The Taste of Night (38 page)

Unfortunately, I thought as I settled beneath a metal stairwell, it also meant the casino floor would be less crowded. My red wig and sunglasses were pretty slapdash and would go only so far to shield my identity. I may have scoffed at the notion of Lady Luck, but Hunter was right. The precautions we’d already taken were no guarantee this all wouldn’t blow up in our faces once it was set into motion.

I passed the time by concentrating on pulling my energy inward, finding a place of balance mortals had to spend hours in yoga or meditation to achieve. I’d learned to reach it in seconds, and hold it for hours. Within five minutes I felt like the inside of a smoky crystal ball. My exterior felt fragile compared to the power swirling inside me, like a storm was swelling, brewing in…

Oh, for fuck’s sake
. I frowned as a sound broke through my serene centeredness. There it was again. Laughter—joyous and innocent, like the tinkle of tiny chimes in a soft spring wind. I rose from my hiding spot, swiftly looked about, then darted to the edge of the parking structure to peer over the side from where the sound had risen.

Buh-bye Buddha, because there she was, a full-fledged Shadow agent, pheromones wafting from her like heated sunflowers, the power from her recent metamorphosis snapping around her in invisible sparks. Even with her back to me Regan DuPree appeared lighthearted, smiling up at a man, arm linked in his, strolling into the hotel without a care in the world. She’d changed her appearance drastically, though she looked moderately familiar…probably, I thought, because I’d recognize her anywhere. Her hair had been chopped short, and now framed her face in an auburn bob. She’d kept her compact build, though, eschewing the femme fatale look for something a little more streamlined.

I sighted her within the crosshairs of my conduit, and almost blew out the back of her pretty little head, but caught myself when I realized there was the issue of the mortal wit
ness standing next to her. I tore my eyes away from the new, improved Regan, and inhaled deeply as my eyes fell on the back of the man’s head. For a moment my eyes and nose warred with one another. I couldn’t assign any olfactory or visual meaning to what my senses were telling me. It was like picking up a glass and expecting to take a sip of milk, only to realize too late that you were drinking wine.

But the confusion lasted only a moment. It was a long, drawn-out moment, to be sure; the longest of my life. But it would never take longer than that for me to recognize Ben Traina.

“No,” I whispered, as that bell-like laugh drifted up to me again.

The exhalation cost me. Regan whipped around, and I ducked behind the concrete wall, squeezing my eyes shut against the vision of Regan clutching Ben’s arm…and him smiling back down at her.

What was he—? And why—? And how could he—?

But I knew what, and why, and how. Hadn’t he spelled it out to me in our recent night together?
Don’t leave me again. I can’t take anymore.

But I had left him, hadn’t I? Left him to wake alone again, with nothing but a note that essentially read,
Don’t call me, I’ll call you
.

And now he’d ended up with Regan. Even in my addled state I put it together easily. She had studied me and my past, and had targeted my lover. She was the woman he’d been talking to on the computer. She was Rose.

And she looked familiar, I thought, because she’d altered her appearance to look like me. The Joanna me.

“I’m gonna kill her. I’m gonna fucking…”

I was rising to take aim again, give chase if I had to, when a family of five stepped out of the garage elevator. As I ducked behind a red Buick while they made their way to their car; luggage, two children, and an infant in tow, the interruption gave me a moment to remember why I was there, and forced me to admit I couldn’t do anything about
Ben and Regan right now. Not with Hunter counting on me, and the entire valley’s survival at stake.

Later, I told myself, trying to find that Zen-like place I’d been in before Regan’s laugh had broken through. I returned to the stairwell and slowed my breathing. I calmed myself, sought full enlightenment…and swore on my life to rip that bitch’s every limb from her brand-new body.

“Where have you been?”

Hunter fell into step beside me as I winged past a full-sized stock car where five boys were goading each other on, bright lights and screeching wheels accompanying their raucous yells. The rest of the arcade was empty, the games huddled forlornly in the cavelike room, intermittent beeps punctuating the too-silent air in discontent. I decided now wasn’t the time to clue him in about Regan and Ben. We both needed to focus, and the best thing I could do for Ben was find that serum. “Find the portals?” I asked instead.

“Three of them, one close to the last known entry into the lab. We’ll start there.”

By now we’d hit the casino floor. I was mildly surprised to see how much action the slots were getting, the diehards still getting their fix as the city sank around them. More surprising was the stench, a smell similar to petrol on the fingertips. I was about to ask what it was when I realized the answer was staring me in the face. Nearly every person in the casino was wearing an invisible mask of black smoke…invisible, that was, on their side of reality. On this side their infections were blatant. I saw oblivious people
marked for death, blithely pouring money into machines while death poured from their throats, their pores, and out onto the casino floor. My aura could barely be seen through the haze.

“This is disgusting,” I said, trying not to think about all the airborne diseases I
wasn’t
seeing. Hunter, too busy scanning the room for agents, only grunted something about not kissing them. I grimaced and held my breath for as long as possible.

“There,” he said, pointing. “See it?”

I did. A tiny pinprick of luminosity stood out even above carousels of blinking bulbs and chandeliers splintering light in a thousand different directions.

“The men’s bathroom,” I said, wryly. “Someone has a sense of humor.”

“Maybe I should go in first,” Hunter said, taking the lead. “It could be a trap.”

“Right. So you can blow your cover. That makes sense,” I jostled him with my shoulder to cut off his reply and unholstered my conduit, taking the shooter’s stance as we flanked the doorway. “Besides, I’m the one whose aura is sliming the place like a melted Popsicle.”

His mouth turned down as he watched the color pooling at my still feet, before giving a short nod, and I pivoted into the bathroom. His voice followed me back into the mortal reality. “Use the radio once you get there.”

A sucking noise sounded behind me, the portal sealing shut, and just like that I was back in full Technicolor. I inhaled, whirled, whirled again, quickly ascertaining that I was, for the moment, alone. But where?

Obviously offices of some sort, I thought, once my eyes adjusted to the dimness of the windowless room. Partitioned cubicles, ten in all, stretched across the floor, with a break room smelling of burned popcorn and stale coffee, and half a sheet of uneaten cake in the shared fridge. Closed for the evening, these offices were part of the administration; marketing, accounting, benefits, something like that. I found a
stack of applications, a photo ID machine, and cabinets filled with employee files. Human resources. I lifted my radio from my belt and spoke into the receiver.

“How do you feel about birthday cake?”

There was a long pause, then a crackle of static, and Hunter’s voice squawked back. “Is that code for ‘Help, the bad guys got me’?”

“No, it’s code for ‘I’m safe and sound but I’m locked in the HR office and don’t know where to go from here.’”

“Coulda been worse. That’s still the ground floor. I’ll come and get you.”

Three minutes later the lock snicked open on the front office, and Hunter appeared…or
almost
appeared. His outline materialized in front of me first, a gray-blue shimmer that solidified into lines with no more dimension than a stick figure’s, features sketchy, like a cartoon. Or a comic book. Even as someone who’d traveled both sides of this reality, I don’t think I’d have known he was there if I hadn’t been expecting him.

“Gee, Hunt, you’re looking a little washed out. Chin up, though. I’m sure we’ll have better luck with the next portal.”

He rolled his normally dark eyes, now marbles of arctic ice, and led me down the hall without reply. My wit might have been intact, but my luck didn’t fare as well. Though I made it through the casino in my wig and glasses without attracting notice, the second portal was located inside the storage freezer in the kitchen of Antoine Ferrare, the famous French chef. I hid behind a crate of plates readied to be run through the industrial-sized dishwasher, waiting for the place to clear long enough to make a run for the freezer. It never did, though, and I had to settle for turned backs while Hunter held open the door, a surprised yell following me into deep freeze before the portal sealed shut behind me.

Inside I found low ceilings, fluorescent lighting and stainless steel shelving. I knocked empty cabinet doors closed with my knees, and pushed shut drawers as I made my way around the partition cutting the room in half.

“I’m in,” I said into my radio, then exhaled deeply as I lowered it to my side. I’d found the lab again, but even in the gray-smeared landscape of reality’s flip side, I could see there were no penned-in primates to trumpet my arrival. Both cages and creatures were gone, with only the toxic scent of ammonia to complement the sinking feeling in my stomach.

I told Hunter to wait while I had a look around, though it was more to give me time to overcome my disappointment than out of any hope I’d find anything. I slammed the doors on a metal cabinet and glanced up at the ceiling, down at the floor, and in all four corners to make sure I was missing nothing. Not a vial, not a note, not even the cap to a ball-point pen. I bet if I dusted the place, I wouldn’t find a single print.

“Well?” came Hunter’s prompt over the radio.

“Fastidious fuckers,” I replied, and winced at his responding sigh.

“I don’t know where it is so I can’t come get you.”

“That’s all right,” I said, spotting a tiny star blinking above the exit door. “I’ll find you.”

I sent a final, searching look around the room, cursed again under my breath, and returned to the mortal reality using the same door I had before. This time the anteroom was dark; no alarms to trip, no armed men racing down the stairs to guard against intruders.

And this time there was a vial of etched crystal spotlighted on a coffee table in the center of the room.

I took a step toward it, studying the deep crimson liquid inside. Like blood, I thought, reaching for it. Like the serum, I knew, because I could scent the same yeasty compound now living inside me. My hand had just cleared the outer rim of the spotlight when another opposite me snatched the vial faster than I could blink.

I dropped the radio on the floor while my weapon hand came up, firing eight clean arrows into the dark, hearing
some sink into fabric—the couch I’d hidden behind before—and others burrow into flesh. I backed up as I fired until I could duck behind the high desk. My breathing was ragged in the ensuing silence. Damn, not one of my senses had kicked into overdrive. Why hadn’t I known anyone was there?

There was a sucking sound, followed by a rattle. A second followed. Then a third. Movement? Labored breathing? A slow death?

I glanced at the beveled mirror mounted behind the desk, which showed arrows being tossed onto the spotlit table, bloodless, though I knew they’d just come from someone’s body. That someone leaned forward, and though the rest of him remained cloaked in darkness, a grin flashed like the Cheshire cat’s.

“Thank you, dear,” a voice said, and a single hand joined that smile, the vial flipping carelessly in bone-white fingers. “I take my power where I can get it.”

“Tulpa,” I whispered, mouth going dry.

The smile widened, the hand gestured. “Call me Pa.”

Fuck. I tucked away my conduit because I knew it wouldn’t help. The Tulpa couldn’t be killed by supernatural means, as unconventional as they were. In fact, from his comment I gathered it was exactly the opposite; he gained more power from the energy expended trying to kill him. I considered making a run for it, but there was that damned mirror. I could be seen crouched behind that desk just as easily as I could see him, and right now I felt the Tulpa’s gaze burrowing into me, probing behind my wig and glasses. I swallowed hard. Hiding wasn’t going to help me either. He could knock this desk through the back wall with a kiss, and I was alive now simply because he willed it.

So I took a deep, steadying breath and stood.

He sat in the middle of the couch, same as before, leaning forward only enough to reveal those pearly whites, elegant hands currently splayed across his knees. He linked them as I approached, letting me know he’d do nothing to impede
my progress…for now. The vial sat gleaming, back in the spotlight.

The radio squawked on the floor between. “Jo? You heading out?”

I stifled a sigh, frozen in place. Thank God Hunter had used my real name. Thank God he
knew
it.

“You should answer that,” the Tulpa said, voice deep and deceptively reasonable.

I had to answer it. Worse than revealing my identity, Hunter might slip and reveal his own. I might be momentarily spared a gruesome death, but such hospitality, I knew, wouldn’t extend to other agents of Light.

I bent, eyes ever on those hands as I lifted the radio. Not that it would do any good. I was unarmed. He was the Tulpa. I weighed the risks, decided I had nothing to lose, and held the device out to the Tulpa. “Why don’t you answer it? He works for you.”

For a moment I thought he’d take the bait. I didn’t know how much an explosive device would hurt the Tulpa, but it’d create a powerful distraction. There was a discreet sniffing—like a hound on the trail of deer’s spoor—and a disappointed sigh. He leaned back, disappearing, and when he spoke again, that calm voice had honed to an edge.

“Tell your partner to join us. All he has to do is take the south elevators to the basement floor. I’ll wait.”

Then Hunter’s voice again. “Hey, you there?”

I couldn’t tell him I was with the Tulpa. He’d tear the building apart trying to find me, and I was already past the point of rescue. I was at the mercy of a being who didn’t even know the meaning of the word. I lifted the radio to my mouth and pressed the button.

“Let’s abort. No more communication. Meet me back at my place in thirty.” I clicked off the radio before Hunter could respond and tucked it back into my belt. Thirty minutes was long enough that whatever was going to happen to me would be a distant memory before Hunter realized I wasn’t coming home.

“Willing to go it alone in order to save your partner. Admirable, Joanna. You’ve grown more confident since we last met.”

I stared into the void where my father’s face was hidden, and found the courage to speed my fate along. It wasn’t that I wanted to die. I just couldn’t see a clear way out of it this time.

“Scared?” I asked, my tone nearly haughty enough to rival his.

He chuckled, a big change from the last time I’d sassed him and he’d responded by nearly blowing the lungs from my chest. “Not particularly.”

“But interested.” I was his Achilles’ heel, and we both knew it.

He leaned forward, and black marble eyes narrowed on mine. “Always that.”

I swallowed hard and looked at him for the first time. Other than the creepy gaze and malleable features, he was disappointingly normal; tanned—large, of course, I’d expected no less—with a crop of salt-and-pepper hair that looked like it’d curl if it ever grew long. Damn. I hadn’t expected him to be handsome. “I’d be flattered, but seeing as how the first interest you showed in me nearly got me killed, I’ll go ahead and reserve judgment.”

“That which doesn’t kill you serves to make you stronger,” he said flippantly, pulling at his cuffs. Gorgeous suit. So soft it almost looked buttery. “What I want to know is what took you so long? You entered the property almost an hour ago. Ever hear how I hate to be kept waiting?”

The bleeding aura. Not just his DNA identifying mine, but a tracking device? I didn’t want to ask. I was already down, and we were in the ninth, so I just shrugged the question away, trying to look relaxed.

His voice sharpened again. “I find your reticence surprising since the last time we met you were extremely vocal about…what was it? Annihilating the entire Shadow Zodiac, including myself?” He tilted his head, and I saw a lock
of dark hair shadow his forehead. “How’s that going for you?”

“’Bout the same as your vow to hunt down and kill my mother,” I said, and had the satisfaction of watching that blinding smile drop. There were Achilles’ heels…and then there were just plain sore spots. The jab gave me confidence.

“Speaking of enemies,” I said, taking another step forward. “You might want to cull your ranks. One of your newer agents seems to have taken a liking to playing both sides.”

Take that, you stupid bitch,
I thought, an evil sort of pleasure warming at the thought of outing Regan to the leader of the underworld. But the Tulpa just spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “Ah, youth.”

My jaw tightened. “She’s the one who killed the Piscean Shadow,” I said, not wanting to give him Regan’s name outright. It was childish, I know, but I wanted to make him ask for it. “She told me about the virus. And gave me Joaquin’s home address.”

I folded my arms and waited for his response.

“And what?” he finally asked, each syllable rolling languidly over his tongue. “You think it was innate talent or wisdom or
experience
that allowed her to think of all that on her own? Why, what a clever girl that would be.”

I blinked and couldn’t keep my mouth from dropping open. “You knew? But to allow the death of one of your agents…”

“A sacrifice for the greater good,” he said, elegant hands linking together again, tone all too reasonable. “Regan had to gain your trust. And you had to take her bait. From there it was easy to deduce where your hate for Joaquin would lead you. Your mind is analytical and pure, Joanna.”

He meant straightforward and simple. I narrowed my eyes. “You had her set me up.”