The Scent of Shadows

28

I wondered if this elevator would have opened to me only a month ago. There was no doubt I was operating in an alternate reality. Ions and electrodes bumped along my skin like blind bees, and a metallic taste rose to fill the back of my mouth. There was enough supernatural energy up here, I thought, to fuel a nuclear power plant.

I’m coming Warren, I thought, touching my breastbone. There was no answer, and I began to wonder if it were all in vain. Then, suddenly, there was no time left to wonder.

The elevator chime sounded like the report from Notre Dame’s bell tower. The doors sliding open were the hiss of a snake. My conduit was pointed at a mirrored image of myself, and my trigger finger pulsed. The doors began to close and I stepped into the foyer at the last moment. And they whisked shut, trapping me.

The Tulpa’s anteroom was immediately visible, just beyond a great marble staircase leading into a sunken chamber flanked by four Roman pillars. An identical staircase rose directly across from me to disappear beneath a pair of oak doors carved with mythic symbols, none of which I understood. That, I immediately decided, was where I needed to be. I simply had to cross over this innocuous-looking sunken chamber that lay in between. A chamber, I noted, with a vast mirrored ceiling.

“Only in Vegas,” I muttered, and took a step forward.

An invisible door slammed open and hard-soled footsteps pounded on the marble. I braced, conduit in front of me, and two men rounded the corner and stopped cold, apparently surprised to see me. Everything on them matched; their suits, their earpieces, their expressions, all the way down to the guns held at their right sides.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Mortals. I tucked away my conduit.

“Hit her!” the second one said, drawing his short club.

“Don’t hit me,” I said, and thrust out my lower lip.

“Hit her!” he repeated, stepping forward.

The first guard regarded him like he was crazy. “I’m not going to hit a girl.”

He was looking at his partner as he said this, so he never saw my arm swing across his cheek. The slap of my open palm reverberated in the air, and his head ricocheted backward, but he rebounded quickly and snapped it back to level me with a look of pure hatred. “Bitch!”

He still didn’t touch me, though.

“I’m a bitch?” I asked innocently.

“Fucking bitch,” he snarled.

I smiled sweetly. “Then why are you the one who just got bitch-slapped?”

Even gentlemen had their limits. He lunged, as I knew he would, and I used Hunter’s baton to strike his wrist, sending the gun clattering uselessly across the foyer. The second man was already aiming at me, his gun chest level, point-blank. Superhuman or not, that was going to hurt. But his hands were shaking. I ducked below his sight line, darted in, and came up under those hands. My left knee came up with me.

Two quick strikes; groin, which had him doubling over, and chest, which sent him pitching down the steps. His trigger finger convulsed, sending an errant shot to ricochet off marble, but I’d already followed him into the sunken room, leaping the last three steps to send a final knee flying into his face. I let him fall, and whirled with his gun in my hands. The barrel sank between the eyes of the first man, who’d followed me down the steps. I withdrew my conduit and pointed at his chest. “Shoulda hit me,” I told him.

His mouth worked, wordless as a guppie’s, his broken wrist forgotten at his side.

“Step aside, Thomas. And I’d do it slowly.” The voice rolled over us, and my stomach clenched.

“But, Mr. Sand—”

“God, that’s really your name?” I pivoted into an open stance, arms crossed; gun on Thomas, conduit on Ajax.

He was poised at the top of the opposite staircase, coiled like a watchful rattler, his transparent eyes shining with anticipation. He was wearing black, which only served to lengthen his bony frame, and I knew his barbed poker was secured like a second spine at his back. I could smell it.

“Step aside, Thomas,” Ajax repeated, sauntering down the marble stairs to join us in the sunken room. “Unless you want to die.”

I waved the gun at him. “Most horrifically, I might add.”

Thomas stepped aside.

“I was wondering how long it’d take you to find us, Archer,” Ajax said, halting at the bottom of the staircase. “I take it you met some of my colleagues in the boneyard? How’d you like them?”

“I wasn’t particularly impressed.”

“But you killed only two.”

And I tried not to let it impress me that he already knew about the battle in the boneyard. “Does that bother you? Their deaths, I mean?”

He shrugged. “Everyone dies. And everyone’s too concerned with their own demise to worry much about another’s. It’s a small thing, really, when you think about it. Now, if you hope to see Warren again, drop your weapons. And don’t make me repeat myself.”

I didn’t want to, but Hunter’s whip still gave me options. I dropped my bow, safety on, to my feet. The gun followed.

“Where is he?” I asked as Thomas lifted my conduit, examining it. The guard on the floor groaned and rose halfway to his feet.

Ajax shook his head, a grown-up amused by the antics of a small child. “Why don’t you give me the gun in your left boot, and then I’ll tell you.”

He was lying and we both knew it. Unfortunately there was nothing I could do about it. His guards were crowding in again, so I leaned down, eyes on his, and dislodged Hunter’s second gun. Guard number two moved to take it from me. I shot him through the chest.

As the body hit the floor, even Ajax looked surprised. “Well, well. An agent of Light who likes to kill innocents. How…invigorating.”

“Nobody who works for the Tulpa is an innocent.” And I shot Thomas twice. He cried out, and my conduit clattered uselessly to the floor. There. I liked those odds better.

“Done now?” Ajax asked, crossing his arms, looking bored. “I mean, there’s really no one left for you to kill.”

“Except you.” I leveled the gun at his chest. It wouldn’t kill him, but it’d sure leave a mark.

Ajax simply held up a finger, as if just remembering something. “Wait, we’re both wrong!” He pointed across the room. “Look behind you.”

I pivoted slowly, keeping one eye on Ajax while I faced whatever new threat lay behind me. But I gasped when I saw Warren there. His body was bound to a chair with casters, head hanging forward, hair loose, black blood pasting a third of it to his skull. But then even Warren was forgotten in a split moment. My eyes were all for the man holding him.

“You.” And I released the breath I’d been holding for a decade.

He was the same as before. I hadn’t imagined him. Of course, now the moonscape wasn’t stamping hollows beneath his cheeks, and the gentle breeze off the desert floor wasn’t rustling his hair into spikes, but the cruel, thin lips were the same. They were the ones I’d searched for in the face of every stranger for the last decade—walking miles and miles past syringes and feces, and alleys that never saw light, seeking them—and now here he was. Standing there. Watching me. Wearing fucking Armani.

“An old friend of yours, I believe,” Ajax said, a smile in his voice.

“Hello, Joanna,” he said, in the voice of my nightmares.

“Hello, asshole,” I replied.

“Now, now. I don’t think you’re in a position to be calling anyone names.” He leaned forward, lifted Warren’s head from where it lolled against his chest and looked into his face. “Do you, Warren?”

Warren’s neck swayed side to side beneath his grip, a motion that made my stomach roll over on itself. Carelessly, he let it drop again.

“Wow, Joaquin,” Ajax said. “Look at her chest.”

I didn’t have to look to know it was glowing. Heat fired through my body, pumped madly in my temples and veins.

Joaquin, however, did look. Then leered. And touched himself. “Pretty.”

I let my right hand drop to my side, a distraction as my left hovered over the pocket where Hunter’s whip was hidden. I was certain they couldn’t smell it—its master, after all, possessed the aureole—and both believed I was no longer armed. When Ajax took a step forward, I noted it, but made no move for the whip. I was biding my time. Drawing the tiger in closer. I inhaled deeply, but only smelled the two of them in the room. And the two dead guards.

And Warren’s agony.

“Wondering where everyone else is?” Ajax said, circling me to start the game of cat-and-mouse.

I shifted, keeping him in my sights. “It had crossed my mind.”

“Joaquin and I have thoughtfully planned this intimate little party just for you. Cozy, isn’t it?” He took another step forward. Joaquin tightened Warren’s body restraints, settling him at the top of the stairs like a king fastened to his throne. “We decided we want to get to know you a little better, Joanna. And Warren here gets to watch.”

“In other words,” Joaquin said, turning to me with a wink, “we want you for ourselves.”

He tossed one of Warren’s arms into the air in celebration. It fell limply back to his side. Warren, it seemed, wasn’t going to be watching anything.

I shook my head slowly, astounded at the magnitude of evil in the room. Of course, I’d destroy them both if I could—I’d discovered that I too could do my fair share of killing—but a part of me thought, What for? There would always be more sick fucks to follow in these two’s footsteps, and more after them. It was like treading water in the middle of the ocean, with no land, no ship, no help in sight. Eventually you’d have to stop, and let yourself sink.

“You didn’t think we were just going to kill you without having a bit of fun, did you?” Joaquin asked, his fingers drumming carelessly atop Warren’s slumped head. “You first, Ajax.”

“Oh, I couldn’t.”

“Really, I insist.” Joaquin waved the protest aside like he was swatting a fly. “I’ve had her before.”

“You are too kind.”

I had gone as cold and still as the marble blanketing the room. My mouth suddenly felt like I’d swallowed a quart of sand. “I’ll kill myself before I ever allow you inside me again.”

Joaquin shrugged. “Whatever. Suicide is of the Shadow too. Isn’t that right, Warren?” He took a knife from behind his back and placed its hilt in Warren’s open palm. Holding the lax fingers around it, he made a cutting motion across Warren’s throat, miming suicide. Blood bloomed, and Warren’s eyes fluttered open long enough to roll back into his head, but he fell limp on a faint groan.

I had jumped, expecting to feel a sympathetic score of the blade across my own neck, but didn’t. Our connection was severed, probably because he was too far gone to be saved. And, I thought, for any of this to matter now.

An eye popped open from beneath the matting of Warren’s hair. And blinked.

No, I thought, inhaling sharply. It winked.

I glanced over at Ajax, but he was watching me with an almost rapturous expression. Joaquin wore a similar one as he continued to thrum Warren’s skull. I saw the bright red ribbons of newly healed scars winding across every inch of his bared skin, and had to clench my jaw against the anger rising inside me again.

“There’s something I’ve been wondering forever now. Something I just have to ask.” Joaquin stopped drumming. “Did you think of me often? I mean, of that night? Of the moment I penetrated you?”

I managed a mean smile. “Every time I sharpened a pencil.”

Ajax laughed. Joaquin’s eyes knifed into slits.

“Well, I thought of you,” he said, licking his lips. “The way you screamed for mercy. Did you know the taste of your skin altered on my tongue as I pumped and pumped and pumped away? It was like innocence…gone sour and ruined.”

My jaw clenched, but I didn’t blink. “Well, I’m all grown up now. Not a shred of innocence to be found.”

He shrugged. “That’s all right. I prefer the powerful ones even more. Like your mother. She was tasty.”

My heart jumped in my chest despite myself. “You lie.”

Ajax laughed again. “Joaquin’s toying with you. After all, your mother went into the arms of the Shadows willingly. She wasn’t like you. She didn’t distinguish between good and evil. And you know why? Because she knew. There is no light and shadow. There’s only a gray rainbow, and a choice as to where you pin yourself on the spectrum.”

“You mean like your mother?” I said, and smiled when he froze. Both pair of eyes were fixed on me. I was the only one who saw Warren’s grip curl around the knife still in his hand.

“Don’t you talk about my mother.”

“Your mother, who was so bad she was good,” I continued, watching his already pale face drain of color.

“You think you’re better than me? Morally superior, because you’re a so-called agent of Light?” And I suddenly knew that’s what he thought.

“Half Light,” I corrected, careful to keep my eyes off the sawing motion behind Joaquin’s back.

“I told you before. There’s no such thing as better or worse in this world, or any world. You think you’re less evil than I, but all you really are is weaker. It’s only a matter of degree, you see? And of knowing at what point you’re going to break.”

I jerked my head once. “I told you before. I don’t believe that.”

A slim grin snaked up his cheeks. “And I told you I’d make you a believer.”

“You really want to know what I believe?” I said, taking a step forward, and I wasn’t just buying Warren time to do whatever it was he was trying to do. I really wanted to tell him. I wanted Ajax to know there was at least one solid core difference between him and me. “I think it kills you to see what you’ll never be. What your mother tried to be and couldn’t. You destroy things because you think it’ll erase her betrayal, fill you up, make you whole. Instead, with each death you grow emptier and emptier. The darkness inside of Ajax Sand casts its longest shadow over himself.”

“Spare me your false righteousness,” he bellowed, spittle flying from the side of his mouth. “You’re no better than I am!” He motioned back to the foyer. “You killed those guards like they were junkyard dogs. Don’t try and tell me you didn’t enjoy the power that gave you!”

“Those guards,” I said, through clenched teeth, “were initiates, not innocents, and killing them before they metamorphosed just saved me the chore of having to do it later.”

“How does she know that?” Joaquin asked, but Ajax didn’t answer. He was watching me. “We masked them. She couldn’t have known.”

“Because they stank,” I said to them both. “Like you. And especially like you.” I stared Ajax down, and found his blue eyes so empty they were like glass. But he was breathing hard.

I took another step toward him. “You do stink,” I said, lowering my voice like I was confiding in him. I inhaled deeply, and wrinkled my nose. “When I’m near you, it’s like being buried neck-deep in a Dumpster. And that goddamned cologne you’re wearing isn’t any better.”

Joaquin was silent now, straining to hear us, watching Ajax’s face, Warren all but forgotten behind him. Power had begun to swirl like a riptide in the air; I felt it. I was taking it from Ajax, and I began to smile. Even though I could see the outline of his conduit tucked inside his jacket, just one short thrust from my chest, I had the confidence he’d rather use his hands on me. Or, at least, he would by the time I was finished.

I dipped my own hands in my pockets, casually and cocky, and felt the hilt of the whip against my palm. I closed my fist around it. Meanwhile, I used words.

“I know why you like to kill star signs.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “And I know why you kill innocents. It’s for their Light. You want it for yourself. You want to be Light.”

“Shut up.”

“You think their blood will cleanse you and you won’t have to live in the stink and squalor of your own putrid flesh—”

“I said shut up!” Ajax thundered. It was amazing how a man could shake and remain so rigidly still. I could tell he was afraid to let it break, that he thought his control might shatter into a thousand pieces…and he’d never be able to piece it together again.

“But you’re the one who’s got it all wrong. It’s not your flesh that reeks. No, no.” I leaned forward and pressed on the hairline fracture that had snaked across his restraint. “It’s your soul. It’s fucking maggot-ridden. And nothing can mask that stench.”

He hit me so fast I never saw him move. And so hard I flew across the room, my torso slamming into a marble pillar six feet above its base. He was bolting toward me even as I fell, and there was no time to reach for Hunter’s whip. I gained my feet just as another cry sounded and there was a flurry of motion behind Ajax. He paused, hearing it, and I leapt.

My shoulder caught him in the diaphragm and the scent of fungus and rot spilled out over me as he grunted, losing his breath. Ajax was a seasoned fighter, though. He didn’t need breath to perform; the madness of the martial dance was ingrained in him, and he kneed me as he backpedaled, pulling me tight so I couldn’t draw away. He struck breast, ribs, and belly. My turn to gasp for air, and then he did release me…enough to send a fourth knee plowing into my face. My head snapped back, my mouth instantly filling with blood, and I glimpsed a silvery sheen passing over his head as he slipped his conduit from behind his back.

I tried to dodge, but his other hand darted out, lifting me from the ground by my neck, and he puckered up, blowing me a kiss before sending me rocketing back across the room and into one of the marble pillars.

It didn’t jar or hurt as much as it would’ve if I were mortal, but I still crumpled to the floor and had to figure out if anything was broken before I rose to hands and knees. Of course, Ajax knew this, and was already heading my way with poker in hand, but confidence was fueling his ego, and it didn’t allow his pace to quicken to more than a swift saunter. I remained where I was, head bowed in defeat while I reached into my pocket. Ajax laughed, grasping his poker in front of him with both hands. I still waited. The poker lifted. And three seconds later the whip lashed out like an unraveling tongue, barbed tip coiling tightly around his neck.

The pain contorting his face would’ve been satisfying enough. The underlying surprise, however, was icing. Not that I was into petty gratification. His mouth moved soundlessly and his free hand went to his throat where his Adam’s apple had been punctured, seeking relief. There was no slack in the leather, though, and the more he fought, the more the barbed tip twisted, tearing him up inside.

He made a gurgling sound, and I jerked him forward, the steel points digging in deep. Over his shoulder I saw Warren kick at Joaquin. He was still half tied to the chair, and I had a brief moment to wonder where, and what, Joaquin’s conduit was…until it dawned on me that his body was his weapon. This was his job. To use his body to steal innocence.

I yanked on the whip, infuriated. Ajax stumbled and fell.

“How are you doing that?” he choked from beneath me. “You look like him! You look like him!”

I glanced up and saw my face reflected in the mirrored ceiling. Then back down again, offering Ajax a wide skeletal smile. “Well, I am the Archer.”

“No, no! My master is the Shadow Archer!” His feet found purchase and he began backing away, one hand pulling to slacken the whip.

“Call me mistress, if you like,” I said, reeling him back in. I placed one hand on his chest, wrapped another coil around his throat, then secured it around my wrist and pulled. He clawed at his throat. “Now, look into my eyes, Ajax. Because I want you to know who I am, deep down, when I kill you.”

A voice finally penetrated through the haze of my fury—I realized it’d been crying out all along—and I had to blink several times to focus.

“Olivia! Damn it! Give me the fucking keys!” Hunter was across the room, supporting Warren within the circle of his strong arms, while holding his cuffed wrists out to me in supplication. His glyph was fiery and white-hot, but it had to be in reaction to Ajax. Joaquin was nowhere to be seen.

Ajax’s eyes widened. Bulged even more upon hearing who I really was behind the mask. “Olivia…?”

“Nice to meet you,” I said, “but I have to make this quick.” I yanked, and there was a bone-splitting crack. Ajax’s neck broke with my sister’s name still caught in his throat. Before the last of life could drain from his body, I ripped his conduit from the sheath at his back and slammed the poker through the core of his chest. Rancid decay hit me immediately, just as it had when I’d killed Butch, but this time I recognized it as a good sign, a death scent. The scent of Shadows. But stronger still was the power that flowed over me like buckets of rain, slamming into me, drenching my insides, coating my organs, and making my blood hum like a live wire. Ajax had been right about one thing. It felt fucking great.

Yanking the handcuff keys from my back pocket, I tossed them to Hunter, and unwound his whip. I dropped it at his feet as I lunged for my conduit, and without stopping, ran for the door that had been left half open.

“Olivia! Stop! I need you to help me get him out of here.”

“But—” But Joaquin. But revenge was so close. The air was still infused with the scent of charred candy, so thick and cloying it was almost visible as it trailed after him. I could still run him down like he’d once done to me…but I had to act now.

Hunter saw my struggle and shook his head. “He’s too weak.”

I growled in frustration, looking from the door, then back at him, and finally said, “I have an idea.”

We bent to Warren’s mouth, alternately pumping life into him with our breath—the aureoles leaving our bodies through our mouths in bright beams—one of us watching his chest rise and fall, his breath steadying, while the other exhaled power and images and pieces of ourselves into his body and mind. It seemed to take forever, but after a few minutes Warren’s eyes flickered open, focused, and he smiled. “Told you…one of the good guys. Like me.”

Gently, I put a finger to his bruised lips, shushing him. “That’s right, Warren. Just like you.”

Standing, I cut my eyes to Hunter. “He’s strong enough now. Get him out of here.”

I didn’t wait to hear his protest. I wasn’t going to choose between saving Warren and having my vengeance. I wanted them both. I wanted it all.