The Scent of Shadows Free with Bonus Material (39 page)

I met the others at the launch pad near dawn, approaching by stealth, testing myself…and the weapon Greta had given me, albeit unwillingly.

“Jesus!” Felix jumped as my hand landed on his shoulder.

“Olivia!” Vanessa whirled next to him. “I didn’t hear you arrive.”

“Neither did I,” Hunter said, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. I tried out Olivia’s most innocent smile as they all looked at me.

“Are you all right?” Micah asked, brows drawn, studying me.

“Peachy,” I said, my blood still whirlpooling in my veins, power still screaming through my ears. I didn’t try to read anyone’s aura. I didn’t need to now. “Though you guys seem a bit wound up.”

“You look different.”

“Brushed my hair,” I said smartly.

“Not physically,” Felix said, beginning to circle me. “Different beneath that. Under the skin.” He ran a finger along my nape and I stiffened visibly. I was strung drum-tight. “Feel different too.” After a moment he let his hand
fall and, though it was almost imperceptible, backed away.

“We were just discussing tactics,” Gregor said, oblivious. All of his energies were focused on healing, but the others felt it. They’d begun to circle the wagons, so to speak, and were standing shoulder-to-shoulder across from me, a half-moon to my lone star.

“I’ll be staying behind for obvious reasons,” he continued, managing a wry smile from where he sat in a wheelchair. “Chandra will remain as well.”

I glanced at Chandra, who didn’t meet my eye. She couldn’t go, I knew, because as long as I was alive she couldn’t be a real and active member of the Zodiac.

“I’m staying too, because if you—” Micah cut himself off, clearing his throat. “I mean
when
the rest of you return I may be needed in a medical capacity. We’ve deemed that more important than my offensive skills.”

He meant he expected most of us to come back wounded. If we came back at all.

“So here’s the plan,” Hunter said, stalking over to me, his movements once again reminding me of a cat. A very large, very patient cat. “Felix will flank your left side and Vanessa your right.”

“Provided I can get out of here, you mean.”

His mouth quirked as he pulled his arm from behind his back, holding out an answer to my challenge.

“What is it?” Felix said, inching forward.

“A helmet?” I asked, taking it. I flipped it over in my hand. It was pliable, made of distressed leather on the outside, but with a strange crisscrossing of wires woven tightly beneath. It was designed to cover the eyes—twin mirrors shot my reflection back at me—and arched across the temples and over the soft tissue behind the ears. A leather toggle secured it around the base of my skull, or beneath a low bun like the one I was wearing now.

“A mask?” Micah said.

“No,” I said. Not a mask, though it would probably be
drawn that way in Zane’s comics. My eyes lifted. “It’s a shield.”

Hunter inclined his head. “Try it on.”

Securing it over the bridge of my nose first, I slid it along my skull and fastened it below the bun. I shook my head side to side.

“How does it feel?” Vanessa asked.

“Like it was made for me,” I answered, thinking Warren would approve. Not only would it shield my eyes from the lights within the chute, but it would conceal my identity for as long as I wore it.

Spotting a full-length mirror to the left of the launch pad, I stood in front of it and studied the reflection. It smiled. For the first time since taking over Olivia’s identity, I recognized myself. “It’s perfect.”

“Of course,” Hunter said with his usual arrogance. You can also use it to freely enter and leave the sanctuary in the future, just like the rest of us.”

“Good thinking,” Vanessa said.

I inclined my head, giving him his due credit, and because I was grateful. Now I could hide my Shadow side, at least in this one small way.

“I just don’t get it!” Felix exclaimed, and began circling me again. “It’s like there’s a wall around you. I can see you, but I sure didn’t hear you come in, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t scent you, even though you’re only two feet from me.”

“Doesn’t bode well for tracking down Shadow signs, does it?” Vanessa said.

Felix gave her a steely look.

Hunter stepped closer. He leaned in as he had in the dojo, crowding my space, taking up all the room. I unlaced the shield and lowered it from my eyes as he scratched his chin.

“Figure it out yet?” I asked in a low voice, gaze steady on his.

Vanessa gasped just as understanding dawned, widening
Hunter’s hooded eyes. There was an uncomfortable shifting in the room, like wind lifting suddenly in a tree.

“Greta?” Hunter asked, face unreadable.

I smiled.

“Oh, my God! You possess the aureole again!” Micah said, up to speed now. “The needles?”

“You used her own weapon against her,” Hunter said, his voice considering. “Like you did with Butch. So you could walk the mortal world like a ghost. That’s why none of us sensed you.”

“God,” Felix breathed from behind me. He had backed away.

“You killed Greta?” Vanessa asked, her voice small. “In cold blood?”

“No. I was still pretty pissed when I did it.” Then I held out a hand to stave off any more comment. “The point is, I have the ability to walk around completely undetected for the next twelve hours.”

“All night,” Gregor said, and excitement lined his words.

“No, the point is she
murdered
someone who was half Light in order to gain power!” Vanessa pointed at me, and I was surprised to see her hand shaking.

“You’ve got it wrong, Vanessa,” I said, turning on her. She swallowed hard but didn’t back away. “What I did was take the power from someone who
used
to be half Light, and now I’m going to use that to battle the Shadow side. See the difference?”

She opened her mouth to argue, then let it snap shut again. After a moment, she nodded. “You’re right. It’s a powerful weapon.”

“Wish I’d thought of it,” Felix said, his voice wistful.

“If you’re all done chatting,” Hunter said, moving back to the launch pad, “perhaps we can get to the fighting now?”

“Isn’t there a way to test this first?” I asked, holding my shield out in front of me.

“No time,” Hunter said, flexing his fingers, rolling his neck. There was no hesitation in his voice, but I was
gratified to see his movements actually appeared nervous. Even superhumans were human. “Fifteen minutes until the light splits.”

Felix clapped his hands together. “So let’s go kick some preternatural ass.”

“On my signal, cowboy,” Hunter said, earning a scowl. “Once you’re through the chute, move aside because I’ll be coming up fast. Vanessa, take the left flank. Olivia, you go up last.”

“But—”

“Last,” he repeated. “They won’t sense you so maybe they won’t see you. Besides, when was the last time you felt Warren stirring inside of you?”

I thought about it. It’d been a while.

“I don’t want that connection severed. He may be too weak without you.”

“Thanks for your concern,” I muttered, earning nothing more than an arched brow.

“Whatever you do, don’t hesitate. These bastards are fast.”

“Not as fast as we are,” Felix said, earning a high five from Vanessa. He rubbed his hands together, his boyish enthusiasm turned deadly.

“Wait,” I said, suddenly nervous. “What if I accidentally shoot one of you? I mean, what if I can’t tell the difference?”

“Can’t tell the difference between Shadow and Light?” Felix scoffed. “Impossible.”

Have you looked at me?
I wanted to say.
Have any of you really seen me?

“It’s too late to worry about now,” Hunter said, and motioned Felix forward to stand on a large X. Raising his left hand, Hunter placed his right on a chrome lever. “Felix, go.”

With a whoosh of air, he was gone. Hunter took his place and, without hesitation, or even a backward glance, shot from mid-crouch up the chute.

Vanessa flipped open her conduit, the blades of the fan locking violently in place. Then she whipped it shut again, holding it ready in her right hand. She looked straight up, back slightly bowed, like she was beseeching the heavens. Throwing back the lever, she whispered a final word. I couldn’t hear it, but I read her lips, and it was, indeed, an invocation. Stryker’s name.

And suddenly I was alone.

I swallowed hard, and tried to think of my mother—what would she think if she could see me now?—but she and all of my other soft memories had been locked up tight, and to access them now would mean revealing my light to the world. I touched my chest where Warren’s second heart had, until recently, resided, but he too seemed to have abandoned me. Or did he think we’d abandoned him? The thought put some resolve into me. I didn’t know what I was about to face, but at least I knew why.

Finally, I knew why.

Slipping the shield over my eyes, I let Greta’s fresh death course through my blood, and the other death I’d caused poked its head, Butch-shaped, above the murky swamp of my darkest thoughts. I let the images surface, and my palms itched as I recalled slicing a tongue, severing hands, pushing a syringe. I let the darkness swirl inside of me, upsetting the hate that had settled like silt on the bottom of my soul. Hand on my conduit, I mainlined adrenaline and stood as the others had, on the giant X, knees bent in anticipation. Then I threw back the lever, and my body was shuttled into space.

They were fighting before I ever made it up the chute. I could hear them, their cries tunneling past me as I rose to the surface, the wind screaming in my ears, my eyes and temples cool and untouched beneath the shield. If the breath wasn’t being whisked so rapidly from my body, I would have sighed in thanksgiving.

My arrival above was announced by nothing more than a hiss, and that masked by the combat around me. I crouched
atop the Slipper and took a quick inventory. The boneyard was awash in shadows. And Shadows.

Felix had been right—it was physically impossible not to discern the difference between the two. Agents of Light were like overgrown fireflies, zigzagging in the air, easy targets were they not so damned fast. Stars trailed in blinding streaks behind them, the air sparkling in their wake. The Shadows—trailing smoke behind them like downed bombers—had the best chance to nail one by anticipating their moves, striking the air marked before them. But the agents of Light anticipated this too.

I watched Felix swivel, a maniacal shooting star, all lithe limbs and bowing core, a frustrated Shadow warrior roaring murderously behind him…then crying out again as he was struck from the back. Vanessa wheeled away, trailing off-pink lights like a whipping tail, the smoke of a Shadow warrior obscuring them as he followed close.

Then I saw Hunter. Suspended ten feet in the air and dropping fast on a Shadow, his loose hair flew madly about his head while his whip wheeled behind him. I knew then why they made him their tactical leader. Black stars, glittering silver in the predawn light, were camouflaged, like a trick of the eye, and his whip struck out like a feline flicking a deadly tail.

But the Shadows weren’t exactly sluggish, and there were more of them. I picked two off with my conduit from the top of the Slipper—piercing one to a giant letter N, and catapulting the other through the air to drop behind the one-dimensional outline of a martini glass. Still, I considered these kills nothing more than luck since neither they nor the rest had seen me yet.

The Neon Boneyard was quickly becoming a cloud of smoke and flame. I scurried to the ground, taking cover behind a rusting depiction of a slot machine, and waited for an opening in the melee. Problem was, most of the fighting was taking place in the thick of the smoke. I decided to wait
it out, take only a sure shot but when the yard finally cleared again, my breath caught and held.

All movement had ceased. The remaining warriors, both Shadow and Light, were frozen in place, chests heaving, a weapon at every back. They looked like a human Scrabble game, one piece linked to another by conduit; brutal hinges on the verge of swinging open at the slightest provocation. Hunter’s whip was lashed around the neck of a woman dressed like a prostitute, but who had the creamy complexion of an eighteenth century debutante. He had only to give one great yank for the barbed hook to cleave her larynx from her throat.

But there was another Shadow behind Hunter, and he had an ax arched over Hunter’s head. Felix had him covered, an edged boomerang cradled on his windpipe, but a normal-sized woman with an abnormally large machete had lodged her grip beneath his breastbone, and his other hand was clutched beneath it to keep the weapon from sliding and rending him in two.

Vanessa had her steel fan arched across the woman’s neck, but the first woman—Hunter’s whore-debutante—had circled around, and had a slim steel brand poised just beneath Vanessa’s left eye. I was the sole independent actor, but I was afraid to move. Nobody else moved either.

“Give it up,” Hunter said, sounding unafraid.

“You have an ax resting at your temple and you’re telling me to give it up?” The man behind him laughed, but it died away as Felix shifted his boomerang, nestling in closer. Like a snake eating its tail, I thought, watching the circle of people. The beast was going to destroy itself.

“You’re surrounded,” Hunter told him.

The man laughed. “Not true, Ram-head. The Tulpa claims we’ve already killed off five of your star signs. There’s only three of you here, the Libra’s captured, and Micah is probably still helping Gregor scoop his bowels from the floor.” The Shadow women began to snicker. “That leaves no one.”

Hunter stole their laughter for himself. “What? And the Tulpa’s never lied to you before?”

The man’s smile fell. Light flashed beneath his skin, his bones burning briefly, then he was himself again. “The Tulpa tells us all we need to know.”

“I see. I suppose he didn’t think you needed to know we planted ten initiates in the boneyard before you ever arrived.” He was good. Even I couldn’t sense the lie.

“Perhaps he didn’t know,” Felix said, the usual cockiness in his voice somewhat strained. Who could blame him with a machete at his heart?