The Scent of Shadows sotz-1

by Vicki Pettersson

  “Better than what?”

  And with the same power I’d used to punch holes in the life of a construction worker, I told him. “If you don’t want the Shadow side to know about her—the one you love and cherish above all others—you’re going to have to control that thread of desperation coiling in your psyche. I can taste it on my tongue, as fresh and sweet as sherbet. What’s her name, anyway?”

  I felt surprise sprout throughout the room and realized I’d just sensed something no one else had known. So even the full-fledged star signs kept secrets from one another, I thought wryly. So much for a unified troop. Hypocrites.

  “Her name is Lola,” Hunter finally answered, and his voice was steady, though a shudder had gone through his able body. At his admission, in fact, it had gone through them all. “And if you go near her, I’ll kill you.”

  I looked around then, forcing every person in the room to meet my eye. “I thought I wasn’t the enemy. Don’t any of you trust me?”

  “I don’t know you.”

  “I don’t trust the Shadow in you,” Chandra said.

  “Micah?”

  He swallowed hard. He, whom I’d once thought was so firmly on my side. “I think you’ll be presented with a choice before Ajax and the Tulpa are done with you. A real test, made in the heat of battle, and one where you’re forced to choose what’s right or…”

  “Or?”

  He looked away. “Or what you want.”

  And with those words I realized Chandra was right. No matter what Warren wanted, I could be cast out of the troop and sanctuary, left in the city, unguarded and alone. I’d be saddled with powers I didn’t know how to use or control, more of a target than some unnaturally gifted hero.

  “There’s only one thing I want.”

  “Revenge?” Hunter asked. “For your sister’s death?”

  I nodded, unsurprised that he could sense it, knowing they all could. It was the one thing, I thought, that I could never hide.

  “And what will you do to avenge her?”

  “Anything,” I swore. “Everything.”

  He nodded slowly, and then turned away. “And that’s what I don’t trust.”

  We obviously didn’t train that day. In fact, all the members of Zodiac troop 175, paranormal division, anti-evil, gave me a wide berth after that. The easy camaraderie between Vanessa and I dissolved like a sugar cube after I’d shown my Shadow side, and she left the room frowning with uncertainty. Felix still grinned at me, but it was tight around the edges and didn’t quite reach his eyes. Micah mumbled something about lab work before disappearing, though he did give me a gentle once-over just to be sure his handiwork had held up against Hunter’s whip.

  Even Chandra, so full of sting and swagger, couldn’t muster a glare, and just shoved her hands into the pockets of her fatigues, shaking her head as she exited the room. Hunter followed without a word or backward glance, which left me alone in the spacious dojo, staring at my foreign and baffled reflection in the mirror, the emblem on my chest still pulsing gently.

  So that went well.

  I thought about finding Warren and asking him when he’d planned to tell me about this democratic little voting process, but he was probably still in his so-called session with Greta. Besides, while we were seated in Greta’s office, pretending to be civilized as we glared at one another across our teacups, I’d decided there was something Warren wasn’t sharing. Either that or something in his recent past that he didn’t want to face. Something, I thought, remembering the guilt sitting like a cold stone in my belly, that had to do with Tekla. So what was it he was unwilling to face, or know? More, what didn’t he want the rest of us to know?

  These questions consumed me as I wove alone through the hallways, halting every so often to scratch the heads and cheeks of escaped cats. Wardens, I thought, correcting myself. None of them hissed or growled or swiped at my hand as I’d seen Luna do with Butch, so that was a small comfort. They just looked at me with unblinking eyes, pushing against my fingers with their lithe little bodies, and moved on when they were finished, tails raised in a parting salute.

  Finally, I returned to my mother’s windowless, concrete room to regroup, thankful there was at least one place in this underground labyrinth where I could be alone and feel safe. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until I’d tucked myself into bed, drawing my knees high to my chest, that I realized trust couldn’t even be extended to my own mind.

  The dream was like wind gradually picking up in slack sails, so I knew it was coming. If I’d acted early enough, I might even have been able to stop it. Still, I wasn’t braced for the feeling of invasion; like someone was picking through the folds of my mind, searching and excavating the forbidden parts. And what they found was bedrock; granite, and caliche, and a petrified memory I’d never dared touch before. But it chipped free now, sharp-edged, banging around inside of me. Slicing at my sanity. A nightmare come back to life.

  The biggest nightmare of my life.

  I was a teen again; fifteen, to be exact. Sneaky and smart, and needing to escape a world that neither knew nor understood me…as all teens feel the need to do, I suppose. But there was one person who did understand me, and he knew and loved me better than anyone else.

  Ben Traina lived across a narrow but elongated patch of desert, long since converted into another thoroughfare for impatient motorists, but marked at the time by a sole footpath which bisected the desert floor. Ben and I probably wore that one away in this summer alone.

  Though relatively close in proximity, our homes were worlds apart. The Archer mansion fanned coldly across an entire city block, a massive complex with so much faux work and gaudy detailing it looked like a Victorian ball-gown. In contrast, Ben’s house was like an old tattered sweatshirt. Low ceilings, small windows, a fireplace made out of rock they’d, thankfully, stopped making in the seventies, and the original green shag carpeting blanketing the concrete floor.

  For all these differences, though, our families were remarkably similar. There was the overbearing patriarch—gaming mogul versus military man; the mousy wife—society maven and the housefrau; and the two point five kids, two girls on my side of the tracks, three boys on his.

  His parents were out of town for the weekend—one brother was already out of the house, and the second was in basic training—so, unsurprisingly, their vacation had become ours. We were in love, a first for us both, and we experienced all the firsts that go along with that. We hid from the world that entire weekend; talking, laughing, eating. Watching movies. Kissing. Stroking. Making love for days.

  Sunday morning marked the end of our lovers’ tryst. His parents would be home by noon, but it was my sister who arrived first, breathless and fresh from a predawn flight across the desert. We were forced to leave our cocoon of sheets and limbs and flesh just to silence her insistent pounding at the door.

  “Mom’s looking for you,” Olivia announced, without preamble. “She’s so freaked she wants to call the police. And Dad says this time you’re going to juvenile hall.”

  Regretfully, I turned to Ben. “I have to go.”

  He sighed sleepily, smelling like me. “Will you get in trouble?”

  I smiled. “It was worth it.”

  “Come on! I am not going to juvi with you,” Olivia said, then shuddered delicately. “They make you wear paper shoes.”

  We fled as fast as our limbs would carry us, into the abyss of darkness, across the swath of hard desert earth I knew as intimately as the vein at my wrist…or Ben’s. Olivia was younger than me, and at the time quicker too. I can still see her flying through the night, golden hair lit by the moon’s eye, streaming behind her like ribbons cutting wind. Even at thirteen she’d been beautiful, the woman inside her already outgrowing the child. I, though older, still looked like a girl.

  The man came from nowhere, hurtling from the darkness like a dust devil, catching Olivia from the side. She didn’t even have time to scream before she struck the boulders and tumbleweeds of the dese
rt floor, pinned helplessly beneath the weight of her stronger adversary. Then there were only sounds of struggle. Clothing torn. Flesh beaten. Anguished cries for mercy.

  A voice, twisted and irrational, snaked up from my subconscious. You deserved what happened that night.

  Even as I groaned in my sleep, shaking my head, I knew I did. Olivia was only there because of me. Those meaty fists rained down on her body and face, knuckles reporting like shots as they made contact with her soft flesh, pummeling fragile bone. And because it was my fault, I reacted the same way again.

  “Run!” I screamed, latching onto the man from behind. I didn’t have the skills then that I did now. I didn’t have the strength to overpower a man of any size, and nothing to enable me to stand up to a human predator. Olivia ran, and even after I’d lost sight of her I could still hear her feet crunching over gravel and rock, her sobs streaming, like her hair, behind her. Then I heard nothing at all.

  But that was then.

  “I should’ve killed you the first time,” said the man I now knew as Joaquin. I felt my eyes open—eyes like Rena’s, there but not—and I stared into a face as cruel as I remembered. Thin lips wrapped around a full set of evenly spaced teeth; a smile for me, I realized, as the smell of rancid honey spilled out of his mouth. A five o’clock shadow, too perfect and precise to have been by accident, studded his cheeks and chin, and despite his position, looming over me, not a hair on his head was out of place. It was slicked back, tight and sleek, the individual lines from the teeth of his comb clear in the meager moonlight.

  “No,” I managed, before his fingertips dug into my windpipe, strangling me again. His other hand ricocheted across my face, whipping it to the right. On the returning backhand, I felt my nose collapse. How had I ever forgotten that sound?

  “Oh, yes,” he replied, arching into me, mimicking orgasm, writhing above me like a rattler. “Yes, yes, yes.”

  I head-butted him, causing him to jerk back, his face registering surprise as blood began to seep from his nose. I hadn’t done that the first time. He slapped me again, but it was too late. A new thought had already burrowed into my mind.

  “I don’t have to be this again. I don’t have to do this again.” And I shifted my hips, forcing space between us, and managed to free a leg long enough to ram a knee into his ribs.

  “Oh, but you do,” he said, and he planted himself widely over me, like a Greco-Roman wrestler, doubling his weight on top of mine.

  I almost gave in. I felt my lungs creaking with need for air, felt his hands fumbling between my legs, but my training and my will kept me struggling. “No…I’m not that girl anymore. I’m the Archer.”

  “Yes,” he snarled, face leering into mine, “I could tell by your stiletto.”

  I blinked, then felt a smile spread over my broken face. “I’m the Archer…and this is my dream.”

  “But we can reach you in your dreams,” he said, grinding into me again. “I can fuck you in your dreams.”

  “No,” I said, struggling. “I don’t want this.”

  “Fight all you want, but you can’t change who you are…who I’ve helped you become.”

  “I’m not like him!”

  “Oh, look in the mirror, dear girl,” he said, giving me a sly smile. “You’re exactly like him.”

  There was a rustling from behind us, and Joaquin looked behind him, then jerked his head back to look at me. “Fuck,” he said, and disappeared.

  And feeling lighter, the weight of both his body and sleep being yanked from me, I really opened my eyes.

  The blankets were tangled around my feet, sheets soaked in the outline of my body, and as I sat up I immediately saw the one thing that hadn’t been in the room before; the item that had called me from my sleeping state. A newspaper had been slipped under my door, the sound somehow sneaking through the web of my not-dream. I rose, left it lying on the floor, and opened the door to peer into the hallway. No one was there.

  Running a hand through my hair I noted my nose felt tender, though not broken, and my throat was raw, and probably red. But I bent to retrieve the paper, silently thanking whoever had used it to chase away my demons…until I saw the lead article.

  “Oh, my God,” I said, and the words from my dream raced again through my head. You’re exactly like him. Slowly, I sank to the side of the bed. Oh, my God, I thought again. Maybe he was right. Maybe they all were right.

  The article was brief, a dispassionate assemblage of facts and figures; time of death, the age of the victim—God, only seventeen—what officials thought had happened. I read over it half a dozen times, trying to reconcile the memory of my confrontation with Ajax with the words appearing on the page. A meaningless and random attack, it reported, by what was, most likely, a gang of teens. One of whom had a blade. The statement from the girl’s mother was no more than a single sentence, but it summed up the only real known fact: “My daughter is gone, and my life will never be the same.”

  So maybe they were right.

  I knew this was what whomever had slid the newspaper under the door wanted me to feel. It was spiteful and obvious, yet it still made me want to bury my head in my hands and never look up. I had failed this girl. I’d put her in danger, just like Olivia, and they’d both paid the price with their lives. So maybe they were right. I was exactly like him.

  I was about to toss the paper aside when another column caught my eye. I was holding the whole of the Metro section, the bulk of the day’s bad news in my hands, and today it featured a story of an early morning shooting, a love triangle gone wrong. A woman named Karen was shot by her husband as she tried to leave their apartment. Moments later one Mark Davis had turned the gun on himself.

  I closed my eyes, and for a moment I didn’t even breathe. I just sat there, chaos swirling inside me like some nauseating psychedelic drug. The store clerk had been an accident, an innocent I’d never meant to injure. But this. Ajax had nothing to do with the dissolution of this marriage, these lives. This was all me. I had fired up my new powers and blasted through the walls of Karen and Mark Davis’s lives.

  I managed to stumble into the bathroom, and splashed cold water onto my face over and over, until I gasped, and realized I was crying. Leaning heavily on the sink, I lifted my head to face the mirror. Olivia’s lovely face, with my haunted eyes.

  And the dark shadows that lingered beneath them? I’d created those—and the reasons behind them—myself.

  “Who do you think you are?” I whispered at the mirrored image. I watched the reflected lips move, then fall still, with no answer.

  I returned to the bedroom, picked up the newspaper and studied the image of Karen Davis smiling up at me from an undated photo. After a moment I shoved it in my duffel bag for safekeeping and left. I wanted to find out for sure if, maybe, they were right.

  Even while hoping against hope that they were wrong.

  21

  My emotions were under control by the time I reached Greta’s room. My eyes dry, face serenely composed—which, I knew, on Olivia only looked blithely unaware—and my energy carefully controlled. I didn’t want to run into any of the others without all my barriers in place. I half expected to find Chandra lurking around each sharp corner, sure she’d been the one to slip the paper under my door, but she was nowhere to be found. If it had been her, then she obviously thought her business with me complete.

  I heard a shot of laughter from the direction of the children’s ward, saw a sole female cat out on patrol, two kittens stumbling along behind her, and increased my pace, intent on arriving at Greta’s undetected. I’d just turned the last corner, casting a final, furtive glance behind me, when I slammed into something, someone, who grunted and gave with the impact.

  “Warren.” We both stepped back, each startled by the other, and I frowned when I saw the color drain from his face. “Are you okay?”

  “Of course.” His words were as jerky as his movements, and he swallowed hard. “I’m fine.”

  But I’d never
seen him looking more disoriented. He was sweating, pale, and bleary-eyed, and all the crazed self-assurance I so readily associated with him was gone. In its place was a man who looked tired and old and scared. Whatever had transpired in the hours since I’d last seen him, it had left him uncertain and shaky.

  “You don’t look fine. You look funny.” I sniffed lightly at the air. “You smell funny.”

  “Well, we can’t all look as good as you, now, can we?” he snapped, a thin hand rising to rub at his face.

  “Geez, Warren.” I drew back. “What happened? What did Greta say?”

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss my therapy sessions with you.” I must have looked as injured as I felt because he cursed beneath his breath and tried to soften his words. “Look, Gregor’s been out there, alone, for over a dozen hours. I’m just…worried. I’m going after him.”

  “But…why can’t someone else go? The Shadows have targeted you.” Because of me, I thought, and guilt speared through me now that I could see the toll it was taking on him.

  “I’m the most experienced,” he corrected, standing taller. “We can’t lose Gregor. He’s the only one of us—other than myself—who’s held his place in the Zodiac for more than twelve months.”

  “What about Micah? Or Hunter?”

  He shook his head. “Talented, both of them, but they’re both new recruits. Micah’s not even supposed to be a star sign. He’s support staff, like Greta.”

  “So it hasn’t just been five agents killed in the last few months—”

  “It’s been ten. Ten of the finest,” he finished, voice weary.

  “Jesus,” I said under my breath.

  “We replenish the signs only to have them destroyed again. One, our Virgo, the very next day.” He looked at me, and his face was hard again. I’d seen this kind of determination before. I’d captured it with my camera on the faces of street people who knew all was lost but were determined to go on anyway. “I won’t lose another. I’m going out there, I’m going to retrieve Gregor, and then I’m going to shut down the Zodiac. We’ll wait until the troop is whole again, strong again. Then we’ll take on the Shadow warriors as a team.”