The Scent of Shadows

29

I hurtled through the door where Joaquin had fled, following a rapidly disappearing trail of blood, only to find myself back in the Gauntlet. “What…?” I swiveled back around, confused, but the door was gone. I slammed my palm against a solid length of wall, smooth at the seams, an impenetrable barrier to all that lay behind me.

A snicker echoed down the hall.

I whirled, bow and arrow braced in front of me, but saw no one. There was just the Gauntlet, smooth and narrow, stretching before me in silent challenge.

The sound raced up the other side of the wall, slipped along the floor behind me before wheedling up the back of my legs and spine. There was a probing at the base of my skull, like a centipede trying to burrow beneath my skin, into my brain, but I shook my head and the feeling receded, though whatever had caused it was still there. This sterile hallway, I knew, contained something that could reach out and touch me at any moment, and it wasn’t Joaquin.

“Finally. Another Archer.”

The voice was curious, friendly even, and each word possessed the deep thrumming echo of a cello string, low, musical, and filled with vitality. I glanced up at the ceiling, looking for vents, shafts, cameras…anything I could be viewed easily with or through, but saw nothing. The walls and ceiling were unusually smooth, and if I didn’t know any better I’d have said it was less of a hallway than a living organ, like an intestine unraveled from within a large beast, and me devoured, lost inside. I quickly pushed the thought aside.

“I was wondering who was punching holes in my energy field. I knew Warren was no longer capable, though he certainly served his purpose. Welcome.” His chuckle came from nowhere and everywhere at once, and I didn’t need to see a face to recognize the cool arrogance haloing his words. I was on his turf, and even though I didn’t know what game we were playing—never mind the rules—I kind of doubted he was going to clue me in.

“You’re the Tulpa.” I said, and tentatively began to back up. I searched again for a door to escape by, but when my palm hit the wall, needles sprung up to stab at my flesh and I jolted away. Glancing down, I found dozens of bloody tears studding my hand, though they dried up and disappeared as I watched. Surface wounds. Not that that wasn’t worrying too. Because now I was sure I had to run the Gauntlet, and I had a feeling there were more sharp little surprises awaiting me.

“Expecting someone else? An ally, perhaps?”

“Not really,” I answered, taking a testing step forward, then another. “You just don’t look anything like I pictured you.”

Okay, so the false bravado probably wasn’t going to get me very far, but my allies were busy escaping Valhalla, and if the Tulpa was here with me, he couldn’t stop Hunter and Warren. He couldn’t, as far as I knew, be two places at once. So that was the upside. The downside? The Tulpa was here with me.

“Then you haven’t pictured me fully. You have to use your imagination, you see. What’s the worst thing you could face in an enemy? What’s the most horrifying thing I could possibly be?”

Me, I thought, before I could stop the idea from forming. The worst thing I could face was someone who looked or felt or acted anything like me. Because that would mean he’d gotten inside, delivered more than just chromosomes at my conception…and that I was somehow like him as well.

“Elvis,” I said, picking up my pace a bit, careful to stay centered in the narrow hallway. Was it me, or was it getting narrower? “If I see one more aging Elvis impersonator I’m totally going to scream.”

“Sweetie. You’re going to scream anyway.”

The walls shook again, but with increased intensity, quaking so the floor swayed beneath my feet. I braced like I was riding a wave, struggling for balance even with my center of gravity low over the ground. He was fucking with me now, I thought, as the shaking slowly died down. I’d seen Luna bat around insects with the same patient and deadly fascination.

“I guess I don’t have to tell you this town isn’t big enough for the two of us.”

“I’ll just be moving on, then.” And I continued the long walk down the Gauntlet, one foot in front of the other. The Tulpa, wherever he was, seemed inclined to let me. For now.

“Joaquin’s long gone,” he said after a bit. “You put a devil of a fright into him. What did you do, I wonder?”

“Revealed myself,” I answered truthfully. A conversation was good. Conversations generally didn’t include bloodshed.

“How about doing the same for me?” he said softly, and a breeze entered the room, like a fan had been switched on and directed at my face. Invisible fingers toyed with my mask, and I clamped a hand down over my head.

“You first,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to see this being, this entity—certainly not a man—who was my father.

“Forgive me if I decline,” the overly polite voice said. “I’m not accustomed to someone issuing me orders. But you go ahead.” And that was an order. I ignored it, and kept walking.

“Come on, I’ve never seen a Tulpa before,” I taunted, continuing forward. I’d gone about ten feet, but it felt like an inch in the elongated hallway. “Oh, I get it. It’s the sideburns, isn’t it?”

No answer. Maybe he’d gone away. Maybe, I thought, he’d stay gone.

I picked up my pace because the unnatural stillness was almost as bad as the hovering presence, but after about five feet the fluorescent lights along the walls flickered, steadied, then went out.

Or maybe not.

I kept inching forward in the darkness. I had to, though I was certain I’d hit something, someone, with each step. I consciously tempered my rising fear, not wanting to give him anything to feed off of, which was obviously what he wanted.

“Silly little agent of Light. Do you think you’re standing there, speaking to me with that insolent tone by anything but my grace?”

Fuck. I still couldn’t see the son of a bitch, but the soft steel in his voice had me biting my lip until it bled. I took another step, heel-toeing it at a faster pace as my pulse sped up as well. I needed to focus on something else, and my mind alighted on the memory of Marcus and his fierce intensity as he flew through the boneyard, a little light darting fearlessly among Shadows. If I centered my energy on that, and on the end of the hallway, I could keep my mind off the fear building in my chest. And if I could do that, maybe my conduit would stop shaking in my hands.

Then my glyph began to glow. Oh, goody. Nice to know I was suddenly in real danger. Though at least now, able to see a few feet in front of me, I could see death coming before I ran smack into it.

“Oh, look. A little night light.” The Tulpa sounded amused. My glyph burned hotter. “Which reminds me…how’ve you been sleeping lately, little Archer? Having nice dreams? Pleasant memories?”

My jaw clenched convulsively. “I was wondering how much of that was my imagination and how much of that was you. I suppose you think you’re clever, using Greta to open our minds to your energy.” Heel-toe, heel-toe.

“It was one of my better ideas,” he said, and I could picture him polishing his knuckles. “As for the rest, I just played on what was already there. Your fears, your conceits, your neuroses. They all let me know exactly what buttons to push.”

“But Greta’s gone now. There’s no way for you to see inside of me any longer.”

He laughed, and the walls shook with it. “There’s always a way inside.”

Again that pricking and burrowing at the back of my neck, and suddenly I knew he was right. A being made of energy, who could be nowhere and everywhere at once, wasn’t going to settle for a bit of physical torture. Oh, shit.

“I know everything about you,” he was saying, but now his voice was within, bouncing off my eardrums from the inside. My brain pulsed once, and my skull felt like it was going to crack as a fissure grew from the bridge of my nose up into my hairline. I pressed a hand to my head, surprised to find it smooth and whole instead of bloody and split…and moaned aloud, scared, because that meant whatever was cracking was on the inside. Still, I stumbled forward. “I knew the night your first life cycle ended. I sent Butch after you for the second—”

“Did you know the moment I killed him, then?” I asked, trying to keep him talking. The pain seemed to decrease when he was talking.

“Of course. I felt the power shift.”

No decrease in pain this time. A white-hot line seeped over my skull, and raced back down my spine to tunnel viciously into my limbs. I could feel him inside me now, his unstable energy wriggling like electric worms and breeding like fiery maggots, and I had to fight not to stand there and scratch the very skin from my body. I had to be halfway down the hall by now. I forced myself to keep going.

“Impressive,” the voice said, lifting from my own throat. He was right. He’d found another way inside. I panicked and lurched sideways. The wall studded my arm with microscopic needles, and the scent of my own blood lifted again in the air. “Oops. Careful.”

“Get out!” My voice lifted from a whimper into a scream, and I whirled around myself blindly, losing track of which way I’d come and which way I had to go. “Get out! Get out!”

“Hmm…” the Tulpa said, considering. The pain abated. “No.”

And with a flick of a wrist, my wrist, he sent me wheeling from my feet, slamming into the ground where needles not only sprung up to rupture my skin, they grew barbs and stuck there. I cried out and jerked up almost as soon as I hit the ground, but yelped when my neck was only inches from the ground. I let it fall again, choosing instead not to move. I was pinned in place from my neck to my calves, in the dark but for the steady burning of my glyph, and in a sterile hallway that was slowly filling with my blood.

“I’ve been waiting for you for a long time, Archer. And now my patience has been rewarded with another adversary, such that you are.” He actually sounded regretful at that. “But I knew, deep down, that there was another. I could feel you out there, like a season yet to arrive. I could sense you growing in the world—my world—ripening just for this moment.”

I’d caught my breath by now, realizing that if I didn’t move at all, the needles didn’t sting so much. The Tulpa was no longer speaking through me either. His voice came at me as if from speakers; above, below, to the sides as well as from the top of my head…as if he were standing just there. I guess he was fonder of physical torture than I originally gave him credit for, but at least I could think without him inside my mind. I could breathe again. And while I saw no way out of the situation, I easily saw the fault in his words. With not much else to lose, I called him on it.

“You didn’t know.”

The maggots began wriggling again. The soft tissue in my head began to swell. “I knew the moment you entered this building! This city, even! This fucking world!”

“No.” I actually laughed, though barbs pulled at the muscles in my neck. “You didn’t.”

He must have sensed the honesty in my derision, because the floor began to shake and the dead lights rattled in their sockets. I realized then that he couldn’t be two places at once. He was either planted inside me or manipulating the environment, but he couldn’t do both. So, I thought, even imagined beings had their limits. Good to know. “I know exactly who you are! You smell like sweet desert sage and cactus juice, burning roses and freshly ground allspice.”

I winced as each barb pinning me in place loosed more of my blood free. “It’s my perfume,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Available at Macy’s.”

“A tart tongue as well. Only one other person possessed all of that.”

Don’t ask me why I was doing it. Perhaps because the sarcasm Xavier had always chastised me for was, once again, my only defense. It seemed to piss off this cool, controlled being who feared nothing. So I went ahead and struck him with a low-voiced barb of my own. I figured I was dead anyway.

“Oh, and you knew her well too, didn’t you?”

The needles suddenly disappeared, ripping from my flesh. I cried out as the floor tilted, and I was slammed into the wall again. I was able to free myself this time, and I rose to my knees and palms quickly. I grabbed my conduit, its outline visible in the glow of my glyph, but pushed myself to my feet too soon and stumbled, falling against the wall again. I righted myself dizzily and kept going. “You knew her so well she infiltrated your organization twice without you ever suspecting it.”

Light casings began to burst up and down the hallway. I felt shards of glass stab and then settle atop my skull. I ducked, and concentrated on moving forward. I was free, and no matter what, I had to keep moving forward.

“I fucked your mother!”

“You men,” I said, shaking my head when silence fell again. “I don’t know why you always think that lends you some sort of power. I mean, let’s be honest, okay? Just between you and me. My mother? She fucked you.”

A vortex of wind whipped around me, so violent it sucked the air from my mouth and throat and lungs. My eyes were glued to my lids, even beneath my shield, and I actually felt my heart jump in my chest like a startled sparrow. Then it faltered. My liver and lungs ached from the hot, vapid suction, like a vacuum had been affixed to my mouth, and a strangled sound was lifted from my throat and ripped away like shredded paper. Like a baby in the womb, I forgot how to breathe.

Then the center of the spiraling wind shifted, amassed, and, limb over limb, I was catapulted down the Gauntlet. I slammed into the wall head first, and slumped to the ground as hollow pops fired down my spine. Fresh pain bloomed with each snapped vertebrae, and a buzzing sounded. It could’ve been the handful of remaining lights flickering on, but I didn’t think so. It had come, again, from within my own skull, but this time there was no one else there. Maybe, I thought dully, that was just the sound soft tissue made when it seeped through newly rent crevices. I choked as blood welled in my throat and my tongue lolled on the floor, spilling it all forward.

The wind died down, as if a switch had been flicked. The Gauntlet looked like a cave in the meager light. The silence was deafening.

There’s usually a grace period before injuries are felt. Adrenaline, and the shock of being alive temporarily numbing the senses. Not this time, though. My limbs shook, my organs felt battered inside me, and I was sure my right shoulder had dislocated when I’d punched into the wall. I coughed, and more blood fountained from my mouth, like one of those ancient marble statues in the middle of some picturesque European marketplace. For some reason, that thought made me giggle. Blood bubbled from my nose, and I laughed some more.

“Who are you?” The words were evenly spaced, but so jagged they sounded a bit off. I realized, with some shock, that the Tulpa’s voice was trembling. Lifting my head, I thought about that…and realized on another jolt that he believed I should be dead. That had been his parting shot, and it’d been a damned good show…except that I was still alive.

I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t stop laughing. The laughter and blood mingled to bubble in wet gasps from my throat, hot iron gurgling to temporarily render me speechless.

“Now that…that is something you should know,” I finally managed, wiping the tears from my eyes, the sticky warmth of blood spreading everywhere. I hacked a big glob on the pristine floor, and looked up at the ceiling. It was probably only blood loss making me loopy, but I figured I might as well get in the last word. What the hell? If this event was going to be recorded in the manuals of Shadow and Light, I wanted to go out in spectacular, if bloody, style. “After all, you created me.”

Dead silence.

And that was it, I realized. He had created me, and once again that had saved my life. So intent on destroying his opposite, his enemy, he never even realized that I was of his blood.

So, maybe I wasn’t dying after all.

“Interesting, huh?” I threw one hand halfheartedly into the air, the other creeping along the wall to lift me into a standing position. I ignored the red prints I left decorating the wall in a macabre geometric design because I was definitely feeling better. Stronger. More powerful. “What happens, I wonder, when the Created becomes the Creator, huh? When you’re no longer just a Tulpa, but a father? What’s next?”

It was so silent, I could almost believe he’d left. Almost.

“What’s the matter, Daddy?” I whispered as I stood, knowing he could hear me as clearly as if I were shouting from the top of Valhalla. I was bent, wobbling, but I was standing. “Cat got your tongue?”

“The Kairos! The first sign of the Zodiac…but it can’t be!”

“Can’t it? You say I smell like her, but who else do I smell like?” I paused. “But that’s right. An agent can’t smell themselves. Even, it seems, a Tulpa.”

I began making my way to the far door again, and as I stumbled forward, I felt his confusion grow.

“You sent a Shadow after your own daughter,” I said, helping him out. “You ordered me raped and beaten and killed at only fifteen years old. Fifteen! And I would have died. Would have, except I was yours.”

I straightened. You’d have never known that mere moments before I’d been a broken heap of bones and blood on the floor. My voice grew stronger. He couldn’t kill me, I realized, until he was willing to kill pieces of himself…but I wasn’t going to let him in on that little secret just yet. “You claim to be all-knowing. You set yourself up, godlike, in this tower, to mete out destruction and judgment as you see fit. You stalk the agents of Light, set on destroying them and this city. But you aren’t all-knowing. You aren’t omnipotent, or even omnipresent.”

By this time I was within ten feet of the door, and my stride was almost normal. My hand was on the door when the voice sounded again.

“Wait!” Power flowed into me with the words; massaging my organs, all my wounds instantly healed. My shoulder popped effortlessly back into place, my bruises disappeared. I could see how a person, or a nonperson, could get used to this sort of power. “At least show me your face.”

I didn’t remove my mask. “Look in the mirror.”

He tried again. “But see how easily I can heal you?”

I smiled at that. “I’d heal anyway.”

“But I can do more. In fact, join me and I can give you more.”

I hesitated. “More what? Power, money, status?”

“I can do anything. Give anything. But in return—”

“My soul, right?” I said, amusement lining my words. “You want me to join with the Shadows, leave the Light?”

“It is prophesied,” he said solemnly.

“That is just so Star Wars.”

“Then we talk,” he said hurriedly. Not only did the man not have a face, I thought, he didn’t have a poker face. But he still had his wits. “Bargain. Tell me your greatest desire, and I’ll prove it’s within my reach.”

“All right,” I said, and the hallway went still. It was as if he was holding his breath. “I want my mother and my sister and my innocence returned to me. I want my life back.”

Wind whistled against my face on a heavy sigh. We both knew it was the one thing he couldn’t give. “I can give you a new life, a better one. You will be exalted in my organization.”

I blew a sticky strand of hair from my cheek and shook my head. “No, Daddy. I liked my old life, so you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to take it all back for myself.”

I reached for the door. It gave, opening easily in my hand. Half turning, I studied the Gauntlet, the strip of bloodied and battered linoleum I had somehow navigated alive. “Next time—and we both know there will be a next time—I’m going to kill Joaquin.”

“You may try.” His voice was low and composed again, but it wavered with need—something I don’t think he’d felt in years—and I lifted my chin, glad, knowing I was the one who put it there.

“But I’m not going to stop there.” I paused for a reaction, but there was none. He was waiting for me, indulging me now that he knew I was his daughter. Both Light and Shadow. The Kairos. “I’m going to train and fight and study our mythology until I find a way to annihilate the entire Shadow Zodiac. I’m going to take my city and my life back. And then…”

There was a hesitation, an indrawn breath. “Then?”

“Then I’m coming after yours.”

I yanked the door wide, and the blast that came, slamming it shut, was not a killing blow, but one meant only to shock, to stun. It didn’t even do that.

He’d pulled his punch, I thought, and smiled to myself. And that was all the power I needed for now.

“Later, Pops,” I said, and walked right out of the Gauntlet, and Valhalla. Into a new day. Into the morning. Into the light.

Hunter stood on the Boulevard, waiting as I cleaned myself up at the bottom of the long, ornate fountain leading up to the casino’s entrance. Vanessa had followed us to the hotel despite Hunter’s warnings, and he’d given Warren over to her care. They were now, presumably, someplace safe and undetectable until dusk and the time of crossing came again.

I sensed no one around us, neither Shadow nor Light, and after Hunter assured me again that the security cameras didn’t reach this far, I pulled the shield from my head and handed it to him. I ran my other fingers through my damp hair.

“Joaquin got away,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

I lifted my face to the sky, breathing deeply of the morning air. “It’s all right. I’ll find him again. I have his scent locked in my brain now.”

“And vice versa,” he reminded me as we turned away from the hotel.

I shrugged, feeling a residual ache echo through my right shoulder. “Either way. Next time I’ll be ready.”

“Yes.” His voice sounded almost tender. “I believe you will.”

I glanced over at the man who was so dutiful he’d been willing to sacrifice himself for us all. His appearance hadn’t altered, but now that we’d shared the aureole, and tasted of one another’s souls, I was seeing him differently. For one, I knew his single-mindedness was a fear-induced response, as was his frightening composure. And while I didn’t know what a man as capable as Hunter had to fear, at least now I knew he felt something beneath that calculating facade. Maybe I’d learn more in time.

“Sorry about your head,” I said, after a moment.

“You apologized before you hit me, remember?” He rubbed at his skull. The swelling was already gone, however, so I didn’t feel that bad. “I guess you were expecting someone from the hotel to find me knocked out at the bottom of that elevator before I ever came around, right?”

“That was the plan.”

“Lousy plan.”

How was I supposed to know he’d already taken care of the security tapes? “Well, I couldn’t let you give up your entire life for me. Besides, we need someone on the inside.” I paused. “My mother would have wanted it.”

He didn’t answer for a moment. We both knew I hadn’t done it for my mother.

“Well,” he finally said, shuffling his feet. For the first time since I’d known him, he looked uncomfortable. Not quite at ease in his gorgeous skin. “Thank you.”

I looked down the street, smiled to myself, and asked softly, “Your daughter. What’s her name?”

“Lola,” he said, just as quietly. I had a feeling he rarely spoke of her at all.

“Ah, that’s Lola,” I said. For some reason, I’d assumed the woman he’d first spoken of in the dojo—the one no one else knew about—was his lover.

“Yours?”

I looked at him. The light from the morning sun set his dark hair to glow from behind, and he almost looked haloed. “I don’t have a daughter.”

“You do.”

I shook my head. “I don’t. I—”

He cut off my protest with one simple, jarring thought. “Our lineage is matriarchal.”

My blood pooled in my feet, and my thoughts drained from me on an escaped breath. “Oh, shit…”

I’d had a girl child. She was now in her first life cycle. “Oh, shit,” I said again.

“Don’t worry about it now. We’ll figure it out—”

I panicked at that, shaking my head hard, then harder. “No one can know. No one does know! And you can’t—”

“Shh,” Hunter put a steadying hand on my shoulder, and I fell silent. “I said we’ll figure it out.”

I swallowed hard, then nodded as I stared at my feet. He was right. There was time yet. I’d figure out what to do—Hunter would help—and I’d find a way to keep my secret as well. I looked back up at him, gave another small nod, and when he smiled back it was almost as if I were seeing him for the first time. A tendril of hair had come loose from his back knot, and after a moment I reached up to tuck it behind his ear. My fingertips skimmed his warm cheek, the delicate folds of his left ear, trailing down his neck. I remembered the softness of his lips, the way they’d yielded beneath mine; and I recalled the memories that were a part of this fierce, complicated man. And, I thought, were now a part of me as well.

“Thank you again,” he said, covering my hand with his own.

“You’re still welcome,” I said softly.

“And don’t ever do it again.”

I peered up at him. “Can we go back to the thank-you part?”

We both smiled at that, momentarily at peace with the hand life had dealt. We were like cats bathing in the morning light, reveling in the freshness of the day as we took inventory of our body and limbs, each of us genuinely surprised, and nearly giddy, at being alive.

That was how Ben Traina found us. Stretching, smiling, happy. I sobered quickly when I saw him. “What are you doing here?”

“Whatever happened to ‘Hello’?” Ben said, looking amused. He looked better than when I’d last seen him. Still too thin, but not reeking of desperation, and no longer quite as wild-eyed. I tried to read his aura, but I was too spent from my time in the Gauntlet, and all I saw was Ben.

“Hello,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

My voice was too sharp, the query inappropriate, but he was too close to Valhalla and its still-fresh horrors for my liking. Certainly too close to me. I shuttered my expression and emotions before anything telling could leak out.

“You must be Ben,” Hunter said, covering for me in the ensuing silence. Ben looked down at the hand stretched before him.

“That’s right,” he said after a moment. “Traina.”

“Hunter. Lorenzo.” They shook, civilized-like, sizing each other up. Hunter inhaled deeply. I cleared my throat in warning, which merely amused him.

“In answer to your question,” Ben said, turning back to me, “I heard reports of something strange happening here this morning. Some sort of power outage or explosion or something. Thought I’d come down and check it out.”

“Back on the force, then?”

He shook his head, one quick jerk. “One of the guys called me in. They know I’ve been…interested in this place for the last few months.”

So he was still looking into my death. Looking for answers he didn’t even have the right questions to. I didn’t know whether to be alarmed or gratified.

“Anyway, I don’t want to keep you guys. You’ve obviously been up all night. Just come from a concert or something?”

“Or something,” Hunter said with a smile.

Ben nodded absently, then leaned in to politely kiss my cheek. “Olivia.”

The air sparked, crackling between us. We both jerked back.

I shook my head. “Whew. Lots of static electricity. Must have been some explosion in there.”

“Yeah.” Ben rubbed at his mouth before backing away, frowning. “Well. See you later.”

I bit my lip and watched him walk away.

“Static electricity?” Hunter said after a moment. I smiled, as he meant me to. “More like chemistry, I’d say.”

“It’s merely sensory-evoked nostalgia,” I told him, turning away. “Micah explained it to me. Ben’s scent is connected to pleasant memories, and my brain’s limbic system is reacting to those memories. That’s all.”

“Uh-huh.”

“It is,” I said, but glanced up to hold his eyes with my own. “The only chemistry Ben Traina ever felt was with and for my sister. Joanna.”

Hunter trailed his eyes over my face, his eyes hooded again, his expression unreadable. “Well,” he finally said. “She must have been quite a woman too.”

I acknowledged the compliment, and his silent agreement to keep my identity secret, with a tilt of my head. “She was.”

We started walking again, and Hunter draped a comforting arm around my shoulder, surprising me by pulling me close. “Come on, Olivia Archer. It looks like we get to live to fight crime another day.”

“Whoopee.”

Still I leaned my head on his shoulder and let him wheel me away from the Hall of the Gods, following him into the crisp air of dawn while the city sparkled around us with the same hope it held for every new day. We walked down the Strip, kept walking, beyond Tropicana and Flamingo, Spring Mountain and Sands, Sahara and Charleston, to where the bones of the old city lay. I welcomed the light rising in that sky, bathed in the touch of the cool air against a whole and healthy body, and welcomed Hunter’s warm and reassuring presence beside me. I was happy to be here. To be alive. To be Olivia.

Happy, even though I could still feel Ben’s hot stare burning a hole through my back.