The Scent Of Shadows Part 33

"What do you all do?" I asked, suddenly curious. I wasn't just trying to ferret information out either. I really wanted to know. "On the outside, I mean?"

Warren was a b.u.m, Gregor a cab driver. Olivia had been a socialite-I supposed that's what I was now-so it seemed the point was to plant Zodiac agents within the entire social spectrum of the Las Vegas valley; matched, I was sure, by the Shadow agents in one form or another. So what about everyone else? "I know Micah's a physician, but what about the rest of you? Who are you when you're not being...you?"

"College student," Felix offered, saluting. "UNLV."

"Yeah," scoffed Chandra. "For the past eight years."

"Hey, it's not my fault! Warren keeps making me change my major." He turned back to me and winked slyly. With his tousled hair and ready laugh, I could imagine him as the most popular guy on campus. "I keep an eye on our initiates, those close enough to metamorphosis to give off strong olfactory signals. I'm also on the lookout for the Shadow initiates. Fraternities, parties, clubs, that's where the young ones are most likely to be."

"Stryker was a crime scene a.n.a.lyst with Metro," Vanessa offered, lifting her cup, reminding us all why we were there. Cups were lifted all around. We drank to his memory, and Vanessa refilled the cups. "It was the perfect way to gain access to fresh kill spots."

n.o.body spoke for a moment, and I knew they were remembering the warehouse where Stryker had been ambushed. A kill spot. I drank some more.

"Well," Micah finally said, shattering the silence. "We're not the only ones who've lost star signs this year. Chandra alone is responsible for two Shadow kills."

"Not me," she retorted, tipping her cup back. "I'm not a star sign, remember."

"You identified the suspects," Vanessa soothed.

"But Hunter took them out."

"We partner well together," he replied modestly. "Most fire signs do."

Spotting my confused expression, Micah expounded further. "Chandra works at Sky-Chem, the largest chemical lab in the state. She can use DNA to identify the Shadows or initiates who go searching for a job."

Chandra's lips pursed as her eyes went from Micah to me; she was fighting the urge to tell the story herself-doing so meant she'd have to speak to me-but pride ultimately won out. "I found the first one, their Capricorn star sign, through a urine sample when he applied as a bouncer at a strip club. It was easy for Hunter to go in after that, pretend he was there for the girls. The other was a hair test, the Shadow Virgo."

Hunter saluted her with his cup, a look pa.s.sing between them, and as much as I disliked Chandra, I had to admit it was a brilliant cover. Every hotel in town sent their employees-and there were thousands-for mandatory drug testing; as did the government agencies, the police department, and the entertainment venues. Still, I wasn't ready to compliment her. I turned to Vanessa.

"And you?"

She leaned back, crossing her long legs. "Reporter for the Las Vegas Sentinel. Crime beat. See, Stryker would be first on a scene, a.n.a.lyze the evidence, and if it looked like a paranormal hit, he'd call me. He'd cover the case, search and bag all the otherworldly evidence, and I'd write it up in a palatable version for the mortals. So 'Agent of Light Takes Out the Shadows' Twelfth House' becomes 'West Las Vegas Man Hangs Himself in Garage.' That was one of my better ones." She toasted herself, draining her cup.

"I see," I said slowly, swirling my drink, watching as a small whirlpool formed there. I stilled the cup and glanced up at Vanessa. "Or 'Shadow Agents Track New Archer' turns into 'Heiress's Sister Plummets to Death.'"

The laughter immediately died from Vanessa's eyes. Shoulders slumping, she touched my arm, and I could see the others noting her acceptance. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be joking. But it's all for the greater good, you see."

I nodded finally. It wasn't her fault, after all. I was just being overly sensitive, sentimental, and probably getting a little drunk. I needed to slow down and focus. "Well, it's a dirty job, but-"

"Yeah, something like that." We tapped our cups together. Chandra scowled, dipping her face in her own cup. The others also seemed well on their way to being truly s.h.i.t-faced, but my own drink seemed to be turning on me, the sweetness now cloying in my mouth. I pushed my cup away and turned to Hunter. He was the only one not drinking. He was also the only one who hadn't answered yet. I raised a brow.

"Director of Security," and before I could ask, he added, "Valhalla."

I gaped at him, and now my mouth went dry. "You're trying to infiltrate the Archer organization? Like my mother did?"

The drink might have been making me a little slow, but I immediately recognized how easy it'd be to act as a liaison between the Light and Shadow sides if he literally worked for the Tulpa's organization.

"Not trying," he said, steepling his fingers. "I'm doing it."

And I didn't know if that was a jab at my mother or at me. He tossed me a half smile, also unreadable, but was clearly pleased at my obvious confusion.

"Someone has to," Chandra said.

"Chandra," Micah said in a warning voice. I sighed inwardly, but was careful not to let my fatigue show. I was getting better at hiding my emotions too.

Chandra's mouth quirked slightly at one side, but she gave no other sign of having heard him, and unlike Hunter and me, she wasn't trying to hide anything. Her eyes were swimming with drink, but that wasn't all. Deep pockets of hatred and resentment covered her entire psyche. I didn't even have to probe to see the mossy plum color radiating sickly around her. In her eyes I hadn't just usurped her place in the Zodiac, I'd stolen it out from under her. And her dreams of becoming this troop's Archer floated, dead and bloated, on the surface of her gaze whenever it lit upon me.

I caught Vanessa, her own silent gaze imploring me to let it go, so I stood, ostensibly to retrieve the other pitcher of alcohol, and with the half-drunken hope that when I returned with it, Chandra would do the same, or at least have found something more interesting to look at. But she was still there, sneering as women had sneered at Olivia so often before. Judging as they had. She held out her cup for me to serve her, then had the nerve to say, "Your mother failed us all when she deserted her star sign. And look who she deserted it for. What a waste."

The contents of the pitcher I was holding-fruit bits, sweet and sticky, citrus-infused alcohol, ice chips-were poured over her head. It was my turn to sneer, but she was standing and had slapped the satisfaction off my face before I even saw her move.

"Girl fight," I heard Felix say.

"Superhero girl fight," I corrected, and wheeling back, steered an elbow into her temple. The force of my action turned me around on myself, so I followed it up with a backward elbow to the nose. Chandra staggered, as surprised at this as I'd been at the slap, but she didn't fall, and the drunken brawl was on.

She lunged, but Felix was quicker, intercepting her just as neatly as Hunter stalled my own forward motion. Chandra and I both struggled and cursed, continuing a bit just for form's sake, though neither of us had a chance of getting loose.

"Ladies, ladies," Hunter said, sounding bored.

I slammed my head back against him, satisfied when I heard him grunt. Petty, but pleasing. And he let me go.

"I am finished apologizing for who I am," I said, jerking away from him and whirling to face them all. Chandra wasn't the only one who needed to know this. I was breathing hard, and I knew my aura had turned red with anger. "Your discomfort with me is your problem, not mine. Got it? I know who I am."

And I did. I could be beautiful without being soft, and I could be tough without being bitter. Without becoming Olivia, without experiencing the world through her body and eyes, I would have never realized this on my own. I folded my arms across my chest and silently dared them all to speak.

"Finally," Micah murmured from his corner, lifting his drink.

"Yeah." My eyes flickered to meet his. "Finally."

A gurgle sounded in my stomach. Then a rising of heat in my gorge. Suddenly, I shuddered, and my intestines seized. Pain wracked my body, and I screamed, collapsing and clutching my loins. A searing pain shot from my thighs to my chest, paralyzing my lower back, and I whipped forward. G.o.d, what was in that drink? The thought swam away as another series of slashing incisions, like hot pokers, scored my flesh. I felt singed and sliced as I curled into myself, my rasping cry dying out in breathless pain.

"What's happening to her?"

I gave an uncontrollable twitch, then puked vodka, citrus, and blood.

"Jesus!"

"Olivia! What's wrong?" Felix was there, but his outline blurred above me, tears and agony ruining my vision.

My organs felt skewered, like they'd been ripped out from inside me. I had to be dying, I thought. I hoped. "G.o.d," I cried out, and this time arched backward as an invisible blade b.u.mped along my spine.

"It's inside. It's my insides..." I looked at my hands, which had been clutching abdomen and thighs, expecting to see them drowning in blood, but there was nothing. Surprise had my mouth closing momentarily. The pain abated, no longer acute, but the spasms and heat lingered. A groan spiraled out of me, filling the cantina.

Micah had reached me at some point, and I regained my sense of self long enough to realize he was cradling my head in his lap, his physician's hands searching, inspecting my ribs and stomach and legs, and finding nothing.

"It's not me!" I doubled over again, a fresh wound cutting me open from sternum to pubic bone. It wasn't me, of that much I was sure. This was a power outside myself, outside this room too. Still, waves of nausea built again in my stomach. I took a deep breath, but the air was metallic with the taste of blood. I groaned, writhed, and finally, near unconsciousness, lay still.

"It's okay. Just stay where you are, take a minute." Micah shifted, turning to the others, though I couldn't see them. "Somebody go get Greta." There were footsteps, then the report of the door.

"She's not bleeding." Hunter's voice, laced with concern, which would've been gratifying if it didn't scare the s.h.i.t out of me.

"Maybe she drank too much."

The pain had subsided, but the echo of it was still in my bones. I swallowed hard against the vomit souring my throat and the brighter scents of pain and fear.

"Maybe she's allergic to the masking pheromones?"

"No, I tested the solution on a small patch of skin before I applied it. They're a perfect match."

It didn't feel perfect, I wanted to say, but a tongue of swollen sandpaper inhabited my mouth. It was as if I'd been denied drink for a week instead of imbibing only minutes before.

Then the roil in my gut again, a tight coil of fear that wasn't really mine. I couldn't understand it. It was like the core of my body belonged to someone else. I managed to sit up with Micah's help, his large palm warm and supporting on the small of my back.

"Maybe she-"

The door to the cantina swung open with a resounding bang. A figure was silhouetted in the shadows of the hall; a man of great bulk, middling height, and only one arm. The dim lights of the cantina made him appear a ghost, and bent at the waist, he wavered like one as well.

"Gregor!" Vanessa abandoned me for him. "G.o.d! What happened?"

"Ajax," he managed, before bending over himself. My body froze, even my shuddering stopped for an instant, and my eyes darted to the hallway behind him, half expecting to see Ajax there, the tip of his flaming javelin already pointed at my heart. "He found me last night, just after dusk. I don't know how...I didn't do anything...I didn't-"

"Shh," Vanessa said, arm over his shoulders. "Of course you didn't. Come sit down."

"I can't..." He looked up at us with as pained an expression as I'd ever seen on another human being. "I can't keep them in."

I glanced down, unprepared for what supernatural beings could do to another nonmortal. His guts spilled forward, bulging from the hollow of his body, pink coils of twisting organs snaking from the cavity. His one good arm was plastered with blood.

"Oh, my G.o.d!" Micah left me so quickly I wobbled, then puked again, this time with shock and revulsion.

"I'll take care of you," I heard Micah say over my retching. "Don't worry about a thing."

"Did you see Warren?" Hunter asked. He was the only one who appeared remotely calm. I wondered if he was still reclined in his seat, ankle crossed over his knee, a detached observer. I couldn't look, though. My eyes-like everyone's-were fastened on Gregor.

His face collapsed upon itself, and red-tinged saliva bubbled from his mouth. "They used me as bait. He tracked my pheromones."

The room fell dead silent.

"And Warren wouldn't listen." He was sobbing now, mouth wide. "I tried to tell him no, not to do it, but he never listens."

"What? What did he do?"

"He traded himself for me." Stunned by this news, n.o.body moved. Another helpless sob escaped him. "They let me go, but I was followed. I'm so sorry. I couldn't close off the entrance to the boneyard by myself. And there was n.o.body to close it behind me."

I gathered it was no small thing for a Shadow agent to infiltrate the boneyard. Still, what did it matter? Any enemy who tried to enter the sanctuary would fry, right? I opened my mouth to say as much, but another fiery a.s.sault wracked my body. My eyes bulged painfully from their sockets, my throat stretched and burning in a soundless cry. And I no longer cared about the sanctuary.

"They're torturing him," Micah said, kneeling next to me. "He and Olivia are linked, remember? She must be experiencing the residual effects."

If this was residual, I never wanted to feel the real thing. Another slice, and I squeezed my eyes so tight spots danced there. I came out of it in time to catch the end of Gregor's words. "-because he knows her true ident.i.ty. We have to hand her over at dawn-"

"Or they'll kill Warren," Hunter finished for him. This time I did turn, arching my neck to find him. He sat back in his chair, eyeing me dispa.s.sionately, sizing me up like I was a sow to be sold at the country fair. I closed my eyes, wondering how I had ever thought him handsome.

"We can't send her up, even if we wanted to," Vanessa said. "She'll incinerate herself before she even breathes fresh air."

"Wha...?" Gregor grimaced. Felix quickly filled him in, and Gregor dropped his head back, groaning. I doubled over again.

"Stop it!" I screamed, to the sky, to Warren, to the torturers, and to a G.o.d I didn't even know existed. I screamed until my throat was raw, and when I finished, a chuckle whispered like a heavy, bouncing wind across the room. Then the torture stopped. We all stared at one another.

"Your voice," Hunter said quietly, eyes narrowed on my face. "Ajax heard it."

"They're linked," Micah repeated.

I thought of Warren, the way he'd left that afternoon; agitated, angry, afraid. I won't lose another! And I realized this must have been foretold. Of course, a man who believed the good of the troop came before that of the individual would do just that. He'd have known, and he'd have gone anyway.

"Oh, my G.o.d," Micah said, realizing the same thing. He lowered his head into his hands, Gregor's blood staining his temples and forehead and ears. "Ajax has been one step ahead of us the whole time."

I conjured the image, my last, of Warren striding down the hall, trench coat billowing at his ankles, the need to do the right thing driving his limbs. My heart sank as I looked at everybody's face. If this was a game, I thought, clutching my gut, we were one move away from losing it all.

23.

Felix and Micah helped me back to my room, where Greta lit candles and some spicy incense to thicken the air, and gave me a pill to block the connection between Warren and me.

"You need your rest," she told me as I swallowed it, feeling both relief and guilt as I did so. "Concentrate on building a mental wall between Warren and yourself. Protect your thoughts and feelings from those who are probing at him to get to you. That's more important even than blocking the pain."

Easy for you to say, I thought, eyes following her from the room. But the smoke from the incense interceded after that, floating between the synapses in my brain, taking the edge from my worries.

"Warren would want that," Rena added, and I glanced over to where she sat in the corner, rocking in a chair she'd brought in from her own room. "You can bet he's doing the same."

The destroyed craters where her eyes should have been had turned to black pools in the candlelight. All her other charges were tucked in bed for the night, and she'd offered to tend to me while what remained of the troop convened in the briefing room. I knew what they were doing; talking about me, around me, but-once again-not to me. I wondered hazily which of them would cast the deciding vote...and how soon before I was kicked out of the sanctuary. Sacrificed for the sake of their leader.

"You should be meditating," Rena said, as if that would solve everything as she leaned back in her chair.

"The meditation exercises aren't working," I told her, managing to work up a snarl, but paid for it when my intestines filled with fire.

"That's because you're not doing them," she said lightly as I pressed back into my pillows, writhing until the burning subsided.

When it finally felt like all I had was a mean case of heartburn, I glanced back at her with watery eyes. "They're going to vote me out, aren't they? They hold me responsible for Warren's capture."

She shook her head, but it was a defeated rather than rea.s.suring gesture. "No, Olivia. The Shadows orchestrated this, just as they've orchestrated every heartbreak we've ever had to endure." She dropped her head back, seeming to deflate where she sat, before adding, "And Warren did this too. He always does."

This last bit was said with a sort of long-standing resignation, and I'd have tried to read her aura, but I was too tired, groggy with the smoke rising in the air between us, and too afraid it would cause me more needless pain. I also wanted to ask what she meant, but was afraid I'd get more mumbling about Warren's secrets-as Micah had done-or protestations that it wasn't her story to tell, as Greta had claimed. So, instead, I asked a different question.

"How'd Warren get his limp?"