Vicki Pettersson - The Scent of Shadows

Pivoting, I reached for the poker, but his hand closed around the grip first, so I redirected and kicked the duffel from his reach. I leapt over his body just as three feet of barbed supernatural steel came arching my way. Scooping up the bag, I felt fire graze my right hamstring, but I was already moving away, stumbling, then breaking into a full-fledged sprint.

I was nearly out the door when a fresh scream sliced the air in two. Safety was feet away, but there was no escaping the horrible stuttering sobs behind me. There was nothing heroic about it; just a slight pivoting of the feet as I turned back around, and the still-fresh memory of the way my sister, also an innocent, had died at the hands of another Shadow agent.

The photo girl’s eye makeup ran down her cheeks in black streaks. Her blue eyes would have seemed transparent in comparison, but they were weighed in their sockets with tears and congealing fear. I probably couldn’t save her. I hadn’t been able to save Olivia, and I sure as hell didn’t know how to save myself, but if I ran from this—and God knows I wanted to—I wouldn’t be able to live with myself anyway. The duffel dropped from my hand with a dull thud, and I stepped back in the store.

Ajax began to laugh.

“You move fast, Archer,” Ajax said, his voice merry with observation. The girl whimpered.

“Don’t,” I said, taking another step forward.

“You should’ve run when you had the chance. It’s one thing I can’t quite understand about the Light signs. Putting your lives at risk for mortals when there are just so many of them about.” He waved his poker in the air like it was a wand. “When are you going to realize they’re expendable? They’re nothing. Just flesh, weakness, and stench. That the agents of Light would care for them at all boggles the mind…and makes you so much easier to kill.”

I read his deadly intention before he moved, and dove half a second before he flipped the poker in his hand. The weapon, a missile now, sank home exactly where I’d been standing, its steel tip buried in a pyramid of Coke cases, sending sodas exploding in the air as it burst into flame.

I began to sprint toward him before the smoke could clear, darting across aisles with no particular plan except to close the distance between Ajax and me and bring that terrified clerk within arm’s reach. I crossed two aisles and raced up a third, to end up behind him. He pulled another poker from beneath his jacket, and this time there wasn’t enough distance to duck, dive, or even blink. Ajax laughed.

“Yes, you’re very fast,” he repeated, turning the hilt of the blade over and over in his hand. “But let’s see if you’re fast enough.”

He didn’t throw it. I knew he wouldn’t, even before he inverted the tip and plunged it into the teenager’s heart. Her screaming cut off into a gasping whine, then a gurgling sigh, and finally an irregular sucking noise, like she was breathing through a bent straw. Ajax twisted the poker, making no move to dislodge it from her chest cavity, just twisting and turning like he was stirring soup. As she died, his eyes never left mine.

“Why?” I asked, my breath, body, and mind going utterly numb. I pulled my remaining energy inward, knowing if I didn’t that I’d collapse right there, weighed down by guilt and revulsion, and the knowledge that I’d caused this. Again. “Why do you kill innocent people?”

He dumped the girl’s body on the floor and wiped his hands on his jacket. “Pain amuses me. Death amuses me.”

“Then you’re going to find this hilarious.” Ajax found out just how fast I was, and it was fast enough.

We hit the floor with a loud smack, rolling together behind the photo counter. Smells became colors behind my eyes; yellow-tinged chemicals, dusky blood, tar-thick smoke, and Ajax’s breath, putrid as pus, audible in my ear. The taste of him was sour as my teeth found flesh and bit down hard. He howled, anger laced with pain, and pulled away, his blood joining the noxious feast. I smiled as he cried out again, only vaguely aware in some still sane part of my mind that I was still wearing the pig’s mask, and with another human’s blood running down my chin, I must have looked like an animal indeed.

We leapt at each other again.

He should have been too fast for me, at least the “me” I’d been nine weeks earlier, but I was countering his moves; meeting blow with blow, and each parry with feint. My training, coupled with the strength I’d been gifted with during metamorphosis, was the most delicious melding of power I could ever imagine. Aggression fused with streaming adrenaline, unadulterated hate, and manifested in a speed I never knew I possessed.

I reveled in it. My strikes were preemptive. I landed punches first and hard. I gained stronger footing. I swung out with my legs. I was confident…and that, of course, was my mistake.

I landed a blow to the thigh designed to take out his left leg and Ajax seemed to stumble. When I moved in for the follow-up, he wrong-footed me, and plowed a right hook into the exposed part of my lower face. He was on me before I recovered, and we hit the ground again, this time my body taking the full impact of our combined weight.

My breath was driven from my chest, and a hollow snap accompanied by an acute shot of pain told me at least one rib had cracked. Ajax flipped me easily, mounting me at the waist and settling his weight on my tender midsection. I struggled for breath, but it wasn’t coming. Ajax laughed…as he had upon scenting me, and upon killing the young, innocent clerk. I was getting sick of that dry, bone-rattling sound.

I swiped the back of my one free hand over my mouth, and came away with blood. When I repeated the motion, it came away dry. I was healing faster than ever. Unfortunately, Ajax noticed this too.

“What? No more tricks, little Archer?” He placed his palm on my chest in what could have been mistaken for an intimate gesture…until he leaned forward. I groaned as pain bloomed behind my lids and the freshly healed rib popped again.

He chuckled under his breath, and I could see where this was heading. Sitting back, his weight still pinning me down, he tilted his head and considered me more closely.

“Did you know, I almost felt sorry for you when we first met? I remember thinking, ‘This poor little girl has no idea why she exists, never mind what she can do or who she might become.’ It was pitiful, really. All that ripe, raw power beginning to glow beneath your skin. All that pent-up ability straining to burst free, trapped instead by that stupid, ignorant mind. Not to mention this fragile wall of flesh.” He popped the rib again, and my head swam with pain. I closed my eyes, afraid I was going to pass out. Ironically enough, his voice kept me anchored in the present.

“I am not, as you might expect, totally void in my feeling for others.” I opened one eye to see if he was serious, but had difficulty seeing through the slits in my tilted mask. His voice sounded serious. “Butch, for example. I cared for him.”

Great. He’d once cared deeply for another psychopath. I wanted to tell him it didn’t necessarily qualify him for sainthood, but I could actually feel my rib stitching together again in my chest and didn’t dare.

“I went on that first date,” he continued conversationally, “intending to kill you quickly. Mercifully.”

“So what changed?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even. Trying to breathe through the pain so I could think of something else to do.

Ajax wasn’t fooled by my question. Leaning forward again, he popped that fragile rib easily. “You opened your mouth.”

He caved in another of my ribs just for pleasure. I cried out at the fresh break, unable to stop myself this time.