The Scent of Shadows sotz-1

by Vicki Pettersson

  Ajax began to laugh.

  “You move fast, Archer,” Ajax said, his voice merry with observation. The girl whimpered.

  “Don’t,” I said, taking another step forward.

  “You should’ve run when you had the chance. It’s one thing I can’t quite understand about the Light signs. Putting your lives at risk for mortals when there are just so many of them about.” He waved his poker in the air like it was a wand. “When are you going to realize they’re expendable? They’re nothing. Just flesh, weakness, and stench. That the agents of Light would care for them at all boggles the mind…and makes you so much easier to kill.”

  I read his deadly intention before he moved, and dove half a second before he flipped the poker in his hand. The weapon, a missile now, sank home exactly where I’d been standing, its steel tip buried in a pyramid of Coke cases, sending sodas exploding in the air as it burst into flame.

  I began to sprint toward him before the smoke could clear, darting across aisles with no particular plan except to close the distance between Ajax and me and bring that terrified clerk within arm’s reach. I crossed two aisles and raced up a third, to end up behind him. He pulled another poker from beneath his jacket, and this time there wasn’t enough distance to duck, dive, or even blink. Ajax laughed.

  “Yes, you’re very fast,” he repeated, turning the hilt of the blade over and over in his hand. “But let’s see if you’re fast enough.”

  He didn’t throw it. I knew he wouldn’t, even before he inverted the tip and plunged it into the teenager’s heart. Her screaming cut off into a gasping whine, then a gurgling sigh, and finally an irregular sucking noise, like she was breathing through a bent straw. Ajax twisted the poker, making no move to dislodge it from her chest cavity, just twisting and turning like he was stirring soup. As she died, his eyes never left mine.

  “Why?” I asked, my breath, body, and mind going utterly numb. I pulled my remaining energy inward, knowing if I didn’t that I’d collapse right there, weighed down by guilt and revulsion, and the knowledge that I’d caused this. Again. “Why do you kill innocent people?”

  He dumped the girl’s body on the floor and wiped his hands on his jacket. “Pain amuses me. Death amuses me.”

  “Then you’re going to find this hilarious.” Ajax found out just how fast I was, and it was fast enough.

  We hit the floor with a loud smack, rolling together behind the photo counter. Smells became colors behind my eyes; yellow-tinged chemicals, dusky blood, tar-thick smoke, and Ajax’s breath, putrid as pus, audible in my ear. The taste of him was sour as my teeth found flesh and bit down hard. He howled, anger laced with pain, and pulled away, his blood joining the noxious feast. I smiled as he cried out again, only vaguely aware in some still sane part of my mind that I was still wearing the pig’s mask, and with another human’s blood running down my chin, I must have looked like an animal indeed.

  We leapt at each other again.

  He should have been too fast for me, at least the “me” I’d been nine weeks earlier, but I was countering his moves; meeting blow with blow, and each parry with feint. My training, coupled with the strength I’d been gifted with during metamorphosis, was the most delicious melding of power I could ever imagine. Aggression fused with streaming adrenaline, unadulterated hate, and manifested in a speed I never knew I possessed.

  I reveled in it. My strikes were preemptive. I landed punches first and hard. I gained stronger footing. I swung out with my legs. I was confident…and that, of course, was my mistake.

  I landed a blow to the thigh designed to take out his left leg and Ajax seemed to stumble. When I moved in for the follow-up, he wrong-footed me, and plowed a right hook into the exposed part of my lower face. He was on me before I recovered, and we hit the ground again, this time my body taking the full impact of our combined weight.

  My breath was driven from my chest, and a hollow snap accompanied by an acute shot of pain told me at least one rib had cracked. Ajax flipped me easily, mounting me at the waist and settling his weight on my tender midsection. I struggled for breath, but it wasn’t coming. Ajax laughed…as he had upon scenting me, and upon killing the young, innocent clerk. I was getting sick of that dry, bone-rattling sound.

  I swiped the back of my one free hand over my mouth, and came away with blood. When I repeated the motion, it came away dry. I was healing faster than ever. Unfortunately, Ajax noticed this too.

  “What? No more tricks, little Archer?” He placed his palm on my chest in what could have been mistaken for an intimate gesture…until he leaned forward. I groaned as pain bloomed behind my lids and the freshly healed rib popped again.

  He chuckled under his breath, and I could see where this was heading. Sitting back, his weight still pinning me down, he tilted his head and considered me more closely.

  “Did you know, I almost felt sorry for you when we first met? I remember thinking, ‘This poor little girl has no idea why she exists, never mind what she can do or who she might become.’ It was pitiful, really. All that ripe, raw power beginning to glow beneath your skin. All that pent-up ability straining to burst free, trapped instead by that stupid, ignorant mind. Not to mention this fragile wall of flesh.” He popped the rib again, and my head swam with pain. I closed my eyes, afraid I was going to pass out. Ironically enough, his voice kept me anchored in the present.

  “I am not, as you might expect, totally void in my feeling for others.” I opened one eye to see if he was serious, but had difficulty seeing through the slits in my tilted mask. His voice sounded serious. “Butch, for example. I cared for him.”

  Great. He’d once cared deeply for another psychopath. I wanted to tell him it didn’t necessarily qualify him for sainthood, but I could actually feel my rib stitching together again in my chest and didn’t dare.

  “I went on that first date,” he continued conversationally, “intending to kill you quickly. Mercifully.”

  “So what changed?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even. Trying to breathe through the pain so I could think of something else to do.

  Ajax wasn’t fooled by my question. Leaning forward again, he popped that fragile rib easily. “You opened your mouth.”

  He caved in another of my ribs just for pleasure. I cried out at the fresh break, unable to stop myself this time.

  “Look at me, Joanna. Look at me,” he repeated patiently, like speaking to a child. He sunk his fingernails into my jaw, forcing my gaze straight. His face was somewhat obscured through the mask, but I caught his eyes probing mine. “I want you to know who I am, deep down, when I kill you.”

  “I know who you are,” I managed as his fingers sunk deeper into my cheeks. “I’ve seen you without your mask before.”

  “In the restaurant, yes, but seeing is not knowing. Observation is no match for experience.”

  Oh God. This didn’t sound good.

  “They lied to you, Joanna.” He almost looked pained as he said this. “There is no precious balance between good and evil. No yin and yang. No good or bad. Light or Shadow.”

  “Apparently your mother disagreed with that.”

  Ajax froze momentarily, then patted my cheek, hard. “She was wrong. Misguided. She never learned, or must have forgotten, that all there really is in this world are varying degrees of evil. That, and the point at which every human being breaks.”

  “She didn’t believe that.”

  He grinned sadistically. “She did in the end.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  He leaned closer, eyes gleaming. “I’ll make you a believer too.”

  I recoiled, but there was nowhere to go.

  “Let’s both remove our disguises, shall we?”

  He gouged his fingertips through the eyes of my mask so forcefully only the narrowness of the slats saved my eyesight. Just as quickly as he lifted the pig’s snout away, however, it snapped back into place, the plastic edges stinging my skin. His weight was gone so suddenly it was as if he’d been lifted straight
into the air. A wild war cry, accompanied by a flurry of wind, swept through the building.

  Freed, and desperate to stay that way, I backpedaled until my head slammed against the photo counter. Ripping the mask from my face, I strained to see where Ajax had gone, as well as who, or what, was in here with us. The answer was immediate. I was lifted to my feet, none too gently, and found myself facing an angry set of brown eyes.

  “Warren,” I gasped. My eyes darted away from him, searching for Ajax, finding him in a crouch atop an aisle barrier facing two other men. The first was stocky but obviously strong, the other lithe as he leapt the entire seven feet in height to square off against Ajax. Both were armed, and both their chests were glowing, pulsing vibrantly. I pushed at Warren’s hands, but he jerked me back into place, yanking my ball cap low.

  “Don’t let him see your face.” Cuffing me by the neck like a mother cat with her kitten, he forced my head lower again. Then he half dragged me to the exit, shielding me with his own body. Even so, I felt the moment Ajax’s eyes lit upon my back. I felt their probing, their impotent fury, and the oily slickness of his thoughts just behind that stare. Outnumbered, he turned away with an outraged cry.

  “I’ll find you out, Archer!” he called out. “I’ll discover your true identity and when I’m finished with you, you will believe!”

  Warren’s fingers tightened on my neck, squelching my instinct to turn, and he blew what I took to be a raspberry at Ajax while ushering me out the door. The last thing I heard was the report of feet pounding across linoleum, a back door slam, and two other pairs giving chase. We headed in the opposite direction, back toward the Strip, where the light bled into the street.

  “My duffel!” I said, halting suddenly.

  “Don’t stop,” he ordered, pushing harder. “Felix will get it.”

  “Can you at least let go of my neck? I’m getting a kink.”

  Warren released me so abruptly I stumbled. He glanced side to side, pivoting so he was walking backward, then turned again before taking off in a trot. “Hurry. The time of crossing is near, and we’re not safe yet.”

  We ran, Warren openly vigilant, and me trying to breathe through the ache in my side which was finally, if slowly, receding. The silhouette of the Peppermill loomed closer, contoured from the other side by the setting sun, and I could see people dining through the long plate-glass windows, oblivious to our plight. It was unsettling how normal everything looked. The foot tourists hardly glanced up as we wove between cars in the restaurant’s asphalt lot. Perhaps they thought it normal in Vegas for an unshaven bum in a leather trench coat to be jogging with a girl whose sweater was half singed from her chest.

  “This way.” We darted around the building’s far corner and into a narrow alley that reeked of urine. A cab waited there, lights off, and a couple stood at the window, arguing loudly with the car’s sole occupant.

  The man loomed over the driver, one hand propped on the hood, irritation coating his voice. “Look, are you on duty or not?”

  “I want to go to the Luxor,” the woman whined.

  The headlights flipped on to illuminate us in their beam.

  “He’s waiting for us,” Warren said sharply. The woman took one look and whimpered. I didn’t know what I looked like, but Warren was striding toward them at a decidedly aggressive pace, limp exaggerated, his coat billowing around his ankles. The couple backed down the alley, not exactly the safest choice of exits, but at least it was away from us. The cab inched forward, and the doors on each side swung open.

  “Get in,” Warren ordered, skirting to the opposite side. I did, wordlessly, wincing as the leather seat caught the gash in the back of my thigh. Leaning my head back, I closed my eyes, and sighed as the door shut and the car began to move.

  “I smell Ajax,” the driver said, singsonging the name. I peeked to find him regarding me through the rearview mirror. All I could make out of his face were his eyes, but they were wide and crinkled at the edges as he laughed at some private joke. I didn’t see what was so funny, and neither did Warren.

  “That’s because Ajax somehow tracked her,” he answered, shifting to face me. “Tell me, Olivia, because I feel like I’m missing something here, but what part of ‘meet me at the Peppermill’ means ‘go fight Ajax at the corner drugstore’?”

  I turned my head away. “He started it.”

  “Do you know what you’ve done? What you could have undone?”

  I clenched my teeth and my jaw ached where Ajax’s fingers had dug into bone. I knew the feeling would fade, that I would soon heal, but the knowledge alleviated nothing right now.

  “What did you do to call him?”

  I glanced at the driver who was still staring at me, a lucky rabbit’s foot swinging beneath his mirrored image, his eyes still amused, then turned to Warren. “Nothing.”

  “You did something,” he said, squaring on me in his seat. “He found you despite the masking agent we administered, and in less than two weeks. I want to know how.”

  Apparently I hadn’t gotten to that comic yet. I shrugged.

  Warren stared at me, his face stony and cold, eyes unblinking. “Did you invoke his name?”

  I shook my head.

  “Did you go after him yourself?”

  “No.” I clenched my teeth again. The pain was gone.

  “Damn it, Olivia!” He punched his fist into the seat in front of him. “You’re not going to keep getting this lucky! What did you do?”

  I leaned toward him and spaced my words evenly. “Don’t. Yell. At me. Anymore.”

  “Warren’s right,” the driver said conversationally. “You are lucky.”

  “Not just lucky…stupid lucky!”

  I looked at him, and I swear his outline was singed in red. This manipulative fruitcake thought he had reason to be furious with me? While my sister was dead, my life was over, and my bones were stitching together inside of me, again?

  “I said don’t fucking yell at me!”

  The words ricocheted like shots off the inside of the cab, shaking it on its wheels. The driver gripped the steering wheel, eyes on the road and no longer smiling, and the smell of singed hair hung in the air. I glared at Warren, and realized he’d backed up in his seat.

  I knew then my Shadow side was showing. That hadn’t been my voice. It was deeper, lower than my natural range, the vocal cords scorched by fury. I swallowed down the anger, the heat scalding my lungs, and turned away again. Tears boiled in my eyes. Shit. Shit! What was happening to me?

  “Jesus,” the driver said, exhaling deeply. It was the last thing anyone said for a long time.

  “Did you kill someone?” Warren finally asked.

  I looked at him in blatant disbelief, shocked to the bone. “Well, it was on my to-do list right after get pedicure, but, no, I hadn’t quite gotten to it yet!”

  Warren shook his head, looking a lot older than I’d ever seen him. “This isn’t a joke.”

  “Wrong, Warren! This whole thing is a joke! A supernatural organization is protecting Las Vegas? Give me a break! Information passed on through comic books…and m-my goddamned chest lights up like a Christmas ornament when someone wants to kill me!” Now I just sounded panicked, frightened rather than frightening. “It’s all a fucking joke, and guess what? Me—my life!—is the fucking punch line!”

  I felt laughter bubbling up in my throat, bitter as bile, and I held it back because I knew it’d come out in a scream, and I was afraid it would never stop. Swallowing hard, feeling light-headed, I said, “Don’t tell me what to think about what I’ve seen since you entered my life. Don’t tell me what to laugh at, or what’s funny and what’s not. I’ll fucking howl at the moon if I feel like it. And,” I added, pointing my finger at his chest, “don’t ever, ever tell me how to feel!”

  And then I really did start laughing. I laughed and laughed until the manic sound soured and turned to tears. Then I cried and cried.

  And then I cried some more.

  16

 
; The rest of the cab ride was spent in stony and uncomfortable silence, and as we sped up Industrial, heading under Flamingo Road, I dully watched the sun setting behind the Palms and felt the darkness rising, eyeing me from the east. Gridlock had set in on I-15, parallel to us, and I could see people singing and talking from behind their windshields, suspended on that strip of highway, momentarily delayed on the way to the rest of their lives.

  Meanwhile, as the world went on revolving around me, I tried to answer Warren’s questions for myself. How had Ajax found me? Had I done something to call him to me? I tried to think back, but my memories were blighted by screams and pain, and Ajax’s particular scent had slithered beneath my skin to suck at my pores. The questions continued to pile up before me, and like those drivers on the freeway, I felt stuck in eternal gridlock.

  And why would Warren ask if I’d murdered another person? Could he really believe I could do it? Did I, in some chipped and faulty corner of my heart, believe it of myself? I thought about the construction workers again, and how power-drunk I’d felt as I used my senses and words to blow holes into their worlds. I had tried to justify it in my mind, telling myself they’d deserved and asked for it; but the truth was, even though I hadn’t killed that man named Mark, or the other man who was sleeping with his wife, I had altered their lives in a horrible and irrevocable way. And wasn’t that a death of sorts? Wasn’t that a way to murder Mark’s hope, in his own fallible heart, that he was wrong in suspecting his best friend and wife?

  I put a hand to my mouth and stared blindly out the window, deciding I didn’t want the answers to all my questions.

  We pulled abruptly into a half-empty parking lot behind Tommy Rocker’s Cantina, a favorite hangout for locals who wanted to be near the Strip but not necessarily the tourists. Two men emerged from the bar, looking innocuous, just colleagues enjoying an after-hours drink before facing the drive home, but I recognized them as the men who’d chased Ajax. The shorter was dark and severe-looking, but the taller appeared happy and light, bouncing on his toes as he approached the cab. The paranormal world’s answer to Laurel and Hardy.