Vicki Pettersson - The Scent of Shadows

“Look at me, Joanna. Look at me,” he repeated patiently, like speaking to a child. He sunk his fingernails into my jaw, forcing my gaze straight. His face was somewhat obscured through the mask, but I caught his eyes probing mine. “I want you to know who I am, deep down, when I kill you.”

“I know who you are,” I managed as his fingers sunk deeper into my cheeks. “I’ve seen you without your mask before.”

“In the restaurant, yes, but seeing is not knowing. Observation is no match for experience.”

Oh God. This didn’t sound good.

“They lied to you, Joanna.” He almost looked pained as he said this. “There is no precious balance between good and evil. No yin and yang. No good or bad. Light or Shadow.”

“Apparently your mother disagreed with that.”

Ajax froze momentarily, then patted my cheek, hard. “She was wrong. Misguided. She never learned, or must have forgotten, that all there really is in this world are varying degrees of evil. That, and the point at which every human being breaks.”

“She didn’t believe that.”

He grinned sadistically. “She did in the end.”

“Well, I don’t.”

He leaned closer, eyes gleaming. “I’ll make you a believer too.”

I recoiled, but there was nowhere to go.

“Let’s both remove our disguises, shall we?”

He gouged his fingertips through the eyes of my mask so forcefully only the narrowness of the slats saved my eyesight. Just as quickly as he lifted the pig’s snout away, however, it snapped back into place, the plastic edges stinging my skin. His weight was gone so suddenly it was as if he’d been lifted straight into the air. A wild war cry, accompanied by a flurry of wind, swept through the building.

Freed, and desperate to stay that way, I backpedaled until my head slammed against the photo counter. Ripping the mask from my face, I strained to see where Ajax had gone, as well as who, or what, was in here with us. The answer was immediate. I was lifted to my feet, none too gently, and found myself facing an angry set of brown eyes.

“Warren,” I gasped. My eyes darted away from him, searching for Ajax, finding him in a crouch atop an aisle barrier facing two other men. The first was stocky but obviously strong, the other lithe as he leapt the entire seven feet in height to square off against Ajax. Both were armed, and both their chests were glowing, pulsing vibrantly. I pushed at Warren’s hands, but he jerked me back into place, yanking my ball cap low.

“Don’t let him see your face.” Cuffing me by the neck like a mother cat with her kitten, he forced my head lower again. Then he half dragged me to the exit, shielding me with his own body. Even so, I felt the moment Ajax’s eyes lit upon my back. I felt their probing, their impotent fury, and the oily slickness of his thoughts just behind that stare. Outnumbered, he turned away with an outraged cry.

“I’ll find you out, Archer!” he called out. “I’ll discover your true identity and when I’m finished with you, you will believe !”

Warren’s fingers tightened on my neck, squelching my instinct to turn, and he blew what I took to be a raspberry at Ajax while ushering me out the door. The last thing I heard was the report of feet pounding across linoleum, a back door slam, and two other pairs giving chase. We headed in the opposite direction, back toward the Strip, where the light bled into the street.

“My duffel!” I said, halting suddenly.

“Don’t stop,” he ordered, pushing harder. “Felix will get it.”

“Can you at least let go of my neck? I’m getting a kink.”

Warren released me so abruptly I stumbled. He glanced side to side, pivoting so he was walking backward, then turned again before taking off in a trot. “Hurry. The time of crossing is near, and we’re not safe yet.”

We ran, Warren openly vigilant, and me trying to breathe through the ache in my side which was finally, if slowly, receding. The silhouette of the Peppermill loomed closer, contoured from the other side by the setting sun, and I could see people dining through the long plate-glass windows, oblivious to our plight. It was unsettling how normal everything looked. The foot tourists hardly glanced up as we wove between cars in the restaurant’s asphalt lot. Perhaps they thought it normal in Vegas for an unshaven bum in a leather trench coat to be jogging with a girl whose sweater was half singed from her chest.

“This way.” We darted around the building’s far corner and into a narrow alley that reeked of urine. A cab waited there, lights off, and a couple stood at the window, arguing loudly with the car’s sole occupant.

The man loomed over the driver, one hand propped on the hood, irritation coating his voice. “Look, are you on duty or not?”

“I want to go to the Luxor,” the woman whined.

The headlights flipped on to illuminate us in their beam.

“He’s waiting for us,” Warren said sharply. The woman took one look and whimpered. I didn’t know what I looked like, but Warren was striding toward them at a decidedly aggressive pace, limp exaggerated, his coat billowing around his ankles. The couple backed down the alley, not exactly the safest choice of exits, but at least it was away from us. The cab inched forward, and the doors on each side swung open.

“Get in,” Warren ordered, skirting to the opposite side. I did, wordlessly, wincing as the leather seat caught the gash in the back of my thigh. Leaning my head back, I closed my eyes, and sighed as the door shut and the car began to move.

“I smell Ajax,” the driver said, singsonging the name. I peeked to find him regarding me through the rearview mirror. All I could make out of his face were his eyes, but they were wide and crinkled at the edges as he laughed at some private joke. I didn’t see what was so funny, and neither did Warren.

“That’s because Ajax somehow tracked her,” he answered, shifting to face me. “Tell me, Olivia, because I feel like I’m missing something here, but what part of ‘meet me at the Peppermill’ means ‘go fight Ajax at the corner drugstore’?”

I turned my head away. “He started it.”

“Do you know what you’ve done? What you could have undone?”

I clenched my teeth and my jaw ached where Ajax’s fingers had dug into bone. I knew the feeling would fade, that I would soon heal, but the knowledge alleviated nothing right now.

“What did you do to call him?”

I glanced at the driver who was still staring at me, a lucky rabbit’s foot swinging beneath his mirrored image, his eyes still amused, then turned to Warren. “Nothing.”

“You did something,” he said, squaring on me in his seat. “He found you despite the masking agent we administered, and in less than two weeks. I want to know how.”

Apparently I hadn’t gotten to that comic yet. I shrugged.

Warren stared at me, his face stony and cold, eyes unblinking. “Did you invoke his name?”

I shook my head.

“Did you go after him yourself?”

“No.” I clenched my teeth again. The pain was gone.

“Damn it, Olivia!” He punched his fist into the seat in front of him. “You’re not going to keep getting this lucky! What did you do?”

I leaned toward him and spaced my words evenly. “Don’t. Yell. At me. Anymore.”

“Warren’s right,” the driver said conversationally. “You are lucky.”

“Not just lucky… stupid lucky!”

I looked at him, and I swear his outline was singed in red. This manipulative fruitcake thought he had reason to be furious with me ? While my sister was dead, my life was over, and my bones were stitching together inside of me, again?

“I said don’t fucking yell at me!”