The Scent Of Shadows Part 29

"You mean the being that's trying to kill me?" I shot back, whirling toward Chandra. "The one that just used Tekla to attack me in the hall?" I scoffed. "Yeah, I'm totally working on his behalf."

"Well, I believe you," Felix said, coming to stand at my side. "We knew the Kairos was going to be both Shadow and Light. It was foretold. So now we deal with it. Besides, Warren wants you here."

Well, he had, I thought wryly. But I didn't share that with Felix. It felt good to have someone on my side.

"Too bad it doesn't matter what you believe or what Warren wants," Chandra said, and a blue-green spark shot out across the ceiling. It bounded overhead, and her grin looked gaseous, evil in the receding light. "We still get to vote."

"Vote?"

And that was all she needed to sh.o.r.e up her confidence. She lifted her square jaw and fisted her hands on her hips. "That's right. You weren't raised in the Zodiac, and you learned nothing in your first two life cycles. Your mother's actions, or inaction, has displaced you and unbalanced the rest of us. Just like a rogue agent."

"This is Zoe Archer's daughter!" Vanessa sounded outraged.

"Yeah, what's your lineage, Chandra? And drunken pity f.u.c.ks that follow failed a.s.signments don't count."

My brows rose at that, and I expected another "f.u.c.k you, Felix," but Chandra simply clenched her jaw against the jab-one she'd obviously heard before-and kept her ire trained on me. I'd have tolerated this-until she stepped into my personal s.p.a.ce.

"All I'm saying," she said, angling her head up so she was staring me dead in the eye, "is that the Kairos should at least be someone who can track the moon's rise and fall without first referring to a map."

"Someone as handsome as you perhaps?"

The oxygen was sucked from the room on a group inhalation. Clouds coiled over the walls, gray building upon gray, until the slanted ceiling was thick with them, walls obscured, the floor snaking with mist. Mood room, indeed.

"I'm going-"

"To kick my a.s.s. Yes, I know. Then what? Climb a tree and start thumping your chest? Scary stuff, She-Man. If you can back it up."

I thought I'd have time to brace and block. But apparently I still wasn't up to superhuman speed. Chandra slapped me so quick and hard-palm flat, but nails curled to score my left cheek-that my head whipped to one side and I staggered back. I lifted my hand. My face throbbed in burning ribbons and I came away with blood. "You cut me."

She sneered. "You'll heal."

I stood for a moment, hand pressed to my cheek, doing nothing. Then I burst into tears. The loud, snuffling kind with crocodile tears and a wide, open mouth. Through one slitted eye I saw Chandra drop her arms, half turning to the others with a bemused expression. She'd probably never faced a tearful superhero before.

Hunter's warning cry was only half uttered when my foot plowed through her chest. I leaned back, putting my hips and thighs into the motion, and Chandra flew the entire length of the mat, crashing against the opposite wall, the back of her skull kissing her reflection with a gratifying crack. Greta had said Chandra needed time and s.p.a.ce to grieve over the loss my arrival had cost her, but I decided a little a.s.s-kicking would take her mind off it as well.

I touched my hand to my cheek. Chandra was right. I'd healed before she even hit the floor. I began to advance on her, but found myself blocked by Hunter's not insignificant frame.

"Like to fight dirty, Archer?" he asked, backing me into the circle again. The Archer glyph shot across the walls again...until he stepped into the circle opposite me. Spearing from the apex of the pyramid came a giant glyph of curling horns that arrowed down into a sharp V. It exploded into a shower of smaller horns, the quant.i.ty instantly overtaking the Sagittarian glyph.

Definitely not on my ally list.

"I use the weapons available to me," I told him, and this time I didn't back down from him as he used up all my s.p.a.ce.

His eyes narrowed to earthy brown slits. "Want to try them on a full-fledged star sign?"

Let's see...a straightforward street fight versus an emotional game of "he says/she says"? I didn't even have to think about it.

My palm shot out, but he was ready and caught it, twisting so it would have broken if I hadn't relaxed and flipped with the motion. I cartwheeled through the air, landed again on my feet and sent him a jab, a knee, an elbow, and a b.i.t.c.h slap...all met and blocked in turn.

We disengaged, circling; me breathing hard, Hunter barely breathing at all. The room was a kaleidoscope again, the emotions of the onlookers merging with the glyphs now wheeling around the sky like mad fireflies. I took a moment to steady myself, then tried another tactic. Inhaling deeply, I threw a line of energy around his body like Warren had taught me, an invisible la.s.so between his intent and mine. No emotion crept up the invisible rope. If my eyes had been closed I wouldn't even have known he was in the room. Impressive.

He knew exactly what I'd been doing, and white teeth flashed as he smiled. "Figure out my talent yet?"

"Yodeling off-key while standing on one foot on a pile of hot coals?" I sidestepped as he changed directions. The walls shifted with us, and the night sky above was clear again, cloudless.

"Close," he said, and lunged. He was as lithe and compact as a mountain lion, as single-minded as well, but I'd convinced myself long ago that it was better, safer, to fight a skilled warrior than a street brawler. Less chance of accidental injury. Of course, there was a greater chance of calculated injury, but that was what defensive skills were for. I threw myself backward and kicked out a leg. Our shins met with a resounding crack. The knowledge that I'd heal made me a bit more reckless than usual, so I pivoted immediately, stayed close, and crushed his left cheek with a flying elbow as he turned.

A chorus of surprise lifted from the others as arrows shot over the walls and we disengaged again, him retreating this time. His exertion was coming off him in waves, manifesting itself in a coppery-smelling band that wrapped around me, linking me to him for as long as I remained his target.

He wasn't holding back either. He really wished to overtake me. One part of me was thrilled with this deadly dance, the chance to test myself against someone strong, someone new. I was a fighter, that hadn't changed, and this is what fighters did. Asaf always said the first encounter with a new foe was the most exciting, the most heady and the most dangerous, and he was right. I swam in Hunter's adrenaline. I floated in my own.

Another part of me, however, was wondering how I'd ever thought this man attractive. He was looking at me like Ajax had; a quick sizing up of body and limbs, a predator searching for the weak, old, or inexperienced in the pack. Hunter was like this: patient, and absolutely feral as he waited for his opening.

He was also uncoiling his whip. The room was suddenly painted in giant ram horns again, not a Sagittarian glyph to be found.

"That's cheating," I said between breaths. He knew I didn't have a conduit yet.

Pitiless, he shrugged and snapped it at his side, his wrist flicking expertly. "I use the weapons available to me." a.s.shole.

I didn't even need to see the walls to know I was in trouble. Bodies, even male against female, were one thing. Surprise could still be used to my advantage. But this was too much like my encounter with Ajax; ominously one-sided, frightening, and full of unknown risks. Alarm p.r.i.c.kled along my skin, and was released, to my chagrin, through my pores.

I backed to the center of the mat to give myself room to maneuver away from the length of the whip, noting n.o.body else had spoken up in my defense. No That's enough or Leave her be. Not even Micah, and that hurt. If there'd been any question before as to my place among these people, it was answered now. Hunter stalked me, and the others merely watched.

"You're afraid," he observed, lifting his arm.

"No s.h.i.t," I said, and jumped as the whip licked at my heels, a barbed tongue. Landing, I glanced around for some sort of shield, finding only a practice pad that covered the length of my forearm and not much else. I secured it as he swung at my head, and lifted it in time to have the whip shearing off the top of it with only a flick from his wrist.

The next snap coiled around both pad and forearm, grazing my shoulder on its second rotation. I whimpered as a barbed tip sunk deep into my flesh, then braced myself and pulled, surprising Hunter by dragging him closer. Using my other arm, I yanked, and closed the distance between us. I had no idea what I was going to do. I only knew the farther I was from his body, the more dangerous it was for me.

"Look! Her glyph's engaged," Felix said, pointing. I felt the pulsing in my upper chest cavity, but kept my eyes on Hunter. His eyes flicked down, and I saw surprise shadow them before it was erased, the expressionless mask returning. His arm wavered, then lowered. The walls cleared abruptly, stark whiteness blinding us all. He had disengaged.

I ripped the barbs from my flesh before I could think too much, and smelled my own blood flowing freely.

"That's only supposed to happen when facing a true enemy," he said, tone low and suspicious.

"Then you might want to put the whip away," I said coolly. I let the barbed end drop, tossing the destroyed pad aside only when he began to coil it. I rubbed at my arm and backed away from them all, feeling achingly vulnerable.

"How are you doing that?" Felix said, looking at my chest.

"It's the Shadow, see? She can't control it."

"Shut up, Chandra, you had that coming." Vanessa sent her a steely glare, and came to stand next to me before also turning on Hunter. "And you. You've wanted to test the new Archer ever since you heard she defeated Butch...something you never managed to do. What do you expect when you gang up on her like that?"

Hunter turned so stony he didn't even blink. "I was making a point."

Yeah, I thought, rubbing my arm. Literally. But suddenly it was clear why no one had intervened on my behalf. Why a whip had to score my flesh and I had to bleed. They needed to know I could.

"I get your point." Only Hunter would meet my eye, and that was fine; I'd focus on him. "Here's Warren, telling you I'm this...this Kairos, that I have more potential than regular star signs, that I'm more powerful than the rest of you because of who my father is. I guess you just decided to see for yourselves, huh? But you didn't have to whip me, you know. All you really had to do was ask."

And, though they hadn't, I opened up a little and let them see what I'd felt when I'd gone up against Butch. How the dark side of moonbeams could bathe the soul too. How freeing it felt to let go of what was right, and think for once only of what you wanted. How vengeance burned like sulfur in every pore, and hatred like an ulcer in the stomach. And how death drew closer with every pa.s.sing moment, and fury was the cancer that could take you there. They needed to see it, I thought, because they needed to know the difference. I let it go on for a time, then I sucked it all back in.

"Happy?" I asked all of them. "Scared?" And I turned back, pressing my face into Chandra's, invading her s.p.a.ce this time. "Or do you wanna take a vote on it and get back to me?"

Chandra took a giant step back, jaw clenching tightly, and the others shifted on their feet, none looking at me, and barely looking at one another. I laughed hollowly and figured if they wanted something to mistrust so badly, I wasn't going to make them search for it.

So I turned back to Hunter, forced him to meet my eye, which he did with an empty gaze of his own. "You're going to have to do better than that," I told him.

"Better than what?"

And with the same power I'd used to punch holes in the life of a construction worker, I told him. "If you don't want the Shadow side to know about her-the one you love and cherish above all others-you're going to have to control that thread of desperation coiling in your psyche. I can taste it on my tongue, as fresh and sweet as sherbet. What's her name, anyway?"

I felt surprise sprout throughout the room and realized I'd just sensed something no one else had known. So even the full-fledged star signs kept secrets from one another, I thought wryly. So much for a unified troop. Hypocrites.

"Her name is Lola," Hunter finally answered, and his voice was steady, though a shudder had gone through his able body. At his admission, in fact, it had gone through them all. "And if you go near her, I'll kill you."

I looked around then, forcing every person in the room to meet my eye. "I thought I wasn't the enemy. Don't any of you trust me?"

"I don't know you."

"I don't trust the Shadow in you," Chandra said.

"Micah?"

He swallowed hard. He, whom I'd once thought was so firmly on my side. "I think you'll be presented with a choice before Ajax and the Tulpa are done with you. A real test, made in the heat of battle, and one where you're forced to choose what's right or..."

"Or?"

He looked away. "Or what you want."

And with those words I realized Chandra was right. No matter what Warren wanted, I could be cast out of the troop and sanctuary, left in the city, unguarded and alone. I'd be saddled with powers I didn't know how to use or control, more of a target than some unnaturally gifted hero.

"There's only one thing I want."

"Revenge?" Hunter asked. "For your sister's death?"

I nodded, unsurprised that he could sense it, knowing they all could. It was the one thing, I thought, that I could never hide.

"And what will you do to avenge her?"

"Anything," I swore. "Everything."

He nodded slowly, and then turned away. "And that's what I don't trust."

We obviously didn't train that day. In fact, all the members of Zodiac troop 175, paranormal division, anti-evil, gave me a wide berth after that. The easy camaraderie between Vanessa and I dissolved like a sugar cube after I'd shown my Shadow side, and she left the room frowning with uncertainty. Felix still grinned at me, but it was tight around the edges and didn't quite reach his eyes. Micah mumbled something about lab work before disappearing, though he did give me a gentle once-over just to be sure his handiwork had held up against Hunter's whip.

Even Chandra, so full of sting and swagger, couldn't muster a glare, and just shoved her hands into the pockets of her fatigues, shaking her head as she exited the room. Hunter followed without a word or backward glance, which left me alone in the s.p.a.cious dojo, staring at my foreign and baffled reflection in the mirror, the emblem on my chest still pulsing gently.

So that went well.

I thought about finding Warren and asking him when he'd planned to tell me about this democratic little voting process, but he was probably still in his so-called session with Greta. Besides, while we were seated in Greta's office, pretending to be civilized as we glared at one another across our teacups, I'd decided there was something Warren wasn't sharing. Either that or something in his recent past that he didn't want to face. Something, I thought, remembering the guilt sitting like a cold stone in my belly, that had to do with Tekla. So what was it he was unwilling to face, or know? More, what didn't he want the rest of us to know?

These questions consumed me as I wove alone through the hallways, halting every so often to scratch the heads and cheeks of escaped cats. Wardens, I thought, correcting myself. None of them hissed or growled or swiped at my hand as I'd seen Luna do with Butch, so that was a small comfort. They just looked at me with unblinking eyes, pushing against my fingers with their lithe little bodies, and moved on when they were finished, tails raised in a parting salute.

Finally, I returned to my mother's windowless, concrete room to regroup, thankful there was at least one place in this underground labyrinth where I could be alone and feel safe. Unfortunately, it wasn't until I'd tucked myself into bed, drawing my knees high to my chest, that I realized trust couldn't even be extended to my own mind.

The dream was like wind gradually picking up in slack sails, so I knew it was coming. If I'd acted early enough, I might even have been able to stop it. Still, I wasn't braced for the feeling of invasion; like someone was picking through the folds of my mind, searching and excavating the forbidden parts. And what they found was bedrock; granite, and caliche, and a petrified memory I'd never dared touch before. But it chipped free now, sharp-edged, banging around inside of me. Slicing at my sanity. A nightmare come back to life.

The biggest nightmare of my life.

I was a teen again; fifteen, to be exact. Sneaky and smart, and needing to escape a world that neither knew nor understood me...as all teens feel the need to do, I suppose. But there was one person who did understand me, and he knew and loved me better than anyone else.

Ben Traina lived across a narrow but elongated patch of desert, long since converted into another thoroughfare for impatient motorists, but marked at the time by a sole footpath which bisected the desert floor. Ben and I probably wore that one away in this summer alone.

Though relatively close in proximity, our homes were worlds apart. The Archer mansion fanned coldly across an entire city block, a ma.s.sive complex with so much faux work and gaudy detailing it looked like a Victorian ball-gown. In contrast, Ben's house was like an old tattered sweatshirt. Low ceilings, small windows, a fireplace made out of rock they'd, thankfully, stopped making in the seventies, and the original green s.h.a.g carpeting blanketing the concrete floor.

For all these differences, though, our families were remarkably similar. There was the overbearing patriarch-gaming mogul versus military man; the mousy wife-society maven and the housefrau; and the two point five kids, two girls on my side of the tracks, three boys on his.

His parents were out of town for the weekend-one brother was already out of the house, and the second was in basic training-so, unsurprisingly, their vacation had become ours. We were in love, a first for us both, and we experienced all the firsts that go along with that. We hid from the world that entire weekend; talking, laughing, eating. Watching movies. Kissing. Stroking. Making love for days.

Sunday morning marked the end of our lovers' tryst. His parents would be home by noon, but it was my sister who arrived first, breathless and fresh from a predawn flight across the desert. We were forced to leave our coc.o.o.n of sheets and limbs and flesh just to silence her insistent pounding at the door.

"Mom's looking for you," Olivia announced, without preamble. "She's so freaked she wants to call the police. And Dad says this time you're going to juvenile hall."

Regretfully, I turned to Ben. "I have to go."

He sighed sleepily, smelling like me. "Will you get in trouble?"

I smiled. "It was worth it."

"Come on! I am not going to juvi with you," Olivia said, then shuddered delicately. "They make you wear paper shoes."

We fled as fast as our limbs would carry us, into the abyss of darkness, across the swath of hard desert earth I knew as intimately as the vein at my wrist...or Ben's. Olivia was younger than me, and at the time quicker too. I can still see her flying through the night, golden hair lit by the moon's eye, streaming behind her like ribbons cutting wind. Even at thirteen she'd been beautiful, the woman inside her already outgrowing the child. I, though older, still looked like a girl.

The man came from nowhere, hurtling from the darkness like a dust devil, catching Olivia from the side. She didn't even have time to scream before she struck the boulders and tumbleweeds of the desert floor, pinned helplessly beneath the weight of her stronger adversary. Then there were only sounds of struggle. Clothing torn. Flesh beaten. Anguished cries for mercy.

A voice, twisted and irrational, snaked up from my subconscious. You deserved what happened that night.

Even as I groaned in my sleep, shaking my head, I knew I did. Olivia was only there because of me. Those meaty fists rained down on her body and face, knuckles reporting like shots as they made contact with her soft flesh, pummeling fragile bone. And because it was my fault, I reacted the same way again.

"Run!" I screamed, latching onto the man from behind. I didn't have the skills then that I did now. I didn't have the strength to overpower a man of any size, and nothing to enable me to stand up to a human predator. Olivia ran, and even after I'd lost sight of her I could still hear her feet crunching over gravel and rock, her sobs streaming, like her hair, behind her. Then I heard nothing at all.

But that was then.

"I should've killed you the first time," said the man I now knew as Joaquin. I felt my eyes open-eyes like Rena's, there but not-and I stared into a face as cruel as I remembered. Thin lips wrapped around a full set of evenly s.p.a.ced teeth; a smile for me, I realized, as the smell of rancid honey spilled out of his mouth. A five o'clock shadow, too perfect and precise to have been by accident, studded his cheeks and chin, and despite his position, looming over me, not a hair on his head was out of place. It was slicked back, tight and sleek, the individual lines from the teeth of his comb clear in the meager moonlight.

"No," I managed, before his fingertips dug into my windpipe, strangling me again. His other hand ricocheted across my face, whipping it to the right. On the returning backhand, I felt my nose collapse. How had I ever forgotten that sound?

"Oh, yes," he replied, arching into me, mimicking o.r.g.a.s.m, writhing above me like a rattler. "Yes, yes, yes."