The Scent of Shadows

24

Sneaking across an entire compound of supernatural beings was a tricky business, though simplified by the knowledge that the handful of people I most needed to avoid were either sequestered away like a hung jury or taking turns in last minute sessions with Greta, mentally preparing them for the battle to come. It was this that gave me confidence as I steered down a sick ward as empty and hushed as a morgue. This, I thought, and a note I was sure Tekla had written me just after her son had died.

Obviously I didn’t have a key to her room—her cell—but the viewing window on the door should help, and my plan was to get her attention by tapping lightly on that. Not loudly enough to draw anyone else’s curiosity, I hoped, but sufficiently hard to call her close so she might tell me what to do next. I just prayed she’d respond to me a little more favorably than last time.

I pressed against walls, crouching around corners, and narrowly avoided running straight into Hunter, apparently on his way to his session with Greta. I watched as he knocked on her door, and had to duck back around the corner when he whirled to sniff suspiciously at the air. Then I heard the door open and Greta’s voice welcoming him inside.

I peeked again. The only light in the entire corridor was the glow eking from the office’s shaded window. Tekla’s room, diagonal to that, was utterly dark. I suspected I had ten minutes, perhaps less, before the next agent arrived for their session, and while it seemed enough time, I’d be standing in plain view for the duration. Even ten seconds was enough to ruin it all.

When the light in Greta’s office dimmed, I made my move. My boots echoed on the tile like gunshots, but keeping my nervous energy contained so no one would detect my presence through anything but direct sight was a far greater concern.

Reaching the door, I shook the handle. Locked, of course. For a moment I considered taking it as a sign. Who knew what I would find beyond that door? Tekla might be completely mad by now. Frothing at the mouth, rocking in a corner. I was taking a big chance on what amounted to nothing more than a hunch on my part. Then again, as Rena had said after I told her what I intended to do, if what I thought was true, I’d be taking a bigger chance by doing nothing at all. So I took a deep breath and turned to peer into the window.

Two great brown eyes stared back, inches from my own. I screamed, muffling the sound with my palm, hoping it wasn’t too late. The brown eyes rolled in response to my girly reaction, and I dropped my hand, embarrassed. Not only was Tekla not frothing, she had apparently been waiting for me. I swallowed my fear and embarrassment and stepped back up to the glass.

Clarity. That’s what I saw there. Not the lunacy I’d been told to expect, or the grief immortalized on the pages of Stryker’s comic. Not the helplessness and pleading that’d shadowed her gaze the day before. There was a hint of fury, and bitterness, I saw, pulling her mouth tight, but more than anything there was a ferocious lucidity. In that singular look I saw exactly why Tekla had been locked away. And what my role was in all this.

“Can you hear me?”

No, but I can read lips, Tekla mouthed back. She went on, her mouth exaggerating the words so I could read them, but I was distracted by the sound of pounding feet and looked away.

“Shit.” I pulled my conduit from the top of my left boot, palming it, wondering even as I did what I intended to do with it. Tekla must have wondered too. Her large, expressive doe eyes widened and her mouth moved again.

“What?” I asked, leaning closer. The pounding, more than one pair of feet, was growing closer.

She pointed at me, her index finger tapping on the glass, and repeated herself. It looked like she wanted me to shoot myself. I shook my head, indicating I didn’t understand. Just then Micah and Chandra rounded the corner, their own conduits held out in front of them.

“Olivia!” Micah shouted at me. “Get back!”

Chandra, holding what looked to be a normal gun, had drawn on me. Her eyes were expressionless, but still cold.

“We have to let Tekla out.”

“What you have to do is get away from that door,” Chandra ordered. “Now.”

I swallowed hard, but didn’t move.

“Olivia, Tekla is sick.”

“No, she’s not.”

“You looked in her eyes, didn’t you?” Micah lowered his weapon, which was good, but took a step toward me, which wasn’t. I sighted on him, and he took back that step. “Damn it, Olivia. That’s why we don’t want anyone down here. That’s why the doors to the sick ward are supposed to be kept shut.” He and Chandra both glared at one another. “She’s ill, but she’s still powerful enough to influence a weaker mind. She can make you believe she’s all right, but as soon as we release her, she starts ranting again.”

“Maybe she’s telling the truth.”

“Just step away from the door.” He was speaking to me in the same voice people used to coax jumpers from ledges, and it made me grind my teeth. I might be insane, but it wasn’t because I’d looked at Tekla.

“Maybe she’s not crazy,” I continued, concentrating on keeping my arm steady, “and she’s really just pissed off because no one will listen to her.”

“Get away from the goddamned door!” Chandra yelled, voice deepening as she dropped into a shooter’s stance, and I knew she would shoot me.

Because if you’re this generation’s Archer, what does that make her?

A rogue agent, I thought, swallowing hard as I stared down the barrel of her gun. And rogue agents killed their matching star signs, just so they could usurp them in the Zodiac.

“Chandra,” Micah said, turning toward her.

She didn’t look at him, just continued staring down her arm at me. “Put down your weapon and get away from the door.”

I flicked my gaze at the window, but Tekla had disappeared. Back to Chandra, then, whom even Micah looked wary of. “Okay,” I said, which had her looking surprised…and not a little disappointed. “Just answer one question first.”

“What?”

“Micah injected Warren with a compound containing my pheromones. That’s how we’re linked, right? Chandra, are you able to create such a compound?”

“Of course.”

“That’s what I thought,” I murmured, and lowered my conduit.

Micah tilted his head. “What are you talking about?”

“She doesn’t know,” Chandra snapped, taking a step forward. “And she isn’t supposed to be here.”

“With the chemicals from your lab and a little knowledge, could I do the same?”

“Yes,” Micah said cautiously, brows drawing low.

“No,” Chandra shot back. “It’s not just a little knowledge, it’s the right knowledge. This isn’t like makeup application. It’s called chemistry.”

I nodded absently. “How did you know I was here?”

If Micah was perplexed by my quickly shifting subjects, he didn’t show it. In fact, he seemed to sense direction behind the questioning, which there was, though I was making up the details as I went along. “We were alerted the moment you touched the door.”

“Alerted how?”

“What’s going on here?” Greta emerged from her office, followed by a heavy-eyed Hunter. “Chandra? Micah?”

“Alerted how?” I repeated, louder, eyes lingering on Hunter for a few moments. He rubbed a hand over his face, hard, then studied the rest of us like we were part of a dream he expected to wake from at any moment.

“We have a sensor on the door handle,” Chandra said to me. I could tell she was humoring me, answering my questions until they closed the distance between us. They weren’t too far off now. “Greta decided it would be the surest way to keep the general population safe.”

“Greta did, did she,” I murmured, and my eyes locked on hers.

“What are you doing down here, Olivia?” she asked, her voice a tad too sharp. “You’re not well.”

“Not well?” I repeated, as if the words made no sense. “Not well like Tekla? That kind of ‘not well’?”

Chandra made an impatient sound in her throat, almost a growl. “Olivia looked her in the eyes. I told you we should have covered that window.”

“Tekla can ‘see’ what’s being done with Warren,” I said, noting Hunter had regained his bearings. He was watching me in that silent way of his, eyes narrowed as they moved from my face to the conduit in my right hand. “We need her in order to locate him.”

“Nonsense,” said Greta. “She hasn’t spoken any sense in months.”

“Because somebody ordered her to be locked in a five-by-ten-foot cell, not to be seen or heard by anyone! Somebody has taken away her voice!” And with four people looking at me like I was crazy, I was beginning to understand what that felt like.

“You’re confused, dear,” Greta said, her voice soothing and light. “Looking directly into Tekla’s eyes will do that to you.”

“No. I’m not,” I said evenly. “Just the opposite, in fact. I looked into Tekla’s eyes and for the first time everything became clear.”

She looked at me for a long, silent moment. They all did.

“I should have figured it out sooner. But, you know, everyone here trusts you so much.” I laughed at the irony of that. “Trusts you more than they even trust themselves.”

“What are you talking about?” Greta was forced to ask, but I could tell she knew. I explained it anyway, so the others would know too.

“I’m talking about the way you suggested to someone that I might like to read the day’s news, news that contained information that would hurt me. News that would send me running right to you.” I started walking toward her, my footsteps a deep and even beat, projecting more confidence than I felt with Chandra’s gun still pointed at my chest. “You wanted to hypnotize me, get in my mind just like you’ve done with everybody else. But there was only one problem. My mother was already there.”

“You bitch. We don’t have to listen to this!” Chandra was rattled, her eyes traveling between Greta and me, and I knew I was right about the paper. But she’d also raised her arms again, and mortal weapon or not, at that distance it would make her point. As the hallway filled with the remaining star signs, however—Vanessa supporting Gregor as they emerged from his sick room, Felix just behind—Chandra became less and less of a threat. So I remained focused on the woman who’d been a threat to them all.

“I don’t think I’d have put it together if it weren’t for the nightmares. I’ve never had them before. I’ve never seen the Tulpa, so I couldn’t fear him enough to have him lunging out at me in my dreams. I certainly haven’t ever allowed myself to dream about my past. But you opened all that up with your own special blend of alchemy. Chemistry, some call it. Let me ask you, when was the last time someone visited your office that you didn’t offer them a spot of tea?”

Greta’s mouth opened, but I didn’t let her answer. It wasn’t really a question meant for her anyway. I could see the others puzzling it out as I began inching her way, though. “It’s so easy to plant mistrust in the minds and psyches of people who have full trust in you, isn’t it, Greta? They come to you after their greatest fears have erupted in their nightmares, and you cement those fears with your little sessions.” I halted, directly across from her, and folded my arms, my conduit still at hand. “You’re all looking at the reason your Zodiac has been depleted. Greta’s true role here is as a mole.”

“Bullshit!” Chandra exploded, and her trigger finger trembled.

“Olivia.” Micah’s patient voice barely masked his annoyance. It was the voice a parent would use on a naughty child. “Greta has never left the compound. Not in two years.”

I lifted a shoulder. “The perfect cover.”

Hunter moved in, clear-gazed now, which would’ve been a good thing if he weren’t eyeing me like a hawk. “You’re going to have to give us more than that.”

“Hold the hermaphrodite off long enough and I’ll give you much more.” The pistol was precariously close to my temple. I swallowed hard and waited, knowing my fate swung on these next few moments alone.

“Chandra. Stand down.”

“What?” she exploded, whirling on Gregor, who had straightened as much as he could. “I can’t believe we’re listening to this! In less than two hours we’re going to battle with every Shadow in town.” Her breathing was ragged as she cocked the gun. “I say we start with this one.”

Holding still as stone, I fixed my eyes on a point just above her head, not wanting to see when she pulled the trigger.

“What you’re going to do is stand down,” Gregor said, his words spaced as deliberately as notes on a music sheet. “I’m in charge when Warren isn’t here, and the reason he’s not here is because he traded his own life for mine. If Olivia has something to say that’ll help get him back alive, then you will damn well stand down! Now!”

His voice had risen, and ricocheted down the cavernous hall, echoing before dying away. I looked at him, standing there with only one arm protruding from his shapeless hospital gown, and the humor I so readily associated with him was nowhere to be found. He would’ve looked more the part of ailing patient if his stocky legs weren’t spread wide and his single hand weren’t curled in a fist. I thought of what Warren had said about him being the most senior agent left, and knew if I could get him to hear me out, the others would follow suit. Chandra’s barrel shook as it slid away from my body.

Then, from an ally I’d never have expected, I heard, “All right. I’ll play.”

Hunter shot me a raw, distant smile as I turned to him. “Your hypothesis is that Greta never leaves the sanctuary, therefore she can never be suspected of betrayal, right?”

“Never leaves,” I corrected, “because she can’t. Like me, she’s unable to exit through the chute. The Shadow side is too dark inside of her now.”

“I can’t leave because I’m totally vulnerable up there.” Greta’s voice was reasonable, as if she were leading a group therapy session. My gaze flickered her way, narrowing at the way her hands played uncertainly with the pearls around her neck, but I had to give it to her. She had her role down pat. “They would find me and hunt me down within a week.”

I blinked at her. “If you haven’t noticed, Greta, this is a suicide mission. And no one else seems particularly concerned with their own lives. Aren’t you the one who told me that duty comes before all else? If something’s not good for the organization then it’s simply not done. If it is—such as going after our troop leader—then everything is done to make sure it succeeds.” I shot them all a mirthless smile. “A true follower of Light, agent or not, would sacrifice everything if it meant saving this troop. Rena convinced me of that.”

“Would you?” Chandra said, arms folded across her chest. It looked like she was fighting to keep from reaching out and strangling me.

I looked at her coolly. “I’m doing it right now.”

“So how’d she get down here?” Hunter continued, with his usual single-mindedness, something I was grateful for at the moment. I blew out a hard breath as I turned back to him, and chose my words carefully. He didn’t look like a man who gave people a second chance.

“She’s half mortal. The other half is Light. Choices, however,” I told him before turning back to Greta, “can be made for either side.”

I saw Felix shaking his head from the corner of my eye. “So how does she tell the Tulpa who we are, then?”

Chandra frowned and turned on him like he was traitorous, but he just shrugged as he met her gaze, his eyes quickly returning to me. “She doesn’t. She marks you. After she gets you into her office, she alters your scent during hypnosis so the Shadow agents can locate you when you’ve left the sanctuary.”

“Not possible,” Chandra spit out, shaking her head.

“You just said it was possible. You said with the chemicals from your lab and a little knowledge—”

“The right knowledge—”

“Which you and Micah have,” I said, anger overtaking my fear for the first time. She was just opposing me as a matter of course. Well, fuck that. I jerked my head at her. “Where do you keep it? Notebook?”

“No. Nowhere anyone can find it.”

“Folder? Filing cabinet? Microfiche?”

“No, you idiot!” she exploded, brows slamming together. “In our minds!”

I raised my chin. “And who has access to your minds?”

Her mouth opened, faltered, and closed. I looked around, meeting every eye, letting the silence grow heavy in the hallway. “Not just your minds, but your laboratories, and not just your labs, but the sick ward. And in the sick ward is the one woman who knows the truth.” I turned away from Chandra to face Greta again, whose color had risen to spot her cheeks in uneven blotches. “Why don’t you tell them the real reason you locked Tekla away?”

She twisted her pearls in her hands like she was counting off rosaries, and her voice was deliberately meek when she spoke. “She broke, inside, when Stryker was killed. Her mind weakened and she couldn’t discern reality from fantasy.”

I shook my head, said to the others, “She didn’t get weaker. She got stronger. More intuitive, more talented. The Zodiac lineage is matriarchal, so the power released when Stryker died reverted back to Tekla. So, isn’t it interesting this was when Greta had Tekla committed? Locked up in a soundless room, not to be seen or heard by anyone. Nobody, that is, but Greta herself.”

“Warren put her away!” Greta said, that cool voice rising.

“Uh-huh.” I nodded my head. “And who planted that suggestion in his mind?”

I waited, but nobody spoke. A good sign, and I turned back to Greta with a grim smile. “You waited two years, biding your time, gaining confidences, winning trust. Learning what you could from Chandra and Micah, preparing for Stryker’s metamorphosis. Then, after you used his death and Tekla’s grief to secure her position for yourself, it was easy to mark the rest. You had access to all their files—their horoscopes, their natal charts and lineages—so you knew how to enter their minds. Ply them with a little tea, get their own imaginations stirred up, and you ensured they’d come to you for hypnosis.”

“God,” someone breathed.

“You took away Tekla’s son and then you took away her gift, her talent.” I found I was breathing hard. “You took away her voice.”

There was a long pause, silence while each person took this in, considered it, and while Greta looked around, waiting for someone to speak up in reply. I couldn’t read anyone’s aura—emotions were too high, the air a roiling mix of gaseous color—but I didn’t have to in order to watch Greta’s color rise. She squared on me and took up her own defense.

“If I took away her voice,” she said, her own growing hard, “then how was she able to accuse you of being a traitor just yesterday?”

“She wasn’t accusing me. She was using what was left of her faculties, after being pumped full of enough drugs to fell an elephant, to beg me to find the traitor. Funny how she had to stop after you pumped her up yet again. Funny how that’s when the Tulpa was able to use her psionic powers to get through to me.”

The first flicker of fear crossed Greta’s face, and her voice was child-light. “How can you say these awful things to me?”

I looked again and saw it wasn’t fear. It was Shadow. I smiled. “Because I’m her voice now.”

The false outrage dropped from Greta’s face. She spun to face the others. “Tekla was the Seer. A full-fledged member of the Zodiac troop, and far more powerful than any half mortal. Why didn’t she speak out against me? Why, if she knew who I was, would she say nothing?”

They all looked to me.

I pulled Stryker’s comic from behind my back, lifted it and opened it to the page I’d already marked. They’d all been there, of course. They knew what had happened. But I watched as fresh grief spread through their faces, and on the page Tekla rose in a gown bloodied by her son’s death, screaming in grief. I couldn’t see the page myself, but, just as they had outside the Quik-Mart when I’d heard them the first time, the words boomed clearly from its pages. “There’s a traitor among us!”

I shut the comic and the voice died, leaving only silence, and the thud of my heart beating loudly in my ears.

“That person, that traitor,” I said softly, “can only be someone left alive in this sanctuary. It’s not me because I just arrived. It’s obviously not Warren. Is it you, Hunter?” His expression tightened, and I spoke before he could answer. “Nope, can’t be. Because it’s not the weapons that malfunction, is it?

“Perhaps Gregor’s the Judas. After all, he’s the one who left the boneyard open to infiltration by the Shadow side. Then again, I seriously doubt he’d have cut open his own bowels just for good effect.” I turned to the next star sign. “How about you, Micah? Granted, you could have handed me over to the Tulpa when I was lying unconscious under your care…or better yet, even killed me yourself.”

I shifted again. “I suppose it could be Chandra. She has the chemicals, the talent, the opportunity. But she’s not a real part of the Zodiac, and that means she’s nothing more than a tool for the real mole. A dupe. A pawn to be used, then discarded.”

“Fuck you,” she said, but she sounded more hurt than angry now.

“Or,” I said, whirling so I was facing all of them again, “is the mole the person who had access to us all? To Warren, whom I saw leaving Greta’s office right before his capture. Who risked all to bring me here, then suddenly—after one brief session—no longer trusted me. No longer trusted himself.”

“This is ridiculous. So far-fetched!” Greta said. “How can any of you listen to this? You know me…and she’s of the Shadows!”

But it was too late to effectively play that card, and I continued on as if she hadn’t spoken. No one stopped me. “Warren was disoriented. He told me you’d just hypnotized him, and when I came in after him you tried to do the same to me. But it didn’t work, did it? I awoke before you finished and there was a funny scent in the air, like metal ground into a fine powder. Something frightened you and you panicked and dropped the vial.”

“It was you. I saw the Shadow in you.”

“Saw it?” I asked coolly. “Or recognized it?”

She couldn’t hold back any longer. Her scream hit my face. “You don’t know any of this for a fact! You’re making it up! My father was an agent of Light!”

“Your father was a Gemini. Dual-sided, dual-faced, right?”

“Are you questioning his loyalty?” She spit in my face. I was guessing from the shock around me that this was a side of Greta none of the others had seen before. “He gave his life for this organization!”

I wiped the spittle from my cheek. “And I bet that really tore you up, didn’t it?”

“Excuse me,” she said, folding her arms over her chest, “but as long as we’re speaking of fathers, need I remind you who yours is, Olivia? Oh, but that’s not your real name, is it? Who’s the one keeping secrets now?”

I made sure my breathing was controlled, then said softly, “No, you don’t need to remind me. But might I remind you that neither goodness nor evil is inherited. Both must be chosen.”

She lifted her chin, her heart-shaped face hard with defiance. “If I’d chosen to betray the Zodiac troop, then the people I’ve lived with for two years—the supernatural people!—should have been able to scent the shadow in me. They specialize in detecting intent.”

“You mean they can’t?” I asked, feigning surprise. I already knew why this was, of course, but I didn’t want to explain it. It was important they discover it for themselves.

“I don’t smell anything,” Felix said, shaking his head.

“Neither do I.”

“Greta’s right,” Hunter said at last. “At least one of us would have been able to recognize something wasn’t right about her.”

The others shook their heads as I met their eyes in inquiry. When they landed on Greta, she smiled smugly. I returned the smile, causing hers to shake at the edges.

“Well, I can. It smells like the earth’s core; sulfur and heat. It smells like things buried deep; rotting flesh, gorging worms. Evil at work.” I was moving across the hallway as I said this, and I ended up in front of Hunter. I leaned into him, an almost seductive move; one knee bending into his body, the flesh of my forearm brushing his, my breath warm on his neck. I inhaled deeply. “Not like you. You smell like the smoke rising from a living campfire. Like the green wood and the grasses and the wild things that spice embers bursting in the air. Don’t you think?”

“If you say so.”

“What?” I drew back and looked in his face. “Can’t you smell yourself?”

He stared back at me, unblinking. “I can smell emotions, sure. I smell adrenaline and perspiration when I work up a sweat, but the basic compound that makes up my molecules is too familiar to me. I can’t identify it.”

“So you can’t identify it on, say…” I looked around, as if searching for a target. Found it in Greta. “…her?”

Hunter looked from me to Greta and back again, frowning.

Micah stared at me, openmouthed. “I can.”

“I can too,” Vanessa said, and furrowed her brows. “I smell Gregor as well.”

“This is ridiculous,” Greta blustered.

“Micah too.” Gregor nodded. “And Warren.”

It was my turn to smile smugly. “Scents are attached to emotion. When Greta discovers something deeply personal through hypnosis, she tags it. When you think of that particular emotion, you emit a pheromone that calls to the Shadow agents.

“But as she’s marking you she also takes a vial of your essence and injects it into herself so that her true scent becomes invisible to each of you.”

“Anosmia,” I heard Felix whisper.

“She binds herself to you the way Micah bound Warren and me. The way she was trying to mark and bind me when I woke up in her office.” I saw a movement at the end of the hallway, and motioned Rena forward. “Of course, you don’t have to take my word for it.”

They all turned, sensing the movement, except Greta, who kept her eyes hard on my face.

“There’s a reason she keeps lovebirds in her room and office…” Greta turned too, then. “And it ain’t love.”

We all watched Rena’s slow approach, and I heard Greta’s breath quicken. After that I could only sense the growing curiosity of the others as Rena drew closer.

She held a kitten. Black and white, with tufts of wild fur, it was sleeping peacefully, its breathing easy as it lay cupped in her palms. A small smile was fixed on Rena’s destroyed face as she stopped a foot in front of Greta and held out the slumbering animal.

For a moment nothing happened. Then, on the next tiny intake of breath, the kitten’s body stiffened, its eyes flipped open, flickered once, and registered Greta standing there. Its back arched immediately, every hair standing on end, then it hissed and lunged for her with tiny, unsheathed claws.

Greta smacked at the bottom of Rena’s cupped hands and sent the kitten flying.

Hunter lunged, catching the flipping body just before it touched concrete. Greta ran for her office, Gregor tripped her up, and she sprawled like a spineless scarecrow.

“The birds were an excuse to keep the cats away,” I said when the shouts in the hallway had finally quieted. “Her office and her room are the only places she can’t fully mask her true scent.”

Greta rolled, eyes dry. Wide, but with madness, not fear, they locked on me with unfettered hatred. Bilious blackened color, like smoke, pooled to surround her body. One by one she studied the others as if coming face-to-face with them for the first time. “Your precious leader will be dead by morning.”

“We should send you up the chute,” Felix said. “You deserve to fry for what you’ve done!”

Greta spit in his direction, not bothering to hide her Shadow side now. She reeked of maggots and rotted eggs, a fetid blend that literally spilled from her pores.

Vanessa advanced on her, nose wrinkled in disgust, eyes fired with fury. “Maybe we’ll just let her loose in the cat ward. Her and her little lovebirds.”

“I raised your father,” Rena said, shaking her head. “He’d be so disappointed.”

“He’d be used to it,” Greta retorted, but I don’t think anybody felt sorry for her.

“But there’s no way he’d—” A sharp pain slashed through my chest and I bent, legs buckling. My mouth opened in a soundless cry as I hit the floor, and Hunter tried to lift me, but I resisted, needing to feel the ground beneath me, anchoring me. “They’re hurting Warren again.”

Greta started to laugh. “The Tulpa knows you’ve found me out! They’ll kill him now…and it’s all her fault!” She pointed at me.

Warren screamed in my brain, agony wracking us both, but nothing came out of my mouth. Then a sickening spiral, down, down into myself, and I knew that Warren, wherever he was, had passed out. That didn’t stop Ajax. He laughed, and the sound resonated in my mind. A boot-shaped sole slammed into my kidney, I retched, and Greta’s laughter joined his when my jaw cracked with a finishing blow, even though nothing had been touched on the surface. I gave thanks that Warren was unconscious, but shuddered knowing he’d have to wake again.

Around me the others were trying to figure out a way past the Shadows in the boneyard.

“Even if you figure out a way to hide your marks,” Greta interrupted, sneering, “and you won’t because those marks are fresh, Hunter was the last—”

“Bitch,” he murmured.

“—it’ll be too late for Warren.” She bared her teeth, and it was hard to see where kindness had ever lived on that face. “You’ll never get to him in time.”

It was the last thing I heard for a while. The questioning and confused babble continued ruminating up and down the hall, and the voices laughing and groaning in my head fell into the background. I tuned them all out, but at length became aware of a dull but insistent tapping. I pried one eye open to find Tekla pointing at me from the other side of the glass again. Only I got it this time. She wasn’t pointing at me. She was pointing at the glass.

“You’re all lost,” Greta was screeching from her position across from me on the floor. “Hear me, Archer? They’ve already won!”

There was the report of flesh meeting flesh, a palm arching across Greta’s face. Then Chandra’s voice, as angry as I’d ever heard it. “Tell us where he is!”

She cackled. “I won’t, no matter what you do, and I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing I did my job! You’re all marked! Do you hear me? Targets! You’ll never even reach his kill spot.”

Warren stirred inside me. He was alive, and if I wanted him to stay that way, I knew what I had to do. As my fingers searched, found my conduit sprawled next to me, the tapping on the window ceased. Forcing myself to keep my hand steady, I pointed it.

“Hey, Greta,” I said, and watched the satisfaction fall from her face as she turned to find herself staring down the pointed shaft of my arrow. “I’m not marked.”

I shifted and shot fluidly, and though it was the first time I’d fired this weapon, it was as if I’d been born to the motion. Greta shrieked and ducked, though she’d be lying in her own kill spot had I still been pointing it at her. Instead, the arrow cleaved through the window of Tekla’s cell, shattering the glass into hundreds of tiny pieces that fell like diamonds onto the hallway floor. Tekla’s face appeared a moment later, but her voice came first.

Warren’s voice.

“Come to Paradise, the Hall of the Slain, also the dwelling of those who never die. Where virgin warriors guard the gates of eternity. The palace with five hundred and fifty doors. Where dead warriors feast, where gods abide.”

“What is he saying?” I heard someone ask.

“Valhalla,” I said, and sunk back to the ground. “They’re holding him at Valhalla.” And I doubled over as Tekla cried out, Warren’s skull splitting inside of me with a blow meant to silence him forever.