The Scent of Shadows Free with Bonus Material (25 page)

I stepped back, trying to feel my way off the platform. I was afraid I’d fall but I couldn’t take my hands from my eyes long enough to look because they were tearing up in defense. I heard a sizzling sound and smelled burning. Then I tasted it, hot and cloying at the back of my throat, and realized it was coming from me.

Agony jigsawed through my skull, drilling at my temples, and I cried out and rushed forward blindly. I had no choice but to move. I was incinerating on that platform, like I was shut in a microwave, organs heating within me, roasting from the inside out.

I stepped, slipped, and slid into oblivion. The incline was like a greased luge run, and me without a sled, I thought hysterically. And while the drop into the toe was not unexpected, my breath was sucked away. Light, brilliant but miasmic, streamed past me, surrounded me…and instead of illuminating me, infected me.

I choked on the white-hot heat as it rolled like lava into my mouth, rising into the soft tissue of my brain as I fell. I was being vacuumed down into a trough of invisible flame, fire biting at my cheeks and ears, sinking in like pokers behind my eyes. I screamed, but the sound was wrenched from my mouth.

“What’s taking her so long?”

The sweltering words slid past me as I continued to fall. More heat invaded me, radiation now; attacking my fevered flesh, piercing my veins, seeking bone.

“She’s coming now. Hear that?”

Hurry, I thought, knowing I was near to blacking out.
Charred
. I grew dizzy and my lungs felt close to imploding. Only when I landed with a hard thud did I realize there was
any air left in my chest to lose. I crumbled, but sucked in air like I was Nessie coming up from the bottom of the loch.

“That was graceless,” I heard Chandra say.

I rolled onto my hands and knees, facedown, gulping down air, thinking I’d never breathed in anything so crisp, cool, balmy, or sweet in my life. It set the sores in my mouth to drying, and they crackled as I winced. They were on my lungs too, where they remained wet and aching.

“Olivia?” Hands on my shoulders. I whimpered and jerked away, and not just because my flesh sizzled at the contact. I was pissed off and feeling vulnerable; exposed and lost, dizzy and disoriented, and betrayed by the very people who were supposed to be protecting me.

And I was so very fucking hot.

Why hadn’t anyone told me what to expect? Or what to do? Why had they just left me up there, alone and burning? I couldn’t get the question out, though; not past the air I was trying to suck in. I started shaking, an improvement over the stinging paralysis, but not by much.

“What’s wrong with her?” Felix this time, voice hesitant and low.

My eyes, scalded, refused to see—I couldn’t even tell if they were open or closed—and my head throbbed where it had whipped back against the top of the slide. But that was nothing compared to the pulpy blisters I felt rising in my brain. I knelt on my haunches, curled into myself and wished for death.

“A little dramatic, don’t you think?”

“Shut up, Chandra.”

“Olivia?” Warren’s hands again. This time I let him turn me over. There was a collective gasp…which probably wasn’t good.

“What happened to her?”

“God. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Get Greta,” I heard Warren say. “Hurry.”

“We could have killed her ten times over by now,” Chandra muttered, and I felt Warren shift. “I’m just saying! It’s
a weakness. The Tulpa will find out about it. He’ll use it against her.”

“He won’t find out if nobody tells him. Besides, he shares the weakness.”

“What happened?” I finally managed. The words were catching like splinters in my throat. I pushed them out anyway. “Why did that hurt so much? Why won’t my eyes stop tearing up?”

“They’re not tears,” Chandra said, and this time she sounded apologetic. “It’s blood.”

I touched a hand to my face.

“I’m so sorry, Olivia.” Warren’s voice was low but panicked, and alarm beat at my chest as I felt him hovering over me uncertainly. “It’s my fault. I forgot, and it’s my fault.”

“Forgot what?” I asked, raising my face, as blind as a baby chick. I could only imagine how I looked.

“The Shadow in you. It can’t take the Light.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

And then there was another voice, a scent like rainwater and sage, and a cool, feminine palm on my shoulder. A wet cloth with herbs was pressed gently over my eyes. “Shh, honey. I’m here. It’s going to be all right.”

“She’s hurting, Greta.” Warren sounded scared.

“I know,” the woman answered. “Bring her to my rooms. I’ll take care of her.”

Strong arms lifted me. There was the click of heels leading the way. And there was Warren’s breath, cold and small, in my ear. “I’m so sorry.”

I felt a tear fall, imagined its crimson path as it trailed over my cheek, and thought, So am I. I leaned into Warren, still smelling burning flesh.
So was I
.

The woman, Greta, asked if she could give me something to knock me out, and I whimpered my agreement, thinking she could knock my head clear from my shoulders if it would just stop the pain. Such drastic measures, thankfully, were not needed, and she administered a shot that had me slinking blissfully into the ether within moments.

When I woke, the room was pitch-dark, but crowded. The darkness I quickly attributed to cloth bandages wrapped loosely around my head. The crowdedness was because…well, there was a crowd. But over the voices rising and falling around me, I thought I heard birds chirping—did the Silver Slipper have an aviary?—and I knew I smelled at least two dozen roses, which I identified as Double Delights from the slight spice wafting from each petal. My eyesight might have been questionable, but the sniffer was still in top form. Yippee.

“We can’t let her leave the same way she came in,” Felix was saying. “It could kill her.”

The thought of crossing through that big, rounded, silver toe again immediately set my pulse to throbbing.

“Well, she can’t stay here forever.”

“Greta never leaves the compound,” Micah pointed out.

“Greta’s a psychic,” Chandra muttered. “Not a superhero.”

They’d been going on like this, I took it, for a while. The forces of evil may have been hard at work in Vegas tonight, but the superheroes of Zodiac troop 175 were arguing back and forth like opposing teams on a baseball diamond. They were also speaking about me as if I wasn’t there. Worse, like I was, and couldn’t understand a thing they were saying.

I did understand, of course. I was a superhero, and superheroes didn’t die. I almost had, and they were all scared to death because of it.

I shifted against what felt like a veritable sea of pillows, and all chatter ceased. “So basically what you’re all saying is that I’m trapped here?” Five pairs of eyes, felt rather than seen, landed on me. “Trapped in the Silver Slipper, right?”

“Uh,” said Warren, after a bit. “Yeah.”

I nodded as if to myself and pursed my lips. “But I’m safe?”

“Safe, but not very useful,” Chandra muttered from my right.

“Safe and useless sounds just fine right now,” I replied.

“The point is, we can’t let her out of the sanctuary anyway until we figure out how Ajax found her so quickly,” Micah said. “I implanted her new olfactory scent myself, right after Chandra blended it. It was fresh, and completely enshrouded her natural scent. I even underscored it to link her to Warren.”

I hadn’t known that.

“Micah’s right,” Warren said. “I still say we should hypnotize her, find out that way—”

“Warren, we’ve already discussed this.” Greta’s voice grew sharp. There were steel edges behind that soft exterior, it seemed. “She’s been through enough.”

“But Ajax should’ve had to go through me.”

That statement was met by silence. I remembered Warren’s angry words once we’d safely reached the cab.
What did you do to call him?

“Well, I didn’t ring him up and ask him to meet me there, if that’s what you’re thinking.” I could just hear that conversation.

Ajax, darling, let’s begin again. I need to make a quick stop first at the Quik-Mart, but we can murder an innocent girl while we’re there, just for old times’ sake. I know how you like that. Got anything sharp and pointy to play with? Something that bursts into flame upon impact, maybe?

Cool fingers touched my skin, and the bandages were gently lifted away. I blinked like a newborn into the light. Actually it was quite dim in the room, but my vision felt raw. It worked well enough, at least, to fix upon the two wide brown eyes smiling into mine. Attached to them was the scent I’d already mentally filed under
Greta.

“Thank you,” I told her.

She responded by alighting on the bed beside me, her weight barely making a difference. “Perhaps you can tell us what exactly you
were
doing when Ajax found you. Start from when Warren contacted you, all the way to Ajax’s appearance.”

I glanced around the room, frilly and feminine and filled with roses, and saw that the others, save Gregor, were all gathered at the foot of my bed. The chirping I’d heard earlier came from a large gold cage on a pedestal across the room, two bright lovebirds resting inside.

“Well, I packed and walked over to the Boulevard like Warren instructed, but there was this film that I needed to develop, and there seemed to be enough time, so—”

“So you disobeyed direct orders,” Chandra said.

“I’m not a Green-fucking-Beret,” I said, shooting her an annoyed glance, “and no, I didn’t disobey. I was one block from the pickup point. I was early. I didn’t know how long I’d be gone—here, I mean—and I wanted to take the pictures with me. That’s all.”

“Where are they?” Warren asked quietly. I looked at him closely for the first time. He’d already looked perfectly disreputable with his grimy clothes and greasy hair, but the rivulets of my dried blood on his shirt added a certain
je ne sais quoi
. I swallowed hard.

“My bag. Wherever it is.”

It was lying forgotten in the corner. I thought about letting Warren rustle through it, but stopped him as he yanked the zipper back. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I said. “There are Shadow manuals in there, mixed in with Light.”

Warren held the duffel out to me. “Open it,” he ordered.

I snatched it and unzipped the bag. All eyes were heavy on my hands as I removed the Shadow side’s comics, then filled with curiosity as they tried to read the titles. I yanked out the Light series as well, putting Stryker’s on top.

“I was reading this one just outside the shop when I first scented Ajax.”

“May I?” Warren asked. I handed him the comic, and he began leafing through it.

“It’s about a guy named Stryker who was ambushed during his transforma—”

“We know about Stryker,” Chandra snapped, eyes hot. “Don’t speak about him like you knew him.”

“God, just leave her alone, Chandra.”

“Fuck you, Felix!” she shouted, then swung around the room, daring anyone to speak. When her gaze landed again on me, she curled her lips and shook her head in sharp disbelief. “She’s the first sign? What bullshit.” She whirled, and the lovebirds started in their cage, crying out as the door slammed heavily behind her.

“Go after her, Felix,” Warren said quietly.

“Fuck her.”

“Felix.”

Felix sighed, but left without another word. Micah shifted uncomfortably. “I’ll go too. They might need a referee.”

Micah left, and after a moment Greta put her hand on
my arm. “It was only six months ago,” she explained in her calm and kind voice. “The wounds are still fresh.”

I nodded, understanding. After all, I’d seen Stryker’s death. Neck cords ripping, blood staining his mother’s robe, her heart-wrenching cries. Chandra was still a bitch, but I couldn’t fault her her grief.

“I’m sorry,” I said, meaning all of it.

Greta patted my hand, then stood to pour tea from a ceramic pot warming on a hot plate. “It’s all right, dear. Drink this. I pick and bag the herbs myself.”

“What’s this?” Warren asked, holding up the photo of Ben. I must have snapped it shut in the pages of the comic when Ajax had found me.

“Oh, my,” Greta said, staring at me sadly. “No wonder.”

“What?” I asked, looking from her to Warren and back, the steaming teacup forgotten in my hand.

“Anyone could have felt that,” she answered, shaking her head. I opened my mouth to ask what she meant, but I suddenly knew. It was so easy to grasp, I thought, when someone pointed it out to you.

Greta, reading my mind, answered anyway. “Your sorrow, dear. Such deep grief. That’s how Ajax knew where you were. Strong emotions—love, hate, grief, joy, hope—give you away if you don’t know how to control them.”

“That’s why we ordered you to stay calm,” Warren said, lifting his eyes from the photo. He still looked annoyed with me, but at least the muddy suspicion had cleared from his eyes.

Greta leaned in. “Who is it, anyway?”

Warren rudely snapped the comic shut, photo inside. He rolled it and pointed it at me. “We’ll talk about this later.” Then he too strode from the room, waves of fury left in his wake.

“Well,” I said finally, “can I clear a room or what?”

“Yes, well done,” Greta said primly, and I had to laugh despite myself.

She was a small woman, this Greta, with slim fingers and
wrists, and tapering legs and ankles beneath a pencil skirt and lab coat. She wore sensible heels, sensible jewelry, and her chignoned hair had begun to gray at the temples. I’d have put her in the early fifties but for the knowledge hardening her caramel eyes. Greta was older, I decided, and probably tougher than anyone looking at her heart-shaped face could imagine.

“You seem to be healing fine,” she told me, returning to my side. “There shouldn’t be any permanent damage beyond the wound on your thigh.”

I touched the back of my thigh where Ajax’s conduit had nicked me as I ran. It had been stitched, and was only mildly sore.

“It’ll leave a mark—all supernatural weapons do—but the cut wasn’t very deep.” She resettled the bedsheets over me. “Your eyes were the more serious concern.”

“Has this ever happened before?”

“What? An injury while trying to enter the sanctuary?” she asked. I nodded. “Not to an agent of Light, no. One time the Ram on the Shadow side tried to enter the sanctuary by force. I heard by the time he reached the bottom of the chute there wasn’t enough left of him to wheel on a rotisserie. That was three years ago, though, before I got here.”

Before she got there? I leaned forward as she studied my eyes. I suppose she liked what she saw because she stopped squinting and smiled. “I thought you had to be raised in the Zodiac in order to be a part of the troop?”

“Oh, no. I came to it late, like you.” She propped a hip on the side of my bed. “My mother was mortal—gifted, sure, but mortal all the same. My father was the Gemini of the star signs. If troop hierarchy were patriarchal, I’d hold that star sign right now. As it is I’m lacking certain…physical gifts. Technically speaking I’m not really a part of the troop.” She smiled wryly but didn’t sound bitter at this twist of fate. “Still, between the two of them, I possess enough insight to contribute in an ancillary form. The other star signs come to me when they’re
afraid their emotions—and therefore their pheromones—might get the best of them. And sometimes they just come to talk.”

“So…you’re like a shrink?”

She wrinkled her nose at my word choice. “A supernatural psychologist, if you will.”

“A…an independent?” I asked, remembering the manuals’ distinction between troop members and all others.

She laughed, then whistled from the side of her mouth. “Be careful how you use that word. Some would take great offense to being lumped in with the rogue agents.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean me. Like I said, I’m just an auxiliary member of the troop. My mother left when I was a child. My father died not long after—supernatural causes, of course—and I’ve been on my own ever since. Still, the Taurean Shadow targeted me about two and a half years ago. Apparently he and my father had some longstanding territorial dispute. Gregor found out about it, found me, and thought it his duty to bring me here. Eventually he convinced Warren of the same.”

“That was nice of him,” I murmured, wondering why no one had done it with me. Or Olivia.

“Oh, nice has nothing to do with it. Duty comes above all else for those raised in the Zodiac. Above family, spouse, or anything comprising a normal life. If something’s not good for the organization, then it’s simply not done. If it is, then everything is done to make sure it succeeds.” Absently, she toyed with the small pearls circling her neck. “That’s why Warren’s so concerned about you. He’s put a lot of hope into you, you know. He doesn’t trust easily. Not to mention he’s risked a great deal.”

I hadn’t thought of that, actually. I’d been so preoccupied with my own worries and loss I hadn’t even considered what defending me might have cost him. “Like what?” I said, really wanting to know.

She gestured at me, letting the pearls drop. “Well, consider
for a moment, what if he’s wrong? Then he’s brought a wolf into our midst. A Shadow among the Light.”

“I’m not a Shadow,” I said irritably.

“But are you Light?”

I didn’t answer. How could I know?

She smiled kindly and laid a hand over my own. “Look, I can only imagine what this has all been like for you, but if Warren seems a bit brusque it’s because his primary concern is keeping this troop safe. He’s looking for reasons his star signs are being killed off. His duty as a leader is to protect them, and so far he’s failing.”

“Tekla said there was a traitor.”

Greta look startled, then relaxed when she realized what I was saying. “You mean in the manual you read? Right before Ajax found you?”

I nodded, and she rose to pour us more tea. “Poor Tekla,” she said as she took my cup from my hand. “She’s not even with the troop anymore.”

“She’s not?”

She began shaking her head, then paused. “Well, she’s here, of course—she’d be a danger to herself and the entire troop were she to be released outside the sanctuary—but Warren’s had her tucked away in the sick ward since shortly after Stryker was killed.”

Something in her tone caught my attention. “You don’t agree with that?”

Greta shrugged, but it wasn’t smooth, and she absently fingered her pearls again. “She rants whenever she sees anyone, of course. And she says the most awful, accusing things. Still…I don’t know. I think she’s in there somewhere, desperate to get out. I’d rather help her than lock her away. Maybe someday I can.”

So there was no traitor. Just a heartsick woman who’d had to watch her son die before her eyes.

She returned to my side, again handing me my cup, sighing to herself as I accepted it. “You seem like a sweet girl, Olivia. But if there’s one piece of advice I would give
you, it’s this: nobody’s really what they seem.” She stood motionless as she looked at me hard, willing me to understand. “Take Warren, for example. When he’s out there in the real world he looks and acts and, unfortunately, smells like a career bum. You look at him and see exactly what you’d expect roosting on the corner of Casino Center Drive.