The Touch of Twilight

by Vicki Pettersson

  “Star signs, draw the line of defense.”

  Every fist, save Warren’s and mine, suddenly held a weapon; a whip, military fork, mace, clawed hand fan, surgeon’s steel, palm-sized grapnel, edged boomerang, and a shiny new dental saw. Warren hadn’t used a weapon beyond his own body and mind for years, ever since he’d had to draw down on his own father. But I slipped my hand beneath my robe…and pulled out the animist’s mask instead.

  Jewell, opposite me, was the first to notice. “Olivia, what are you doing?”

  One by one the other star signs turned my way. I glanced up as the roof of the sky suddenly lowered, cirrus clouds clamoring for prime spots over the little canyon. “Putting on the only weapon I’m going to need.”

  Though I was expecting the kick of power this time, the mask still knocked me back a few steps as it bound itself to my skull. Pure power pooled through my temples, divining my purpose, my expectations, my future actions…starting with those I’d take in the next second. I relaxed, calming the breath as it ran through my body, and waited for the chaos to settle. Finally the inner world fell silent and the slate blank. Power rumbled through the canyon, but that was only the thunder gathering overhead, sending ozone to slip through the mouth hole and lick at my lips.

  As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t tell the troop what I was seeing. The future assailing me behind the mask was too near, and it’d be too easy for them to lose perspective. The same sort of revelation was what made amateur fortune-tellers and going to psychics so dangerous. It wasn’t that their advice was evil or wrong, but even the right information doled out in the wrong moment led to poor decision making, or in some cases, no decision at all. The agents of Light needed to act, and do so in unyielding agreement according to the knowledge they currently possessed, and no more. If the vision in the mask was to come true, I had to be careful about exactly how much I revealed.

  Yet my pulse jumped once my vision cleared and I caught the stares of disdain and surprise—coupled with a skein of burgeoning fear—all of which made me itchy with the need for action. But it wasn’t time; it wasn’t the kairotic moment. Not yet.

  Kimber’s somber piety fled her and her head snapped up over the golden cowl of her robe, hood slipping back so her hair looked star white in the deepening night. “Goddammit, she’s trying to make this about her!”

  “I’ve already metamorphosed once and it was enough, thank you.” They couldn’t view my scowl behind the mask, but it couldn’t stifle the sarcasm.

  “Then what are you doing, Olivia?” Tekla said sharply. “Metamorphosis is a sacred ceremony requiring the troop to act as one. You’re to do what you’re told, remain in formation, and never, ever act or speak out of turn!”

  “Uh-huh,” I said absently, as color flared behind my eyelids. The mask was agitated, fate momentarily unwritten—destiny up in the air—but then it settled and I breathed a sigh of relief. As the blinders of the future lifted, I swiveled to regard Tekla. “Do you happen to have the time?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” I glanced up at the sky to find a perfectly formed hole in the clouds, a funnel revealing a ringed moon on the high side. The air was thicker than it’d been even a minute ago, and farther off, a giant nexus of thunder began rolling our way. Time, and other fluid, manipulative elements, were drawing nearer. Deciding to err on the side of caution, I put my fingers to my lips and sent a piercing whistle knifing through the canyon.

  “Are you nuts?” Felix asked, from my other side. “Do you want the world to know we’re out here?”

  “Which world?” I muttered darkly, as I lifted my head to the two figures stepping onto the lip of the ridge above us. Feeling the air current, sensing the motion, the rest of the troop whirled as well.

  “Chandra?” said Micah, because she wasn’t supposed to be here.

  “Archer?” Warren growled, demanding an explanation through the question. Again, as one, the troop whirled my way.

  “You told us to partner up.” I shrugged. “So we have.”

  Chandra managed a nervous smile as she held tight to the bound Shadow agent, but I could see she was already faltering. I’d only told her enough to convince her to help me, but even that would doom us if she revealed it too soon. Zell groaned, eyes edging my way before rolling to white. His shirt was a mess, ripped and bloodied from his earlier struggle against us, and his labored breathing infused the air with the acrid scent of his pain in sharp, floating puffs.

  “This is a metamorphosis,” Tekla said lowly, and her outrage seeped like oil into the briny air. “It’s not meant as a kill spot.”

  “No, but as you know they’re sometimes one and the same,” I answered just as coldly.

  There were a handful of gasps, and Tekla blanched at the untimely reminder of her son’s death. Despite her shocked wobble, I kept my eye on her. She had more usable power in her pinky finger than I did in my entire body.

  “You’re grandstanding,” she managed in a ragged whisper.

  “I’m not.” Without taking my gaze from Tekla’s, I said, “Tell them, Zell.”

  Zell swallowed hard, like his throat was working against the rest of his body, and blood bubbled from the side of his mouth as his eyes rolled again. “They’re coming,” he croaked.

  “Who…?”

  But the chaos I’d been privy to in the confines of the mask suddenly made itself known in a resounding crack, and the thick sky still gathering to welcome Kimber into the Zodiac was rent apart by a new splintering power. And when every single glyph in the circle flared to life, they all knew who.

  Kimber whimpered in the center of our circle, her face turned toward the unnatural roil of smoke as it filled in the gaps between the battered clouds. The furious expression that’d met my appearance was gone, and in its place was stark, palpable fear. “Oh God.”

  “Stay centered.” Warren put a hand on her shoulder as she started to move, but removed it immediately. Ozone was gathering around her, and enough elemental power would soon assault her body that it could kill even him. There was nothing she could do, and nowhere to run or escape. At her moment of metamorphosis she’d be frozen where she stood, easy pickings for the swarm headed our way. And it was too late anyway. The clouds pinpointed her location, revealing her existence to the heavens…and anyone else who might be watching. “And stay low. It’ll be better that way.”

  “But the Shadows…”

  The Shadows appeared over the ridge of the bright little canyon, glyphs smoking on their chests as they circled us in a living ring. We turned outward as one, backs toward Kimber, moving in as tightly as we could. There were a number of Shadows I’d never seen in person before, ones who’d gradually taken the place of the four I’d sent to an early grave. Ronan was the new Aries who, for some reason, had an affection for dressing as a modern-day pirate. Too much Jack Sparrow in his cinematic diet, I gathered. Harrison was the Shadow Virgo, and like Ajax before him, he had a build to match his slim, sharp weapon, a fencing sword. En garde. Little was known about the Aquarian, Tariq, who, as the Shadows’ newest member, had replaced my former mortal enemy. On the other hand, I knew everything I needed to about the Piscean Shadow. I’d encountered Adele spiking the drink of a sorority sister weeks earlier, then setting the poor girl loose in a notorious “gentlemen’s club.” She’d obviously escaped me then, but not unscathed. The new limp would’ve gone better with Ronan’s disguise.

  Regan had taken up the five o’clock position, and though her stance widened, her arms were crossed as if the outcome of this contest had already been decided. Yet, as alert as I was to her presence, nothing about her called to me, and I knew she hadn’t brought my conduit. She wouldn’t risk losing it to me or her ally agents, who wouldn’t hesitate to seize the opportunity to steal it from her. The chance to erase the Kairos’s existence from the earth was too great to resist. Yet, in the next pulse-pounding moment, even that concern, along with Regan, was forgotten.

  He appeared directly opposite
Chandra, positioning himself above the statue of the Christian savior…and well above all of us. This time he wore the flesh suit of an absentminded college professor, his day-old stubble and haphazard hair accented by loafers, a vest, and the expression of someone who’d just looked up from a particularly engrossing text. It was all at once thoughtful, faraway…and calculating.

  If he were mortal, I thought, he would’ve been called slight and almost considered handsome. But with liquid power causing his hair to stand on end and kindling his eyes into fiery silver and onyx globes, what he looked was invincible.

  “Well, what have we here?” His voice was almost gentle. “A familiar scenario, it seems. An agent of Light, about to kneel before me.”

  Lightning drilled into the dry ground next to Kimber, searching for her, and she yelped while the rest of us drew closer, the bolt jumping like an electrical current to run through the tight circle, tying us together in purpose. In duty.

  In the kairotic moment.

  The Tulpa laughed…and I inhaled deeply, swallowed hard, and stepped forward, breaking the circle.

  “Joanna, no!” Though he barked out the order, Warren was careful to use my real name in front of the Shadows, but the air around me still shook with the shock of my ally agents. My identity beneath Olivia’s soft shell had been a mystery among our agents from the first, so they couldn’t help themselves. The air was so heavy with storm clouds and humidity you could almost take a bite out of the emotion, and I knew the Tulpa felt their surprise because of it…and because he laughed again.

  “Another secret revealed among the troop.” He lifted his leg as if to take a step from the gorge’s rim…and gently floated to the canyon floor instead. His flesh looked like a lustrous silver parachute, unlined and glowing, as midnight air rustled his clothes. Once his feet touched ground, he asked, “How long before the new mole inside your sanctuary shares it with us?”

  “There’s no one else,” Micah said, calling his bluff.

  “So confident,” said the Tulpa, tilting his head, electric eyes firing. “So sure. I guess that makes you suspect number one.”

  “There’s no one else,” Warren said, backing Micah up, and I wondered if he was even aware of how the circle tightened around Kimber at his words, with me on the outside. No one seemed to note it, though. No one but the Tulpa.

  “Ah, except for the sole agent who remains now, as always, divided between us.”

  “I’m not divided anymore.”

  “Step back, Joanna,” Tekla commanded, deliberately making room for me next to her. It temporarily loosened the ring, creating an obvious breach among them, though the Piscean gap between Riddick and Hunter still stood out more. Even linked, there was nothing they could do about that, and I knew the Shadows, whispering and shifting up on the canyon’s rim, saw it too. Adele, as the opposing Pisces, would be particularly drawn to it.

  A second bolt of lightning suddenly speared at Kimber’s feet, sizzling as it lifted the hairs on our bodies, showing off the depths of its immense power, though it was just the warm-up act. I closed my eyes, steadied myself on a breath, then looked straight at the Tulpa.

  “No.” The dense air thickened even more. I licked my lips and tasted sky. “As you said, Tekla, this is not a time for grandstanding. But it isn’t just a metamorphosis either. This is the third sign of the Zodiac come to pass. Tonight marks the rise of my dormant side.”

  The ring instantly tightened around Kimber, my spot again swallowed by their bodies.

  “I know what fate awaits me at the end of this night, and where my future lies.” I chose my words carefully, raising my voice so it could be heard over the storm already railing above us. By the time those swollen clouds broke it’d be too late. “While my fellow troop members have seen only success through the eyes of this mask, I see the truth.”

  The Tulpa smiled wryly. “You figured it out.”

  I waited until the sky had finished crackling. “What? That you’ve planted masks all over the city to draw on the power of the public?” Shrugging, I lied. “It was easy.”

  “Tell that to Warren.”

  I did. “It’s how he’s been getting energy,” I said, though it looked like Warren had figured that one out for himself. “At one time he would’ve forced people to don the masks, stealing their soul essence to yield energy for his animation, but he knew you’d be looking for that. What you wouldn’t be looking for was a souvenir sold in the Valhalla gift shop, one worn to every Las Vegas event imaginable.”

  One quick phone call to Janet had confirmed all the masks worn at last month’s Swingers’ Ball had been generously donated by the Valhalla gift shop. And all the power in the wearer’s thoughts and emotions and soul had been ferried right back to the Tulpa.

  “All this time…” Warren began.

  But time was short. I looked up as the sky fell unnaturally still, and even though the clouds could be seen spinning and roiling via the bolts firing within, the silence was the same that waylaid the land before a tsunami. So I kept my eyes on the sky, and finished for him.

  “All this time mortals have been wearing these masks willingly, their vitality leached from their body in bundled packages of soul power. They’d stumble home in a fog, wondering why they had a headache at the end of the night—if they’d drunk too much, if it was just jet lag, or if it was Vegas working its late night magic.” Still others, like Xavier, put on the masks in worship, and who knew how many of those willing victims were out there, giving up bits of their soul they could ill afford to miss? “But an animist’s mask, like this one, is even more powerful. This is a weapon that was designed with superheroes in mind, right?”

  The Tulpa inclined his head, and in that same unnervingly gentle voice, took up the telling. The absentminded professor schooling us all. “It shows an agent of Light exactly what they hope to see of the future. It gets them to let down their guard, then it feeds their thoughts directly to me.”

  Now Chandra, who’d stolen the mask, looked guilty, and Warren looked positively ill. He’d willingly donned the mask, and from the way he began to sway, I had a feeling it was more than once. He’d certainly done so after choosing Cathedral Canyon as the site for Kimber’s metamorphosis, thus the Tulpa’s appearance here. The only thing to be thankful for was that the mask only revealed the future, not the past. Otherwise the Tulpa would already know of my transformation into Olivia, and I wouldn’t be standing here now, alive, the only one still able to spin lies and hide thoughts.

  Hunter was the first to find his voice after I’d explained all this to them. “Why did the mask adhere to your face? Why’d it choose you to reveal the future to?”

  “Because you’re the Kairos?” Micah guessed.

  “Because you’re part Shadow?” said Regan from the ridge.

  “No.” Though those things were undoubtedly a part of it. “Because I’m the only one in a position to do something about it.”

  The Tulpa began to laugh, his voice no longer gentle as it boomed over the canyon to equal the power of the thunder roiling above. “Your position, darling, is at the bottom of a canyon, surrounded by enemies, with no conduit, and a troop of agents facing imminent death. Or so I saw from this end.”

  “And when’s the last time you checked?” I snapped, unable to help myself. “Fates can change quickly…and I’m the only one wearing a mask now.”

  “And what, pray tell, do you see?”

  “I see, I see,” I sang in a childhood rhyme, before my voice fell to a growling scratch. “…something bloody.”

  The energy in the mask wobbled, the Tulpa’s spike of concern a sudden factor. It was too early yet for either of us to act, so I whirled to face Warren, again playing the traitor’s card. “I’m sorry, but our fate is already written. I told you the first time I put this thing on that destruction awaits the agents of Light.”

  Micah whirled toward the top ridge, and the woman he’d counted as his closest friend. “And Chandra? You’re helping her?”
<
br />   Chandra couldn’t look at him. “Trust me…it’s for the best.”

  “Chandra’s the one who told me I had to respect that biology has made me different,” I said, because we could all sense her wavering. “She’s the one who made me face the consequences of my Shadow side.”

  “So it seems you do have some betrayers in your troop after all.” The Tulpa’s grin widened so far it was beyond normal, and no longer handsome. “My daughter and the girl you betrayed for her. Too bad your Kairos is really my Kairos.”

  I shook my finger in his direction like I was chiding one preschooler for swatting at another. “Not so fast. Shadows never do anything unless there’s a trade involved. If I’m to come stand at your side, I want something in return.”

  “Name it.”

  “I will,” I said, smiling at his word choice. “So…anything?”

  His inclining head fell well short of a nod, the only outward sign of his hesitancy. “You’re my daughter. I want you on my side.”

  “Yet there’s something else you want more, isn’t there?” I said, and he suddenly looked less comfortable, though he hadn’t moved at all. I had to risk it, though. A mean game of push-and-shove would be more believable than a total and abrupt turnaround. Changing the subject before he could answer, I feigned ease. “Well, this mask has shown me that if things go your way, five minutes from now the entire troop of Light will be nothing more than a memory, but at least one of your agents will die with them. It’ll either be Zell…”

  And here Chandra pulled out Zell’s ax and pointed the weapon at his back.

  “Or Regan.”

  I saw her jolt on the shelf above us, her mouth falling open before she knew what she wanted to say. Her attempt to catch the Tulpa’s eye failed because his were glittering excitedly, pinned on me.