The Touch of Twilight

17

Light pricked at my vision in shards, and I groaned to send them slicing through my brain. The fluorescent bulbs above me coalesced, and the smell of grease anchored me back in time. Regan. Damn. Bitch.

When I could do more than form one-word expletives, I picked my defeated ass off the floor, and found my bag in the alley, though, unsurprisingly, not my conduit. Regan, I knew, would use the crossbow as soon as the Tulpa lifted his protective ban on my life. And then she wouldn’t just kill me, she’d obliterate my memory and legacy from the manuals, our history, and the earth.

It’s you she’s after.

I limped over to the body still lying sprawled in the alley, vision wavering as I placed weight on the leg Regan had stabbed. I slid down the grimy wall to drop next to the woman. Of course she was still there. Regan didn’t care about her, the mortal had served her purpose, and it was more tortuous to leave the body for me to deal with.

My nose felt lopsided, and I didn’t bother wiping away the blood yet. My eyes, probably both blackened, watered as I popped my nose back into place, but ten more minutes alone and no one would ever know. At least my extensions had held, I thought, feeling the top of my head. Yay for bonding glue and hairspray.

And then I began to cry.

Shit. Regan was right. I had to start taking responsibility for what I’d done, and now I’d killed a mortal. And what about what I was allowing to happen to Ben, and possibly to this entire mortal plane?

What the fuck was I doing? I thought, gazing through the tears at the woman’s body.

At the involuntary twitch of her thumb. My sniffles died in my throat and I was next to her in a millisecond, belly on the ground, cheek over her mouth, but otherwise entirely still. The softest breath, like a baby bird’s first, warmed my ear.

“Oh my God.” Alive. Alive.

And to keep her that way I had to get to the hospital quick. Not one of ours; Micah was tucked in the sanctuary until dawn, and she couldn’t wait that long. So one of the mortal hospitals, then, I thought, lifting her. But I’d have to drop her at the emergency entrance, unable to risk the paperwork, the questions about my involvement and appearance, the certain leaks of both of those to the Shadow side…leaks Olivia Archer couldn’t risk.

But this mortal would live. She had to. And after I saw her safe, I would get cleaned up, find a replacement conduit for the one I’d lost, and retire to someplace safe until I could cross to the sanctuary at dawn.

And there was only one place to do all that. Unfortunately it wasn’t until after I’d left my fragile package beneath the spotlight of a streetlamp at the city’s trauma unit, until after I heard cries of surprise and yells for assistance, and until well after I’d entered the shell of the warehouse and its arsenal of silent, hidden alarms that I thought about what exactly it meant to be alone with Hunter Lorenzo. In the depths of night and in a building only he could arm and secure. It really hit me when he swung open the side steel door and I found myself face-to-face with those muscles rounding beneath his white wife-beater, his fresh sweat so heady my nipples contracted. He looked great, yes. But, more, he looked safe.

If Hunter noticed the hitch in my breath he didn’t say. Instead his eyes widened as he took in my face.

“What the hell happened to you?” he asked, yanking me inside.

“Haven’t I healed yet?” I asked, patting at my face.

There was nothing seductive about his touch as he dragged me to the center of the warehouse, positioning me on a high metal stool next to his drawing table to assess the damage. But he wasn’t looking at my face. He’d scented my blood the moment he saw me, and had torn the seam of my slacks aside to reveal the wound above my right knee. It looked like a splash of red paint against a flawless ivory canvas.

“It’s nothing,” I told him, swallowing hard at the sight. One more scar to hide, I thought. Olivia would be appalled at the way I was treating her body. “Just a scratch.”

“From a conduit,” he said, his concern not lessening. “I wouldn’t call that nothing. Whose?”

“Guess,” I said wryly, as he yanked open a drawer on a cabinet-length toolbox to reveal emergency medical supplies. You had to hand it to the guy. He was prepared.

He whipped his gaze up to mine. “Again?”

“Don’t look at me that way!” I bristled, stood, and bristled again when he pushed me back onto the stool. “I’m not seeking her out, I’m not losing control of my emotions, I’m not even going near Ben. She’s like a poisonous mushroom. She keeps popping up whenever the conditions are right.”

“You mean when you’re alone and vulnerable and not suspecting her attack.”

I flipped my hair back and focused on the alone part. “Hey, it’s not like I’m trying to keep Chandra from accompanying me-”

“Anymore,” he added quickly, but I ignored that too, gritting my teeth as he swabbed the cool, stinging alcohol over my knee.

“Besides, it doesn’t seem to matter where I go or who I’m with. She’s locating me almost at will. I can’t figure it out.” I scratched at my chest, and Hunter gently pulled my hand away so he could reach my forearm. I hadn’t even realized it’d been nicked.

“Tell me what you were doing when she found you,” he said, pushing up the long sleeve.

“She didn’t,” I said, swallowing hard. “I found her.”

I told him about the woman in the alley, what I’d done, where I’d left her, and felt his eyes on me when my voice broke, his work slowing. Without looking at him, I quickly moved on to the Tulpa’s decree that I not be killed, though he stopped bandaging my arm altogether when I said I’d lost my conduit. It was a moment longer before I could look him directly in the eye, but when I finally managed it, I found none of the disgust or anger I expected…or that I felt for myself.

“Oh, Joanna,” he said softly.

“Don’t,” I said, tearing up. “You’ll make me cry. And I can’t cry.” I scratched at my other arm and wished for my room in the barracks.

“Okay,” he said, drawing the word out as he rewrapped a length of gauze. “So you said you think the Shadow changeling told Regan where you were going?”

I nodded. “I know it. Douglas heard my conversation with the other kids. They wanted me to kill Jasmine, if you can believe that. They said it’d been done before by a guy named Jaden Jacks…”

I started to rise to grab the manual the boys at Master Comics had given me, thankful for something to do, but Hunter stilled me with a palm on my thigh. “And did it actually look like Regan in the alley?”

“God, yes! You think I would’ve struck her otherwise? But it was dark and she’d marked the mortal with her own scent, I’d know it anywhere, and I tried to pull back but it was too late and-”

“Shh.” Hunter’s hands stilled my own, which were moving faster and faster in the air with the telling, and I took a deep breath, realizing I was close to hyperventilating. We both waited until I was calm enough, and then my gaze met his. His voice matched it in softness. “So if you know Regan so well, how can you not see she’s been planning this forever? That woman’s injury wasn’t your doing.”

“It was,” I argued. “It’s because I know her so well that I should have seen it coming.”

“So now you’re responsible for all the evil in this world as well?”

Take some fucking responsibility…

I shook my head, loosening Regan’s words, but unable to keep from recalling how soundly my elbow had cracked against that woman’s flesh. I scratched my chest absently, tears threatening again. “All I know is Regan possesses knowledge of my old identity and my new. She has my past, my conduit…my number. And she can find me at will. I just don’t know why.”

Hunter straightened, eyeing me narrowly, and I froze in mid-scratch. “What?”

“What are you doing?” His voice was low, modulated, and suspicious.

“Playing patient to your bossy-ass doctor act,” I said, scratching again as I indignantly pushed off the stool. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

He pushed me back down. “Allowing your skin to breathe.”

“What?” My hand stilled on my arm as he reached for my sleeve and ripped it. I was about to yell that cashmere didn’t come cheap when I glanced down at my bare arm. At first it looked like flaking skin to me, but then Hunter was peeling it away in strips, like dead skin lifting from a healing sunburn, but in neat, even rows. “What the-?”

The bronzed slivers lifted, and the scar I’d gotten four months earlier from a Shadow agent named Liam Burke appeared. I realized immediately I hadn’t seen it since applying the makeup Regan had left in the ladies’ room. I’d barely been aware of the itching since then; it’d been as subtle as the bite of a mosquito in summer, something to be slapped at, but not concerned with.

“Shit.” She hadn’t left it by accident. “It’s the makeup.”

“It’s a tracking device,” Hunter clarified, and peeled a thin, flexible strip from my arm.

I was a fucking idiot.

And Regan made a brutal man named Ajax, and a psychotic one named Joaquin, look like kittens at play. Of course she wasn’t going to come at me with guns blazing. Women fought differently. I knew that.

Hunter pulled out a knife and a pair of goggles from the stacked tool chest next to us, and I sat stone-still as he cut a giant cross through the center of my turtleneck, then angled the blade toward my chest. The cool tip whispered against my skin until it caught on the edge of the compound. Hunter picked at the edge carefully, close enough I could feel his breath on my earlobe as he worked, the dark hair that was only just growing out again falling across his forehead in front of me. The blade scratched, moving between us, and I kept my hands clasped in my lap. Yet with his head lowered, eyes covered and his hands busy, I could allow my gaze to fall to his lips, slightly parted as he concentrated on my skin. Damn.

“There are microscopic wires embedded in the compound. They flattened as you spread the makeup out, and hardened into a flat web of interconnected transmitters.” There was still no censure in his voice, and I was thankful for that.

“That’s how she found me at Master Comics,” I said, trying to think back to all the times the compound had itched, indicating the feed was live. “And tonight.”

“Where else did you apply it?”

“My calf,” I told him, then froze. Oh shit. “The back of my thigh.”

He lifted his gaze to mine, and for a moment wickedness lived in his smile. “Bend over, baby.”

“Ah, maybe I should do it myself,” I said, holding out a hand for the knife.

He sobered immediately, shaking his head. “You have to be sure to get it all, or else she might be able to lock in on you using the remnants.”

He wasn’t angling, and he wasn’t flirting. It was fact, and we both knew it, so I sighed and began taking off my clothes-including my tattered turtleneck-while Hunter went to retrieve a solution he said would neutralize the compound and a wide-angle edged scraper used for sculpting putty. “Is there a toy you don’t have?” I called as he retreated, but he dismissed me with a wave and kept walking.

The intervening minutes gave me time to order my thoughts. It was good that I’d come here. Warren might have had a few choice words to fling in my direction, but Hunter hadn’t gone on attack, and his words had loosened a knot that’d been forming inside me. I still needed to take responsibility for the results of my own actions…but I didn’t need to weigh myself down with Regan’s as well.

And as for Regan…

“Time to pay a little visit to the state prison,” I murmured, folding my pants. Because if Regan wanted to play hard and fast with lives she had no right to touch, then I would match her move to move. I’d attack her next by honing in on her soft spots, and when I reached the bruised center of her life?

I’d push.

Hunter returned with a vat of what looked like water but smelled like petrol. He carefully sat it on the drafting table, then stood back to regard me in all his cotton-and denim-clad glory while I wore nothing but two swaths of silk and lace, utterly exposed but for my scars.

Turning my back, I decided, would at least hide my nervousness. So would being a smartass. “Geez, Hunt. Taking quite a chance being alone with the girl who spawns heart-eating look-alikes, allows herself to be tagged by a Shadow, and unwittingly injures mortals. Aren’t you afraid of my ill chi too?”

“You didn’t murder Jasmine,” he reminded me lightly, as if that would make up for the rest. “And I’m not afraid of much.”

I released a breath I hadn’t even known I’d been holding, and didn’t even mind Hunter scenting my relief. It was going to be okay. He was the one person who’d been inside me in all ways but the physical, and he thought I was fine. He always had, and though I was grateful, I still didn’t understand why. I hadn’t been exactly stable to begin with. But that wasn’t something I wanted to get into right now. “But you’re afraid of me working at Valhalla, right?”

“Worried,” he corrected, without looking up. The scrape of the blade gave way to a gentle tugging, the compound being removed. “For you.”

“I can take care of myself,” I said, still wondering why he was so against it.

“Clearly.”

Okay, so I deserved that.

Hunter placed a warm palm on my back as he deposited a skin-colored strip into the vat. It bubbled, disintegrated, and dissolved. The remaining solution looked cracked. It was the exposed wires of the tracer now that the makeup had been destroyed. Damned clever.

“The tracer was itching while I was here. Will Regan find the warehouse?”

He shrugged and dropped another strip into the steel vat, then moved up to begin work on the back of my thigh. “I’m neutralizing them pretty quickly. I can’t imagine she’d get an immediate bead on your location, but even so, this place has more traps than even your body could ever hold.”

I glanced over my shoulder at him and sneered. “Nice.”

He smiled now that he’d forced a fighting response from me. “She’d never get in, but I’ll lock the wires in the tool chest if you’re worried. The reinforced steel will interfere with the reception too. Here, I need you to move.”

He lowered the stool I’d been sitting on to knee height, then pushed me forward so I was bending over it. There was nothing sexual in the movement, but I caught our reflection in a pair of safety goggles across from us-Hunter bent over me, the muscles twitching beneath one of those gorgeous round shoulders as he did his exacting work, and me in pink panties and a bra-and knew the scene would replay itself in my midnight memories, but with a different ending.

“She might wait for you to come out,” I said, voice lower than I intended it. Think of Ben. Think of anyone and anything else. Just don’t think of the man behind you, whose touch makes you totally insensible.

“Worried over my welfare? Touching,” he said, as he gently touched me. I braced my hands on the drafting table, trying to get my equilibrium back.

“Hey, she knows about you too, Hunter.” I shifted, sounding calm again as he pushed at my thigh. “She’s not one to easily forget.”

“So I’ll have to make sure I don’t accept any cover-up from her in the near future.” And before I could respond, he whipped his hand up to place a finger against my mouth, and smiled as he leaned close. “I know. Fuck off.”

But I was very suddenly aware of the length of him curled around my half-naked body, and the slight pressure against my lips didn’t make me want to either shut up or return the smile. God help me, it made me want to give that finger one good long lick, and suckle it until he brought me something more satisfying. My lips, pressed together and readied for a hard retort, softened at the thought, and Hunter’s eyes flashed dark. Humor fled us both, and the pressure against me increased fractionally.

“Do you remember before? When I was telling you about my templates and the way I fashion the conduits for individual agents?”

I’d have thought he was trying to redirect the sudden intensity, except he hadn’t moved; he was still too close and warm and overly physical, but I let him talk, mostly because I was afraid to move more than I had to. If I did anything more than nod I might just loosen my limbs, throw my legs around his waist, and rock.

“Well, there’s another reason some conduits feel like they’re made for your hand and others don’t.” And his left palm was suddenly warming my side, gliding, smooth-tipped. “See, your crossbow has a catch mechanism and lock, so when you’re controlling the conduit you can feel all manners of ripples and bouncing waves and vibrations.”

“And if there aren’t any catch mechanisms?” Like on your whip, I wanted to say, but even the thought of that slim piece of leather sent heat through me.

“Then you feel the lack of them, and for some, that’s the right fit. Either way, when the right tool meets with the right person, there’s a natural harmony of body and spirit. It’s so simple. And complex. It’s chemistry.”

“Hunter-”

He spoke over me. “It’s the same with people. Two people meant to be together will be drawn together again and again like they’re caught in a magnetic field. And every time they interact, the energy changes between them. They change each other. So while the elemental forces that initially drew them together are reinforced, others are deconstructed to alter into something new.”

I swallowed hard. I couldn’t argue because our chemistry had had physical consequences. We’d once fired the night with a single torrid kiss and created thunder between us.

“And when the two join, like conduit and controller…well, it’s not just the way they move together, the friction or the taste on the tongue or the sigh meant only for the other to hear…it’s how one single body affects the other. It’s elemental and-”

I knocked his hand aside, and tipped the stool to get away. I was breathing hard, the drawing table between us now, arms propped on it for support, head lowered as I kept my wary gaze on his.

Hunter righted the stool, straightened slowly, and after a moment, shook his head. “What are you so afraid of?”

I thought of the tattoo on his shoulder, the one stating fear was the opposite of desire. If I said I was afraid of him, he’d know I wanted him as well. And I did. My mouth watered with it.

“I fear myself,” I finally whispered. “You should too.”

“Yes.” His eyes did a slow crawl down my body, pausing in all the right places. Heat rushed through me. “Very scary.”

The taunt had me pushing away from the table, and I found that the momentum I carried inside me, that constant blind run away from him, still had some steam. “Are we done?”

“The compound is gone, if that’s what you mean.”

I began to pull my slacks back on. The turtleneck was ruined, but maybe I could temporarily knot the pieces together. I turned away from Hunter, hands shaking.

“I wouldn’t hurt you, you know.” His voice was a whisper, one I could’ve chosen to ignore, but doing so might make him think he had a right to say it, and he didn’t. Not with Ben and my long-standing no and little more than silk standing between us. It was an opportunity he should have let be.

“No,” I replied, gathering my shirt in front of me, “but you might charge me by the hour, and we have a long night ahead of us.”

“Ah, the bitch is back,” he said wryly, but didn’t defend himself as he cleaned up, lifting the wires from the bowl with metal tongs, depositing them in the toolbox as promised.

“I’d like to look through the panic room,” I said, ignoring the fat spears of guilt stabbing at my chest, and the spicy evidence of our lust hanging heavily in the air, threatening to choke me if I took too deep a breath. I took one anyway, looking right at him so he knew my mind was in control here, not my hormones, and told him how I wanted to study the map of breaches the doppelgänger had made in to our world so far.

The change in topic worked, or so I thought. He dumped the toxic solution into the floor drain, sprayed and wiped it clean with a red shop rag, and nodded slowly to himself. I didn’t expect anything more, so I turned toward the panic room…and was ambushed by his next words.

“You should let Micah erase his memory,” he said, and I froze in my tracks. The statement was bolder than his flirtations, and blunter than I’d have expected.

“I don’t want him to forget,” I said just as bluntly, without turning.

Because Ben would have to forget it all-me, our past, our potential future. All memories would stop the night I was attacked a decade ago, and Micah would rebuild a history for Ben that had me languishing in a forgotten childhood…and one that didn’t include me in his adult world at all. I would cease to exist for the last person on earth who’d truly known me as me. “We have a child together.”

“And you think that’s reason enough to hang on?”

I still didn’t turn around. “I do.”

“You sound obsessed.”

“I don’t expect you to understand,” I said, and though I did turn my head and meet his eyes, it was a dismissive gesture, my mind made up. “Why should I have to lose him just because I’ve found my true self?”

Laughter barked out of him, his bluntness turning cruel. “Because that’s what we do. We live for them, Jo, not with them…and not for ourselves.” He wiped his hands on another rag before tossing it on the floor. “You ceased doing that the day you metamorphosed, and the sooner you accept it, the easier it will be. For everyone.”

Like Hunter gave a shit if life leaned a little easier on Ben. Superhero, I well knew, didn’t mean saint. “I won’t ever accept it.”

I turned away before he could respond-because what I was saying was I won’t ever accept you-but not before I saw an emotion abandon his face, one that apparently had been holding it up. I hesitated in the wake of that broken emotion, feeling victory and loss at the same time, before walking away. There was no call from behind me asking me to return, no apologies or explanations or footsteps across the floor to stop or help or seize me. I reached the panic room and flipped on the light, but all it did was illuminate the silence. I hesitated a second more, then closed the door firmly behind me.