Vicki Pettersson - The Touch of Twilight

A tremor, like an animal stirring to life, moved through me. “Ben will never be with your pulpy rotting ass as long as I’m alive, clear?”

That eye twitched again, her mouth thinning. “Well, we can fix that, can’t we?”

My eyes slid to her changeling, who’d picked something slimy from his hair and was studying it closely, trying to figure out what it was. My gaze found hers again, and I thought, Fuck it . The leader of the underworld had made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. A doppelgänger wanted to eat my heart for breakfast. What was one more little war?

I ran at her so fast, my fist was flying toward her face while her hands were still motionless at her side. The crunch of her nose was less satisfying now that I knew how rotted out her insides were…and besides, it wasn’t enough to kill her.

Momentum had me somersaulting over her head, but I anticipated, and was twisting in the air above her, readying a second assault even before I’d touched ground. She turned into me, I blocked with my right, and the sharp tip of my elbow sailed downward to bury into her left eye socket.

Douglas had finally found his feet and had again coagulated into the grotesque, rubberized monster meant to protect the Shadows, but I ignored his snarl, dodged his lunge, and thrust my foot into his solar plexus. It sunk through to the other side, and would’ve pierced his body if not for a membrane wall as clear and thin as a yolk sac. He screamed as I yanked my foot free, but the interruption had given Regan time to retreat. She moved so the blazing fireplace was between us.

“Don’t.” I circled closer as her eyes flicked to the door. “You’ll never make it.”

She shifted too. “What are you doing? You can’t kill me here.”

“This is just practice, Regan,” I said, stalking her. “A taste of things to come.”

She pulled out her conduit, even though it was useless in the safe zone. “Is that what the Tulpa told you when he took a chunk out of your cheek?”

My face still ached with the residual sting of the Tulpa’s slap, but I shrugged. “That was before we came to an agreement. And I’ll heal.”

“Sure,” she said, feigning unconcern as her gaze darted sideways. “But will your changeling?”

“I’m fine,” Jasmine said, but she was guarded, clearly worried Regan would seek retaliation for my attack on her changeling.

But Regan hadn’t been looking at her. “Jasmine…where’s Li?”

“She was here a minute ago,” Jasmine complained, and she backed away to peer under the freestanding bookcases separating the back of the room into rows. “I swear, if I lose her again my mother is going to…”

“Oh God.” My eyes found Li at the same time Jasmine’s did. I was vaguely aware of Regan’s laughter-laughter and footsteps as she ran from the storeroom-but I bolted in the opposite direction, and dropped to my knees next to Jasmine, who’d been closer and had gotten there first.

“Wait, Jas!”

But she was already turning her sister over. “Li, how many times do I have to-”

We both gasped, momentarily stilled by the china doll cheek scored with three deep claw marks. It looked like she’d been attacked by a pit bull. Her beautiful skin hung in tatters, and blood pooled on the floor around her. Even once the bleeding was staunched, even when the furrows were stitched back together under a surgeon’s gentle hand, the child would be scarred for life.

But when she looked up at me, there was none of the loathing I expected in her watery gaze. There was no room for it with pain and fear and hope all jostling for space. “I did good, right? I protected you?”

The lump in my throat turned into a mountain. “Yeah, baby. You did great.”

She smiled with the good side of her face. I turned to Jasmine and found the piercing accusatory glare I deserved.

“Happy?” she asked, voice breaking.

God, no. I certainly wasn’t that. “I-I didn’t know.”

My voice cracked and a tear slid down the cheek that mirrored the injury to Li’s…except mine would heal. Jasmine looked at me in a length of charged silence, and for a moment I saw something akin to pity flickering behind her gaze, but she snuffed it out in the next. “Whatever.”

“I’m going to fix it.” I reached for Li.

“You’d better.” Jasmine said in a voice round with fury and disbelief. “ Hero .”

But there was only one heroine present, and I lifted her in my arms and gently carried her from the storeroom.

I drove Li and Jasmine to the emergency room, and left only after their mother had arrived, assuring her all medical costs would be covered by the Archer Children’s Foundation. She thanked me repeatedly for “saving” her baby’s life from a vicious dog’s attack, while Jasmine sat in a plastic chair, swinging her feet back and forth as she alternated text messaging on her cell phone and glaring pointedly in my direction.

I wanted to tell her it wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t expected the Tulpa to attack, and I didn’t know how the injury had been transferred to Li instead of me or even her. But intentionally or not, I really had broken something vital to the balance of the supernatural system, and now not only were the manuals not being written, but a seven-year-old’s life had been permanently affected.

It was too late to return to Master Comics. The shop was closed and I’d received instructions to meet the rest of the troop at eight o’clock to examine the mask Chandra had stolen from Xavier’s. It was seven-thirty now and I still had to get across town in the rush of Friday night traffic, but at least it gave me time to think of a way to tell the others about Li, as well as ponder the smorgasbord of trouble now filling my plate. Okay, so it wasn’t all bad news. I’d learned the doppelgänger’s appearance had spooked the Tulpa enough to have him willing to bargain with the Light. I’d also learned Regan’s left eye wigged out when she was nervous, that she was overly sensitive about turning into a walking corpse, and I could best her in hand-to-hand if I played my cards right.

The news about Hunter having a side gig as a sex worker wasn’t what one would call good , but he always had a reason for what he did, and surely he had one for keeping it from the rest of the troop. Since I was exceptionally curious as to what that reason was, it was convenient to find myself swinging in front of the warehouse that served as his workshop with almost a quarter hour to spare. We were meeting here because we weren’t sure what would happen if we tried to take Xavier’s mask back into the sanctuary with us. Anything related to the Shadows was instantaneously incinerated as it slid down the secured chute leading to our hidden underground lair. I shuddered as I recalled the sole time I’d attempted entry without donning my protective mask. In contrast, we didn’t know if this mask was inherently evil-though there was something determinedly not right about a piece of wood that came to life and sucked out a person’s soul essence-but we couldn’t risk it being destroyed before we had a chance to examine it further.

Hunter’s workshop was as safe a place as we could hope for on this side of reality. It wasn’t a designated safe zone like Master Comics or the Downtown Cocktail Lounge, and was technically accessible by mortals and Shadows alike, but Hunter had the place so booby-trapped, the unfortunate Shadow who attempted a break-in here would be skewered, rotisseried, and served up to his or her enemies faster than you could say, Would you like fries with that? I’d seen him construct a weapon out of nothing more than toothpicks and twine, but the devices buried about his workshop were more than that; they were lethal works of art. Hunter did like his toys.