“Warren, what if I don’t gain any more power? I mean, what if I just tried to control my emotions and live a mortal’s life. Would they leave me alone?” These questions were more rhetorical than anything. We both knew I was beyond letting sleeping dogs lie. I’d seen too much. And there were too many deaths on my hands.
Warren shook his head. “They’d find you eventually. In the end you’d just have fewer ways of defending yourself. Crossing over into the Neon Boneyard via an alternate plane was the first step in gaining more power, a necessary one, because now you have the knowledge, even when you return to the mortal world. Entering the sanctuary was the second step because now you’ll be able to enter any portal closed to mere mortals.”
“Which means?”
“Which means,” he said, squaring on me, “you now have front row seats and an all-access pass to the supernatural realm.” I regarded him, unblinking. “What? Haven’t you ever had doors that won’t open when you twist the handle, though you could have sworn you saw someone else disappear inside only moments before? How about elevators that won’t come when you call them? Or the feeling that someone is watching you, only to turn and discover nobody’s there? Well, those doors and elevators—portals is what they really are—will now be open to you.”
He motioned to the wall in front of us. I looked closer, spotted a discreet seam running from ceiling to floor, and pushed. Nothing. I pushed harder with the same results, then looked at Warren. He ushered me back, then with another flourish of his hands the barrier separated and the walls folded back on themselves like a Japanese fan. Beyond lay a steel elevator, doors already open wide and inviting.
“Neat trick,” I muttered, getting in. “I thought you said they’d open to me?”
“You need a little practice. And patience.”
I scowled and looked away, ignoring the censure in his voice. The elevator panels were mirrored in a smoky gilt frame, and revealed the strangest couple staring back. A fashionista in a dashing pink warm-up, and an indigent dressed up in someone else’s hand-me-downs. Barbie goes slumming.
“So these…portals, they’re a part of an alternate reality?”
“Exactly,” he said, pushing a button marked down. The doors whisked shut behind us. “You’ll have to be extremely careful at first. You won’t know what’s waiting on the other side of any given entrance, but you’ll learn.”
Visions of monsters lunging from the closet and from under my bed had me sighing. Dammit. I’d only just gotten over that phobia.
The elevator slid open and we stepped into a stunted hallway leading to a set of double doors, again in smoked glass.
“Hold the elevator!” The glass swung open and a figure rushed past before halting and backpedaling. “Oh. Hello, Warren.”
“Vanessa.” Warren inclined his head. “This is Olivia, our new Archer.”
“A new Archer? I hadn’t heard.” She feigned shock, then held out a hand. Her grip was surprisingly firm, and I could feel her too-smooth fingertips pressing against my palms, but the rest of her was amazingly normal.
Bronzed skin of middling color, she was of middling height, also, and average weight. Her hair was dark with soft wisps of fringe escaping the bun she’d piled on her head, and revealed a natural curl. There was the taste of the exotic about her, some lineal bent that darkened and thickened the lashes around her honeyed eyes; a cast on her heritage that would allow her to tan easily in the faintest beam of sun, but it didn’t immediately step forward. She could have been anything from African to South American to Middle Eastern. Which meant, I realized, that she’d disappear easily in a crowd. “Vanessa Valen. I’m the Leonine force around here, your sister sign in the Zodiac.”
“Also a fire sign,” Warren offered.
I looked from one to the other, feeling stupid. “Which means?”
“It means you two should make quite a team.”
“It means we kick ass,” Vanessa corrected, smiling, and that’s when everything average about her disappeared. Her smile was wide, brilliant, and infectious…or would have been if it had blanketed her eyes. This smile merely lifted the corners, like light blazing through a drawn curtain before being shut out again. Warren didn’t seem to notice, but knowing about such things, I wondered what past sorrow was presently denying her the right to smile. She turned her half smile on Warren. “Speaking of fire, I heard about the one at the federal building on Friday. Two Shadows, five innocent hostages. What’d you do, smoke them out?”
He nodded. “And sang ‘This Little Light of Mine’ at the top of my lungs.”
“Then they fled willingly. I didn’t know you were religious.”
“Recovering Southern Baptist,” Warren said.
“My brother,” she said, and they high-fived. Vanessa smiled wryly at me. “A style all his own, our Warren.”
“Different drummer and all that,” I said. “Yeah, I noticed.”
“So, see you in the Orchard?”
Warren said, “We’ll be right there.”
“Nice meeting you, Olivia.”
“You too,” I said, and watched as the elevator doors shut behind her. “Seems nice.”
“Vanessa’s one of our most dangerous agents. Sure, she’s nice, but nice like a sleeping cobra. Nice like the calm before a storm. Nice like you.”
“I can be very nice when I want to,” I said, following him into what looked like a dim foyer, though larger, more like a theater-in-the-round.
“Let me know when the urge hits. I’ll log the date and time.”
“Har, har.”
“Now, every city needs all the star signs, a full Zodiac, to be in balance.” He turned in a circle, centered in the middle of the bowed room. It was actually more octagonal than round, a large star stamped into the pavement where Warren stood, motioning to the steel paneled walls. Some of the panels were marked with brightly lit emblems that even I, with my spotty astrological knowledge, knew represented different signs in the Zodiac. “I won’t lie. Our ranks have been blighted in the past year. Either the enemy is getting stronger or we’re getting weaker. In any case, we’re missing five signs, and that’s with you taking up the Archer.”
“And how many star signs does the Shadow side have?”
He bit his lip, and worry swirled in my gut. “All twelve.”
“But Butch is dead.”
He shook his head, eyes clouding over darkly. “They’ve replaced him by now. Whomever it is simply hasn’t revealed themselves yet, and while the new Shadow won’t be as strong, not at first, their initiates are fast learners too.” His voice echoed through the cavernous room as he turned and approached one of the panels. I glanced up at the domed ceiling, a single speck, like a star, binding the corners of the room at the apex. I was sensing a theme here.
“Here,” Warren said. “This one’s yours.”
I lowered my gaze, latching onto the symbol he pointed out, an etching of a centaur; the half-man part of the mythological beast looking suspiciously half woman.
“Go ahead,” Warren urged. “Touch it.”
I did, laying my hand flat on a palm plate, and the emblem flickered, blinked on, and remained glowing in a steadily pulsing heat. It made my eyes ache to look at it. Still, my stomach jumped, and unexpected pride swelled at seeing it, glowing there with the others. Then my eyes fell to a latch, waist height. I jiggled it, and felt an incredulous expression bloom on my face. “It’s a locker?”
“Well, Superman had a phone booth, didn’t he?” he asked, brows raised. “This is much more useful.”
A superhero locker? I drew back. I mean, what was in it? A cape? A mask? Not those gawdawful tights, I hoped. I turned back to Warren. “So, what’s the combination?”
He shrugged. “Only you know.”
I felt my brows climb my forehead. I did? “No, I don’t.”
“Sure you do. Push the button next to the middle slat and speak into it slowly. Think of a password, a phrase, something meaningful to you. Something symbol
ic.”
I looked back at the locker doubtfully, then grudgingly pressed the button. “Open up, motherfucker.”
“Colorful,” Warren commented.
“Open Sesame!” I tried again. “Abracadabra! Hocus-pocus! Shazam! Shalom! Anyone home?” Then I smacked the panel a few times with my palm.
I straightened and smiled innocently at Warren. “Still not opening.”
“I can’t imagine why,” he said dryly, before suddenly shooting me a smile of his own. Quickly, before I could react, he pulled the photo of Ben from his pocket and shoved it through one of the tilted openings in the locker. My cry of protest was met with a stone hard stare. “When you can open that locker, you’ll be ready to face, and mask, your emotions for Ben.”
Ruthless, Greta had called him…but this was just downright cruel. I clenched my jaw, preparing to argue, but in the middle of my first eye roll my vision snagged on something peculiar, on something that wasn’t there, actually. “That’s the sign of the Scorpio, right? Stryker’s sign?”
My question knocked him off balance. Warren swallowed hard, the cords working in his neck like the breath had caught there. “It was.”
I stared at the symbol; vacant, dark, dead. And though Greta had already explained it, I wanted to hear what Warren had to say. I needed to discover for myself just whom I could trust. “You said the lineage of the star signs was matriarchal. Didn’t this sign revert back to his mother when he was killed?”
“Stryker’s death…” He paused, searching for the right word. “…unhinged Tekla. She’s been in solitary confinement, recuperating in our sick ward for months.”
And he’d put her there. Left her there. I pursed my lips at that. “So the Scorpion sign remains empty? Even though she’s alive?”
“Half alive, and not especially happy to be so.”
This time I felt a sorrow that wasn’t mine coursing through my core. It felt like raw onions curdling in an empty stomach, and I touched a hand there, surprised. I didn’t know it worked both ways. I also didn’t think emotion that strong could be fabricated. “Well, maybe that’s because she’s alone, and has no one to talk to.”
“Maybe it’s because her son was torn apart in front of her eyes,” he said shortly.
I swallowed hard and thought of Olivia, limbs pinwheeling into the night. I nodded. “Can someone else take her place in the Zodiac even though she’s alive?”
“Only if she’s willing to relinquish it to them, but for reasons unknown to all but her, she’s not. We’ve asked her, begged her, even, but she just starts spewing obscenities, making illogical accusations, tries to injure anyone who approaches.”
I remembered the first of these accusations from the pages of Stryker’s comic. There’s a traitor among us.
“So, did my mother relinquish the Archer sign to me when she…left?” I asked, changing the subject.
Warren inclined his head, looking relieved. “Your mother believed that when the time came, you alone would be able to create this house anew.”
The house of the Zodiac. The first sign. The Archer, agent of Light.
I shook my head, only able to grasp one thought at a time. I voiced the one I thought most pressing. “But she’s still out there, right?”
“She’s alive, we know that much. Her power is muted, diminished because she gave it all to enshroud your identity, so she’s essentially a mortal. It’s a dangerous position for a member of the Zodiac to be in, but one that has, ironically enough, kept her safe.”
I folded my arms over my chest. “I want to see her.”
He shook his head, began to open his mouth.
“She’s my mother!” I pounded my fist on the locker with a sudden fierceness that surprised even me. It had been growing there, I guessed, ever since I saw her belongings hanging in a closet. I had smelled her on them.
“There are some doors, Olivia, that are closed even to us.”
I stared at him, thinking that of all people, a superhero shouldn’t have to hear that.
“Come on,” he said, turning. His limp made an exaggerated slap-and-drag sound on the concrete floor. “There’s more to see.”
Something other than Stryker’s fate, or Tekla’s, or my mother’s? I wanted to ask. Of course, Warren—the bum—could give me no assurances. It seemed that even a supernatural life, for all its benefits, didn’t come with guarantees.
“Okay, Warren,” I said, walking, walking right past him. “Then just promise me one thing.”
“If I can,” he said gravely.
I shot one last glance back at the unyielding locker and the centaur glowing with six other star signs. “Shoot me if I ever grow hindquarters.”
19
We bypassed another series of hallways on the way to Saturn’s Orchard, Warren pointing out the children’s ward—the tinkling of bell-like laughter punctuating the air in confirmation—and then made a quick stop by the animal habitat, where cats of every shape and size were striding, sitting, playing, or sleeping purposefully around the room.
“We breed them,” Warren explained, lifting a pure white Persian kitten from behind the guard gate, his face softening as the two wide blue eyes stared unblinking into his own. “Cats are wardens. They’re naturally territorial, so good guardians of our space. They can also identify a Shadow agent no matter what they’ve done to mask their identity.”
“I wonder if Luna came from this bunch,” I said, inching closer.
“Did Zoe give her to you?”
“To Olivia.” I ran a finger along the soft fur tufting from the kitten’s cheeks. “For her eleventh birthday. She’s had her ever since.”
The kitten’s eyes slitted shut and she pushed her cheek against my hand, a purr rising from the little body that could have shook the entire building. Warren chuckled, then dropped a kiss on the ivory head and returned her to her litter. He blushed when he saw me watching.
“They are wonderful little gifts. And fiercely protective.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” I said, an image of Butch’s sheared eyelids and gouged retinas popping into my head. Just then a young boy darted into the room, scrambling nimbly between us, an outraged cry rising in his wake. He lunged for the gate, climbing so quickly I knew this wasn’t the first time he’d hatched this particular escape plan. Warren plucked him up with one hand, and I stared down at the blond crown of his head as he proceeded to wiggle and squirm, struggling toward the kittens that lay just beyond his reach.
“Marcus!”
A tall woman in a simple white robe reached around me and snatched the child from Warren, pulling him to her in a possessive and practiced grab. An immediate screech rose from the child, but the woman only smiled up at us as if to say, Sorry for the inconvenience, but you understand. I’m sure this would have been accompanied by an eye roll…except that she didn’t have any.
“They’re so boisterous at this age,” she said, smiling tightly.
“They are that,” Warren replied, his own smile a bit wider.
I said nothing, just continued staring at the skin, shriveled and wrinkled and scarred, where her eyes should have been.
Marcus, however, had no interest in her looks. When he saw there was no escaping her grasp, and no chance of retrieving one of the kittens, his face turned a bright shade of red, a howl like winter wind rose from his throat, and then his face, literally, burst into light. “Give me my warden!”
I whirled away, covering my eyes with one of my forearms, clutching my furry little charge to my chest as heat from the child’s anger slammed against the back of my neck. The rays of light blasted past me into the concrete walls, and his voice did the same. I heard a muffled smack, a howl of outraged pain, and then a scuffling before the light disappeared, like a wick snuffed between wetted fingers.
When I uncovered my face, the boy was gone, but the woman remained. She shot us an easy smile and serenely folded her hands together in front of her. “Somebody made the mistake of telling Marcus he was next i
n line for the Virgo sign, and he’s bedeviled us ever since. Wants his warden, wants his conduit. He’s a bit headstrong these days.”
That, I thought, was an understatement.
“Need some help?” Warren asked, inclining his head toward the hall where chattering, screaming, shrill little voices rebounded off the concrete interiors. The sound cut a path straight to my lingering headache.
“I might,” she admitted, with a frazzled lift of her brows. “There’s only Sondra and I for the lot of them. The other ward mothers are in classes. But first…”
She angled herself toward me, raising her brows.
“I’m sorry,” Warren said. “Where are my manners?”
“I’ve been wondering the same for years.”
I smiled at that, instantly liking her, and held out my free hand. “I’m Olivia.”
She found my hand, and held fast as she tilted her head, regarding me in some unknown way. “Rena,” she offered. “Ward mother of the Zodiac offspring, charged with overseeing their development until the first life cycle. As you can see, Marcus has a way to go in the control department.”
“Is that why…uh—”
“My eyes?” she asked, smiling. She would have been beautiful, I realized, if not for those dual scars blooming where said eyes should have been. “I’m afraid so, though not him. Another child of Light, long before little Marcus came along. I’ve been ward mother here for nearly forty years now. Saw Warren here through his first life cycle.”
“Really?” At closer glance, I saw light wisps streaking away from her temples to mingle with the ginger hair she’d secured into a low bun. Creases that had to do with age, not scarring, also lined her face, though I noticed the ones where she smiled were deepest of all. Given her words, I placed her around sixty. A very young and vibrant sixty.
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