Vicki Pettersson - The Touch of Twilight

I dove into the next doorway I came upon, a bar with gouges in the floor, team trophies lining the walls, and an inexplicably large jar of pickled pigs’ feet next to the register. Two men holding pool cues over a neglected table straightened when I came in, but I ignored both them and the stares from those who swiveled on their red patent leather stools. I wasn’t looking for a game. I needed a way out.

I headed straight to the back of the bar and pushed through the kitchen entrance. The slit-eyed cook never looking up from his portable television as I exited into the back alley. My nostrils flared as I first pivoted left, then took off in the opposite direction, following the scent of decay.

Following Regan.

It wasn’t hard to put together, and I did it as I ran. The little shit in Master Comics had called Regan again after overhearing my conversation with Dylan and Kade about Jaden Jacks, and Regan had either tracked me, or correctly guessed I’d research the events in the Jacks manual immediately. My money was on the latter, as we all knew fixing Jasmine was a priority.

So Regan DuPree knew I was here…but I knew she was too. I knew her scent as well as I did my own, and offensive though it was, it would take a miracle to dislodge. Regan, I decided as I rounded the block, didn’t have another miracle left in her.

I blew by an apartment building, wind at my heels, knocking over a child’s bike, leaves and debris rustling in my wake. I flattened myself against the building’s short side, double-palmed my crossbow, and eased into the adjacent side street.

She was picking her way through the street’s middle, a dark figure with a sharp, swinging bob, and I was pleased to see her looking tentative. Her scent was the same as it’d been in the shop, and in the bathroom before that: smugness like smoky marshmallow, crazy like cheap liquor, and as spoiled as fermented flesh.

I thought of all the times and ways she’d eluded me, how she’d pawed Ben so possessively, and threatened to either blow him to bits or shrivel his soul until it matched her own. As she neared the last quarter length of that alley-nearly safe-I thought of what Gregor told me about her parents and decided that playing fair was overrated. Her death, I thought as I lifted my weapon, would be a relief to us all.

The damned toddler was what saved her. His screech as he ran from the street festival announced his arrival at the mouth of the alley, a tiny bolt of flying limbs accompanied by his mother’s panicked, exasperated cry. I lowered my weapon as they appeared in quick succession, the frantic mother whipping him back to her side where he cried out again. They drew lines in their battle of wills, right there between the two bland apartment buildings.

Regan didn’t slow. In fact, her confidence lifted at the sight of them, and why not? I’d never attack with witnesses present. Their arrival also gave her options, other lives to play with in this cat-and-mouse chase with me, and I decided right there and then: not again.

I rushed her. It wasn’t as fast as an arrow through the heart, but the timing was perfect. I cleared twenty yards in the seconds it took for the mother and child to slip from view. Regan hadn’t taken three steps before I was on her, momentum driving me too close for a fully extended punch. I settled for the more lethal elbow to the temple, driving downward with all my supernatural might just as she shifted, brows furrowing…

On a face that wasn’t Regan’s.

I pulled up short, but it was too late. The blow still connected and the woman fell, probably without even knowing she’d been hit. Not a deathblow , I pleaded silently, my breath sounding loudly in my ears. Please, please not a deathblow . But through my pleading, and as I cradled a clearly mortal body in that ragged silence, I battled back confusion. I could still scent Regan on this woman, in her, a sensory record of a life touched by Shadow. And when I coupled that olfactory knowledge with the woman’s appearance-a build similar to my old one, the blunt hair exact, but a face that was nothing like Regan’s or mine-my confusion was snuffed, and my blood went colder than the thin stream of that which was trickling from the mortal’s ear, onto the ground.

It’s you she’s after.

And she’d use anything and anyone-including an innocent-to get to me. I’d have bent to study the track marks I knew studded the veins in her arms, but Hunter’s reminder sounded again, more insistent this time.

It’s you she’s after.

I dove to my left, only because I happened to be leaning to my right, just as the bell-like laughter sounded down the alley. Luckily there was a jumble of shopping carts and construction debris to block me from view, but still my heart pounded, my own emotion now up and easily scented, and I looked back at the woman sprawled in the middle of the street regretfully. I hated to leave her, but I had no way of knowing if Regan was alone.

Back to the wall and using the construction material as a shield, I shakily inched my way again to the bar’s rear exit. I’d come full circle, but it was the knowledge that I had to get out of here now that had me lightheaded.

The moment I touched the handle of the kitchen door, it rocked into me with a force that should’ve been impossible on spring hinges. My skull cracked on the steel doorframe, then with one good yank on my arm, I was pulled inside. I let my knees buckle-they wanted to, anyway-and narrowly avoided a blow to the head. I could have also eluded the foot in my gut if my attacker was mortal, but the blow nailed me true and square and sent me sprawling on the kitchen floor, joining the unconscious cook and an obscenely large cockroach scuttling past my head. All I could think as Regan squashed it beneath her boot, was Clever bitch . She’d predicted I’d recognize the cab and had made the driver drop her off in front of me on his previous circuit, along with a woman she’d probably culled from the herd of mortals days ago. Why was it only clear now, when it was too late?

“You…”

She’d plucked an innocent from the world, one she made sure looked like her-me-from behind, then marked her with her own olfactory scent. She made me kill the mortal because watching that would be so much more fun than doing it herself.

Regan just nodded to all those unspoken accusations, her other boot pinned at my neck. “And you thought I was just another pretty face.”

“You made me…”

“Puh-lease shut up. For once take some responsibility. You did it yourself.”

The tinny scent of the woman’s blood burned the lining of my nose, causing my eyes to tear up.

“Besides,” Regan went on, increasing her weight. “I told you not to fuck with me anymore. I thought the threat on Ben’s sad little life would do the trick…but then I found this.”

I glanced at the bugging device in her hand, less concerned about that than the ice pick poised at my heart while my conduit still lay unguarded outside the kitchen’s back door. “Maybe you missed it before.”

“I did not miss it!” Her hand disappeared into her pocket, and before I could speak again she withdrew it and pegged me with five other devices…all the new ones Gregor had planted. They stung my skin, fell harmlessly to the floor, and I lay extra still, trying not to look like I was planning to attack her.

Trying to figure out a way to kill her where she stood.

“What did I say about backing off?” She placed her hands on her hips, her conduit fisted in her right. Ben should see her now, I thought, eyeing her black on black street wear-perfect for the First Friday crowd-her hair slicked back behind her ears, looming over me with homicide in her eyes.

It’d be unrealistic if I played too nice, so I voiced my first thought. “Gee, Mom, I don’t know. What did you say?”