The Scent of Shadows Free with Bonus Material (42 page)

“How does she know that?” Joaquin asked, but Ajax didn’t answer. He was watching me. “We masked them. She couldn’t have known.”

“Because they stank,” I said to them both. “Like you. And especially like you.” I stared Ajax down, and found his blue eyes so empty they were like glass. But he was breathing hard.

I took another step toward him. “You do stink,” I said, lowering my voice like I was confiding in him. I inhaled deeply, and wrinkled my nose. “When I’m near you, it’s like being buried neck-deep in a Dumpster. And that goddamned cologne you’re wearing isn’t any better.”

Joaquin was silent now, straining to hear us, watching Ajax’s face, Warren all but forgotten behind him. Power had begun to swirl like a riptide in the air; I felt it. I was taking it from Ajax, and I began to smile. Even though I could see the outline of his conduit tucked inside his jacket, just one short thrust from my chest, I had the confidence he’d rather use his hands on me. Or, at least, he would by the time I was finished.

I dipped my own hands in my pockets, casually and cocky, and felt the hilt of the whip against my palm. I closed my fist around it. Meanwhile, I used words.

“I know why you like to kill star signs.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “And I know why you kill innocents. It’s for their Light. You want it for yourself. You want to
be
Light.”

“Shut up.”

“You think their blood will cleanse you and you won’t have to live in the stink and squalor of your own putrid flesh—”

“I said shut up!” Ajax thundered. It was amazing how a man could shake and remain so rigidly still. I could tell he was afraid to let it break, that he thought his control might shatter into a thousand pieces…and he’d never be able to piece it together again.

“But you’re the one who’s got it all wrong. It’s not your flesh that reeks. No, no.” I leaned forward and pressed on the hairline fracture that had snaked across his restraint. “It’s your soul. It’s fucking maggot-ridden. And nothing can mask that stench.”

He hit me so fast I never saw him move. And so hard I flew across the room, my torso slamming into a marble pillar six feet above its base. He was bolting toward me even as I fell, and there was no time to reach for Hunter’s whip. I gained my feet just as another cry sounded and there was a flurry of motion behind Ajax. He paused, hearing it, and I leapt.

My shoulder caught him in the diaphragm and the scent of fungus and rot spilled out over me as he grunted, losing his breath. Ajax was a seasoned fighter, though. He didn’t need breath to perform; the madness of the martial dance was ingrained in him, and he kneed me as he backpedaled, pulling me tight so I couldn’t draw away. He struck breast, ribs, and belly. My turn to gasp for air, and then he did release me…enough to send a fourth knee plowing into my face. My head snapped back, my mouth instantly filling with blood, and I glimpsed a silvery sheen passing over his head as he slipped his conduit from behind his back.

I tried to dodge, but his other hand darted out, lifting me from the ground by my neck, and he puckered up, blowing me a kiss before sending me rocketing back across the room and into one of the marble pillars.

It didn’t jar or hurt as much as it would’ve if I were mortal, but I still crumpled to the floor and had to figure out if anything was broken before I rose to hands and knees. Of course, Ajax knew this, and was already heading my way with poker in hand, but confidence was fueling his ego, and
it didn’t allow his pace to quicken to more than a swift saunter. I remained where I was, head bowed in defeat while I reached into my pocket. Ajax laughed, grasping his poker in front of him with both hands. I still waited. The poker lifted. And three seconds later the whip lashed out like an unraveling tongue, barbed tip coiling tightly around his neck.

The pain contorting his face would’ve been satisfying enough. The underlying surprise, however, was icing. Not that I was into petty gratification. His mouth moved soundlessly and his free hand went to his throat where his Adam’s apple had been punctured, seeking relief. There was no slack in the leather, though, and the more he fought, the more the barbed tip twisted, tearing him up inside.

He made a gurgling sound, and I jerked him forward, the steel points digging in deep. Over his shoulder I saw Warren kick at Joaquin. He was still half tied to the chair, and I had a brief moment to wonder where, and what, Joaquin’s conduit was…until it dawned on me that his body was his weapon. This was his job. To use his body to steal innocence.

I yanked on the whip, infuriated. Ajax stumbled and fell.

“How are you doing that?” he choked from beneath me. “You look like him! You look like
him
!”

I glanced up and saw my face reflected in the mirrored ceiling. Then back down again, offering Ajax a wide skeletal smile. “Well, I am the Archer.”

“No, no! My master is the Shadow Archer!” His feet found purchase and he began backing away, one hand pulling to slacken the whip.

“Call me mistress, if you like,” I said, reeling him back in. I placed one hand on his chest, wrapped another coil around his throat, then secured it around my wrist and pulled. He clawed at his throat. “Now, look into my eyes, Ajax. Because I want you to know who I am, deep down, when I kill you.”

A voice finally penetrated through the haze of my
fury—I realized it’d been crying out all along—and I had to blink several times to focus.

“Olivia! Damn it! Give me the fucking keys!” Hunter was across the room, supporting Warren within the circle of his strong arms, while holding his cuffed wrists out to me in supplication. His glyph was fiery and white-hot, but it had to be in reaction to Ajax. Joaquin was nowhere to be seen.

Ajax’s eyes widened. Bulged even more upon hearing who I really was behind the mask. “Olivia…?”

“Nice to meet you,” I said, “but I have to make this quick.” I yanked, and there was a bone-splitting crack. Ajax’s neck broke with my sister’s name still caught in his throat. Before the last of life could drain from his body, I ripped his conduit from the sheath at his back and slammed the poker through the core of his chest. Rancid decay hit me immediately, just as it had when I’d killed Butch, but this time I recognized it as a good sign, a death scent. The scent of Shadows. But stronger still was the power that flowed over me like buckets of rain, slamming into me, drenching my insides, coating my organs, and making my blood hum like a live wire. Ajax had been right about one thing. It felt fucking great.

Yanking the handcuff keys from my back pocket, I tossed them to Hunter, and unwound his whip. I dropped it at his feet as I lunged for my conduit, and without stopping, ran for the door that had been left half open.

“Olivia! Stop! I need you to help me get him out of here.”

“But—” But Joaquin. But revenge was so close. The air was still infused with the scent of charred candy, so thick and cloying it was almost visible as it trailed after him. I could still run him down like he’d once done to me…but I had to act now.

Hunter saw my struggle and shook his head. “He’s too weak.”

I growled in frustration, looking from the door, then back at him, and finally said, “I have an idea.”

We bent to Warren’s mouth, alternately pumping life into him with our breath—the aureoles leaving our bodies through our mouths in bright beams—one of us watching his chest rise and fall, his breath steadying, while the other exhaled power and images and pieces of ourselves into his body and mind. It seemed to take forever, but after a few minutes Warren’s eyes flickered open, focused, and he smiled. “Told you…one of the good guys. Like me.”

Gently, I put a finger to his bruised lips, shushing him. “That’s right, Warren. Just like you.”

Standing, I cut my eyes to Hunter. “He’s strong enough now. Get him out of here.”

I didn’t wait to hear his protest. I wasn’t going to choose between saving Warren and having my vengeance. I wanted them both. I wanted it all.

I hurtled through the door where Joaquin had fled, following a rapidly disappearing trail of blood, only to find myself back in the Gauntlet. “What…?” I swiveled back around, confused, but the door was gone. I slammed my palm against a solid length of wall, smooth at the seams, an impenetrable barrier to all that lay behind me.

A snicker echoed down the hall.

I whirled, bow and arrow braced in front of me, but saw no one. There was just the Gauntlet, smooth and narrow, stretching before me in silent challenge.

The sound raced up the other side of the wall, slipped along the floor behind me before wheedling up the back of my legs and spine. There was a probing at the base of my skull, like a centipede trying to burrow beneath my skin, into my brain, but I shook my head and the feeling receded, though whatever had caused it was still there. This sterile hallway, I knew, contained something that could reach out and touch me at any moment, and it wasn’t Joaquin.

“Finally. Another Archer.”

The voice was curious, friendly even, and each word
possessed the deep thrumming echo of a cello string, low, musical, and filled with vitality. I glanced up at the ceiling, looking for vents, shafts, cameras…anything I could be viewed easily with or through, but saw nothing. The walls and ceiling were unusually smooth, and if I didn’t know any better I’d have said it was less of a hallway than a living organ, like an intestine unraveled from within a large beast, and me devoured, lost inside. I quickly pushed the thought aside.

“I was wondering who was punching holes in my energy field. I knew Warren was no longer capable, though he certainly served his purpose. Welcome.” His chuckle came from nowhere and everywhere at once, and I didn’t need to see a face to recognize the cool arrogance haloing his words. I was on his turf, and even though I didn’t know what game we were playing—never mind the rules—I kind of doubted he was going to clue me in.

“You’re the Tulpa.” I said, and tentatively began to back up. I searched again for a door to escape by, but when my palm hit the wall, needles sprung up to stab at my flesh and I jolted away. Glancing down, I found dozens of bloody tears studding my hand, though they dried up and disappeared as I watched. Surface wounds. Not that that wasn’t worrying too. Because now I was sure I had to run the Gauntlet, and I had a feeling there were more sharp little surprises awaiting me.

“Expecting someone else? An ally, perhaps?”

“Not really,” I answered, taking a testing step forward, then another. “You just don’t look anything like I pictured you.”

Okay, so the false bravado probably wasn’t going to get me very far, but my allies were busy escaping Valhalla, and if the Tulpa was here with me, he couldn’t stop Hunter and Warren. He couldn’t, as far as I knew, be two places at once. So that was the upside. The downside? The Tulpa was here with me.

“Then you haven’t pictured me fully. You have to use
your imagination, you see. What’s the worst thing you could face in an enemy? What’s the most horrifying thing I could possibly be?”

Me
, I thought, before I could stop the idea from forming. The worst thing I could face was someone who looked or felt or acted anything like me. Because that would mean he’d gotten inside, delivered more than just chromosomes at my conception…and that I was somehow like him as well.

“Elvis,” I said, picking up my pace a bit, careful to stay centered in the narrow hallway. Was it me, or was it getting narrower? “If I see one more aging Elvis impersonator I’m totally going to scream.”

“Sweetie. You’re going to scream anyway.”

The walls shook again, but with increased intensity, quaking so the floor swayed beneath my feet. I braced like I was riding a wave, struggling for balance even with my center of gravity low over the ground. He was fucking with me now, I thought, as the shaking slowly died down. I’d seen Luna bat around insects with the same patient and deadly fascination.

“I guess I don’t have to tell you this town isn’t big enough for the two of us.”

“I’ll just be moving on, then.” And I continued the long walk down the Gauntlet, one foot in front of the other. The Tulpa, wherever he was, seemed inclined to let me. For now.

“Joaquin’s long gone,” he said after a bit. “You put a devil of a fright into him. What did you do, I wonder?”

“Revealed myself,” I answered truthfully. A conversation was good. Conversations generally didn’t include bloodshed.

“How about doing the same for me?” he said softly, and a breeze entered the room, like a fan had been switched on and directed at my face. Invisible fingers toyed with my mask, and I clamped a hand down over my head.

“You first,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to see
this being, this entity—certainly not a man—who was my father.

“Forgive me if I decline,” the overly polite voice said. “I’m not accustomed to someone issuing me orders. But you go ahead.” And that
was
an order. I ignored it, and kept walking.

“Come on, I’ve never seen a Tulpa before,” I taunted, continuing forward. I’d gone about ten feet, but it felt like an inch in the elongated hallway. “Oh, I get it. It’s the sideburns, isn’t it?”

No answer. Maybe he’d gone away. Maybe, I thought, he’d stay gone.

I picked up my pace because the unnatural stillness was almost as bad as the hovering presence, but after about five feet the fluorescent lights along the walls flickered, steadied, then went out.

Or maybe not.

I kept inching forward in the darkness. I had to, though I was certain I’d hit something,
someone
, with each step. I consciously tempered my rising fear, not wanting to give him anything to feed off of, which was obviously what he wanted.

“Silly little agent of Light. Do you think you’re standing there, speaking to me with that insolent tone by anything but my grace?”

Fuck. I still couldn’t see the son of a bitch, but the soft steel in his voice had me biting my lip until it bled. I took another step, heel-toeing it at a faster pace as my pulse sped up as well. I needed to focus on something else, and my mind alighted on the memory of Marcus and his fierce intensity as he flew through the boneyard, a little light darting fearlessly among Shadows. If I centered my energy on that, and on the end of the hallway, I could keep my mind off the fear building in my chest. And if I could do that, maybe my conduit would stop shaking in my hands.

Then my glyph began to glow. Oh, goody. Nice to know I was suddenly in real danger. Though at least now, able to
see a few feet in front of me, I could see death coming before I ran smack into it.

“Oh, look. A little night light.” The Tulpa sounded amused. My glyph burned hotter. “Which reminds me…how’ve you been sleeping lately, little Archer? Having nice dreams? Pleasant memories?”

My jaw clenched convulsively. “I was wondering how much of that was my imagination and how much of that was you. I suppose you think you’re clever, using Greta to open our minds to your energy.” Heel-toe, heel-toe.

“It
was
one of my better ideas,” he said, and I could picture him polishing his knuckles. “As for the rest, I just played on what was already there. Your fears, your conceits, your neuroses. They all let me know exactly what buttons to push.”

“But Greta’s gone now. There’s no way for you to see inside of me any longer.”

He laughed, and the walls shook with it. “There’s always a way inside.”

Again that pricking and burrowing at the back of my neck, and suddenly I knew he was right. A being made of energy, who could be nowhere and everywhere at once, wasn’t going to settle for a bit of physical torture. Oh, shit.

“I know everything about you,” he was saying, but now his voice was within, bouncing off my eardrums from the inside. My brain pulsed once, and my skull felt like it was going to crack as a fissure grew from the bridge of my nose up into my hairline. I pressed a hand to my head, surprised to find it smooth and whole instead of bloody and split…and moaned aloud, scared, because that meant whatever was cracking was on the inside. Still, I stumbled forward. “I knew the night your first life cycle ended. I sent Butch after you for the second—”

“Did you know the moment I killed him, then?” I asked, trying to keep him talking. The pain seemed to decrease when he was talking.

“Of course. I felt the power shift.”

No decrease in pain this time. A white-hot line seeped over my skull, and raced back down my spine to tunnel viciously into my limbs. I could feel him inside me now, his unstable energy wriggling like electric worms and breeding like fiery maggots, and I had to fight not to stand there and scratch the very skin from my body. I had to be halfway down the hall by now. I forced myself to keep going.

“Impressive,” the voice said, lifting from my own throat. He was right. He’d found another way inside. I panicked and lurched sideways. The wall studded my arm with microscopic needles, and the scent of my own blood lifted again in the air. “Oops. Careful.”

“Get out!” My voice lifted from a whimper into a scream, and I whirled around myself blindly, losing track of which way I’d come and which way I had to go. “Get out! Get out!”

“Hmm…” the Tulpa said, considering. The pain abated. “No.”

And with a flick of a wrist,
my
wrist, he sent me wheeling from my feet, slamming into the ground where needles not only sprung up to rupture my skin, they grew barbs and stuck there. I cried out and jerked up almost as soon as I hit the ground, but yelped when my neck was only inches from the ground. I let it fall again, choosing instead not to move. I was pinned in place from my neck to my calves, in the dark but for the steady burning of my glyph, and in a sterile hallway that was slowly filling with my blood.

“I’ve been waiting for you for a long time, Archer. And now my patience has been rewarded with another adversary, such that you are.” He actually sounded regretful at that. “But I knew, deep down, that there was another. I could feel you out there, like a season yet to arrive. I could sense you growing in the world—my world—ripening just for this moment.”

I’d caught my breath by now, realizing that if I didn’t move at all, the needles didn’t sting so much. The Tulpa was no longer speaking through me either. His voice came
at me as if from speakers; above, below, to the sides as well as from the top of my head…as if he were standing just there. I guess he was fonder of physical torture than I originally gave him credit for, but at least I could
think
without him inside my mind. I could breathe again. And while I saw no way out of the situation, I easily saw the fault in his words. With not much else to lose, I called him on it.

“You didn’t know.”

The maggots began wriggling again. The soft tissue in my head began to swell. “I knew the moment you entered this building! This city, even! This fucking world!”

“No.” I actually laughed, though barbs pulled at the muscles in my neck. “You didn’t.”

He must have sensed the honesty in my derision, because the floor began to shake and the dead lights rattled in their sockets. I realized then that he couldn’t be two places at once. He was either planted inside me or manipulating the environment, but he couldn’t do both. So, I thought, even imagined beings had their limits. Good to know. “I know exactly who you are! You smell like sweet desert sage and cactus juice, burning roses and freshly ground allspice.”

I winced as each barb pinning me in place loosed more of my blood free. “It’s my perfume,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Available at Macy’s.”

“A tart tongue as well. Only one other person possessed all of that.”

Don’t ask me why I was doing it. Perhaps because the sarcasm Xavier had always chastised me for was, once again, my only defense. It seemed to piss off this cool, controlled being who feared nothing. So I went ahead and struck him with a low-voiced barb of my own. I figured I was dead anyway.

“Oh, and you knew
her
well too, didn’t you?”

The needles suddenly disappeared, ripping from my flesh. I cried out as the floor tilted, and I was slammed into the wall again. I was able to free myself this time, and I rose to
my knees and palms quickly. I grabbed my conduit, its outline visible in the glow of my glyph, but pushed myself to my feet too soon and stumbled, falling against the wall again. I righted myself dizzily and kept going. “You knew her so well she infiltrated your organization
twice
without you ever suspecting it.”

Light casings began to burst up and down the hallway. I felt shards of glass stab and then settle atop my skull. I ducked, and concentrated on moving forward. I was free, and no matter what, I had to keep moving forward.

“I fucked your mother!”

“You men,” I said, shaking my head when silence fell again. “I don’t know why you always think that lends you some sort of power. I mean, let’s be honest, okay? Just between you and me. My mother?
She
fucked
you
.”

A vortex of wind whipped around me, so violent it sucked the air from my mouth and throat and lungs. My eyes were glued to my lids, even beneath my shield, and I actually felt my heart jump in my chest like a startled sparrow. Then it faltered. My liver and lungs ached from the hot, vapid suction, like a vacuum had been affixed to my mouth, and a strangled sound was lifted from my throat and ripped away like shredded paper. Like a baby in the womb, I forgot how to breathe.

Then the center of the spiraling wind shifted, amassed, and, limb over limb, I was catapulted down the Gauntlet. I slammed into the wall head first, and slumped to the ground as hollow pops fired down my spine. Fresh pain bloomed with each snapped vertebrae, and a buzzing sounded. It could’ve been the handful of remaining lights flickering on, but I didn’t think so. It had come, again, from within my own skull, but this time there was no one else there. Maybe, I thought dully, that was just the sound soft tissue made when it seeped through newly rent crevices. I choked as blood welled in my throat and my tongue lolled on the floor, spilling it all forward.

The wind died down, as if a switch had been flicked.
The Gauntlet looked like a cave in the meager light. The silence was deafening.