The Scent Of Shadows Part 30

I head-b.u.t.ted him, causing him to jerk back, his face registering surprise as blood began to seep from his nose. I hadn't done that the first time. He slapped me again, but it was too late. A new thought had already burrowed into my mind.

"I don't have to be this again. I don't have to do this again." And I shifted my hips, forcing s.p.a.ce between us, and managed to free a leg long enough to ram a knee into his ribs.

"Oh, but you do," he said, and he planted himself widely over me, like a Greco-Roman wrestler, doubling his weight on top of mine.

I almost gave in. I felt my lungs creaking with need for air, felt his hands fumbling between my legs, but my training and my will kept me struggling. "No...I'm not that girl anymore. I'm the Archer."

"Yes," he snarled, face leering into mine, "I could tell by your stiletto."

I blinked, then felt a smile spread over my broken face. "I'm the Archer...and this is my dream."

"But we can reach you in your dreams," he said, grinding into me again. "I can f.u.c.k you in your dreams."

"No," I said, struggling. "I don't want this."

"Fight all you want, but you can't change who you are...who I've helped you become."

"I'm not like him!"

"Oh, look in the mirror, dear girl," he said, giving me a sly smile. "You're exactly like him."

There was a rustling from behind us, and Joaquin looked behind him, then jerked his head back to look at me. "f.u.c.k," he said, and disappeared.

And feeling lighter, the weight of both his body and sleep being yanked from me, I really opened my eyes.

The blankets were tangled around my feet, sheets soaked in the outline of my body, and as I sat up I immediately saw the one thing that hadn't been in the room before; the item that had called me from my sleeping state. A newspaper had been slipped under my door, the sound somehow sneaking through the web of my not-dream. I rose, left it lying on the floor, and opened the door to peer into the hallway. No one was there.

Running a hand through my hair I noted my nose felt tender, though not broken, and my throat was raw, and probably red. But I bent to retrieve the paper, silently thanking whoever had used it to chase away my demons...until I saw the lead article.

"Oh, my G.o.d," I said, and the words from my dream raced again through my head. You're exactly like him. Slowly, I sank to the side of the bed. Oh, my G.o.d, I thought again. Maybe he was right. Maybe they all were right.

The article was brief, a dispa.s.sionate a.s.semblage of facts and figures; time of death, the age of the victim-G.o.d, only seventeen-what officials thought had happened. I read over it half a dozen times, trying to reconcile the memory of my confrontation with Ajax with the words appearing on the page. A meaningless and random attack, it reported, by what was, most likely, a gang of teens. One of whom had a blade. The statement from the girl's mother was no more than a single sentence, but it summed up the only real known fact: "My daughter is gone, and my life will never be the same."

So maybe they were right.

I knew this was what whomever had slid the newspaper under the door wanted me to feel. It was spiteful and obvious, yet it still made me want to bury my head in my hands and never look up. I had failed this girl. I'd put her in danger, just like Olivia, and they'd both paid the price with their lives. So maybe they were right. I was exactly like him.

I was about to toss the paper aside when another column caught my eye. I was holding the whole of the Metro section, the bulk of the day's bad news in my hands, and today it featured a story of an early morning shooting, a love triangle gone wrong. A woman named Karen was shot by her husband as she tried to leave their apartment. Moments later one Mark Davis had turned the gun on himself.

I closed my eyes, and for a moment I didn't even breathe. I just sat there, chaos swirling inside me like some nauseating psychedelic drug. The store clerk had been an accident, an innocent I'd never meant to injure. But this. Ajax had nothing to do with the dissolution of this marriage, these lives. This was all me. I had fired up my new powers and blasted through the walls of Karen and Mark Davis's lives.

I managed to stumble into the bathroom, and splashed cold water onto my face over and over, until I gasped, and realized I was crying. Leaning heavily on the sink, I lifted my head to face the mirror. Olivia's lovely face, with my haunted eyes.

And the dark shadows that lingered beneath them? I'd created those-and the reasons behind them-myself.

"Who do you think you are?" I whispered at the mirrored image. I watched the reflected lips move, then fall still, with no answer.

I returned to the bedroom, picked up the newspaper and studied the image of Karen Davis smiling up at me from an undated photo. After a moment I shoved it in my duffel bag for safekeeping and left. I wanted to find out for sure if, maybe, they were right.

Even while hoping against hope that they were wrong.

21.

My emotions were under control by the time I reached Greta's room. My eyes dry, face serenely composed-which, I knew, on Olivia only looked blithely unaware-and my energy carefully controlled. I didn't want to run into any of the others without all my barriers in place. I half expected to find Chandra lurking around each sharp corner, sure she'd been the one to slip the paper under my door, but she was nowhere to be found. If it had been her, then she obviously thought her business with me complete.

I heard a shot of laughter from the direction of the children's ward, saw a sole female cat out on patrol, two kittens stumbling along behind her, and increased my pace, intent on arriving at Greta's undetected. I'd just turned the last corner, casting a final, furtive glance behind me, when I slammed into something, someone, who grunted and gave with the impact.

"Warren." We both stepped back, each startled by the other, and I frowned when I saw the color drain from his face. "Are you okay?"

"Of course." His words were as jerky as his movements, and he swallowed hard. "I'm fine."

But I'd never seen him looking more disoriented. He was sweating, pale, and bleary-eyed, and all the crazed self-a.s.surance I so readily a.s.sociated with him was gone. In its place was a man who looked tired and old and scared. Whatever had transpired in the hours since I'd last seen him, it had left him uncertain and shaky.

"You don't look fine. You look funny." I sniffed lightly at the air. "You smell funny."

"Well, we can't all look as good as you, now, can we?" he snapped, a thin hand rising to rub at his face.

"Geez, Warren." I drew back. "What happened? What did Greta say?"

"I'm not at liberty to discuss my therapy sessions with you." I must have looked as injured as I felt because he cursed beneath his breath and tried to soften his words. "Look, Gregor's been out there, alone, for over a dozen hours. I'm just...worried. I'm going after him."

"But...why can't someone else go? The Shadows have targeted you." Because of me, I thought, and guilt speared through me now that I could see the toll it was taking on him.

"I'm the most experienced," he corrected, standing taller. "We can't lose Gregor. He's the only one of us-other than myself-who's held his place in the Zodiac for more than twelve months."

"What about Micah? Or Hunter?"

He shook his head. "Talented, both of them, but they're both new recruits. Micah's not even supposed to be a star sign. He's support staff, like Greta."

"So it hasn't just been five agents killed in the last few months-"

"It's been ten. Ten of the finest," he finished, voice weary.

"Jesus," I said under my breath.

"We replenish the signs only to have them destroyed again. One, our Virgo, the very next day." He looked at me, and his face was hard again. I'd seen this kind of determination before. I'd captured it with my camera on the faces of street people who knew all was lost but were determined to go on anyway. "I won't lose another. I'm going out there, I'm going to retrieve Gregor, and then I'm going to shut down the Zodiac. We'll wait until the troop is whole again, strong again. Then we'll take on the Shadow warriors as a team."

"You mean...leave the city vulnerable?"

He closed his eyes, and they moved like minnows beneath their lids, as if he were already watching the outcome of that decision. "We have no choice."

"For how long?"

"As long as it takes to train up a new Zodiac force. A year. Maybe more."

"A year!" I exclaimed, thinking of all the damage Ajax and his ilk could do in that amount of time. Thinking also of young teenage girls being attacked in Quik-Marts and the desert, and left there to die. "That's too long."

"Got a better idea?" His eyes snapped open, fired on me.

"Hey, don't take it out on me! I'm just saying-"

"Well, just don't!"

"G.o.d," I exclaimed, balling my fists. "Why are you so upset with me? What did I do?"

"I'm not-" He cut off his words as he realized he was yelling, and inhaled deeply. On the exhale he continued. "I'm not upset with you, okay?" he lied. "Greta and I had some things to discuss and they've put me on edge. I'm sorry for yelling. I've got to go."

His fear reached out to burn the lining in my nose. "Wait a minute. Things? Like me?"

"Things," he mimicked sharply, "that are confidential. It's not your business what I discussed with Greta."

"It's my business when you come out of that room treating me like a stranger. Like an enemy." I folded my arms as he opened his mouth to deny it. "The conversation lingers on you, Warren. It smells like an industrial solution. It's metallic and cold, and it's heightening as we speak. Why were you discussing me with Greta?"

"I don't have to tell you anything," he whispered. "I've done enough for you."

I drew back, surprised. Who was this man? I angled my head, exploring the air around him with my thoughts; nasal receptors probing like centipede legs.

"Stop it," he ordered, and an invisible mental wall rose like a tower around him. He pushed past me and began stalking away.

"What the h.e.l.l is wrong with you?"

"It's you!" he yelled, whirling on me with hot and furious eyes. "Don't you get it? It's not me, it's you!"

I stared into those angry eyes, watched as they banked, smoked, then dimmed. Unfeeling now. Apathetic. Dead. He's shut down on me, I thought with injured wonder. He just closed me out, turned me off.

I felt my eyes grow wide, and my breath stuttered out of me on a whisper. "You b.a.s.t.a.r.d. You're the one who brought me into this, remember? You yelled 'Eureka!' and jumped in front of my car! You knocked me out and made me into this," I said, motioning up and down Olivia's body.

"You want your life back, Joanna?" he asked, surprising me by using my real name so openly. I looked around but whipped my attention back to him when he took a step toward me. "Or, excuse me, I mean that empty excuse of an existence you called a life? Well, fine. Once we find a way to get you out of here, we'll cut you loose. Physically. Mentally. Completely. Happy?"

I would have been; a handful of days, or even hours, earlier. But this was abandonment, and even less of a choice than he'd offered me before. So why now?

I tilted my head and took a step toward him. "You're afraid of me."

Alarm lashed through my gut like a whip, and Warren's jaw clenched. He hadn't wanted me to feel that, and tried to cover the slip with words. "We were wrong. I was wrong. We should have never approached you, never introduced you to the Zodiac at such a late age."

I ignored his words, paying heed only to the emotions rippling like hot oil beneath the waxy exterior. "You don't trust me."

"I don't trust the Shadow in you!"

My body jerked before I could control it and my heart skipped a beat. A wire of panic began to spread outward from the core of my belly. He'd been the last person in this subterranean h.e.l.l I'd have expected to utter those words. Even though I suspected Warren of hiding secrets, I thought they'd had to do with Tekla or some troop dynamic I had yet to understand. But not me. Somehow, I'd taken it for granted, from the beginning, that he'd always be on my side. "And what about the Light? What about my mother's side?"

"Your mother," he scoffed, bitterness oozing like venom to coat the walls around us. "Zoe's gone, Joanna. She's so gone she's never coming back. Perhaps she lived with the Shadow side so long that she began to enjoy it. Who knows? She could be there now, living a life of ease, because it is so much easier, you know..." I did know. "s.h.i.t, for all we know she could be the one feeding the Tulpa information about our star signs-"

"No." I shook my head hard. "She wouldn't."

"And how do you know what she would or wouldn't do? You never knew her at all."

My mouth trembled closed. He had me there.

"We'll forget Zoe ever existed, and soon we'll do the same with you. Then we can all just go back to living in our separate realities."

My heart cracked at that, and I knew Warren sensed it. He could feel and smell and hear the echo of it in his blood...if only he wanted to. "So...just like that?"

He looked me over, his face softening momentarily, and he blinked. Then it hardened again, his emotions petrified, and it turned him into something other than a crazed b.u.m and a leader of the underworld. It nullified him. "I have to go."

"Just like that, Warren?" I repeated, raising my voice after him. "You're going to turn your back on me like I didn't lose my entire life, my ident.i.ty, my sister? Like n.o.body's trying to kill me too?" He kept walking and I raised my voice. "Like my eyes didn't bleed from their own f.u.c.king sockets?"

No response, just the silly little slap and slide of his gait. Suddenly, though, it didn't look so silly. It looked resolute. Defeated. Final.

"What about this special connection we're supposed to have, huh? What about that?" He rounded the corner without looking back, hearing me but not listening. "Don't turn your f.u.c.king back on me!" I slammed my fist against the wall. "Warren!"

My voice echoed emptily down the hall, then trailed away in a choked whisper. "Don't...don't leave..."

Slumping against the wall, I tried to catch my breath. How could he? He knew me, who I was and why. Hadn't he held me while I lay sobbing on the floor, watching my own funeral play out on the local news like some sick reality show? He knows me, I thought, the real me. He knows...

"That I don't even know myself."

Shaking, I pushed away from the wall. I didn't want to break down here in the hallway where anyone could see me. Where Warren's mistrust lingered like a virus.

So I lunged for the closest escape, Greta's door, and it swung open so quickly I was two steps inside before I realized I'd forgotten to knock. Half blind with shock and self-pity, I barely registered Greta's surprise or the way she jolted before she could control it. Her hands disappeared behind her back and she backed into her dressing table, my reflected face pale and ink-eyed behind her.

I seemed to be having that effect on people these days.

She put a hand to her chest. "Olivia!"

"I'm sorry. I just...I'm not-" I'm not Olivia. I'm not a superhero. I'm not anyone. I'm not going to cry, I thought, even as the first tear fell. "I just needed someone to talk to."

"Oh, dear. Of course you do." She rushed to my side, though I saw her hesitate before wrapping her arms around me, and that made me cry even harder. She urged me toward her flowered settee. "Come, sit."

"I'm sorry," I repeated, accepting the tissue she pressed into my palm. I made a tentative dab at my eyes, then gave up and let my face crumble upon itself. "I didn't know who else to come to and I needed to talk and I saw Warren and he won't...he just...and he..."

"Shh," she said, pulling my head to her chest. I rested it there. Rested, it seemed, for the first time since my mother had left me a decade ago. I closed my eyes, slumped against her soft chest, and inhaled deeply. I knew her now, I realized. The twin bouquets of roses and the herbs she brewed for her own teas were fused upon her breath and skin, her signature scent stamped like a star on the surface of my temporal lobe.

Gradually, the distress and misery left my body, sliding away through my tears, and I relaxed. My sobs were replaced by blessed nothingness, my body went limp against hers and, after one final sniffle, I lay silent. Greta continued to rock me, and though I knew she still feared what'd happened that morning, still feared me, I was so grateful for the momentary kindness that I didn't care.

"Thank you," I said, swiping the back of my hand over my face. "Again."

"One of those days?" she asked quietly.

"One of those lives," I muttered, a bitter laugh hiccuping out of me.

"You're overwhelmed, dear. You've toured the sanctuary. Met the others-"