The Scent of Shadows Free with Bonus Material (21 page)

“It’s okay,” I said doubtfully. I wasn’t planning on anyone seeing me naked anyway. “How long did you say this stuff lasts?”

Cher wasn’t listening. She was moaning and cursing—delicately, of course—and pulling at her hair extensions. “I wanted this to be perfect!”

“It has been,” I assured her. “Really. I can’t think of the last time I’ve had this much fun.”

“Truly?” She sniffed, and stared at me through tearstained eyes.

I nodded. “This is the most fun I’ve ever had naked with another woman.”

“Except for that time in Cozumel.”

I’d puzzle that one out later.

“But now you have to wear turtlenecks for two whole weeks!”

Facing the mirror, I sighed. That answered that question.

“It’s not right!” Fresh tears welled in her eyes. “First you ruin your Louboutins and now you’re marked for life!”

“It’s not for—” I broke off, whirling to face the mirror again and looked closer.
Marked
.

“I think I’m faint,” Cher continued behind me. “I need a drink with something stronger than cucumbers in it.”

“It looks like…” I found I couldn’t finish. I cleared my throat and tried again. “It’s a…”

Cher gasped as she came up behind me. “I see it!” Her amazement, my horror, and the symbol on my chest were all reflected clearly in the glass across from us. Cher was the first to find her voice, and it was reverent. “It’s shaped like a stiletto!”

Shit. She could be right.

It was blurred, smudged around the edges, and not entirely drawn in—like a half-finished tattoo—but dammit, Cher just might be right. If I angled myself just so, squinting…

Damn. My glyph, I thought, turning to view it from another angle, was a fucking stiletto. But at least this time I didn’t have to wonder what Olivia would say.

“Well,” I said, and blew out a sigh. “At least it’s cute.”

I’d once thought myself a stranger to darkness, but as I drove back to Olivia’s apartment I thought back to my encounter with the construction worker earlier that day—cursing myself for remembering his name, Mark—and of the pain that had bloomed in his face as realization struck. At my words. Words Olivia would never have uttered. I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable with myself. Darkness, I was finding, came in many forms.

And what about what had happened in the comic store? Carl had seemed not only genuinely surprised that I could pull from both the Light and Shadow series, but I’d recognized that flash of fear as he looked from me to Zane and back at the comics in my hand.

So you’re the one,
Zane had said.

The only one
. Micah’s words hurtled back at me.

And then Warren’s,
you’re the first sign.

I parked in Olivia’s spot in the underground garage, grabbed the comics from the trunk, and decided to read through them all tonight. I needed to fill in the holes
Warren and Micah had left in my supernatural education…and in my life.

The phone was ringing as I slid the key in the door, and smelling nothing out of the ordinary, I jogged to the bedroom and grabbed the portable from its hook. Luna wound her silky body between my legs, nearly tripping me up.

“Hello.” I perched on the edge of the bed and leaned to stroke Luna’s head. She arched fluidly under my hand just as Warren’s voice reached my ear.

“Olivia, it’s time. We’ve got to get you out of here, to the sanctuary.” He sounded panicked and out of breath.

My hand froze on Luna’s back. “You said I wasn’t ready.”

“No choice. Every agent is ordered off the streets.”

“Why?”

“I don’t have time to tell you…hold on.” There was a muffled sound, like he’d placed his hand over the receiver or muffled it against his chest. After half a minute he was back. “Remember when I told you the Shadows had found a way to kill off our star signs? One by one?”

I nodded, though he couldn’t see it.

“Well, they’re tracking us; I don’t know how, but they have their next target. That’s why we all have to go.”

“Who are they after?”

There was another silence. “Me.”

I stood and paced to the window, where shadows, once again, were soaking into crevices along the valley floor. “But why do I have to go? You said I wasn’t ready. And remember, Olivia is an Archer. They won’t touch her, or me, right?”

“Joanna Archer,” he said, surprising me by using not only my real name, but my full name, “they don’t want me for my sterling personality. They want me because of you.”

Oh.

“Meet me at the Peppermill on the Boulevard. Walk, don’t drive. We don’t want Olivia’s car anywhere near the pickup point. There will be a cab waiting out back. Pack
like you’re going to summer camp, and bring only what you need.”

I looked around the room, with no idea where to start. “How long will I be gone?”

“Long enough to learn what you need to, but not long enough for anyone to miss you.”

“That narrows it,” I muttered to myself. “What about Luna?”

“She’ll be taken care of.”

I paused as the image of Mark and his naked pain and disbelief crowbarred its way back into my brain. “I need to tell you something, Warren. Or ask you—”

“Later. There’s a window of opportunity for the crossing, but it’s short. We must hurry.”

“The crossing?”

“From your world into ours,” he explained impatiently. “It can only be executed the exact moment day turns into night, or vice versa.”

I drew back and actually looked at the receiver. “That’s called dusk, Warren. It lasts more than a moment.”

“Not the point at which the light and shadow are divided evenly in the air. Be there, mid-dusk sharp.” He hung up in my ear.

I scowled at the phone, then down at Luna. “Bossy for a homeless man, isn’t he?”

I packed swiftly, only throwing in items I was comfortable with…or relatively so, considering Olivia’s wardrobe. Nothing silk, nothing with heels, and no lace. Sure, the jeans I stuffed into the duffel bag were Sevens rather than Levi’s, and the sweats were velour lined with satin rather than simple cotton, but at least they were items I could move in. I could run. I could fight.

Figuring discretion was the way to go since Warren had been specific about not using Olivia’s car, I donned a turtleneck and loose slacks, both black, though I decided to bring her crystal-studded cell phone along; after all, Olivia
couldn’t just drop off the face of the earth, could she? Then I started throwing in the usual toiletries.

Underwear, socks, hairbrush, toothpaste, lotion…camera.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered, freezing with the cheap cardboard camera in my hand. I held it in my palm as gingerly as I would a baby bird. On it were the last images I’d taken as myself; the images I’d snapped in those early morning hours before returning to Warren to tell him that yes, I would accept his offer to become a superhero.

The ones of Ben, smiling in his sleep because I was alive.

I looked at the clock. Did I have time? My heart thudded at the prospect of viewing these photos. I’d have liked to develop them myself, to play with the shadow and light in the confines of my own dark space, but I knew that wasn’t an option. My home was being watched, and even if it wasn’t, Warren would never agree.

Still, there was a one-hour photo shop located inside a Quik-Mart only one block east of the Peppermill. If I drove that far and hurried, I might be able to make it.

The drive was a short one. I parked a block away, then crossed an intersection and three stop signs on foot to get to the store. I was only harassed by one motorist and one panhandler, so I figured my day was improving markedly.

I was greeted inside the Quik-Mart by a sleepy-eyed girl who looked barely old enough to vote. Perhaps greeted is too strong a word because she actually looked disappointed to see me, like I’d interrupted her life-in-progress and she wanted only to go back to her regularly scheduled programming. I wanted to tell her I could relate.

“How fast can you develop this?” I asked, handing her the camera.

“The sign says an hour.”

“I need them in half that.”

“So does everyone else, lady. Can’t do it.” She pushed the camera back at me and turned away.

“This says you can,” I said, sliding a hundred beneath the box. She looked from the money to me, and returned to the counter.

“You’ll have ’em in twenty.”

She may have been lazy, but she wasn’t stupid.

I decided to wait outside, thinking twenty minutes was enough to get started on at least one comic. The November air was sharp, but freshly so, and comfortable enough with the turtleneck on. I sat with my back against a stuccoed pillar and pulled the stack from my duffel bag, wondering where to begin.

Light, I decided. Definitely. I chose the one with the earliest date—volume two, number twenty-five—and flipped it open to learn more about the “independents” Warren had so distastefully mentioned the night of my metamorphosis. Apparently independents—also known in less flattering terms as rogue agents—were a constant threat to a troop’s equilibrium. In a world where lineage meant everything, the competition for open star signs was fierce, and even those of the Light had been known to take out their matching star sign just for the opportunity to usurp them in the Zodiac. That meant the independents weren’t liked or trusted by established troop members, and were rarely tolerated within city boundaries.

Fortunately, most of the time there was no disputing a star sign’s lineage; it went from mother to daughter, or if there was no younger female left, to the eldest son. But every once in a while a sign opened up with no obvious heir, and according to the manual, that’s when things got “interesting.”

I grimaced and flipped the page, remembering the way Warren’s mouth had curled when he spoke about the independents. Why did I get the feeling “interesting” was a euphemism for “deadly”?

I also had to wonder how my ascendancy into the Archer sign would be viewed by the star signs in his troop. If the Archer sign had been empty since my mother’s disappearance, might some of them liken my sudden appearance to
that of a rogue agent? At the least, wouldn’t it be seen as “interesting”?

Not having these answers, and not liking the direction my questioning was taking, I quickly flipped that manual shut and picked up another. This time I ignored the chronological ordering and just snagged the one with the best-looking superhero on the cover, shoving the rest back into my pack.
Stryker
, it was called.
Agent of Light.

“Stryker is striking,” I murmured, settling back. The rating on it was PG-17, and I could see why; leather clung to the man’s thighs, snug in all the right places, and a loose-knit cashmere sweater revealed tremendous biceps…as well as the glyph pulsing like a heartbeat on his chest. It was, in fact, pulsing on the page. Though no expert in astrology, I thought it might be the glyph for Scorpio, the sign and month before mine. Stryker was holding what I assumed to be a weapon, bent like a crossbow, but with a chain attached. Its use was totally unfathomable to me.

“I’d be willing to find out, though,” I said, my eyes grazing his figure again. Note to self: side benefit of being a superhero? Getting to know other superheroes.

I paused as my eyes caught the author’s name stretched across the top band in black stencil. Zane Silver. The same Zane who worked in the shop? I wondered, before my eye caught the second name illustrated there. Carl Kenyon, penciler.

“Wookie-boy?” I wondered aloud, shifting so the comic was lit from the streetlight above the store.

Ten minutes later I had a tenuous grasp on some of the events that had plagued me recently. I followed Stryker—a character, or a real person?—through a series of events leading to his metamorphosis. He’d been taken to an empty warehouse on Industrial and Pollack, and was surrounded by eleven other men and women, though it was difficult to tell one sex from the other. Each person wore a loose-
fitting robe, white and dotted with what I took to be golden-threaded constellations.

“Nice job, Carl,” I said, placing a finger on one of the sparking star clusters. It pulsed warmly beneath my hand. I smiled and continued reading.

“Your first life cycle ended at puberty, and the second ends tonight.”
The words bubbled up from a man who looked suspiciously like Warren. Only it couldn’t have been Warren, I thought, tracing the image with my fingers, because Warren had never been this clean-shaven.
“To enter the third life cycle, you must go through metamorphosis and be willingly initiated into the seventh house of the Zodiac, under your mother’s sign of the Scorpio. Do you accept?”

“Crap dialogue,” I muttered. “Who wrote this shit?”

“I accept,”
Stryker said with dignity befitting the gravity of the ceremony.
“As my mother did before me.”

“And you do so of your own free will?”
the man asked, a slash of lightning outside the warehouse sinking him into silhouette. The storm clouds, I knew, were gathering outside. I could almost hear them erupting in my head the way they’d once erupted around and above Olivia’s apartment.

“As my mother did before me,”
Stryker repeated, inclining his head. Behind him the windows had begun to streak with rain.

“At least you knew what you were choosing,” I muttered, turning the page. A shaft of light shot up from the pages. It was like a paranormal pop-up book! The manual trembled between my fingertips, and the words, panels, and dialogue bubbles dissolved in an explosion of thunder. I watched as Stryker was pummeled by the same force that had entered me not long ago, dropping him to his knees and turning him into a helpless supplicant. The other star signs made a tight wedge around him—their bodies shown from above to create the symbol of his star sign—Stryker
at the center. The book was more of a screen now, revealing images that flashed and burned away in turn, only his bright star immobile in the middle of the page.

There was a crack so great it shook the pages between my fingers. I almost dropped the whole thing as the sound of the sky rending in two joined the stabbing light, and with it a cry as horrible and intensely feral as I’d ever heard.

“No!”
I heard a voice, perhaps Warren’s, scream in response.

The symbol was broken, its bright points—the other agents of Light—splintering and turning outward to face an invasive red glow. I couldn’t follow, the action was too chaotic and confused; like I too was caught in the turmoil. Blows rained down around my head, the air filled with words I’d never heard before…nd screams I wished I hadn’t. Every so often the action would slow, like a tape being caught in a recorder, and a clear image—one more reminiscent of a traditional comic—would pause, burning on my retina, before being swallowed again into chaos.

I saw Warren slaughter a man with nothing more than a rope and his fists.

I saw Micah use his surgeon’s hands to slice first the scalp and then the face from an attacker’s falling frame.

And I saw, with a sort of disbelieving numbness, the man who’d attacked me as a teen. A name bubbled up through the air in long capitalized letters—JOAQUIN, followed by SHADOW AQUARIAN—then it popped, the lettering cracked into shards and shooting out beyond the confines of the pages, gone.

“Joaquin,” I said aloud. I knew him. I knew the look of death on his brow.

And I knew, as I turned the page, that he would kill Stryker.

And there he was. Gorgeous and helpless and immobile in the center of this maelstrom, his head grasped between Joaquin’s large hands. The Shadow Aquarian began to pull,
and I watched, horrified, as the strong but tenuous cording in Stryker’s neck stretched, the tendons beneath straining, a cry catching in his throat. Then, in what seemed like slow motion, his flesh gave. A horrible gurgle was yanked from a newly rent hole in that throat, and his head, popping, was hauled from his body. The light in the center of the page blinked out and was no more. The red glows dissolved and were simply, suddenly, gone. And the cacophony of martial voices died until there was only one.