The Taste Of Night

Still down, I began backpedaling madly, knowing just how Linda Hamilton had felt against the Terminator.

“Stop, Archer. Stop!” Carl tugged on one of my legs. I shook him free and struggled to my feet, still backpedaling. Carl grabbed one of my arms and dug in. “Just let Jasmine stay in front of you. You’ll be fine.”

From a half crouch I looked again. And slowly straightened. Joaquin was still there, outlined in the doorway with one hand cocked on his hip, head tilted as he tried to peer around Jasmine. But she had grown, stretching to a cut-out form that eerily echoed mine, a shadowy barrier between him and me. I straightened, and she did too, my mirror image but tinged in a vibrant shade of violet that pulsed from her body with each beat of her heart.

“She won’t let you come to harm. That’s her job. Your identity’s protected as long as she’s between you.”

I turned my head toward Carl, to show I was listening, but kept my eyes on Joaquin. “So, what’s he seeing?”

“Nothing but your outline right now. And I do mean your outline. The real you. As you were before.”

I glanced at Carl. Jasmine, in front of me, mirrored the movement. “Really?”

He nodded. “If you want to be fully seen as you were before, then just step through her. She’ll try to echo the movement, but move a little faster and her aura will become attached to your own. It’ll mold and shape this body into your original frame. Right now it’s just like using a medium to reveal who you are. Step through her and you actually become the medium.”

I swallowed hard, but my heartbeat was slowing. Joaquin didn’t come any closer, and Jasmine didn’t look like she’d let him. “I don’t get it.”

“She’s the frame,” Carl said, motioning ahead, “you’re simply what’s being mirrored.”

It made sense in some unbelievable way I no longer questioned. Still. Step through another person so their aura could stick to my own? “I don’t think so.”

I did take a step forward, though, and when nothing happened-other than Jasmine mimicking the movement- took another. Reaching my bag, and the comics I’d dropped when Carl had plowed into me, I gathered them together and sought out my conduit, trying to ignore my shaking hands. Jasmine mirrored my movements exactly, keeping my Olivia identity hidden from Joaquin on the other side. A changeling, I thought, shaking my head slightly. And here I thought she was going to eat me.

Just as I began to compose myself, Jasmine roared. It sounded like the earth quaking at its core, and I realized too late that she was backing up as Joaquin charged forward. As wind rushed ruthlessly down the hallway, the pages of the manuals flipped madly before they were wrenched away from my grasp, and Carl’s voice faded as he flew backward.

“Hold still!” he yelled, his voice trailing off as he tumbled away. I held still. Jasmine backed into me. And like the slamming of a storm cellar door, the wind abruptly died. Rolling to my back, I hit the floor, and was looking up at a man who’d cleared twenty-five yards in less than a breath. My arm whipped up; I sighted his chest between the crosshairs of my conduit and fired.

Nothing happened.

“Worth a try,” Joaquin said, his smile shining in the light of my glyph, finally lit. He shrugged. “For both of us.”

And he turned and sauntered back into the shop. I watched until he disappeared before I breathed again. Then I looked down. My hands, I realized, wiggling my fingers. And my arms. I felt my chest…wonderfully unimpressive. My hand flitted to my hair. Mine-short, bobbed, brown-wonderfully mine. And other than everything being tinted in a deep violet hue, I looked like me. Me, Joanna. Me, me.

Then, letting my head loll to the side, I saw her. “Oh my God! Jasmine, no!”

She was her normal size again, curled in the fetal position, legs drawn tightly up to her little chest, eyes squeezed shut, a wince of pain on her frozen face. She wasn’t breathing.

“Don’t touch her!”

I let my hand fall short of her too-white skin as Carl skidded to a stop next to me, breathing hard. His dual faux hawk had divided and multiplied into a dozen different styles, and he stepped between me and Jasmine as if to protect her.

“We have to help-” I began.

“She’s fine,” he said, holding up his hands. I strained to get around him. “Archer! She’s fine.”

I licked my lips nervously as I glanced back down the hallway-no sign of Joaquin-then back at Jasmine. “She doesn’t look fine.”

“Well, she will be,” he clarified, looking down at her. “As soon as you give her aura back to her. She can’t move without it, of course. And she won’t live if you keep it beyond a twenty-four-hour period…oh, and if you happen to be injured or die while wearing it. But other than that, she’s pretty much just sleeping.”

Just a few little contingencies then. I swallowed hard. “She looks…waxy.”

“She’s fragile,” he admitted softly. “Like an egg with the yolk blown from the center. She gifted you with her vitality, her life force. Without it, she’s just a shell.”

Great. No pressure. My greatest enemy was one room away, and not only did I have to watch out for my life, but another that was connected to it.

“You look just like I pictured you,” Carl said, sizing me up, squinting one eye. “God, I’m good.”

I rubbed a hand over my face. “What the fuck just happened?”

“Jasmine did her job, that’s what. Changelings always protect their agents…even if the agent is too stupid to protect themselves.”

“Hey!” I snapped. “How was I supposed to know he’d rush me?”

“Joaquin. Enemy. Duh.” I grimaced because he had a point. “Now, are you just going to stand there, or are you going to go out and face your mortal enemy like a true heroine of Light?”

“What about her?”

“She’ll be fine. Probably more comfortable on a lounge chair in the back, but no one will disturb her here.”

I glanced at him dubiously, then down at the conduit still clenched in my hand. “Why couldn’t I kill him?”

“The shop is neutral territory. Both sides of the Zodiac come here to study, so it’s considered a safe zone, even for those on the Shadow side. Neither of you can touch the other.”

Which Regan had known when she gave me Joaquin’s location, I thought wryly. But the rest of her information was good. Joaquin was here. As unprepared as I was for my conduit not to work and my glyph not to fire-not to mention having my own demon-child protectress-Regan hadn’t put me in danger. She’d even said she’d give me enough information to catch him…when the time came. Smart girl, I thought again.

“Are you sure?” I asked Carl. The last thing I needed was to waltz into the shop front and face another surprise attack.

He nodded. “Jasmine will preserve your identity as long as her aura is molding your true frame. Just don’t make any jerky movements. Limbs sometimes disengage-it’s gross-so if he lunges at you just ignore it.”

Easy for you to say, I thought, but nodded as I took a step forward. It was a strange feeling at first, like hearing my footsteps fall a second after I felt them land, but there was a sense and rhythm to it, and after steeling myself with a steadying breath, I entered the shop.

He was seated at a gaming table in a chair that was too small for him, one long leg crossed over the other, hands linked at his knee. Sebastian, as slate-colored, slack-jawed, and long of tooth as Jasmine had been, was stationed at his right side. The twins had also morphed into onyx-colored changelings, and were standing guard on each side of the door, though whether they were keeping us in or everyone else out, I had no idea.

And right now I didn’t care. I only had eyes for Joaquin. He shifted, and I glanced down, expecting to find a weapon in his hands. I was actually surprised to find them empty. It was something he carried around inside him, I then realized, a sort of vigilance that made him look ever-armed. He was one of the few agents who didn’t have a conduit fashioned just for him. His body was his weapon, and it was all he’d ever needed.

Sebastian tried to shield him from me, but Joaquin brushed him aside with a flick of his wrist. As he did, his hand passed behind the changeling’s form, and I got a glimpse of the real Joaquin. Blackened bone, cracked nails, and charred flesh hung from his frame. My nose was right. He was as corrupted and rotted on the inside as he smelled. He watched me watching him, and after a long pause, slowly licked his lips. My jaw clenched reflexively as I fought the urge to gag.

“Back off, changeling,” he told Sebastian. “Nobody in here frightens me.”

I was half insulted, half relieved. I didn’t really want to view the rot lying beneath that composed exterior. I