The Taste of Night (37 page)

Yes.
Let someone else be strong for a change. I did need a soft spot. Even if only for a night.

My answer was my sigh, my breath as it caressed his cheek, my mouth as it played over his. As our tongues met he was inside me again, hard and fast in a solid stroke. I reared beneath him, wordless noises scattering across the moonlit room, my sigh turning into a needy moan.

“This is real,” he said, thrusting, the impact sealing our bodies together as one. “This is all there is.”

And feeling my acceptance, my need equaling his, he eased up, hooking his right ankle beneath mine, and flipped us easily, so I was on top. I gazed down and met his eyes, swallowed hard at the challenge there, and began to rock. Yes, I thought, as waves of heat rose through me, up my belly, making my head light. He licked wine from my chest, and I sighed his name into his hair. He was right. This was all there was.

After that we really did talk. I answered what questions I could—yes, I was alive, but yes, I was different too. No, I had no contact with my sister. Yes, that was in order to keep her safe. And I posed a few pointed inquiries myself. Did he miss the police force? Why wasn’t he still writing? Who the fuck was Rose?

Then he led the conversation into a linear questioning about what had happened the night of my disappearance, what had happened subsequently, and what was going to happen next. I answered these with mumbled half truths about a secret life—nothing about the sanctuary, Shadows…and certainly not that I’d found Joaquin—and ultimately the vague responses piled up between us and we fell silent, him trying to think of ways to draw me out, me wondering where I could hide.

So I distracted him by disappearing beneath the covers, mouth too full for words, and by the time I emerged again, he was too breathless to ask any more. We sipped directly from the wine bottle after that, propped up on each other’s flesh until the pastel colors of predawn seeped into the inky sky. I got up and shut the windows, knowing heat would begin bleeding into the room within the hour.

Ben watched my every move. His eyes fluttered shut from time to time, but he opened them again by sheer force of will, only letting a smile and relief pass his face when they found me again. I drifted off myself, and that was unex
pected. So much so that when I did awaken it was with a jolt, breathing quickly, eyes winging open. Ben’s breathing didn’t change.

I rose and dressed, knowing even as I did so that it wasn’t fair. I mean, here I was, a ghost lover returning to seduce my beloved, to keep him in essence from getting on with his personal life, when I’d known all along that come sunrise I’d leave him again. What I hadn’t expected was to feel this soft; the ability to be fragile with another person wasn’t even something I’d realized I was missing, and only the contrast between the lightness I felt with his arms around me and the heaviness that returned as I left that room made me aware of it at all. Wasn’t it supposed to be the other way around?

And how the hell was I supposed to live without it now?

And still I couldn’t help but think maybe I could return to him intermittently, even semiregularly, as me. It wouldn’t be a normal relationship, but what was normal? The guy who went to his nine-to-five every day, then stopped by a strip club on the way home to his wife and family? The woman who waited until her husband was away on business to invite the UPS guy inside? The couples I’d seen at the swingers’ ball who’d decided three was most definitely not a crowd?

Hell, I’d turned down mortals and superheroes alike just because the memory of Ben was stronger than the reality of anyone else. But if I left now—and I had to get Jasmine’s aura back to her soon—at least I could comfort myself with knowing Ben wouldn’t die with scorched lips and genitals.

And he won’t replace your spot in bed with another woman
.

I jotted down a quick note in the kitchen, telling him if he needed to get in touch with me to leave a message, unsigned, in the mailbox. Then I dropped the house key next to it before returning to the bedroom one last time. Just to look.

“It’s best this way,” I said from the doorway. “I promise.”

As I blinked back tears, I felt Jasmine’s aura loosing on
my lids, the movement echoed just a fraction of a second after mine, and knew it was time to go. Letting myself out the back door, I leaped the block wall separating my house from the next, and sprinted away from my home and lover.

Away from my real secret life.

Less than an hour later I was home—having driven Jasmine to her house and watched her climb a trellis into her second-story window—but home at Olivia’s this time. Home
as
Olivia, I thought, catching my reflection in the entry mirror, almost surprised to see the cascade of long blond curls coming loose from their underpinnings.

Sighing, I dumped my keys on the console, my bag beneath it, and called out Hunter’s name as I made my way to the kitchen. There was no answer, and just as well. The scent of lovemaking clung to my skin, and I decided to momentarily forgo food for a shower instead. I was pretty sure Hunter knew where I’d been—he’d encouraged it, after all—but there was no need to rub it in his face.

I set the spray to full heat, threw my clothes into the hamper, and was about to climb into the shower when the phone rang. I hesitated. It could be Hunter, and if he had news about Valhalla he wouldn’t leave it on the machine. Then again, it could be Ben. By now he’d probably have woken up alone in a house of ghosts, and might be calling Olivia in a panic to see if she knew anything about my sudden return, and where I might be now.

But it wasn’t either of them. Instead Suzanne’s frothy voice followed my machine’s beep, made even tinnier by her panicked voice. I’d never heard her out of breath before. “Livvy, darlin’, it’s me. Listen, I’m standing at the starting line for the marathon—you know, the one that ends up in Nye county?” She said this like it was a reasonable thing, and I rolled my eyes as I headed back into the bathroom. I’d listen to the rest later. “Anyway, Ian and I were supposed to meet here an hour ago, he’s been talking about this race for months, and I just know he wouldn’t miss this for the world.

“I know the two of you weren’t seeing each other, but I was wondering if he mentioned something to you at the ball about a quick trip out of town, a death in the family, something like that? I don’t know, I’m just worried is all. It’s not like him. He’s been missing work too—”

This is the point where I backed again into the bedroom. “—and that’s not like him either. His bosses say he has a big programming project due soon, and they haven’t heard hide nor hair from him for at least a week.”

I whirled, staring hard at the spot where my sister’s computer once sat, trying frantically to put it all into a neat time frame—the swingers’ ball, Ian’s disappearance, the computer’s—while Suzanne’s voice continued chirping along in the background.

“…so if you happen to hear from him, or talk to him in the next little bit, would you mind giving me a ring, or tell Ian to call me himself? I just want—”

There was a loud explosion that jolted me and I looked back at the recorder, suddenly worried for Suzanne.

“Oops, there’s the starting gun, honey. Gotta run. Literally. Smooches!” And she was gone.

I went back to the bath and shut off the now-steaming shower, then returned to the kitchen, not for food, but for the fingerprinting kit I had tucked behind a basket of cleaning supplies under the sink. After lightly dusting the computer desk with the fine powder, I straightened, wrists cocked on
my naked hips, heart pounding as I stared at the dance of prints revealed there. Significant because I didn’t have fingerprints. And neither did Hunter.

Not that I was surprised to see them. I wouldn’t be dusting if I didn’t think a mortal was responsible for the theft. The question was, were they Ian’s? I leaned forward, viewing the desk eye level, like they did on TV. Was there only one set of prints? Or more?

“Think, think,” I told myself, straightening, trying to see the larger view. Ian had been abducted the night Joaquin discovered my hidden identity, and there was a good possibility he’d questioned Ian instead of killing him, or before killing him, trying to find out how much the mortal knew about me, who my friends were. What my habits were.

I kept dusting. I wanted to see if the computer desk was the only thing touched by this intruder, or if they’d been looking for more. By the time I was done, most of Olivia’s bedroom was caked in the fine, silty particles…and I was in even more desperate need of that shower. But I couldn’t move. I stood paralyzed in the middle of the now snowy room, the sun outside beating down on the carpet and my feet while I shivered inside, and that due only in part to the air conditioning and my naked state.

Fingerprints surrounded me. They were everywhere, where they hadn’t been before, and standing back, trying to see the whole picture—where the intruder had gone first, what he’d been looking for, what he’d found—I began to pick up a trail, like a train of ants leading to the nest. I followed it to where the prints grew densest.

“No,” I whispered, lifting the keepsake box from my dresser, running my hands over the oiled wood interspersed with glossy mother-of-pearl. I took a moment to trace the ghostly remains of another’s fingers, then fumbled with the latch until I finally managed to wrench it open. “No,” I said again, but it was too late.

I staggered a bit and found the bed, dropping like the floor had come out from beneath me, like all the breath had
left my body and I’d deflated to land there, a poor and pitiful excuse for the heroic woman I was supposed to be.

“Olivia!”

I heard it, knew it was my name, but I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t do anything but stare at the empty desk where Olivia’s computer used to be, where she’d so craftily ferreted out and stored her niece’s identity and location. And I let the box where I’d so lovingly, so meticulously, so
stupidly
kept all my letters to Ben fall to the floor.

“Olivia?”

The voice was closer, but it was swept away by the screams in my own head, driven back by the howls already ricocheting off the soft tissue, and the pleas I wanted to voice, if only there were someone around, up there, somewhere, to listen.

“God, you’re shivering.” The duvet was up, wrapped about my shoulders, then drawn in front of me, and finally I could focus. Hunter knelt before me, his face a mixture of worry and caution as he took in my nakedness, my room, my catatonic behavior.

“Hunter,” I said in someone else’s voice. “They know.”

“Know what?” he asked, repeating it when I only shook my head harder. “Know about what, Jo?” And the use of my own name, my real name, snapped me out of my suspended state. My face crumpled.

“Everything,” I said, and began to cry. “My daughter…on the computer. My lover…in the letters. Oh my God. Joaquin’s not coming after me. He doesn’t need to. He knows about them all.”

“Who?” he asked, insistently.

“Everyone,” I told him. Everyone who needed to stay hidden the most.

I didn’t stay catatonic for long. I was up, dressed, and ready to barge into Valhalla itself within the hour, except that Hunter wouldn’t let me. At first he tried reason, talking to me about controlling my emotions and timing and planning
and a bunch of other stuff I didn’t give a shit about when I thought of Ben in Joaquin’s clutches. Or of the child that might be killed only because she happened, at one time, to be mine.

When reason didn’t work, he sat on me. He used that big, gorgeous body to hold me down while I raged; against Joaquin, against the Tulpa, and especially against him. I told him he was no better than them. I spit on him—stupid, as I was directly beneath him—and acted like a rabid, frothing bitch. I let my bones burn through my skin, not just revealing my Shadow self, but all the rage and hate and venom that I tried so hard to hide from those in the sanctuary.

Hunter merely anchored himself more firmly on my chest, taking in the sharp bones pushing against my flesh, my eyes as black as buffed coal, the hot iron blistering the air between us. “Don’t you get it, Jo?” he finally said. “I’ve never been afraid of your Shadow side.”

And the shock of that statement, the absurdity and frankness of it, and the fucking
romance
of being accepted in all my ugliness, had me breaking down all over again. My bones sank like quicksand beneath my skin and my black eyes were extinguished by fat tears. Anyone else might have let me up then, but Hunter knew better, and he sat it out, literally. And that’s how we spent the rest of the day. Until noon came and went. Until the sun fell from the sky. Until dusk crept over the valley again, and I finally slept the dreamless sleep of split realities.

“I’m sorry.”

My voice was raw and scratchy, and when I tried to clear it, I ended up coughing so hard that my gentle entry into waking hours was abruptly replaced by a scalded throat and violent headache.

“Here.”

The scent of warm peppermint washed over me, and I looked up to find Hunter standing at my bedside, a cup of steaming tea in his outstretched hand. Twelve hours earlier, I would’ve slapped it away, sending tea splattering against the cream-colored walls along with the perfume bottles, mirrors and knickknacks I’d already destined for the trash bin. Instead, as I looked around for the remnants of those things, I accepted the tea, and took a grateful sip.

“You cleaned up,” I said, as Hunter perched himself next to me. This gave me a clear view of myself in the cracked dresser mirror, and I winced at my multiple reflections. “Everything but me, I see.”

He leaned back, blocking my view. I met his steady gaze. “How’re you feeling?”

“Like I’ve been hit by a semi.”

He cocked one dark brow. “I can’t imagine why.”

“Look, I’m sorry. Really—”

“I heard you the first time,” he stopped me, though his voice wasn’t harsh like I expected. Or deserved. “And it’s okay.”

I sipped some more tea, letting the warmth spread through my chest, and out into my limbs, pooling in my ravaged fingertips. “Thank you.”

He lifted one large shoulder, shrugging off the gratitude. “Remember when we were in the boneyard? In Tekla’s thought maze?”

“Hunter—”

He smiled, bittersweet, and shook his head. “Not that part. Before that. The reason we were there. The purpose of the maze.”

I knew the answer—the hours spent under Tekla’s tutelage, breaking down walls, had been toward that purpose. “To get to the center without detection. As quickly as possible.”

“To use your
sixth sense
to reach that center,” he clarified, watching me closely. I faltered under that clear-eyed gaze. “To use clarity of mind and intention to reach your sixth sense.”

Yes, I knew that too. I closed my eyes and nodded. “And I had none of that yesterday. If I’d gone to Valhalla like that I’d have been dead before I hit the door.”

Hunter patted my leg, warming me further. When I finally opened my eyes again, he said, “The thing is, Jo, getting through that maze was only the first step. Creating barriers out of the ether was the ultimate goal. And do you know why?”

Because the most powerful being had been wrought into the world solely by the determination of a powerful mind. “Because if you know how to build them up, you know how to tear them down.”

“Valhalla is the Tulpa’s house,” Hunter said, nodding. “You need clarity, intention, and your sixth sense combined
to enter safely, but to reach the center of his quarters, you need to be able to throw him off your trail. Create barriers of your own.”

“And destroy the artificial walls he’s created to throw me off of his.” I sighed thoughtfully and sipped at the cooling peppermint.

Hunter nodded. “Can you do that?”

I sipped again, and this time the tea settled like a brick in my gut. I looked back at him. “No.”

He nodded slowly, and to himself. “But you’ll try anyway.”

My response this time was a mere whisper. “I have to stop Joaquin. Find Ian. Try to find an antidote to this virus.” Save Ben. Save the girl. Save myself. “I have to at least try.”

“I know,” he said, laying a hand over mine. It was as warm and comforting as the tea. I glanced again at Hunter. I’d never seen him like this before; gentle, understanding, almost paternal. “And as you’ve already made that choice, there’s only one more question you need to ask yourself.”

I waited.

His mouth quirked, his eyes narrowed, and there was the sexy weapons master I knew. “Who do you want walking beside you?”

“Oh, Hunter. I can’t—”

“—ask me to do that,” he interrupted again, rolling his eyes. “I know. But I’m the one doing the asking here. So. What’s it going to be?”

“Yes.” The word rushed out of me on a relieved exhale. Dying alone, after all, had such little appeal. “God, yes. Of course. If you’re sure.”

He smiled at me again, a grim little thing, and lifted a hand to brush back one of the tendrils hanging in my face. “You don’t have to ask that either,” he murmured.

Then he rose to leave, saying something about rest, that we’d leave the following dusk, but stopped in the doorway to send me a hard look over his shoulder. I pulled my eyes away from the shattered reflections of my many selves, and
bit my lip. “I only ask one thing of you. Stay honest about your intentions. Anything less will kill us both.”

I flushed because he felt he had to say it, even though I knew I deserved it after last night’s hysterics, but lifted my chin in what I hoped was a convincingly determined look. “I want to bring Ian back. I want Ben safe. I want my…the child’s safety ensured as well.”

I said nothing about vengeance or making Joaquin pay for what he’d done to me. No request to let me be the one to kill him. I didn’t say it because I finally saw those dreams for what they were: violent distractions. Finally Hunter nodded. “All right, then. Let’s go get Joaquin.”

He disappeared back into the living room, and I sipped my tea and let my eyes travel back to the mirror.

“Yes,” I said, eyeing all my shattered selves. “Let’s go get that bastard.”

We found a portal a block away from Valhalla, and entered to find the world awash in a blanket of white.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” I said, testing the depth of the snow with one leather boot before glancing back at Hunter, still huddled in the doorway of the souvenir shop we’d come through. “We can’t walk into that hotel and cross back to mortal reality with snow on our feet and in our hair. It’ll be a dead giveaway.”

“And the alternative is?” he asked wryly, looking at the snow like it was acid. “Walk through the front door?”

No, we couldn’t do that. Now that Joaquin knew my real identity, he’d be looking for me—mask or no mask. This reality was still our best shot. “Let’s find another portal.”

He shook his head. “It’s not the portal, it’s the timing. It just happens to be snowing on this side of reality right now.” He shuddered, and I don’t think it had anything to do with the cold. Like me, Hunter was a desert rat. Anything this cold and white was simply…unnatural. “Can we wait it out?”

I glanced up at the thick blanket of clouds roiling overhead,
and doubted it. This, along with the colorless landscape, was the other major difference on this side of reality. While the physical surroundings matched what one would find in the real world, the more fluid variables, like weather, were particularly unstable. Step through a portal on a bright blue summer day, and you were likely to find vicious winds circling the valley as if stalking their prey. A parched winter day might yield rainbows arching overhead, crisscrossing in shades of gray, though no less glorious for it. So while we might find a portal to enter closer to Valhalla, it would only minimize the trudge, but change nothing. Besides, this one had already sealed behind us.

“Let’s go,” I said reluctantly, and plodded out into the street, arms wrapped around my already chilled body. Across the road a shirtless kid skateboarded home in the dusk of his sweltering reality. I glanced back, following the dual footprints leading to the aural smears of light directly behind Hunter and me, and wished we had something to cover them with. The prints, not the smears. Those dissipated within seconds, though the vibrant colors seemed to hang longer in the heavy winter air, and I briefly wondered if the troops back east considered this a problem. Hunter followed the direction of my gaze and read my thoughts.

“Hindsight and all,” he said, turning forward again.

“Yeah. I’ll make a note to add snowshoes to my shopping list.”

After that we fell silent, and I kept my mind off my numbing limbs by going through our plan to infiltrate Valhalla step by step. First, we had a good operative in Hunter, as he knew the property, was in uniform, and had already established the habit of varying his shifts. His colleagues wouldn’t think twice at him showing up for the swing shift on a Tuesday night, though we were hoping he wouldn’t have to show himself on that side of reality at all. I’d follow behind him as we tried to locate the same portal we’d found weeks earlier, and see if there was an antidote to the virus somewhere in that lab. That was our first priority.

Second, one of us had to search out a secondary portal while the other was busy in the lab. I hated to split up, but if Ian and my computer were being held in Valhalla, as I suspected they were, it was the most expedient way to conduct a search of the vast property, despite doubling the prospects of running into a Shadow agent. If that happened, and I thought that a big
if
since the Shadows all still seemed to be on their extended summer vacations, I expected to encounter only one at most. And there were still two of us.

Finally, we had to find a way to move Ian and the computer off property, and that would probably be the trickiest part. Ian was mortal and could only be moved along the natural plane, but we’d have to deal with contingencies as they came. I was ticking through the various ways that scenario could play out when Hunter suddenly spoke.

“Uh-oh.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. “What ‘uh-oh’?”

“I thought this might happen. You’re bleeding again.”

“Wha—? Fuck. No!” I whirled around myself, first one way, then the other. “Why me? Why not you?”

“Thanks for your concern,” he replied wryly, before pointing at the ground where crimson-colored aura pooled around my feet. “They must have the place sensored or something, to alert them to your presence on this plane. I thought it might be all of us—all agents of Light, I mean—but they probably don’t have a DNA sample for each of the agents of Light, so it must be just you.”

“But how would they have a sample of my—”

I broke off and met Hunter’s steady eyes, realization dawning in tandem. “The Tulpa,” we said at the same time.

“They must’ve used some of his DNA, some skin cells or something to experiment with.”

“How does an imagined being have DNA to start with?” I said, frustrated with the logic.

“How do imagined walls have molecules to keep them upright?” he countered, trudging ahead. “Besides, he’s not
imaginary anymore. And now we know there’s something worth guarding in there. We’re on the right track.”

“Who cares if I’m not even allowed on the train?” I grimaced, lifting my feet higher as I walked, as if that would keep my aura from staining the pristine snowbanks. Berry slushies.

“Gonna let something like a little bleeding aura stop you?” he said teasingly.

“Easy for you to say,” I almost snarled. “Your aura’s packed tighter than a can of tuna.”

He shrugged, turning back to trudge ahead of me, shooting over his shoulder, “All we have to do is get you inside so you can access one of the interior portals.”

“Oh, is that
all?
”

“Here’s what I’m thinking,” he said, ignoring my sarcasm. His stride was longer than mine but I stretched to fit in his footprints, hoping to ease the chill around my ankles every time I took a step. “I go in, in uniform, and scout out the portals first. Once I have their locations, I call you inside.”

“Yeah, because yelling out ‘Joanna Archer’ in the middle of the craps pit won’t be at all obvious.”

Smirking, he held out a palm-sized device. “I’ll call you with this.”

I halted, took the remote, and clicked the button on the side, speaking clearly into the slats. “A walkie-talkie?” My voice sounded from somewhere near his ass area.

Hunter reached behind him and pulled out its twin. “Not just a walkie-talkie, but one identical to those used by Valhalla security, in all ways but two. First, I set it to a channel only the two of us can access. Even if the signal’s detected, they won’t be able to locate it until we’re long gone.”

Okay, so I was impressed, but I had my badass superhero face on, and wasn’t about to show it. “And second?”

“Second,” he retorted, just as badass, “you’re the only one who can use it. Anyone else depresses that button, and the device explodes, taking a limb with it.”

I grinned. “Nasty.”

“I take it you approve.”

My smile widened. “So where am I going to be hiding with my handy-dandy explosive device while you’re locating the portals?”

“Parking garage,” he said, and held up a hand before I could protest. “The floors are monitored by cameras, but they only capture certain angles. The stairwell can’t be viewed at all. The third level leads directly into the video arcade. I figure with all the noise and sound and color, that’ll be the least likely place you and your bleeding aura will be noticed. From there, we make a quick sprint to the first portal, and we’re off.”

We started trudging forward again. The Strip seemed a lot longer covered in snow. “Wow, got it all figured out, don’t you?”

“As best I could given time and resources.”

And it sounded good. He must’ve been refining the details while I was doing my
Exorcist
imitation the night before. “So that’s all we need,” I said, sighing. “You on the inside, me with an explosive toy, and a half dozen portals to choose from.”

“And luck,” Hunter added, over his shoulder. “Don’t forget Lady Luck.”

“That fickle bitch?” I muttered, slipping the walkie-talkie into my black cargo pocket. “How could I ever forget her?”

Valhalla’s parking garage was planted at the end of a road veering off from the more accessible valet entrance, and stacked like a concrete layer cake, with different colors and numbers to help guests remember which floor they’d parked on. There was nothing nefarious to indicate it was any different than any other garage along the Strip. In fact, the most ominous thing was the lack of vehicles housed within the normally packed floors. Valhalla was suffering the effects of the valley virus as much as any other property, which had to suck for the hotel’s shareholders, but happily
decreased my chances of being observed by mortal or agent alike.