Unbound (17 page)

A
union between them—a contractual one to accompany the physical one growing in Sola’s womb—was the best way to show her it could work. Their baby wouldn’t just be their world’s highest power, the Kairos, she would possess the best of them. She would represent the purest essence of a balance between their two sides. Quintessence…and choice.

And Solange was his.
That was his foremost thought as he bent his head and placed his mouth to hers, sealing them forever. The female minister, with her shock of purple hair, clapped along with the two showgirls flanking her from the previous hour’s “Vegas Package” wedding. Since Solange wasn’t exactly sentimental, the feather- and crystal-encrusted women were also their witnesses for the ten-minute ceremony. When they finally pulled away, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

“Obviously this changes everything,” he said afterward, shoving a stacked fork of pancakes into his mouth, though he didn’t clarify if he meant the wedding, the baby, or the way they’d both betrayed their troops. They were at a pancake house, both ravenous and wild-eyed with what they’d done…and what had yet to be done.

“We can’t keep all of it out of the manuals,” she said, primly cutting her own food, creating the perfect bite. “Identities are one thing, and even a relationship can be hidden. Anything short of out-and-out treason will remain concealed until we show our hand, but this is different. It’s too big.”

But what wasn’t? JJ thought, as she spoke. Walking down the street was a big thing if there happened to be a drunk driver heading your way. Throwing an innocent smile at a stranger was big if she later became your lover. Everything was big, but then, he thought, watching Sola with her furrowed brow, everything was small, too. And the small things often mattered most.

Still, she was right. Things were omitted from the manuals because for knowledge to be useful it had to be earned, same as for mortals, but not all of this would be left out. And, ultimately, it might be better if it was revealed anyway. Because that would mean they’d gotten away.

“We must either part ways,” he said, wiping his mouth, “which is not going to happen, or disappear—”

“Difficult, but not impossible,” she interjected. In some cases, rogues blended with humanity for years.

“Harder once the baby comes,” he pointed out. As rogue agents, they’d both be disavowed, which meant they’d be driven from the city. Or killed. Not the most ideal circumstances under which to raise their child. “Or we change our appearances entirely.”

Even if the manuals showed them doing that, and they probably would, the drawings wouldn’t depict their new identities. Universal checks and balances were still in play.

But Sola had stopped chewing mid-bite, a wistful expression blanketing her face as she stared at him.

“What?”

“You. You,” she said again, giving it a lover’s inflection, as her eyes gained a sheen. “I just wish I could see you.”

He frowned. “You mean—”

“I mean before this.” She indicated the length of his body with a nod of her head, her sigh spiced with regret. It smelled like her, him, and his child.

“It’s not much different. Just bigger.” He reached over to squeeze her hand. “Besides, you did. Once.”

“As a child,” she said dismissively, before squeezing back. “But who did that child become? What would you have looked like if you’d been allowed to remain entirely you?”

“It’s still me, Sola. I’m in here. What does it matter what’s on the outside?”

“Because I want to make love to you. I want
you
buried inside of me. Not a facsimile, not a mask hiding you from me as if I’m just another person in this world. I’m your wife now, and our child will have your features. I’d like to be able to recognize them in her, that’s all.”

Her sentiment touched him, and he bent to place his forehead to hers. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to do that.”

She bit her lip, fought back her tears, and nodded. Glancing at her plate, she pushed at her food with her fork, before stilling. Then she looked up again, tilted her head, and narrowed her eyes. Her tears fell, squeezed out by the considering look.

“What?”

“Well, I might…there may actually be a way. But…no. Too risky.”

“What is it?”

“No. I can’t ask it of you. Not now, after you’ve done so much. Let’s just move forward, okay?”

“Please, Sola, just tell me. If I can’t be heroic for my own wife, who can I act for?”

It surprised a laugh from her, but it took a minute more of convincing. When she finally told him, he sat back in his chair, mind spinning. She was right; it was dangerous. It was also taboo.

Each side of the Zodiac possessed a human ally called a changeling, a child young enough to still believe in comic book heroes and epic causes. Their job was to protect an agent from his or her enemies when within a safe zone, and not just the agent, but the agent’s identity as well. When the changelings willed it, they could mold their aura around an agent’s form to hide the person’s current identity by revealing the original.

Despite this ability, the kids were truly mortal. As soon as they reached puberty, the willingness to believe in comics and superheroes waned. They lost their powers, practically overnight, and put the Zodiac world behind them as they would a toy train. Their posts and duties were then passed on to another.

Asking a changeling to perform this function outside a safe zone was taboo because it was also dangerous. An agent could survive injury by a mortal weapon, but if the agent was attacked while wearing a changeling’s aura, the child would still suffer mortal damage. There was also the issue of securing the changeling’s earthly body. When an agent was using the aura, the child’s was immobilized, as fragile as an egg until the aura was returned. That emptied mortal body couldn’t survive beyond twelve hours.

All these considerations raced through JJ’s mind as he studied Sola. What ultimately settled it was putting himself in her position. If she were clothed in a fleshly disguise, wouldn’t he want to see his true love beneath? The way her body moved below his, how her face looked when focused solely on him? Besides, despite the warnings, a changeling had never been harmed before. The warnings were just that: like notices on the back of poison. Only dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands.

“And only once, right?” he asked, though he wasn’t really talking to her.

“It would be enough,” she said simply, and that was it. She didn’t want to hurt anyone, she only wanted him. And this would be her sole opportunity to see whom she was giving up her entire world for.

“Well, as long as we’re living dangerously,” he said, and a small jolt at the illicit—the same dark desire Sola had known lived in him from the beginning—thrilled through him as they kissed, sealing the decision.

It was JJ’s responsibility to acquire the changeling, but Sola set the stage. She chose a penthouse downtown, one with an old-school feel but new-city glamour. In the bedroom, she’d created a cocoon of pillows to shelter the fragile shell the changeling would become once JJ borrowed his aura. Their room, he assumed, was up the winding staircase she descended when JJ and the boy arrived.

“I’m going to put on something a little more comfortable,” Sola whispered, her body twining with his, already smelling of wet heat. “I suggest you do the same.”

She ascended the staircase like a wisp of smoke, and JJ smiled after her, until the kid, Ricky, finally cleared his throat. He was watching Solange with narrowed eyes, but he trusted JJ enough to follow.

“Right. Come with me.”

Once inside the bedroom, they wasted little time. The kid reminded him that it was imperative to return his aura within twelve hours, then, making it look easy, shrugged off his aura as simply as he’d remove his clothes. His body elongated into a shimmering outline of JJ’s, thinning to a finger’s width to achieve the same height, the transformation reflected in the mirror across from them. The boy’s glimmering form deepened to opaqueness, so that his features disappeared. Now JJ’s could appear through him.

What are you doing?

JJ, watching all this as though from a distance, immediately dismissed the voice. He was being transparent, that’s what he was doing. Being truly seen, perhaps for the first time since Solange had looked at him across the distance of his parents’ broken bodies. How appropriate that it was she who would see him again now, not as an enemy or superhero, just him and her and the child they’d created between them.

He stepped forward, through the elongated form, and felt the aura mold to him like wet gauze, healing and cool. He avoided looking in the mirror as he made sure the boy’s now lifeless body was safely cradled on the bed before heading upstairs. He wanted his wife to be the first to see him. The first in years.

She killed in black silk. Though the staircase surprisingly led to a rooftop terrace that mirrored an outdoor bedroom with the sky spread above, and downtown Vegas winking below, he marveled only at her. It was a toss-up as to what possessed a deeper sheen, her hair or the chemise, or perhaps, JJ thought, it was her eyes, fixed on him as she handed him a glass of champagne, then clinked her glass to his.

“To quintessence,” she said softly.

“To relevance,” he added, which made her smile. She lifted to her toes, mouth open and inviting on his. JJ moved to deepen the kiss, but she pulled back and held him at arm’s length, studying the man who was really her husband.

JJ shifted under her stare. “Well?” he finally asked, sipping nervously at his glass as her eyes trailed him from head to toe. He felt vulnerable, small beneath the night sky they both loved. Though he knew the stars were there, they were unreadable from the city, and he had a sudden flash of being suspended amid all that dark matter, not knowing if he was on an upswing, or a down.

What are you doing?
His inner voice again, more ur-¥?gently, but his eyes had already slid to Sola’s smooth legs as she poured more champagne, the black silk rounding out her behind, cutting low on her back to reveal the ridges and muscles and strength he so loved. He caught his reflection in the oval floor mirror and startled at the sight. But he was only sizing himself up in relation to her, and in his eyes—scotch-colored, the same as always—they were a perfect fit. And that’s what she commented on.

“She’ll have your eyes.”

He lifted her, kissing her neck as he dropped her to the center of the bed, also draped in black, so only her limbs shone in the ambient light. Her lips and eyes were dewy, and so was her body as his mouth trailed downward. She was his drug, he decided, as he grew dizzier with her taste and scent and sight. Her moans echoed like a shifting wind as he lingered at her thighs, her desire driving his need. Champagne poured over her torso, and he licked it clean on the way back up to her mouth, where he entered her, dividing her twice. She spread her limbs like a five-tipped star, encouraging him to mirror her with her hands and hips. He did, and she sucked and sucked at him, like she was trying to pull his soul loose and bury it inside her. Already dizzy, he actually became breathless, but her need was relentless. She wouldn’t stop.

And he couldn’t stop it.

His eyes winged wide—sent another wave of dizziness through his head—and found she was already watching him. He tried to pull away. The strong arms he loved tightened, and her heels hooked around his. She sucked harder.

The wine.

More dizziness as the realization coursed through his body, and into his loins. Too late now, he couldn’t help it. He came. She took—his seed, his breath and, he realized as he finally passed out, the changeling’s aura from his body—all in a small, inaudible pop.

His last thought before all faded to black?
The small things mattered the most.

He searched. God, did he search. And as he did—stumbling across the highway, racing down stinking alleyways, and canvassing all the places he knew Solange had once been—the scales fell from his eyes.

Solange had convinced him to gain the changeling’s aura, knowing full well the boy, as one who championed the Light, would never trust her. It made sense that she hadn’t tried the same with the Shadow changeling. That would compromise
their
side, angering her leader, and it was obvious now—as it should have been all along—that she was still very much a Shadow.

What JJ couldn’t understand was what she needed with the aura anyway. By the time the twelve-hour window was almost up, and he still hadn’t found Solange and the aura she was hiding beneath, he knew he’d never know the answer to that question. He returned to the penthouse, determined that the boy who’d trusted him so completely wouldn’t die alone.

Yet he did die.

JJ entered the bedroom where Ricky lay, instantly shocked at how tiny he looked. Curled into the fetal position, hands tucked prayerfully beneath his chin, his head was bent low as if braced for a blow. He was so small…

Every person has a right to the small things.

His father’s words burst through his mind like the monsoon that had raged on the night all this had begun. Surely it was only his own guilt rearing, but it seemed the completion of the thought coincided exactly with the boy’s final mortal moment. The slight quiver that overtook the small body was as unnatural as if it were made of rousing snakes, and JJ shuddered, swearing he could hear a rattler’s shake.

The little happinesses.

The quiver strengthened into a quake, and the cells comprising Ricky’s skin began separating, looking pixilated at first, some sinking while others slipped and scattered across the ridges and angles of the young body before dropping to the cotton bedding. JJ’s gut twisted, and his hard exhalation scattered those loosened cells into a fine coating of dust.

Those are the ones that make life most worth living.

The boy settled more firmly, burrowing into his final resting place as his sandy insides softened, and he even looked peaceful before his small smile, and his lips, too, fell away. JJ refused to avert his eyes as the freckles dropped, the eyelashes fell. He saw the spiky hair flatten, dissolve, and leave behind a powdery skull. JJ’s unblinking stare was obscured only when he began to cry, and he eventually realized between convulsing, open-eyed sobs that his wet sorrow was melding with the boy-shaped dune. He could literally build a castle with his tears. It made him cry harder.

It’s what we’re fighting for,
came his father’s last, late reminder.

When, and how, had JJ forgotten to fight?

The shell of Ricky’s body was now totally depleted, drained as if dehydrated, lacking life force instead of water. From somewhere in the suite a clock chimed off the last of the twelve-hour mark, and JJ reached out to touch a small hand, to say good-bye. In one moment there was a child. In the next, dust mounded the bedding, a handful finely ground as beach sand in JJ’s fist.

An innocent. A child. Dead because of him.

And JJ did bow his head now, unable to form thought or words, but sending up a prayer of emotion into the Universe, hoping someone, something, somewhere understood the regret squeezing his chest, the sorrow burning in his gut, and the hopelessness that made him want to lie down, too, and embrace a dusty death.

Weeping openly, not even trying to hide the scent of his shame and sorrow and misery, JJ didn’t turn at the soft sound behind him. Unguarded emotions were easy for his kind to pick up. Kneeling bedside, he bowed his head and welcomed blessed death. But the enemy he’d drawn back to him had something else in mind.

JJ turned his tear-streaked face, and found Warren’s unsurprised gaze locked hard on his. Tonya Dane’s prediction—the one Warren hadn’t wanted to believe and had been trying to prevent—had finally come true. His troop leader put it together quickly, eyes slipping mournfully to the mound of dust on the bed, as he inhaled to take in both the boy and Solange on JJ’s skin.

“You should kill me,” JJ said flatly, still kneeling.

“Yes.” Warren’s reply was, if possible, even flatter. “At the very least, exile.”

“No.” JJ’s mind stumbled over the unacceptable thought. “I don’t want to live. I don’t want—”

“I don’t care what
you
want.” Warren remained still, so enraged he was all but quivering. “From now on, you want what I want.”

“And that is?” JJ said it casually, but inside he was braced against the idea of living. He glanced at the plate-glass window, but a dive from the penthouse balcony wouldn’t be enough to kill him. Warren, clearly intuiting his thoughts, moved between him and the window.

“I take responsibility for this,” he surprised JJ by saying. “I made a mistake. I allowed you too much autonomy and granted you a position with too much power. I favored you because of your childhood, your parents, their deaths. When you wanted the position of weapons master I allowed that—”

Now something did spark inside JJ. “Because I’m the best.”

Warren nearly snapped back, but closed his eyes instead, his head and shoulders drooping. “But I should have had someone apprenticing with you. I just never thought you would…I should have thought.”

JJ didn’t bother saying he was sorry. An apology meant nothing in the wake of an innocent’s death. Besides, Warren was admitting he would exile or kill JJ if the troop didn’t need him so badly, and one thing that could be counted on by Warren, he always acted in the best interest of the troop.

When Warren lifted his head again, the fatigue was gone and that hard truth was branded in his gaze. “You will give yourself over entirely to me,” he said, voice harder than JJ had ever heard it.

Because living with the knowledge of what he’d done would be harder than dying over it.

“You’ll tell no one about your
wife
”—he spit the word—“or the changeling. You’ll do what I say, no questions asked, no argument, no explanation.”

“Okay,” JJ finally agreed, head bowed, fingers dusty.

“That wasn’t a request.” Warren’s voice regained its strength and rhythm as he strode forward.

JJ nodded, staring at the floor. “And then I’ll find her. I’ll make this right…”

“You’ll do no such thing.” Warren said, jerking JJ to his feet. Their faces were so close their noses nearly touched. “She’s poison to you, boy. Besides, do you think you deserve
any
sort of happy ending after what you’ve done?”

No. He didn’t. No happily-ever-after…including revenge.

“She won’t find you, either. We’ll change your identity in full this time. Micah will make you over into something new, something better, someone who won’t make this kind of mistake again.”

JJ recalled the fiery pain following his last surgery, and the ghost of his old bulk trying to squeeze from beneath his current flesh, but he only stared at Warren mutely before nodding again.

“You’re no longer your mother’s son. Not JJ, or Jay…or Jaden Jacks.” Not his mother’s son, not his father’s, either. Warren was stripping him of that connection and past, but in a way it was a relief. He had failed them, too.

“Solange won’t ever find you. We’ll make it so that even your own troop members won’t remember you. It’ll be as if you never existed.”

JJ did step back now, unable to keep his mouth from falling open. Would Warren really do that? He knew Micah could erase the memories of mortals, rewire their minds so that new pasts defined their futures. It was especially useful if one had happened upon an event or object derived from their hidden world. But could Warren really convince Micah to alter the troop’s collective memory? It’d be a huge undertaking…not just rewiring the minds of the twelve senior star signs, but the ward mothers who’d helped raise JJ in their underground sanctuary, and the flexible minds of the initiates, too—the children of the next generation who so looked up to him now. Would Warren do that?

He looked at his troop leader’s gaze—level again, and cool. Yes, he would. None of them would have a choice in the matter, and most wouldn’t even question it. If they ever read about JJ in the back issues of the manual of Light, it would be like reading about someone else entirely. And it made JJ wonder: had Warren ever done this before?

But he’d be alone in his wonder, JJ realized. That would be his punishment. To remember what he’d done, to know the failure forever, and to live among his peers as a fraud. So it was almost as harsh as a death sentence.

JJ nodded yet again.

“You will take the appearance and job I determine for you, you will return to the sanctuary every night without fail, and you will log your activities for me down to the last detail.”

“Yes,” he replied woodenly. He no longer cared where his needs and desires ranked in his own life. In fact, it would be a relief to follow orders and let someone else do the thinking for a while. He would give his life over in service to mortals, and he’d do it wholeheartedly…or at least with what was left of it after Solange’s betrayal.