The Scent Of Shadows Part 25

"I'm not a Green-f.u.c.king-Beret," I said, shooting her an annoyed glance, "and no, I didn't disobey. I was one block from the pickup point. I was early. I didn't know how long I'd be gone-here, I mean-and I wanted to take the pictures with me. That's all."

"Where are they?" Warren asked quietly. I looked at him closely for the first time. He'd already looked perfectly disreputable with his grimy clothes and greasy hair, but the rivulets of my dried blood on his shirt added a certain je ne sais quoi. I swallowed hard.

"My bag. Wherever it is."

It was lying forgotten in the corner. I thought about letting Warren rustle through it, but stopped him as he yanked the zipper back. "I wouldn't do that if I were you," I said. "There are Shadow manuals in there, mixed in with Light."

Warren held the duffel out to me. "Open it," he ordered.

I s.n.a.t.c.hed it and unzipped the bag. All eyes were heavy on my hands as I removed the Shadow side's comics, then filled with curiosity as they tried to read the t.i.tles. I yanked out the Light series as well, putting Stryker's on top.

"I was reading this one just outside the shop when I first scented Ajax."

"May I?" Warren asked. I handed him the comic, and he began leafing through it.

"It's about a guy named Stryker who was ambushed during his transforma-"

"We know about Stryker," Chandra snapped, eyes hot. "Don't speak about him like you knew him."

"G.o.d, just leave her alone, Chandra."

"f.u.c.k you, Felix!" she shouted, then swung around the room, daring anyone to speak. When her gaze landed again on me, she curled her lips and shook her head in sharp disbelief. "She's the first sign? What bulls.h.i.t." She whirled, and the lovebirds started in their cage, crying out as the door slammed heavily behind her.

"Go after her, Felix," Warren said quietly.

"f.u.c.k her."

"Felix."

Felix sighed, but left without another word. Micah shifted uncomfortably. "I'll go too. They might need a referee."

Micah left, and after a moment Greta put her hand on my arm. "It was only six months ago," she explained in her calm and kind voice. "The wounds are still fresh."

I nodded, understanding. After all, I'd seen Stryker's death. Neck cords ripping, blood staining his mother's robe, her heart-wrenching cries. Chandra was still a b.i.t.c.h, but I couldn't fault her her grief.

"I'm sorry," I said, meaning all of it.

Greta patted my hand, then stood to pour tea from a ceramic pot warming on a hot plate. "It's all right, dear. Drink this. I pick and bag the herbs myself."

"What's this?" Warren asked, holding up the photo of Ben. I must have snapped it shut in the pages of the comic when Ajax had found me.

"Oh, my," Greta said, staring at me sadly. "No wonder."

"What?" I asked, looking from her to Warren and back, the steaming teacup forgotten in my hand.

"Anyone could have felt that," she answered, shaking her head. I opened my mouth to ask what she meant, but I suddenly knew. It was so easy to grasp, I thought, when someone pointed it out to you.

Greta, reading my mind, answered anyway. "Your sorrow, dear. Such deep grief. That's how Ajax knew where you were. Strong emotions-love, hate, grief, joy, hope-give you away if you don't know how to control them."

"That's why we ordered you to stay calm," Warren said, lifting his eyes from the photo. He still looked annoyed with me, but at least the muddy suspicion had cleared from his eyes.

Greta leaned in. "Who is it, anyway?"

Warren rudely snapped the comic shut, photo inside. He rolled it and pointed it at me. "We'll talk about this later." Then he too strode from the room, waves of fury left in his wake.

"Well," I said finally, "can I clear a room or what?"

"Yes, well done," Greta said primly, and I had to laugh despite myself.

She was a small woman, this Greta, with slim fingers and wrists, and tapering legs and ankles beneath a pencil skirt and lab coat. She wore sensible heels, sensible jewelry, and her chignoned hair had begun to gray at the temples. I'd have put her in the early fifties but for the knowledge hardening her caramel eyes. Greta was older, I decided, and probably tougher than anyone looking at her heart-shaped face could imagine.

"You seem to be healing fine," she told me, returning to my side. "There shouldn't be any permanent damage beyond the wound on your thigh."

I touched the back of my thigh where Ajax's conduit had nicked me as I ran. It had been st.i.tched, and was only mildly sore.

"It'll leave a mark-all supernatural weapons do-but the cut wasn't very deep." She resettled the bedsheets over me. "Your eyes were the more serious concern."

"Has this ever happened before?"

"What? An injury while trying to enter the sanctuary?" she asked. I nodded. "Not to an agent of Light, no. One time the Ram on the Shadow side tried to enter the sanctuary by force. I heard by the time he reached the bottom of the chute there wasn't enough left of him to wheel on a rotisserie. That was three years ago, though, before I got here."

Before she got there? I leaned forward as she studied my eyes. I suppose she liked what she saw because she stopped squinting and smiled. "I thought you had to be raised in the Zodiac in order to be a part of the troop?"

"Oh, no. I came to it late, like you." She propped a hip on the side of my bed. "My mother was mortal-gifted, sure, but mortal all the same. My father was the Gemini of the star signs. If troop hierarchy were patriarchal, I'd hold that star sign right now. As it is I'm lacking certain...physical gifts. Technically speaking I'm not really a part of the troop." She smiled wryly but didn't sound bitter at this twist of fate. "Still, between the two of them, I possess enough insight to contribute in an ancillary form. The other star signs come to me when they're afraid their emotions-and therefore their pheromones-might get the best of them. And sometimes they just come to talk."

"So...you're like a shrink?"

She wrinkled her nose at my word choice. "A supernatural psychologist, if you will."

"A...an independent?" I asked, remembering the manuals' distinction between troop members and all others.

She laughed, then whistled from the side of her mouth. "Be careful how you use that word. Some would take great offense to being lumped in with the rogue agents."

"I'm sorry."

"Oh, I didn't mean me. Like I said, I'm just an auxiliary member of the troop. My mother left when I was a child. My father died not long after-supernatural causes, of course-and I've been on my own ever since. Still, the Taurean Shadow targeted me about two and a half years ago. Apparently he and my father had some longstanding territorial dispute. Gregor found out about it, found me, and thought it his duty to bring me here. Eventually he convinced Warren of the same."

"That was nice of him," I murmured, wondering why no one had done it with me. Or Olivia.

"Oh, nice has nothing to do with it. Duty comes above all else for those raised in the Zodiac. Above family, spouse, or anything comprising a normal life. If something's not good for the organization, then it's simply not done. If it is, then everything is done to make sure it succeeds." Absently, she toyed with the small pearls circling her neck. "That's why Warren's so concerned about you. He's put a lot of hope into you, you know. He doesn't trust easily. Not to mention he's risked a great deal."

I hadn't thought of that, actually. I'd been so preoccupied with my own worries and loss I hadn't even considered what defending me might have cost him. "Like what?" I said, really wanting to know.

She gestured at me, letting the pearls drop. "Well, consider for a moment, what if he's wrong? Then he's brought a wolf into our midst. A Shadow among the Light."

"I'm not a Shadow," I said irritably.

"But are you Light?"

I didn't answer. How could I know?

She smiled kindly and laid a hand over my own. "Look, I can only imagine what this has all been like for you, but if Warren seems a bit brusque it's because his primary concern is keeping this troop safe. He's looking for reasons his star signs are being killed off. His duty as a leader is to protect them, and so far he's failing."

"Tekla said there was a traitor."

Greta look startled, then relaxed when she realized what I was saying. "You mean in the manual you read? Right before Ajax found you?"

I nodded, and she rose to pour us more tea. "Poor Tekla," she said as she took my cup from my hand. "She's not even with the troop anymore."

"She's not?"

She began shaking her head, then paused. "Well, she's here, of course-she'd be a danger to herself and the entire troop were she to be released outside the sanctuary-but Warren's had her tucked away in the sick ward since shortly after Stryker was killed."

Something in her tone caught my attention. "You don't agree with that?"

Greta shrugged, but it wasn't smooth, and she absently fingered her pearls again. "She rants whenever she sees anyone, of course. And she says the most awful, accusing things. Still...I don't know. I think she's in there somewhere, desperate to get out. I'd rather help her than lock her away. Maybe someday I can."

So there was no traitor. Just a heartsick woman who'd had to watch her son die before her eyes.

She returned to my side, again handing me my cup, sighing to herself as I accepted it. "You seem like a sweet girl, Olivia. But if there's one piece of advice I would give you, it's this: n.o.body's really what they seem." She stood motionless as she looked at me hard, willing me to understand. "Take Warren, for example. When he's out there in the real world he looks and acts and, unfortunately, smells like a career b.u.m. You look at him and see exactly what you'd expect roosting on the corner of Casino Center Drive.

"Meanwhile he's working day and night to stop the Shadows from injuring or influencing mortal lives and thoughts. If he can't do that, he works to hide the resulting destruction. Covers it under a veil of confusion or bad luck, so there's nothing or no one to strike out at-because, you know, that's what the Shadows ultimately want. For their handiwork-destruction and chaos-to s...o...b..ll. For human emotion to turn sour so they can feed off that negative energy."

"But what he does isn't right either," I said, frowning because Warren had done the same to me; set me up-or, at least, let me be set up-to take the fall for Olivia's death. "He tricked me into choosing all this. He played with my life just as much as the Shadows play with others'."

"Ah," she said, pulling her sweater tighter across her chest. "Now you've hit on the crux of what makes Warren tick. See, he cares more about the whole of humanity than he does about the individual person. To him the universe is a scale that must constantly be kept in balance. Choice, mortals' and ours, is a secondary consideration."

I drew back. "But that's...ruthless."

"Well, there are things in Warren's past that make ruthlessness a virtue," she said, and before I could ask what those things were, held up a hand, shaking her head. "Not my story to tell. Besides, the point is, what else can you be but ruthless when dealing with enemies who toss mortals around like p.a.w.ns on a chessboard?"

She frowned, realizing that was exactly how I felt, and shot me a small, apologetic smile. "For what it's worth, there are others who feel as you do. Their thought regarding humans is, 'But for one step down on the evolutionary chain, there go I.' But Warren's the troop leader, and they're not."

And Warren's actions made a sort of twisted sense now that I knew more about him and his responsibilities. Would I have put the troop before myself? Probably not, which was why he hadn't given me the choice. Would I agree that ruthlessness could be deemed a virtue? Probably not, which was why Greta wouldn't share with me the particulars of Warren's past. I sighed.

"Look," Greta said, watching me carefully, as if reading my thoughts. "The deaths of our senior troop members have everyone rattled. It means we're vulnerable. It means change. It means we might have to take on rogue agents, and there are some who are vehemently opposed to that."

"And Chandra is one of those," I guessed.

"Ah, Chandra." She nodded slowly. "She's painfully obvious, isn't she?"

"I mistook her for a man when we first met."

Greta winced. "Well, she wouldn't have liked you in any case...even if you'd mistaken her for Miss America. Before your whereabouts were known, she was next in line to be the Archer. Your arrival has thrust her into a sort of noman's-land, and she now has to carve out a new place for herself in this troop. But first we must allow her to mourn what she's lost."

I made a surrendering gesture. "Hey look, if she wants it that badly, she can have the honor."

"No, she can't," Greta said, shaking her head as she forced me to meet her gaze. "Your lineage is stronger, and the laws are clear. We only go outside the existent bloodline if the entire house has been wiped out. Your mother was one of us, and the manuals have foretold your arrival. Read them, you'll see. Your duty now is to fulfill that legacy. Ours is to show you how."

I wanted to believe her, but her words and their meaning were having trouble getting past my own muddled thoughts. With the fall down the Slipper, the warm tea settling in my belly, and the shock of being attacked by Ajax again, it was too much. Thankfully, Greta sensed that.

"Sleep now," she said, getting to her feet. "You need rest. Tomorrow you'll see the grounds."

I leaned my head back against the pillow and let out a deep sigh as she took the teacup from my hand, then set a corner lamp burning low. The birds had settled again and were chirping softly to themselves, and the scent of roses clouded my brain even after I heard the soft snick of the door clicking shut behind her. By then my head was too heavy to lift, and I gladly let myself drift away from thoughts of duty and legacies and women who looked like men, and into the safety of my own mind.

I slept that night with more soundness and peace than I had since awakening in my sister's body, and it was probably due to Greta's soft words, her tea, and the sense that even though I'd nearly been fried in the process, I was finally in a place where I was relatively safe. I know I dreamt, but there was nothing of reason or memory or meaning in the dreams, only my body healing itself in the long midnight hours, and the scent of warm roses overlying it all.

Then I crawled into the second half of the night.

I heard them yelling from my room in the opposite wing of the house, their voices stacking up on one another's just as they had that first time a decade earlier. The novelty of hearing my mother actually standing up to Xavier had been enough to have me tiptoeing through the halls to their bedroom, and the interest sparked when I heard my name ping-ponging between them kept me there. I centered an eye between the gap in the door and leaned forward, careful not to b.u.mp it with my growing belly.

"I'm talking about the way you look at her!" my mother said, and I heard Xavier take a breath, but Zoe cut him off cold. "Like she's filthy inside, Xavier. Like she should be ashamed."

He paused before saying, "She's carrying a monster's child."

My hand stifled my gasp and I drew back in the hallway, as I imagine my mother did in their bedroom. Then, in a new voice, she said, "Well, like mother, like daughter, I guess."

I heard a crack then, an open palm ricocheting off bare flesh, and my mother's surprised cry before an almost unearthly length of silence. Then, slowly, silently, almost deadly...

"There is nothing wrong with my daughter." And she said it like I belonged to her alone. And though I was sixteen again in the dream, I carried with me the knowledge that Xavier was not my father. And deep down he must have known it.

"Zoe!"

His call had me rushing to hide in the portico of the adjoining hallway just before my mother appeared, and I watched from there as she strode away, seeing her with new eyes. It was like the bandages Greta had peeled away hours earlier had really been blinders, and in this dreamy reenactment I didn't just see the sheen of tears on her cheeks, I saw the determination beneath them, and the hands clenched into able fists at her sides.

"Zoe!" Xavier followed, stopping right in front of the bisected hallway, giving me a clear glimpse of the bewilderment and anger muddling his normally composed face. The part of me that knew I was dreaming wanted to laugh. I'd forgotten all about this argument. She'd been gone the next day, and that's what I'd been focused on. But it all made sense now, and my dreaming self did laugh as I continued to study Xavier's confusion.

He heard me.

Xavier's head swiveled as if it was ratcheted on his neck, eyes finding me squatting in the dark like twin lasers fixing on a target. I froze awkwardly, smile dying on my face as his chin lowered and his top lip lifted in a sneer, and I swallowed hard. I didn't remember this part.

"Think it's funny, little Archer?" he asked, in a voice throatier than his own, one raspy with age and power. He pivoted stiffly to face me, and I fell back, hampered by my belly...though I knew this was a dream and I was no longer pregnant. I wasn't even there.

But those eyes remained fixed on me, colder and darker than I'd ever seen them, and they followed my frantic backpedaling pitilessly. I scrambled away as he began to stride toward me, each of his steps faster, crisper, than the last, but then my back was cornered, the stunted hallway dead-ending into a laundry chute, and I had nowhere to hide.

I took a large breath, intending to wake myself up-because I knew this wasn't real; it hadn't happened this way, and it wasn't happening now-but a fat palm slapped over my mouth, and I tasted blood as my teeth cut into my top lip. I felt like a b.u.t.terfly pinned to a board. I struggled, my limbs wheeled, the baby tumbling madly in my belly, but my head was immobile beneath that iron-straight arm. Then the hand shifted and my head was lifted, forcing me to look in his face.

There was a summer during my childhood that I remember being particularly hot. I took refuge one day beneath a giant pepper tree, brushing aside the long flowing branches to enter a shaded chamber, the spicy scent of those living limbs heavy on the searing air. I was just about to lean back on the peeling bark of the old tree when I saw the cicada sh.e.l.ls dotting the trunk. There were dozens of them, all empty dead husks marking where life had once been lived.

That's what it was like looking into Xavier's face. All life had been extinguished in that giant sh.e.l.l of a man, and death itself stared back at me from those black orbs. I had time to wonder if his skin would crackle and crush into dust beneath my fingers, like those cicada husks had, but then Xavier's bullish features began to contort.

It was as if a giant invisible hand was pressing putty; his mouth and nose switched places, swirling grotesquely on his face, and his eyes and brows slipped to the sides of his face, ears disappearing altogether. Then the putty thinned, tearing high along his cheekbones and forehead, and peeling away to reveal blood, muscle, and finally gleaming white bone.

His eye sockets were black pools, dark and swirling and alive with something that could only be called unyielding rage. "So are you going to pick up where your mother left off, Archer? Will you come after me too? Think you're ready to take me on?"

He poked me in the belly with his free hand, and I gasped against the palm still clenched against my jaw. The bony finger poked again, and this time I felt it in my gut, separating my intestines, sc.r.a.ping precariously close to my unborn child. The jaw of his skeletal smile click-clacked gleefully as I struggled beneath his invasive touch.

"Because I'm ready for you. Oh, yes I am." He was getting riled up now, and smoke escaped through the bone of his nose to make my eyes tear, as embers flew from his mouth. "Ajax tells me you're strong, as strong as Zoe even, but I can smell you on the winter wind, and do you know what you smell like to me?"