Vicki Pettersson - The Touch of Twilight

“I told you I’d kill him. But first I’ll tell him about your ugly secret, the daughter you don’t want him, or anyone, to know about.”

Yet here she was talking about it again. So, even prone on the floor, glyph glowing brightly beneath both boot and conduit, I wasn’t as scared as I probably should have been. I also wasn’t dead like the mortal in the alley, and even though my bones had risen to burn through my fragile skin, Regan read the thought.

“The Tulpa has said you’re not to be touched.” She ground her teeth together, and a smile began to spread over my face. “Not for a while anyway.”

Her left eye twitched, and I whipped my legs up, somersaulting backward to avoid the coming blow. Gotta love knowing someone else’s tell. “This is not touching?” I said, flipping my hair from my eyes as we circled each other again.

“It’s not killing,” she said, tone harder now as she tried to figure out how I’d anticipated the blow. “You can’t prove I touched you. The evidence is fading already.”

“So it seems we’re on equal footing once again.” In more ways than one, I thought, circling.

“You forget I know who you are, where you live, what your daughter’s name is. And I still have the man you love.” She licked her lips when she saw I wasn’t going to argue-all those things were true-and went on. “Have you looked up what I told you about Ben and that street thug yet? Read the account in his journal of how you appeared in a ghetto barricade, disarmed a criminal, then left Ben alone to mete out justice? I guess that makes you an accomplice to that murder as well, huh?”

Magnum hadn’t been an innocent, not like the woman still warm in the alley. He’d probably been born bad, yet he was mortal all the same, so technically under my protection and care. And I had left him sprawled on the floor of that barricade. But. “Ben didn’t murder that man.”

“Oh, Joanna,” Regan sighed, flipping her conduit in her hand. “Can’t you see? It’s not hard to push a man to his breaking point. Ben will kill again if I tell him to. In fact, his finger is already on the trigger. All I have to do is tell him where to aim.”

“He’s a good man.” My voice came out in a whisper.

Regan smiled. “A good man with a stain on his psyche. One you put there. And the longer I’m with him, the wider and deeper that stain will spread.

“Yes, I have plans for ol’ Benny-boy,” she went on, smiling. “He’s going to help me accomplish some of my long-term goals. And when I’m done with him he’ll be a cracked shell of the man you once loved.”

The bones beneath my lotion-soft knuckles fisted, the rings on my tensed fingers glinted, and Regan’s eyes widened. I hit her so hard, one of my diamonds was imprinted on her cheek, the memory of something precious carved into her fouled skin. Her ice pick fell as fast as a dart to connect above my knee. I crumpled, and she was spinning in the air, her left foot in my face as she whipped around me on her way out the door. My head knocked back, but I lifted it in time to see her fist lowering again. See it, but not stop it. The scream of panic and rage welling in my throat scuttled off like a roach in the light as my temple took the full force of the blow. There was a slow, almost arduous dropping, then nothing after that.

Light pricked at my vision in shards, and I groaned to send them slicing through my brain. The fluorescent bulbs above me coalesced, and the smell of grease anchored me back in time. Regan. Damn. Bitch .

When I could do more than form one-word expletives, I picked my defeated ass off the floor, and found my bag in the alley, though, unsurprisingly, not my conduit. Regan, I knew, would use the crossbow as soon as the Tulpa lifted his protective ban on my life. And then she wouldn’t just kill me, she’d obliterate my memory and legacy from the manuals, our history, and the earth.

It’s you she’s after.

I limped over to the body still lying sprawled in the alley, vision wavering as I placed weight on the leg Regan had stabbed. I slid down the grimy wall to drop next to the woman. Of course she was still there. Regan didn’t care about her, the mortal had served her purpose, and it was more tortuous to leave the body for me to deal with.

My nose felt lopsided, and I didn’t bother wiping away the blood yet. My eyes, probably both blackened, watered as I popped my nose back into place, but ten more minutes alone and no one would ever know. At least my extensions had held, I thought, feeling the top of my head. Yay for bonding glue and hairspray.

And then I began to cry.

Shit. Regan was right. I had to start taking responsibility for what I’d done, and now I’d killed a mortal . And what about what I was allowing to happen to Ben, and possibly to this entire mortal plane?

What the fuck was I doing? I thought, gazing through the tears at the woman’s body.

At the involuntary twitch of her thumb. My sniffles died in my throat and I was next to her in a millisecond, belly on the ground, cheek over her mouth, but otherwise entirely still. The softest breath, like a baby bird’s first, warmed my ear.

“Oh my God.” Alive. Alive.

And to keep her that way I had to get to the hospital quick. Not one of ours; Micah was tucked in the sanctuary until dawn, and she couldn’t wait that long. So one of the mortal hospitals, then, I thought, lifting her. But I’d have to drop her at the emergency entrance, unable to risk the paperwork, the questions about my involvement and appearance, the certain leaks of both of those to the Shadow side…leaks Olivia Archer couldn’t risk.

But this mortal would live. She had to. And after I saw her safe, I would get cleaned up, find a replacement conduit for the one I’d lost, and retire to someplace safe until I could cross to the sanctuary at dawn.

And there was only one place to do all that. Unfortunately it wasn’t until after I’d left my fragile package beneath the spotlight of a streetlamp at the city’s trauma unit, until after I heard cries of surprise and yells for assistance, and until well after I’d entered the shell of the warehouse and its arsenal of silent, hidden alarms that I thought about what exactly it meant to be alone with Hunter Lorenzo. In the depths of night and in a building only he could arm and secure. It really hit me when he swung open the side steel door and I found myself face-to-face with those muscles rounding beneath his white wife-beater, his fresh sweat so heady my nipples contracted. He looked great, yes. But, more, he looked safe.

If Hunter noticed the hitch in my breath he didn’t say. Instead his eyes widened as he took in my face.

“What the hell happened to you?” he asked, yanking me inside.

“Haven’t I healed yet?” I asked, patting at my face.

There was nothing seductive about his touch as he dragged me to the center of the warehouse, positioning me on a high metal stool next to his drawing table to assess the damage. But he wasn’t looking at my face. He’d scented my blood the moment he saw me, and had torn the seam of my slacks aside to reveal the wound above my right knee. It looked like a splash of red paint against a flawless ivory canvas.

“It’s nothing,” I told him, swallowing hard at the sight. One more scar to hide, I thought. Olivia would be appalled at the way I was treating her body. “Just a scratch.”

“From a conduit,” he said, his concern not lessening. “I wouldn’t call that nothing. Whose?”

“Guess,” I said wryly, as he yanked open a drawer on a cabinet-length toolbox to reveal emergency medical supplies. You had to hand it to the guy. He was prepared.