Vicki Pettersson - The Scent of Shadows

Another part of me, however, was wondering how I’d ever thought this man attractive. He was looking at me like Ajax had; a quick sizing up of body and limbs, a predator searching for the weak, old, or inexperienced in the pack. Hunter was like this: patient, and absolutely feral as he waited for his opening.

He was also uncoiling his whip. The room was suddenly painted in giant ram horns again, not a Sagittarian glyph to be found.

“That’s cheating,” I said between breaths. He knew I didn’t have a conduit yet.

Pitiless, he shrugged and snapped it at his side, his wrist flicking expertly. “I use the weapons available to me.” Asshole .

I didn’t even need to see the walls to know I was in trouble. Bodies, even male against female, were one thing. Surprise could still be used to my advantage. But this was too much like my encounter with Ajax; ominously one-sided, frightening, and full of unknown risks. Alarm prickled along my skin, and was released, to my chagrin, through my pores.

I backed to the center of the mat to give myself room to maneuver away from the length of the whip, noting nobody else had spoken up in my defense. No That’s enough or Leave her be . Not even Micah, and that hurt. If there’d been any question before as to my place among these people, it was answered now. Hunter stalked me, and the others merely watched.

“You’re afraid,” he observed, lifting his arm.

“No shit,” I said, and jumped as the whip licked at my heels, a barbed tongue. Landing, I glanced around for some sort of shield, finding only a practice pad that covered the length of my forearm and not much else. I secured it as he swung at my head, and lifted it in time to have the whip shearing off the top of it with only a flick from his wrist.

The next snap coiled around both pad and forearm, grazing my shoulder on its second rotation. I whimpered as a barbed tip sunk deep into my flesh, then braced myself and pulled, surprising Hunter by dragging him closer. Using my other arm, I yanked, and closed the distance between us. I had no idea what I was going to do. I only knew the farther I was from his body, the more dangerous it was for me.

“Look! Her glyph’s engaged,” Felix said, pointing. I felt the pulsing in my upper chest cavity, but kept my eyes on Hunter. His eyes flicked down, and I saw surprise shadow them before it was erased, the expressionless mask returning. His arm wavered, then lowered. The walls cleared abruptly, stark whiteness blinding us all. He had disengaged.

I ripped the barbs from my flesh before I could think too much, and smelled my own blood flowing freely.

“That’s only supposed to happen when facing a true enemy,” he said, tone low and suspicious.

“Then you might want to put the whip away,” I said coolly. I let the barbed end drop, tossing the destroyed pad aside only when he began to coil it. I rubbed at my arm and backed away from them all, feeling achingly vulnerable.

“How are you doing that?” Felix said, looking at my chest.

“It’s the Shadow, see? She can’t control it.”

“Shut up, Chandra, you had that coming.” Vanessa sent her a steely glare, and came to stand next to me before also turning on Hunter. “And you. You’ve wanted to test the new Archer ever since you heard she defeated Butch…something you never managed to do. What do you expect when you gang up on her like that?”

Hunter turned so stony he didn’t even blink. “I was making a point.”

Yeah, I thought, rubbing my arm. Literally. But suddenly it was clear why no one had intervened on my behalf. Why a whip had to score my flesh and I had to bleed. They needed to know I could.

“I get your point .” Only Hunter would meet my eye, and that was fine; I’d focus on him. “Here’s Warren, telling you I’m this…this Kairos, that I have more potential than regular star signs, that I’m more powerful than the rest of you because of who my father is. I guess you just decided to see for yourselves, huh? But you didn’t have to whip me, you know. All you really had to do was ask.”

And, though they hadn’t, I opened up a little and let them see what I’d felt when I’d gone up against Butch. How the dark side of moonbeams could bathe the soul too. How freeing it felt to let go of what was right, and think for once only of what you wanted. How vengeance burned like sulfur in every pore, and hatred like an ulcer in the stomach. And how death drew closer with every passing moment, and fury was the cancer that could take you there. They needed to see it, I thought, because they needed to know the difference. I let it go on for a time, then I sucked it all back in.

“Happy?” I asked all of them. “Scared?” And I turned back, pressing my face into Chandra’s, invading her space this time. “Or do you wanna take a vote on it and get back to me?”

Chandra took a giant step back, jaw clenching tightly, and the others shifted on their feet, none looking at me, and barely looking at one another. I laughed hollowly and figured if they wanted something to mistrust so badly, I wasn’t going to make them search for it.

So I turned back to Hunter, forced him to meet my eye, which he did with an empty gaze of his own. “You’re going to have to do better than that,” I told him.

“Better than what?”

And with the same power I’d used to punch holes in the life of a construction worker, I told him. “If you don’t want the Shadow side to know about her —the one you love and cherish above all others—you’re going to have to control that thread of desperation coiling in your psyche. I can taste it on my tongue, as fresh and sweet as sherbet. What’s her name, anyway?”

I felt surprise sprout throughout the room and realized I’d just sensed something no one else had known. So even the full-fledged star signs kept secrets from one another, I thought wryly. So much for a unified troop. Hypocrites .

“Her name is Lola,” Hunter finally answered, and his voice was steady, though a shudder had gone through his able body. At his admission, in fact, it had gone through them all. “And if you go near her, I’ll kill you.”

I looked around then, forcing every person in the room to meet my eye. “I thought I wasn’t the enemy. Don’t any of you trust me?”

“I don’t know you.”

“I don’t trust the Shadow in you,” Chandra said.

“Micah?”

He swallowed hard. He, whom I’d once thought was so firmly on my side. “I think you’ll be presented with a choice before Ajax and the Tulpa are done with you. A real test, made in the heat of battle, and one where you’re forced to choose what’s right or…”

“Or?”

He looked away. “Or what you want.”

And with those words I realized Chandra was right. No matter what Warren wanted, I could be cast out of the troop and sanctuary, left in the city, unguarded and alone. I’d be saddled with powers I didn’t know how to use or control, more of a target than some unnaturally gifted hero.

“There’s only one thing I want.”

“Revenge?” Hunter asked. “For your sister’s death?”

I nodded, unsurprised that he could sense it, knowing they all could. It was the one thing, I thought, that I could never hide.

“And what will you do to avenge her?”

“Anything,” I swore. “Everything.”

He nodded slowly, and then turned away. “And that’s what I don’t trust.”

We obviously didn’t train that day. In fact, all the members of Zodiac troop 175, paranormal division, anti-evil, gave me a wide berth after that. The easy camaraderie between Vanessa and I dissolved like a sugar cube after I’d shown my Shadow side, and she left the room frowning with uncertainty. Felix still grinned at me, but it was tight around the edges and didn’t quite reach his eyes. Micah mumbled something about lab work before disappearing, though he did give me a gentle once-over just to be sure his handiwork had held up against Hunter’s whip.