The Scent of Shadows Free with Bonus Material (9 page)

“I
am
the weapon, you asshole.” And I hissed in his direction, my breath filled with the same black intent as my heart. For the first time Butch looked scared.

My movements weren’t as smooth as normal, my strikes less practiced. I swung out with more adrenaline than skill, but I got a few blows in, took a few too, before pulling back and forcing myself to think. I imagined Butch’s body as a grid. I overlaid it in strike zones, trying to see him as an opponent and not only the man who had just murdered my sister.

“Over here.” I circled him from behind. “What are you, blind?”

“I’m going to kill you.” He swiveled side to side, trying to locate me with his four remaining senses. Which gave me an idea. I backed away, edging toward my sister’s dresser until I found what I needed there. “Hear me? I’m going to fucking kill you!”

“No. You’re not.” I located Olivia’s perfume bottle by touch and picked it up. “But you’re going to die trying.”

Spritzing the fragrance into the air, I pumped until the room smelled like the inside of a sweet powdery seed. Then I sprayed the remainder on myself. The perfume sent Butch’s olfactory senses into overdrive. He stumbled about in the center of the room, oddly more at a loss with his lack of scent than he’d been with his loss of vision. Feeling my lip curl, I thought of the three senses he had left to work with—touch, taste, sound—and decided to fuck with them all.

Pushing the alarm on Olivia’s digital clock, I wrenched the knob as high as it would go. Nirvana’s “Come as You Are” filled the room. Startled confusion was soon replaced by helpless anger. Butch let out an outraged howl and began to totter unsteadily in my direction. I threw the empty
perfume bottle into the opposite corner where it shattered against the wall. He whirled in that direction, his chest moving shallowly with his breath. Lowering myself to the floor, I rolled under the bed and came up on the opposite side with the scimitar clutched firmly in my fists.

Two senses left.

My anger was cold now, narrowing my resolve into an icy arrow poised for release. I was the hunter; like the big cats crouched in the waving grasses of Africa, the bloodthirsty eagle swooping to rip the flesh from its earthbound prey.

And there was nothing glorious or heroic in the way I toyed with him. I’d trained my body and mind in combat too long not to recognize a rogue warrior, a vigilante bent solely on retribution. I watched Butch revolving about the room, striking out with his fists and voice as he tottered this way and that. On his face was the dawning realization that he might lose. That he might die. That I might be the one to kill him.

Kurt Cobain’s voice rasped through the room, swearing over and over that, no, he didn’t have a gun…

I waited until Butch calmed enough to remember the weapons, counting on his memory of the room’s layout and the relative distance between him and my knife outside the doorway. As expected, he lunged for the closer and more familiar weapon, the one he’d brought with him. The one I held in my hand.

He knelt, thrusting his hands beneath the bed, searching frantically with his fingers. His sense of touch. He couldn’t smell, hear, or see my approach. Too bad, because I saw my reflection in the dresser mirror—eyes black, muscles tensed, arms raised high—and I looked like a fallen angel.

Butch froze. I smiled. And that bowed blade sang.

The stubs Butch instinctively cradled to his chest were white with bone and red with blood, trailing strings of meaty flesh. He howled, demon’s mouth opened wide, head thrown back like a baby bird searching blindly for its next
meal. Obligingly, I inserted the tip of the blade, pressing lightly against his tongue. His lips peeled back in a parody of a grin.

His last point of sensory perception was at my fingertips, the sense of taste. I leaned over to take his jaw in my free hand, forcing the blade to bite into his lower lip, and he whimpered as I lowered my lips to his ear. He had lied and laughed with that tongue, and both at my sister’s expense. With the gentlest press upward of my fingers, I lifted him to his feet. “Do you have something to say to me?”

He shook his head as much as he dared, tears streaming from his destroyed eyes.

“I think you do,” I said, my tone dry as dust. “In fact, I think it’s right there on the tip of your tongue.” I pressed, felt the bite of blade into flesh. Butch gurgled, a strangled cry for mercy, and I let up. “What was that?”

“Haar-yyy.” The points where his lips had touched the double-edged blade were stained scarlet. He’d said sorry. I straightened, my body deadened to emotion.

“Well that’s not good enough.” I whispered it, not even caring if he could hear.

I could have slid that curved sword down his throat, severing the roof of his mouth, skewering his guts from the inside. I could have twisted it, sending that tip burrowing up into his skull to flay the soft tissue encased there. Instead, with a brisk flick of my wrists, I tore the blade free.

Butch leaned forward, retching blood, and fell again to his knees.

“Don’t cry, Butch. All devils speak with forked tongues. This will just make it easier for others to recognize you.”

He was bereft of all his senses now, as helpless before me as Olivia had been in his arms, but instead of killing him, I lowered myself to the edge of the bed and watched. I wanted to observe the last seconds of his life, as death marched across his features. I wanted to see if he would heal.

Then I could kill him all over again.

But he did die. The sonofabitch died and left me there in
my sister’s cream-colored, blood-splattered room, with a hole in the window like some large, gaping mouth. He exited this world the same way he’d entered it—squalling, miserable, and covered in a woman’s blood.

I don’t know how long I slouched there, bleeding and crying, and intermittently screaming with the rotting stench of this demon’s death rising up around me; willing both him and my sister alive again so I could change it all.

Eventually, I stood and turned off the music. Silence buzzed in my ears as I hauled Butch’s body to the window and pitched it over the side. I didn’t watch his tumble, but the rain had stopped and the whole world was silent, as if it existed in a vacuum, so I heard the thud, and the cracking report of his body hitting pavement. Never say I don’t learn from my mistakes, I thought humorlessly.

Then I keeled over and retched up my guts.

“Police! Open up!”

The words rang in my ears as I came to, lying next to my own vomit. Feeling leaden and hollow, I pushed myself to my knees, then my feet, allowing a moment for my head to stop spinning. My mouth was dust-dry, my eyes crusted over with tears. I didn’t know how long I’d been laying there, but the night sky had cleared outside the destroyed window, and though the lights of the city still rendered the heavens starless, a soft, crisp breeze blew against my back.

Another knock sounded urgently at the front door, and I drifted into the living room to answer it, my feet reporting hollowly on the tile floor. My martini sat perched on the coffee tray where I’d left it, next to my still unopened gift. Tears stung my eyes again, and I had to blink them away as the pounding continued. A neighbor had finally rang the cops. I wondered why they didn’t just knock it down, but swung it open anyway.

Ajax stared back at me. “Hello, Joanna. I’d have come sooner, but I was…detained.”

Shocked, my response was delayed, and when I slammed
the door he caught it easily, wrenching it open again. I backpedaled as he shut it behind him. He made no move to attack, instead cocking his head to one side, like he’d just thought of something. “Why, Joanna, dear, there’s something different about you.” He sniffed delicately at the air before snapping his fingers smartly and pointing. “I’ve got it. You’ve changed your hair.”

He did step forward then, and I retreated into the sunken living room. I knew he would kill me. I was injured and he was fresh, angry, and knew better than to underestimate me, unlike Butch. He also had all the inexplicable powers that Butch possessed, and I didn’t know if I could fight that again…or even if I wanted to. What was the point? I’d never been more alone in my life.

“Now,” he said, crossing his arms over his body. This time he unsheathed two serrated pokers, one in each hand. “Where did we leave off?”

Okay, so I’m alone
. I swallowed hard.
Get over it
.

Pounding sounded behind me, and I turned and stared, not quite believing my eyes. There, clutching the parapet of the building, was the homeless bum I’d run over, still looking disreputable, and still popping up in the strangest of places. He was mouthing something, pointing and jerking his head toward the bedroom. I turned back to find Ajax as awestruck as I, his mouth open in obvious displeasure.

“Warren,” he said, lowering the pokers. “I should skewer you through your useless Taurean heart.”

“Warren?” I said.

“Shut up, Ajax, you pathetic excuse for evil. Who dressed you this morning? Certainly not your mother. You look like some B-movie cliché.”

I glanced back and forth, less concerned that they knew one another than with their being able to converse between a thick plate of soundproof glass. And that I could hear every word.

“Don’t talk about my mother!” Ajax said, enraged.

“She should’ve swallowed that load, dawg, that’s for sure. Don’t worry, she’ll make up for it tonight.” And he began to make a repetitively lewd motion with his private parts. Right there on the ledge.

It took another meaningful look from him to realize he was buying me time. Afraid of telegraphing my intent, I fled without glancing back. I heard Ajax’s curse, his feet pounding across tile, but I had the bedroom door slammed, locked, and was already halfway across the bedroom before it crashed open again.

“Give me your hand!” On the other side of the glass, Warren stretched out his own.

“Shit,” I said, looking down. The breeze was much stronger out there.

“Give me your hand now!” he repeated, and pulled me forward from my center of gravity. I cursed again, but was half pulled, half lifted out onto the ledge, and just out of Ajax’s reach.

“Bitch!”

“Come and get her,” Warren taunted. I’d rather he not, I wanted to say, but the bum was already moving away, palms against concrete and glass, back against the building. “This way.”

He paused at the buttress, and held onto me until I was steadied on the ledge. Then he turned and continued moving toward the living room windows. I hesitated. “He’ll see us.”

Warren glanced back, his hair swirling around his head like some mad professor’s. “It’s the only way. There’s a staircase that leads to the roof. On that side, there’s nothing.”

I glanced behind me, swallowing hard. There was a swatch of material hanging from the jagged glass, torn from my blouse when Warren pulled me out, but no sign of Ajax.

“Joanna?”

“Okay.” The word escaped on an exhalation and I nodded. We inched around the corner, my feet a mere inch
shorter than the ledge’s width. I traversed the facade, gaining on him, but a gust of wind slapped at me, and Warren grinned as I hugged the facing.

The living room windows shone like gems in front of us, and the light inside was a beacon, calling me back to reality.
What the hell was I doing out here?

“Ready?” Warren said.

I nodded, took a deep breath, and followed.

Ajax appeared inside the cozy living room, framed like a slide in a projector. He was in a warrior’s stance, legs wide, arms cocked, hands fisted around the pokers. Warren seemed unconcerned and kept inching along the ledge, a turtle on a tightrope.

“What do we do if he breaks the glass?”

“Try not to get hit.”

I turned around. “I’m going back.”

“Joanna.” His voice froze me in place. I turned to find his crazed eyes sober upon mine. “There is no going back.”

He was right. What would turning from a possible death to a more certain one do for me? It wouldn’t bring Olivia back, or change the fact that I’d killed a man without remorse; and I seriously doubted I could sweet-talk Ajax into changing his mind about doing the same to me. Besides, how many times had I prayed for God to take away the past? To change events so I could wake up and be happy and normal and…like Olivia. Never once had my prayers been answered.

Or had they?

I looked at the man leading me. Sent from the heavens or not—and I had to admit it was unlikely—I knew one thing: he was not who he seemed. He also held the answers to the events that had plagued me the past twenty-four hours. And I wanted those answers. Besides, I told myself, he was right. There never was any going back.

“I’ll follow you,” I said, and Warren’s face lit in absurd elation. “If you promise me two things.”

His brows drew together again.

“First, you have to tell me what the hell is going on, and I mean all of it.”

“Done! Easy-peasy,” he said, and leaned toward me confidentially. “And second?”

“And second? Take a fucking shower.” I wrinkled my nose. If he stunk before, he positively reeked now.

“Such a sweet girl. Glad you’re on my side.”

“I’m on
my
side.” I edged out, and Ajax appeared again, poised as he’d been before.

“You two finished yakking yet?” His lips moved on the other side of the glass, but his voice bloomed next to me. “Can we get on with this?”

“By all means. I’ve got a date with your mama. Gotta get a move on.” Warren hopped from one foot to the other with a sharp, jeering cackle. This infuriated Ajax and he rushed the window. I lunged for a vertical post, clinging to it with whitened fingertips. Warren did not, making himself a target.

I squeezed my eyes shut and averted my face as the poker lanced through the window. No crash came. Whirling back, I saw the tip slide through the glass as easily as trout through water. Warren dodged, wrapped his hand in the tattered hem of his duster coat, and seized the triangular blade before Ajax could withdraw. He yanked, the blade screeching and stuttering through the glass to the hilt. Ajax’s face slammed against the pane, and I gained another post before he’d recovered.

“Let. Go.” He spaced the words evenly, one eye riveted on Warren.

“You let go.”

Ajax must have sensed the futility in arguing with someone possessing the rationale of an asylum patient. That, or he was sick of eating glass. He pulled away and released the poker. “That’s okay. I have another.”

Viper fast, quicker than I’d have guessed, he had the second weapon spearing through the window, angling toward my gut. I assume everyone has a moment of terrified
realization right before their death. I was no different. That sliver of a blade was the sharpest thing I’d ever seen. I anticipated pain, knew I’d be skewered through, and wondered if I’d feel the impact when I fell to my death.

Wondered, briefly, if Olivia had.

I didn’t feel it. I waited, eyes squeezed tight, and still it didn’t come. Having already braced myself for the hereafter, I found this relatively unnerving. I opened one eye. Ajax and Warren were staring at me, wide-mouthed and wordless. I looked down. Bending halfway to the hilt, the steel blade looked rubberized. Then its ruined tip began dissolving, dripping onto the stone ledge, and then down the side of the building like liquid mercury. Nonplussed, I glanced back up at the two men. Were supernatural beings supposed to look that surprised?

“Ah-ha! Eureka! I found her, Ajax! I found her!”

“I found her, you noxious bag of air.”

“Yes, but too late. Too late, and now look. She’s too strong for you! Just as we’d hoped. Just as I
knew
!”

“She’s not!” To prove it, Ajax yanked the first poker from Warren’s grip, which he’d loosened in his excitement, and thrust again. An inch away from my body it melted like snow. He tried again, with the same results, then dropped the stub with a cry of rage.

By now Warren was almost doubled over with laughter, tears streaming down his dirty cheeks as he wobbled precariously from one foot to the other. “Too strong! Too strong!”

“I don’t understand,” Ajax said to me. “You can’t have that kind of strength. You’re an innocent.”

“Yeah, that’s what Butch said. Right before I killed him.”

“Butch was here?”

“What? Can’t you smell him?” I asked nastily, bolder now that I was safe. Not counting the two hundred foot drop behind me. “Why don’t you use your nose? Sniff him out?”

They both stared, like I was the abnormal one there.
Warren found his voice first. “You can’t smell the dead, Joanna. You’ve erased his scent, his essence. It’s as if he never existed.” He turned to face the man on the other side of the glass. “Isn’t that right, Ajax?”

Ajax had begun to shake. “You bitch. You fucking bitch.”

“Are you disrespecting me, Ajax?” Warren said. “Are you? Because if you are—”

“I think he’s talking to me.”

“Oh,” Warren said. “Go ahead, then.”

“I’m going to kill you, you know that?” Ajax told me. “I’m going to find you and I’m going to fucking kill you.”

“How?” Warren asked. “You can’t scent her, therefore you can’t find her.”

“Temporary. When the aureole wears off I’ll be on you like peanut on butter.”

Stupid thing for a homicidal anorectic to say.

“Or like a cat on a mouse.” Warren pointed at Ajax’s feet.

Ajax screeched, and wheeled backward. Luna hissed and began to stalk him, her butt swaying in a mean saunter, tail high and shaking. Ajax continued backing away, casting uncertain looks around him to make sure there were no other feline attackers. Shaking, he made his way to the door.

“This isn’t over,” he said, pointing at me. “Not by a long shot.” Then he fled out the front door just as Luna charged.

“We can go in now,” Warren said.

Luna met us inside the bedroom window. She was licking a paw—buffing her knuckles, it seemed—as she waited for us. She moved over as I climbed through, and wound about my legs, probably expecting a treat. I scooped her up and buried my face in her fur the way Olivia had. The purr shook her body and reverberated into mine.

“I didn’t know your sister had a cat.”

But somehow he knew I had a sister. Had a sister, I thought again, and felt the tears well. “Yeah. She did.”

Warren fell still. Inhaling deeply, he glanced at the window before turning back to me, and his expression—usually
so crazed and wild-eyed—was blighted. “Oh God, Joanna. I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t smell her anymore, do you?” My voice was small and didn’t hold much hope. Warren only stood there. I looked away. “Neither do I.”

“We have to get you out of here.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, not caring where we went. “Let’s get me out of here.”

Warren didn’t speak as we walked the five blocks to a roadside motel—not to me, at least—and that was fine. He did, however, keep up a babbling monologue—something about baboons on Mars—which had the few pedestrians we did encounter steering a wide berth around us.

Beneath the garish red flash of a neon sign, a clerk wordlessly handed Warren a room key, and gave my blood-soaked and torn clothing a quick once-over without the slightest change of expression.

Oh yeah, I thought, noting the way Warren’s shoulder-bent stoop gradually straightened as we crossed the dusty asphalt lot, this bum had a lot to answer for.

He opened a gray door, ushering me inside, and flicked on a light to reveal an equally dismal room. The requisite bed, dresser, and bedside tables were so nondescript I barely saw them. I dropped into one of four chairs flanking a battered round table and slouched with my back to the wall, head back, eyes closed. Every once in a while a car would pass along the road behind the building, tires humming and splashing in the puddles left by the storm, before fading away again into a soundless void.

Warren picked up the phone, and speaking lowly, ordered someone named Marty to bring us food. Gone was the feebleminded lunatic who’d taunted Ajax, the one I’d hit with my car. This was a man in charge, who apparently gave orders he expected to be obeyed. I didn’t understand it, but that was a pretty common state of mind for me these days. All I knew right now was that I didn’t want to eat
whatever he’d ordered. I didn’t even want to drink…imagine that. Instead, I felt like keeping my eyes closed, mindlessly counting cars passing outside the room until forever itself had come and gone.

“You should shower,” Warren said at last, breaking the silence. His voice was still cracked, dusty with dehydration and disuse, but his words were appropriately somber.