Vicki Pettersson - The Scent of Shadows

Warren fell still. Inhaling deeply, he glanced at the window before turning back to me, and his expression—usually so crazed and wild-eyed—was blighted. “Oh God, Joanna. I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t smell her anymore, do you?” My voice was small and didn’t hold much hope. Warren only stood there. I looked away. “Neither do I.”

“We have to get you out of here.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, not caring where we went. “Let’s get me out of here.”

Warren didn’t speak as we walked the five blocks to a roadside motel—not to me, at least—and that was fine. He did, however, keep up a babbling monologue—something about baboons on Mars—which had the few pedestrians we did encounter steering a wide berth around us.

Beneath the garish red flash of a neon sign, a clerk wordlessly handed Warren a room key, and gave my blood-soaked and torn clothing a quick once-over without the slightest change of expression.

Oh yeah, I thought, noting the way Warren’s shoulder-bent stoop gradually straightened as we crossed the dusty asphalt lot, this bum had a lot to answer for.

He opened a gray door, ushering me inside, and flicked on a light to reveal an equally dismal room. The requisite bed, dresser, and bedside tables were so nondescript I barely saw them. I dropped into one of four chairs flanking a battered round table and slouched with my back to the wall, head back, eyes closed. Every once in a while a car would pass along the road behind the building, tires humming and splashing in the puddles left by the storm, before fading away again into a soundless void.

Warren picked up the phone, and speaking lowly, ordered someone named Marty to bring us food. Gone was the feebleminded lunatic who’d taunted Ajax, the one I’d hit with my car. This was a man in charge, who apparently gave orders he expected to be obeyed. I didn’t understand it, but that was a pretty common state of mind for me these days. All I knew right now was that I didn’t want to eat whatever he’d ordered. I didn’t even want to drink…imagine that. Instead, I felt like keeping my eyes closed, mindlessly counting cars passing outside the room until forever itself had come and gone.

“You should shower,” Warren said at last, breaking the silence. His voice was still cracked, dusty with dehydration and disuse, but his words were appropriately somber.

“You should shower,” I retorted, though the usual heat was lacking from my words. They were wearied, weak, and shaky. Like my knees. Like my life.

“Fine. I’ll shower.”

I didn’t move when the bathroom door shut, or when I heard the shower start up. I didn’t move when the knock came at the door, or when a man entered, uninvited, with a tray of bread and lunch meats that made my stomach do an unsettling flip-flop. When he left, I still sat there. Finally, I pushed myself to my feet and crossed the room to stare in the mirror at a woman I no longer recognized. She was dark-eyed and disheveled. She had blood beneath her nails and a stone where her heart used to be. She had killed a man in cold blood and hadn’t an ounce of regret.

“Who the fuck are you?” I said hollowly. The woman stared back. She had no answers for me.

The bathroom door opened and I turned to find Warren watching me, still bearded, but clean-faced and clear-eyed. He had on fresh clothing; a gray T-shirt and baggy blue sweats, worn but odor-free and unsoiled. His hair was snarled and matted, but it was pulled back relatively neatly. Only the uneven gait remained totally unchanged. He wobbled, crossing to the tray to make himself a sandwich. When he finished, he took a seat across from the one I’d been slumped in and looked up at me expectantly.

“Tell me what happened.” He didn’t baby me, and he didn’t beg, just as he hadn’t pleaded with me to shower or to eat. He gave me nothing to rail against, no reason to argue, and so I found myself obediently seated as before. Perhaps he could give me answers. And maybe the answers would provide some relief to the grief and guilt rising like a geyser inside of me again.

I explained as much as I could remember of the night’s events, and when I was done, waited for his response. Warren continued to chew, pausing mid-bite to nod thoughtfully. “That’s why you were able to resist Ajax’s conduit. I’d heard of it being done before, but I’ve never actually seen it myself.”

At my look of incomprehension, he explained. “A conduit is a weapon made especially for the individual operator, a weapon of great energy and power. A conduit, by definition, channels energy. In this case, intent.”

“You mean because the user intends to kill someone else with it,” I said dully.

He nodded. “Here’s the thing, though. Not only can’t a conduit be duplicated, it leaves no trace of existence in the physical world. You literally melted Ajax’s, without lifting a finger in defense.”

Even I was curious how that had happened. “And?”

“It was because you’d just killed another Shadow agent—that’s what we call those in our enemy army—but it was more than that,” he hurried on, excited now. “You used Butch’s conduit on him. You turned his own magic against him. No agent can heal from the blow of his own weapon.

“But, most important, was your motive. Intent. You slew him in vengeance, pure and simple. An ‘eye for an eye’ and all that. Powerful stuff. We don’t practice that much.”

I frowned, not liking the way that sounded. That wasn’t how it had happened. Vengeance was something requiring forethought, and cold-bloodedness. Warren didn’t see the way that monster had carved into my sister’s perfect and delicate skin. Or the way he’d tossed her like refuse from the side of a building. “You’d have done the same thing.”

“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard to do. You killed a senior Shadow agent, without training, knowledge, or a weapon of your own. We work for years to instill that sort of instinct in our troops and still often find ourselves on the losing end of the battle.”

I looked at him warily. “Who’s ‘we’?”

“I told you before. Zodiac troop 175, division Las Vegas—”

“Fucking superhero shit!” I pounded my fist on the table, a gesture so swift and violent it surprised us both. I pointed my finger at him. “Don’t start that again! I just watched my sister die and could do nothing about it! Nothing! And neither could you!”

“No,” he said softly. “Not this time.”

“‘Not this time’?” I stood, knocking my chair backward as I stalked to the door, throwing it open. “Not any time, nutcase! I’m out of here.”

“Hope your shoulder feels better.”

I froze. Then backed up to look in the dresser mirror. Checked my hands. Then sank onto the edge of the bed. “No wounds.”

He shrugged, almost apologetically. “Fast healers.”

Like him. Like Butch . I dropped my head in my hands. What was happening to me? Here I was healing while Olivia lay dead, her final scream still spiraling in my mind.

“Why her?” I whispered, shaking my head. “Why not me?”

Warren didn’t answer. He just sat there as I sobbed, unashamed and unable to stop, weeping in a way I hadn’t for a decade. Bile rose to coat my throat, and I ran to the bathroom.

When I returned, Warren was still picking at his food, though he seemed to have lost his appetite as well. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and took a deep drink of water. It did nothing to erase the cloying sickness from the back of my throat.

Lowering myself to the edge of the bed, I said, “What happened to me tonight?”

Warren took a deep breath. “It’s called metamorphosis. It’s a transformation that marks the beginning of a third life cycle. It happens to all of us when we reach a quarter century in age. Because you were so well hidden, we couldn’t locate you until you began emitting the hormones, the pheromones, that come with the transition.”