Vicki Pettersson - City of Souls

As the body parts were too small to attract mortal attention, we found each one through Vanessa’s blood and unique scent, all of us attuned to the macabre signage pointing us in her direction.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Jewell said when we came across Vanessa’s perfect, petite, and now severed nose. It was as if they were chopping off every available appendage, severing all the bits that came together to identify her as a whole.

“Don’t you dare!” Felix whirled, and his tears rolled from their tracks, disappeared into the night. He wiped a hand over his face, leaving a smear of dirt. “She has to endure this. It shouldn’t be so hard for you .”

Felix, normally engaging and easygoing, fisted his hand in his already tousled hair like he wanted to pull it out. It wasn’t just that he’d grown up with Vanessa in the underground sanctuary that housed the agents of Light and their children, their world. The two junior agents had quietly become an item in the last year, and he was having a hard time keeping his emotions from burning like acid in the air.

Tekla, our troop’s Seer, wise woman, and senior troop member, placed a hand on his shoulder. “She didn’t mean that, Felix. She didn’t mean anything by it.”

“She is not just parts…” He shook off Tekla, but kept on shaking. “She’s not…”

Hunter and I looked at each other, then he jerked his head and we silently followed.

We followed the body parts all the way into Chinatown.

“This can’t be right,” Riddick said as we turned onto Spring Mountain Road. “All of Chinatown is a safe zone.”

Safe zones were places where neither side of the Zodiac could touch the other, and were built in around the entire city. Even an agent’s paranormal weapon, their personal conduit, was useless in such a place.

Gregor squinted at the faux Imperial skyline. “You sure it’s not residual? Has Vanessa been here before?”

“It’s fresh blood,” Micah said, voice strained. Felix winced.

“So why would they lead us somewhere they can’t touch us?”

“I know why.” It was the first time Warren had spoken since Hunter and I joined them, and the timing was telling. It was only recently that I’d begun to realize his quietude was much like his indigent cover, designed to make us overlook him…and that he had such a great stake in our lives. Meanwhile the wheels were turning behind that sturdy frame, his mind ever-working, and all to an end that he’d already pinpointed at his personal destination. “They want to make a trade.”

I swallowed hard. There was only one person they’d be willing to trade the life of a full-fledged agent of Light for-only one thing we had that they wanted. Our world’s chosen one. The Kairos. Me.

They were torturing Vanessa because of me.

I was careful not to let Felix see my face as my stomach roiled.

“No trade.”

“Of course not.”

Felix frowned and bit his lip, and he didn’t look at me.

I took a breath. “Wait. There has-”

Tekla stayed a hand on my arm, but spoke loudly enough for Felix to hear. “No, Jo. We’ll get her back without risking you. Now put on your mask. And start searching for a portal. We can’t enter a safe zone on this side of reality.”

We found one, and we entered it as a team, as one.

At one time only three people knew I was masquerading as my sister, the socialite and casino heiress Olivia Archer. It had been a month since the other agents of Light found out I was Joanna Archer beneath all this Stepford perfection, but other than Regan DuPree-now an outcast and rogue agent-the entire Shadow Zodiac was still clueless about my cover identity. Everyone in the mortal world believed Joanna Archer had died a year ago in a fall from a high-rise building, and it was out of this destruction of my old identity that my true life was birthed. In order to keep that life, it was imperative the Shadows never discover my Olivia Archer identity.

So I made one last check of my mask before we collectively slipped under the turned-up eaves of a strip mall impersonating a Chinese temple. The red tile rooftops appeared black in the moonless night, and we stole past the crowded restaurants on the lower levels, where menus I couldn’t read were pressed against the windows and the people inside were munching contentedly on dim sum and pot stickers. Ignoring the scent of steamed food, we instead followed that of fresh blood and rotting flesh, heading one by one up a wide concrete staircase to the empty furniture stores above.

Antiques shops comprised most of the retail space, Buddhas and dragons and Shaolin warriors all peering out from the window displays in wary dismay, but we kept going, the macabre scents intensifying as we neared a Chinese bakery. The Shadows weren’t even trying to conceal their location.

Warren, sotto voce. “Make a net.”

We put some distance between us, so the splitting of ranks would appear natural, though we were running short a couple of agents. Chandra, whom I’d displaced, was now serving the troop in an auxiliary role only, and Kimber was no longer strong enough to run with us. As she blamed me for that lack, I didn’t exactly mourn her absence. Yet it was at the moment that everyone pulled out their conduits that I felt most vulnerable. That now-rogue agent, Regan, had stolen mine after being expelled from the Shadow troop. I had to settle for a mortal weapon until Hunter could make me a new one. The Micro Uzi was a poor substitute for a conduit, but you took what you could get.

The bakery was abnormally large, with giant plate-glass windows sporting tiered wedding cakes that overlooked the ornamental patio and the lights of passing traffic on Spring Mountain Road beyond. There was no way to sneak up unseen, but we didn’t need to in a safe zone. So we walked single file through the sole glass door, propped open to let the scent of Shadows-and Vanessa-waft outside.

The table and chair clusters had been cleared from the room’s center, and bakery cases lined the opposite wall, while red paper lanterns set on a low glow shot an eerie light through the cavernous shop’s middle. There were coffee and tea stations, and a curtained doorway leading into a kitchen, but the Shadows were clustered at one side of the elongated room, tilting our attention that way. It was like they were baiting us. But for what?

And then, as they parted ranks, I decided they’d been luring us in for a close-up of the carnage they’d wreaked upon Vanessa’s once pristine body. She was trussed to a chair like a victim in a gangster movie, except the ropes wrapped only around her core, leaving limbs and remaining appendages free for further attack. But they’d dispensed with the toying games now. In addition to her shorn hair and missing nose, and the ear and digits we’d already found, there was a foot lying beneath her chair.

They had done this because of me.

It was all I could do to hold back a wail.

Felix didn’t. His cry rose out of him like a siren, but guttural and borne from his belly. He strained forward, but Gregor and Micah were already flanking him in anticipation. They held him until he stopped struggling, but his voice had awoken something in Vanessa. She lifted her head, which had been lolling, and though it took her a moment to focus, seeing us brought her to life. She shook her head from side to side, gurgling as she strained against her bonds, eyes bulging, the movement making the blood flow free in her mouth again. After all she’d been through, it was a testament to her will that she could still move at all.

Other than the man securing her, the Shadows fanned out, and we each gravitated almost unconsciously to our opposite on the Zodiac. Felix dutifully followed Sloane, the Shadow Capricorn, who fucked with him by arching the farthest away from Vanessa. Though I didn’t will it, I found myself bisecting the room to stand directly in front of our captured Leo. My opposite, the Sagittarian Shadow and their troop leader, was missing.