security cameras tracking my movements-they couldn’t on this side of reality-but I did start worrying when the tangerine aura vanished under a doorway situated beneath a bank of escalators. Damn. He’d crossed back over into the mortal realm, taking his visual tell with him. If I wanted to pick up his olfactory trail again, I’d have to do the same.
“C’mon, there has to be another one,” I muttered, and began scanning the casino’s perimeter. Hoping I wouldn’t have to go back outside to find another portal, I moved quickly among the slot banks, keeping to the walls as much as possible. I was scouring the buffet line, which was doing a surprisingly brisk business for ten o’clock at night, when I ran into a security guard. Literally.
“Ow,” I said, rubbing my forehead with one hand while I discreetly slipped my conduit behind my back with the other.
“The fuck you doin’ here?” he said, mouth barely moving. I smiled up at him, more relieved than I cared to admit to see a familiar-if not altogether friendly-face.
Hunter Lorenzo was one of ours, and as close to an ideal image of a superhero as one could get. Thing was, he wasn’t a cartoon, and it wasn’t an act. He was the troop’s weaponeer and head tactician, and had artistic hands- though he practiced a violent art-and a hooded, if sure, intelligence. I could still see his aura on this side of reality; banners of gold and white splaying out around him-typical superhero fare. He wore his clothing like armor, and moved so effortlessly he made a cat look clumsy. His thick, shoulder-length hair had recently been shorn into a severe military cut, a move I’d privately lamented, but it made his brooding brown eyes even more intense.
Hunter and I had butted heads from the first-I had the scars from his conduit to prove it-and a bit of that friction still remained…but then something else had happened. We’d briefly shared a power that had made us temporarily invincible-the aureole-but doing so had left us knowing more of each other than either of us was comfortable with because it was an unearned intimacy. I didn’t know his middle name or his favorite color, but I knew how his thoughts felt caressing my mind. The bright tang of his adrenaline coursing under my skin. The force of his heart, strong and rhythmic and a bit sad, pumping within my own chest.
We’d been in the same room only a handful of times in the ensuing months, a mutual choice, and never alone. Fact was, I was attracted to Hunter when I didn’t want to be. My heart belonged to another, and always would. Besides, paranormal Boy Scout that he was, if I had only one word to sum up Hunter, it would be
“You shouldn’t stand around talking to yourself, Hunter,” I told him, motioning to the cameras mounted like shining black half moons on the ceiling above us. “It might look suspicious.”
“Warren’s going to be pissed when he finds out you slipped through a portal without permission.”
“It was an accident. I was looking for the bathroom.” He glanced at me sharply, then looked away, obviously scouring the walls for a portal, which made my pulse trip faster. Sure, that’s what I was doing too, and I could probably use the help, but if Hunter knew the Shadows had found out who I really was, my identity would be altered so fast I wouldn’t even have time to say,
Besides, I hated all that domineering alpha male shit…even if Hunter did wear it well.
I crossed my arms over my chest and gave him a wry look. “What’s the big deal, Hunter? Only agents can see me, and when was the last time you saw a Shadow agent wandering these sacred halls, huh? It’s been weeks, months.” Minutes.
He did look at me then, dead on, his eyes cool and hard on my face. “Your aura’s bleeding into this reality, Olivia.”
“What?” I looked around me, swallowing hard when I spotted a Kool-Aid stain pooling onto the carpet. “How?”
From the way Hunter was shielding my body, I could tell the color was visible to the mortal eye. Yes, we existed to protect them…but they weren’t supposed to know it.
Hunter pulled his radio from his belt, looked around, and pretended to speak into it. “I don’t know. The Tulpa must have installed a new security system on that side. We have to get you back through a portal, and quick.”
“Which is what I was trying to do when you pulled the whole rent-a-cop routine.” I lifted my arm, watched color waft beneath my left pit. “Shit.”
“This way.”
We pushed past the crowd gathered around the blackjack tables, skirted the baccarat lounge, and barely escaped an excited throng gathering for a slot tournament. All this took a full minute, a minute in which I was aware of my aura slowly oozing into the mortal plane like a leaky tire. Thank God the carpeting in Vegas casinos was made to stand such things. Though the same couldn’t be said for the cream-colored walls around me.
“Hurry,” I told Hunter, my voice quavering involuntarily. Hunter feinted right suddenly, arm snaking back to grab my wrist, yanking me behind him. From behind a slot bank I spotted two other security guards. Hunter followed them with his eyes until they passed.
“They see us?” I asked, straining around him.
“Every time you speak, color spews from your mouth. Shut up.”
He started moving again, and I followed. Quietly.
We finally made it to a recessed doorway where a gently pulsing star marked a portal’s entry. No shout of alarm rose behind us, no Shadows were ahead to greet us. I’d deliberately slowed my breathing to try and minimize the seepage, and I was feeling a bit like I’d been under water too long. Crouching low, I let out the breath I’d been holding before sucking in another. When I stood again, I found myself two inches away from Hunter’s chest.
“Sorry,” I muttered feebly. I’d put him in danger. Again.
“Go,” he said, blocking a visual of the doorway with his body. “Then get out of Valhalla.”
It wasn’t the steel in his voice that propelled me through the archway, or the risk of detection a few seconds more would have cost me. It was the look on his face just before he tore his gaze away; his eyes searching mine before lowering to linger on my mouth, then dropping to my throat, which forced me to swallow hard, and then lower still.
I found myself thrust into a pitch-black room. Always comforting. At least Hunter couldn’t just open the door I’d entered and find me back in living color, aura-less, waiting on the other side. He’d probably have thrown me out of Valhalla himself. I tried to gain my bearings, edging forward, my footsteps echoing on linoleum. A fairly large room, then, probably storage. I felt along the wall, reaching a second doorway before long, and ran my palm along the right side until I found a switch. I didn’t flip it on immediately, instead yanking my conduit from my bag again, crouching low in a readied stance. Then I flipped it on.
Two liquid brown eyes stared at me through the crosshairs of my weapon.
The owner of the eyes screamed, and I screamed back.
“Oh shit. Shit!” Heart pounding, I fell back against the wall. The beast across from me began shaking its cage, the sound lost in a cacophony of agitated screeches and cage rattling by the room’s other inhabitants. I took a quick look around-obviously a lab of some sort-then did the only thing I could think of when faced with a roomful of shrieking chimpanzees. I flipped the light back off, felt for the door handle, and got out of primate hell.
I’d entered a softly lit anteroom, the middle cleared for foot traffic, with a U-shaped reception desk off to one side and a sofa and coffee table opposite that. The beasts continued their muffled screeches behind me while I tried to figure out where to go next, wondering what the hell monkeys were doing in a casino, when I heard the pounding of footsteps. I sniffed-two mortals-and ducked behind the couch just before they appeared.
I watched them launch themselves down the staircase, dressed in civilian wear, but athletically trim, sporting buzz cuts…and military-issue guns trained on the door before them. They communicated in sign language and entered the door in tandem, a well-practiced team. Not, I thought, regular security guards hired off the street. The monkeys went crazy once again, and I could’ve used the opportunity to escape up the stairs, but something held me back. Curiosity, perhaps. Stupidity, more likely.
“Fuckin’ chimps,” one of the men muttered as he slammed the door behind him a few moments later, muting the cries circulating from inside…though not much. I palmed my conduit in case they decided to search this room too, but relaxed marginally as I scented annoyance and laziness overtake the martial interest that had propelled them down here. “We can’t come running every time those fuckers have a coronary over their own shadows.”
“Actually, chimpanzees are the smartest primates alive, besides humans. Their closest relation is to us, not gorillas or orangutans, so they can make tools, be taught to communicate, and they possess similar emotions to our own.”
