Vicki Pettersson - The Touch of Twilight

He’d rubbed his fingertips together when he said it, so I held out my own hand, asking, “You can actually feel if the design is right?”

He nodded. “Firing a weapon is an act of acoustic vibration. A perfect weapon unleashes energy at a frequency that allows for easy manipulation of world matter, and then the throwing or shooting or stabbing or whipping takes no effort at all. Some people call it being ‘in the zone.’ All that violent energy is absorbed by the body; there’s no kickback or impact.”

I snorted. “Tell that to the target.”

He inclined his head, a small smile visiting his lips, and I was glad I’d changed the subject. He was happiest when he was talking about war. “But-and here’s what’s important to understand-a perfectly constructed conduit also manipulates the agent. Firing it releases acoustic vibrations that oscillate back and forth between controller and conduit. A weapon’s shape, therefore, acts as a funnel for the will of the agent, but it also reinforces the agent at the same time. That’s why they must be uniquely matched…and perfectly paired.”

More vibrational theory, I thought, with a wry smile. Explosions destroying molecules, black holes eating up matter. Now violence that resonated in the soul. I shook my head, and stared at him for long seconds. “What are you up to, Hunter?”

He looked at me to clarify, and I would have if I could put my feelings into words. Maybe it was the same sort of power that gave him the ability to study a weapon as if it were a person, though more likely it was the aureole still humming between us. Yet for all that, he was still a mystery. And even though I wanted to know why he’d taken up another identity-in the sex industry, no less-the way he was looking at me now, like I should already know, had me squirming like a bug. I broke eye contact. Maybe some things should remain unspoken.

Apparently Hunter didn’t feel the same. “You know, someday you’ll come to me. I’ll wait, because I’m a gentleman, but you will come. Again and again.”

“That is gentlemanly,” I quipped, but he smiled when he saw me swallow hard. I turned to walk away, but he was suddenly there, spinning me back. I yanked my arm away but he only strengthened his grip, and I knew he’d leave bruises. I shook my head, pissed. That big, powerful body, I thought glaring up at him. Making me feel like a mortal again. But I could still fight him with words. “I should tell everyone about your side gig as a sex worker.”

His hands lowered to mine, still powerfully twined, though his thumb played lazily against my palm. “And I should tell everyone about your daughter.”

Now he was trying to piss me off. “Then I might slip and mention yours.”

“Then I might slip also, and call you Joanna.” He drew closer, testing me.

I remained where I was, and though the only thing touching was our hands, the heat from his body pooled around him, resonating against my skin like the sun. “Wow, blackmail and threats on top of manhandling. You do know how to woo a girl.”

“Well, you don’t seem like the flowers and chocolate type.”

“Is that your professional opinion?”

“Honey,” he said, eyes narrowing as they fastened hard on mine. “Were I a celibate monk secluded from the fairer sex my entire life, I’d still know your type.”

“Really?” I snarled. So much for his lip service to everyone being unique; now I was a type . “Which is what?”

Angling forward, his chest touched mine. It was like setting a match to oil, and my nerve endings burned with it. “Mine.”

The warehouse door slammed behind me, and I heard voices talking, calling out, bantering, but I was afraid if I moved, it would be into him. I looked at his body again, running my eyes over it like water.

“We had an agreement,” I whispered feebly, hating my fluid emotions, the pull of both desire and anger, the reaction to his mere physicality.

And knowing how he affected me, Hunter winced like he was apologetic, bent…and ran his lips over my cheek. “Well, now we’re going to agree to disagree.”

I jerked away as Felix rounded the corner, followed by a girl with thick blond hair, dreaded and hanging halfway down her back. Each was carrying three boxes of pizza, and the scent of cheese and pepperoni presumably masked the emotion coming from Hunter and me because neither of them looked alarmed.

“I’ve got eats, yo, but I’m not paying for everyone-poor college student, remember?” Felix threw his pies on top of Hunter’s drawing table, and wiped his hands on his jeans as he shot us his wide, trademark grin. “Pony up the bills, kids.”

I batted my lashes and flipped my hair back over my shoulder. “Sorry, Felix. All I’ve got is my American Express Black, but Hunter will cover me.” I regarded him with a raised brow. “He gets paid in cash.”

In addition to booby traps, and bombs, and anything one would need to manufacture indestructible weaponry, Hunter’s workshop boasted a panic room. If Shadows ever found the warehouse, an agent could retreat here until backup arrived. It’s where we went after everyone else had arrived, chatting about nothing in particular until we’d all gathered in the weapon-and soundproof room.

An old-fashioned card catalog was shelved along one of the shorter walls, and another two drawing tables were pushed together as a center workspace. A blow-up bed, currently deflated and stowed in a giant cabinet, could be pulled out in emergencies, but the room was otherwise utilitarian, without even a chair to sit on. We spread out along its perimeter, and I leaned against one of the cabinets used for archival storage. This one held meticulous records of Shadow appearances and attacks, tracking their movements and dates, and triangulating their positions.

We also kept duplicates of the valley’s street maps here, the residential roadways as well as the main thoroughfares, though they differed from maps that could be bought at the corner gas station in one very significant way. These pinpointed the location of previously known portals, when they opened and closed, who accessed them, and where they led in Vegas’s corresponding flip side. These records were constantly updated, usually by Gregor, whose cabdriver persona gave him the most obvious pretext to canvass the streets, though we all kept daily logs of our encounters that went to Warren at the end of the week.

But the personality of the room, the thing that made it come alive despite a lack of warmth or personal effects, came from the flat stacks of hand-drawn maps in the climate-controlled case beneath the drawing tables. These historic depictions detailed the Las Vegas known to previous generations, all the way back to the early 1700s, and an independent agent who’d been tagging along with a desert expedition led by a Spanish scout. He was the one who’d dubbed this fertile swath of land “The Meadows.”

Of course, Las Vegas hadn’t become large enough to warrant a true troop until long after that; first came the fort that acted as a refuge for the original Mormon settlers, then the trading posts and railroads that brought saloons and prostitution and, eventually, the workers who’d labored over the Hoover Dam in the nearby Black Canyon. No, it wasn’t until the Second World War was over, and tourism turned a sole dusty boulevard into a flashy desert oasis, that the true battle for Vegas’s soul began. So the city grew, our troop formed, and the maps reminded us of how far we’d come, and in a way allowed us to pay homage to those who were here first.

Our generation’s map was splayed like a banner over one full wall, the population boom of the early nineties penciled beneath the expansion in the millennium and the mid-decade rise of the city as it began to spread up as well as out.