I slept that night with more soundness and peace than I had since awakening in my sister’s body, and it was probably due to Greta’s soft words, her tea, and the sense that even though I’d nearly been fried in the process, I was finally in a place where I was relatively safe. I know I dreamt, but there was nothing of reason or memory or meaning in the dreams, only my body healing itself in the long midnight hours, and the scent of warm roses overlying it all.
Then I crawled into the second half of the night.
I heard them yelling from my room in the opposite wing of the house, their voices stacking up on one another’s just as they had that first time a decade earlier. The novelty of hearing my mother actually standing up to Xavier had been enough to have me tiptoeing through the halls to their bedroom, and the interest sparked when I heard my name ping-ponging between them kept me there. I centered an eye between the gap in the door and leaned forward, careful not to bump it with my growing belly.
“I’m talking about the way you look at her!” my mother said, and I heard Xavier take a breath, but Zoe cut him off cold. “Like she’s filthy inside, Xavier. Like she should be ashamed.”
He paused before saying, “She’s carrying a monster’s child.”
My hand stifled my gasp and I drew back in the hallway, as I imagine my mother did in their bedroom. Then, in a new voice, she said, “Well, like mother, like daughter, I guess.”
I heard a crack then, an open palm ricocheting off bare flesh, and my mother’s surprised cry before an almost unearthly length of silence. Then, slowly, silently, almost deadly…
“There is nothing wrong with my daughter.” And she said it like I belonged to her alone. And though I was sixteen again in the dream, I carried with me the knowledge that Xavier was not my father. And deep down he must have known it.
“Zoe!”
His call had me rushing to hide in the portico of the adjoining hallway just before my mother appeared, and I watched from there as she strode away, seeing her with new eyes. It was like the bandages Greta had peeled away hours earlier had really been blinders, and in this dreamy reenactment I didn’t just see the sheen of tears on her cheeks, I saw the determination beneath them, and the hands clenched into able fists at her sides.
“Zoe!” Xavier followed, stopping right in front of the bisected hallway, giving me a clear glimpse of the bewilderment and anger muddling his normally composed face. The part of me that knew I was dreaming wanted to laugh. I’d forgotten all about this argument. She’d been gone the next day, and that’s what I’d been focused on. But it all made sense now, and my dreaming self did laugh as I continued to study Xavier’s confusion.
He heard me.
Xavier’s head swiveled as if it was ratcheted on his neck, eyes finding me squatting in the dark like twin lasers fixing on a target. I froze awkwardly, smile dying on my face as his chin lowered and his top lip lifted in a sneer, and I swallowed hard. I didn’t remember this part.
“Think it’s funny, little Archer?” he asked, in a voice throatier than his own, one raspy with age and power. He pivoted stiffly to face me, and I fell back, hampered by my belly…though I knew this was a dream and I was no longer pregnant. I wasn’t even there.
But those eyes remained fixed on me, colder and darker than I’d ever seen them, and they followed my frantic backpedaling pitilessly. I scrambled away as he began to stride toward me, each of his steps faster, crisper, than the last, but then my back was cornered, the stunted hallway dead-ending into a laundry chute, and I had nowhere to hide.
I took a large breath, intending to wake myself up—because I knew this wasn’t real; it hadn’t happened this way, and it wasn’t happening now—but a fat palm slapped over my mouth, and I tasted blood as my teeth cut into my top lip. I felt like a butterfly pinned to a board. I struggled, my limbs wheeled, the baby tumbling madly in my belly, but my head was immobile beneath that iron-straight arm. Then the hand shifted and my head was lifted, forcing me to look in his face.
There was a summer during my childhood that I remember being particularly hot. I took refuge one day beneath a giant pepper tree, brushing aside the long flowing branches to enter a shaded chamber, the spicy scent of those living limbs heavy on the searing air. I was just about to lean back on the peeling bark of the old tree when I saw the cicada shells dotting the trunk. There were dozens of them, all empty dead husks marking where life had once been lived.
That’s what it was like looking into Xavier’s face. All life had been extinguished in that giant shell of a man, and death itself stared back at me from those black orbs. I had time to wonder if his skin would crackle and crush into dust beneath my fingers, like those cicada husks had, but then Xavier’s bullish features began to contort.
It was as if a giant invisible hand was pressing putty; his mouth and nose switched places, swirling grotesquely on his face, and his eyes and brows slipped to the sides of his face, ears disappearing altogether. Then the putty thinned, tearing high along his cheekbones and forehead, and peeling away to reveal blood, muscle, and finally gleaming white bone.
His eye sockets were black pools, dark and swirling and alive with something that could only be called unyielding rage. “So are you going to pick up where your mother left off, Archer? Will you come after me too? Think you’re ready to take me on?”
He poked me in the belly with his free hand, and I gasped against the palm still clenched against my jaw. The bony finger poked again, and this time I felt it in my gut, separating my intestines, scraping precariously close to my unborn child. The jaw of his skeletal smile click-clacked gleefully as I struggled beneath his invasive touch.
“Because I’m ready for you. Oh, yes I am.” He was getting riled up now, and smoke escaped through the bone of his nose to make my eyes tear, as embers flew from his mouth. “Ajax tells me you’re strong, as strong as Zoe even, but I can smell you on the winter wind, and do you know what you smell like to me?”
His finger stirred inside me, scratching and grating, making me whimper, and when he leaned closer, his breath reeked of minerals and the deep, fiery core of the earth. He opened his mouth and I nearly gagged on the rot of his blackened soul. “Prey.”
And I jerked awake, gasping for air, nearly choking as the powdery scent of Greta’s room mingled with the scent of the grave. “Fuck,” I rasped, gulping for air. “What the fuck?”
My hands went protectively to my belly, and I looked down, past the glyph that had lit on my chest, glowing through my skin as hotly as it had during my run-in with Ajax. The heat was lessening now, though, and that was reassuring, as was the smooth, flat skin on my belly, unmarked by violence or pregnancy, or anything more alarming than the imprint of the sheets I’d been tangled in. I was about to breathe a sigh of relief when something wormed inside my gut. It felt like a finger, or a piece of one, was still lodged there. I screamed and backed up, head cracking against my headboard as an explosion of laughter boomed inside my skull.
Then the room was silent, but for my ragged breath and the fading volley of the laughter. I cursed again, and pressed one hand against my belly, the other against my face. I must have bit my lip while dreaming because I came away with blood there, but at least this time nothing moved inside me.
I glanced at the gilded clock beside Greta’s bed, 9:18, and rubbed at my eyes. Surely the headache behind my sockets was just because I’d slept in late. And the sheets were tangled and soaked for the same reason. Because I wasn’t going crazy.
And the Tulpa, I told myself on another steadying breath, had not just entered my dreams.
18
One of the lovebirds whistled as I swung my feet out of bed and made my way on shaking legs to the wardrobe mirror. There was a note attached to its beveled edge, a flowery scrawl on scented paper. I’m off to work for the day. Make yourself at home. Warren will come for you at ten. G.
I yanked it down before studying my reflection in the mirror. There was a clump of dried blood by my temple, sticking out fr
om my blond tresses like a spot on a Dalmatian, but I picked it free, then leaned forward and pulled down the lower lid of my right eye. Bloodless. Perfect. Whole. Other than the new wound on my lip, I had totally healed. And even that, I saw, was already smoothing over.
I exhaled the breath I’d been holding, and gave thanks to any deity who might be listening. The most extensive repair work needed on my body would be a hot shower and food in my belly. But my mind might be a different story. The remnants of my dream clung like quicksand, threatening to overtake me with every new thought.
Grabbing a change of clothing from my bag, I pushed out a deep breath and headed to the shower. A half hour later I was steady again, and had donned a racer-back tank, hooded jacket, and terry-cloth pants—all pink, of course—my hair slicked into a low ponytail, face scrubbed shiny and clean. He’d said we were going to train today, and that, I knew, would go a long way toward helping me feel more myself again.
I’d considered telling Warren about my dream, but was shocked into silence when I opened the door to find him dressed in pleated khakis, a blue button-down shirt tucked in at the waist. His face was clean, brown eyes clear and rested, hands still callused, but smooth. Were it not for the snarls gathered back from his face, I’d have pegged him for a businessman headed off on his long morning commute.
“A full recovery, I see.” Warren looked me up and down appraisingly but didn’t meet my eye. The man who’d been so flippant and ridiculous when we’d first met had been replaced by a serious, almost severe leader, and looking at him I could suddenly name the question that’d niggled at me since I woke up with bandaged eyes in Greta’s room.
If there was no traitor inside the sanctuary, as Warren so fervently insisted, why was it still so important to him that no one know my true identity?
I couldn’t ask him now, not when he was still obviously angry with me, so when he held out the studded cell phone Cher had given me—obviously dropped on my fall into the sanctuary—I just took it from his callused palm and pocketed it as I followed him out the door.
As Felix had said the day before, the sanctuary was a place of respite, where beleaguered star signs went to replenish their energy, gain knowledge, and train for whatever force or enemy they were currently facing. Most of the time it was peopled only with the support staff, children, and initiates who dwelled permanently beneath the Neon Boneyard, but now it was brimming with the remaining star signs, and the rest of the compound was buzzing with the apparent novelty of that. Warren told me the others were in a meeting, no doubt about yesterday’s events, but would soon begin the day’s combat training in a place called Saturn’s Orchard.
For me, however, the first stop was the barracks.
“Home sweet home,” Warren said, flipping a light switch and motioning me into the room. It was clean and shaped like Greta’s, but the similarities ended there. Gone were the feminine touches; the laces and frills and pastel-colored doilies. The concrete floors, like the walls, were bare and painted an unrelieved white. A queen-sized platform bed was pressed tightly against one wall, mattress naked, and a chunky coffee table in chocolate hardwood flanked one end. A wooden tray filled with rocks, all white, was the only item on the table, and a trio of white paper lanterns floated from the ceiling above it, the only lighting in the room. Twelve palm-sized floating wall shelves, also in mahogany, were suspended over the bed, and echoed the lanterns’ rectangular shape. They held clear glass votives, which no doubt lent warmth to the clean, modular room when lit.
Though sparse and utilitarian, it was still warm and sexy…though it said nothing about the person who lived there. I loved it.
“It’s perfect,” I told Warren, though what remained unspoken was that the three-hundred-square-foot room had better be perfect because my stay looked to be a lengthy one.
“What did Micah mean when he said he’d designed me so that Ajax couldn’t find me?” I asked, trying to keep the question casual as I peered into the adjacent bathroom.
“Micah’s a gifted doctor,” Warren said, joining me at the doorway. “Just as he can alter the nose on your face, he can also alter the makeup of your genetic template—your pheromones. He used science to create a synthetic formula, one different than your own, and his own magic as a fixative to secure it in place. Ajax didn’t know the new code, so he shouldn’t have been able to find you so quickly.”
He had, though, due to my distress over Ben. But I didn’t want to get into that yet. “And when he said that I was linked specifically to you?” I stared at his reflection through the bathroom mirror because it was more comfortable than facing him head on.
Warren looked marginally wary, but answered. “After inoculating you, he withdrew the essence of that compound from your bloodstream, then injected it into my own.”
I wasn’t sure I liked that. Was Warren trying to keep me safe, or was he just trying to keep tabs on me? After his accusations the day before, the latter seemed more likely. “So it’s like a tracking device…?”
“Of the emotions, yes,” he finished for me. He caught my frown in the mirror and turned toward me, forcing me to do the same. “I know it sounds intrusive, Jo, but you’re more vulnerable than the other agents. I’d never have gotten to you in time yesterday if I hadn’t been able to track you through this linking agent.”
I folded my arms. “So, basically, I’ve been bugged?”
“I’m bugged,” he corrected, tapping his own chest. “It’s like I have a second heartbeat. I know when your pulse accelerates or slows, if not why. The blood running in your veins is like a current rushing through my ears. If you break out in a sweat, my body attempts to cool it. Basically I feel any metabolic change you go through. And yes, the sense of smell is that much greater.”
“A magnified sixth sense, then?”
“More like a seventh. An eighth.” He folded his hands in front of him. “Try it now, if you like. Think of something that unsettles you, and I’ll tell you the moment it enters your mind.”
“Okay.” I closed my eyes and kept my body very still. I thought of waking that morning in Greta’s scented room, the birds chirping softly on their perch, the relief that washed over me as I escaped my dream. I thought of giggling with Cher over fizzy water and peppermint lotion. Then I zeroed in on the memory of the man across from me, asking if I’d killed an innocent, somehow entirely certain I could.
“There.” My eyes shot open to find him pointing at me. “My second heartbeat accelerated, my palms broke out in a sweat beneath my own skin, but the overriding sense was one of anger. Maybe a touch of fear.” He angled his head. “What were you thinking of?”
“Xavier. How he used to treat me,” I said, well aware Warren could smell the lie on me. I didn’t care. The man was inside me, or I inside him, and with these sudden questions about his intentions, I was determined to keep some things to myself. “So could you feel what I felt when Ajax found me?”
“I scented your fear when he entered the building. Your anger when he killed that girl…” He paused, before adding, “And the sorrow before all of it began.”
I’d known it wouldn’t take him long to circle back to that. I avoided his gaze and moved from the doorway, opening the closet to peer inside.
“You have to stay away from him, Jo,” he said, but I wasn’t paying attention.
“Whose room is this?” I asked, jerking back from the closet in surprise.
“Yours now,” he said, joining me to stare at the evenly spaced clothing filling the racks and shelves, the shoes and boots lined along the floor. All black, all female. “But it was once Zoe’s.”
Our eyes met.
He said nothing about the eagerness texturing the air in lacy patterns between us, instead using the opportunity to pull out the photo of Ben he’d taken from me the day before. I inhaled sharply as he held it up in front of my face. “You don’t want Ajax to find him, do you?” he asked softly.
Ajax who would track him, torture him, and skewer his innocent
heart. And enjoy it.
I lifted my eyes, laid them dead on his. “No.”
“Then train your mind. Don’t even think Ben’s name.” He spaced these last words so evenly it was as if he bit them off. I found I couldn’t meet his gaze. “If you don’t control your emotions, you’re putting both of your lives in danger. Mine too.”
This time I heard the plea in his voice. I wanted to tell him he didn’t know what he was asking, but he did know, and deep down I knew he had a right to ask it. What was my personal sorrow compared to the greater welfare of the troop? The city? The universe?
We stared at one another, tension spiking between us. Desperation oiled the air, as much his as mine, and finally I nodded. No more lives would be lost because of me. I could at least promise him that much. Warren sighed and leaned back on his heels, and as if by magic the air seemed clearer, fresher around us. It sparkled invisibly, and I sucked in a deep breath of it. Now things could be right between us again. Almost.
“One more question,” I said, and held up a hand as the guarded look returned to his face and the air glimmered less brightly. “Could you sense what it was like for me when I penetrated the sanctuary?”
His hands fisted at his sides. Now it was my turn to feel and scent and taste raw guilt in the air, and it went a long way toward soothing my anger. “I tasted the atoms splicing in your body. I felt the sizzle of them on my tongue. Your boiling blood reeked in my nostrils, and I could smell the marrow melting in your bones.”
I swallowed hard. I hadn’t exactly realized that that’s what had happened.
“Come on,” he said, palm reassuring on my shoulder. “I’ll show you the rest.”
We strode along corridors just wide enough for two bodies side by side. A strip of red neon, like a racing stripe, ran along the walls near the floor, lighting our footfalls and marking our progress, before dimming again behind us. In the brief volleys of light I could make out symbols on the walls—runic, perhaps, or some long-dead language I didn’t recognize—but we walked so quickly their shapes were nothing more than a flash burned on my retina, replaced in the next second by another, then another. Warren, used to them, took no note.
The Scent of Shadows sotz-1 Page 27