“I think that’s everything,” Olivia was saying. Her back to us both, she was bent over a mound of stilettos and boots emptied from her shoe closet. She continued talking, her voice a breathy staccato thrumming in the air, but I don’t think either Butch or I heard a word. There was something else going on, like the dark undercurrent stirring beneath a placid lake just before the monster struck. I inched toward Olivia, my back to the wall. Butch, strangely enough, kept his gaze on the bedside clock. It was one minute to midnight.
“Olivia,” I said in my quietest, deadliest voice. “Get behind me.”
Two pairs of eyes looked at me, but only one seemed surprised. Butch merely looked amused. I moved to my sister’s side.
“How about that. Ajax was right.” He shook his head wonderingly. “It was you all along. Hidden in plain sight. Xavier’s daughter, no less.”
Whatever the hell that meant. “I’m not Xavier’s daughter.”
He laughed. “Then whoever hid you knew what they were doing.”
“Excuse me? What’s going on here? Am I missing something?”
“I thought it was her,” Butch said, jerking his head at Olivia. “It was the closest I could come to scenting you, but once I was in her…” He shook his head in a sorrowful gesture. “I thought I was going anosmic.”
Then he slid a smoothly curving scimitar from behind the nape of his neck. I had to give it to these guys—whoever they were, they had unique weapons.
“Whoa!” Olivia’s breath escaped her in a whoosh. I don’t think I was breathing at all. “I’ve heard of unsafe sex, but this is ridiculous!”
“It was you we were after,” he said, ignoring her. “You I detected on your sister’s skin, your signature scent all along. But what I can’t understand,” he continued, looking at the bedside clock, tapping the flat edge of the blade against his palm like he was waiting, “is how you recognized me. You don’t fully come into your sixth sense for another…thirty seconds.”
Midnight. Like that homeless freak had said. Make sure you survive.
“Signature scent?” I mimicked, my eyes also on the clock. “Kinda girly, don’t you think?”
“Well, I’m a right softie at heart.” He flashed those dagger teeth. “Tell me, Joanna, been smelling things lately? Interesting things? Foul things on the wind?”
I swallowed hard. “What, Ajax tell you that too?”
“Common knowledge. You’re turning twenty-five, right? That’s when the metamorphosis begins.”
“Excuse me,” Olivia said, “but do you two know each other?”
Butch smiled and took a step forward. “Not as well as we’re about to.”
“That’s enough, Butch. One more step and this stiletto’s going up your ass.” We all looked down at Olivia’s hand. I frowned, recognizing the ebony pump as one of her favorites. The same thought must have occurred to her. She dropped the shoe and picked up another. “This stiletto’s going up your ass.”
I sighed. Bless her for trying.
Butch returned his eyes to me. “Get ready, innocent. Your first real breath will also be your last.”
I only had a vague notion of what he was talking about, based on snippets from a very unreal last twenty-four hours, but I knew a real threat when I heard one.
Ten, nine, eight…the seconds inched by, midnight looming. Outside, thunder cracked like a whip overhead, and the sheet of pattering rain deteriorated into a full-force onslaught of sleet and hail. Wind whistled, rattling at the walls, and the building began to shake in palsied tremors. Some of Olivia’s knickknacks tinkled, others shattered, and then the core of the building began to rock on its braces. An explosion sounded as we crossed into midnight.
“Olivia, get back!” I had to yell as the tempest blew through the bedroom. It was like being at the top of a tornado’s funnel, poised to be sucked inside. Then the glass wall began to splinter, a sound like fingernails raking a chalkboard, sending spasms up my spine. I resisted the impulse to cover my ears, and went for the blade at my back instead. Butch tensed and raised his scimitar. A bolt of lightning arrowed the sky as Olivia screamed behind me, and there was a flicker of movement from the corner of my eye.
And then I saw nothing.
Molten licorice, smoking iron, and bright flames filled my mouth. I was singed, burning from the inside out, and my teeth felt like they were being collectively yanked from my jaw. I knew somewhere in my mind I’d been hit, and my fallen knife now lay uselessly on the floor, but that knowledge was the only lingering connection between brain and body. The synapses controlling movement had been severed by the bolt, much like how the muscles continue to twitch in a decapitated chicken’s body. I couldn’t tell if I was still standing or had fallen. In the whiplash of that storm, I totally lost myself.
Once, in my early teens, I’d ventured into the high desert during a flash flood, driven by a youthful sense of adventure and an even greater sense of invulnerability. A stray dog had been my unlikely companion that night, and as it galloped unevenly across the rocky terrain, I saw it struck by lightning. Its golden fur disintegrated instantly into ash, and smoke streamed from its body like a signal for help. When I reached the fallen animal’s side, its eyes were wide saucers, unblinking, and the heat emanating from that blistering body warded me off. This was how I felt now; sightless, terrified, and smoldering. And just before all my senses were lost, I felt an acute pain sear through my left shoulder.
Then there was nothing. No pain, no light, not even darkness. I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or closed, and my body felt like I was suspended in water; numb, floating, and impervious from all sides. I knew I was in trouble, if not already dead, but I was unable to react, and had no idea how long I remained in this state.
It felt like forever.
It felt like a nanosecond.
Then the lingering tendrils of Olivia’s scream were back in my head, and a smell so putrid it clogged every cell of my body had me lifting my hand to my mouth to keep from vomiting. Realizing what I was doing, amazed that I could move, I lowered my hand again and, still sightless, located the edge of my boot. I flipped open the folded blade and threw it into the heart of that rotting stench.
The air exploded, and crashed over me in waves, like maggot-ridden garbage spilling from a bag, and the scream that accompanied it was inhuman. I fell to my knees, indescribably weak, and allowed my head to fall into my hands.
When I lifted it again, the world had miraculously righted itself and the bedroom was eerily silent. The strange indoor storm had abated. The glass wall was whole and unmarked.
And there was a dead man on the floor in front of me.
7
“Jo? Are you okay?”
I lifted my head. Olivia was huddled in a corner, cradling Luna, the cat’s head tucked protectively beneath her arm. I nodded, and turned back to where Butch lay sprawled at my feet like a giant toad.
“What happened?” My voice rasped like it’d been cut to ribbons by a tiny razor.
“Y-You did what you had to do, Jo,” Olivia said, misinterpreting my question. “He came at you with that big knife and I thought for sure he’d kill you. But you didn’t back up. You didn’t run. You didn’t even waver. I couldn’t believe it.”
I glanced at the clock next to her and did a double take. It was 12:01. I couldn’t believe it either. Only a minute had passed since the onset of that tempest? “What about the storm?”
Olivia looked momentarily confused, and glanced uncertainly from me to the window, where a patter of raindrops stroked the glass. “It stopped, I guess. I hadn’t noticed.”
Hadn’t noticed? Hadn’t noticed an electrical bolt had damn near sliced her sister in two? Hadn’t smelled my flesh burning?
“Help me up.” I held up my hand and she reached for it, but Luna whirled in her arms, hissed, and swiped at me.
“Fuck you,” I said to the feline, and pushed myself to my feet. I was a bit wobbly, but alive.
“That’s no way to talk to
someone who just helped save your life!” Olivia scolded before burying her face in Luna’s furry nape. “Is it, my precious pookie?” Her voice came out muffled. “My pookster? You love Auntie Jo so much you risked one of your nine lives to save her.”
“What do you mean?”
Olivia didn’t answer at first. Then she turned her face toward mine, cradling the cat to her cheek. “Look at his eyes.”
My legs were shaky, but they held as I crossed to Butch’s body. I nudged him with the toe of my boot, and he rolled like a sausage to his back. He would have been staring sightlessly at the ceiling…if there hadn’t been four long scores across each eye. The lids had been shredded with scalpel-like accuracy, slim incisions but deep, lacerating each eyeball.
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
Olivia joined me next to the body. “You’d be dead if Luna hadn’t leapt when she did.”
But why would a cat attack a human? A man, no less, whom it was obviously afraid of? I turned to ask Olivia this just in time to see her eyes go wide with shock. The heroic feline was unceremoniously dumped on the bed. “Jo! You’re injured!”
I looked down and saw the blood seeping through the left shoulder of my blouse. Part of me was surprised I hadn’t felt the injury before. Another part knew it was a bad sign I hadn’t. “It’s okay,” I told her, knowing it wasn’t. “It doesn’t hurt.”
“Lie down. Let me get something to staunch the wound, and we’ll call an ambulance.”
I was in no shape to argue. Perhaps it was only psychosomatic, but I was feeling a bit dizzy all of a sudden. Luna hissed as I plopped down among the pillows, then leapt from the bed, over the corpse, and streaked away. I closed my eyes.
I must have drifted off because when I came to again Olivia was seated next to me, pressing a clean towel to my wound. I winced as fresh pain coursed through me, and was about to tell her she shouldn’t have used the good towels when the first tear fell.
“Hey,” I said, reaching up to wipe it away. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m going to be fine.”
“I know,” she said. Her face crumpled anyway. “I just keep seeing that monster—he really looked like a monster!—and he wouldn’t stop staring at you.” She shook her head side to side, as if to dislodge the memory. “I thought for sure I was going to lose you. Again.”
I tried to make my smile reassuring. “Well, you didn’t lose me, and you won’t ever lose me. It’s just a little scratch. See? The bleeding has already stopped.”
She sniffled. “I guess.”
We sat in silence, Olivia’s cell phone clasped on her lap, though she made no move to open it. Chaos would resume as soon as that call was made, and even though it was a false sense of normalcy surrounding us now—there was a dead man on the bedroom floor—I think we both felt once we made that call, our lives would never be the same.
“Gawd,” Olivia sniffled, and lifted the edge of the towel to see if the bleeding had stopped. “I just have the worst luck with guys.”
We looked at each other and for a moment neither of us spoke. Then we began to laugh, that crazed, hysterical laughter you see in people who’ve drank too much, or who’ve forgotten their lines on their wedding day. The laughter tore at my shoulder, probably starting the bleeding again, but it felt so good, much more acute than the pain, and I didn’t want to stop. Our bodies shook with it and tears rolled unheeded down our faces.
We were both gasping, dizzy, and breathless, when I felt Olivia jerk and inhale sharply. Opening my teary eyes, I too froze. There was a beefy arm across her throat, and her fingers clawed at it, her eyes wide and instantly somber. Butch wasn’t exactly choking her, but he wasn’t being gentle either. Hauling her to her feet, he squared himself behind her body in a position that made it impossible for Olivia to defend or escape the hold, even if she knew how.
“You’re dead,” I said dumbly, though all evidence pointed to the contrary. I’d killed him. Yet there he stood, blood staining his clothing out of a wound that no longer existed. How could that be? In fact, the only ill effect he still showed was the scoring about his eyes and a blind and total reliance on his other senses. Especially, I noted, his sense of smell.
“Not quite,” he said. “Not yet.”
The words fast healer burst through my brain, images of a wrist popping back into place on a dusty desert road, a crumpled body coming back to life. I knew then it was possible. Blindly, Butch backed away from me, dragging Olivia with him, his nostrils flaring widely with every breath. He was moving closer and closer to the blade I’d dropped. I had to do something quickly before it was too late to do anything at all.
“Let her go,” I said, pitching my voice to the right of the bed before easing myself up and to the left. “Y-You want me, fine. But leave her out of this.” My arm throbbed and the bedroom wavered as I stood, but I forced myself steady. I didn’t know how long I could stand, but passing out wasn’t an option. I’d save Olivia or I’d die trying.
“How’d you do that?” Butch asked, head tilted into the middle of the room.
“Do what?”
“Kill me. You’re supposed to be immobile during metamorphosis. How’d you move?”
Like I knew? Instead of answering, I advanced.
“One more step and you’ll watch your sister die.” He’d stilled and was focused on me despite his blindness. For emphasis, he tightened his grip. Olivia’s eyes bulged. “Now step back.”
Death rode his brow. I stepped back. Think, Joanna. Think!
Okay, so Butch’s sight was gone, but his other senses were flawlessly acute. It made me wonder at this transformation he’d talked about. It obviously meant something to him. He’d waited until then to try and kill me, and in that time all my senses had been shut down. But now that they were back, what about that “sixth sense” he’d spoken of? Was that what he was using to track me now?
As much as I hated to take my eyes from Butch and Olivia, I had to close them in order to transfer focus to my other senses. I did, and the difference was immediately discernable. Colors flashed behind my eyelids, accompanying scent and sound. By simply casting my mind in the direction of the objects I last remembered seeing, I could smell them.
On myself I smelled blood, Ben, and the faint scent of the soap I showered with. I turned to the dresser beside me where a bevy of beauty products rested—mint, eucalyptus, wax, powder, and a perfume that reminded me unerringly of Olivia. Turning my attention to her, I inhaled deeply, and caught lingering tendrils of that scent, as well as something sharp, which I instinctively identified as fear.
As for Butch, I didn’t dare cast my mind in his direction. His scent was already overwhelming me, like being locked in a room with a pustulant corpse. I was already more sensitized to him than anything else in the room.
Except the blade on the floor between us.
My eyes flew open in time to see Butch’s head jerk, then jerk again when I inhaled sharply. We scented it at the same time, or scented each other scenting it. He was closer than I. I lunged, he snarled, and we reached it at the same time.
I came up with the tip burrowed beneath my chin, Butch’s laughter hot in my face. Olivia’s squeal was choked off in a warning tug. “Don’t fucking move. You don’t think I know what you’re doing? What you’re thinking?” He flicked the blade, a swift motion that made me wince in anticipation, but no pain came. Yet. My necklace, however, dropped soundlessly to the carpet. My jaw clenched reflexively, but otherwise I didn’t move. Butch laughed humorlessly. “I can detect your thoughts before you even form them. Remember, I’ve been at it longer, Archer, and I’ve never been an innocent.”
That I could believe.
“Just tell me what you want,” I said, fighting to keep my voice even. “Anything you want. Me for her? Give the word and I’ll do it.”
“Oh, now you’re making deals, are you? Isn’t that noble, sacrificing everything for your sister. But you’ve done that before, haven’t you, Jo?” He grinned that corrosive smile. “Tim
e to do it again.”
“No!” Olivia struggled against his iron grip. He just held on until she’d worn herself out. If it had been me, I could have bent forward until his weight was on my back, flipping him, or swept a leg, or scraped his shin on the way to breaking bones in his foot. But it wasn’t me. It was my sweet, harmless, innocent sister, and she could only stand there and weep. And choke.
“Take out the weapon in your left pocket, and throw it out the door.”
I didn’t wonder how he knew about the hidden kubotan. Even I could smell the cold, pressed aluminum. I did, tossing it through the doorway leading to the living room.
“Now step back…Step back,” he repeated, when I didn’t move. “I can smell the defiance on you, Joanna, don’t you know that? Do you really think you can do something to change what’s happening here? You think you can save Olivia now like you saved her before?”
I stepped back, but instead of relaxing Butch, this seemed to provoke him. Olivia struggled, her face going red, but his grip was a crowbar wrapped around a feather. If he’d shoved that knife through my jaw, I’d have felt less horror.
“No!” My fists balled impotently at my side and fear slicked my insides and rose like a tide of tar, oiling the air around me. I knew he could smell it on me. Desperation made my words earnest. “You said you’d trade me for her! Me for her!”
“Now why would I want to trade you for her?” he asked, loosening his grip. Olivia stilled. Butch raised the blade. “When I can have you both?”
With that he began to cut.
“Joanna?” Olivia’s voice was childlike, small. She looked at me as if seeing me for the first time, wide eyes filled with childlike confusion. I knew, though, that she was really viewing me through a veil of white-hot pain. I remembered how the world looked when buried beneath your own blood. Tears burned in my eyes for Olivia’s sake and a strangled cry escaped my throat.
Butch began to laugh. Laughing and cutting, precise despite his blindness. Beyond the brutality, there was just something horrifying about seeing that pure beauty marked. I’d never seen Olivia injured before and it was like seeing wings torn from a butterfly, like watching a temple being defiled. It broke something reverent in my heart, and her anguished cries filled my own mouth.
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