Vicki Pettersson - The Scent of Shadows

“What is he saying?” I heard someone ask.

“Valhalla,” I said, and sunk back to the ground. “They’re holding him at Valhalla.” And I doubled over as Tekla cried out, Warren’s skull splitting inside of me with a blow meant to silence him forever.

Tekla, it seemed, had always spoken for the others. Before Stryker’s death, and Greta’s betrayal, she had been able to see, via flashes and images, when an agent of Light was walking into danger. It had been a marvelous, if disconcerting, gift. It was during one of these moments, Micah surmised, that Greta must have bound herself to Tekla, and thus began the downward spiral of Zodiac troop 175, and of Tekla herself.

The past six months had stripped her of her voice, and like a rewound tape, she began spouting all she’d seen while locked in her five-by-eight cell. It would take a while to catch up, but time was something we didn’t have.

Warren’s voice had fallen quiet inside me, and I didn’t need a psychic to tell me that Ajax was behind the stillness. I felt it as clearly as if I possessed the Sight. He’d silenced Warren to try and keep us from tracking him further, but hadn’t killed him outright. No, that was still the carrot dangling on a stick.

Which meant there was only one thing to do.

“Find a way to get me up the chute without frying,” I told Hunter, “and I can find Warren.”

A short argument ensued between those who thought I should stay put versus those who believed I shouldn’t, but ultimately what it came down to was this: the others were marked, and I wasn’t. I was linked to Warren, and they weren’t. And, finally, if I really was Warren’s beloved Kairos, I couldn’t be killed today, or anytime soon.

But if he was wrong? I thought as I headed back to my mother’s room in the troop’s barracks. If I wasn’t the person they all thought I was? Well, then they’d need Warren far more than they needed me. He was the troop leader. He could train the next generation. He could find the true Kairos.

But that didn’t mean I’d go down without a fight.

Sliding open the closet doors, I decided my mother had the fiercest wardrobe ever. Literally. Arranged on evenly spaced hangers were tops, slacks, and single-piece stretch suits in varying weights of silk, spandex, and leather. The uniformity came in two colors only, black or charcoal gray, with a hand that shimmered at the touch. This material, Warren had explained, would not burn through at the flaring of a glyph.

“Olivia would tremble with jealousy,” I murmured, running my fingers over the fine material. I wasn’t exactly steady myself, though that was probably nerves rather than reverence. After all, when my mother suited up, she at least had an idea of what she’d been about to face. I simply assumed I was facing the worst.

With the thought that this ensemble would be featured on the next series of Light and Shadow comics, I picked a long-sleeved V-neck T-shirt and fitted cargoes. Though comfortable enough, they fit me like they’d been sprayed on. I didn’t recall my mother being quite as curvy as Olivia, but then I didn’t remember her ever wearing a leather bra either, and here it was.

I dressed and looked at myself in the mirror. Other than my hair, which floated around me like a wavy bleached cloud, I looked like a shadow. A smudge on reality. Fitting, I thought, since that’s what I’d be.

Standing before the small square mirror, I slicked back my hair and rolled it into a tight club. I found a pair of chopstick combs, similar to the ones the Chinese used to secure their own glossy locks but sharper and steel-tipped, more lethal. A most fashionable backup weapon, I thought, studying myself from the side. The street fighter in me approved.

“Thanks, Mom,” I said, pocketing my conduit. There was only one item missing from my supernatural arsenal. Unfortunately, I had to go to Greta’s holding cell to get it.

You had to give it to her, I thought, peering through the cell’s window. For a woman facing imminent death, she was admirably composed. Though chained to a concrete floor, hands and feet bound in front of her, she sat with her back straight against the stone wall, head back, eyes closed. She even looked relieved. Like she’d been performing the same play over and over and had been longing for some new dialogue. With a crisp turn of the key in the lock, I entered the room, intending to give it to her.

She didn’t look up.

“How’s it feel, Greta?” I asked, closing the door behind me, my voice reporting hollowly off the stone walls. “To be helpless, locked up, wondering what’s to become of you?”

“You should know.” She motioned with one hand, chains clanking as she indicated the entire sanctuary. “Your cell is just a little bigger.”

I advanced upon her, showing her that even a confined place could shrink upon itself. She just leaned her head back and closed her eyes again. “Tell me, what was it like knowing you were sending Warren to his death?”

“What, you’re the psychologist now?” She sneered. “Savior of the Zodiac didn’t fit quite right?”

I shrugged. “Just wondering.”

She pulled her knees into her chest. “Keep wondering.”

I shifted to lean against the wall, crossing my legs at the ankles. “You should tell someone, don’t you think? I mean, otherwise your deeds won’t get written down. You’ll be just one more stiff in the body count at the end of a comic book.”

She glanced up at me with disdain. Her chignon had fallen loose, and her skin was smudged beneath overly dark eyes. The Shadow sat on her features like a defiant child. “You think that’s why I did this? To gain recognition for infiltrating the Zodiac troop when I was fated to be nothing more than a talented mortal? A mere half-breed?”

The detail in her answer told me that was exactly why she’d done it. “You tell me.”

She was silent for nearly a minute. “No. I don’t think I will.”

“You’d better,” I sang the words softly.

That got her attention. She studied me carefully for a moment, then snickered. “Or what? You’re going to kill me?” She tightened her arms around her knees. “That doesn’t frighten me.”

“Death doesn’t frighten you?” She pursed her lips, but otherwise ignored me. “But insignificance did. It frightened you enough for you to betray your father’s people.”

“Oh God, don’t try that psychological shit on me! You’re no good at it.” She shifted irritably, chains rattling like pennies in a glass jar. “That’s not why I did it.”

“Then why?”

“You know why!” she bellowed suddenly, and I could see in her fevered gaze she really believed it. “You told me yourself this afternoon.”

I thought back. Then began to nod slowly. “Ah.”

“Yes, ahhh,” she said mockingly. Madness danced in her once kind eyes. “Power. Having it. Using it. Controlling others with it. I was more powerful than the most powerful. More powerful than all of you.”

I raised a brow, taunting her without words.

“I’d have cracked you eventually too,” she said quickly, too loudly. It made me smile, and she went on in a rush. “I’d have found out who you really were and used that knowledge to plant the mark so deep no one would ever find it.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

“I did it to everyone, even Tekla, the so-called Seer. And me, a half-mortal.” I looked at the pride on her face: there wasn’t even a trace of regret for the lives she had cost.

“No,” I said in a low voice, “you’re not even half that.”

Her eyes narrowed to black pinpoints and she studied me, looking up my body and back down again. A slow smile began to thread from one side of her face to the other.