Vicki Pettersson - The Taste Of Night

Everyone thinks Las Vegas casinos are impenetrable, that any place with security cameras, trained personnel, and mountains of hard cash would be as hard to get into as Fort Knox. Mostly, they’re right. You can’t walk right into a stripfront property and wander any way your fancy dictates. That’s a given.

But what’s also a given is human error. Not to mention sheer boredom. You spend forty-plus hours a week, year after year, in the same smoke-filled, sensory-overloaded environment for an unimpressive hourly wage, and try to maintain a semblance of genuine interest. It’d be hard to feign curiosity under those circumstances, never mind a state of urgency. This was what I was counting on when I approached the aquarium’s guarded back door, and I wasn’t disappointed.

It was nearly midnight, probably about five hours into the guard’s shift, and he was slumped next to the door, near catatonic. As a bonus, he had a prohibited MP3 player that I could hear pumping gangsta rap from ten feet away. I slipped in the door half a foot away from him, and he never knew I was there.

The aquarium’s main room was cool and humid, silent but for the humming white noise of the tanks. Concrete walls were bathed in an eerie blue glow from the exhibit’s thick acrylic windows, and sea life from jellies to sharks floated obliviously content through beds of fresh seawater. Most of the tanks lined the walls, but a few transparent cylinders spiked through the center of the room, holding the more delicate fish. I turned around myself, thinking of those action movies where the thick glass cracks to send stingrays and water and kelp and plankton over the hapless hero as the bad guys get away. That thought in mind, I pulled out my weapon, as well as a mask that I slipped over my head. Then I dropped my bag in the corner.

“Too late for that, Archer of Light,” came a woman’s voice, and then bell-like laughter came at me from everywhere. “We already know who you are.”

“Know it,” Liam’s voice boomed out at me from the opposite side so that I turned toward it, “but can’t believe it.”

Shit. There were two of them.

“I told you she’d follow.” The woman again, but closer. I whirled again. How had I missed the second aura? And why was I still scenting only one Shadow?

“I thought she’d be harder to catch.”

“You haven’t caught me yet,” I said, getting more and more nervous as the calm banter continued. Where the fuck were they?

“Patience, Olivia…or can I call you Joanna?”

My jaw clenched as I slid toward the center of the room, back against a circular tank housing glowing pink jellies. I was confused; they were obviously close, but the glyph on my chest had yet to engage. I tapped at my cleavage, wondering if the thing was working. In movies and comic books, glyphs were represented by large lettering on the superhero’s clothing. In reality it was like a brand under the skin, undetectable until it started glowing, and only then in the presence of enemy agents, a sort of preternatural alarm system.

So if the Shadows were so close that Liam’s scent was clogging my pores, why wasn’t my glyph glowing now?

“Are you okay, Archer?” the woman said, this time from my right. “You look a little confused.”

I frowned, edging around the cylinder. How were they seeing me?

“Don’t have this place mapped out, do you? Of course, once we knew you were posing as Xavier Archer’s daughter, we knew you’d have studied Valhalla’s floor plan. That’s why we picked the aquarium. That’s why we waited until it was nearly completed to lure you here.”

Alarm skirted through me. They’d known who I’d become, and they’d waited. And I, walking around in Olivia’s skin, hadn’t known that they’d known. The woman, feeling the bump in my adrenaline, laughed.

“What’s wrong? Wondering if the Tulpa is going to show up and finish what he started?”

Liam chuckled now too. God, he sounded like he was practically on top of me. “It’s a sad day when a father tries to kill his own daughter.”

“He stopped when he found out I was his daughter,” I said, and bolted across the room to another tank.

“Which is why we haven’t told him about your new identity, or that you’d be here tonight. The place is soundproof, and the security cameras won’t be installed until next week.”

“And you’ll be long dead by then,” the woman added, her laughter ringing out again.

Oh good. They’d given this some thought. I swallowed hard and tried to soften my gaze, see shapes rather than colors. Maybe they’d found another portal and were stalking me from the other side. We could still reach each other that way. We could still kill each other. “And you think the Tulpa will be fine with that? With you killing his only child, his heir? The one he believes is the Kairos?”

“You’re not the Kairos,” Liam said, his tone falling sharply. “And the Tulpa will never know.”

I thought about that for a moment, and decided he was bluffing. My death would leave a kill spot, noticeable by any supernatural, same as anyone else’s. And kill spots didn’t only leave the psychic imprint of the person who’d died, they identified those who’d done the killing as well. It was a supernatural calling card, bragging rights, and a history lesson all rolled into one.

Except in one way, I thought, and swallowed hard, gripping my conduit more tightly. No agent could heal from the blow of his own conduit. If you were killed by your own paranormal weapon, your aura was negated, your scent obliterated, and your death would be blighted from the mythology. It was as if you’d never existed.

“Over my cold, dead body,” I murmured, just as my glyph began to glow. I looked around frantically.

“Pleasure,” came the woman’s voice from above.

I looked up to see her already falling. There was no time to clear my bow for a direct shot, though the impact of her body landing on mine caused my trigger finger to tense, and an arrow was released into space. I heard a surprised yelp and an angry “Watch it!”

I head-butted the woman, and she cried out, falling back, but by that time Liam had dropped from the rafters and had my weapon hand secured in both of his. He lifted it, using pure brute strength to angle my conduit toward my chest. I held tight, but he had power and leverage on his side, and he angled the arrow toward my core, ripping through my left bicep as he pushed the arrow lower and closer to my heart.

I rammed him with my knee, but felt the jarring sensation of my kneecap meeting with a cup-what the hell was it made of, steel?-and my leg crumpled beneath me upon its return to the ground.

Halfway to the floor, weapon hand still trapped in his, I anticipated his reach. I released my conduit, latched on to his forearms, and pulled him with me as I rolled back, propelling him with my good leg so he went flying over my head. There were more cries as he collided with the woman, and I was up again, stretching for my conduit. Inches away, a black boot connected with my weapon, sending it skittering across the concrete floor. A second boot plowed into my face. Another pair landed on my back. Something popped like corn, and numbness sped along my limbs.

Please, God. Don’t let whatever that was have been important .

“Jesus, that was easy!” Liam gasped, stomping on my neck for good measure before kneeling in front of me.

It was, I thought, disgusted with myself as he sat me upright. My back was spasming in pain, but knowing I’d heal, I pushed away the agony and looked up at him through watering eyes. I was surprised-though I shouldn’t have been-to find he was dressed as the security guard I’d passed on the way in. Even without my ability to see auras anymore, I should’ve at least scented him. And I hadn’t.