The Scent of Shadows

18

One of the lovebirds whistled as I swung my feet out of bed and made my way on shaking legs to the wardrobe mirror. There was a note attached to its beveled edge, a flowery scrawl on scented paper. I’m off to work for the day. Make yourself at home. Warren will come for you at ten. G.

I yanked it down before studying my reflection in the mirror. There was a clump of dried blood by my temple, sticking out from my blond tresses like a spot on a Dalmatian, but I picked it free, then leaned forward and pulled down the lower lid of my right eye. Bloodless. Perfect. Whole. Other than the new wound on my lip, I had totally healed. And even that, I saw, was already smoothing over.

I exhaled the breath I’d been holding, and gave thanks to any deity who might be listening. The most extensive repair work needed on my body would be a hot shower and food in my belly. But my mind might be a different story. The remnants of my dream clung like quicksand, threatening to overtake me with every new thought.

Grabbing a change of clothing from my bag, I pushed out a deep breath and headed to the shower. A half hour later I was steady again, and had donned a racer-back tank, hooded jacket, and terry-cloth pants—all pink, of course—my hair slicked into a low ponytail, face scrubbed shiny and clean. He’d said we were going to train today, and that, I knew, would go a long way toward helping me feel more myself again.

I’d considered telling Warren about my dream, but was shocked into silence when I opened the door to find him dressed in pleated khakis, a blue button-down shirt tucked in at the waist. His face was clean, brown eyes clear and rested, hands still callused, but smooth. Were it not for the snarls gathered back from his face, I’d have pegged him for a businessman headed off on his long morning commute.

“A full recovery, I see.” Warren looked me up and down appraisingly but didn’t meet my eye. The man who’d been so flippant and ridiculous when we’d first met had been replaced by a serious, almost severe leader, and looking at him I could suddenly name the question that’d niggled at me since I woke up with bandaged eyes in Greta’s room.

If there was no traitor inside the sanctuary, as Warren so fervently insisted, why was it still so important to him that no one know my true identity?

I couldn’t ask him now, not when he was still obviously angry with me, so when he held out the studded cell phone Cher had given me—obviously dropped on my fall into the sanctuary—I just took it from his callused palm and pocketed it as I followed him out the door.

As Felix had said the day before, the sanctuary was a place of respite, where beleaguered star signs went to replenish their energy, gain knowledge, and train for whatever force or enemy they were currently facing. Most of the time it was peopled only with the support staff, children, and initiates who dwelled permanently beneath the Neon Boneyard, but now it was brimming with the remaining star signs, and the rest of the compound was buzzing with the apparent novelty of that. Warren told me the others were in a meeting, no doubt about yesterday’s events, but would soon begin the day’s combat training in a place called Saturn’s Orchard.

For me, however, the first stop was the barracks.

“Home sweet home,” Warren said, flipping a light switch and motioning me into the room. It was clean and shaped like Greta’s, but the similarities ended there. Gone were the feminine touches; the laces and frills and pastel-colored doilies. The concrete floors, like the walls, were bare and painted an unrelieved white. A queen-sized platform bed was pressed tightly against one wall, mattress naked, and a chunky coffee table in chocolate hardwood flanked one end. A wooden tray filled with rocks, all white, was the only item on the table, and a trio of white paper lanterns floated from the ceiling above it, the only lighting in the room. Twelve palm-sized floating wall shelves, also in mahogany, were suspended over the bed, and echoed the lanterns’ rectangular shape. They held clear glass votives, which no doubt lent warmth to the clean, modular room when lit.

Though sparse and utilitarian, it was still warm and sexy…though it said nothing about the person who lived there. I loved it.

“It’s perfect,” I told Warren, though what remained unspoken was that the three-hundred-square-foot room had better be perfect because my stay looked to be a lengthy one.

“What did Micah mean when he said he’d designed me so that Ajax couldn’t find me?” I asked, trying to keep the question casual as I peered into the adjacent bathroom.

“Micah’s a gifted doctor,” Warren said, joining me at the doorway. “Just as he can alter the nose on your face, he can also alter the makeup of your genetic template—your pheromones. He used science to create a synthetic formula, one different than your own, and his own magic as a fixative to secure it in place. Ajax didn’t know the new code, so he shouldn’t have been able to find you so quickly.”

He had, though, due to my distress over Ben. But I didn’t want to get into that yet. “And when he said that I was linked specifically to you?” I stared at his reflection through the bathroom mirror because it was more comfortable than facing him head on.

Warren looked marginally wary, but answered. “After inoculating you, he withdrew the essence of that compound from your bloodstream, then injected it into my own.”

I wasn’t sure I liked that. Was Warren trying to keep me safe, or was he just trying to keep tabs on me? After his accusations the day before, the latter seemed more likely. “So it’s like a tracking device…?”

“Of the emotions, yes,” he finished for me. He caught my frown in the mirror and turned toward me, forcing me to do the same. “I know it sounds intrusive, Jo, but you’re more vulnerable than the other agents. I’d never have gotten to you in time yesterday if I hadn’t been able to track you through this linking agent.”

I folded my arms. “So, basically, I’ve been bugged?”

“I’m bugged,” he corrected, tapping his own chest. “It’s like I have a second heartbeat. I know when your pulse accelerates or slows, if not why. The blood running in your veins is like a current rushing through my ears. If you break out in a sweat, my body attempts to cool it. Basically I feel any metabolic change you go through. And yes, the sense of smell is that much greater.”

“A magnified sixth sense, then?”

“More like a seventh. An eighth.” He folded his hands in front of him. “Try it now, if you like. Think of something that unsettles you, and I’ll tell you the moment it enters your mind.”

“Okay.” I closed my eyes and kept my body very still. I thought of waking that morning in Greta’s scented room, the birds chirping softly on their perch, the relief that washed over me as I escaped my dream. I thought of giggling with Cher over fizzy water and peppermint lotion. Then I zeroed in on the memory of the man across from me, asking if I’d killed an innocent, somehow entirely certain I could.

“There.” My eyes shot open to find him pointing at me. “My second heartbeat accelerated, my palms broke out in a sweat beneath my own skin, but the overriding sense was one of anger. Maybe a touch of fear.” He angled his head. “What were you thinking of?”

“Xavier. How he used to treat me,” I said, well aware Warren could smell the lie on me. I didn’t care. The man was inside me, or I inside him, and with these sudden questions about his intentions, I was determined to keep some things to myself. “So could you feel what I felt when Ajax found me?”

“I scented your fear when he entered the building. Your anger when he killed that girl…” He paused, before adding, “And the sorrow before all of it began.”

I’d known it wouldn’t take him long to circle back to that. I avoided his gaze and moved from the doorway, opening the closet to peer inside.

“You have to stay away from him, Jo,” he said, but I wasn’t paying attention.

“Whose room is this?” I asked, jerking back from the closet in surprise.

“Yours now,” he said, joining me to stare at the evenly spaced clothing filling the racks and shelves, the shoes and boots lined along the floor. All black, all female. “But it was once Zoe’s.”

Our eyes met.

He said nothing about the eagerness texturing the air in lacy patterns between us, instead using the opportunity to pull out the photo of Ben he’d taken from me the day before. I inhaled sharply as he held it up in front of my face. “You don’t want Ajax to find him, do you?” he asked softly.

Ajax who would track him, torture him, and skewer his innocent heart. And enjoy it.

I lifted my eyes, laid them dead on his. “No.”

“Then train your mind. Don’t even think Ben’s name.” He spaced these last words so evenly it was as if he bit them off. I found I couldn’t meet his gaze. “If you don’t control your emotions, you’re putting both of your lives in danger. Mine too.”

This time I heard the plea in his voice. I wanted to tell him he didn’t know what he was asking, but he did know, and deep down I knew he had a right to ask it. What was my personal sorrow compared to the greater welfare of the troop? The city? The universe?

We stared at one another, tension spiking between us. Desperation oiled the air, as much his as mine, and finally I nodded. No more lives would be lost because of me. I could at least promise him that much. Warren sighed and leaned back on his heels, and as if by magic the air seemed clearer, fresher around us. It sparkled invisibly, and I sucked in a deep breath of it. Now things could be right between us again. Almost.

“One more question,” I said, and held up a hand as the guarded look returned to his face and the air glimmered less brightly. “Could you sense what it was like for me when I penetrated the sanctuary?”

His hands fisted at his sides. Now it was my turn to feel and scent and taste raw guilt in the air, and it went a long way toward soothing my anger. “I tasted the atoms splicing in your body. I felt the sizzle of them on my tongue. Your boiling blood reeked in my nostrils, and I could smell the marrow melting in your bones.”

I swallowed hard. I hadn’t exactly realized that that’s what had happened.

“Come on,” he said, palm reassuring on my shoulder. “I’ll show you the rest.”

We strode along corridors just wide enough for two bodies side by side. A strip of red neon, like a racing stripe, ran along the walls near the floor, lighting our footfalls and marking our progress, before dimming again behind us. In the brief volleys of light I could make out symbols on the walls—runic, perhaps, or some long-dead language I didn’t recognize—but we walked so quickly their shapes were nothing more than a flash burned on my retina, replaced in the next second by another, then another. Warren, used to them, took no note.

“Warren, what if I don’t gain any more power? I mean, what if I just tried to control my emotions and live a mortal’s life. Would they leave me alone?” These questions were more rhetorical than anything. We both knew I was beyond letting sleeping dogs lie. I’d seen too much. And there were too many deaths on my hands.

Warren shook his head. “They’d find you eventually. In the end you’d just have fewer ways of defending yourself. Crossing over into the Neon Boneyard via an alternate plane was the first step in gaining more power, a necessary one, because now you have the knowledge, even when you return to the mortal world. Entering the sanctuary was the second step because now you’ll be able to enter any portal closed to mere mortals.”

“Which means?”

“Which means,” he said, squaring on me, “you now have front row seats and an all-access pass to the supernatural realm.” I regarded him, unblinking. “What? Haven’t you ever had doors that won’t open when you twist the handle, though you could have sworn you saw someone else disappear inside only moments before? How about elevators that won’t come when you call them? Or the feeling that someone is watching you, only to turn and discover nobody’s there? Well, those doors and elevators—portals is what they really are—will now be open to you.”

He motioned to the wall in front of us. I looked closer, spotted a discreet seam running from ceiling to floor, and pushed. Nothing. I pushed harder with the same results, then looked at Warren. He ushered me back, then with another flourish of his hands the barrier separated and the walls folded back on themselves like a Japanese fan. Beyond lay a steel elevator, doors already open wide and inviting.

“Neat trick,” I muttered, getting in. “I thought you said they’d open to me?”

“You need a little practice. And patience.”

I scowled and looked away, ignoring the censure in his voice. The elevator panels were mirrored in a smoky gilt frame, and revealed the strangest couple staring back. A fashionista in a dashing pink warm-up, and an indigent dressed up in someone else’s hand-me-downs. Barbie goes slumming.

“So these…portals, they’re a part of an alternate reality?”

“Exactly,” he said, pushing a button marked down. The doors whisked shut behind us. “You’ll have to be extremely careful at first. You won’t know what’s waiting on the other side of any given entrance, but you’ll learn.”

Visions of monsters lunging from the closet and from under my bed had me sighing. Dammit. I’d only just gotten over that phobia.

The elevator slid open and we stepped into a stunted hallway leading to a set of double doors, again in smoked glass.

“Hold the elevator!” The glass swung open and a figure rushed past before halting and backpedaling. “Oh. Hello, Warren.”

“Vanessa.” Warren inclined his head. “This is Olivia, our new Archer.”

“A new Archer? I hadn’t heard.” She feigned shock, then held out a hand. Her grip was surprisingly firm, and I could feel her too-smooth fingertips pressing against my palms, but the rest of her was amazingly normal.

Bronzed skin of middling color, she was of middling height, also, and average weight. Her hair was dark with soft wisps of fringe escaping the bun she’d piled on her head, and revealed a natural curl. There was the taste of the exotic about her, some lineal bent that darkened and thickened the lashes around her honeyed eyes; a cast on her heritage that would allow her to tan easily in the faintest beam of sun, but it didn’t immediately step forward. She could have been anything from African to South American to Middle Eastern. Which meant, I realized, that she’d disappear easily in a crowd. “Vanessa Valen. I’m the Leonine force around here, your sister sign in the Zodiac.”

“Also a fire sign,” Warren offered.

I looked from one to the other, feeling stupid. “Which means?”

“It means you two should make quite a team.”

“It means we kick ass,” Vanessa corrected, smiling, and that’s when everything average about her disappeared. Her smile was wide, brilliant, and infectious…or would have been if it had blanketed her eyes. This smile merely lifted the corners, like light blazing through a drawn curtain before being shut out again. Warren didn’t seem to notice, but knowing about such things, I wondered what past sorrow was presently denying her the right to smile. She turned her half smile on Warren. “Speaking of fire, I heard about the one at the federal building on Friday. Two Shadows, five innocent hostages. What’d you do, smoke them out?”

He nodded. “And sang ‘This Little Light of Mine’ at the top of my lungs.”

“Then they fled willingly. I didn’t know you were religious.”

“Recovering Southern Baptist,” Warren said.

“My brother,” she said, and they high-fived. Vanessa smiled wryly at me. “A style all his own, our Warren.”

“Different drummer and all that,” I said. “Yeah, I noticed.”

“So, see you in the Orchard?”

Warren said, “We’ll be right there.”

“Nice meeting you, Olivia.”

“You too,” I said, and watched as the elevator doors shut behind her. “Seems nice.”

“Vanessa’s one of our most dangerous agents. Sure, she’s nice, but nice like a sleeping cobra. Nice like the calm before a storm. Nice like you.”

“I can be very nice when I want to,” I said, following him into what looked like a dim foyer, though larger, more like a theater-in-the-round.

“Let me know when the urge hits. I’ll log the date and time.”

“Har, har.”

“Now, every city needs all the star signs, a full Zodiac, to be in balance.” He turned in a circle, centered in the middle of the bowed room. It was actually more octagonal than round, a large star stamped into the pavement where Warren stood, motioning to the steel paneled walls. Some of the panels were marked with brightly lit emblems that even I, with my spotty astrological knowledge, knew represented different signs in the Zodiac. “I won’t lie. Our ranks have been blighted in the past year. Either the enemy is getting stronger or we’re getting weaker. In any case, we’re missing five signs, and that’s with you taking up the Archer.”

“And how many star signs does the Shadow side have?”

He bit his lip, and worry swirled in my gut. “All twelve.”

“But Butch is dead.”

He shook his head, eyes clouding over darkly. “They’ve replaced him by now. Whomever it is simply hasn’t revealed themselves yet, and while the new Shadow won’t be as strong, not at first, their initiates are fast learners too.” His voice echoed through the cavernous room as he turned and approached one of the panels. I glanced up at the domed ceiling, a single speck, like a star, binding the corners of the room at the apex. I was sensing a theme here.

“Here,” Warren said. “This one’s yours.”

I lowered my gaze, latching onto the symbol he pointed out, an etching of a centaur; the half-man part of the mythological beast looking suspiciously half woman.

“Go ahead,” Warren urged. “Touch it.”

I did, laying my hand flat on a palm plate, and the emblem flickered, blinked on, and remained glowing in a steadily pulsing heat. It made my eyes ache to look at it. Still, my stomach jumped, and unexpected pride swelled at seeing it, glowing there with the others. Then my eyes fell to a latch, waist height. I jiggled it, and felt an incredulous expression bloom on my face. “It’s a locker?”

“Well, Superman had a phone booth, didn’t he?” he asked, brows raised. “This is much more useful.”

A superhero locker? I drew back. I mean, what was in it? A cape? A mask? Not those gawdawful tights, I hoped. I turned back to Warren. “So, what’s the combination?”

He shrugged. “Only you know.”

I felt my brows climb my forehead. I did? “No, I don’t.”

“Sure you do. Push the button next to the middle slat and speak into it slowly. Think of a password, a phrase, something meaningful to you. Something symbolic.”

I looked back at the locker doubtfully, then grudgingly pressed the button. “Open up, motherfucker.”

“Colorful,” Warren commented.

“Open Sesame!” I tried again. “Abracadabra! Hocus-pocus! Shazam! Shalom! Anyone home?” Then I smacked the panel a few times with my palm.

I straightened and smiled innocently at Warren. “Still not opening.”

“I can’t imagine why,” he said dryly, before suddenly shooting me a smile of his own. Quickly, before I could react, he pulled the photo of Ben from his pocket and shoved it through one of the tilted openings in the locker. My cry of protest was met with a stone hard stare. “When you can open that locker, you’ll be ready to face, and mask, your emotions for Ben.”

Ruthless, Greta had called him…but this was just downright cruel. I clenched my jaw, preparing to argue, but in the middle of my first eye roll my vision snagged on something peculiar, on something that wasn’t there, actually. “That’s the sign of the Scorpio, right? Stryker’s sign?”

My question knocked him off balance. Warren swallowed hard, the cords working in his neck like the breath had caught there. “It was.”

I stared at the symbol; vacant, dark, dead. And though Greta had already explained it, I wanted to hear what Warren had to say. I needed to discover for myself just whom I could trust. “You said the lineage of the star signs was matriarchal. Didn’t this sign revert back to his mother when he was killed?”

“Stryker’s death…” He paused, searching for the right word. “…unhinged Tekla. She’s been in solitary confinement, recuperating in our sick ward for months.”

And he’d put her there. Left her there. I pursed my lips at that. “So the Scorpion sign remains empty? Even though she’s alive?”

“Half alive, and not especially happy to be so.”

This time I felt a sorrow that wasn’t mine coursing through my core. It felt like raw onions curdling in an empty stomach, and I touched a hand there, surprised. I didn’t know it worked both ways. I also didn’t think emotion that strong could be fabricated. “Well, maybe that’s because she’s alone, and has no one to talk to.”

“Maybe it’s because her son was torn apart in front of her eyes,” he said shortly.

I swallowed hard and thought of Olivia, limbs pinwheeling into the night. I nodded. “Can someone else take her place in the Zodiac even though she’s alive?”

“Only if she’s willing to relinquish it to them, but for reasons unknown to all but her, she’s not. We’ve asked her, begged her, even, but she just starts spewing obscenities, making illogical accusations, tries to injure anyone who approaches.”

I remembered the first of these accusations from the pages of Stryker’s comic. There’s a traitor among us.

“So, did my mother relinquish the Archer sign to me when she…left?” I asked, changing the subject.

Warren inclined his head, looking relieved. “Your mother believed that when the time came, you alone would be able to create this house anew.”

The house of the Zodiac. The first sign. The Archer, agent of Light.

I shook my head, only able to grasp one thought at a time. I voiced the one I thought most pressing. “But she’s still out there, right?”

“She’s alive, we know that much. Her power is muted, diminished because she gave it all to enshroud your identity, so she’s essentially a mortal. It’s a dangerous position for a member of the Zodiac to be in, but one that has, ironically enough, kept her safe.”

I folded my arms over my chest. “I want to see her.”

He shook his head, began to open his mouth.

“She’s my mother!” I pounded my fist on the locker with a sudden fierceness that surprised even me. It had been growing there, I guessed, ever since I saw her belongings hanging in a closet. I had smelled her on them.

“There are some doors, Olivia, that are closed even to us.”

I stared at him, thinking that of all people, a superhero shouldn’t have to hear that.

“Come on,” he said, turning. His limp made an exaggerated slap-and-drag sound on the concrete floor. “There’s more to see.”

Something other than Stryker’s fate, or Tekla’s, or my mother’s? I wanted to ask. Of course, Warren—the bum—could give me no assurances. It seemed that even a supernatural life, for all its benefits, didn’t come with guarantees.

“Okay, Warren,” I said, walking, walking right past him. “Then just promise me one thing.”

“If I can,” he said gravely.

I shot one last glance back at the unyielding locker and the centaur glowing with six other star signs. “Shoot me if I ever grow hindquarters.”