The Taste of Night (3 page)

“Yeah, well, I shoot mine a card on Christmas and her birthday. Guess we’re not all that closely related after all. Let’s go.”

“Shouldn’t we look around a bit more?”

“Be my guest, Dr. Dolittle, but I’m not missing the playoffs for no fuckin’ monkey.”

Dolittle, seeing his point, sighed and followed.

I remained where I was a few minutes after their boot-clad steps faded away, more alarmed by this than I would’ve been a few months ago. I’d watched enough of the Discovery
Channel to know that labs and chimps meant experiments. Experiments meant science. And science was what the supernaturals used to augment their magic to more easily manipulate the mortal world. So what was a lab full of primates—primates that most closely resembled humans, I now knew—doing in a casino on the Las Vegas Strip? And why were soldiers—mortals, sure, but armed nonetheless—guarding them? Somehow I thought I could rule out coincidence as a viable option, but maybe Hunter would know what was going on. I’d ask him later…or perhaps I’d come back again on my own.

For now, however, both guards and monkeys had to wait. I was in search of a Shadow.

Once I was sure the guards had gone, I bounded up the empty stairwell, straightening my clothes as I walked and tucking my conduit back out of sight.

It didn’t take long before my presence was known, and reported, among the employees. The Valhalla Hotel and Casino was one of the newest and most extravagant resorts in Las Vegas, and Xavier Archer the savviest, most respected, and feared entrepreneur in town. Thus walking around in Olivia Archer’s skin was akin to the queen of England strutting around Buckingham. Employees practically genuflected in front of the woman they assumed was the sole heiress to the Archer family fortune.

Yet I knew something they didn’t. Xavier might have held the title of president and CEO of Valhalla, but he did so by my true father’s will and whim. Though we had yet to prove it, the agents of Light believed this was where the Shadow organization was headquartered, and where their conspiracies—operating under the guise of a little innocent gaming—were plotted and set into motion. That my biological father tried to kill me here last winter was proof enough for me.

I shut out the memories of that last encounter as I strode
through the pit. Sure, I was walking around the lion’s den, but this time I was doing so with claws and fangs of my own.

Dozens of gazes weighed on me as I crossed the casino floor, and I could practically hear the whirring of machinery as every eye in the monitor room followed my progress. If I’d ever in my life considered striving for fame and fortune, my time spent in Olivia’s skin would’ve had me reconsidering that career goal.

I plastered an expression of vacuous cheerfulness on my face, moving as quickly as I could without looking hurried, and added an extra bit of sway to my hips as I walked. Meanwhile I searched for the olfactory thread I’d memorized while racing down the streets. I was like a voluptuous, blond bloodhound.

Twenty feet later my eyes fastened on a sectioned-off area of the casino. Bingo. If I’d had a tail, I’d be on point. Renovations were ongoing in most Strip properties, and I skirted the craps pit to edge along the curtained area, scanning the signs updating tourists on the latest and greatest improvements. The Great Hall of the Gods was, apparently, getting an aquarium. One that, I recalled Xavier saying, would make Monterey look like a wading pool. At two hundred million, it had better.

And though it was new, it smelled like a few fish had been rotting too long in the tide pool. Another specimen Monterey didn’t possess, I thought, wrinkling my nose. Shadows.

I exited through the main entrance before I could be stopped by some solicitous casino host, knowing the Eye in the Sky was still trained on me as I strode through the porte cochere. Once on the Boulevard, I circled the block, ducked behind a line of perfectly edged shrubs, jumped an eight-foot wall, and approached again from the back.

Everyone thinks Las Vegas casinos are impenetrable, that any place with security cameras, trained personnel, and mountains of hard cash would be as hard to get into as Fort Knox. Mostly, they’re right. You can’t walk right into a
stripfront property and wander any way your fancy dictates. That’s a given.

But what’s also a given is human error. Not to mention sheer boredom. You spend forty-plus hours a week, year after year, in the same smoke-filled, sensory-overloaded environment for an unimpressive hourly wage, and try to maintain a semblance of genuine interest. It’d be hard to feign curiosity under those circumstances, never mind a state of urgency. This was what I was counting on when I approached the aquarium’s guarded back door, and I wasn’t disappointed.

It was nearly midnight, probably about five hours into the guard’s shift, and he was slumped next to the door, near catatonic. As a bonus, he had a prohibited MP3 player that I could hear pumping gangsta rap from ten feet away. I slipped in the door half a foot away from him, and he never knew I was there.

The aquarium’s main room was cool and humid, silent but for the humming white noise of the tanks. Concrete walls were bathed in an eerie blue glow from the exhibit’s thick acrylic windows, and sea life from jellies to sharks floated obliviously content through beds of fresh seawater. Most of the tanks lined the walls, but a few transparent cylinders spiked through the center of the room, holding the more delicate fish. I turned around myself, thinking of those action movies where the thick glass cracks to send stingrays and water and kelp and plankton over the hapless hero as the bad guys get away. That thought in mind, I pulled out my weapon, as well as a mask that I slipped over my head. Then I dropped my bag in the corner.

“Too late for that, Archer of Light,” came a woman’s voice, and then bell-like laughter came at me from everywhere. “We already know who you are.”

“Know it,” Liam’s voice boomed out at me from the opposite side so that I turned toward it, “but can’t believe it.”

Shit. There were two of them.

“I told you she’d follow.” The woman again, but closer. I
whirled again. How had I missed the second aura? And why was I still scenting only one Shadow?

“I thought she’d be harder to catch.”

“You haven’t caught me yet,” I said, getting more and more nervous as the calm banter continued. Where the fuck were they?

“Patience, Olivia…or can I call you Joanna?”

My jaw clenched as I slid toward the center of the room, back against a circular tank housing glowing pink jellies. I was confused; they were obviously close, but the glyph on my chest had yet to engage. I tapped at my cleavage, wondering if the thing was working. In movies and comic books, glyphs were represented by large lettering on the superhero’s clothing. In reality it was like a brand under the skin, undetectable until it started glowing, and only then in the presence of enemy agents, a sort of preternatural alarm system.

So if the Shadows were so close that Liam’s scent was clogging my pores, why wasn’t my glyph glowing now?

“Are you okay, Archer?” the woman said, this time from my right. “You look a little confused.”

I frowned, edging around the cylinder. How were they seeing me?

“Don’t have this place mapped out, do you? Of course, once we knew you were posing as Xavier Archer’s daughter, we knew you’d have studied Valhalla’s floor plan. That’s why we picked the aquarium. That’s why we waited until it was nearly completed to lure you here.”

Alarm skirted through me. They’d known who I’d become, and they’d waited. And I, walking around in Olivia’s skin, hadn’t known that they’d known. The woman, feeling the bump in my adrenaline, laughed.

“What’s wrong? Wondering if the Tulpa is going to show up and finish what he started?”

Liam chuckled now too. God, he sounded like he was practically on top of me. “It’s a sad day when a father tries to kill his own daughter.”

“He stopped when he found out I was his daughter,” I said, and bolted across the room to another tank.

“Which is why we haven’t told him about your new identity, or that you’d be here tonight. The place is soundproof, and the security cameras won’t be installed until next week.”

“And you’ll be long dead by then,” the woman added, her laughter ringing out again.

Oh good. They’d given this some thought. I swallowed hard and tried to soften my gaze, see shapes rather than colors. Maybe they’d found another portal and were stalking me from the other side. We could still reach each other that way. We could still kill each other. “And you think the Tulpa will be fine with that? With you killing his only child, his heir? The one he believes is the Kairos?”

“You’re not the Kairos,” Liam said, his tone falling sharply. “And the Tulpa will never know.”

I thought about that for a moment, and decided he was bluffing. My death would leave a kill spot, noticeable by any supernatural, same as anyone else’s. And kill spots didn’t only leave the psychic imprint of the person who’d died, they identified those who’d done the killing as well. It was a supernatural calling card, bragging rights, and a history lesson all rolled into one.

Except in one way, I thought, and swallowed hard, gripping my conduit more tightly. No agent could heal from the blow of his own conduit. If you were killed by your own paranormal weapon, your aura was negated, your scent obliterated, and your death would be blighted from the mythology. It was as if you’d never existed.

“Over my cold, dead body,” I murmured, just as my glyph began to glow. I looked around frantically.

“Pleasure,” came the woman’s voice from above.

I looked up to see her already falling. There was no time to clear my bow for a direct shot, though the impact of her body landing on mine caused my trigger finger to tense, and an arrow was released into space. I heard a surprised yelp and an angry “Watch it!”

I head-butted the woman, and she cried out, falling back, but by that time Liam had dropped from the rafters and had my weapon hand secured in both of his. He lifted it, using pure brute strength to angle my conduit toward my chest. I held tight, but he had power and leverage on his side, and he angled the arrow toward my core, ripping through my left bicep as he pushed the arrow lower and closer to my heart.

I rammed him with my knee, but felt the jarring sensation of my kneecap meeting with a cup—what the hell was it made of, steel?—and my leg crumpled beneath me upon its return to the ground.

Halfway to the floor, weapon hand still trapped in his, I anticipated his reach. I released my conduit, latched on to his forearms, and pulled him with me as I rolled back, propelling him with my good leg so he went flying over my head. There were more cries as he collided with the woman, and I was up again, stretching for my conduit. Inches away, a black boot connected with my weapon, sending it skittering across the concrete floor. A second boot plowed into my face. Another pair landed on my back. Something popped like corn, and numbness sped along my limbs.

Please, God. Don’t let whatever that was have been important
.

“Jesus, that was easy!” Liam gasped, stomping on my neck for good measure before kneeling in front of me.

It was, I thought, disgusted with myself as he sat me upright. My back was spasming in pain, but knowing I’d heal, I pushed away the agony and looked up at him through watering eyes. I was surprised—though I shouldn’t have been—to find he was dressed as the security guard I’d passed on the way in. Even without my ability to see auras anymore, I should’ve at least scented him. And I hadn’t.

I deserved to die for that alone.

“Speak for yourself,” the woman told him, rubbing at her forehead as she came around to stand in front of me. And there was the second surprise. It was the same woman who’d been bidding on me at the bachelorette auction. I closed my
eyes and let my head drop back. Okay, I deserved to die twice.

I opened my eyes when I heard the scrape of my conduit being lifted from the floor. The woman was inspecting it carefully, and the sight of it in someone else’s hands was unsettling, like she was carrying around a piece of me.

The woman was dwarfed next to Liam, even though she was taller than average, and fit despite being small boned. Though not as blindingly blond, she was serviceably pretty, with eyes that were less greedy than assessing. Of the two, she alarmed me more. I glanced at her hands. It could’ve been the easy way she was palming my weapon. Damn.

She knelt, grabbed my arm—stronger than she looked, even for a nonmortal—and torqued it until I was angled awkwardly against a glass cylinder. Her other hand was busy pressing an arrow against my temple, and I got the picture, and held very still. She took a surprising, steadying breath…then leaned forward and kissed me on the lips.

Soft, I thought, as shock buzzed through me. That’s why guys liked us. I understood this as her tongue gently flitted in my mouth, touching mine, bringing with it the taste of the exotic; ground ginger and warm apples and something undeniably female. Had I been born a different type of woman I might have enjoyed that softness, but to me it was an earthworm sort of soft. The softness of slugs. The tenderness of raw meat. She withdrew her tongue before I could bite it off. I cleared my mouth and spit as she fell back.

“What are you doing?” Liam asked, sounding more horrified about two chicks locking lips than most men would be. We both ignored him.

She pulled back, gazing intently into my eyes. “Just an experiment,” she murmured.

“Sorry.” I rubbed my mouth against the back of my hand, fighting back rage at being manhandled. “But I’m not into girl-on-girl.”

She stared at me another moment, assessing; running her tongue over her lips, tasting. Then the speculation cleared
from her eyes and she smiled playfully. “What? No final wishes? No regrets?”

“Not in that regard.” Though that wasn’t exactly true if we were speaking about my love life in broad terms. I allowed one word to float through my brain—
Ben
—then banished it before the accompanying scent leaked out. I’d hate to lead her on.

“Well, I’ve had enough with experiments,” Liam said, glancing suspiciously around the aquarium. “Let’s just do this and get out of here.”

The woman smiled apologetically at me. “No sense of foreplay.”

“Bet he always has to be on top too.”

Liam rammed his forearm across my neck, cutting off my words and my breath as he leaned in close. His scent was one of moldering skin, dusty bone, and the bitter tang of bile. I’d gag if he kissed me. “You want to find out?”

“Oh God, Liam. That’s so caveman,” the smaller Shadow said, pushing him away. “Have it your way.”

She stepped back, readying my conduit as Liam lifted me to my feet. Oh God. They were really going to do it. I was going to die, and I realized a part of me hadn’t thought I would. The Tulpa hadn’t been able to kill me…and that had made me careless.

“I wish you’d let me do it,” Liam said, holding me in place.

“You lost the toss,” she replied, motioning him aside. He grunted and backed away.

“You guys tossed for me?” I grimaced. Now not only was I humiliated, I was insulted.

The female Shadow smiled and raised my conduit so the arrow was centered between my eyes. I could see the other arrows lined in the small chamber, and the shiny onyx metal glinted at me in the short distance. “I got heads.”