The Taste of Night (10 page)

“Well, that’s a secret, isn’t it? Though it looks like you have some secrets of your own.” He tipped his chair forward and leaned his elbows on the table as he studied me. “Where is the rest of your troop, anyway? All still holed up underground? Did the revelation of the second sign scare them that much? Or don’t they know you’re acting
independently
?” Just in case I didn’t catch the inflection in his voice, he mouthed the word
rogue
to me.

“They’re biding their time,” I shot back, assuring him…and perhaps myself. “As for the second sign, a battlefield’s only cursed for those destined to die there.”

“And you’re so unconcerned that you can while away your hours looking for buried treasure?”

Again, that buried treasure remark. I tilted my head, thought, and went with my instincts. “Like you, you mean?”

He scoffed, but I saw the way his jaw tensed first. Interesting. “I admit, I enjoy slumming here every once in a while. I find the neutrality of this place intoxicating. It’s a fresh slate, a blank page, if you will,” he said, motioning again to Zane. “A void where anything is possible.”

But I could tell from the way he dismissed it that there was more to it than that. “But that’s not why you’re here today.”

“No, it’s not,” he said, surprising me with the ease of his admission. His fingers began winding themselves around each other again, like little snakes coiling to strike. “One of my friends has been missing since last night. I lost his trail after he disappeared through a portal and never returned.”

“And you think he stopped by for a little game of Dungeons and Dragons with your flunky over there?” I said, causing Sebastian to snarl again.

“I think a place that caters to both sides of the Zodiac is a good place to start looking when your friends vanish without a trace.” He tilted his head as if he’d just had an idea. “Strange that you’re here today, of all days. You haven’t recently seen a male Shadow with blinding blue eyes, about
yea tall, have you?”

“Zane’s the record keeper,” I said, wanting to keep last night’s events to myself for as long as possible. “Ask him.”

“You’re the only agent of Light who’s been trying to unbalance the Zodiac,” he said flatly. “So I’m asking you.”

“Well, I don’t make it a habit of kibitzing with the Shadow side. As you know.”

“So is that a no, little Archer?”

My jaw clenched. “A resounding one.”

“Liar.”

“I’m not. I didn’t kill your Shadow agent.”

Joaquin leaned back in the tiny chair, somehow managing to give an air of dignified composure. It had to be challenging for a walking corpse. Steepling his fingers, he stared at me over the top of his hands. “Funny, but I don’t remember mentioning he was dead.”

I froze and began cursing my stupidity before realizing I could just tell him. I could reveal Regan’s identity, tell Joaquin about her betrayal of Liam, and she’d be dead before the sun set this evening. The problem was, she’d either offer my Olivia identity in return for her life, or be tortured into revealing it, and that’d put me in a worse spot than I was now. As it was, I still had two weeks to kill Joaquin, find Regan, and to get it all done before Warren really pulled the rug out from under me. I glanced across at Joaquin. Between the two, I’d take my chances with Regan.

Besides, baiting the man in front of me was a pleasure. “Well, admittedly, that big ol’ shillelagh was too mighty a weapon for a ‘little Archer’ like myself…but I used both hands when I bashed that Irish bastard’s skull in, and he didn’t seem to know the difference at all.”

Joaquin sat up so fast I think he surprised himself. Everyone else had gone unnaturally still, and that’s when I realized he hadn’t been joking about Liam being a friend. His face slackened and paled, and that brought a pure, genuine smile to mine.

I leaned forward and rubbed salt into the wound. “He screamed like a baby when I shattered all his limbs. Between the blood and snot and tears, I could barely make out what he was saying, but I have to confess. His begging made me feel so”—I took in a deep breath—“powerful.”

Joaquin had lowered his head, and I watched the rise and fall of his chest, saw when it finally slowed and he looked up at me from beneath his brows. His eyes were as hard and cold as I remembered them, and his hands weren’t exactly shaking on the card table, but they were twitching. This, I realized, was Joaquin in a fury.

“Come on outside, Archer,” he said in a voice soft as a viper’s. “You can even bring your little bow and arrow, as we already know what happens when you try to fight without it.” He made a motion, and I knew he was stroking himself under the table. He waited for my reaction, and though I wanted to swallow the bile that had risen reflexively in my gorge, I shook my head slowly, mindful of Jasmine’s protective aura. “Not here. Not now.”

I’d like to say that Regan’s promise to lead me to him—that old ace in the hole—had no effect on my decision. But even as I told myself that, I knew it wasn’t true. Without that, I’d be out the door already. This was the man who’d taken my innocence from me. Who’d taken Ben from me. For the latter alone he deserved to die.

But it also looked supremely confident for me to turn down an opportunity to fight in broad daylight, and I knew how such confidence could play on a person’s mind in the darkest hours of night, when they were alone but for the sharklike questions circling in their own mind. I wanted to poison Joaquin’s mind like that. I wanted uncertainty to seep into that rotted brain and slow his movements, jumble his thoughts, and make him fear the worst-case scenario.

So it wasn’t that I didn’t want to battle Joaquin right then, in broad daylight, with children pressed against the shop windows behind me, because I did. But I had Regan’s prom
ise to help me further, and now I had Joaquin pissed enough to look for me himself. I’d use both those things to my advantage, and then he’d do more than die at my hands. He’d suffer first.

Right now it was enough that his smile had faltered, and his stroking had stopped. He knew why I was saying no. He recognized the Shadow in me as clearly as if he were looking in a mirror. I dropped my fists on the card table, and leaned so close I made his eye twitch. “I made a vow to run your rancid, decaying body down, and I’m renewing that vow now.”

He stood, perhaps more comfortable with a small distance between us, or maybe he just wanted to be taller. His lip curled as he looked down at me, and he ran a hand over his perfectly coiffed hair, either unimpressed by my words or giving a very good impression of it. “Your passion will be your downfall.”

I smirked. “Passion would imply that I give a shit about your presence on this earth. It’s much simpler than that,” I said, though it wasn’t. “I just want to
hunt
.”

And now I was speaking a language he understood.

“Agent of Light,” I said, in response to his stiffening posture. “Enemy. Duh.”

Carl snickered beside me.

Joaquin straightened his suit, pulling at the cuffs with those dangerous hands like he was an eighteenth-century dandy instead of a twenty-first-century supervillain. “Even the Tulpa can’t keep me from defending myself under such a bald threat, Joanna. You’ve opened the floodgates.” He jerked his head at Zane, recording our words. “I’ll give you your war.”

I shrugged. “Would you like a little tactical advice, then?”

“Sure,” he said, stepping closer to me, invading my space this time. “I’m not beyond stealing secrets from the enemy.”

“All right. Just one hint.” I looked up into his face, past
the thin lips, into those empty eyes, and held my ground. “Look behind you, Joaquin. Even when you think you’re alone, even when you feel safe and secure in your lair, even when you sleep. Don’t ever stop looking behind you.”

“A little tip for you as well, then,” Joaquin said, lips curling into a cruel sneer. “Try number 5142. It’s the record of the night we first met. I’m sure you’ll find it fascinating.”

Some may have taken it for weakness, but I let him have the last word. I watched him back away from me, only watched as he blew me a parting kiss, and stood where I was even when the door chimes split the air, severing the tension linking us together. Besides, I was too busy smiling to respond. He
had
glanced back over his shoulder, just before the door shut behind him, just as I wanted. And damn if it didn’t make me feel powerful.

I should have known better than to try and follow. I thought if I could at least get a good look at the kind of car he drove I could add it to my growing trove of information about him, and the Shadows in general: a lab in the basement of Valhalla, an original manual with the facts needed to destroy the Tulpa, an initiate gone bad. Badder. Whatever.

So I pulled down the edge of an Aquaman poster, half expecting to see the Batmobile parked outside. My hand was slapped away, though, and one of the twins snarled, his elongated teeth dripping with saliva as he leered in my direction.

“Oh, back off, Beavis,” I said, and slapped him upside his sooty gelatinous head.

“Ow-w,” he whined, his features shrinking, skin losing its dark color, like leaking ink, until he regained his ruddy mien. His jaw snapped back into shape with an audible pop.

“You can’t watch him leave, Archer,” Carl said. “It’s part of the rules—”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, turning away from the window. I’d figured as much. “How do I get her off me?”

“Who, Jas?” he asked, and I thought,
No, the other preteen affixed to me like Cling Wrap
. “Just return to her shell and touch her. She’ll take over from there.”

I did, and Jasmine peeled from my frame like a Band-Aid, color rushing along her limbs like it’d been released from a dam; no more pale skin, and no more scary monster fangs. Waking as though from a dream, she blinked up at me, wide-eyed and expectant. “Are you okay?”

“Of course,” she answered sweetly as I helped her to her feet. “How did we get into the hallway?”

I picked up my belongings and turned to Carl, who’d come with me after the other kids had morphed back into pockmarked pubescents. “She really remembers nothing?”

He started walking backward, keeping an eye on us as we all headed back into the shop. “Memory is unnecessary for changelings, and would actually inhibit function in their own lives. Besides, if they remembered these events as adults they’d have to be institutionalized.” Carl slumped against the back wall and gave me an appreciative once-over. “You handled yourself well, Archer. That last nose-to-nose bit is going to be a beaut to draw.”

“What did we miss?” one of the twins asked.

His brother hit him. “Dude, they never tell us. We’ll have to wait and read the manual.”

“Man, I hate that!” he replied, slapping his thigh. “Carl, we should at least get a discount if we’re in the fucking thing!”

“Language! There’s a lady in the house,” Carl said, and the boys began looking about.

I rolled my eyes and turned back to Carl. “Thanks for your help back there. I didn’t know…” I trailed off, thinking of all the things I didn’t know. Carl, reading my thoughts, waved the appreciation away.

“Anytime. Joaquin’s right about one thing, though,” he said, leading to obnoxious cries of “Joaquin? The Shadow agent? Where? When?,” and had to raise his voice to be heard. “You need to grow in power before you take him on. If you acted in the outside world the way you did in the hall
way, you’d be dead right now.”

“I know,” I muttered as I headed to the register. But
that
was going to change.

“You all right?” Zane asked when I reached him.

You care?
was the first retort to come to mind, but it wasn’t really his job to care, and it was nice of him to ask. Still, when I nodded, I didn’t meet his eye. I didn’t want him to see the frustration there. I’d hate for him to write about it in the Shadow manuals. Then Joaquin would really know he’d gotten to me.

So I fumbled with my wallet instead, hunting for the cash to pay for my purchases, pausing when my eyes fell on the papers in front of him. The pages to the left were filled with dialogue, a shorthand version of Joaquin’s and my conversation minutes before, but the one to the right—the one he’d been working on when I entered the shop—was blank. But for two words.

Liam Burke.

“It was nice of you, you know,” Zane said, seeing the direction of my gaze as he slipped the manuals into a plastic bag. “You allowed his name to be recorded in the manuals of Light.”

I shrugged. “It’s what I would have wanted.” I took the bag and handed him the money.

“He’d have snuffed you out without a second thought,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly.

“Always a pleasure, Zane.” I pocketed the change, took my receipt, and turned to leave.

“It’s strange, though.”

I turned back, warily. “What is?”

He tapped his pencil against his man-boobs. “Well, these events, your actions…they come to me in visions, bubbling up suddenly in my consciousness, and they come in color. The agents of Light are always bathed in a golden iridescent glow, the Shadows always silver.”

So it was some sort of psychic energy manifesting itself, the same as mortal dreams. I’d wondered. Curious to hear
more, I took a step back toward the counter. I believed in energy, that we were all created by it and created it in turn. Shit, these days it was practically the only thing I believed in. Nevertheless, I tried to hide that I was impressed. “So?”

“So, before you snagged the aureole, before my mind went blank and all I saw were those two words,” he said, annoyance flickering over his face as if I’d flipped the channel while he was watching his favorite program. Voyeur. “I could have sworn there were two entities in that aquarium.”

“You mean you saw another Shadow agent?” I asked innocently.

“No. The vision wasn’t strong enough for that,” he admitted, and I let out the breath I’d been holding. “But I know I saw something. I saw someone.”

He couldn’t see initiates, I realized. And the aureole had blunted my capture and conversation with Regan. So while he might have intuited Regan’s presence, he couldn’t prove it. “Well,” I finally said, shooting him Olivia’s brightest smile. “Good luck with that.”