The Scent of Shadows sotz-1

by Vicki Pettersson

“To a fault,” Micah chimed in.

  “Determination. Loyalty. Pride.”

  “Don’t let Hunter charm you,” Chandra broke in. “All Archers have those qualities.”

  I turned to find myself facing hollow eyes, and knew then that she and I would never be friends. I raised one slim brow. “Do you?”

  “In spades,” she said, her upper lip curling.

  “What do you know so far about conduits?” Hunter asked, moving to stand between us.

  Conduits are conductors of energy; conductors of the agent’s express will. Each conduit is specifically made for its handler; to compliment his or her talents, and channel his or her will through means of violence, death and gore. Though Olivia, of course, would never have put it that way.

  “Uh, well, most of them are pretty sharp,” I said, drawing laughs from Micah and Felix. Hunter narrowed his eyes, Chandra rolled hers. “I know they come in different shapes, sizes, some of them are pyrotechnic, and each one is made to complement the strengths of its owner.”

  There. That was a nicely balanced answer. Not too embarrassing.

  “That’s right. When I design a weapon, I take into consideration the agent’s particular physical and mental strengths, then fashion a conduit specifically for their hands. It takes on a life of its own that way. Becomes your companion, your match. Of course, that means I need complete honesty if the weapon is to maximize all your gifts. Do that, though, and I’ll create something to suit your temperament, your mind, and your heart.”

  “Something that blows bubbles from its tip, perhaps?”

  “Jesus, Chandra.” Felix dropped his head into his hands. I could tell he, and the rest of them, thought I wasn’t going to be able to handle this angry little hermaphrodite. Laughable, though it meant I was doing my job at being Olivia. I picked lint off my jacket, as if I hadn’t heard.

  Hunter unsheathed—or unraveled, rather—his own conduit, and offered it to me. It was a twelve-foot-long whip, with barbed tips studding the lower half of the slim black leather.

  My heart began to pound. Down, girl.

  “What else do you know about their use?”

  I took the whip in hand, studying it carefully, and this time pride had me elaborating a degree. “I know if you’re struck by an enemy’s conduit, you’ll die, even if you’re more than human. But if you use a conduit against its own agent, its companion,” I said, using his word for the weapon wielder, “you win a little something in their death. A bit of their power, and a rush of energy, a temporary high. They die, and you have twelve hours to walk this earth undetected. Nobody can find you; human, Shadow, or Light. It’s like you don’t even exist.”

  Hunter held out his hand. I glanced at it as I handed his conduit back. You could tell a lot about a person by studying their hands. His were tanned and elegant, despite the calluses studding his palm.

  “Butch?” he asked, coiling the whip.

  I nodded.

  “How did it feel?”

  I glanced at Vanessa. “I felt invisible. Invincible.”

  The room was silent. “No one else has ever done that. Used a conduit against its own Shadow companion. It’s a powerful magic.”

  “It fits the legend—” Felix said, looking at Hunter.

  “Oh, come on,” Chandra said abruptly. “This? This…cream puff is the Kairos? The gifted individual on whom all our fates hinge? I mean, get real!”

  Nobody said anything, though, and she folded her arms over her chest. “Didn’t any of you hear what I said about Tekla?”

  “And didn’t you hear me say that if you were going to start that up again you should do it in front of Warren?” Micah answered sharply. “You know how he feels about…her.” He motioned my way, and for the first time I saw a shadow flicker across his gaze. I straightened with a jolt as it struck me that Micah might not fully believe in me himself.

  “Warren was there! He saw Tekla accuse her!” Chandra said, challenging me to deny it. “She did, didn’t she? She called you a traitor!”

  “Oh, and your perception wouldn’t happen to be skewed in any way, would it, Chandra?”

  “Shut up, Felix.”

  “Shut up, Felix,” he mimicked.

  I’d stopped paying attention to the two of them, though. The room had darkened, and I felt a shift as though the ground itself was moving. Then color swirled over the mirrored walls, psychedelic waves turning the room into a cavernous love shack. Charles Manson’s love shack, I thought, shuddering as an onyx wave washed over me.

  “It’s a mood room,” Vanessa said in answer to my unspoken question. “It reacts to emotion. When we train it follows the battle, tracking who’s winning. See those circles over there?”

  I did. Through the colorful spears of light bounding across the mat, two diametrically opposed ovals faced off against one another.

  “Go stand on one,” she urged.

  I stepped forward and found the surface spongy, rather than firm like a normal dojo mat. But there was no risk of twisting an ankle. It just seemed to move with my feet, reaching up through my arches to support my movement. Gaining the first circle, the colors suddenly whipped away from the floor and walls, replaced by infinite blackness, as if I was standing on a platform in the middle of the universe. Thus, I realized, the spongy floor. If not for the support, I’d have lost all sense of equilibrium. Then tiny lights popped up, stars pricking the universe, and floating among them was a tilted cross with an arrow on one end.

  “Huh. The Archer’s glyph,” Felix said, looking pointedly at Chandra. “Never seen that before.”

  “Fuck yourself…” she muttered, but the jab seemed to take some of the wind from her sails. “You didn’t see it. You didn’t see him.”

  “All right. Enough.” I stepped out of the circle and the universe flickered, then died away. The mirrored walls of the pyramid reappeared, blinding, but only for a moment. “How can I possibly be a traitor? I just got here. I didn’t even know about the Zodiac or this troop until a few weeks ago…right, Micah? I certainly didn’t know about Stryker.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Chandra insisted before Micah could speak. “Tekla is psionic, and she’s psychic…or she was. She can see what you’re going to do. She knows it even before you do.”

  “So she was telling the future back there? That I was going to betray you all?” I looked around for a reaction. No one answered yes, but no one said no either. I shook my head in exasperation and disgust. “Why would I? I have nothing to gain from it.”

  “Your father does.”

  “You mean the being that’s trying to kill me?” I shot back, whirling toward Chandra. “The one that just used Tekla to attack me in the hall?” I scoffed. “Yeah, I’m totally working on his behalf.”

  “Well, I believe you,” Felix said, coming to stand at my side. “We knew the Kairos was going to be both Shadow and Light. It was foretold. So now we deal with it. Besides, Warren wants you here.”

  Well, he had, I thought wryly. But I didn’t share that with Felix. It felt good to have someone on my side.

  “Too bad it doesn’t matter what you believe or what Warren wants,” Chandra said, and a blue-green spark shot out across the ceiling. It bounded overhead, and her grin looked gaseous, evil in the receding light. “We still get to vote.”

  “Vote?”

  And that was all she needed to shore up her confidence. She lifted her square jaw and fisted her hands on her hips. “That’s right. You weren’t raised in the Zodiac, and you learned nothing in your first two life cycles. Your mother’s actions, or inaction, has displaced you and unbalanced the rest of us. Just like a rogue agent.”

  “This is Zoe Archer’s daughter!” Vanessa sounded outraged.

  “Yeah, what’s your lineage, Chandra? And drunken pity fucks that follow failed assignments don’t count.”

  My brows rose at that, and I expected another “Fuck you, Felix,” but Chandra simply clenched her jaw against the jab—one she’d obviously heard before—and
kept her ire trained on me. I’d have tolerated this—until she stepped into my personal space.

  “All I’m saying,” she said, angling her head up so she was staring me dead in the eye, “is that the Kairos should at least be someone who can track the moon’s rise and fall without first referring to a map.”

  “Someone as handsome as you perhaps?”

  The oxygen was sucked from the room on a group inhalation. Clouds coiled over the walls, gray building upon gray, until the slanted ceiling was thick with them, walls obscured, the floor snaking with mist. Mood room, indeed.

  “I’m going—”

  “To kick my ass. Yes, I know. Then what? Climb a tree and start thumping your chest? Scary stuff, She-Man. If you can back it up.”

  I thought I’d have time to brace and block. But apparently I still wasn’t up to superhuman speed. Chandra slapped me so quick and hard—palm flat, but nails curled to score my left cheek—that my head whipped to one side and I staggered back. I lifted my hand. My face throbbed in burning ribbons and I came away with blood. “You cut me.”

  She sneered. “You’ll heal.”

  I stood for a moment, hand pressed to my cheek, doing nothing. Then I burst into tears. The loud, snuffling kind with crocodile tears and a wide, open mouth. Through one slitted eye I saw Chandra drop her arms, half turning to the others with a bemused expression. She’d probably never faced a tearful superhero before.

  Hunter’s warning cry was only half uttered when my foot plowed through her chest. I leaned back, putting my hips and thighs into the motion, and Chandra flew the entire length of the mat, crashing against the opposite wall, the back of her skull kissing her reflection with a gratifying crack. Greta had said Chandra needed time and space to grieve over the loss my arrival had cost her, but I decided a little ass-kicking would take her mind off it as well.

  I touched my hand to my cheek. Chandra was right. I’d healed before she even hit the floor. I began to advance on her, but found myself blocked by Hunter’s not insignificant frame.

  “Like to fight dirty, Archer?” he asked, backing me into the circle again. The Archer glyph shot across the walls again…until he stepped into the circle opposite me. Spearing from the apex of the pyramid came a giant glyph of curling horns that arrowed down into a sharp V. It exploded into a shower of smaller horns, the quantity instantly overtaking the Sagittarian glyph.

  Definitely not on my ally list.

  “I use the weapons available to me,” I told him, and this time I didn’t back down from him as he used up all my space.

  His eyes narrowed to earthy brown slits. “Want to try them on a full-fledged star sign?”

  Let’s see…a straightforward street fight versus an emotional game of “he says/she says”? I didn’t even have to think about it.

  My palm shot out, but he was ready and caught it, twisting so it would have broken if I hadn’t relaxed and flipped with the motion. I cartwheeled through the air, landed again on my feet and sent him a jab, a knee, an elbow, and a bitch slap…all met and blocked in turn.

  We disengaged, circling; me breathing hard, Hunter barely breathing at all. The room was a kaleidoscope again, the emotions of the onlookers merging with the glyphs now wheeling around the sky like mad fireflies. I took a moment to steady myself, then tried another tactic. Inhaling deeply, I threw a line of energy around his body like Warren had taught me, an invisible lasso between his intent and mine. No emotion crept up the invisible rope. If my eyes had been closed I wouldn’t even have known he was in the room. Impressive.

  He knew exactly what I’d been doing, and white teeth flashed as he smiled. “Figure out my talent yet?”

  “Yodeling off-key while standing on one foot on a pile of hot coals?” I sidestepped as he changed directions. The walls shifted with us, and the night sky above was clear again, cloudless.

  “Close,” he said, and lunged. He was as lithe and compact as a mountain lion, as single-minded as well, but I’d convinced myself long ago that it was better, safer, to fight a skilled warrior than a street brawler. Less chance of accidental injury. Of course, there was a greater chance of calculated injury, but that was what defensive skills were for. I threw myself backward and kicked out a leg. Our shins met with a resounding crack. The knowledge that I’d heal made me a bit more reckless than usual, so I pivoted immediately, stayed close, and crushed his left cheek with a flying elbow as he turned.

  A chorus of surprise lifted from the others as arrows shot over the walls and we disengaged again, him retreating this time. His exertion was coming off him in waves, manifesting itself in a coppery-smelling band that wrapped around me, linking me to him for as long as I remained his target.

  He wasn’t holding back either. He really wished to overtake me. One part of me was thrilled with this deadly dance, the chance to test myself against someone strong, someone new. I was a fighter, that hadn’t changed, and this is what fighters did. Asaf always said the first encounter with a new foe was the most exciting, the most heady and the most dangerous, and he was right. I swam in Hunter’s adrenaline. I floated in my own.

  Another part of me, however, was wondering how I’d ever thought this man attractive. He was looking at me like Ajax had; a quick sizing up of body and limbs, a predator searching for the weak, old, or inexperienced in the pack. Hunter was like this: patient, and absolutely feral as he waited for his opening.

  He was also uncoiling his whip. The room was suddenly painted in giant ram horns again, not a Sagittarian glyph to be found.

  “That’s cheating,” I said between breaths. He knew I didn’t have a conduit yet.

  Pitiless, he shrugged and snapped it at his side, his wrist flicking expertly. “I use the weapons available to me.” Asshole.

  I didn’t even need to see the walls to know I was in trouble. Bodies, even male against female, were one thing. Surprise could still be used to my advantage. But this was too much like my encounter with Ajax; ominously one-sided, frightening, and full of unknown risks. Alarm prickled along my skin, and was released, to my chagrin, through my pores.

  I backed to the center of the mat to give myself room to maneuver away from the length of the whip, noting nobody else had spoken up in my defense. No That’s enough or Leave her be. Not even Micah, and that hurt. If there’d been any question before as to my place among these people, it was answered now. Hunter stalked me, and the others merely watched.

  “You’re afraid,” he observed, lifting his arm.

  “No shit,” I said, and jumped as the whip licked at my heels, a barbed tongue. Landing, I glanced around for some sort of shield, finding only a practice pad that covered the length of my forearm and not much else. I secured it as he swung at my head, and lifted it in time to have the whip shearing off the top of it with only a flick from his wrist.

  The next snap coiled around both pad and forearm, grazing my shoulder on its second rotation. I whimpered as a barbed tip sunk deep into my flesh, then braced myself and pulled, surprising Hunter by dragging him closer. Using my other arm, I yanked, and closed the distance between us. I had no idea what I was going to do. I only knew the farther I was from his body, the more dangerous it was for me.

  “Look! Her glyph’s engaged,” Felix said, pointing. I felt the pulsing in my upper chest cavity, but kept my eyes on Hunter. His eyes flicked down, and I saw surprise shadow them before it was erased, the expressionless mask returning. His arm wavered, then lowered. The walls cleared abruptly, stark whiteness blinding us all. He had disengaged.

  I ripped the barbs from my flesh before I could think too much, and smelled my own blood flowing freely.

  “That’s only supposed to happen when facing a true enemy,” he said, tone low and suspicious.

  “Then you might want to put the whip away,” I said coolly. I let the barbed end drop, tossing the destroyed pad aside only when he began to coil it. I rubbed at my arm and backed away from them all, feeling achingly vulnerable.

  “How are you doing that?” F
elix said, looking at my chest.

  “It’s the Shadow, see? She can’t control it.”

  “Shut up, Chandra, you had that coming.” Vanessa sent her a steely glare, and came to stand next to me before also turning on Hunter. “And you. You’ve wanted to test the new Archer ever since you heard she defeated Butch…something you never managed to do. What do you expect when you gang up on her like that?”

  Hunter turned so stony he didn’t even blink. “I was making a point.”

  Yeah, I thought, rubbing my arm. Literally. But suddenly it was clear why no one had intervened on my behalf. Why a whip had to score my flesh and I had to bleed. They needed to know I could.

  “I get your point.” Only Hunter would meet my eye, and that was fine; I’d focus on him. “Here’s Warren, telling you I’m this…this Kairos, that I have more potential than regular star signs, that I’m more powerful than the rest of you because of who my father is. I guess you just decided to see for yourselves, huh? But you didn’t have to whip me, you know. All you really had to do was ask.”

  And, though they hadn’t, I opened up a little and let them see what I’d felt when I’d gone up against Butch. How the dark side of moonbeams could bathe the soul too. How freeing it felt to let go of what was right, and think for once only of what you wanted. How vengeance burned like sulfur in every pore, and hatred like an ulcer in the stomach. And how death drew closer with every passing moment, and fury was the cancer that could take you there. They needed to see it, I thought, because they needed to know the difference. I let it go on for a time, then I sucked it all back in.

  “Happy?” I asked all of them. “Scared?” And I turned back, pressing my face into Chandra’s, invading her space this time. “Or do you wanna take a vote on it and get back to me?”

  Chandra took a giant step back, jaw clenching tightly, and the others shifted on their feet, none looking at me, and barely looking at one another. I laughed hollowly and figured if they wanted something to mistrust so badly, I wasn’t going to make them search for it.

  So I turned back to Hunter, forced him to meet my eye, which he did with an empty gaze of his own. “You’re going to have to do better than that,” I told him.