I whirled, bow and arrow braced in front of me, but saw no one. There was just the Gauntlet, smooth and narrow, stretching before me in silent challenge.
The sound raced up the other side of the wall, slipped along the floor behind me before wheedling up the back of my legs and spine. There was a probing at the base of my skull, like a centipede trying to burrow beneath my skin, into my brain, but I shook my head and the feeling receded, though whatever had caused it was still there. This sterile hallway, I knew, contained something that could reach out and touch me at any moment, and it wasn’t Joaquin.
“Finally. Another Archer.”
The voice was curious, friendly even, and each word possessed the deep thrumming echo of a cello string, low, musical, and filled with vitality. I glanced up at the ceiling, looking for vents, shafts, cameras…anything I could be viewed easily with or through, but saw nothing. The walls and ceiling were unusually smooth, and if I didn’t know any better I’d have said it was less of a hallway than a living organ, like an intestine unraveled from within a large beast, and me devoured, lost inside. I quickly pushed the thought aside.
“I was wondering who was punching holes in my energy field. I knew Warren was no longer capable, though he certainly served his purpose. Welcome.” His chuckle came from nowhere and everywhere at once, and I didn’t need to see a face to recognize the cool arrogance haloing his words. I was on his turf, and even though I didn’t know what game we were playing—never mind the rules—I kind of doubted he was going to clue me in.
“You’re the Tulpa.” I said, and tentatively began to back up. I searched again for a door to escape by, but when my palm hit the wall, needles sprung up to stab at my flesh and I jolted away. Glancing down, I found dozens of bloody tears studding my hand, though they dried up and disappeared as I watched. Surface wounds. Not that that wasn’t worrying too. Because now I was sure I had to run the Gauntlet, and I had a feeling there were more sharp little surprises awaiting me.
“Expecting someone else? An ally, perhaps?”
“Not really,” I answered, taking a testing step forward, then another. “You just don’t look anything like I pictured you.”
Okay, so the false bravado probably wasn’t going to get me very far, but my allies were busy escaping Valhalla, and if the Tulpa was here with me, he couldn’t stop Hunter and Warren. He couldn’t, as far as I knew, be two places at once. So that was the upside. The downside? The Tulpa was here with me.
“Then you haven’t pictured me fully. You have to use your imagination, you see. What’s the worst thing you could face in an enemy? What’s the most horrifying thing I could possibly be?”
Me, I thought, before I could stop the idea from forming. The worst thing I could face was someone who looked or felt or acted anything like me. Because that would mean he’d gotten inside, delivered more than just chromosomes at my conception…and that I was somehow like him as well.
“Elvis,” I said, picking up my pace a bit, careful to stay centered in the narrow hallway. Was it me, or was it getting narrower? “If I see one more aging Elvis impersonator I’m totally going to scream.”
“Sweetie. You’re going to scream anyway.”
The walls shook again, but with increased intensity, quaking so the floor swayed beneath my feet. I braced like I was riding a wave, struggling for balance even with my center of gravity low over the ground. He was fucking with me now, I thought, as the shaking slowly died down. I’d seen Luna bat around insects with the same patient and deadly fascination.
“I guess I don’t have to tell you this town isn’t big enough for the two of us.”
“I’ll just be moving on, then.” And I continued the long walk down the Gauntlet, one foot in front of the other. The Tulpa, wherever he was, seemed inclined to let me. For now.
“Joaquin’s long gone,” he said after a bit. “You put a devil of a fright into him. What did you do, I wonder?”
“Revealed myself,” I answered truthfully. A conversation was good. Conversations generally didn’t include bloodshed.
“How about doing the same for me?” he said softly, and a breeze entered the room, like a fan had been switched on and directed at my face. Invisible fingers toyed with my mask, and I clamped a hand down over my head.
“You first,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to see this being, this entity—certainly not a man—who was my father.
“Forgive me if I decline,” the overly polite voice said. “I’m not accustomed to someone issuing me orders. But you go ahead.” And that was an order. I ignored it, and kept walking.
“Come on, I’ve never seen a Tulpa before,” I taunted, continuing forward. I’d gone about ten feet, but it felt like an inch in the elongated hallway. “Oh, I get it. It’s the sideburns, isn’t it?”
No answer. Maybe he’d gone away. Maybe, I thought, he’d stay gone.
I picked up my pace because the unnatural stillness was almost as bad as the hovering presence, but after about five feet the fluorescent lights along the walls flickered, steadied, then went out.
Or maybe not.
I kept inching forward in the darkness. I had to, though I was certain I’d hit something, someone, with each step. I consciously tempered my rising fear, not wanting to give him anything to feed off of, which was obviously what he wanted.
“Silly little agent of Light. Do you think you’re standing there, speaking to me with that insolent tone by anything but my grace?”
Fuck. I still couldn’t see the son of a bitch, but the soft steel in his voice had me biting my lip until it bled. I took another step, heel-toeing it at a faster pace as my pulse sped up as well. I needed to focus on something else, and my mind alighted on the memory of Marcus and his fierce intensity as he flew through the boneyard, a little light darting fearlessly among Shadows. If I centered my energy on that, and on the end of the hallway, I could keep my mind off the fear building in my chest. And if I could do that, maybe my conduit would stop shaking in my hands.
Then my glyph began to glow. Oh, goody. Nice to know I was suddenly in real danger. Though at least now, able to see a few feet in front of me, I could see death coming before I ran smack into it.
“Oh, look. A little night light.” The Tulpa sounded amused. My glyph burned hotter. “Which reminds me…how’ve you been sleeping lately, little Archer? Having nice dreams? Pleasant memories?”
My jaw clenched convulsively. “I was wondering how much of that was my imagination and how much of that was you. I suppose you think you’re clever, using Greta to open our minds to your energy.” Heel-toe, heel-toe.
“It was one of my better ideas,” he said, and I could picture him polishing his knuckles. “As for the rest, I just played on what was already there. Your fears, your conceits, your neuroses. They all let me know exactly what buttons to push.”
“But Greta’s gone now. There’s no way for you to see inside of me any longer.”
He laughed, and the walls shook with it. “There’s always a way inside.”
Again that pricking and burrowing at the back of my neck, and suddenly I knew he was right. A being made of energy, who could be nowhere and everywhere at once, wasn’t going to settle for a bit of physical torture. Oh, shit.
“I know everything about you,” he was saying, but now his voice was within, bouncing off my eardrums from the inside. My brain pulsed once, and my skull felt like it was going to crack as a fissure grew from the bridge of my nose up into my hairline. I pressed a hand to my head, surprised to find it smooth and whole instead of bloody and split…and moaned aloud, scared, because that meant whatever was cracking was on the inside. Still, I stumbled forward. “I knew the night your first life cycle ended. I sent Butch after you for the second—”
“Did you know the moment I killed him, then?” I asked, trying to keep him talking. The pain seemed to decrease when he was talking.
“Of course. I felt the power shift.”
No decrease in pain this time. A white-
hot line seeped over my skull, and raced back down my spine to tunnel viciously into my limbs. I could feel him inside me now, his unstable energy wriggling like electric worms and breeding like fiery maggots, and I had to fight not to stand there and scratch the very skin from my body. I had to be halfway down the hall by now. I forced myself to keep going.
“Impressive,” the voice said, lifting from my own throat. He was right. He’d found another way inside. I panicked and lurched sideways. The wall studded my arm with microscopic needles, and the scent of my own blood lifted again in the air. “Oops. Careful.”
“Get out!” My voice lifted from a whimper into a scream, and I whirled around myself blindly, losing track of which way I’d come and which way I had to go. “Get out! Get out!”
“Hmm…” the Tulpa said, considering. The pain abated. “No.”
And with a flick of a wrist, my wrist, he sent me wheeling from my feet, slamming into the ground where needles not only sprung up to rupture my skin, they grew barbs and stuck there. I cried out and jerked up almost as soon as I hit the ground, but yelped when my neck was only inches from the ground. I let it fall again, choosing instead not to move. I was pinned in place from my neck to my calves, in the dark but for the steady burning of my glyph, and in a sterile hallway that was slowly filling with my blood.
“I’ve been waiting for you for a long time, Archer. And now my patience has been rewarded with another adversary, such that you are.” He actually sounded regretful at that. “But I knew, deep down, that there was another. I could feel you out there, like a season yet to arrive. I could sense you growing in the world—my world—ripening just for this moment.”
I’d caught my breath by now, realizing that if I didn’t move at all, the needles didn’t sting so much. The Tulpa was no longer speaking through me either. His voice came at me as if from speakers; above, below, to the sides as well as from the top of my head…as if he were standing just there. I guess he was fonder of physical torture than I originally gave him credit for, but at least I could think without him inside my mind. I could breathe again. And while I saw no way out of the situation, I easily saw the fault in his words. With not much else to lose, I called him on it.
“You didn’t know.”
The maggots began wriggling again. The soft tissue in my head began to swell. “I knew the moment you entered this building! This city, even! This fucking world!”
“No.” I actually laughed, though barbs pulled at the muscles in my neck. “You didn’t.”
He must have sensed the honesty in my derision, because the floor began to shake and the dead lights rattled in their sockets. I realized then that he couldn’t be two places at once. He was either planted inside me or manipulating the environment, but he couldn’t do both. So, I thought, even imagined beings had their limits. Good to know. “I know exactly who you are! You smell like sweet desert sage and cactus juice, burning roses and freshly ground allspice.”
I winced as each barb pinning me in place loosed more of my blood free. “It’s my perfume,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Available at Macy’s.”
“A tart tongue as well. Only one other person possessed all of that.”
Don’t ask me why I was doing it. Perhaps because the sarcasm Xavier had always chastised me for was, once again, my only defense. It seemed to piss off this cool, controlled being who feared nothing. So I went ahead and struck him with a low-voiced barb of my own. I figured I was dead anyway.
“Oh, and you knew her well too, didn’t you?”
The needles suddenly disappeared, ripping from my flesh. I cried out as the floor tilted, and I was slammed into the wall again. I was able to free myself this time, and I rose to my knees and palms quickly. I grabbed my conduit, its outline visible in the glow of my glyph, but pushed myself to my feet too soon and stumbled, falling against the wall again. I righted myself dizzily and kept going. “You knew her so well she infiltrated your organization twice without you ever suspecting it.”
Light casings began to burst up and down the hallway. I felt shards of glass stab and then settle atop my skull. I ducked, and concentrated on moving forward. I was free, and no matter what, I had to keep moving forward.
“I fucked your mother!”
“You men,” I said, shaking my head when silence fell again. “I don’t know why you always think that lends you some sort of power. I mean, let’s be honest, okay? Just between you and me. My mother? She fucked you.”
A vortex of wind whipped around me, so violent it sucked the air from my mouth and throat and lungs. My eyes were glued to my lids, even beneath my shield, and I actually felt my heart jump in my chest like a startled sparrow. Then it faltered. My liver and lungs ached from the hot, vapid suction, like a vacuum had been affixed to my mouth, and a strangled sound was lifted from my throat and ripped away like shredded paper. Like a baby in the womb, I forgot how to breathe.
Then the center of the spiraling wind shifted, amassed, and, limb over limb, I was catapulted down the Gauntlet. I slammed into the wall head first, and slumped to the ground as hollow pops fired down my spine. Fresh pain bloomed with each snapped vertebrae, and a buzzing sounded. It could’ve been the handful of remaining lights flickering on, but I didn’t think so. It had come, again, from within my own skull, but this time there was no one else there. Maybe, I thought dully, that was just the sound soft tissue made when it seeped through newly rent crevices. I choked as blood welled in my throat and my tongue lolled on the floor, spilling it all forward.
The wind died down, as if a switch had been flicked. The Gauntlet looked like a cave in the meager light. The silence was deafening.
There’s usually a grace period before injuries are felt. Adrenaline, and the shock of being alive temporarily numbing the senses. Not this time, though. My limbs shook, my organs felt battered inside me, and I was sure my right shoulder had dislocated when I’d punched into the wall. I coughed, and more blood fountained from my mouth, like one of those ancient marble statues in the middle of some picturesque European marketplace. For some reason, that thought made me giggle. Blood bubbled from my nose, and I laughed some more.
“Who are you?” The words were evenly spaced, but so jagged they sounded a bit off. I realized, with some shock, that the Tulpa’s voice was trembling. Lifting my head, I thought about that…and realized on another jolt that he believed I should be dead. That had been his parting shot, and it’d been a damned good show…except that I was still alive.
I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t stop laughing. The laughter and blood mingled to bubble in wet gasps from my throat, hot iron gurgling to temporarily render me speechless.
“Now that…that is something you should know,” I finally managed, wiping the tears from my eyes, the sticky warmth of blood spreading everywhere. I hacked a big glob on the pristine floor, and looked up at the ceiling. It was probably only blood loss making me loopy, but I figured I might as well get in the last word. What the hell? If this event was going to be recorded in the manuals of Shadow and Light, I wanted to go out in spectacular, if bloody, style. “After all, you created me.”
Dead silence.
And that was it, I realized. He had created me, and once again that had saved my life. So intent on destroying his opposite, his enemy, he never even realized that I was of his blood.
So, maybe I wasn’t dying after all.
“Interesting, huh?” I threw one hand halfheartedly into the air, the other creeping along the wall to lift me into a standing position. I ignored the red prints I left decorating the wall in a macabre geometric design because I was definitely feeling better. Stronger. More powerful. “What happens, I wonder, when the Created becomes the Creator, huh? When you’re no longer just a Tulpa, but a father? What’s next?”
It was so silent, I could almost believe he’d left. Almost.
“What’s the matter, Daddy?” I whispered as I stood, knowing he could hear me as clearly as if I were shouting from the top of Valhalla. I was bent, wob
bling, but I was standing. “Cat got your tongue?”
“The Kairos! The first sign of the Zodiac…but it can’t be!”
“Can’t it? You say I smell like her, but who else do I smell like?” I paused. “But that’s right. An agent can’t smell themselves. Even, it seems, a Tulpa.”
I began making my way to the far door again, and as I stumbled forward, I felt his confusion grow.
“You sent a Shadow after your own daughter,” I said, helping him out. “You ordered me raped and beaten and killed at only fifteen years old. Fifteen! And I would have died. Would have, except I was yours.”
I straightened. You’d have never known that mere moments before I’d been a broken heap of bones and blood on the floor. My voice grew stronger. He couldn’t kill me, I realized, until he was willing to kill pieces of himself…but I wasn’t going to let him in on that little secret just yet. “You claim to be all-knowing. You set yourself up, godlike, in this tower, to mete out destruction and judgment as you see fit. You stalk the agents of Light, set on destroying them and this city. But you aren’t all-knowing. You aren’t omnipotent, or even omnipresent.”
By this time I was within ten feet of the door, and my stride was almost normal. My hand was on the door when the voice sounded again.
“Wait!” Power flowed into me with the words; massaging my organs, all my wounds instantly healed. My shoulder popped effortlessly back into place, my bruises disappeared. I could see how a person, or a nonperson, could get used to this sort of power. “At least show me your face.”
I didn’t remove my mask. “Look in the mirror.”
He tried again. “But see how easily I can heal you?”
I smiled at that. “I’d heal anyway.”
“But I can do more. In fact, join me and I can give you more.”
I hesitated. “More what? Power, money, status?”
“I can do anything. Give anything. But in return—”
“My soul, right?” I said, amusement lining my words. “You want me to join with the Shadows, leave the Light?”
The Scent of Shadows sotz-1 Page 42
