Authors: Vicki Pettersson
T
he lights in the roadside cafe would’ve been bright no matter what the circumstances. But with a knot the size of a walnut on her skull, and said knot throbbing like a teen’s heart on prom night, they were absolutely blinding.
Zoe pushed away from the ripped vinyl of the red bench, wiped the drool from the corner of her mouth, and faced her three captors. “I can’t believe you guys are still coming to this dive. The cook spits in the soup, you know.”
“Jesus, it really is her!” The man on Warren’s left gaped, dropping his cheap coffee cup back in its saucer with a clatter.
Zoe lifted a glass of water and pressed it to her aching forehead. “Hello, Gregor. Walk beneath any ladders lately?”
He shook his head, his smile almost as wide as his bulky body. Gregor wasn’t very tall, but he had the neck of three men put together, and the shoulder span of an angel’s wings. He was bald, with one small hoop earring that made him look like a modern-day pirate, and had a superstitious nature to match. “Haven’t stepped on any cracks in the sidewalk, either. Damn, Zoe, but it’s good to see you.”
“And worth losing that rogue agent back at the Cathedral,” agreed the woman to Warren’s right. Zoe smiled at Phaedre. She was the same age as Nurse Nancy, though the similarities stopped there. Actually, thought Zoe, they’d probably ceased in their twenties because that’s how old Phaedre looked. Like a twenty-something party girl with lowlights in her mahogany mane and a smile deadly all on its own. The weapon tucked between her ample cleavage helped, though. “Welcome back.”
“She’s not back.”
An uncomfortable silence bloomed and Zoe’s heart plummeted. She shifted her gaze to Warren’s, meeting head-on the anger she saw living there. His baggy clothing made him look slim, almost slight, but beneath it he was sinewy and tough, though Zoe knew the skin that covered all that compact muscle was as soft as her own. He’d have looked boyish with his short hair springing from his head in straight brown tufts, except that his eyes were hard and knowing, calculating as they rested on Zoe. It was his choice whether to accept her back in the troop or not but that wasn’t what he was talking about. Of anyone, Warren knew Zoe never changed her mind … or went back.
The waitress’s arrival saved her from answer, and the woman let her disinterested gaze travel over Zoe’s face, lingering where the throbbing was the worst. “Your girlfriend finally come to?” she asked needlessly, snapping gum the same pepto-pink as her uniform. “Get you some coffee, sweetie?”
Zoe pursed her lips. Why not? Her funds were low, and despite Warren’s current appearance—he seemed to be dressed as some sort of street bum this time—he could afford it. Besides, he owed her for the knock on the head. She nodded. “That’d be good. And a short stack … side of bacon.”
The waitress pulled her pen from behind her ear, and wrote down the order as she walked away. Zoe assumed everyone else had already eaten.
She returned her eyes to Warren, still waiting for her to explain herself. So she did. “I need your help.”
Phaedre looked concerned, Gregor interested. Warren continued to stare warily. If she was hurting him by not apologizing—if she’d hurt him by leaving without saying goodbye—he was hiding it well. But it was a superficial sort of hidden; like an alligator stirring up sediment beneath a brackish surface, and Zoe couldn’t help wondering when it’d strike.
She made them wait until her food had arrived and she’d gotten a good bellyful before telling them. If she had to chase them out of the cafe begging for help, she wanted to do it on a full stomach. Surprisingly, when she finished the telling—a mortal child had been stolen by the Shadows, and she needed to get her back—they were still there. Cool. She signaled the waitress for a refill.
“So, there must be something special about this child,” Warren finally said, cupping his elbow in his hands as he leaned forward. “I mean, to bring you out of retirement.”
Zoe ignored his emphasis of the last word, and sipped at her coffee as she shook her head. “I was in the wrong place at the right time. I saw the Shadows take her.”
“Didn’t you try to stop them?”
“There were probably too many, right?”
Zoe didn’t meet Phaedre’s eye, or answer Gregor’s question. They didn’t know about her mortality—they probably thought she was wearing masking pheromones, and that’s why they couldn’t scent her. She didn’t want to relieve them of that notion. Not just yet.
“There were three of them. I was alone.”
But Warren could tell she was holding back.
Always holding back, Zoe! Always with the secrets and the lies!
Still Zoe didn’t consider for one second telling him about Joanna or the attack her daughter had endured just because the Shadows had scented Zoe on her …
in
her. The Seer had been very clear: No one could know about these girls … these future Archers. The knowledge could one day be used against them all. Thus, beating against Warren’s unspoken accusation was a prophecy that ruled Zoe’s days:
You must do it alone
.
So she silently willed him to understand that she was still the woman he’d once loved, still Light, but his returned silence was critical, like he sensed her desperation, and he probably did. The unease sitting on both Phaedre’s and Gregor’s faces told her they did as well. Zoe’s lukewarm coffee soured in her belly and straightening, she pushed her cup away.
“Are you going to help me or not?” she said shortly.
“Of course—” Phaedre started.
“Why should I?” Warren interrupted. Not
we
. Phaedre’s mouth snapped shut.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Zoe said, his imperious tone making her own voice tight. “You’re the one with the power.”
And don’t forget who the hell helped put you in that position, she thought, blood beginning to boil.
“What’s obvious,” he said flatly, “is that you’re doing another one of your disappearing acts, and you want us to clean up after you.”
“That’s not it at all.”
“Oh, really?”
“Warren—”
“Shut up, Gregor.” Warren shook off the other man’s hand without looking at him and threw Zoe’s purse at her. “All your ID is different. You’ve altered your appearance, hid your scent beneath a masking compound—”
“I’m not hiding it!” Zoe finally exploded, gripping the edge of the Formica table so hard her fingers ached. “I’m human!”
They all fell still, and Zoe felt herself redden.
“I have no power,” she said, more normally. “Think about it, smell and watch, and you’ll know it’s true. I couldn’t cross into another reality right now if it unfurled in front of me like the yellow brick road.”
Gregor’s mouth fell open. “No … my God …”
The disbelief in his voice had her dropping her head. Only another agent could understand exactly what she’d lost.
Phaedre was just as shocked. “Zoe, what happened? Did the Shadows find you? Steal your
chi?
Make you relinquish it in return for your life?”
Because all those things had happened before to other agents, though not in this troop. Not to anyone under Warren’s watch. Zoe nodded. “How else could you sneak up on me without me even batting an eyelash?”
“I was wondering that myself,” Gregor murmured, falling back in the booth.
Zoe was so busy reading the pity in his eyes that when her head whipped back, the open-palmed slap coming at her from nowhere, the sting of it had her gasping. The blood that sprayed from her nose had Gregor and Phaedre doing the same.
Pressing her napkin to her face, head tilted back, she regarded Warren over the top of it. “I’d make you pay for that,” she said, voice muffled, “but you’d see it coming a mile away.”
Warren blanched, which cheered her a bit. “What have you done?” he asked, his whisper ragged at the edges.
“I gave my power away,” she said, with more composure than she felt.
“Why? To whom?”
“To someone who needed it more than I did.” To someone, she didn’t say, we’d all need before long.
“Brave,” said Gregor, fingering the inverted gold horseshoe shining from a thick chain around his neck.
“Heroic,” Phaedre agreed, on an awed whisper. “Stupid,” Warren said. He shook his head, his expression again shuttered. “Why do you always have to be so stupid?”
Zoe’s jaw ached from the effort to hold her tongue and temper. She wouldn’t get into a pissing contest with Warren just because he was still nursing hurt feelings. He could deal with those himself. She’d had to. “Look,” she said, pushing her cup aside to lean forward on her elbows. “The baby’s mortal. We’re still in the business of protecting mortals, right? Or are we only interested in slaughtering rogue agents who are doing nothing more than looking for sanctuary?”
Warren colored at that. Good. She was useless physically, but at least her words still had some sting. “
We
protect mortals. You are a mortal.”
“Warren,” Phaedre chided.
Zoe shrugged like it didn’t matter. “That may be … but I’m still Light.”
Warren just quirked a brow, and when it was apparent he’d do no more than that, Phaedre reached out and patted Zoe’s arm. “Of course you are.”
Gregor put his giant palm on her other arm, glaring at Warren. They all stared at him, linked and acting as one— even though he was their leader—daring him to tell the Archer of the Zodiac no.
For a moment she thought he’d hit her again. She didn’t have to scent his emotions to know how angry he was. “Fine,” he finally said, voice frighteningly low. “But let’s get one thing straight. You’re just baggage, Zoe. You’re no good to us—” She flinched; to
me,
he was saying, “—to anyone. We’ll get back this precious mortal for you, but after that you disappear for good. And you formally relinquish your star sign.”
Zoe sucked in a breath. Formally renouncing her star sign meant another agent born under the Sagittarius moon would fill her place on the Zodiac, in the troop. It would void her lineage forever, and nullify everything she’d sacrificed.
And that just wouldn’t do.
But Warren didn’t need to know that. So she held her indrawn breath, and inclined her head. And Warren was just arrogant enough—and angry and righteous, too—not to insist she do it right then and there. He shot the three of them a grim, closed-mouth smile, then threw down his napkin and rose. “Fine. Let’s work it out.”
Gregor shot Zoe a relieved smile before following, and Phaedre took her hand, helping her up. Zoe wanted to thank her but didn’t know if her voice would hold. Besides, just because they said they were going to help didn’t mean they could do it.
T
he Shadow and the Light had been battling in the valley ever since Vegas was just an X on some prospector’s map. Each side was comprised of twelve agents—one for each sign on the western Zodiac—and when both sides were full there was balance in the mortal realm. People were then free to make personal and societal decisions uninfluenced by paranormal nudges meant to bring out the shadow or light lurking in their own souls.
As tempting as it sometimes was to interfere in the world’s human dramas, agents of Light worldwide had fought to preserve the gift of choice for too many centuries to blithely disregard it. The Shadows, conversely, specialized in that, which gave them a distinct advantage over the mortal realm; it was far easier to cause heartache and mayhem than clean up the resulting mess.
Zoe’s life work, before she threw it away, had been to neutralize this advantage. She’d grown up idolizing the elder agents, devouring the manuals that depicted the fight between good and evil. From the moment she’d undergone metamorphosis at the age of twenty-five, coming into her full powers, she’d dedicated her life to infiltrating the Shadow organization. She was patient, wickedly sharp, and determined to use whatever resources she had to fell her enemies: her strength, her craftiness, and eventually her body. She’d spent more years than she cared to remember using that last tool … but an effective weapon it’d turned out to be.
So Warren had no right to complain about the means by which she garnered her information or stalked her prey. Hadn’t she always reminded him that no matter whose bed she woke in, her heart remained solely with him? “It’s what I was born to do,” she told him, years ago when they were both still young and arrogant enough to think philosophically about the whole thing. “It’s what I’m good at.”
And Warren knew it. Maybe, Zoe thought now, that was the problem.
“The child is how premature?” asked the troop’s physician, Micah, over the car phone’s speakers. They’d called him on the way to the real McCormicks’ residence, hoping he’d be able to better deduce where the Shadows would have taken the child. “Well, the nurse—though an imposter—was right. Children can be saved at twenty-four weeks, though it’d help if she were an initiate. One born to the Zodiac is naturally more resilient than a mortal infant.”
Zoe knew that, which was why she wasn’t as concerned about the child’s health as much as her
continued
health.
“So they’re hiding her, incubating her, keeping her safe from discovery—”
“Not exactly news to us,” Warren snapped, hands tight on the steering wheel. The dueling sides of the Zodiac were constantly shifting their appearances, their occupations, and haunts. Settle in one place too long and you were just begging for a paranormal ambush. As Zoe had discovered.