But you hadn’t known him at all, had you?
I resumed my reading, feeling like a voyeur but unable to look away.
Solange first approached him in a bar, intent on com pleting the task she’d neglected when they were both children: end his life. She seduced him at the height of a desert storm, but whatever she saw in the final flash of heat lightning, as her tomahawk was poised overhead, had her withholding her killing blow…and had him doing the same. They made love instead, and then they made a pact…public enemies, private lovers. For months he’d had an affair with a mortal enemy, one this manual revealed in embarrassingly erotic detail.
Was that why he could accept the Shadow in me? I thought, flipping pages faster and faster. Was it how he could look past my father’s mean influence and unwanted lineage, and say there was nothing wrong with me?
And why he believed my Shadow side could ultimately be overcome?
I blinked, shocked to find tears staining the pages, and slapped the manual shut. I knew the rest of this story anyway. They’d had a child together. She’d fled to Midheaven.
And I was wrong about the connection between us.
My soft thoughts of us together weren’t memories…they were recurring deaths. I hadn’t been made love to him like the woman on these pages, like a goddess. The time he spent with me had been a lie and dream. And when I was awake? I was alone, trapped by mortality.
I tucked the manual back in the duffel, glanced back up at the stars scattering the ceiling and reaching to touch what he’d called a frozen star. They were really black holes. Dead stars. He tracked them along with the others, he said, because they had the shortest lives. For some reason Hunter had been attracted to dark things. Like me.
Like Solange.
I’ve been searching for Sola for a long time, he’d said, before leaving me for her.
It was enough to harden my thoughts to him once again. Because he’d admitted this after making love to me, after convincing me that being vulnerable wasn’t synonymous with being weak. After I’d allowed his voice to wash through me, filling crevices and hollows I hadn’t even known were empty.
I gazed at the wrongly marked sky, the version of true love they shared, until my vision blurred. Then I pushed from the bed and rejoined Tripp downstairs.
17
“I’m going to take a few of these for you,” Tripp said, gathering together drawings, careful not to look at me. Buttersnap nudged my elbow, and I knew they both scented my pain. I wiped at my eyes and face, also content to ignore the obvious. “If we ever get a real weapons master, they can fashion more conduits for you…maybe even some for the rest of the rogues.”
A rogue weapons master forging tools for rogue agents. There was a thought large enough to eclipse any other. But Tripp wasn’t finished.
“Look what else I found.” He opened a satchel I immediately recognized…one I’d stashed in the bottom drawer of the tool chest the last time I’d been there. Reaching inside, he withdrew a handful of poker chips embossed with illustrations of my former powers.
The currency of Midheaven. Tripp and I had once battled each other over a green felt poker table over chips like this. I swallowed hard, having forgotten about them, then reached forward to touch one. The powers represented on these chips were abilities like regeneration and speed, each of the five amplified senses as well…things everybody in the Zodiac world possessed. Yet others represented individual gifts.
“I had no idea you could slip into the sanctuaries of both Shadow and Light,” he said, fingering through the chips curiously. “Or that you could leave the valley even before you were thrown from the troop.”
Neither had I.
“Oh, lookie here. You got Shen’s sense of smell. And the albino’s aether.”
I glanced at the two new chips he held. “What?”
“Their powers. I heard you cleaned up at soul poker once I was off the table.” He tossed one of my chips, my speed, aside, muttering, “These are all useless.”
Yeah, this warehouse was just rife with my losses. I sighed…and my emotion clearly bloomed into scent. Tripp blew out a chiding breath and readjusted the big, black Stetson on his head. “Man, what a double standard. You won’t allow others to feel anything soft for you, but you wallow in your own pity. Know what your father would say?”
“He’d be happy to relieve me of the problem?”
He picked up the canister we’d come for, a modified fire extinguisher holding the fortifying preservative, and motioned for me to hold still. “He’d say just ’cause you got something doesn’t mean you got the right to it.”
“Swell guy.” I shut my eyes, and a soft mist enveloped me, falling over clothes, hair, and skin in an even invisible webbing. A conduit could now strike me once, and the effect would be the same as trying to chop through petrified wood. It wouldn’t even make a dent. Opening my eyes, I motioned at Tripp, and he handed it to me.
“But he’s right,” he said, inhaling so deeply his black vest moved against his great belly. I misted him, then handed back the canister.
“Easy for you to say when you’ve got all your strengths.” I swung away to leave, but Tripp was suddenly in front of me, aptly illustrating the speed I didn’t possess.
“Stop.” I jerked back when his hand fell to my waist. But he wasn’t touching my flesh. He was fumbling for the trident secured in my pants pocket. There was a faint hum when he found it, a vibration rising from the pocket and up his arm. He gasped, his face scrunching in pain, and when he pulled his hand away a second later, his palm was mottled, red at the edges, black in the center. The smell of burnt flesh filled my nose.
“Oh my God.” Dropping my chips, I reached for his hand, but he flipped it over, grasped mine and pulled me closer until my gaze returned to his face.
“Ya don’t know what you can do till you try,” he growled through clenched teeth. “Or if your talents are unique until compared with someone else’s. So just stop underestimating your damned self. Now, come on. The others are waiting.”
I followed Tripp, dumbstruck by what he’d just done and unsure of what it meant. So he couldn’t touch the old weapons? Was that the same for all rogues? Thinking back, I hadn’t seen any conduits in the bunker, any of the grays armed, or heard anyone speak of their conduits.
“I’m thinkin’ we should leave the alarm off,” Tripp said, interrupting my thoughts. “Locking the door should be enough to convince the Light nothing’s amiss. They already know the place will blow without the right security code.”
And none of them had it.
“That’ll allow us to leave Buttersnap too, since we can’t exactly show up with her to your big bash tonight.” He put his hand on my back, guiding me to the door.
We then paid a visit to the complex’s Dumpster, where Tripp tipped in the protectant, the foam templates, and most of the drawings, though I had a feeling he’d tucked a few away in the inner pocket of his leather vest. I too had the soul chips tucked away. They might be useless, but they were still mine.
The thought had me giving the cabdriver we hailed an address far from the Archer estate. I leaned back, trusting Tripp wasn’t yet familiar enough with the city to object…at least not until it was too late. Meanwhile, the driver’s log would contain the account of this trip, one easily traced were someone so inclined. Which was the point. Someone, I knew, was very interested in the activity in and around this neighborhood. I waited until the cab’s taillights disappeared, then headed the other way, jerking my head so Tripp would follow.