The Touch Of Twilight (37 page)

“No, this is it.” She turned around herself, the choppy layers of her hair striping her face in the slight breeze. She shook them away. “And the closed environment didn’t serve us very well before. Warren thought we’d try something new. Something the Shadows would never suspect.”

And a place of worship and respect and peace dropped into a crevasse in the middle of the Mojave would pretty much do it.

Soulfly’s groove metal sprung from my pocket again, Chandra looked at me, and this time I answered it.

“Give it back.”

I smiled again as I tucked my cell phone between shoulder and ear, not even pretending not to know what Regan was talking about.

“No. It’s mine, I bought it, actually signed the papers and closed on it last night, sight unseen. God, you’ve gotta love the way money talks in this town.” I heaved a happy sigh. “Hey, I have an idea. Next time you don a new identity, you should make her rich instead of cute.”

Wow. Grinding teeth sounded a lot like sawing logs over the telephone line.

In a reasonable tone, I explained I wasn’t going to actually live in her mother’s old house. That wasn’t the point. It just felt good for a change to possess something I knew Regan cared about. I didn’t need to say she wouldn’t have kept or maintained the property if she didn’t care about it, or that that’s what had exposed the weakness to me. She knew that, so I merely added, “The perks to my Olivia identity are starting to grow on me. I’m becoming quite the materialist. I’ve decided to start a small, but elite collection. I’m going to call it ‘All the things Regan loves most.’”

Her breath hitched on the other end of the line but it didn’t stop her ragged threat. “And do you think it’ll ever rival mine? I call it ‘All the ways I could maim Ben Traina.’”

It was the expected rejoinder, but I saved my own comeback for later. By now Chandra had realized who I was talking to, and was glaring openly at me. I batted my lashes but, like Regan, she had never fallen for that. “I understand from the changelings that you’ve seen something in the manuals exciting enough to have you running from the shop like your life depended on it.”

This time there was no hesitation. “And I understand from my changeling that you had a run-in with the doppelgänger. Of course, being a loyal underling, I had to tell the Tulpa. He’s pissed you didn’t kill her when you had the chance.”

Preteens were the biggest gossips, I thought, sighing as Chandra’s eyes grew wide. She was making no attempts to hide her eavesdropping, but I shrugged her concern away. Whatever the kids could relay to my enemies wasn’t anything that could affect the larger battle, anyway. Otherwise it would’ve been like Kade had said; the information would’ve slipped from their minds even as they tried to recall it.

“If he were truly upset he’d have sent a message-by-minion so he could tell me himself. Or didn’t you feel like showing your innards today?” I gestured toward the restroom, turning, knowing Chandra would follow, still listening. As soon as I pushed open the door and daylight spilled into the cavernous darkness, there was a burst of frenzied squeals, and I ducked as my hair was rustled by hairless wings. Chandra yelped behind me, and the bats narrowly missed the canyon walls as they swerved blindly out into the sunlight. I ducked back out into the canyon, knowing Regan would try to make sense of the noise coming over the line.

“Never mind,” I said, a smile in my voice. “You’re probably depressed after having to sell your sole physical birthright to me”—I just had to rub it in—”but you can tell the Tulpa there was no way to harm the doppelgänger in the sanctuary. She was invulnerable to everyone who tried to stop her.”

“And was your friendly neighborhood call boy one of those to try?” she asked, as I wandered directly beneath the sagging footbridge.

I snorted, feeling Chandra on my heels. “Still going on about Hunter? I’ll have to let him know. He’ll be so pleased.”

“I’ll let him know myself as soon as I find him.”

The thought of Regan tracking Hunter made me laugh aloud. Even Chandra scoffed at that one. “Careful, Regan. You’re starting to sound obsessed. Aren’t you the one who once told me being a Shadow agent was a job like any other? You’re just an underling, remember? An evil man’s flunky…and an evil man’s daughter.”

“Your point?” she asked tightly.

“None,” I lied, still leading her. “Other than you should be so proud of being sired by a mortal who can rival the Tulpa in atrocities.”

She snickered, and I could envision the accompanying eye roll. “I can’t muster interest, much less pride, in someone I’ve never met. I don’t even care about most of the people I see every day. Affection is a supremely bad habit,” she said, reinforcing what I knew of Brynn’s legacy to her daughter.

“Then why would you suppose I care about what the Tulpa thinks of me?”

“Because you think of him, my dear Joanna. More than you’d like.”

“I don’t want to talk about my father with you,” I said curtly. That was no lie.

“Fine,” she said quickly, because she didn’t want to talk about him either. “Then let’s go back to talking about first loves.”

I paused for effect, mouth winging up in a sly smile. “About that. Don’t be expecting Ben to tend your garden anymore, or even returning your phone calls. In fact, don’t be surprised if he’s already left a kind but firm message on your machine canceling whatever plans you two made for the weekend. He’ll be with me tonight…and every night thereafter.”

I wiped the dust from a plaque memorializing a long-lost child. Regan finally ended the silence. “I’ll expose your world to him and tell him who you are,
Olivia
.”

“I plan on telling him that myself tonight,
Rose
, and he’s always been a part of my world. Always will be too.” My smile was so wide it could be heard in my voice. “I told you he’d never be with you as long as I’m alive. So game over. I win.”

“You think I’ll give up that easily?”

“Why not?” I straightened, meeting Chandra’s eyes as she shook her head, warning me off from baiting Regan. Too late. “I thought you didn’t care about most people you see every day?”

“Oh, but Ben’s different. He’s special. In fact, I love him to
death
.” And with that I heard a distant beep pass over the line, an innocuous enough sound immediately followed by a sonic boom, the way the air cuts beneath a speeding jet. Chandra jumped across from me, looking up, and even though I’d been expecting it, I couldn’t help my sharp intake of breath. A part of me hadn’t believed she’d do it. When the sound faded, Regan’s laughter chimed over the line, genuine joy blooming where silence had reigned before. “Oh and now…there’s so much of him to love.”

I was no longer surprised at the unadulterated evil living in that sparkling laughter, but I closed my eyes, dipping my head. Regan, and those like her, would never stop. What scared me about that was I could never stop then either. Meeting evil head-on meant cutting it off, and preemptive strikes needed to be as vicious as the machinations of the Shadow side. So where and when did it all end? Or was this some sort of endless universal treadmill, where showing fatigue meant falling off into oblivion, but speeding up got you nowhere? The peace I’d felt upon entering the canyon dissipated, and I shivered in its wake.

“Your mom was right, Regan,” I said softly, and the way my voice shook with the words wasn’t an act. “Love
is
a weakness. But, as you know…we all have ’em.”

Then I hung up amid the confused silence, Regan no doubt wondering why I wasn’t out of my mind with grief for the life she’d just ended. But Father Michael’s life, I knew, had ended the day he’d met Brynn DuPree.

“Tell me that vibrational chaos was the doppelgänger again,” Chandra said, when I’d finally opened my eyes. I shook my head and looked up at the giant statue of Jesus, one hand held up in welcome, the other folded peacefully in front of his robes. I half expected a reaction out of him, a lashing with his olive branch, a stern look that would have the sky falling down on my shoulders. But the other half thought he might thank me. Too many alleged holy men had used his name for atrocities. I wondered briefly if he’d ever felt this sort of conflict, if dueling sides had ever warred inside him. I wondered if those upturned palms had ever wanted to curl into fists.

“You,” Chandra said, pointing at me before I turned my back on her, “just killed an innocent, didn’t you?”

“I wouldn’t call him that,” I murmured as I began walking back to the staircase. The canyon was half shadowed, and it was getting cool.

“I knew this was coming,” she said, following closely. I walked faster, reaching the steps and taking them two at a time. “First you broke the changeling, you ruined the manuals of Light, and I tried to tell myself that Warren was right, and it was all an accident…but this wasn’t. And the small things lead to the big, and your plans to tell that mortal who and what you are is big enough, but this—”

I whirled, halfway up the stairs, so we were staggered as we faced off against each other. “This is nothing like that! Don’t you ever compare him to that…that pervert, that meat suit! They were both mortal, but the similarities stop there. Got it?”

“It’s the rise of your Shadow side!” She was quivering, eyes wild beneath her choppy bangs, and looked on the brink of hysteria. I rolled mine.

“You’re the only one who thinks so, Chandra!” Then I bent at the waist, tilting my head. “Or perhaps it’s because you want to believe it?”

“Or perhaps,” she articulated, leaning forward as well, “It’s because you just killed a mortal man!”

I threw up my arms. “Regan killed him with her twisted need to continue hurting me. Excuse me for protecting myself and those I love. Apparently nobody else will.”

“Don’t.” She reached out when I tried to turn away, and I slapped her hand out of my face. She grabbed for me again and kept talking. “Don’t make excuses for what you’ve done. You need to take responsibility and respect that biology has made you different from the rest of us. This just proves we can’t ignore that fact any longer.”

“Ignore this,” I spat, extending my middle finger so close to her face she went cross-eyed. I whirled, and this time her hand on my arm had my vision shifting to red.

“Look at you! You’ve got smoke coming from your ears! You try to downplay your differences but now we have to go back to the sanctuary and tell Warren you’ve done something none of us would even consider. Then he’s going to change your identity, and hopefully your personality, so that—”

“Oh, shut up, Chandra,” I yelled, and took out my anger on the scuttling movement I spotted from the corner of my eye. I missed my mark, due to temper and haste, and the sand scorpion froze, feeling the vibration of my foot slamming on the dusty desert shelf. Then it sped off, as blindly as the bat, to hide in the desert sand.

“You don’t know anything about me,” I told her, pissed that I couldn’t stop the whimper escalating in my voice.

Nothing of importance, I told myself as I wiped at my face. Nothing that…

Matters.

My head shot up as an image of Chandra causing life to bloom from a rocky outcrop with just the wave of her hand hit me hard. She was behind me now, bitching about the acridness of my anger spicing the air, but I barely heard her over her memory-voice telling me creating life was something we all could do. A static buzz swelled in my ears, the doppelgänger asserting that with my help she’d be unrestricted by worlds or planes or boundaries. Synapses fired with almost audible pings, and sizzled as they finally connected. Every thought, every word, every action given voice. It’s all channeled into one thing. Vibrations. Energy. Chandra had said it herself…

Matter is all that matters.

I blinked hard, as my own scattered thoughts began to crystallize. Then I turned to Chandra, frowning. “Have you ever heard about the boy, blind from birth, who gets around using echolocation?”

“What?” She shook her head, more in surprise at the topic shift than in negation. “No. Okay, yes. I think. Why?”

I began nodding to myself, the crystallized thought hardening into a stalactite of certainty. “Well, it proves a person, a mortal, can use vibrations to navigate the world like the scorpion, the bat.” The doppelgänger, who circumvents the proper channels in order to access our reality.

“So?” Chandra asked, holding up her hands.

I squared on her, and bit my lip. “So close your eyes.”

She did, exaggerating the action, half laughing as she lifted her chin. “You want to see if I can get around using echolocation?”

“No. It just makes it easier to do this.”

The blow was one of the hardest I’d ever delivered, and it not only knocked her backward, but flipped her over the wooden railing as well. Maybe it was because of what she’d said before—we both knew a fall wouldn’t kill her—and maybe it was because my anger still burned like a warm coal in my chest. But my fist caught her in the side of the head, and she was out before she stirred the dust on the canyon floor. I followed at a brisk pace, ignoring the Savior this time, and trailing a wispy thread of black smoke behind me. I confiscated her cell phone, used her belt to tie her hands together, and locked her in the cave doubling as a bathroom, lights off.

“Fine, so you’re right,” I muttered as I returned to the top of the canyon. “Biology has made me different.”

But I’d just figured out why the doppelgänger was blowing holes through our reality, and Chandra was only going to get in the way. I needed to find a way to stop those cosmic breaches, and after I did, I swore, nothing would come between Ben and me again. Not a Shadow, I thought, huffing dismissively. And not a Light.

• • • *
      

I later learned the screams of rage could be heard for ten square miles around Ben’s house, which was where Regan had been when she placed her call to me. As for the explosion out at the correctional center, nobody other than Father Michael had been injured. It wasn’t my fault Regan’s homemade bomb had been designed for a slow kill, a poison meant to delay death, impart suffering, and burn a man from the inside out. It took five doctors, ten hours, and a strict quarantine, but even all that couldn’t save Regan’s father. Within the passing of a day, Father Michael was face-to-face with his Maker.