The Touch of Twilight

11

I drove Li and Jasmine to the emergency room, and left only after their mother had arrived, assuring her all medical costs would be covered by the Archer Children’s Foundation. She thanked me repeatedly for “saving” her baby’s life from a vicious dog’s attack, while Jasmine sat in a plastic chair, swinging her feet back and forth as she alternated text messaging on her cell phone and glaring pointedly in my direction.

I wanted to tell her it wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t expected the Tulpa to attack, and I didn’t know how the injury had been transferred to Li instead of me or even her. But intentionally or not, I really had broken something vital to the balance of the supernatural system, and now not only were the manuals not being written, but a seven-year-old’s life had been permanently affected.

It was too late to return to Master Comics. The shop was closed and I’d received instructions to meet the rest of the troop at eight o’clock to examine the mask Chandra had stolen from Xavier’s. It was seven-thirty now and I still had to get across town in the rush of Friday night traffic, but at least it gave me time to think of a way to tell the others about Li, as well as ponder the smorgasbord of trouble now filling my plate. Okay, so it wasn’t all bad news. I’d learned the doppelgänger’s appearance had spooked the Tulpa enough to have him willing to bargain with the Light. I’d also learned Regan’s left eye wigged out when she was nervous, that she was overly sensitive about turning into a walking corpse, and I could best her in hand-to-hand if I played my cards right.

The news about Hunter having a side gig as a sex worker wasn’t what one would call good, but he always had a reason for what he did, and surely he had one for keeping it from the rest of the troop. Since I was exceptionally curious as to what that reason was, it was convenient to find myself swinging in front of the warehouse that served as his workshop with almost a quarter hour to spare. We were meeting here because we weren’t sure what would happen if we tried to take Xavier’s mask back into the sanctuary with us. Anything related to the Shadows was instantaneously incinerated as it slid down the secured chute leading to our hidden underground lair. I shuddered as I recalled the sole time I’d attempted entry without donning my protective mask. In contrast, we didn’t know if this mask was inherently evil-though there was something determinedly not right about a piece of wood that came to life and sucked out a person’s soul essence-but we couldn’t risk it being destroyed before we had a chance to examine it further.

Hunter’s workshop was as safe a place as we could hope for on this side of reality. It wasn’t a designated safe zone like Master Comics or the Downtown Cocktail Lounge, and was technically accessible by mortals and Shadows alike, but Hunter had the place so booby-trapped, the unfortunate Shadow who attempted a break-in here would be skewered, rotisseried, and served up to his or her enemies faster than you could say, Would you like fries with that? I’d seen him construct a weapon out of nothing more than toothpicks and twine, but the devices buried about his workshop were more than that; they were lethal works of art. Hunter did like his toys.

The steel bay door was open on the easterly side, and I assumed all alarms, traps, and missile systems had been turned off, so I pulled my Porsche to a stop next to his Ford Mustang, noting they were the only two cars here as of yet. Also convenient.

Clicking the alarm on my car, I glanced at the red Mustang and wondered if he used it for his security cover or if it was the ride for his side gig. What did a call boy drive on a date, anyway? And why, I asked myself as I shook my head, should I even care?

The workshop was housed in an isolated commercial district where the Strip’s biggest names in magic stored their props. Burton, Copperfield, Penn and Teller; they all had storage buildings the size of airplane hangars, so if our place ever was broken into, the templates and drawings and odd contraptions could be explained away as yet another magician’s illusionary trove of tricks.

What it was, however, was a place to plan, design, and test the weapons we used against the Shadows as we vied for control over the valley. The conduits designed to complement a specific agent’s talents, temperament, and training were conceived and honed to lethal perfection here. However, that was a relatively rare task-agents, with any luck, tended to live a long time-so the rest of the time it was a place to run sims and defensive programs meant to counteract our enemies’ machinations. Even the tools used to clean up a location affected by a paranormal battle were contained in raw form and made here. And Hunter’s hands crafted them all.

I’d once heard the Eskimo languages had dozens of different words for the concept of snow. Agents, I decided, should have the same extensive linguistic flexibility for the qualities of smoke, because the scent I inhaled upon entering the warehouse wasn’t the Shadow stench of incinerating flesh and hot ashes, and it wasn’t the suffocating fallout that had squeezed all the air from the molecules in the pseudo black hole the Tulpa had created downtown last weekend. No, Hunter’s scent was more natural, like the wisps rising from an isolated forest campfire, when the breeze was up and there was no other person for miles around. I located him by inhaling the heady mixture of clean sweat and a spice as identifiable as a sliver of ginger on the tongue, and my belly flip-flopped inside me. It’s true what they say, I thought, rounding the corner to find him shirtless, bent over a sliding table. Where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire.

And this man was scorching.

He wasn’t overbuilt like a gym rat; his physicality was more raw and far less self-conscious than that. He was sleek in the fashion of panthers and fast cars, built for performance, with latent power almost quivering beneath that compact frame. Still, the first word that would spring to mind if you ever saw him backlit, in silhouette, would be man. I especially liked the way his shoulders rounded, how they rolled high and smooth, like statues on display, clearly the force behind his fist. I’d seen him pummel through a concrete barrier with a careless backslap, and couldn’t help but compare that to the way I fought. I had never solely used the torque of my shoulder. I used my wide hips, my long thighs, my agile mind. As a woman, my whole being had to be the force behind my fist.

And back when I was a mortal woman, Hunter was exactly the type of man I’d study from behind the lens of my camera. I’d see them moving across a room with unconscious, predatory grace, and wonder what it would be like to be that powerful. What did it feel like to be able to run faster, jump higher, hit harder? To feel synapses firing in split-second bursts beneath the skin, testosterone making me jumpy?

Those were, of course, the covetous thoughts of a girl who’d been victimized in a way most men could never imagine. Back then, before I was a hundred times stronger than all those men I so jealously and suspiciously studied, I equated physicality with power. I thought the stronger you were, the more you controlled your own body and destiny. I even remember swearing in the abyss of night that if I’d been born with a male body I would never let it get out of shape or allow it to be less than what it could be. I’d have sculpted it until David wilted beneath his fig leaf in comparison. I’d have taken up as much space as possible. I’d have run just to feel power pumping in my thighs.

I hadn’t felt that envious twinge since my metamorphosis, but it struck me now, and surprise had me holding back as I studied Hunter from my location beside the wall cabinets. I’d never seen him without his shirt before, and the ambient light from the low-hanging bulbs captured the cuts and grooves of his muscles as he worked. His skin was burnished like faded copper…the result of sporting beneath the desert sun, not worshipping. More, there was a tattoo high on his back, above his right shoulder blade, and when he shifted again I crept closer to inspect it. It was a perfect circle of ink so black, his tanned skin looked pale in comparison. One side of the circle was shaded, the other left naked in the classic design of yin and yang. But the artist had left enough skin bare on the shaded portion to spell one potent word: Desire.

On the naked side? Fear.

“You’re in my light,” he said, not looking up. He knew my scent too. In fact, every fresh encounter between us strengthened that knowledge, and soon those silty layers would be thick enough to form a solid bedrock of intimacy. If a team of archaeologists could dig up the emotions lying between us, unearthing the beginning of my relationship with Hunter, the aureole we’d swapped and shared would mark a distinct altering of the hostility that came before it. It was hard to hate someone when you’d stood not just in their shoes, but the very seat of their soul.

And right now, with his scent invading my pores and the sight of him with fewer clothes on than I’d ever seen before, my vision clouded. All I could see was that damned tattoo, like some of those emotions I’d experienced while inside him had been inscribed on his skin. I could all too easily recall the slide of his lips beneath mine as I passed him the aureole, the power in both his body and mind mingling with mine. It was a memory I didn’t want.

And starting an argument, I decided, would be a good way to push it away.

“I’ll stand over here, then,” I said, before pulling out one of the flyers Regan had pelted me with and dropping it in his line of view. It landed at the toe of his left boot, and he merely shifted his eyes, the rest of him still as he remained bent over his work. “I mean, this is your good side, right?”

Now he did look up. “Where’d you get this?”

I crossed my arms. “They’re plastered all over town.”

Now he did straighten, stretching blithely, which annoyed me for some reason. “And when did Olivia Archer become a patron of the smut peddlers?”

“Actually, Ben discovered it. He’s decided he doesn’t like you.”

Hunter turned back to the pencil and scale he’d been working with. “Oh, I’m real worried about the mortal who keeps stepping on his own dick.”

“Hey!” I straightened, indignant.

He waved my protest away and kept working. “Big deal. So Ben told the little sister of his not-dead ex-girlfriend-who really is his ex-that he doesn’t like me. Meanwhile he’s dating her sworn enemy. Stop me when this gets ridiculous.”

I circled to the other side of the table and leaned forward so I really was in his light. “You mean ridiculous like pissing off a P.I. so badly, he shared everything he’s learned about Hunter Lorenzo with his new girlfriend?”

That had him looking up. “What?”

I shot him a grim smile now that I had his attention. “Ben didn’t show that to me. Regan did.”

I saw his mind working, body still as his eyes wandered the floor, mentally covering all the angles as I had. The Hunter Lorenzo identity, the odds of Regan tracking him to Valhalla. Finally his tensed shoulders relaxed. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does if she ever sees you at the casino. What are you going to say, security is your side job? Or hooking is?”

His jaw clenched, but he still offered no explanation. “You worry too much.”

He meant I asked too many questions. Feeling my temper rise, I linked my hands to keep them from curling into fists, and worked on keeping my tone light and even. “I’m not worried, just curious. I mean, what kind of women call you? Desperate? Homely? College girls come to Vegas to party? Doctors’ wives left alone too many nights in a row?”

He turned away again. “Business etiquette prevents me from speaking of my clients.”

“How quaint. An escort code of honor.” I held up my hands as his gaze whipped up to mine again. “Hey, I’m interested. I mean, do you go to dinner? Dancing? Or is it straight to the bedroom for horizontal gymnastics?”

He almost smiled, and I realized my voice had risen. “Whatever they want,” he said coolly, twirling his pencil lightly between thumb and forefinger. He was watching me carefully now. “Each woman’s needs are a unique and fragile thing.”

“Don’t go all new age call boy on me,” I snapped. “Warren doesn’t know about this, does he?”

Hunter shrugged. “He wouldn’t care. As long as I’m discreet.”

I glanced back down at the flyer with his face plastered across the cover.

Hunter’s jaw flexed as my eyes returned to him. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

I was in no position to argue; I’d turned him down repeatedly, and made it clear we would never be an item. Sure, I was physically attracted to him, but the imprint stomped on my heart was Ben-shaped, and it’d been there long before Hunter came along. No matter how honed that capable body and mind might be, he would never fit into that space.

“Fine,” I said agreeably, backing up a step. He watched me for a moment, sniffed, then pulled the cap off a bottle of water, downing it in practically one gulp. “So what are you working on?”

He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, then tossed the empty bottle into a lined trash bin without looking. “A new conduit.”

And anyone could see that designing the weapons each agent carried into battle was his true passion. Two oversized drafting tables took up the warehouse’s nucleus, and both were littered with sketches, pencils and erasers, rulers and flow charts. He then cast his experimental weapons in foam templates, though that didn’t mean his work was tentative. The weapons master prior to him had been an exacting teacher, breaking Hunter’s inferior efforts underfoot until he’d finally learned to abandon caution and rely solely on his warrior’s instinct. For every conduit created there were a dozen more abandoned-as evidenced now by the two full bins of discarded foam-but the result was weapons with responsiveness and punch, a harmonic blend of stiffness and tenuity that coupled with the individual agent’s personality and talents. These martial creations were a big factor in our troop’s success.

“For whom?” I asked, picking up one of the foam templates from a metal bin next to his drawing board. It was probably one he’d discarded for something better, and too bad, because even carved in foam it was very nearly sleek. It looked like a gun with a barrel as long as a spine, but somehow the palm-sized butt was still easy to handle. Probably ballast at the end; I turned it over to look, but Hunter snatched the template from my hand, gave me a hard look, and tossed it back in the bin. I held up my hands until he backed away. Passionate could be another word for freaky.

“It’s for Kimber Marshall. Her official metamorphosis is on the nineteenth. There will be a new moon, it’ll be a new week, a new Libra. Marlo’s old sign.”

I waited for him to say more, but the mention of Marlo was enough to tell me Hunter still blamed himself for her death. Sure, he hadn’t been responsible for the virus lying dormant in her young body, but he was there when it’d sparked to life inside her. He’d been the one to ignite it…but I’d been the one responsible for it being there in the first place. Time to change the subject.

“Why a blowgun?” I asked, glancing at the vellum paper splayed over his largest drawing table. The hollowed-out tube was represented there in different dimensions and angles, as were the darts. “I mean, how do you choose this weapon as her conduit?”

Conduits were like prosthetic limbs, extremely personal and individually fitted for the wielding agent. Mine was a miniature crossbow, bequeathed to me by my mother, as conduits often were. But Marlo’s lineage had died along with her, which meant a new dynasty could lay claim to the Libran star sign. Yet because Marlo’s ancestors had been here since the birth of the troop, there were no other Librans of Light in the valley. We’d sent a message out to the troops nationwide, a sort of supernatural want ad asking for a second daughter of good lineage. Our succession was matriarchal, and second daughters were rarely called into duty, but that didn’t mean they weren’t well trained or ambitious. And if a family could have two daughters serving the Light in two different cities, it served to strengthen their legacy and interests.

After receiving replies from a number of interested parties, Tekla had cast lots and compared birth charts to determine which of the proffered daughters was fated for the job. It didn’t hurt that Kimber’s birth date was closest to Marlo’s, and she would metamorphose-coming into her full powers as an agent-in only a couple of weeks. We needed the manpower now, and she had the added advantage of coming from an allied troop. We regularly sent our initiates for fostering in Arizona; the desert climate meant they faced many of the same physical challenges we did, but they also returned with new ideas and skills gleaned from the leaders of that troop. As an initiate Kimber could still cross state and city lines, but after her twenty-fifth birthday that ability would be stripped. If she remained in Arizona, she’d merely serve on an auxiliary basis. But by coming to Las Vegas, she would become a full-fledged agent, and she would belong to us, leaving her life there behind. She would also need a conduit.

“I don’t choose them, at least not consciously.” Hunter told me, opening a giant chest to pull out the blowgun in question. It wasn’t the crude weapon brought to mind by Pygmies and rain forests and silent ninja crouched on shadowed rooftops. The tubing gleamed unnaturally, not silver but not black, with a mouthpiece and guard matching in opaqueness. A fragile glass cylinder rested on top, presumably the dart quiver. “But I start fiddling around in the workshop, touching this textile or metal or stone, and as I handle all these resources that can be fashioned into weapons, I think of the agent’s gifts-talents and temperament and tendencies-and the right material always speaks to me.”

“Speaks to you.” I raised my brows, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear.

“Not literally, but yeah.” He gestured to a sheaf of papers tucked on the corner of his table, which I immediately recognized as a birth chart, probably from Tekla. “For instance, Kimber is the Libra, an air sign known to be calculating and cool, but with a passion for balancing injustices. Yet she’s also near the Libran/Scorpio cusp, which gives her a touch of bravado and some impulsiveness. A distance weapon would fit her well, but not something requiring close contact. Anyway, when I pick up the raw material my fingertips, I don’t know, tingle. I think of her doing the same, envision her body, her particular strength exerting a specific force on the object, and this helps me determine the weapon, its stiffness and density, its design and shape. If I piece these elements together correctly, that tingle turns into a full-blown pulsing when I fire or wield the weapon.”

He’d rubbed his fingertips together when he said it, so I held out my own hand, asking, “You can actually feel if the design is right?”

He nodded. “Firing a weapon is an act of acoustic vibration. A perfect weapon unleashes energy at a frequency that allows for easy manipulation of world matter, and then the throwing or shooting or stabbing or whipping takes no effort at all. Some people call it being ‘in the zone.’ All that violent energy is absorbed by the body; there’s no kickback or impact.”

I snorted. “Tell that to the target.”

He inclined his head, a small smile visiting his lips, and I was glad I’d changed the subject. He was happiest when he was talking about war. “But-and here’s what’s important to understand-a perfectly constructed conduit also manipulates the agent. Firing it releases acoustic vibrations that oscillate back and forth between controller and conduit. A weapon’s shape, therefore, acts as a funnel for the will of the agent, but it also reinforces the agent at the same time. That’s why they must be uniquely matched…and perfectly paired.”

More vibrational theory, I thought, with a wry smile. Explosions destroying molecules, black holes eating up matter. Now violence that resonated in the soul. I shook my head, and stared at him for long seconds. “What are you up to, Hunter?”

He looked at me to clarify, and I would have if I could put my feelings into words. Maybe it was the same sort of power that gave him the ability to study a weapon as if it were a person, though more likely it was the aureole still humming between us. Yet for all that, he was still a mystery. And even though I wanted to know why he’d taken up another identity-in the sex industry, no less-the way he was looking at me now, like I should already know, had me squirming like a bug. I broke eye contact. Maybe some things should remain unspoken.

Apparently Hunter didn’t feel the same. “You know, someday you’ll come to me. I’ll wait, because I’m a gentleman, but you will come. Again and again.”

“That is gentlemanly,” I quipped, but he smiled when he saw me swallow hard. I turned to walk away, but he was suddenly there, spinning me back. I yanked my arm away but he only strengthened his grip, and I knew he’d leave bruises. I shook my head, pissed. That big, powerful body, I thought glaring up at him. Making me feel like a mortal again. But I could still fight him with words. “I should tell everyone about your side gig as a sex worker.”

His hands lowered to mine, still powerfully twined, though his thumb played lazily against my palm. “And I should tell everyone about your daughter.”

Now he was trying to piss me off. “Then I might slip and mention yours.”

“Then I might slip also, and call you Joanna.” He drew closer, testing me.

I remained where I was, and though the only thing touching was our hands, the heat from his body pooled around him, resonating against my skin like the sun. “Wow, blackmail and threats on top of manhandling. You do know how to woo a girl.”

“Well, you don’t seem like the flowers and chocolate type.”

“Is that your professional opinion?”

“Honey,” he said, eyes narrowing as they fastened hard on mine. “Were I a celibate monk secluded from the fairer sex my entire life, I’d still know your type.”

“Really?” I snarled. So much for his lip service to everyone being unique; now I was a type. “Which is what?”

Angling forward, his chest touched mine. It was like setting a match to oil, and my nerve endings burned with it. “Mine.”

The warehouse door slammed behind me, and I heard voices talking, calling out, bantering, but I was afraid if I moved, it would be into him. I looked at his body again, running my eyes over it like water.

“We had an agreement,” I whispered feebly, hating my fluid emotions, the pull of both desire and anger, the reaction to his mere physicality.

And knowing how he affected me, Hunter winced like he was apologetic, bent…and ran his lips over my cheek. “Well, now we’re going to agree to disagree.”

I jerked away as Felix rounded the corner, followed by a girl with thick blond hair, dreaded and hanging halfway down her back. Each was carrying three boxes of pizza, and the scent of cheese and pepperoni presumably masked the emotion coming from Hunter and me because neither of them looked alarmed.

“I’ve got eats, yo, but I’m not paying for everyone-poor college student, remember?” Felix threw his pies on top of Hunter’s drawing table, and wiped his hands on his jeans as he shot us his wide, trademark grin. “Pony up the bills, kids.”

I batted my lashes and flipped my hair back over my shoulder. “Sorry, Felix. All I’ve got is my American Express Black, but Hunter will cover me.” I regarded him with a raised brow. “He gets paid in cash.”