The Scent of Shadows

“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?”