The Taste of Night (21 page)

While I wondered, Chandra spoke up. “What about a biological attack?”

My head shot up. Yes. Closer…

“You mean like anthrax or ricin?” Micah shrugged and flipped his notebook shut. “Something like that could cer
tainly affect a large group of people, but it would start in a contained area. Or at least have a point of origin we could trace it back to. These victims are spread all around the valley. Different social classes, workplaces, lifestyles. Nothing to unite them at work, play, or socially.”

“So nothing other than they all live in Las Vegas?” asked Felix.

Except that they were all gathered outside Valhalla the night of the fireworks…

Micah ran a hand through his hair thoughtfully. “There is one thing, actually. A similarity in DNA, a strain of chromosomes that might indicate a propensity toward mutation of sorts. I haven’t had time to study it further, but my bet is the answer lies there. I’d have to get back to the lab to know for sure, though.” And his legs twitched beneath him, indicating he wanted to do just that.

“Wait!” I said as he began to rise. They all looked at me and I bit my lip, thinking fast. “Um, what about motive? I mean, maybe if we discover
why
the Shadows have suddenly decided to begin mass murdering innocents it’ll lead us to how.”

“They’re Shadows,” Chandra snapped. “Do they need a reason?”

“They don’t need it, but they probably have one,” I said, snapping back before turning away from her and addressing the rest of the room. “I mean, even if you’re right and they’re trying to draw me out in the open, it still seems a little extreme. What if it’s a trial run for something else? Something bigger?”

“That’s not how they operate, Olivia,” Warren said, squashing the idea immediately. “Humans are sometimes affected by our paranormal battles, and it’s our job to keep those individuals safe, but the Shadows don’t target groups of people. Otherwise, why not wipe out the entire city? Why not do it years ago?”

I crossed my legs, my foot bobbing impatiently. “You’re operating on the premise that the Shadows seek balance,
like you do. What if that’s changed? What if they want a greater influence over the valley? What if the Tulpa wants annihilation?”

Chandra scoffed. “You can’t annihilate an entire city. Without mortals the Shadows would have no one to influence, to carry out their schemes and autosuggestions, to create chaos on their behalf.”

“Not the
mortals
, Chandra,” I said bitingly. “Us. What if it’s a trial run for us?”

An unsettling silence fell over the room as they each considered my words. Even Warren was listening, eyes fixed on me as if seeing me for the first time.

“I’m just saying if I were—” I was going to say
Shadow
, but I was half that, and wouldn’t be doing myself any favors reminding them of it. “If I were a Shadow agent and I was going to do something this big, I’d test it first. Make sure it would invade or infect the way I thought it would.”

“Test it on monkeys,” Micah murmured, mind working.

“Test it on mortals,” I corrected, because the whole of the valley had become a part of the Shadows’ experiment. They all were silent after that.

“Maybe we should…” Chandra trailed off, her own gaze far-off and thoughtful.

“Go ahead, Chandra,” Warren said to her.

“I was just thinking maybe we should all give blood samples to Micah. You know, in case it is a biological weapon. Then we can rule out for sure that none of us are…”

Infected
. The word she couldn’t speak was on everyone else’s faces. Vanessa and Felix looked at each other. Riddick and Jewell did the same. Warren cleared his throat, and all eyes returned to him as he reluctantly nodded his agreement. “It’s a good idea. Everybody hit the lab so Chandra can take a sample of your blood. I doubt we’ve anything to be worried about, but it’s best to be safe.”

I swallowed hard, realizing what I’d just gotten myself into. If the virus could show up in the blood, then couldn’t
the immunity do the same? After all, what was immunity but a sampling of the toxin turned safe? If I gave blood, would it send me into further lockdown? Would biology give up the secret I’d worked so hard to keep?

But if my blood did possess the immunity—and all I had was Regan’s faithless word on that—then I owed it to my troop, and the city, to offer it up. And studying the samples would take time. If Micah hadn’t discovered my immunity himself by morning, I swore I’d tell him myself. But dawn was fast approaching, and Joaquin’s address was flashing like neon in my mind. Warren could lock me up in the sanctuary for as long as it took to find a cure, but I wanted, and
needed
, to end Joaquin’s contemptible life tonight. Talk about a cure for the world’s ills. So I left the meeting and headed back to my room in preparation for escaping the boneyard one last time.

“That you, Olivia?”

I jumped, automatically feeling at my hip for a weapon that wasn’t there. A chuckle came at me from the darkness, and my heart settled enough to make out the shape of the man coming at me from an adjacent passageway. An orange ember was brought to his lips, flared, then obscured again in a puff of smoke.

“Shit. Hunter.” I put a hand to my chest and inched closer, joining him in the shadows. “What are you doing loitering in the dark?”

“Is
that
what it looks like I’m doing?” That laugh again, a sound void of humor, then another deep inhalation on his cigarette. I hadn’t even known he smoked. “I’m not
loitering
in the dark, dear, dear Olivia. I’m reveling in it. I’m bathing in it. Fuck, I’m…I’m one with it.” He motioned widely around him, then leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. He wasn’t bathing in the darkness, I thought, sniffing as I approached him. He was drowning in it…it and the bottle both.

“I thought you were sleeping,” I said, alarmed because
Hunter never, ever drank. I’d never learned the reason behind that, but the fact he’d abandoned one of his most stringent personal mores had me biting my lip in worry.

“Sleep?” His head rolled forward on his neck. “Nooo…”

I gingerly tipped up his chin, and saw it wasn’t just drink that kept him from focusing on my face. His eyes looked burned out, like they couldn’t bear letting in another appalling sight, and his breathing was shallow…and reluctant. That’s why I hadn’t sensed him there. He was almost devoid of anything that passed for human life.

“You’re very drunk.”

“You’re very right.”

“C’mon, Hunter,” I said, taking his hands. “Let’s get you to bed.”

“Absolutely. Bed is where I need to be.” He let me shift him to his feet, but his acquiescence was more surrender than agreement. We maneuvered down the hallways, his cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth, the smoke making my eyes sting. Though he was moving his feet, I got the feeling he didn’t care whether he came or went, stayed or left, lived or died. Bone-deep didn’t even begin to describe his fatigue.

“This is it, right?” I asked, steering him to a nondescript door off the top of the Z-shaped barracks.

“Home sweet home,” he agreed, and blew the air out of his nose while dropping his face against the wall. It was as close as I’d ever heard Hunter come to a giggle. He fumbled to get his hand aligned with the palm plate, and nearly fell inward when the door swung open. We stumbled in, and I jumped as a clap of thunder split the room in two and rain began to hammer on the window opposite the door.

A holograph, I thought, sighing. We had the option of programming three-dimensional images onto the walls in our rooms—a green meadow, a streetscape, anything to further personalize our space—but I hadn’t activated the feature in my room, forgetting it even existed until now. A
holograph of a soft summer shower might be relaxing, one with light from a far-off street lamp playing over slowly streaking walls, and headlights from cars ferrying souls unlucky enough not to be tucked snugly in bed adding to the comfort and security of being nestled inside.

But this wasn’t womblike and warm. This assaulted the senses, an angry attack from the heavens that ripped through the bruised sky to punish the pane.

“God, no wonder you needed to get out of here. This is…”

“Atmospheric,” he finished, opening his arms wide to throw himself off balance again. I let him stumble since he was headed toward the bed, but he righted himself again in an exaggerated sway and offered me an equally overstated grin. I smiled back weakly. Seeing a heroic man this drunk was like seeing a rhino tottering about after receiving a tranquilizer dart. You really didn’t want to be near it when it fell.

“I was going to say depressing.”

“What? You don’t like rain?” He maneuvered over to the wall, touched the faux window, and came away with wet fingers. A water wall too, I realized, as he rubbed his smooth fingertips together. “I love rain,” he whispered. “It makes me feel small. It feels like baptism.”

The note of loss in his voice bored a hole straight through my chest, and another sharp bolt of light cracked through the room, lighting the hollows under his eyes. I felt the air escape me as his shoulders slumped, and crossed the room quickly, putting my arm around him again, this time in comfort rather than support. He turned into me, and heat leached from my body into his and back again. I imagined it driving the cold spots from the crevices of his heart, held him for a long minute, then squeezed him hard before pulling away.

He pulled me close again.

“Hunter,” I said, my voice muffled against his chest. God, but his skin smelled good, even with the alcohol and sorrow permeating his pores. Still. “Let go of me.”

He released me enough to stare down at me, eyes so dark his golden skin appeared whitewashed in contrast. “I’m sorry, Olivia, but you’re being a tightass, and this is for your own good.”

And he kissed me. And that’s when I realized that whenever he did so, I thought of violence. Sure, it was tempered with warmth and the softness of his full lips, but there was a firmness in his embrace, a determination to infiltrate, overpower, and conquer that made some primal need in me rear up to do the same.

My hands were on him before I could stop them. We over-balanced—he was drunk and had an excuse; I simply had a sudden and blinding need to taste and feel more—and we crashed against that wall of water, the pane shaking beneath our combined body weight. He could match my strength, so I wasn’t gentle, concentrating solely on my hunger as lightning scorched the sky behind him. In the brief illumination I saw water sluicing over the sides of his silhouette, plastering his hair to his skull, his T-shirt to his back, molding his jeans to his ass. I lowered my hands, pulled in close, and he dropped his head back on a rich, musical moan. A single trail of water coursed over his left cheek, and I caught it at his neckline, stroked upward with my tongue, found his ear, pressed closer.

His hands were on my waist then, beneath my shirt, printless fingertips gliding along my sides. They dipped to the small of my back, met there, and I quivered as they lowered, cupping me from behind. He was towering over me now, head bent, his lips so close to mine, I scented his breath on mine.

“Joanna…”

My name, whispered, brought me to my senses. It wasn’t supposed to be paired with his. Not in my dreams, or in my life, not even surrounded by a punishing rainstorm bested only by his heart against my own. It was supposed to be Joanna and Ben. The way it’d always been. The way it always would be.

So what the hell was I doing? This wasn’t a flirtation, or a game, or fun. This was a wild bid to escape whatever had buried itself in his mind. I pulled away despite a desire to curl up into his core, knowing there was no epiphany to be found in his arms. Or mine.

“How altruistic of you,” I managed, when I got my breath back. I licked the taste of him from my lips and met his gaze. “Now let me go.”

His mouth quirked, like I’d told a joke, but he let his arms drop. I felt unbalanced; free, but fettered at the same time. Hunter seemed to know it. Letting out a deep sigh, I shook my head and headed to the door. His voice stopped me halfway across the room.

“Jo.”

I turned back warily. As the only member of the troop outside of Warren and Micah who knew my true name, he also knew not to use it. But he used it again now that we were alone, tongue silky over the single word. “Jo. You think I don’t know how you want me? That I can’t see what’s going on inside you? Or feel it?”

I gave my head a short jerk. “I know you know.”

“Because you know me too. Because when you gave me the aureole we became joined.” He took a step forward, steadier now. “You’ve already let me inside of you.”

I swallowed hard. “Not on purpose.”

Another step. “You don’t have to be alone.”

I looked over his shoulder to the wall of glass and falling rain. What he meant was
we
didn’t have to be alone. Me, him, and the emotions that’d lain him flat tonight. If I stuck around I’d learn about them all, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I had my own failures to be haunted by, my own epiphanies to seek.

“Hunter, I—”

“Need an ally,” he interrupted, as sober as he could manage. “Someone who knows your secrets and has seen into your Shadow side…and still stands by you. Warren won’t, you know. You don’t want him to know about your daughter—”

“
Not
my daughter.” I was getting tired of having to remind people of that.

“The child who carries your lineage in her blood, then,” he said sharply, and that somehow sounded worse. Maybe because it was the truth, and someday soon I was going to have to face it…and do something about it. I dropped my head, saying nothing, and a moment later the warmth of his palm glided up my arm, sending chill bumps along my side, while he rested his hand on my shoulder. His weight against me was solid and reassuring. “Warren can sense you’re not telling him everything. He’s waiting for you to make even one false step. If anything reminds him remotely of the Shadows he’ll name you a rogue, just like his father.”

I jerked away, my hands automatically clenching into fists. “Thanks for lumping me in with a murderer.”