The Scent of Shadows Free with Bonus Material (22 page)

A woman, dressed in the same robe as Stryker’s, rushed forward and sobbing, lifted Stryker’s head—just the head—into her lap. It lolled there, and she bent to it, crying and stroking his hair. I could see the familial resemblance through the tears and faint lines webbing her face.

Our lineage is matriarchal.

“God.” Unable to bear the scene any longer, I turned the page.

The woman was still there, but she was standing now, fists clenched, eyes burning, her shift sodden with her son’s blood.
“There’s a traitor among us,”
she said in a destroyed voice.

Jesus, I thought, slamming the comic book shut. This was a Light comic?

And was that what I was up against? Beings who appeared out of nowhere to rip heads from bodies? Off of superheroes?

“Ex-Excuse me.” Jolted, I looked up to find the photo clerk staring at me, eyes wide, face pasty, a scattering of photos at her feet. She swallowed hard, and I didn’t have to wonder how long she’d been standing there. “Th-These are the f-first few. I thought you might want them immediately.”

I tried out a smile on her. She took a step back, not that I could blame her. I sat forward, gathering the photos. “Go finish,” I said.

She ran back inside with a whimper, all the teen defiance gone. I leaned back again, wondering how I’d explain
this away, and tried to catch my breath. Good thing too, because one glance at the handful of photos from the ground had the air fleeing my body again in an involuntary cry.

These images didn’t flash. They didn’t blur or glow or shoot light from the paper they were printed on. My photographer’s eye saw a dozen different ways to improve the composition, but there was absolutely no way to improve upon the moment. I lifted the top one close to my face, unable to keep my hands from shaking, and studied the one-dimensional and utterly heartbreaking image captured there.

I knew my man.

I’d known how to angle myself in the encroaching dawn so as to maximize the lighting without using the flash. I knew every angle and smoothly sculpted plane of his sturdy face. I knew the length and breadth of his fingertips, and the way they felt stroking my own. I knew what color his eyes were in the morning, their intensity deepened by dreams.

And I knew, at the moment this shot had been taken, Ben Traina had been thinking of me.

It had been just before full sunrise, and dawn was breaking beautifully over his face. The smile was secretive, too small to cause his eyes to crinkle up at the corners in the way I loved, but it was the contented smile of a man who was expecting to wake up and face the first day of the rest of his life. He thought I was alive. He didn’t yet know of a man named Butch and bodies tossed out plate-glass windows. I compared the image with the man who’d stopped me earlier today, and knew he’d never be this happy again. And neither would I.

A gust of air, carrying the scent of a nearby Dumpster, brought me back to the present. I looked up, mildly surprised to find myself still in front of the Quik-Mart. I’d been unaware of the passing time. I glanced at my watch,
heard laughter—probably a man stumbling from the bar down the street—then shut it out, sighing over the sound.

Perhaps Warren could help Ben, I thought, turning my attention back to the photo. If he could change an identity, maybe he could erase a person’s memory so they no longer mourned a loved one. I bit my lip. Did I want to be forgotten? Did I want him to get over me, and turn those smiling morning eyes on someone else?

I recalled kissing him and I didn’t. Then I thought of how I’d seen him look after he thought me dead and I did. I thought of the lust that had ignited so effortlessly between us again, and I didn’t. Then I recalled the fury I’d seen on his face this afternoon, and I did.

“God, Ben,” I said, pressing the photos to my chest as I closed my eyes. “We’re never going to be this innocent again.”

Laughter sounded behind me again, closer.

The fear that punched at my heart was a physical blow. I rocked into a standing position instantly, my legs braced wide, head up, and I sniffed. Rot on the air. Decaying hate, bloodthirsty hunger. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Ajax. I don’t know how he’d found me, but he was coming, and quick.

I shoved the photos and comics into the duffel bag, zipping it as I raced into the store. I ducked down the first aisle and zigzagged to the back of the store, past cosmetics, lotions, shampoos, candy, and condoms, the security globe above capturing my every move. I fled past aisles stocked with visors and cheap T-shirts, there only because the words
Las Vegas
were splayed upon them in some manner, and quickly discovered that among the mundane and the kitsch and the items that made life oh-so
convenient
, there was one thing missing. A place to hide.

I should have run, I thought, blood churning. I should have taken off in the opposite direction of the stench and laughter, and run all the way to the Peppermill. To the
safety of Warren or someone else who might know what to do.

Nobody can know who you really are, do you understand?

I looked again at the mirrored globe, and cursed Olivia’s reflected image. If Ajax didn’t kill me, Warren was surely going to do the job.

The automatic doors at the front of the store slid open. Through the security globe I saw a figure slide inside like a wisp of smoke, then disappear. He was following my scent, the fear now, and whatever emotion or pheromone that had alerted him to me in the first place. Seconds ticked by like bombs, and I felt the frantic despair rats must feel in a maze. There was, very simply, nowhere to hide. Then my eyes fell to the clearance bin in the middle of the aisle. Nowhere to hide, I thought, except in plain sight.

Tossing my duffel aside, I dove for the mishmashed items; remaindered Halloween costumes made of colored felt and cotton meant to wear away in one washing. All I needed was a mask. I tossed aside bear bodies, bumblebees, superheroes—ha!—and butterfly wings, and finally unearthed a cheap plastic mask. It would only cover half my face, but it’d fit. Fumbling it over my head, I snagged a baseball cap sporting the famous
Welcome to Las Vegas
sign on it, and tucked Olivia’s golden locks up inside. Then I turned, breathing hard, and waited.

His laugh, the one I’d mistaken for drunken mirth, was the first thing to reach me. But if Ajax were drunk, it was with the intoxication of anticipated success and unrestrained violence, not hard alcohol.

When he appeared, the first thing I noticed was his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, then the anticipatory twitch of his long fingers; those effective, effeminate hands. His lanky skeleton pressed beneath his skin as he moved, and I was almost surprised his bones didn’t clack together
when he walked. Already in place, his feral grin widened when he saw me.

“I have to hand it to Warren. This is his best disguise yet…other than his own, that is,” and his laugh was so cruel it was clear he wasn’t speaking of Warren’s vagrant persona. “I’d have never guessed it was you.”

My eyes, beneath the slit of plastic, flickered up to the mirrored ball. A pink pig’s snout protruded from beneath the rim of the hat, but my face—Olivia’s face, and her hair—were perfectly hidden. Dignified it wasn’t, but it did the job.

“I’m guarding my identity,” I said, unnecessarily.

“I see that.” Ajax took a step forward, his long coat swirling around his ankles. I mirrored him, taking one step back. “But, very soon, neither your plastic mask nor your veil of flesh and bone are going to matter. I’m going to rip your head from your body and swim in your blood.”

I thought of Stryker and shuddered. Ajax laughed. “God, but your fear is delicious! It’s like an aperitif…a promise of delights to come. Can you see it the way I do? Every emotion emanating from your body in a silvery wave, rolling in sheets of phosphorescent emotion. See, there goes a particularly strong one. Like the tide rushing from the sea, nice and foamy at the edges as it roars for escape.”

I clenched my teeth and brought a mental barrier slamming down in front of me, the way Micah had taught. I held my breath until I was sure I could control it, then exhaled slowly. Ajax frowned. “Quick learner, aren’t you, Jo? I didn’t expect you to find your glyph so quickly either, but of course you’ve had help.”

I glanced down. The symbol that had been sprayed on my chest earlier that day was suddenly pulsing with light, a white heat throbbing beneath my black turtleneck. Damn it, I thought. I bet that Yulyia bitch wasn’t even from the Ukraine.

The rip of steel through air had my head whipping up.
Ajax had his poker gripped in both hands, point down, poised in front of him like a walking cane. One with extremely sharp teeth.

“Tell me, do you also have your conduit?”

“Yes,” I lied.

“Let’s see it.”

I swallowed hard, motioning with my chin. “It’s in that duffel bag.”

Smiling, he sheathed his weapon and lifted the bag by its soft handles. “Never leave your conduit unattended, Joanna. You, more than anyone, should know the power in turning an enemy’s own weapon against him.”

He lifted the bag, but hesitated, brows drawing in closely, nostrils working like a rabbit’s. He was sensing my lie. I had to distract him, fill the air with an emotion other than anxious hope.

“Powerful,” I agreed, “and Butch’s scimitar was particularly fun. Do you know I began by chopping his hands off at the wrists? I think the majority of blood loss occurred there, but I also forked his tongue and watched him choke on his own blood. I’ve never seen so much blood,” I said, shaking my head, and that was true. Remembering, I was able to conjure up the taste of molten vengeance in my mouth. I exhaled the memory in Ajax’s direction.

He reflexively lifted a hand, shielding his face, and glared at me from over the top of it. “He was like a brother to me.”

“Well, Ajax,” I said, and leaned forward, “your brother pissed himself when I used his own blade against him. Now
that’s
what I call a wave of fear.”

I braced myself in case he was going to rush me, but rage had him ripping into my duffel, blindly searching for a weapon that wasn’t there. It also had his fingers inadvertently running across the weapons that were.

Carl, the little wookie, had been right. Getting zapped by an enemy’s manual wasn’t pretty. I had the five agent of
Light comics stacked on top of the Shadows, and Ajax, it seemed, got a good handful. He dropped the duffel bag immediately, but the damage was already done. The skin on his right palm charred before my eyes, his eyes rolled so far back in his skull that they were snowy white orbs, and his hair sizzled down to within a half inch of his skull.

I was already turning, ready to run like an Olympic sprinter, when I saw the photos of Ben scattered in the aisle.

Shit. Ajax would recover. Ajax, I thought, swallowing hard, would see them. Then he’d hunt down the one man I’d ever loved, and torture him the way I’d tortured Butch. He’d do it to spite me, or bait me, or lure me. And I, of course, would come.

The fingers on Ajax’s good hand were already beginning to twitch to life, and his eyes were rolling back into place, independent of one another, like twin reels on a slot machine. He’d have himself a jackpot if I were still kneeling at his feet when they hit home.

I lunged for the photos, gathering them quickly. He groaned and staggered forward. He bumped my arm with his left foot and I cursed as he fumbled for his weapon. Springing forward from a crouch, I wrapped my arms around his spindly but strong legs and sent his body crashing forward. His chin landed with an audible crack on the hard linoleum, and he nearly impaled himself on his own poker. Nearly, but unfortunately not quite.

Pivoting, I reached for the poker, but his hand closed around the grip first, so I redirected and kicked the duffel from his reach. I leapt over his body just as three feet of barbed supernatural steel came arching my way. Scooping up the bag, I felt fire graze my right hamstring, but I was already moving away, stumbling, then breaking into a full-fledged sprint.

I was nearly out the door when a fresh scream sliced the air in two. Safety was feet away, but there was no escaping
the horrible stuttering sobs behind me. There was nothing heroic about it; just a slight pivoting of the feet as I turned back around, and the still-fresh memory of the way my sister, also an innocent, had died at the hands of another Shadow agent.

The photo girl’s eye makeup ran down her cheeks in black streaks. Her blue eyes would have seemed transparent in comparison, but they were weighed in their sockets with tears and congealing fear. I probably couldn’t save her. I hadn’t been able to save Olivia, and I sure as hell didn’t know how to save myself, but if I ran from this—and God knows I wanted to—I wouldn’t be able to live with myself anyway. The duffel dropped from my hand with a dull thud, and I stepped back in the store.

Ajax began to laugh.

“You move fast, Archer,” Ajax said, his voice merry with observation. The girl whimpered.

“Don’t,” I said, taking another step forward.

“You should’ve run when you had the chance. It’s one thing I can’t quite understand about the Light signs. Putting your lives at risk for mortals when there are just so many of them about.” He waved his poker in the air like it was a wand. “When are you going to realize they’re expendable? They’re nothing. Just flesh, weakness, and stench. That the agents of Light would care for them at all boggles the mind…and makes you so much easier to kill.”

I read his deadly intention before he moved, and dove half a second before he flipped the poker in his hand. The weapon, a missile now, sank home exactly where I’d been standing, its steel tip buried in a pyramid of Coke cases, sending sodas exploding in the air as it burst into flame.

I began to sprint toward him before the smoke could clear, darting across aisles with no particular plan except to close the distance between Ajax and me and bring that terrified clerk within arm’s reach. I crossed two aisles and raced up a third, to end up behind him. He pulled another poker
from beneath his jacket, and this time there wasn’t enough distance to duck, dive, or even blink. Ajax laughed.