The Taste of Night (2 page)

One of her rivals was a well-dressed gentleman standing next to Xavier, probably a business associate, and I wondered how much he was willing to drop on me just to ingratiate himself to my “father.” Finally, there was a blond man who looked as out of place as I felt. Number 56 reminded me of a construction worker despite his double-breasted suit, but he wielded his paddle with a careless flick of his wrists, so I let the observation pass. Looks, as I well knew, were deceiving.

As expected, number 15 didn’t last much longer. The woman, closest to him, shot him a haughty glance, but she was the next to fall. Now it was between Xavier’s sycophant and the blond giant. I was hoping the latter would win, anything to put a hitch in Xavier’s stride, so I shot the man a smile so encouraging a murmur went up from the audience.

That smile, and his responding bid, was enough to finish off Xavier’s man. Applause rolled through the room, and I acknowledged the winning bidder with a tilt of my head, and pivoted, glancing sideways at Xavier as I left the stage. He only rolled his eyes, turning his back as his companion’s paddle fell, and walked away.

“How the fuck am I supposed to follow that?” the next bachelorette grumbled, trudging reluctantly up the stairs as Cher and Madeleine swallowed me in a group bear hug.

“You were awesome! Incredible! Inspiring!”

“Guys…I just stood there,” I fought for breath through the assault of lotion, perfume, hairspray, and breath mints.

“Oh no…Priscilla just stood there.”

“Stood there so long her use-by date expired!”

They gave each other an air high-five and squealed.

“Ladies.” The emcee, an anchorman for one of the local channels, poked his head through the curtain. “Time to meet your bidders. Congratulations on a job well done…
and make sure they know we take cash, check, or money order.”

Number 56 made me come to him. There was no meeting me halfway; he just stood as before—watching me skirt around tables, smile at people I was supposed to know, and dodge the woman who’d also been bidding on me—arms folded over his chest expectantly. On second thought, he fit right in with this pretentious crowd. And, I decided, he fit in especially well at Valhalla. Larger up close than he’d appeared from the stage, he had one of those overdefined builds that makes one wonder what exactly he was compensating for, and with the blond hair and gold winking in one earlobe, he was a modern-day Viking…right down to the suddenly avaricious glint in his eyes.

“Congratulations on a fine bid,” I said, shifting my handbag to my left arm as I held out my right. The giant accepted it, dwarfing my palm in his, and drew me in close like it was his right. Tension immediately sprang up in me.

Relax, Jo, I told myself, flashing him a tight smile. Hidden identity or no, I didn’t want to be one of those women who let one little near-death experience scar her forever. Okay, two near-death experiences.

Well, five…but who was counting?

“I’m Olivia,” I said, pulling my hand away. He let it slide from his reluctantly.

“Oh, I know exactly who you are.” And though he smiled, he said it like he really did.

I tilted my head and sniffed. Smell was the strongest of my senses—and for both my allies and my enemies—but right now I scented nothing.

“And you are?” I asked, raising a brow.

“Liam,” he answered, and though I waited for more, that was apparently it.

“Okay,” I said, as cheerily as I could manage. “Well, you have three weeks to claim your…” God, I could barely say
it. “Prize. After that the bid is void. You can pay at the front before you leave, and the attendant there will provide my contact information.”

Liam just nodded, that amused expression still touching his face. I mirrored him, nodding back, now straining to keep my smile in place. Time to extricate myself from this social train wreck, and let Mr. Chatty get back to polishing his biceps. I’d just cross my fingers that the next three weeks would pass uneventfully.

“All righty, then. See ya later, Liam.” I turned to head back to the dressing area.

“Good-bye…Archer.”

I froze. Slowly turned. Sniffed again.

And there it was; faint, just a smudge across the pane of my temporal lobe—like memory, but thicker—with edges and hooks that snagged my attention. He let his natural scent intensify, growing so densely cloying I had to breathe through my mouth, and even then the oxygen was round and full, like I could bite it.

My heart thudded in my chest, and I had to fight to keep my own nerves, and scent, from rising to permeate the room. “What do you want?”

Liam’s mouth widened into a full grin. “I want you to want me.”

I thought of the weapon nestled in my bag. Believe me, I wanted him.

“Uh-uh,” he warned, shaking his head as he sensed the direction of my thought. And why not? He was a Shadow. I was an agent of Light. It was only natural to want to kill each other. “Look at all the people, Joanna. Look at the press. ‘Bachelorette Auction Turns into Bloodbath’ would make a terrific headline.”

“You know who I really am.” Though surprised at his use of my real name, I stated it as fact…because the real question was
How?

He smiled in mock sympathy and began that slow head nod again. “Kinda puts a hitch in your five-year plan, doesn’t it?”

I clenched my jaw, but said nothing. Shadows were braggarts, down to the last, and while annoying, it was something I might be able to use to my advantage. Keep him talking, buy enough time to signal Vanessa, and we could corner him and escort him outside to his death. If that failed? I’d shoot him where he stood.

“You’re the first real Shadow I’ve seen face-to-face in a long time,” I began conversationally, though the taunt was spot-on. For some reason our enemies had been lying low for the past six months, a move that spoke of a blanket command. I knew that couldn’t sit well with all the Shadows, and was right in suspecting Liam was one of them. His eyes narrowed, and the air around us warmed, peppery cinders bleeding from his pores. “I mean…you are a real Shadow, aren’t you? Not just some rogue agent looking to score brownie points with the local troop?”

His face tightened. Rogue agents were outcasts looking to usurp their counterparts in a city’s established troop, and nobody on either side of the Zodiac liked to be mistaken for what essentially amounted to a paranormal mutt. “I’m more real,” he said through clenched teeth, “than most of the breasts in this room.”

“Prove it,” I said, shooting an unconcerned glance around the room. I didn’t see Vanessa anywhere. “What raids have you led lately?”

As expected, he was anxious to brag. “I was responsible for the showgirls held hostage at the top of the Trop at the beginning of the year.”

“That was you?” I feigned interest, having caught sight of Vanessa near a tray of crab cakes, and he nodded while I waited for her to turn. “Not very original.”

The smile dropped. “I also devised the implosion of the new Cirque showroom.”

That’d been two months earlier, a paranormal prank that’d spilled hundreds of gallons of water out and onto the Strip. “We should’ve let that one go.” I shrugged philosophically.

“Cleanup was a bitch, was it?” he said, referring to the lengths we’d had to go to keep the entire event from mortal notice.

“Not really,” I said, shrugging. Vanessa had turned my way to grab a champagne flute from a passing waiter. Now all I had to do was catch her eye. “But we don’t need another fucking Cirque show in this town.”

“Okay, then.” He licked his lips, provoked. “How about the theft of the mayor’s gin back in March?”

He smiled when an involuntary twinge shuddered up my spine. The mayor and his damned martinis. The entire city’s coffers had nearly gone to the first person to come up with a bottle of Tanqueray. “That was a close one,” I had to admit.

His arrogance returned. “So. Been taking many photographs lately, Joanna? ‘Raising awareness of the homeless and displaced through your art,’” he quoted, and it was my turn to stiffen. Those words had been in my obituary six months earlier. “But Olivia doesn’t take photos, does she? Though plenty are taken of her.”

I feigned a yawn, like his words—and knowledge—didn’t matter. “I’ve been kinda busy lately. You know. Saving Las Vegas from evil beings bent on chaos and destruction.”

“You mean tourists?” Liam grinned at my unamused stare. “Wouldn’t it be so much easier to protect these mortals if it weren’t for the whole ‘free will’ thing?”

“Forgive me if I don’t get into the moral responsibility of promoting individual choice with a guy who takes his orders from an evil overlord.”

“An overlord, I should remind you, who’s also your father.”

People just loved to throw that in my face.

“So is that why you’re here? Dear ol’ Dad send you to convince me to turn to the dark side of the force?” I rolled my eyes and caught Vanessa heading toward the Henshalls. Damn.

“Actually I wanted to see for myself what all the excitement was about.” And he looked me up and down, doing just that.

His curiosity didn’t surprise me. I was something new, after all. Something spoken about in the superhero mythology and written about in our texts, but that no one on either side of the Zodiac had ever seen before. I was the first star sign who’d ever been both Shadow
and
Light, the person our mythology called the
Kairos
, and the fulcrum upon which the supernatural fates hinged. Basically I could tip the metaphysical scales in the favor of whatever side I chose, Shadow or Light, which made me a valuable commodity in the paranormal world.

“And?” I finally said, resisting the urge to cross my arms over my chest.

Liam leaned close in a way that must have looked intimate and wolfish from afar. “I think you’re the biggest joke I’ve ever seen. I think you’ve as much chance of being the Kairos as my dirty socks. And I think you should die for even breathing the same air as I am right now.”

“Then it’s a good thing,” I said slowly, “that I don’t give a fuck what you think.”

And now my paternal heritage pushed itself to the fore-front, soot and dust overpowering his own scent as my vision went red at the edges, telling me my eyes had gone tar black.

If Liam was startled, he didn’t show it. He just reached out very slowly and put a hand to my face, resting it on the side of my cheek. I let him, just to show I truly felt no fear just then. I could reach up and snap his wrist before anyone in the room blinked, but I let him touch me. I was feeling philosophical about the whole thing. I’d touch him back soon enough.

He let his hand rest before patting my cheek hard enough to sting, and probably leave a red mark as well. “You’ve got the balls of your father, I’ll give you that. Do you know he was actually proud of the way you took care of Ajax and Butch? A Shadow, proud of the Light.” He shook his head and scoffed. “But I want to see what you’ve learned since
then. I wonder, do you know how to do more than just fight?”

“Like what?”

He let his gaze wander off over my shoulder, as if he was pondering the eternal question, and when his eyes returned to mine, he smiled. “Like…run.”

He was gone before I could take a breath. I swiveled as the air rushed past me, caught myself before I darted after him. People were watching. Plus it was already too late. Liam was already halfway to his destination; a normal door with a red-lettered exit sign fixed above it, but with another symbol above that, one noticeable only to those who knew how to look.

I cursed inwardly and bit my lip as I stared at the tiny winking star that marked a portal. Once Liam opened it, he shot a final victorious glance back at me, then slammed it so hard the room’s chandeliers rocked and the champagne flutes shook on their trays. I sighed inwardly. Even the mortals had noticed that.

More importantly, the star above the doorway flickered, then blinked out. Portals disappeared as soon as they were accessed, a paranormal precaution against mortals accidentally getting through…and proof positive the Universe had a twisted sense of humor.

Run, Liam had said. But what he meant was follow. And even though my instincts told me not to, that a trap awaited me on the other side of reality, I didn’t have much of a choice. Either I stopped Liam before he got too far, or my hidden identity would spread across the supernatural world like napalm across the rain forest.

And if that happened, Kairos or not, my troop would place me in a secured holding cell to wake up a week from now with an entirely new identity, and alias, to get used to. That’d be the end of the relationships I’d been working on so hard these last six months. Good-bye to Cher. Good-bye to the life I’d built.

Good-bye to Olivia.

And that wasn’t going to happen. So I said nothing to Vanessa, who was staring hard at Lena Carradine’s lip implants, and slipped out of the room when no one was looking. And once outside I did as Liam wanted, even in skyscraper heels. I ran.

Portals are to the supernatural realm what dreams are to the subconscious, ways to access an alternate reality. Everyone encounters these supernatural gateways at one time or another, usually in the form of an elevator skipping the floor of a button you know you just pushed, or the feeling of being watched out of a window that is, by all accounts, empty. Small things, mostly, but ones hiding an entire world behind their impenetrable cores.

Needless to say, humans were personae non grata in the supernatural realm. Portals were…unstable. Even an agent didn’t always know what lurked on the other side. Sometimes you didn’t want to know.

In this case, however, I needed to get to the danger awaiting me on that side of reality, and to do so I climbed the stairwell to the roof, disconnected the alarm, and exited there. Sure, there were active portals inside the casino, but I didn’t have time to look for one now, and there was always one located at the apex of a giant building—something having to do with the mechanics of superstrings—so that was the one I beelined for.

The lights of Vegas were on full throttle, but I ignored the
sight and pulled my conduit from my bag. The flathead of the crossbow shone like polished onyx in the reflected light, and the wire string gleamed thin and dangerous as I thumbed off the safety. Its weight in my palm warmed me even more than the balmy late-spring night, and I quickly located the tiny variable star winking like a diamond chip above a maintenance hatch and reentered the building.

The greatest difference between the real world and this alternate one was the silver-gray tint smearing the entire landscape, obscuring everything that wasn’t an agent’s aura in a dull, hazy, shroud. Texture and weight played a factor in the depth of color, so buildings were denser than cars, and birds and butterflies were only the lightest shade of smoke. People could be ashen or silvered, depending on their mood: this was a mirrored world, the earth in negative, a place that divided light and shadow down to its most basic structure. Even the air carried that clouded tint into your lungs, the ions and electrodes laid bare so that each breath tasted metallic.

Yet all the natural rules still applied, which was why I still had to run when chased by Shadows, and I still had to dodge people and objects, and basically avoid those who operated in the real world. We could still be seen by mortals, though perhaps a better word was
sensed
. It wasn’t an entirely comfortable feeling to brush up against an agent operating in the supernatural realm, rather like biting down on a wad of tinfoil, and feeling that ache in every limb, pore, and soaring cell of your body. Without even realizing they were doing it, mortals would step aside when I brushed too close, or quickly look away if we happened to make eye contact. Because I had no pigment to attract the eye, they seemed to feel a touch of vertigo if I was too near, and—to the amusement of some of our more immature agents—were easily unbalanced.

Once I was back in the main casino, I inhaled sharply, searching out the skein of scent Liam had so thoughtfully provided. Now that I was on the negative side of reality, I
had a visual tell too: here an agent’s aura could be read like a psychic map, a bright splash of color amid all the shades of gray.

Weeks ago I’d had the ability to read the moods and temperaments of agents and mortals alike, and I’d thought it was a part of my nifty hey-look-it’s-the-Kairos package. But apparently my powers were more of the use-it-or-lose-it variety. Outside the portals now I could view only the auras of those agents with the strongest and most inflexible wills, and I couldn’t discern human auras at all.

So I searched throughout the achromatic gloom for something similar to the rosy Technicolor streaming behind and around my body and moved quickly through the casino, the mortals around me unaware of my presence, though the zombies feeding cash into the slot machines probably wouldn’t have looked up anyway.

I’d just passed the main casino cage when the air reverberated around me, the stench of decay strong enough to prickle my skin. I swung around and spotted a zephyrous streak of blood orange rounding a far corner, followed by a stark white void erasing the silvery light. It was like a bright spattering of paint next to an empty space on a contemporary artist’s fresh canvas, and the scent of mold hit me as a giggle floated my way.

I raced around the corner to find Liam’s shadow splayed on an adjoining wall, backlit and straining forward. Then the shadow retracted, elongating and snapping, before disappearing entirely from view. I began running again.

I followed Liam’s scent past the empty sports book and packed poker room. I wasn’t worried about the casino’s security cameras tracking my movements—they couldn’t on this side of reality—but I did start worrying when the tangerine aura vanished under a doorway situated beneath a bank of escalators. Damn. He’d crossed back over into the mortal realm, taking his visual tell with him. If I wanted to pick up his olfactory trail again, I’d have to do the same.

“C’mon, there has to be another one,” I muttered, and
began scanning the casino’s perimeter. Hoping I wouldn’t have to go back outside to find another portal, I moved quickly among the slot banks, keeping to the walls as much as possible. I was scouring the buffet line, which was doing a surprisingly brisk business for ten o’clock at night, when I ran into a security guard. Literally.

“Ow,” I said, rubbing my forehead with one hand while I discreetly slipped my conduit behind my back with the other.

“The fuck you doin’ here?” he said, mouth barely moving. I smiled up at him, more relieved than I cared to admit to see a familiar—if not altogether friendly—face.

Hunter Lorenzo was one of ours, and as close to an ideal image of a superhero as one could get. Thing was, he wasn’t a cartoon, and it wasn’t an act. He was the troop’s weaponeer and head tactician, and had artistic hands—though he practiced a violent art—and a hooded, if sure, intelligence. I could still see his aura on this side of reality; banners of gold and white splaying out around him—typical superhero fare. He wore his clothing like armor, and moved so effortlessly he made a cat look clumsy. His thick, shoulder-length hair had recently been shorn into a severe military cut, a move I’d privately lamented, but it made his brooding brown eyes even more intense.

Hunter and I had butted heads from the first—I had the scars from his conduit to prove it—and a bit of that friction still remained…but then something else had happened. We’d briefly shared a power that had made us temporarily invincible—the aureole—but doing so had left us knowing more of each other than either of us was comfortable with because it was an unearned intimacy. I didn’t know his middle name or his favorite color, but I knew how his thoughts felt caressing my mind. The bright tang of his adrenaline coursing under my skin. The force of his heart, strong and rhythmic and a bit sad, pumping within my own chest.

We’d been in the same room only a handful of times in
the ensuing months, a mutual choice, and never alone. Fact was, I was attracted to Hunter when I didn’t want to be. My heart belonged to another, and always would. Besides, paranormal Boy Scout that he was, if I had only one word to sum up Hunter, it would be
feral.

“You shouldn’t stand around talking to yourself, Hunter,” I told him, motioning to the cameras mounted like shining black half moons on the ceiling above us. “It might look suspicious.”

“Warren’s going to be pissed when he finds out you slipped through a portal without permission.”

“It was an accident. I was looking for the bathroom.” He glanced at me sharply, then looked away, obviously scouring the walls for a portal, which made my pulse trip faster. Sure, that’s what I was doing too, and I could probably use the help, but if Hunter knew the Shadows had found out who I really was, my identity would be altered so fast I wouldn’t even have time to say,
Good-bye Olivia.

Besides, I hated all that domineering alpha male shit…even if Hunter did wear it well.

I crossed my arms over my chest and gave him a wry look. “What’s the big deal, Hunter? Only agents can see me, and when was the last time you saw a Shadow agent wandering these sacred halls, huh? It’s been weeks, months.” Minutes.

He did look at me then, dead on, his eyes cool and hard on my face. “Your aura’s bleeding into this reality, Olivia.”

“What?” I looked around me, swallowing hard when I spotted a Kool-Aid stain pooling onto the carpet. “How?”

From the way Hunter was shielding my body, I could tell the color was visible to the mortal eye. Yes, we existed to protect them…but they weren’t supposed to know it.

Hunter pulled his radio from his belt, looked around, and pretended to speak into it. “I don’t know. The Tulpa must have installed a new security system on that side. We have to get you back through a portal, and quick.”

“Which is what I was trying to do when you pulled the whole rent-a-cop routine.” I lifted my arm, watched color waft beneath my left pit. “Shit.”

“This way.”

We pushed past the crowd gathered around the blackjack tables, skirted the baccarat lounge, and barely escaped an excited throng gathering for a slot tournament. All this took a full minute, a minute in which I was aware of my aura slowly oozing into the mortal plane like a leaky tire. Thank God the carpeting in Vegas casinos was made to stand such things. Though the same couldn’t be said for the cream-colored walls around me.

“Hurry,” I told Hunter, my voice quavering involuntarily. Hunter feinted right suddenly, arm snaking back to grab my wrist, yanking me behind him. From behind a slot bank I spotted two other security guards. Hunter followed them with his eyes until they passed.

“They see us?” I asked, straining around him.

“Every time you speak, color spews from your mouth. Shut up.”

He started moving again, and I followed. Quietly.

We finally made it to a recessed doorway where a gently pulsing star marked a portal’s entry. No shout of alarm rose behind us, no Shadows were ahead to greet us. I’d deliberately slowed my breathing to try and minimize the seepage, and I was feeling a bit like I’d been under water too long. Crouching low, I let out the breath I’d been holding before sucking in another. When I stood again, I found myself two inches away from Hunter’s chest.

“Sorry,” I muttered feebly. I’d put him in danger. Again.

“Go,” he said, blocking a visual of the doorway with his body. “Then get out of Valhalla.”

It wasn’t the steel in his voice that propelled me through the archway, or the risk of detection a few seconds more would have cost me. It was the look on his face just before he tore his gaze away; his eyes searching mine before lowering to linger on my mouth, then dropping to my throat,
which forced me to swallow hard, and then lower still.
Feral
. We turned away from each other at the same time, the air crackling between us like charred satin, and I dove through the portal. It was safer, I thought, in the shadows.

I found myself thrust into a pitch-black room. Always comforting. At least Hunter couldn’t just open the door I’d entered and find me back in living color, aura-less, waiting on the other side. He’d probably have thrown me out of Valhalla himself. I tried to gain my bearings, edging forward, my footsteps echoing on linoleum. A fairly large room, then, probably storage. I felt along the wall, reaching a second doorway before long, and ran my palm along the right side until I found a switch. I didn’t flip it on immediately, instead yanking my conduit from my bag again, crouching low in a readied stance. Then I flipped it on.

Two liquid brown eyes stared at me through the crosshairs of my weapon.

The owner of the eyes screamed, and I screamed back.

“Oh shit. Shit!” Heart pounding, I fell back against the wall. The beast across from me began shaking its cage, the sound lost in a cacophony of agitated screeches and cage rattling by the room’s other inhabitants. I took a quick look around—obviously a lab of some sort—then did the only thing I could think of when faced with a roomful of shrieking chimpanzees. I flipped the light back off, felt for the door handle, and got out of primate hell.

I’d entered a softly lit anteroom, the middle cleared for foot traffic, with a U-shaped reception desk off to one side and a sofa and coffee table opposite that. The beasts continued their muffled screeches behind me while I tried to figure out where to go next, wondering what the hell monkeys were doing in a casino, when I heard the pounding of footsteps. I sniffed—two mortals—and ducked behind the couch just before they appeared.

I watched them launch themselves down the staircase, dressed in civilian wear, but athletically trim, sporting buzz
cuts…and military-issue guns trained on the door before them. They communicated in sign language and entered the door in tandem, a well-practiced team. Not, I thought, regular security guards hired off the street. The monkeys went crazy once again, and I could’ve used the opportunity to escape up the stairs, but something held me back. Curiosity, perhaps. Stupidity, more likely.

“Fuckin’ chimps,” one of the men muttered as he slammed the door behind him a few moments later, muting the cries circulating from inside…though not much. I palmed my conduit in case they decided to search this room too, but relaxed marginally as I scented annoyance and laziness overtake the martial interest that had propelled them down here. “We can’t come running every time those fuckers have a coronary over their own shadows.”

“Actually, chimpanzees are the smartest primates alive, besides humans. Their closest relation is to us, not gorillas or orangutans, so they can make tools, be taught to communicate, and they possess similar emotions to our own.”

“What are you, a fuckin’ encyclopedia?” I heard a smack, and a pained exclamation from the smaller man before he came into view, rubbing the back of his head.

“I’m just sayin’. I’ve been reading the books the professor gave us—”

“
Chimpanzees for Dummies
,” the first man scoffed.

“—and it’s really interesting. Did you know they enjoy lifelong bonds with their mothers?”