“Joanna.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t even look at him.
Regan laughed, a tattered chortle, and dug my conduit into the cake, licked frosting from the tip.
“I see nothing,” Warren interrupted, brow furrowed. “I see a rogue agent trying to bargain her way into a better situation.”
“Then let me elucidate.” Regan chuckled, and yanked on Hunter’s whip. “Your star superhero here has been working with me. I give him what he wants, he gives me what I want.”
“Bull.” Riddick looked at Hunter with the same sure expression he always had.
Hunter gazed straight ahead, looking at no one.
“It’s true,” Regan continued, shrugging so the flesh on her shoulder wobbled. “How else have I eluded you for this amount of time? I mean, fuck!” Her face went wide with the enraged word, and literally split. Part of her tongue darted out to lick the blood on the side of her mouth. “Even I can smell myself. Yet I continue to get away. Slip through holes in your defenses. Disappear into the wild night.”
Still staring at Hunter, Riddick finally winced, like it was painful. He clenched his jaw when he saw me looking, and turned to face Warren.
I didn’t blame him. Even I, having long known that Hunter was up to something, that he was meeting with someone he shouldn’t be, that he had a secret identity and agenda, had never fathomed that his contact had been Regan.
And he’d slept with me after what she’d done to me, to Ben. He entered me while helping this…. this walking carcass. This being I hated so very much.
The shock sizzled in my brain, clouding it, making it heavy on my shoulders. I felt the additional weight of Hunter’s gaze. He knew that with every passing minute I was putting more and more of his betrayal together. Right now it seemed endless. A long road, and I was riding in a car that would never stop.
“Is this true?” Tekla spoke up from the far corner of the room, and though her arms were folded across her body as usual, the wall looked like it was holding her up.
“I had reasons,” he told them all, still looking at me. “Good ones.”
“Your reasons are my reasons!” Warren pounded at his chest, and we all jolted as if from a stupor. Tekla straightened. Everyone else looked at the floor.
Regan tucked my conduit beneath her right armpit and stuck her index finger directly in the center of my cake, swirling it, blood mingling with the white frosting.
Hunter glanced at me and I wanted to shake him. Instead I looked away. But Warren had words enough for us both.
“Hunter, did you help this—this—” He finally gestured at the center of the room, the former Shadow now smashing the cake between her fingers, a child in her own sandbox, “—this, escape us? Even knowing she had Jo’s conduit?”
I cleared my throat before Hunter could answer. “Hey, Regan.”
Her sugarcoated hand stilled.
“How’d you know we were here?”
Vanessa was shaking her head. “You told her about this place too, didn’t you, Hunter? Damn it, I used this safe-house last week!”
“We did,” Felix said flatly, stepping to her side. Regan tilted her head at the couple, another considering smile growing on her face.
“Stop looking at them and get your hand out of my fucking cake.”
“Shut up, Jo!” Warren’s eyes were on my conduit. Regan’s were again on me. “This is about Hunter.”
“I never put Jo in danger,” Hunter said stiffly. She yanked on his conduit in warning. His mouth snapped shut.
“Except that Regan is still alive,” Warren said.
Hunter glared at him.
“And here now,” Regan added, still focused on me.
“How did you get here?” I wanted to know. I knew I was probably in shock, but something just wasn’t adding up.
“By trusting nobody but myself.” She pointed my conduit at my heart. “Now get your ass up over here. You and I are going for a walk. Bring the cake.”
Hunter frowned, and beneath his brows I saw shock and fear and shame, and possibly even the need to keep me from walking out that door.
But he couldn’t move. Because Regan, his “friend,” had turned to watch his reaction.
And that was when Warren moved. Not to the Shadow—no, that would have been certain death for me, him…maybe both—but in front of me, using his body as a shield and with a bargain on his tongue.
“Not her.” He said it calmly, as though bartering.
“Her,” Regan insisted.
“Not her,” he repeated. “Hunter.”
“No,” I said without hesitation.
Regan laughed so hard her guts tore through, shining and pink among the blood and shredded flesh. She used an elbow, grunting as she pushed them back in, but kept laughing. “What is this? Puppy love? Could you really care for a man who made a deal over your flesh?”
“I did not—”
She yanked on his whip. Hunter winced involuntarily.
“In return for what?” I wanted to know. What was so important that it would cause Hunter to betray me? All of us?
“It doesn’t matter,” said Warren, Mr. Black-and-White. But it mattered to me.
Regan licked her lips, her tongue darting out in four different directions. “Come with me and I’ll tell you everything.”
I nodded for a moment, then took a step forward. Felix stepped in front of me, beside Warren, creating a wall. Then Tekla was there. They were lined up like ducks, waiting for Regan to pick them off. She began to laugh again.
I too saw what they were doing. Sacrificing themselves for me, their Kairos, if need be. Regan could squeeze off one shot before someone tackled her. But the one agent she shot, they’d all determined, wouldn’t be me.
“Fine,” she finally said, dropping back from the table. “It’s better this way anyhow. As long as I’m alive, I’ll find her. For now, I’ll take her lust-puppy.”
She began backing up, crossbow pointed straight ahead.
“No—”
“Jo, let him go!”
“In return for what?” I demanded again, looking at Hunter now. “What were you going to give me over for?”
“I wasn’t. Not ever.”
Regan answered for him. “A free trip to Midheaven. A few ounces of my soul. About all that’s left.”
“If that,” I snarled. She laughed again and bled some more.
“Why would you do that?” Warren was as incredulous as I. “After I expressly ordered no one to go there.”
I frowned. No one but me.
“After the measures I took to keep this troop safe from that evil place.” Warren shook his head, disbelief oozing from his pores. “You would go against that, after I’ve practically raised you, after all I’ve taught you, after I gave you a home and a place and a name in this troop? You put our Kairos at risk? You put this troop at risk!”
Hunter’s jaw clenched. “I was only going after what was mine.”
Warren’s chin lifted at that. “So go. Because what’s here is yours no longer.”
Regan sighed happily. “Guess you won’t need this,” she said, and let Hunter’s whip go slack before giving it a momentous yank with an enthusiastic growl. The torque jerked him from his feet, each barb in the whip’s length ripping from his torso and taking skin with it. I think it was the first time most of us had ever seen Hunter injured, and it was like something had been defiled. Regan tossed his conduit in the corner, took a bow in the wake of our collective gasp, then picked him up in a headlock, the tip of my conduit buried in his forehead. A line of blood began to trail between his eyes. His level gaze remained fixed on Warren.
“Wait,” I said, voice cracking. Things were happening too fast. I couldn’t begin to guess what was held in those heavy glances passing back and forth between Warren and Hunter, what had happened in their shared past, but somehow I knew I couldn’t let Regan’s appearance here break the alliance between these two men. I couldn’t let her break Hunter.
Hunter, bloodied and hunched over, said to Warren, “Don’t do this.”
“I said go.”
“Wait!” I tried to push past Warren. He pushed back.
“This is pathetic.” And Regan Dupree pistol-whipped Hunter with the butt of my crossbow, flipping the weapon around in her palm as he fell, before centering back in on Warren. Her physical destruction hadn’t taken away any of her speed.
“Go,” he told her.
“What?” My voice came out in a feeble shriek, but no one else made a sound or a move, and Regan began a slow, backward retreat, dragging Hunter’s dead weight with her.
“Happy Birthday,” she said to me, winking as she pulled him through the doorway. Through the glass enclosure I could see his limbs bumping against table legs and chairs, and then—as suddenly as she’d arrived—both of them were gone.
23
Nobody moved for so long it was as if the entire room had been paralyzed. When someone finally breathed—Gregor or Micah or Riddick letting a curse loose on the air—everyone else seemed to deflate. Whatever it was that’d been holding them up seconds before disappeared, and the entire troop sunk to the nearest surface—wall, tables, floor—looking more like rag dolls than superheroes.
I stared at them all, but my incredulity was met by blank stares. I spoke so loudly in the dumbed silence it was like a slap in the face. “We have to go after him!”
Warren, slumped in the corner, put his head in his hands. He shook it mournfully. “Joanna. He’s gone.”
My eyes winged so wide they felt like flying saucers. “What do you mean gone? He’s right outside those doors!”
I pointed, but Warren said nothing.
I spun on the others, letting my arm fall. “Riddick, Vanessa?” Neither of them looked at me. I goggled again. “It’s Hunter!”
Micah pushed himself into a standing position. He was so tall and wide it looked like a chunk of the wall was moving. I almost sighed in relief, but before he could take even one step forward, Warren rose as well.
“He betrayed you, Jo.” Warren shook his head sorrowfully. “He betrayed us all.”
Micah paused…then bent his head.
No arguing, Warren was right. Betrayal lay everywhere, but I’d seen the look in Hunter’s eyes, and I knew that in some way he’d also betrayed himself. I needed to find out why. “So that erases all the good he’s done before that. His friendship? His past deeds?”
“Yes,” he said simply.
I shook my head. “So then we deal with him!” I looked around, but nobody would meet my eye. “All of us. Not Regan.”
“We just did. Jo—”
“No!” I was so tired of Warren speaking for the rest of us—there was no way everyone in the room felt like that! No way had kinship and brotherhood and the absolute love these people felt for Hunter been so suddenly replaced by indifference. Not in mere moments. Not just because Warren said so. “So we take a vote or something, right? Isn’t that what you were going to do when I first came in the troop?”
It was supposed to be a democratic gesture. Suddenly it felt more like a popularity contest.
Tekla finally stirred, her whisper full of grief. “That was different.”
“He knew better,” Warren added, like that made a difference. “He’s known from birth.”
Because unlike me, he’d been born and raised in a troop of superheroes, taught not to question his duty or his troop leader. He’d kept secrets from Warren too, but…
“Maybe he just made a mistake.”
It sounded hollow even to me. A mistake was something done once, not over again and again. He’d been meeting with Regan repeatedly, if not regularly. It was inexcusable, but I still wanted to find out why.
“Some mistakes are irreparable.”
I shook my head, staring at my troop leader. He sounded like a religious fanatic. One of the fundamentalists intent on spreading the Word to new places and people, and once the natives heard it, they had better heed it or burn. A year ago today I had been one of those natives.
So it wasn’t my fault, I thought, crossing to pick up Hunter’s whip, if things were getting a little hot in this kitchen.
From the corner of my eye I saw Tekla making her way to me, using the voice she reserved for her most troublesome pupils. “Archer, Warren is—”
She was going to tell me Warren was right. She was going to tell me to drop the conduit, fall into ranks, and do as I was told. But that was before I turned the whip on her.
“Get back, bitch.”
Vanessa gasped. “Joanna!”
Now the troop came to life, and that pissed me off even more. They’d stir for Tekla, but not for Hunter? Was this how easily a valued member of the troop could be thrust on the outside? How much easier, then, would they do the same to me? The bad pupil, I thought, feeling Tekla’s considering gaze. The wild native, I decided, catching Warren’s.
My anger began simmering. I might not have had Tekla’s control or Warren’s ruthlessness, Shen may have taken my ability to heal, and I’d had to give over my ability to construct walls from thin air to Boyd on my last escape from Midheaven…but I still had my temper.
My father’s temper.
“One step toward me, one wall set up to box me in…” I looked pointedly at Tekla. “…one move to stop me, and I’ll let it go. My eyes will burn so red they’ll serve as a beacon for the Tulpa. He’ll dive-bomb your new hidey-hole. He’ll flatten us all.”
“Think about what you’re doing, Joanna.” Tekla’s gaze was ice cold in comparison to my heated one.
Gregor, then, a man who’d never been anything but kind to me. “Don’t betray us too.”
“I’m not. But we’re stronger with him.” I turned back to Warren. “You know it.”
Warren’s jaw clenched and he swallowed hard, but he remained unmoved. I shook my head and started to back up, just as Regan had minutes earlier.
Vanessa, perhaps closer to me than anyone there, tried, her voice imploring. “Joanna, please—”
“No, let her go.” Warren crossed his arms and leaned against a stainless steel rack. I wasn’t fooled. The last thing he felt with his beloved Kairos walking out the door was in control. His tight smile kept me from feeling remotely bad about it. “But we won’t help. We won’t risk ourselves by going after him.”
“Some friends,” I spat, looking at each of them in turn. Felix was cross-legged on the floor, almost in a ball, and his fists were clenched so tight his knuckles were white. Good. I hoped his inaction sliced like a knife. Riddick had his eyes closed, head back, like he was thinking of pounding it through concrete—I hoped that hurt too—and though Micah had returned to his position up against the wall, he and Gregor were shooting uncertain glances at each other behind Warren’s back. I shook my head. Hunter hurt me too, but outrage on his behalf momentarily helped keep that at bay. If there was one thing I knew, it was how to prioritize.
But so did Warren. He tried again. “He betrayed you.”
Because Hunter had taken me to his bed, in his arms, while meeting with Regan. Knowing how I felt about her, I thought. Knowing she’d do anything to get to me. But it was the magnitude of those offenses that made me want to know why. “Well, I’m not going to lower myself by doing the same.”
I felt something close to hatred then; not for Hunter, but for Warren. Because he could just wash his hands of Hunter, even after he’d dutifully served this troop for so many years. Hunter was still that same person, and he was out there, still alive…though not destined to stay that way for long. I sneered at Warren. I scoffed at them all.
“Stay safe, heroes.” I looked pointedly at each of them, and found that none of them were willing to meet my eye. “Enjoy the fucking cake.”
Doubts crept in once I was out on the apocalyptic str
eets with the strange hovering sky and eerie silence, with the Shadows lurking and my troop in hiding. I even had the urge to turn around a couple of times, but images of Hunter kept flashing through my mind: the whip that I was holding licking air as he battled the Shadows, his eyes going soft as caramel as he moved inside of me. Betrayed me? Okay, yes. He’d done that. But betray the rest of the troop? His family? It just didn’t hold.
I wasn’t far behind. Though she had a head start, Regan was weighted down with injury, Hunter, and the need for stealth. I had only the third issue to worry over, and that was nothing new. So I followed the scent of blood—both old and new; tainted and fresh, fouled and that of the recently ruined hope—and thought, Oh, Hunter. What have you done?
Grieve later, I told myself, and headed into the core of the city.
I wasn’t surprised when the trail led to the nearest pipeline entrance. I hadn’t been in this one before, but it didn’t matter. All roads led home. It didn’t take a genius to figure out where Regan was headed. She was going to the entrance to Midheaven. It was symbolic, since he’d apparently engaged her in order use her soul energy for access. It was mean and meant especially for me.
I picked up my pace inside the tunnel’s depths. I could now move unseen, and I counted on Hunter to make enough noise so I was also unheard. The first tunnel emptied into a ninety-degree turn, but I stopped keeping track after that. The turns and whorls it took were impossible, part of a magic system rather than any clever planning on the city’s part. After the first few, which I navigated by touch, the air became stifling, and the blood I’d smelled earlier intensified.
Just as I was wondering how much farther this particular rabbit hole went, I heard Regan’s voice. It was closer than I expected, and I froze.
“They won’t come after you,” I heard her say, and a sharp thwack! told me she had just slapped his face. What was it with these Shadow women and face slapping? Did they take classes in it or something?
“I know.” His flat, annoyed response told me it wasn’t the first time he’d been hit. It was probably how she’d brought him back around. It was hard to carry someone heavier than yourself while trudging through a damp tunnel.
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