. I let the darkness swirl inside of me, upsetting the hate that had settled like silt on the bottom of my soul. Hand on my conduit, I mainlined adrenaline and stood as the others had, on the giant X, knees bent in anticipation. Then I threw back the lever, and my body was shuttled into space.

They were fighting before I ever made it up the chute. I could hear them, their cries tunneling past me as I rose to the surface, the wind screaming in my ears, my eyes and temples cool and untouched beneath the shield. If the breath wasn’t being whisked so rapidly from my body, I would have sighed in thanksgiving.

My arrival above was announced by nothing more than a hiss, and that masked by the combat around me. I crouched atop the Slipper and took a quick inventory. The boneyard was awash in shadows. And Shadows.

Felix had been right—it was physically impossible not to discern the difference between the two. Agents of Light were like overgrown fireflies, zigzagging in the air, easy targets were they not so damned fast. Stars trailed in blinding streaks behind them, the air sparkling in their wake. The Shadows—trailing smoke behind them like downed bombers—had the best chance to nail one by anticipating their moves, striking the air marked before them. But the agents of Light anticipated this too.

I watched Felix swivel, a maniacal shooting star, all lithe limbs and bowing core, a frustrated Shadow warrior roaring murderously behind him…then crying out again as he was struck from the back. Vanessa wheeled away, trailing off-pink lights like a whipping tail, the smoke of a Shadow warrior obscuring them as he followed close.

Then I saw Hunter. Suspended ten feet in the air and dropping fast on a Shadow, his loose hair flew madly about his head while his whip wheeled behind him. I knew then why they made him their tactical leader. Black stars, glittering silver in the predawn light, were camouflaged, like a trick of the eye, and his whip struck out like a feline flicking a deadly tail.

But the Shadows weren’t exactly sluggish, and there were more of them. I picked two off with my conduit from the top of the Slipper—piercing one to a giant letter N, and catapulting the other through the air to drop behind the one-dimensional outline of a martini glass. Still, I considered these kills nothing more than luck since neither they nor the rest had seen me yet.

The Neon Boneyard was quickly becoming a cloud of smoke and flame. I scurried to the ground, taking cover behind a rusting depiction of a slot machine, and waited for an opening in the melee. Problem was, most of the fighting was taking place in the thick of the smoke. I decided to wait it out, take only a sure shot but when the yard finally cleared again, my breath caught and held.

All movement had ceased. The remaining warriors, both Shadow and Light, were frozen in place, chests heaving, a weapon at every back. They looked like a human Scrabble game, one piece linked to another by conduit; brutal hinges on the verge of swinging open at the slightest provocation. Hunter’s whip was lashed around the neck of a woman dressed like a prostitute, but who had the creamy complexion of an eighteenth century debutante. He had only to give one great yank for the barbed hook to cleave her larynx from her throat.

But there was another Shadow behind Hunter, and he had an ax arched over Hunter’s head. Felix had him covered, an edged boomerang cradled on his windpipe, but a normal-sized woman with an abnormally large machete had lodged her grip beneath his breastbone, and his other hand was clutched beneath it to keep the weapon from sliding and rending him in two.

Vanessa had her steel fan arched across the woman’s neck, but the first woman—Hunter’s whore-debutante—had circled around, and had a slim steel brand poised just beneath Vanessa’s left eye. I was the sole independent actor, but I was afraid to move. Nobody else moved either.

“Give it up,” Hunter said, sounding unafraid.

“You have an ax resting at your temple and you’re telling me to give it up?” The man behind him laughed, but it died away as Felix shifted his boomerang, nestling in closer. Like a snake eating its tail, I thought, watching the circle of people. The beast was going to destroy itself.

“You’re surrounded,” Hunter told him.

The man laughed. “Not true, Ram-head. The Tulpa claims we’ve already killed off five of your star signs. There’s only three of you here, the Libra’s captured, and Micah is probably still helping Gregor scoop his bowels from the floor.” The Shadow women began to snicker. “That leaves no one.”

Hunter stole their laughter for himself. “What? And the Tulpa’s never lied to you before?”

The man’s smile fell. Light flashed beneath his skin, his bones burning briefly, then he was himself again. “The Tulpa tells us all we need to know.”

“I see. I suppose he didn’t think you needed to know we planted ten initiates in the boneyard before you ever arrived.” He was good. Even I couldn’t sense the lie.

“Perhaps he didn’t know,” Felix said, the usual cockiness in his voice somewhat strained. Who could blame him with a machete at his heart?

“You’re bluffing. The Tulpa knows all.”

“So when this cactus sign explodes behind me, he’ll know it?”

That was my cue. I cocked an arrow back in my compact bow and took aim.

“We’ve been camped outside your doorway all night. If there were even one initiate out here we would have found him by now.”

I fired a shot past his head, the arrow whistling past his hairline before imploding the pictorial sign on impact. I was moving again before it hit. The Shadows cringed.

“Initiates can’t scent out Shadows,” the gorgeous hooker said, sounding unsure.

“Well, they don’t have to if you’re standing in plain sight, do they?” Vanessa answered. “I’d watch the gold horseshoe over your left shoulder. It’s going to explode. Now.”

I slammed the arrow home like I’d practiced it my entire life.

“And I’d drop your conduits if I were you,” Hunter said once the dust and flame died again.

“No. You wouldn’t.”

“Then we all die.” Hunter shrugged, like it was a small thing. “It’s okay. Our initiates are anxious to prove themselves.”

“Initiates are no match for star signs, and you know it. They try to rescue Warren and they’ll all be dead before sunrise.”

“Unless some of us are also star signs.” I entered the clearing from the base of the Silver Slipper, the opposite direction from where I’d just fired. I smiled as the Shadows shifted. None of them had sensed me at all.

“Say hello to our new Archer.”

“Then drop your conduits,” I added, smiling.

“The Tulpa didn’t say anything about a new agent of Light.”

“Apparently they’re on a need-to-know basis,” Vanessa said to me.

“Too bad they needed to know. Now drop ’em.” I drew back my notched arrow and sighted right between the middle woman’s eyes. Mine narrowed as hers widened. She was the belly of the snake. Worse case scenario, they didn’t drop their conduits and I cleaved the snake in half.

“You’ll kill us if we drop them.”

“We can’t kill you,” I said, and they looked surprised. “Ajax has our Bull. Our guns are at your temples, so to speak, but his is pointed at Warren and we want him back. Five Shadow warriors die, and it’ll produce such a jolt of energy that he just might pull that trigger.”

“Like dominoes,” the man said. “You kill us and Ajax kills your leader.”

I shifted, my arrow pointed between his eyes. “Just don’t forget who dies first.”

“She’s new, but she does have a knack for summing up a situation.” Hunter smiled like a proud papa. “Then again, she should. It’s been prophesied that an Archer will rise to cast her shadow or, if you will, her light, over both sides of the Zodiac.”

I looked at him. It had?

“The Kairos? A myth,” the hooker scoffed.

“You mean the Tulpa told you it’s a myth,” Vanessa corrected.

“The legend is that the woman who bears both sun and moon inside of her will have to choose her allegiance. Like a fulcrum, her fate is not fixed. She begins by belonging equally to the day and night,” the man said.

“Which means,” added Dawn, “that we have as much chance of spawning the Archer as you.”

“Is that what your manuals say?” Hunter said. “Interesting. Because ours tell us that one night in the season of Jupiter, eight Shadow warriors will infiltrate the Neon Boneyard, and battle there until dawn breaks over the Black Mountains. Some will die, but the rest will be given a choice to lay down their arms and live, the first time in history either side has offered a truce. If the Shadows don’t accept, however, they die en masse, along with the warriors of Light. Either way, one star sign walks away. This marks the rise of the Kairos.”

Hunter motioned to me, and I took a small bow, though more because he expected me to than out of any belief in what he’d said.

The Shadows looked at one another. Then the man said, “Prove it.”

I glanced at Hunter. He shrugged. “Zell wants you to prove it.”

So I squared on the Shadow agents, and without removing my shield, allowed my bones to rise from beneath the shroud of my skin, rearranging themselves on the surface; elongating, gleaming in the light of the full moon, revealing the face of my father. I blew him a kiss as I sucked the bones back in. It came out on a scalding wisp of breath, and I smiled prettily.

“Shit,” one of the Shadows said softly.

The man behind Hunter lowered his ax, then tossed it on a pile of scrap metal. Vanessa, in turn, folded her steel fan. Dawn removed her machete from Felix’s middle, hand shaking, and threw it aside. Felix doubled over, clutching at his stomach.

“Felix!” Vanessa rushed to him.

“Oops,” Dawn said, laughing. She shrugged at Vanessa’s upturned glare. “Well, don’t look at me. I did that before the deal was made. Though it was a good strike if I do say so myself.”

“Get him to Micah,” Hunter ordered Vanessa.

She gave a sharp nod, her face gone pale. “I’ll catch up with you guys later.”

“You can’t come alone,” Hunter argued, then jerked his head at the three Shadows. “This isn’t all of them.”

“Then wait for me.”

“There isn’t time.”

Vanessa looked at the lightening sky, then back at him, frustrated resignation clouding her face.

“Bad luck all around,” Zell said, shaking his head. “Was that in your manual too?”

Felix straightened long enough to slam a fist into the guy’s mouth…then collapsed in a heap.

Vanessa caught him, gathered him up, and Hunter motioned for me to guard the Shadows while he assisted them to the base of the Slipper.

Zell chuckled, licking the blood from the side of his mouth, then turned to me. “Why the mask, sweet cheeks?”

“It’s not a mask. It’s a shield.” I hesitated, then said, “My Shadow side won’t allow me to enter the sanctuary without it.”

“What happens if you try?” the whore-debutante asked, sounding genuinely curious.

“Same thing that happens to all of you. I get microwaved from the inside out.”

They all shuddered.

Zell, whom I took to be some sort of leader, folded his arms as he studied me. “So if those two are going back into the sanctuary, and you and Hunter are going after Ajax, who’s supposed to keep us all rounded up here like good little sheep? Those invisible initiates you were talking about?”

I shook my head. “They don’t exist.”

“I thought not,” Dawn muttered.

“Don’t worry,” Hunter called down from the top of the slipper, “we have something far more frightening in mind.”

Before the Shadows could ask what, Hunter called out, “They can come up now, Rena.”

There was a moment when we all wondered what might exit the mouth of that slipper. This pause was followed by a deep internal rumble that had the Shadows glancing around them, looking ready to bolt. Zell caught me watching him, glared at my smile, and stayed put.

Seconds later two dozen children of the Zodiac tumbled out like ants pouring from the mouth of a mound. They were screaming gleefully, zipping to the far reaches of the boneyard and back, their faces alight, literally, with joy. Rena followed closely behind.

“I don’t approve of this, you know,” she said to Hunter. “It’s past their bedtime.”

“It’s good practice for them,” he replied, watching as more children tumbled over the Slipper. “Have they eaten?”

“Double chocolate banana splits and espresso. They’ll be up all night.”

“Shit,” the woman next to me muttered again, squinting against the residual zips of light.

Little Marcus raced past me, his face an intense chocolate-smeared mixture of joy and determination. As he passed the Shadow man he leaned in and gave a ferocious growl, his expression so fierce it sparked the entire boneyard to life. Zell cried out and covered his eyes with his arms.

Marcus, of course, thought this hilarious. He circled the Shadow warriors, leaning in and leering at them so that his face blinked on and off like a little bulb. The other kids, shrieking, began to do the same.

“Brilliant,” I murmured, squinting even from within my mask. Like baby rattlers, the children’s strength was in their inability to control their power. If the Shadows found the rest of us hard to bear, then the children’s raw and undiluted power was insufferable. And the little vessels of pure light, I thought, smiling, could keep these Shadows immobile for as long as they wished. I heard a howl of pain as one of the kids poked their quarry in the stomach. Sparks flew as flesh met flesh.

“Linus! Stop that this instant! What did I tell you about torture?”

Hunter was suddenly beside me again. “You ready?”

I nodded, backing from the raucous melee and the cringing Shadow signs. “Guess we don’t have to worry about these guys for a while.”

“Don’t worry. There will be more where we’re going.”

“The Hall of the Gods,” I muttered, following him toward dawn and another reality. Toward Valhalla.