Unbound

Prologue

It was a normal moment, and barely worth note. Which, of course, was what made it so noteworthy. But after weeks, and a barrage of demands and pleas, JJ would finally be allowed to wave sparklers and an American flag and cheer until his throat burned. And when darkness blanketed the sky, fountains of color so amazing and loud and powerful would rip it open, dulling even the Las Vegas Strip visible in the distance. For a child born, reared, and hidden in an underground lair, it was an absolute dream come true.

So that was why a family of superheroes were having a simple picnic on a grassy hillside, blanket-edge to blanket-edge with the mortals they’d been born to defend.

“Born and sworn to deflect and protect” his father would say, in a booming baritone that made his mother throw back her head and laugh. JJ would steal glances at them—at the giant man with honey-colored eyes identical to his own, and his mother with her quiet strength and noble lineage—and wonder if he had what it took to do that, to make them proud. He didn’t know. In a world that honored women, he was not yet a grown man, but he was the strongest five-year-old he knew. And all the kids in the sanctuary said his high jump—already ten feet—was better than most of the girls’.

A born leader, he’d overheard the new soothsayer, Tekla, claim of him, and while he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be leading—a parade like the one they’d seen earlier today? Maybe a band like the one with the drums that’d rumbled down the street? — he’d liked the sound of it.

So while his parents sipped from plastic cups, making small talk with the mortals gathered on the highest green of the SandStone golf course, JJ waved a rope he’d found lying in the asphalt parking lot, and pretended it was his mother’s barbed whip. He would inherit the conduit when it was time, and he’d wield it as deftly as she did, unfurling it in the air to strike at fleeing Shadows and their vicious canine wardens.

JJ became so entrenched in these imaginary battles that he had threaded two bunkers and a green by the time the first rocket shot into the sky. Amid the distant laughter and clapping of the hillside audience, he froze under that pulsing sky, the rope slipping from his palms. He felt the same sort of wonder as when his father blocked a thirty-foot dunk in skyball, or when his mother made a concrete wall appear out of nowhere with the mere flick of her wrist. Who knew mortals were capable of something both beautiful and explosive? Each detonated flare thrummed inside his chest like a second, irregular heartbeat.

He jolted when his father’s hand dropped to his shoulder. At some point, as light had carved whorls into the sky, they’d found him. “This is what we’re preserving for everyone else,” his father told him, his characteristic passion making each word sharp. “Every person has a right to the small things, you see? The little happinesses. After all, those are the ones that make life most worth living. It’s what we’re fighting for.”

He touched his wife’s hand as he said it.

And JJ saw that it was good. Cotton candy and popcorn and sticky fingers, and a slightly sick stomach when it was all over. JJ only realized he’d fallen asleep when he felt himself being lifted, then settled again in the car they’d borrowed for the occasion. Outside of their troop’s sanctuary, his parents were believed to be too hard-strapped to afford their own vehicle. They took the bus when posing as mortals, but most often, they ran with a speed that would make a cheetah envious.

And this was JJ’s dream as they drove back to the hotel where they’d spend the night before returning to their subterranean lair at dawn—he was outrunning a big cat, legs wheeling so fast that the beast eventually slowed, and bowed to him as the superior athlete. JJ climbed atop the animal, his right as the competition’s victor, and was carried at breakneck speed along the neon-slicked streets, whizzing past the giant hotels his parents had pointed out to him hours before.

He startled awake when the cat reared suddenly, though they would tell him later that the animal’s awful cry was really the screeching of brakes. He opened his eyes to see his mother’s face, eyes fierce and burning into his. But it was her lighted chest that riveted him. Normally dormant beneath her skin, her glyph was fired, warning of danger, and her right hand curled tightly around her whip.

“Stay,” she said, and then she was gone.

“On the floor,” his father snapped, and like the sparklers JJ had waved only hours before, he, too, was only a bright trail for the eye to follow in the night.

JJ’s heart thrummed inside his small frame, chest tight, as if his Arien glyph wished to burst to life as well. Danger! screamed some primal voice inside him. Flee!

But his father had said to stay on the floor.

It will be even safer beneath the car.

He didn’t know why he’d listen to some unfamiliar voice over his own father’s, but if he was outside he could see his parents, and as long as he could see them, he’d be okay.

Of course, even as he clambered over the front seat, even before the first battle cry ripped the hot, velvet sky—probably even before he’d been tossed from the back of the dream cheetah—he knew they were at war. These were Shadows. Rotted sulphur and smoke pooled in the night sky, stinging his eyes just as in his ward mother’s bedtime stories.

Still, he blinked away the burn, searching for his parents along the rocky desert vista, every outcropping a bumpy threat. Inching forward beneath the car’s chassis, he settled in time to see his mother’s whip unfurl, barbed tips sparking off the light from her chest, which also threw her drawn porcelain features into stark relief. She was feral.

The Shadow she fought was a charred skeleton.

“Mama!” The word squeaked from him. His strong mother, his laughing and vibrant mother, couldn’t be injured by that demon! Tears welled and he blinked them away—keep them in sight! — so he saw when the Shadow’s head swiveled his way.

“No!”

His mother screamed, and she ignored the extended arc of her whip as she reversed, flipping her wrist to shove the metal grip into the living skeleton’s teeth. Bone shattered beneath the force, and JJ—and his cry—was forgotten.

Another light appeared, zigzagging like an overgrown firefly. Defying bulk to outmaneuver his opponent, his father’s limbs whirled, breaking skin and bone with studded gloves, sending more noxious fumes spilling into the air. The two Shadows fell at nearly the same time, and JJ’s parents sidestepped, back-to-back, breathing hard, studying their surroundings.

“How?” his mother asked, voice low.

“Later.” His father reached behind with one bloodied fist to squeeze her free hand. “Let’s get Jay to safety.”

JJ nearly opened his mouth to cheer—his brave parents, his strong parents, had done it again! — but his mother jerked her head, her reply a near growl. “We need to know now.”

“Why?”

“Because there might be…”

Others.

Suddenly there were. So many circling so fast, the smoke became a black tornado, and JJ quickly lost count. Though outnumbered, his parents continued to guard each other, backs and fingertips touching, searching for a way out. Just before the first cry sounded, his mother shot a look back at the car. A smile touched her lips, briefly, before she let it fall.

Then she fought.

And then she died.

And somewhere, more mortals set the sky alight, burning the heavens for pleasure even as his parents’ death cries carved whorls into the air.

The Shadows didn’t linger. The deaths of two senior agents of Light would soon be noted, the kill spots as obvious as the constellations above for those who knew how to read them. So JJ squeezed from beneath the car as soon as the last Shadow disappeared, and rushed to his parents.

There was barely anything recognizable at all. It was as if the Shadows were so blighted in spirit and form that they wished to render the Light the same.

“Solange! Ma Sola! Come back!”

JJ’s head jerked up.

“Un instant, Mama! I want a souvenir to mark my first…”

The girl’s words died in her throat when she saw him. Her gaze skittered like beetles to his hands, braced on the broken things he loved. She wasn’t much older than he, maybe eight, but with a darkness about her…one that’d called her back in search of a memento.

She had watched as her troop ambushed and murdered his family, JJ realized with a sniff. Studying for her future position as a Shadow agent.

A tear coursed over his cheek, and she winced as if it repulsed her. She frowned, then opened her mouth to reveal his existence. He held tight to what was left of his parents while another tear fell.

“Solange!” came the voice again, causing the girl to jolt.

Solange licked her lips. Their eyes remained fastened on each other. Finally. “Nothing here, Mama.”

“So allez. Our enemies will soon be here. We don’t wish to be trapped within their radius. Leave the cadeau, and the cleanup, for them.”

Laughter accompanied her retreat, and sapped JJ’s remaining strength. He collapsed between what used to be his family, and stared blindly up at the molten, scarred, celebratory sky.

“Solange. Sola. Ma Sola.”

He mumbled her names over and over. He memorized them. He wondered why she hadn’t killed him. And, sobbing—even once he was lifted into the arms of his troop leader—he wished she had.

1

The bar was a college hangout, hardly more than a steel ceiling and a concrete floor. The so-called band had just finished their final set and was now taking their payment from the tap. JJ let his head hang forward as Warren called for another round, and the bartender, who’d only dubiously allowed the last one, frowned. Options flitted over his face like words on a teleprompter. He could be fined if they left this bar and suffered injury under the influence of the whiskey he’d served, but on the up side, they wouldn’t come back. Even in a run-down, midtown Las Vegas bar, where transience was an accepted part of life, a guy who smelled like a bum and one who looked like a pissed-off linebacker were undesirable. So he hedged his bets, and brought them the bottle. JJ offered up a lopsided smile. It was the Vegas way.

Once served, his troop leader finally came around to the subject he’d spent the last half hour inching up on. “That, my son, was a close one.”

No, JJ thought, tapping the glass and throwing back his head. It had been even closer than that. Trapped in that steel plane, thousands of feet above the ground, JJ had been forced to consider something rare, at least in relation to himself: death. In fact, he’d never been so sure of anything in his life as the commuter flight the Shadows had hijacked flew toward the base, flanked by fighter jets, screams tearing through the air. What most surprised him was the voice, the one he trusted and had named his intuition, had sighed its acceptance. Finally.

JJ knew Warren expected some bland agreement, but his overriding thought was, Just buy me another shot, man.

Then his troop leader surprised him by squaring on him fully. “It’s hard living in the past. Hard to even call it your past if you’ve never put it behind you.”

JJ peered into his shot glass. “This thing still empty?”

Warren motioned, took the bottle from the bartender’s hands, and started pouring it himself. “You’ve broken even so far, but that’s just treading water, and today proved it.”

Because today, for the first time in the three years he’d been a full-fledged agent of Light, JJ had almost lost.

Obviously, he’d experienced death before. One couldn’t live long in an underworld of heroes and demons and not be touched by it, and he told Warren that now without words, using only a shrug and a jerk of his head to throw back another shot. God, but the whiskey was good…sharp and warm, and lingering in his belly as if his glyph glowed there. It made him feel alive.

“Death’s not important,” Warren said in reply.

“I know.” Holding out his glass, JJ accidentally caught his reflection across the bar; eyes spent, face sunken on his wide frame, his normally tan skin sallow, like campfire dust mingling with sand. He was built like his dad, though even wider and taller and stockier. His sheer size had drawn such unwanted attention that the troop’s physician/magician, Micah, had whittled down his frame once already, but the pain of even that minor transformation was like mainlining mercury. In the hours before he healed, it was as if he’d been skinned alive, then stitched back together, tighter. Even now, if he thought about it too much, he could imagine himself bursting at the seams. JJ refused any additional reduction after that, and Warren hadn’t pressed.

Looking at his bleached, military-cut hair through the smoked mirror, he wondered idly if he should shave it to the skull. Would that whittle him down even more? Could walking through the world with less friction smooth out the journey?

“Death also isn’t meaningful, not even a violent one,” Warren continued, impervious to JJ’s thoughts of journeys and friction. “It’s what you tell yourself about death that’s critical. Thoughts shape actions, and actions expose your state of mind.”

“Shit.” JJ jerked the bottle from Warren’s hand, because if he had to listen to a lecture about the past and death and the detonated fate he’d narrowly avoided, he wasn’t going to do it sober. Unfortunately, it took a lot for a superhero to get truly shit-faced, a fact JJ currently lamented. “So is this the speech where you tell me my parents didn’t die because of me, that there was nothing I could do at the time, and that I need to put it behind me? Because I swear I’ve heard that one somewhere before.”

And it was bullshit. Besides…

“What more do you want from me?” he continued before Warren could answer. “I do the best I can at all times. You can’t tell me I don’t.”

“I wouldn’t. But your level best is different than your potential best.”

“I don’t know what the hell that means.” His voice was too sharp, his body too rigid. Dial it back, JJ told himself, even while downing another glass. Boy, the more you drank, the smoother this shit got.

“It means the heroes of your past should fortify the present. You’re engaged in old battles, son. So, in answer to your question, that’s what I want. For the first time in your life, look forward, not back. What happened tonight should show you what a gift the future really is.”

JJ licked his lips slowly, knowing exactly what sort of gifts his future held. Things like metaphorically throwing himself in front of oncoming trains to save countless others, most of whom had gotten themselves into bad situations through faulty logic, poor planning, or pure stupidity. In fact, the majority of the mortal population was spoiled and ungrateful, and continued to piss away the life he fought for them to have. He also didn’t say he’d give a limb just to be able to work a regular Joe’s nine-to-five, and to come home to nothing more complicated than a pair of squabbling kids and a lukewarm meal. Instead, I have to beware if I go on something as simple as a fucking picnic.

Warren misread his silence. “Don’t you care anymore, Jay? Don’t you still believe you can make a difference, son?”

JJ snorted. Sure he cared. He had no problem helping others—he knew no other life than that—but lately it’d occurred to him that making a difference meant having to always put his own needs and desires second. Or, in a city of two million, was it dead last?

Warren dropped a hand on his shoulder. “I think you’re burned out, son.”

“Maybe,” JJ conceded, rolling his glass between his palms. “Though I’ve never heard of an agent burning out after only three years.” Some superhero.

“It’s been three years since your metamorphosis,” Warren said, referring to that critical moment when a troop member turned from mere initiate into a full-fledged agent of Light. “You’ve been fighting for over twenty.”

Their eyes met, but neither man spoke. His parents’ deaths were long ago, and remembered from different vantage points, but horror and sadness still plagued both of them.

“Look,” Warren said, “I think you should take some time off. Go fishing. Get laid. Fucking shave, for God’s sake.”

“I’m fine…and stubble looks good on the trading cards.”

Warren didn’t laugh. “You’re cold.”

“I’m calm,” JJ corrected. His voice was low, but his glance was sharp.

Warren wasn’t intimidated. “Well, we need you committed if we’re going to acquire our priceless little package before the Shadows do. Understand?”

JJ wanted to say he understood his own life was passing him by, unlived, while he toiled in service to some pampered elite, but he was already talking too loud, and his eyes were probably pinwheeling from the adrenaline still trailing through his system. He could sit here and argue with Warren, or he could agree with the man and get on with drinking. So he nodded his head, hoped he looked contrite, and waited for his leader to leave.

When Warren did—after an order, disguised as a warning, to go home and sleep it off—JJ glanced up at the television, where a local station was reporting on the latest antics of some vapid society sisters: a blond who’d just shown her physical talents to half the Western world in some men’s magazine he used to read for the articles, and her sister—her dark-eyed, unsmiling opposite—who had no reason that he could see to look so pissed off. He downed the rest of his whiskey and held up a hand for another bottle.

And then, in a roundabout fashion, the “package” Warren had mentioned appeared on the screen. JJ squinted at the image of one Tonya Dane, a psychic who’d appeared on a local morning show the previous week to predict an earthquake on this side of the Sierra Nevadas. That alone wouldn’t have been cause for worry, or even note, not among his kind. But the prediction had come true, which was why the footage continued its loop on the tube.

What they kept cutting was Dane’s lead-in prediction, the appearance of the Kairos, a powerful woman who would tip the metaphysical scales in favor of whatever side—Light or Shadow—she chose to endorse. Mortals, having no idea what that meant, dismissed it as nonsense, but those words had been long coveted in his world. Previously, the Kairos had been buried in mythology, but Dane’s prediction brought that epoch to an end, and now both sides were searching for her in earnest.

Unfortunately, Dane had since disappeared, without even a tarot card to point them her way.

The bartender—mustached, built, and apparently uninterested in parapsychology—flipped the station. He caught JJ’s gaze through the mirror, and quirked a brow. “You watching that?”

“Nah, bro. Flip it.” JJ shakily brought his shot glass to his lips, muttered into it. “Here’s to free will, and all that shit.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

It was a testament to his drunkenness that he didn’t sense the woman’s approach. He turned, and she was just there—slim-limbed, doe-eyed, with a cascade of raven black hair. She quirked a brow at the bottle in his hand, clearly accustomed to getting what she wanted. JJ didn’t mind, though. She smelled good.

“Have a name?”

“JJ, or just Jay.” He didn’t bother lying. Unlike his glass fingertips, hers appeared printed, like any mortal’s, and again, she smelled like a dream. “You?”

“Yes.” She licked cherry lips, coming on strong out of the gate. One way or another, JJ seemed destined for a head-on collision tonight. Besides, he thought, letting his eyes travel the length of her body, Warren had said to take some time off. “That your convertible outside?” she asked.

His focus sharpened marginally. “How’d you know?”

“Anyone else in here look like they can manage that ride? Besides, Mustangs are my favorite. Though I usually prefer a dark-haired man driving it.”

“Really? So…” He leaned forward, into her space, testing, angling in further. She met him halfway. “You willing to overlook that glaring fault and go for a little ride?”

“If I wanted a little ride,” she said, pointedly, “I’d be talking to the guy over there.”

He laughed, throaty and loud, surprising himself, then threw down some bills. Draping his arm over her slim shoulders, he turned her toward the door. “Come,” he said, already sure she would.

2

She did love the car. She purred when he revved the engine, laughed when the tires bit into the curb, and stood in her bucket seat, hands gripping the windshield as speed and desert air—pregnant with a summer storm—played havoc with her hair. Bolting up Charleston, he left the false cheer of Las Vegas behind, driving so fast it was like he was burying them in the night.

He jerked the wheel right before Spring Mountain Ranch, the turnoff coming more quickly than he remembered, though the view from the asphalt top was as spectacular as always…and theirs alone. Wild burros and rattlers regularly canvassed the dusty range, but as the first bolts of lightning pinged off the desert floor, all that flashed back at them were Joshua trees, sagebrush, and the red sandstone range framing the basin. JJ killed the engine, and for a moment they were both silent, enjoying the beginnings of a storm that would turn the dry washes into rivers sure to flood the valley.

Then the woman rose, straddling the windshield in one liquid motion, skirt rising to her hips. She challenged him with a downward glance as her bare foot carelessly crushed a wiper. “I love a good desert monsoon,” she said, and licked her lips as the sky cracked open.

JJ moved so fast she was pinned to the glass before the first raindrop fell. His hands were in her wind-whipped hair, his mouth eating her laughter. He had to remind himself to be careful with her—she was mortal and more fragile than his kind—but her hunger was spiced, and it fueled him. It was probably just the drink, but with his eyes closed, his mouth open, and his body spread atop hers, he felt pieces of him shifting inside, as if loosening from tethered moorings, suddenly unbound.

When JJ finally opened his eyes, he was surprised to find their positions reversed. He was pinned to the hood, her clothing pushed aside, his jeans half down his thighs. She lowered herself over him, a private smile revealed in a sharp crack of splintered light, but when her hips began pistoning above him, he forgot even to be surprised.

He decided later that despite her aggressiveness, she was a closet romantic. Why else wait until the storm had heightened, and they were both about to climax, to pull out the weapon? The need for symbolism, coupled with raw power, obviously motivated her…him, too, which was why he happened to open his eyes in that moment, wanting to watch her rain-streaked face as she cried out into the wild night. Instead he saw her wide, dark eyes hard with intent, and the honed edge of a tomahawk barreling toward his chest.

JJ barely pulled his palms from her waist in time to counteract the lethal blow, but once it’d been deflected, adrenaline lent the sobriety needed to disarm her. He flipped, crushing her against the car she so loved, her slim frame denting the pristine hood. The glyph on her chest began to smoke. “Guess I don’t have to be so gentle after all,” he said, and made a second, deeper dent.

The impact didn’t stop her throaty laughter. “Satisfy a girl’s curiosity before she dies?”

“Is this a final request?” he growled, forearm across her neck.

“At least you’ll finish off something tonight.”

“Besides your life, you mean.” He dug a nail into the flesh of her fingertip, and felt a false print pop off. He sucked in a deep breath but still couldn’t scent anything of her Shadowy nature. She’d covered it with a synthetic, then. It was easy enough to do.

She smiled weakly. “When did you get the tattoo on your right shoulder?”

She’d seen the yin/yang symbol. The word desire was etched out in the shaded side. The other held fear. “I was nineteen.” He saw no harm in answering now.

“And now you’re twenty-eight.”

She relaxed beneath him as his brow furrowed, all her strength sinking inward. He remained on guard.

“JJ,” she teased in a threadbare croak. “I’ve known you since you were five.”

He froze above her, all the shifting inside of him ceasing, reversing. “And you are?” he asked, voice as hard.

“Solange,” she said simply.

Lightning cracked over his shoulder as memories moved through his skull. Solange. Sola. Ma Sola.

“You’ve lost your accent.”

“Second generation French.” She shrugged easily, like they didn’t have a past, and she still had a future. “Easy when you’re raised here.”

“Have you waited twenty-three years to kill me?”

Her tongue darted out, wetting her bottom lip. “I’ve waited to see why I didn’t.”

They looked at each other, and JJ inexplicably lessened the pressure. Then he caught himself, and picked up her conduit, the tomahawk. The heft was eerily unfamiliar. He lifted it above his head.

She gave him a slight smile for being able to do what she hadn’t. “I’m sorry.”

Again, it threw him.

“About…my parents?”

She nodded again.

He raised a brow. “So sorry you were going to kill me?”

He felt her forearm flex before her fingertips trailed up his arm, playing just below his tattoo. “I was going to put you out of your misery.”

“Don’t do me any more favors, Solange.”

But as her fingertips continued to play on his skin, he lowered her weapon. Warren’s words revisited him as he stared into the cocoa depths of the woman’s eyes. Death’s not important…not even a violent one. Thoughts were crucial, he’d said. Actions exposed one’s state of mind.

After a few more moments of staring and still living, Solange lifted slightly and ground her pelvis into his. Still half clothed and, surprisingly, half hard, he swallowed, met her gaze…and slid easily back into her warmth.

“Ah. So even superheroes,” she whispered in rhythm, “crave the illicit.”

Her hot breath sent chills down his arm.

“And you crave…?” he asked, somehow knowing he was giving it to her. He pushed deeper.

“Not much.” She waited until she was coming again, breathing the answer into his mouth. “Mere relevance.”

Why don’t I kill her? Why, despite being natural enemies, did JJ instead lie with Solange on the dented hood of his car, until the full of the high desert storm had passed?

Maybe it was because she, too, had been born into this life of battling sides—good versus evil, Light and Shadow—and she recognized, or was at least willing to admit, that perfection and compulsiveness and vigilance would get them only so far. They could both act like model agents, but if either so much as breathed in the wrong direction, the same gruesome death they’d watched his parents endure would readily be theirs.

Normally his mind shied from that memory, but with his enemy’s head on his shoulder, he admitted that that’s what happened when a person gave himself over entirely to the lifestyle. It was why he was burned out, and why he resented the mortals he’d sworn to protect. He found the thought of continuing to exist for the mere good of someone else unbearable. But…

If I had something for myself, something that was mine alone.

“What do you recall?” Solange asked him, the heat in her voice threaded soft.

JJ gazed up at the black metal sky. Not the battle, that was sure. That was muddied with the confusion of a five-year-old’s mind, a swirl of color and sound melding into a singular cry of pain. When he thought back to the night his parents died, he didn’t even remember the red carnage, or not much anyway. Yet he could clearly envision his parents touching hands, holding to each other until the very last. They’d died because of him…but they’d lived because of each other.

“It was my fault,” he finally said, in lieu of his truest thought, which was: I’ll never have that. “I wanted to see the fireworks. They were permitted to take me from the sanctuary because no one could stand to listen to me whine any longer. So we were on the golf course, out in the open, because of me…and I think we were tracked because of me, too.”

He knew now, eyes following the tail of the receding storm, that his emotions had been high, a young boy’s excitement even stronger than the fireworks staining the sky.

“Your joy was like tingling, warm taffy,” Solange confirmed, turning her head so she was staring directly into his eyes. “It was the sweetest thing I’d ever sensed.”

JJ swallowed hard. She broke eye contact first, nestled closer, and looked back to the now-clear sky, stars so bright they looked scoured. He could snap her neck in one swift jerk.

“I follow the constellations,” she said suddenly, as if the words and her voice were at odds. “Never someone else’s orders. Not even my own whim. So, in a way, the sky is a map of my mind. Nobody else knows that.” She tilted her head up to his, exposing her neck like a dare. He bent, kissed its hollow, and found it salty and slightly sharp. When she spoke again, her voice thrummed against his lips. “So if you know what constellation I’m tracing, you can connect the dots and predict my next move.”

“What constellation are you on now?”

She gave him a look like he was crazy.

JJ laughed, liking the way she could surprise him. “Fine, then tell me this. Are you on an upswing or down?”

She shook her head, lifting to lean on an elbow. “You’re missing the point. The stars aren’t what’s important. They’re just pivot points to send you off in a new direction. It’s the space between them that’s relevant. Everything that can actually be seen—the stars, you, me—is less than four percent of what’s out there. The rest is…dark.”

“Because it’s invisible?”

She shook her head. “Because it’s unknown.”

She sat up, turning suddenly so both elbows were propped on his chest, her weight entirely atop his, though he felt little of it. “You know, most people think everything they do is so important. They sweat the small stuff—traffic jams and spilled milk—and get pissed off if things don’t come off exactly as planned. Most go their entire lives without realizing plans don’t matter one bit.”

JJ knew. They were at the mercy of something much bigger and, he often thought, more uncaring than that.

“The greatest mysteries—life, love, loss—are destined to remain a dark matter.” She jerked her chin at the crystalline sky. “We don’t even know what we’re looking at right now.”

He dropped a kiss atop her damp, perversely refreshing, cynical head. “It’s the Universe.”

“No.” She nestled closer, and pointed at the sky. “That’s a violent, evolving panorama of births and deaths. Just like us. The Universe,” she said, pointing to the spot he’d just kissed, “is in here.”

Which was the same shit Warren had been telling him earlier. Which was the same shit, he thought, sighing, that he already knew. Except for one thing. He tapped his head. “Which means you think that ninety-six percent of what is up here is dark matter.”

“Exactly.” Linking her slim arms behind her head, Solange smiled. “And chaos reigns.”

3

It was hard to argue against people being predisposed to chaos, JJ thought as he hauled a skinny mortal from a seedy downtown strip club. The idiot had been about to challenge a Shadow over a woman who called herself Destiny. Yeah, JJ thought, posing as a bouncer, Destiny was really worth getting your head ripped, literally, from your shoulders.

“Maybe it’s why you guys need protection in the first place,” he mumbled.

“What?” the man asked, his tone matching his terrified face.

“I said you should take a serious look at the way you spend your free time.”

“Look at you, man!” The scrawny redhead jerked down his shirt after JJ threw him against the wall. “Like you have any right to judge!”

Score one point for the village idiot, JJ thought, because as much as the comparison rubbed, for the first time he was indulging his darker side, too. And enjoying it. Still, he had a job to do, and was finding a perverse joy in that again as well. He reentered the club and headed back to the VIP room to give the lone Shadow a real taste of destiny.

“I don’t think the Kairos will be found entertaining a late night stag party,” JJ said, parting the curtains of the private room, and dropping into the seat nearest the door. “But that’s just me.”

The Shadow, a small but stocky man who was all but lost between two manufactured breasts, froze. He swallowed hard, dark eyes darting, the glyph on his chest beginning to smoke, but he otherwise didn’t move. When he saw that JJ was alone, visually measuring the distance between them as being great enough, he tried to play it cool. “Can’t be too thorough, though, can you?” he said, smiling, as he ran a hand down Destiny’s thigh.

“No. You can’t.” And JJ unfurled his whip with a crack. Destiny screamed even though she’d been a whole four inches away from the nearest barb, and began tottering from the room on Lucite heels. JJ caught her in one arm, pulling her close to his chest as he yanked, snapping her john’s neck.

By the time Warren arrived, Destiny was “resting” in a dark corner, the Shadow appeared passed out on the velvet sofa, and the room’s security tapes were in JJ’s pockets.

“Who?” Warren asked, eyes assessing JJ for injury.

JJ smiled, handing the tapes over. “Shadow Pisces.”

“Where?”

He jerked his head back at the club. Warren motioned, and a cleanup crew emerged from the night like ninja warriors, slipping inside the back door. The corpse would be gone in five minutes. The kill spot—with the Shadow’s death and JJ’s claim to it—would remain forever.

Warren clapped him on the back, a wide grin splitting the furrows of his craggy face. “Nice to have you back, son. On the side of Light.”

“The side of might,” JJ finished for him.

Though pleased with the night’s work, he wasn’t sure Solange would feel the same. He arrived at their meeting spot, a motel off the I–15, sure she wouldn’t come. If she did, it would only be to end their affair. In fact, she might even break their unspoken truce by bringing her troop with her.

Instead, she met him wearing silk and garters and holding a glass of champagne.

“I’d have been worried,” she murmured as he closed in on her, “if you’d wrapped that thing around one of the girls instead of the guy.”

The morbid humor stoked their lovemaking like rocket fuel. JJ stroked her hair, remembering how it trailed behind her as she’d fled Gregor. He thought of her tomahawk whirring through the air, and it was all he could do not to laugh into her mouth. How could he explain the rush of knowing this dark, lethal beauty was his? Who would believe that he fought hard and well and heroically to return to that wry, promising smile? Coming together with Solange was, very simply, like riding a cyclone.

“That was wonderful,” Sola said after their final collapse, sending him a look that would have sucked the air from his chest, were any left. “But the next time you save me from being cornered by the Scorpio of Light, I’ll kill you.”

She was referring to a small skirmish two days earlier. He’d been sure she hadn’t noticed. Tucking a strand of hair behind the delicate shell of her earlobe, he said, “I know, sweetheart.”

“I wouldn’t stop any of my allies from slaying you.”

He hummed his understanding against her lips.

“And you’ll kill me as well?” She pulled back, but said it like she was asking for a date.

He shrugged, dropping his eyes. “If you’d like.”

“It’s not about what I like,” she said, biting off the last word. She forced him to look at her. “It’s about authenticity. We need to be as honest in that as we are in all else. Otherwise, this means nothing.”

“In that case,” he said, licking at her skin, “I’ll wrap my whip around your middle, let the barbs bite into your organs, and rip it free before you even make a sound.”

He kissed her lightly and she sighed into his opened mouth. “You’re such a romantic.”

JJ swallowed her wicked laugh, and met the lift of her hips.

“Find the Kairos yet?” she asked, licking at the hollow of his neck.

He kissed the top of her head. “Stop fishing.”

She put on a pout. “Like you don’t care what we’re up to.”

“Honey, if your side had our world’s weapon of mass destruction, I wouldn’t be lying here now.” And a part of him was careful to keep this in mind, even when he was notched deep inside her. “You guys have no idea where the Kairos is.”

Knowing she was beaten, she curled up, back to his chest, leaving JJ to wonder if she wasn’t merely a gorgeous, exciting, and, yes, dangerous pet project. Proof that even someone raised by people dedicated to chaos and destruction could choose the right thing, if only provided the opportunity. Perhaps, he thought, stroking her hair, if they had someone to believe they were good.

Playing savior was no basis for a relationship, but as his actions weren’t being reported in either the Shadow manuals or the Light, he didn’t worry too much. Disguised as comic books and consumed by mortal minds, these manuals were as important for what they omitted as for the battles they recorded. Perhaps his deeds weren’t being shown because he was getting through to Sola. He chose to believe the Universe knew she needed anonymity if she was to continue working her way toward good. After all, his side would try to stop him if they knew what he was doing, and hers would kill her outright.

Thus, he decided, the Universe itself was upholding their right to choose—to choose each other or to choose to walk away—and to do it without interference from those who wouldn’t know of the affair unless they saw it with their own eyes. That was a natural law; and therefore an obvious sign to JJ that Sola was wrong and he was right.

So he held out hope she would soon realize this, even while unable to fathom such a reversal in his own moral code. The great irony? His involvement with her hadn’t lessened his desire to save the world, but strengthened it. So how could it be wrong? Besides, his heart’s longing was a small, private matter: he wished only to love whom he wanted, to be with whom he chose.

But she was right about one thing. Why should he be the only one not getting what he wanted? Why should every small pleasure be sacrificed to duty? If he was going to die in the same gruesome fashion as his parents—a risk he took every time he stepped from his sanctuary—then he should be allowed to take joy where he could. So when she woke and turned to him in the middle of the night, asking yet again why he bothered fighting her kind, he smiled against her side.

“I need to,” he said simply. “I’m a superhero.”

“You’re a man,” she said, her throaty voice soft as smoke, her hand resting on the tattoo that was both shadow and light. “I have what you need.”

Yes. For some reason he needed her, too.

And for some other reason, she was willing to be his need.

“Don’t get it.”

Sola’s eyes were on JJ as he leaned from the bed to check his cell. Warren. “I have to.”

“You’re putting work ahead of me.” Her bottom lip, swollen from his kisses, would be sticking out.

“Ahead of the competition, yes.” He smiled as he angled back, but she turned away. Snorting, he putting a hand over the receiver in case Warren came on the line. “Don’t even try it.”

Solange threw the sheets from her body, backside swaying as she made her way to the bathroom. A few seconds later water began running into the tub. “Yes,” he said, tone altering at Warren’s voice. His leader had begun calling JJ first, whether it was to assist with recon, stakeout, or especially attack. How ironic that he had Sola to thank for it.

“I’ve found her.”

JJ stood. “You haven’t.” But he began pulling on his jeans one-handed. “Where?”

“Right where she’s supposed to be.” Warren laughed, and it wasn’t his maniacal spiral, though it couldn’t be called tame, either. “She wasn’t in hiding or kidnapped by the Shadows or even in jail over a traffic violation. She went to fucking Maui, but now she’s back.”

Maui. JJ rolled his eyes. Tonya Dane predicted his world’s savior and then went surfing. “Where are you?”

“The motel on Fremont.”

“I’ll be right there.” JJ flipped the phone shut and slid it into his pocket. Getting to Tonya first was a huge coup. That woman’s mind—mortal, but a psychic’s—was a big red arrow on a map that, with luck, could lead directly to the Kairos.

Solange was soaking in the tub, slim and shining legs propped against the faucet, dark tendrils pressed against the damp curve of her long neck. JJ smiled reflexively when he saw her, but she didn’t even look up.

“Off to play angel of mercy?” She wrinkled her little nose, and sourly truncated his reply. “I don’t understand why you bother saving those who won’t lift a finger to save themselves.”

Given his recent burnout, JJ was surprised to find himself arguing. “We allow freedom of choice from your influence. We don’t interfere unless there’s an outright victimization. We simply counteract your machinations so the mortal population remains autonomous.”

“Shadows can’t influence those who aren’t already predisposed to chaos,” she answered, as quickly. “All you do is delay the inevitable.”

“We grant a person time and space to make a better choice.”

“You waste your life to better the future of those who are undeserving.”

“Everyone is deserving of a chance,” he answered simply, hand to her cheek.

She mimicked the movement. “I told you you’re a romantic.”

“You are, too.”

She pulled away at that, the lips he loved to lick pursed in a tight bow. “Uh-uh. I live for myself. I put my life above all others. It will always be that way, mark my word.”

“And is that written in the stars?”

“You know the answer to that.” It was written between them.

“Go.” She lifted a leg in the air, soaping one tight calf, her mouth still thinned in a pout.

He wanted to say he was sorry, that she knew how duty called, and all that, but it wouldn’t deter Sola from a mood she was determined to be in, and it was also untrue. He wasn’t sorry, because the moment she got wind that the soothsayer was back in town, she and her entire troop would swoop down upon her as well.

Right now he ignored Sola’s combative words by lifting her from the water and pulling her to him. She squealed, though he could tell she was delighted. How could one of the softest things he’d ever touched also be one of the hardest people he’d ever known?

“You won’t be far behind,” he reminded her, circling his hands on her bare hips.

She shrugged one slim, wet shoulder, like she didn’t care, but beckoned him forward after another moment. Lifting to her toes as he curled about her, she tucked her hands into the back pockets of his jeans, wetting the front of him with her warm body, her tongue darting gently to meet his lips. He opened to her, but she didn’t deepen the kiss, just pulled back to stare up into his eyes, the fingertips of her left hand rising to circle the tattoo that lay beneath his T-shirt.

“Be careful out there.”

He reached around to cup her ass, lifted her slightly, and deepened the kiss himself. Her response was fired, and seconds flipped into minutes. “Find me again tonight?”

“That soon?” Surprise lightened her voice. They usually waited at least a day between meetings.

He smiled. “I’m hard now.”

“I’ll be here.”

JJ was still smiling as he let himself out into the morning light. Behind him was an enemy mistress, who made him feel bold, oddly heroic, and shockingly alive. In front of him was a mortal Seer, who might or might not know the identity of his world’s savior. He tried not to think of himself as being caught between them. He still wanted it all.

4

Warren had Tonya Dane stashed away at a dilapidated motel on Fremont Street, which, while not a safe zone, was a good enough place to hide, as long as emotions didn’t run high when Shadows lurked nearby. There were a number of hidey-holes and nondescript locales used this way by both sides of the Zodiac. Safe zones—like Master Comics, where the troop manuals were created and displayed—were desired, but rare.

But today JJ had to quell the laughter that threatened to bubble out of him when he entered the Lazy Dayz Motel to find a superhero masquerading as a bum getting his palm read by a woman who looked like a cross between a country music star and a stripper.

Tonya Dane stared up at JJ when he entered, blinking a good half-dozen times as she took in his short, blond cut, the skin as naturally dark as her enforced tan, and his overall size. When she finished, her frosted smoker’s mouth pursed. “Obviously another one of y’all.”

JJ glanced at Warren, who sheepishly withdrew his hand. “It’s okay, she knows everything. She’s agreed to a full memory cleanse as soon as we’re finished. We were just passing the time until you arrived.”

Tonya reached over, bright pink nails digging into Warren’s weather-beaten hands. “Remember what I said. She still loves you. She’s showing it in the only way she knows how.”

Warren cleared his throat and rose. “The others should be here shortly.”

That distracted JJ from Tonya’s words. “Others?”

“I decided to bring in the rest of the troop after we talked. Ms. Dane here says that different people bring out nuance in her readings, even if related to the same subject.”

“Time is more fluid than this world believes. Even future relations can be read in the present.”

So she’d be able to read connections between them and the Kairos…if there were to be any.

“I figured there was no harm in introducing her to the others as she’ll give up the memory anyway. It’ll give Tekla a rare opportunity to talk shop with someone who shares her talent, but on the mortal side.” He smiled at Tonya. “She’s our troop’s Seer.”

“I know,” Tonya said, eliciting a truncated snort from JJ. He sobered when her sharp eyes found him again. “We can start with you.”

“Start what with me?”

“The readings.” And she held out her hand for his palm.

“Wait.” JJ turned back to Warren to find humor threading the man’s mouth. “I thought we were questioning her. Not the other way around.”

He didn’t think a mortal Seer could rival their world’s psychic in skill, but with a secret life, and his lover’s touch so recently on his skin, it was best to stay away from Seers altogether…which was why Tekla’s impending appearance was so disturbing. He’d been avoiding her as well.

Warren sobered. “Just give it a try. You may have a residual connection with the Kairos.”

JJ wanted to ask how it could be residual if it hadn’t happened yet, but knew better from his sessions with Tekla. Ask one innocent question and you’d get a weeklong lecture on the intricacies of quantum physics. He had long since learned to keep quiet.

Still, he remained skeptical of Dane.

“I don’t know—” JJ began, but Warren was done.

“Jay, please. I know it’s not much to go on, but we need every available advantage. Okay?”

He clenched his jaw, but nodded. “Sure.”

Tonya reached for his hand as soon as he settled across from her. “It’s better if I touch you.”

It’s better if you don’t. “I don’t like to be touched.”

She reached out anyway, her cool fingers as fragile as a sparrow’s foot in his tensile palm. He couldn’t help but compare her touch to Sola’s. Though undeniably female, his love’s form was merely a streamlined version of his own, as if tendons and veins, bone and muscle, were all concrete-filled. Tonya, in contrast, was air.

Her tone, though, gave her weight. “You’re a singularly driven man, which isn’t rare of your kind, but you’ve a compulsiveness that drives you harder, farther, and deeper. You fight where others will stop.” Which was when she stopped, her body jolting slightly. For a moment he thought she was going to pull away, but then her voice deepened, the cadence altered. “In many ways, and for many years, you will be the perfect superhero.”

So much for her preternatural abilities, he thought, starting to draw away. He’d already screwed that up. “Thank you.”

Her airy fingers constricted, catching his again. “You harbor a strong sense of duty, but entertain a private restlessness. Your gift, a talent with your hands, steadies you and helps you to live more in the moment, but it doesn’t entirely quiet the internal dissension.”

JJ sat straighter, warier now, but intrigued. He was the troop’s weaponeer, had been even prior to metamorphosis into a full agent, and was responsible for making the conduits that could kill agents, something mortal weapons could not do.

“You have a tragic past, not unusual for one dealing in evil matters, but yours has shaped you in a strange way. You are attracted to things you fear, and desire to understand them. You have friends, you’re well liked, but the one who will know you best is drawn in by your fallibility.”

Warren stiffened at that, though he remained turned away, pushing aside the curtain to look out the window. Tonya spoke faster, as if rushing through the words could lessen their impact. “Saving ‘all of mankind’ isn’t enough to motivate you. It needs to be personal. You strip away a person’s labels and see the individual. It’s very admirable.”

“It’s very dangerous,” said Warren, who always saw things in terms of black and white.

“Yes,” JJ agreed immediately, knowing too well how his leader felt. Cohesiveness was desired, the good of the whole came first, the troop was more important than the individual.

“Can be,” Tonya said, knowing none of this. “But you desire a deeper involvement. You want to feel more. People, their ability to choose—”

“That’s enough,” JJ jerked away, her pseudo-strength giving way to his will. “None of this is useful in finding the Kairos.”

But her voice continued to rasp from between those frosted lips. “This will allow you to see her. She is a mystery to you. A dark—”

Matter.

The greatest mysteries are destined to remain a dark matter.

Dane wasn’t talking about the Kairos, he suddenly realized. She was speaking of Solange.

“You will know she is meant for you before she does.”

“No more.” JJ shot from his chair, heading straight to the door. He needed air.

“You will recognize her immediately—”

“Later,” he said, thinking, Shut up, shut up, shut up.

“There is no later. Not for you. Not even for me,” she said, tone darkening as JJ threw open the door. “There is only now.”

JJ froze. Because now half a dozen Shadow agents fanned across the parking lot in a reverse chevron, Solange at the tip. She had her tomahawk in one hand, his cell phone in the other. Her chest was smoking. She looked through him as if she’d never seen him before, as if he’d never lived inside her.

He probably shouldn’t have been surprised, but the betrayal cracked his heart. She’d used their private time, their time of truce—and, he’d stupidly begun to believe, their love—to gain data for the Shadow side.

“Hope you’re living ‘in the moment’ right now,” Warren commented, suddenly beside him. “Because these next few are going to be doozies.”

When JJ saw Sola standing there, his first impulse was to smile.

You see the individual.

Luckily his instinct was stronger, because he dove sideways just as the tomahawk appeared in front of his face, death inscribed on the blade. Whirring head over handle, it sliced air, then there was a sick, wet thud as it found another bodily home. JJ shifted to find Tonya Dane reclined in her chair, frosted lips rounded in surprise, the tomahawk buried in her skull. The crevasse between skin and gray matter literally split her in two.

The glyph on JJ’s chest kicked to life, matching Warren’s, who’d dived to the other side of the doorway as the phalanx of Shadows moved closer. JJ reached into his pocket and withdrew his whip, unfurling it as he pivoted. Its length licked out and wrapped around Tonya’s chair leg, trapping her body to it as he yanked, whipping both to Warren’s side. His leader withdrew the tomahawk quickly, with a murmured apology, and JJ jerked his weapon again, this time spinning the chair like a top, the barbed tips in the strip of leather releasing, ready now for a Shadow.

Obligingly, they continued their advance. JJ didn’t aim for Solange. Warren, possessing her conduit, would do that. Turning a person’s own weapon against him was like turning his body inside out. It was personal, destructive, and gave the bearer of the death an additional measure of power. Instead, JJ centered his weight, flicked his wrist, and sent the barbed whip on a snapping journey around the doorframe. He felt the tug of flesh as it connected, and jerked back like he was fly-fishing, instead pulling a man ashore. Once the Shadow was blocking the doorway, JJ pulled his whip free, ripping the man’s life with it. Warren and JJ then used the dead bulk to push their way into freedom.

Using his tattered trench as a defensive shield—JJ had made the armored coat himself—Warren covered the rear, deflecting projectiles, Solange’s tomahawk still fisted tight. JJ’s whip danced. Warren planted his boots into solar plexuses and stomachs, both screamed their battle cries…and a part of JJ continued to search for Sola.

“Look out!”

The Shadow dropped from above. Warren drew the trench over them, and JJ swept the ground with his whip, one hand braced on asphalt. Even so, he felt death smiling at him—there were too many enemies from too many directions…and all because he had trusted Solange.

The full weight of the descending Shadow crushed his shoulders. He braced, but it didn’t move, even while other Shadows yelled warnings into the night. Warren whipped the shielding trench from their heads, and JJ circled his whip, readying for the next attack. But the voices raining around them were familiar, and he recognized the mace lodged in the chest of the Shadow at his feet as Gregor’s, an ally.

Arriving in response to Warren’s call, the troop had surprised the attacking Shadows, and managed to inflict casualties of their own.

Because Solange hadn’t known about them, JJ thought, once the remaining Shadow agents had fled. He stood, breathing hard, whip hanging at his side, and surveyed the lot. Warren’s phone call, which Solange had somehow taped or bugged or replayed, had mentioned only the two of them locked in a room with the woman who could deliver them the Kairos. But now that woman, and link, was dead, and they were left to clean up the mess.

And Solange had disappeared. Again.

5

The perfect superhero…attracted to things you fear…it needs to be personal…

Tonya Dane’s final prediction, always his first waking thought, jolted JJ awake again.

He cursed as he rubbed a hand over his moist face, down his neck, and over his bare chest. That prediction, along with his mind’s betraying dreams—the touch of Sola’s flesh on his, the taste of her tongue in his mouth, the scent of her lingering on his skin, the sound of her soft moans in his ears—was why he’d become an insomniac in the past three months. And he supposed that was why he’d accidentally dozed off here, in the lush comfort of the Valhalla Hotel’s Turkish-style hammam. It was a warm and misty wet sauna with walls and floors of swirling mosaic tiles in relaxing blues, and the perfect place for JJ to study the city’s partiers…though that was hard to do, he thought wryly, if his eyes were shut.

Pushing himself to an upright position, he took a long drag from the ice water at his side, and looked around. The hammam boasted a heated gold slab in the great room’s center, occupied on this day by three blonds in minute bikinis—including one woman who looked marginally familiar. From his corner, which was both bench and booth, JJ watched as a cluster of suitors, eager to impress, flexed and bulged around them. Determining that none of the mortals were either risky or at risk, he breathed in the scents of eucalyptus and soft mint, and squinted up at the recessed lighting. It was so obscured in the wet haze that it almost resembled the night sky.

The blonds soon left, resulting in the exodus of most of the room’s occupants, but not before the middle girl, the one who looked familiar, shot him a smile sweeter than he’d expect attached to that body. He realized belatedly that it was the socialite he’d seen burning up the airwaves months ago. He recalled hearing she’d been keeping a low profile since, but imagined that could be true only if she refrained from stepping outside altogether. When the hammam doors swung shut behind her, the swirling wet haze closed ranks.

JJ shut his eyes.

“If you think this is relaxing, you should try the thermal detox.”

He’d imagined her voice so many times—screaming, begging, pleading for mercy—that for a moment it felt like a daydream sparked by the misty environs. But when he opened his eyes she was there, reclined sideways on the smooth, thick center slab, steam-slick from head to thigh, white bikini glaring against her tanned, smooth curves. Her dark hair swung down to reveal her slim shoulders. Only her eyes were indistinguishable, dark in their sockets, like they were missing altogether.

“It would be so much easier on me,” he said, before he knew it, “if you’d give me something to beat against.” He was a warrior and needed a fight. All this passive aggression was somehow exhausting.

“I know,” she whispered, letting her hand trail down her thigh.

“Are you going to ambush me again?”

“Rather hard when I don’t know where you’ll be,” she said, voice wry. “You’ve done a good job of covering your tracks, Jay. I’ve been waiting at this spa for weeks.”

Because he’d changed up every habit he had. He’d stopped drinking, moved house, and even sold his Mustang. Took a fiscal beating on it because of the dents in the hood, too. “You must be getting wrinkly.”

One corner of her mouth twitched. “It’s the hot new place in Vegas. I knew you’d have to come here eventually.”

So as to protect mortals from each other, and themselves. Keep the balance so all had a fair choice between virtue and vice.

Scent out the Shadow to exact his revenge.

But he hadn’t done such a good job of that, had he? He must have some sort of sensory blind spot where she was concerned, just like the emotional one that had allowed her to aim a tomahawk at his skull, while he never saw it coming. And now that she was in front of him, all he was doing was staring.

“You tried to kill me. After we made love, too. After we said whatever we learned while together was off-limits.”

“I was merely following the constellations.” She shrugged. “Orion.”

“And, let me guess, you hit the dark matter?”

She shook her head. “The apex. I was on a downswing.”

This time he didn’t think her explanation cute. He stood, crossing the room in full strides to loom over her. “So your decision to take my life was random?”

“Life is random, JJ!” Solange was suddenly on her feet, too, standing in the middle of the slab like a pissed-off sacrifice. “The stars and skies are the only things that make sense, don’t you see? They’re impermeable. They’re forever. The light gets all the attention, but the dark matter is the glue of our Universe.”

“Would you quit with all the ‘dark matter’ shit? They’re just words someone used to describe something unknown. That’s all. Fuck.”

Her eyes followed the way he rubbed his hands over his head, and he stopped. She huffed. “People like to label things they don’t understand.”

“Like Light and Shadow?”

“Like love.”

His turn to huff. “You’re going to talk to me of love?”

She lifted her chin. “Don’t look so outraged. You enjoyed our time together. Remember, I’ve seen the way you look at me when you’re buried deep. You like it.”

“I don’t like you.”

“But you love me.”

He didn’t say anything.

“And there’s your ‘tell.’ You’re actually quite incapable of a lie, JJ.”

“Moral pinnings aren’t weaknesses.”

“Sure they are. They make you predictable.”

He thought about that, took a step forward. “You love me, too.”

Her turn to fall silent now, but she didn’t move back.

“It means you can change…if you choose to.” And the thought fueled the first flush of excitement he’d felt in months. How sick was that?

“No,” she ultimately whispered. Her dark eyes were buried into his as she looked up. “I no more want to be you than you want to be me. You forgot that, even though I warned you.”

“So what now? You’re warning me again?”

Solange wrapped her arms around his neck. JJ let her.

Why the hell did he let her?

“What do you want?” he finally said, voice muffled against her neck.

“I already told you that.”

He thought back, brows furrowing, then shook his head. There was too much emotion marring his thoughts when it came to her. Like static over a phone line, it kept the real message from getting through.

“The first night,” she prompted. “In the desert storm. On the hood of your car.”

He’d asked her what she wanted then. Relevance. “I can’t give that to you.”

Her fingers trailed along his back, blindly found his tattoo. “Do you know the meaning of the word quintessence?”

“It means typical.”

She pulled back, offended. He pulled her tight again, and held her there. For a moment it felt like she’d struggle, but then she relaxed, her hipbones playing just beneath his. And then she pulled him down so they were seated across from each other, legs intertwined on the warmed marble. “It means pure. A highly concentrated and most perfect embodiment of a substance. You know what the basic elements are, right?”

He rolled his eyes. “Air, fire, earth, and water.” As an Aries, JJ was a fire sign. Solange was Pisces, a water sign. Maybe that was their problem.

And she’s a Shadow agent.

“So think about it. Quint-essence. The fifth essence, or element. The Pythagoreans called it ether. They claimed it flew upward at creation to comprise the stars.”

JJ furrowed his brows. Another piece in the puzzle that was her obsession with the constellations…but it still made no sense to him.

She smiled softly. “You, JJ, are the perfect embodiment of Light. I smelled it all those years ago, a mixture both warm and sweet.”

Oh, now he saw. “And you are quintessential Shadow, right? Never swayed, unchanging?”

“You tell me. Scent me again.”

Though an agent’s every sense was heightened, their noses were perhaps the most keen. Enemies were easiest to scent when emotions were high; an evolutionary gift, but JJ didn’t need to sniff to know Solange. His olfactory nerve had memorized her unique blend of heat and spice and that’s what he said.

“You sure?” she asked, tilting her head.

He hesitated, then tentatively sniffed at the air. Lifted his chin. Sniffed again. “You smell…different.”

Her scent had turned, not soured, but altered. Her spice had softened, the biting hooks melting into peppered waves, as if buried in something as heavy and sweet as melted caramel.

She wants relevance.

And in a matriarchal society such as theirs, the best way to achieve that was to mother a child of legacy, one of both Shadow and Light…the Kairos. “Oh my God. But the soothsayer said she’s already here, in this city.”

“She is.” Solange placed a hand on her belly. “Inside of me. And has been from that first night under the stars.”

A child of Shadow and Light. A baby who would be mothered by a Shadow. But his baby.

“Her name will be Lola. She will be the Kairos.”

Then the glossy door burst open and cool air rushed in. The man framed in the doorway wore a ratty trench and smelled like soured sweat. He had no place in an upscale spa, but JJ knew he’d moved so fast the reception staff hadn’t seen him. Sola’s glyph smoked to life, and JJ’s glyph burst with light, though whether it was in response to her or Warren, he didn’t know.

“Step back, JJ.”

He did it automatically, used to obeying his leader.

“Oh,” she said, turning her face up to his. Tears brimmed in her eyes, and JJ realized then what it looked like. “Touché.”

He reached forward, grip tightening on her arm. “No—”

She didn’t fight, and she didn’t look away as Warren advanced.

“Your emotion is up, son. Didn’t I warn you about that?”

“How long have you been following me?” JJ asked him, as if Solange—his enemy and lover—wasn’t right there.

“Since Tonya Dane told me you needed following.” He halted in front of them, looking with distaste at Solange, eyes taking her in like she was a snake. “So. You’re it.”

Like she was a thing, an intangible, trash to be discarded. Next to Warren she looked tiny.

“No,” JJ said, before his leader could act. “Wait—”

“I don’t think so.”

But as Warren stepped forward, arms reaching to snap Sola’s slim neck, the strangest thing happened. JJ’s fist shot out, slow-mo and of its own accord, and Warren’s head snapped back so fast it hadn’t righted itself before he hit the ground. JJ didn’t even feel his fist lower. It was as if he’d blinked and reality shifted, and he now existed on an entirely different plane.

Shaking, he looked down at his leader, splayed on the heated slab. What had he done? This was Warren, as close to a father figure as he’d ever had, and the leader of the agents of Light. His troop. His family!

“I should have killed you,” he told Sola, who hadn’t moved. “That first night. I should have slain you with your tomahawk and walked off with the power and prestige that would provide.”

“And I, you,” Solange said lightly. He glanced up to find her eyeing Warren speculatively. The visual that slid through his mind—a bronzed, bikini-clad warrior carving bodies with a tomahawk—would’ve been laughable were there anything funny about the situation. Yet all Solange did was swallow hard, and leveled her gaze at JJ. “So what are you going to do now?”

It wasn’t worry that had her asking, but confidence…and perhaps curiosity. She didn’t believe he’d kill her while she was pregnant, and she was right. Shadows were not innocents, and innocents were never Shadows…but this was his child.

And she will be Light.

So if he really thought he could make a difference in the world, a superhero in deed as well as name, and if he really believed that a Shadow could change—despite her obsession with the Universe’s dark spaces—then this was the time to prove it.

No, he thought, not prove it. Make it happen. Because Solange wanted to believe as well. Three times now she’d come to kill him, and hadn’t. She could have disappeared, had this baby on her own, and raised it as Shadow without his knowing. But she was here now. She had chosen him. She had chosen goodness. And he needed to do the same.

Solange smirked, as if reading that thought, but the expression dropped as soon as he reached forward, throwing her over his shoulder in one swift motion.

“What are you doing?” She started to struggle. He held tight.

“Finishing what I started that night.”

6

A union between them—a contractual one to accompany the physical one growing in Sola’s womb—was the best way to show her it could work. Their baby wouldn’t just be their world’s highest power, the Kairos, she would possess the best of them. She would represent the purest essence of a balance between their two sides. Quintessence…and choice.

And Solange was his. That was his foremost thought as he bent his head and placed his mouth to hers, sealing them forever. The female minister, with her shock of purple hair, clapped along with the two showgirls flanking her from the previous hour’s “Vegas Package” wedding. Since Solange wasn’t exactly sentimental, the feather- and crystal-encrusted women were also their witnesses for the ten-minute ceremony. When they finally pulled away, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

“Obviously this changes everything,” he said afterward, shoving a stacked fork of pancakes into his mouth, though he didn’t clarify if he meant the wedding, the baby, or the way they’d both betrayed their troops. They were at a pancake house, both ravenous and wild-eyed with what they’d done…and what had yet to be done.

“We can’t keep all of it out of the manuals,” she said, primly cutting her own food, creating the perfect bite. “Identities are one thing, and even a relationship can be hidden. Anything short of out-and-out treason will remain concealed until we show our hand, but this is different. It’s too big.”

But what wasn’t? JJ thought, as she spoke. Walking down the street was a big thing if there happened to be a drunk driver heading your way. Throwing an innocent smile at a stranger was big if she later became your lover. Everything was big, but then, he thought, watching Sola with her furrowed brow, everything was small, too. And the small things often mattered most.

Still, she was right. Things were omitted from the manuals because for knowledge to be useful it had to be earned, same as for mortals, but not all of this would be left out. And, ultimately, it might be better if it was revealed anyway. Because that would mean they’d gotten away.

“We must either part ways,” he said, wiping his mouth, “which is not going to happen, or disappear—”

“Difficult, but not impossible,” she interjected. In some cases, rogues blended with humanity for years.

“Harder once the baby comes,” he pointed out. As rogue agents, they’d both be disavowed, which meant they’d be driven from the city. Or killed. Not the most ideal circumstances under which to raise their child. “Or we change our appearances entirely.”

Even if the manuals showed them doing that, and they probably would, the drawings wouldn’t depict their new identities. Universal checks and balances were still in play.

But Sola had stopped chewing mid-bite, a wistful expression blanketing her face as she stared at him.

“What?”

“You. You,” she said again, giving it a lover’s inflection, as her eyes gained a sheen. “I just wish I could see you.”

He frowned. “You mean—”

“I mean before this.” She indicated the length of his body with a nod of her head, her sigh spiced with regret. It smelled like her, him, and his child.

“It’s not much different. Just bigger.” He reached over to squeeze her hand. “Besides, you did. Once.”

“As a child,” she said dismissively, before squeezing back. “But who did that child become? What would you have looked like if you’d been allowed to remain entirely you?”

“It’s still me, Sola. I’m in here. What does it matter what’s on the outside?”

“Because I want to make love to you. I want you buried inside of me. Not a facsimile, not a mask hiding you from me as if I’m just another person in this world. I’m your wife now, and our child will have your features. I’d like to be able to recognize them in her, that’s all.”

Her sentiment touched him, and he bent to place his forehead to hers. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to do that.”

She bit her lip, fought back her tears, and nodded. Glancing at her plate, she pushed at her food with her fork, before stilling. Then she looked up again, tilted her head, and narrowed her eyes. Her tears fell, squeezed out by the considering look.

“What?”

“Well, I might…there may actually be a way. But…no. Too risky.”

“What is it?”

“No. I can’t ask it of you. Not now, after you’ve done so much. Let’s just move forward, okay?”

“Please, Sola, just tell me. If I can’t be heroic for my own wife, who can I act for?”

It surprised a laugh from her, but it took a minute more of convincing. When she finally told him, he sat back in his chair, mind spinning. She was right; it was dangerous. It was also taboo.

Each side of the Zodiac possessed a human ally called a changeling, a child young enough to still believe in comic book heroes and epic causes. Their job was to protect an agent from his or her enemies when within a safe zone, and not just the agent, but the agent’s identity as well. When the changelings willed it, they could mold their aura around an agent’s form to hide the person’s current identity by revealing the original.

Despite this ability, the kids were truly mortal. As soon as they reached puberty, the willingness to believe in comics and superheroes waned. They lost their powers, practically overnight, and put the Zodiac world behind them as they would a toy train. Their posts and duties were then passed on to another.

Asking a changeling to perform this function outside a safe zone was taboo because it was also dangerous. An agent could survive injury by a mortal weapon, but if the agent was attacked while wearing a changeling’s aura, the child would still suffer mortal damage. There was also the issue of securing the changeling’s earthly body. When an agent was using the aura, the child’s was immobilized, as fragile as an egg until the aura was returned. That emptied mortal body couldn’t survive beyond twelve hours.

All these considerations raced through JJ’s mind as he studied Sola. What ultimately settled it was putting himself in her position. If she were clothed in a fleshly disguise, wouldn’t he want to see his true love beneath? The way her body moved below his, how her face looked when focused solely on him? Besides, despite the warnings, a changeling had never been harmed before. The warnings were just that: like notices on the back of poison. Only dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands.

“And only once, right?” he asked, though he wasn’t really talking to her.

“It would be enough,” she said simply, and that was it. She didn’t want to hurt anyone, she only wanted him. And this would be her sole opportunity to see whom she was giving up her entire world for.

“Well, as long as we’re living dangerously,” he said, and a small jolt at the illicit—the same dark desire Sola had known lived in him from the beginning—thrilled through him as they kissed, sealing the decision.

7

It was JJ’s responsibility to acquire the changeling, but Sola set the stage. She chose a penthouse downtown, one with an old-school feel but new-city glamour. In the bedroom, she’d created a cocoon of pillows to shelter the fragile shell the changeling would become once JJ borrowed his aura. Their room, he assumed, was up the winding staircase she descended when JJ and the boy arrived.

“I’m going to put on something a little more comfortable,” Sola whispered, her body twining with his, already smelling of wet heat. “I suggest you do the same.”

She ascended the staircase like a wisp of smoke, and JJ smiled after her, until the kid, Ricky, finally cleared his throat. He was watching Solange with narrowed eyes, but he trusted JJ enough to follow.

“Right. Come with me.”

Once inside the bedroom, they wasted little time. The kid reminded him that it was imperative to return his aura within twelve hours, then, making it look easy, shrugged off his aura as simply as he’d remove his clothes. His body elongated into a shimmering outline of JJ’s, thinning to a finger’s width to achieve the same height, the transformation reflected in the mirror across from them. The boy’s glimmering form deepened to opaqueness, so that his features disappeared. Now JJ’s could appear through him.

What are you doing?

JJ, watching all this as though from a distance, immediately dismissed the voice. He was being transparent, that’s what he was doing. Being truly seen, perhaps for the first time since Solange had looked at him across the distance of his parents’ broken bodies. How appropriate that it was she who would see him again now, not as an enemy or superhero, just him and her and the child they’d created between them.

He stepped forward, through the elongated form, and felt the aura mold to him like wet gauze, healing and cool. He avoided looking in the mirror as he made sure the boy’s now lifeless body was safely cradled on the bed before heading upstairs. He wanted his wife to be the first to see him. The first in years.

She killed in black silk. Though the staircase surprisingly led to a rooftop terrace that mirrored an outdoor bedroom with the sky spread above, and downtown Vegas winking below, he marveled only at her. It was a toss-up as to what possessed a deeper sheen, her hair or the chemise, or perhaps, JJ thought, it was her eyes, fixed on him as she handed him a glass of champagne, then clinked her glass to his.

“To quintessence,” she said softly.

“To relevance,” he added, which made her smile. She lifted to her toes, mouth open and inviting on his. JJ moved to deepen the kiss, but she pulled back and held him at arm’s length, studying the man who was really her husband.

JJ shifted under her stare. “Well?” he finally asked, sipping nervously at his glass as her eyes trailed him from head to toe. He felt vulnerable, small beneath the night sky they both loved. Though he knew the stars were there, they were unreadable from the city, and he had a sudden flash of being suspended amid all that dark matter, not knowing if he was on an upswing, or a down.

What are you doing? His inner voice again, more ur-¥?gently, but his eyes had already slid to Sola’s smooth legs as she poured more champagne, the black silk rounding out her behind, cutting low on her back to reveal the ridges and muscles and strength he so loved. He caught his reflection in the oval floor mirror and startled at the sight. But he was only sizing himself up in relation to her, and in his eyes—scotch-colored, the same as always—they were a perfect fit. And that’s what she commented on.

“She’ll have your eyes.”

He lifted her, kissing her neck as he dropped her to the center of the bed, also draped in black, so only her limbs shone in the ambient light. Her lips and eyes were dewy, and so was her body as his mouth trailed downward. She was his drug, he decided, as he grew dizzier with her taste and scent and sight. Her moans echoed like a shifting wind as he lingered at her thighs, her desire driving his need. Champagne poured over her torso, and he licked it clean on the way back up to her mouth, where he entered her, dividing her twice. She spread her limbs like a five-tipped star, encouraging him to mirror her with her hands and hips. He did, and she sucked and sucked at him, like she was trying to pull his soul loose and bury it inside her. Already dizzy, he actually became breathless, but her need was relentless. She wouldn’t stop.

And he couldn’t stop it.

His eyes winged wide—sent another wave of dizziness through his head—and found she was already watching him. He tried to pull away. The strong arms he loved tightened, and her heels hooked around his. She sucked harder.

The wine.

More dizziness as the realization coursed through his body, and into his loins. Too late now, he couldn’t help it. He came. She took—his seed, his breath and, he realized as he finally passed out, the changeling’s aura from his body—all in a small, inaudible pop.

His last thought before all faded to black? The small things mattered the most.

He searched. God, did he search. And as he did—stumbling across the highway, racing down stinking alleyways, and canvassing all the places he knew Solange had once been—the scales fell from his eyes.

Solange had convinced him to gain the changeling’s aura, knowing full well the boy, as one who championed the Light, would never trust her. It made sense that she hadn’t tried the same with the Shadow changeling. That would compromise their side, angering her leader, and it was obvious now—as it should have been all along—that she was still very much a Shadow.

What JJ couldn’t understand was what she needed with the aura anyway. By the time the twelve-hour window was almost up, and he still hadn’t found Solange and the aura she was hiding beneath, he knew he’d never know the answer to that question. He returned to the penthouse, determined that the boy who’d trusted him so completely wouldn’t die alone.

Yet he did die.

JJ entered the bedroom where Ricky lay, instantly shocked at how tiny he looked. Curled into the fetal position, hands tucked prayerfully beneath his chin, his head was bent low as if braced for a blow. He was so small…

Every person has a right to the small things.

His father’s words burst through his mind like the monsoon that had raged on the night all this had begun. Surely it was only his own guilt rearing, but it seemed the completion of the thought coincided exactly with the boy’s final mortal moment. The slight quiver that overtook the small body was as unnatural as if it were made of rousing snakes, and JJ shuddered, swearing he could hear a rattler’s shake.

The little happinesses.

The quiver strengthened into a quake, and the cells comprising Ricky’s skin began separating, looking pixilated at first, some sinking while others slipped and scattered across the ridges and angles of the young body before dropping to the cotton bedding. JJ’s gut twisted, and his hard exhalation scattered those loosened cells into a fine coating of dust.

Those are the ones that make life most worth living.

The boy settled more firmly, burrowing into his final resting place as his sandy insides softened, and he even looked peaceful before his small smile, and his lips, too, fell away. JJ refused to avert his eyes as the freckles dropped, the eyelashes fell. He saw the spiky hair flatten, dissolve, and leave behind a powdery skull. JJ’s unblinking stare was obscured only when he began to cry, and he eventually realized between convulsing, open-eyed sobs that his wet sorrow was melding with the boy-shaped dune. He could literally build a castle with his tears. It made him cry harder.

It’s what we’re fighting for, came his father’s last, late reminder.

When, and how, had JJ forgotten to fight?

The shell of Ricky’s body was now totally depleted, drained as if dehydrated, lacking life force instead of water. From somewhere in the suite a clock chimed off the last of the twelve-hour mark, and JJ reached out to touch a small hand, to say good-bye. In one moment there was a child. In the next, dust mounded the bedding, a handful finely ground as beach sand in JJ’s fist.

An innocent. A child. Dead because of him.

And JJ did bow his head now, unable to form thought or words, but sending up a prayer of emotion into the Universe, hoping someone, something, somewhere understood the regret squeezing his chest, the sorrow burning in his gut, and the hopelessness that made him want to lie down, too, and embrace a dusty death.

Weeping openly, not even trying to hide the scent of his shame and sorrow and misery, JJ didn’t turn at the soft sound behind him. Unguarded emotions were easy for his kind to pick up. Kneeling bedside, he bowed his head and welcomed blessed death. But the enemy he’d drawn back to him had something else in mind.

JJ turned his tear-streaked face, and found Warren’s unsurprised gaze locked hard on his. Tonya Dane’s prediction—the one Warren hadn’t wanted to believe and had been trying to prevent—had finally come true. His troop leader put it together quickly, eyes slipping mournfully to the mound of dust on the bed, as he inhaled to take in both the boy and Solange on JJ’s skin.

“You should kill me,” JJ said flatly, still kneeling.

“Yes.” Warren’s reply was, if possible, even flatter. “At the very least, exile.”

“No.” JJ’s mind stumbled over the unacceptable thought. “I don’t want to live. I don’t want—”

“I don’t care what you want.” Warren remained still, so enraged he was all but quivering. “From now on, you want what I want.”

“And that is?” JJ said it casually, but inside he was braced against the idea of living. He glanced at the plate-glass window, but a dive from the penthouse balcony wouldn’t be enough to kill him. Warren, clearly intuiting his thoughts, moved between him and the window.

“I take responsibility for this,” he surprised JJ by saying. “I made a mistake. I allowed you too much autonomy and granted you a position with too much power. I favored you because of your childhood, your parents, their deaths. When you wanted the position of weapons master I allowed that—”

Now something did spark inside JJ. “Because I’m the best.”

Warren nearly snapped back, but closed his eyes instead, his head and shoulders drooping. “But I should have had someone apprenticing with you. I just never thought you would…I should have thought.”

JJ didn’t bother saying he was sorry. An apology meant nothing in the wake of an innocent’s death. Besides, Warren was admitting he would exile or kill JJ if the troop didn’t need him so badly, and one thing that could be counted on by Warren, he always acted in the best interest of the troop.

When Warren lifted his head again, the fatigue was gone and that hard truth was branded in his gaze. “You will give yourself over entirely to me,” he said, voice harder than JJ had ever heard it.

Because living with the knowledge of what he’d done would be harder than dying over it.

“You’ll tell no one about your wife”—he spit the word—“or the changeling. You’ll do what I say, no questions asked, no argument, no explanation.”

“Okay,” JJ finally agreed, head bowed, fingers dusty.

“That wasn’t a request.” Warren’s voice regained its strength and rhythm as he strode forward.

JJ nodded, staring at the floor. “And then I’ll find her. I’ll make this right…”

“You’ll do no such thing.” Warren said, jerking JJ to his feet. Their faces were so close their noses nearly touched. “She’s poison to you, boy. Besides, do you think you deserve any sort of happy ending after what you’ve done?”

No. He didn’t. No happily-ever-after…including revenge.

“She won’t find you, either. We’ll change your identity in full this time. Micah will make you over into something new, something better, someone who won’t make this kind of mistake again.”

JJ recalled the fiery pain following his last surgery, and the ghost of his old bulk trying to squeeze from beneath his current flesh, but he only stared at Warren mutely before nodding again.

“You’re no longer your mother’s son. Not JJ, or Jay…or Jaden Jacks.” Not his mother’s son, not his father’s, either. Warren was stripping him of that connection and past, but in a way it was a relief. He had failed them, too.

“Solange won’t ever find you. We’ll make it so that even your own troop members won’t remember you. It’ll be as if you never existed.”

JJ did step back now, unable to keep his mouth from falling open. Would Warren really do that? He knew Micah could erase the memories of mortals, rewire their minds so that new pasts defined their futures. It was especially useful if one had happened upon an event or object derived from their hidden world. But could Warren really convince Micah to alter the troop’s collective memory? It’d be a huge undertaking…not just rewiring the minds of the twelve senior star signs, but the ward mothers who’d helped raise JJ in their underground sanctuary, and the flexible minds of the initiates, too—the children of the next generation who so looked up to him now. Would Warren do that?

He looked at his troop leader’s gaze—level again, and cool. Yes, he would. None of them would have a choice in the matter, and most wouldn’t even question it. If they ever read about JJ in the back issues of the manual of Light, it would be like reading about someone else entirely. And it made JJ wonder: had Warren ever done this before?

But he’d be alone in his wonder, JJ realized. That would be his punishment. To remember what he’d done, to know the failure forever, and to live among his peers as a fraud. So it was almost as harsh as a death sentence.

JJ nodded yet again.

“You will take the appearance and job I determine for you, you will return to the sanctuary every night without fail, and you will log your activities for me down to the last detail.”

“Yes,” he replied woodenly. He no longer cared where his needs and desires ranked in his own life. In fact, it would be a relief to follow orders and let someone else do the thinking for a while. He would give his life over in service to mortals, and he’d do it wholeheartedly…or at least with what was left of it after Solange’s betrayal.

Warren continued, voice thick with everything he wasn’t allowing himself to say…and do. “You will be the exemplary superhero in every way. If I even suspect you’re faltering, I’ll kill you myself.”

JJ nodded numbly. Then Warren punched him so hard he fell into the sea of pillows. A cloud of dust rose around him, and he coughed, tasting loss and death and a dry guilt that smothered any burning desire to fight. Warren didn’t want his numb acquiescence, he realized.

Not when there was so much dust.

“I’m not doing this for you.” Warren hissed, pointing a finger at JJ, tears rolling down his cheeks as he said it. “This is for your parents and what they meant to me, and what they sacrificed for us all.”

“I won’t forget again. Ever.”

Though his parents were gone, he would live for them, as they’d once lived for each other. And he’d learn to listen again to his intuition, the inner voice he’d muted while reaching for his own selfish dreams, reaching until Solange had snagged his palm, and pulled him into all this dust.

His answers, his sorrowed scent, seemed to mollify Warren. His leader turned to the bedroom window, trench billowing at his ankles, and looked out at the city he was charged to protect. “You may choose your own name.”

JJ stood and joined Warren at the window. “Hunter.”

Warren looked at him sharply.

“Hunter,” he repeated, sending back the steely gaze. Warren wanted the perfect embodiment of a superhero, so that’s who he’d be. The purest predator in the city. The most concentrated essence of good, he thought, looking up at the sky.

The quintessential hunter.

Because somewhere out there was a woman with a thing for dark-haired men, a preference for Mustangs, and a need for relevance. She took action based on the constellations, her deeds steered by the dark matter in between, and she did it with his daughter, his Lola, in her belly.

And a child, Hunter decided, rubbing faintly dusty fingers together, was a damn good reason to continue the fight.