The Scent of Shadows Free with Bonus Material Read online

  Or had they?

  I looked at the man leading me. Sent from the heavens or not—and I had to admit it was unlikely—I knew one thing: he was not who he seemed. He also held the answers to the events that had plagued me the past twenty-four hours. And I wanted those answers. Besides, I told myself, he was right. There never was any going back.

  “I’ll follow you,” I said, and Warren’s face lit in absurd elation. “If you promise me two things.”

  His brows drew together again.

  “First, you have to tell me what the hell is going on, and I mean all of it.”

  “Done! Easy-peasy,” he said, and leaned toward me confidentially. “And second?”

  “And second? Take a fucking shower.” I wrinkled my nose. If he stunk before, he positively reeked now.

  “Such a sweet girl. Glad you’re on my side.”

  “I’m on my side.” I edged out, and Ajax appeared again, poised as he’d been before.

  “You two finished yakking yet?” His lips moved on the other side of the glass, but his voice bloomed next to me. “Can we get on with this?”

  “By all means. I’ve got a date with your mama. Gotta get a move on.” Warren hopped from one foot to the other with a sharp, jeering cackle. This infuriated Ajax and he rushed the window. I lunged for a vertical post, clinging to it with whitened fingertips. Warren did not, making himself a target.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and averted my face as the poker lanced through the window. No crash came. Whirling back, I saw the tip slide through the glass as easily as trout through water. Warren dodged, wrapped his hand in the tattered hem of his duster coat, and seized the triangular blade before Ajax could withdraw. He yanked, the blade screeching and stuttering through the glass to the hilt. Ajax’s face slammed against the pane, and I gained another post before he’d recovered.

  “Let. Go.” He spaced the words evenly, one eye riveted on Warren.

  “You let go.”

  Ajax must have sensed the futility in arguing with someone possessing the rationale of an asylum patient. That, or he was sick of eating glass. He pulled away and released the poker. “That’s okay. I have another.”

  Viper fast, quicker than I’d have guessed, he had the second weapon spearing through the window, angling toward my gut. I assume everyone has a moment of terrified realization right before their death. I was no different. That sliver of a blade was the sharpest thing I’d ever seen. I anticipated pain, knew I’d be skewered through, and wondered if I’d feel the impact when I fell to my death.

  Wondered, briefly, if Olivia had.

  I didn’t feel it. I waited, eyes squeezed tight, and still it didn’t come. Having already braced myself for the hereafter, I found this relatively unnerving. I opened one eye. Ajax and Warren were staring at me, wide-mouthed and wordless. I looked down. Bending halfway to the hilt, the steel blade looked rubberized. Then its ruined tip began dissolving, dripping onto the stone ledge, and then down the side of the building like liquid mercury. Nonplussed, I glanced back up at the two men. Were supernatural beings supposed to look that surprised?

  “Ah-ha! Eureka! I found her, Ajax! I found her!”

  “I found her, you noxious bag of air.”

  “Yes, but too late. Too late, and now look. She’s too strong for you! Just as we’d hoped. Just as I knew!”

  “She’s not!” To prove it, Ajax yanked the first poker from Warren’s grip, which he’d loosened in his excitement, and thrust again. An inch away from my body it melted like snow. He tried again, with the same results, then dropped the stub with a cry of rage.

  By now Warren was almost doubled over with laughter, tears streaming down his dirty cheeks as he wobbled precariously from one foot to the other. “Too strong! Too strong!”

  “I don’t understand,” Ajax said to me. “You can’t have that kind of strength. You’re an innocent.”

  “Yeah, that’s what Butch said. Right before I killed him.”

  “Butch was here?”

  “What? Can’t you smell him?” I asked nastily, bolder now that I was safe. Not counting the two hundred foot drop behind me. “Why don’t you use your nose? Sniff him out?”

  They both stared, like I was the abnormal one there. Warren found his voice first. “You can’t smell the dead, Joanna. You’ve erased his scent, his essence. It’s as if he never existed.” He turned to face the man on the other side of the glass. “Isn’t that right, Ajax?”

  Ajax had begun to shake. “You bitch. You fucking bitch.”

  “Are you disrespecting me, Ajax?” Warren said. “Are you? Because if you are—”

  “I think he’s talking to me.”

  “Oh,” Warren said. “Go ahead, then.”

  “I’m going to kill you, you know that?” Ajax told me. “I’m going to find you and I’m going to fucking kill you.”

  “How?” Warren asked. “You can’t scent her, therefore you can’t find her.”

  “Temporary. When the aureole wears off I’ll be on you like peanut on butter.”

  Stupid thing for a homicidal anorectic to say.

  “Or like a cat on a mouse.” Warren pointed at Ajax’s feet.

  Ajax screeched, and wheeled backward. Luna hissed and began to stalk him, her butt swaying in a mean saunter, tail high and shaking. Ajax continued backing away, casting uncertain looks around him to make sure there were no other feline attackers. Shaking, he made his way to the door.

  “This isn’t over,” he said, pointing at me. “Not by a long shot.” Then he fled out the front door just as Luna charged.

  “We can go in now,” Warren said.

  Luna met us inside the bedroom window. She was licking a paw—buffing her knuckles, it seemed—as she waited for us. She moved over as I climbed through, and wound about my legs, probably expecting a treat. I scooped her up and buried my face in her fur the way Olivia had. The purr shook her body and reverberated into mine.

  “I didn’t know your sister had a cat.”

  But somehow he knew I had a sister. Had a sister, I thought again, and felt the tears well. “Yeah. She did.”

  Warren fell still. Inhaling deeply, he glanced at the window before turning back to me, and his expression—usually so crazed and wild-eyed—was blighted. “Oh God, Joanna. I’m so sorry.”

  “You don’t smell her anymore, do you?” My voice was small and didn’t hold much hope. Warren only stood there. I looked away. “Neither do I.”

  “We have to get you out of here.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, not caring where we went. “Let’s get me out of here.”

  Warren didn’t speak as we walked the five blocks to a roadside motel—not to me, at least—and that was fine. He did, however, keep up a babbling monologue—something about baboons on Mars—which had the few pedestrians we did encounter steering a wide berth around us.

  Beneath the garish red flash of a neon sign, a clerk wordlessly handed Warren a room key, and gave my blood-soaked and torn clothing a quick once-over without the slightest change of expression.

  Oh yeah, I thought, noting the way Warren’s shoulder-bent stoop gradually straightened as we crossed the dusty asphalt lot, this bum had a lot to answer for.

  He opened a gray door, ushering me inside, and flicked on a light to reveal an equally dismal room. The requisite bed, dresser, and bedside tables were so nondescript I barely saw them. I dropped into one of four chairs flanking a battered round table and slouched with my back to the wall, head back, eyes closed. Every once in a while a car would pass along the road behind the building, tires humming and splashing in the puddles left by the storm, before fading away again into a soundless void.

  Warren picked up the phone, and speaking lowly, ordered someone named Marty to bring us food. Gone was the feebleminded lunatic who’d taunted Ajax, the one I’d hit with my car. This was a man in charge, who apparently gave orders he expected to be obeyed. I didn’t understand it, but that was a pretty common state of mind for me these days. All I knew right n
ow was that I didn’t want to eat whatever he’d ordered. I didn’t even want to drink…imagine that. Instead, I felt like keeping my eyes closed, mindlessly counting cars passing outside the room until forever itself had come and gone.

  “You should shower,” Warren said at last, breaking the silence. His voice was still cracked, dusty with dehydration and disuse, but his words were appropriately somber.

  “You should shower,” I retorted, though the usual heat was lacking from my words. They were wearied, weak, and shaky. Like my knees. Like my life.

  “Fine. I’ll shower.”

  I didn’t move when the bathroom door shut, or when I heard the shower start up. I didn’t move when the knock came at the door, or when a man entered, uninvited, with a tray of bread and lunch meats that made my stomach do an unsettling flip-flop. When he left, I still sat there. Finally, I pushed myself to my feet and crossed the room to stare in the mirror at a woman I no longer recognized. She was dark-eyed and disheveled. She had blood beneath her nails and a stone where her heart used to be. She had killed a man in cold blood and hadn’t an ounce of regret.

  “Who the fuck are you?” I said hollowly. The woman stared back. She had no answers for me.

  The bathroom door opened and I turned to find Warren watching me, still bearded, but clean-faced and clear-eyed. He had on fresh clothing; a gray T-shirt and baggy blue sweats, worn but odor-free and unsoiled. His hair was snarled and matted, but it was pulled back relatively neatly. Only the uneven gait remained totally unchanged. He wobbled, crossing to the tray to make himself a sandwich. When he finished, he took a seat across from the one I’d been slumped in and looked up at me expectantly.

  “Tell me what happened.” He didn’t baby me, and he didn’t beg, just as he hadn’t pleaded with me to shower or to eat. He gave me nothing to rail against, no reason to argue, and so I found myself obediently seated as before. Perhaps he could give me answers. And maybe the answers would provide some relief to the grief and guilt rising like a geyser inside of me again.

  I explained as much as I could remember of the night’s events, and when I was done, waited for his response. Warren continued to chew, pausing mid-bite to nod thoughtfully. “That’s why you were able to resist Ajax’s conduit. I’d heard of it being done before, but I’ve never actually seen it myself.”

  At my look of incomprehension, he explained. “A conduit is a weapon made especially for the individual operator, a weapon of great energy and power. A conduit, by definition, channels energy. In this case, intent.”

  “You mean because the user intends to kill someone else with it,” I said dully.

  He nodded. “Here’s the thing, though. Not only can’t a conduit be duplicated, it leaves no trace of existence in the physical world. You literally melted Ajax’s, without lifting a finger in defense.”

  Even I was curious how that had happened. “And?”

  “It was because you’d just killed another Shadow agent—that’s what we call those in our enemy army—but it was more than that,” he hurried on, excited now. “You used Butch’s conduit on him. You turned his own magic against him. No agent can heal from the blow of his own weapon.

  “But, most important, was your motive. Intent. You slew him in vengeance, pure and simple. An ‘eye for an eye’ and all that. Powerful stuff. We don’t practice that much.”

  I frowned, not liking the way that sounded. That wasn’t how it had happened. Vengeance was something requiring forethought, and cold-bloodedness. Warren didn’t see the way that monster had carved into my sister’s perfect and delicate skin. Or the way he’d tossed her like refuse from the side of a building. “You’d have done the same thing.”

  “Maybe, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard to do. You killed a senior Shadow agent, without training, knowledge, or a weapon of your own. We work for years to instill that sort of instinct in our troops and still often find ourselves on the losing end of the battle.”

  I looked at him warily. “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “I told you before. Zodiac troop 175, division Las Vegas—”

  “Fucking superhero shit!” I pounded my fist on the table, a gesture so swift and violent it surprised us both. I pointed my finger at him. “Don’t start that again! I just watched my sister die and could do nothing about it! Nothing! And neither could you!”

  “No,” he said softly. “Not this time.”

  “‘Not this time’?” I stood, knocking my chair backward as I stalked to the door, throwing it open. “Not any time, nutcase! I’m out of here.”

  “Hope your shoulder feels better.”

  I froze. Then backed up to look in the dresser mirror. Checked my hands. Then sank onto the edge of the bed. “No wounds.”

  He shrugged, almost apologetically. “Fast healers.”

  Like him. Like Butch. I dropped my head in my hands. What was happening to me? Here I was healing while Olivia lay dead, her final scream still spiraling in my mind.

  “Why her?” I whispered, shaking my head. “Why not me?”

  Warren didn’t answer. He just sat there as I sobbed, unashamed and unable to stop, weeping in a way I hadn’t for a decade. Bile rose to coat my throat, and I ran to the bathroom.

  When I returned, Warren was still picking at his food, though he seemed to have lost his appetite as well. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and took a deep drink of water. It did nothing to erase the cloying sickness from the back of my throat.

  Lowering myself to the edge of the bed, I said, “What happened to me tonight?”

  Warren took a deep breath. “It’s called metamorphosis. It’s a transformation that marks the beginning of a third life cycle. It happens to all of us when we reach a quarter century in age. Because you were so well hidden, we couldn’t locate you until you began emitting the hormones, the pheromones, that come with the transition.”

  “Which is why Butch was sent to kill me at that exact moment,” I surmised.

  Warren nodded. “It’s a time of change, one that signifies a move into great power, or at least access to that power. Problem is, the exact moment of transition is also a time of great weakness. You’re frozen, as unable to act or react as a marble statue, though most of our members describe it in terms of heat, a rush of energy into your core.” That, I thought, jibed with what I’d felt. “We usually place our initiates in a sort of safe house, surrounded by our other members, where they can go through the process without risk to themselves or any near mortals.”

  Like Olivia. “Why didn’t you do that with me?”

  “Because the initiate has to be willing. You’ve been hidden so long your true nature was buried, even from yourself. We couldn’t find you in time to enlist you, much less educate you.”

  “So how’d Ajax find me?”

  “Opposites attract. You’re always more attuned to that which you fear or hate.”

  I let out a hollow laugh that broke down into a tattered cough, and shook my head at the irony of that. So why hadn’t I known what to do about Butch? Why had my instinct only kicked in after it was too late?

  “So, that’s how it works,” Warren said, after I motioned for him to continue. “We couldn’t locate you until our enemies identified you first. Then we could only hope that it wasn’t too late.”

  Which brought me back to my original question—why me? “I think you’ve got the wrong heroine.”

  Warren leaned forward, one corner of his mouth lifting in a small smile. What was most unsettling about this was how normal, and sane, that smile looked there. I rubbed at my eyes. “You’re special, Joanna, even among us. Your mother was also a member of the Zodiac troop. She was the Archer.”

  I looked at him sharply and my heart began to pound. Nobody had spoken of my mother in nearly a decade. “You know my mother?”

  “You were born on her birthday, right?”

  I nodded, both surprised and not that he knew this.

  “So was I. I’m a Taurus, though, the Bull of the western Zodiac, al
so after my mother. Our lineage is matriarchal,” he explained, sunburned hands wrapped around one knee. “I suppose you can call it an inheritance of sorts. Every generation twelve men and women are born, raised, and trained to keep order in their part of the world. When all twelve positions are filled, there is peace and cosmic balance. Every major city in the world has a Zodiac troop, though the suburbs are patrolled by independents.” He frowned at that, as if the word tasted bitter in his mouth.

  “Independents,” I repeated, my brows raised dubiously.

  “Rogue agents,” he said in an exaggerated whisper.

  “Superheroes?” I pressed, and he shrugged.

  “For lack of a better word, yes. We live in the city of our birth, pay our taxes, and hold normal jobs, but in the meantime we scent out Shadow agents, our polar opposites on the astrological chart, and destroy them.”

  I shook my head to drown out the words. They didn’t make any sense anyway. “I still don’t see what this has to do with me. I’m not a superhero. I’m—”

  “Something never seen before,” he finished for me, and leaning forward, looked into my eyes. “You, Joanna, are the first sign.”

  I rubbed a hand over my face and did a quick calculation. “Sorry to interrupt this fantasy in progress, but Sagittarius is the ninth sign of the zodiac, not the first.”

  He shot me a look like I was the crazy one in the room and began cleaning the crud from beneath his fingernails. “Unless you define ‘sign’ as the portent signaling our ascendancy over our enemies. Your discovery means just that. It’s the first sign. You’re the first sign.”

  Oh.

  He paused, mistook my blighted look for one of confusion, and rubbed a hand over his beard. “Think of us as a metropolitan police force, but for the paranormal.”

  “Then you suck,” I said bluntly. “Crime has risen eleven percent in the last year alone.”

  Warren smiled and shook his head. “We can’t control what mortals do, Joanna. Ever hear of free will? Individual choice? All those universal checks and balances set up since the beginning of time? We do what we can on the physical plane—if we’re in the right place at the wrong time, that is—but our real job is to counteract the criminal activity of the Shadow side.”