Unbound

  JJ furrowed his brows. Another piece in the puzzle that was her obsession with the constellations…but it still made no sense to him.

  She smiled softly. “You, JJ, are the perfect embodiment of Light. I smelled it all those years ago, a mixture both warm and sweet.”

  Oh, now he saw. “And you are quintessential Shadow, right? Never swayed, unchanging?”

  “You tell me. Scent me again.”

  Though an agent’s every sense was heightened, their noses were perhaps the most keen. Enemies were easiest to scent when emotions were high; an evolutionary gift, but JJ didn’t need to sniff to know Solange. His olfactory nerve had memorized her unique blend of heat and spice and that’s what he said.

  “You sure?” she asked, tilting her head.

  He hesitated, then tentatively sniffed at the air. Lifted his chin. Sniffed again. “You smell…different.”

  Her scent had turned, not soured, but altered. Her spice had softened, the biting hooks melting into peppered waves, as if buried in something as heavy and sweet as melted caramel.

  She wants relevance.

  And in a matriarchal society such as theirs, the best way to achieve that was to mother a child of legacy, one of both Shadow and Light…the Kairos. “Oh my God. But the soothsayer said she’s already here, in this city.”

  “She is.” Solange placed a hand on her belly. “Inside of me. And has been from that first night under the stars.”

  A child of Shadow and Light. A baby who would be mothered by a Shadow. But his baby.

  “Her name will be Lola. She will be the Kairos.”

  Then the glossy door burst open and cool air rushed in. The man framed in the doorway wore a ratty trench and smelled like soured sweat. He had no place in an upscale spa, but JJ knew he’d moved so fast the reception staff hadn’t seen him. Sola’s glyph smoked to life, and JJ’s glyph burst with light, though whether it was in response to her or Warren, he didn’t know.

  “Step back, JJ.”

  He did it automatically, used to obeying his leader.

  “Oh,” she said, turning her face up to his. Tears brimmed in her eyes, and JJ realized then what it looked like. “Touché.”

  He reached forward, grip tightening on her arm. “No—”

  She didn’t fight, and she didn’t look away as Warren advanced.

  “Your emotion is up, son. Didn’t I warn you about that?”

  “How long have you been following me?” JJ asked him, as if Solange—his enemy and lover—wasn’t right there.

  “Since Tonya Dane told me you needed following.” He halted in front of them, looking with distaste at Solange, eyes taking her in like she was a snake. “So. You’re it.”

  Like she was a thing, an intangible, trash to be discarded. Next to Warren she looked tiny.

  “No,” JJ said, before his leader could act. “Wait—”

  “I don’t think so.”

  But as Warren stepped forward, arms reaching to snap Sola’s slim neck, the strangest thing happened. JJ’s fist shot out, slow-mo and of its own accord, and Warren’s head snapped back so fast it hadn’t righted itself before he hit the ground. JJ didn’t even feel his fist lower. It was as if he’d blinked and reality shifted, and he now existed on an entirely different plane.

  Shaking, he looked down at his leader, splayed on the heated slab. What had he done? This was Warren, as close to a father figure as he’d ever had, and the leader of the agents of Light. His troop. His family!

  “I should have killed you,” he told Sola, who hadn’t moved. “That first night. I should have slain you with your tomahawk and walked off with the power and prestige that would provide.”

  “And I, you,” Solange said lightly. He glanced up to find her eyeing Warren speculatively. The visual that slid through his mind—a bronzed, bikini-clad warrior carving bodies with a tomahawk—would’ve been laughable were there anything funny about the situation. Yet all Solange did was swallow hard, and leveled her gaze at JJ. “So what are you going to do now?”

  It wasn’t worry that had her asking, but confidence…and perhaps curiosity. She didn’t believe he’d kill her while she was pregnant, and she was right. Shadows were not innocents, and innocents were never Shadows…but this was his child.

  And she will be Light.

  So if he really thought he could make a difference in the world, a superhero in deed as well as name, and if he really believed that a Shadow could change—despite her obsession with the Universe’s dark spaces—then this was the time to prove it.

  No, he thought, not prove it. Make it happen. Because Solange wanted to believe as well. Three times now she’d come to kill him, and hadn’t. She could have disappeared, had this baby on her own, and raised it as Shadow without his knowing. But she was here now. She had chosen him. She had chosen goodness. And he needed to do the same.

  Solange smirked, as if reading that thought, but the expression dropped as soon as he reached forward, throwing her over his shoulder in one swift motion.

  “What are you doing?” She started to struggle. He held tight.

  “Finishing what I started that night.”

  6

  A union between them—a contractual one to accompany the physical one growing in Sola’s womb—was the best way to show her it could work. Their baby wouldn’t just be their world’s highest power, the Kairos, she would possess the best of them. She would represent the purest essence of a balance between their two sides. Quintessence…and choice.

  And Solange was his. That was his foremost thought as he bent his head and placed his mouth to hers, sealing them forever. The female minister, with her shock of purple hair, clapped along with the two showgirls flanking her from the previous hour’s “Vegas Package” wedding. Since Solange wasn’t exactly sentimental, the feather- and crystal-encrusted women were also their witnesses for the ten-minute ceremony. When they finally pulled away, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

  “Obviously this changes everything,” he said afterward, shoving a stacked fork of pancakes into his mouth, though he didn’t clarify if he meant the wedding, the baby, or the way they’d both betrayed their troops. They were at a pancake house, both ravenous and wild-eyed with what they’d done…and what had yet to be done.

  “We can’t keep all of it out of the manuals,” she said, primly cutting her own food, creating the perfect bite. “Identities are one thing, and even a relationship can be hidden. Anything short of out-and-out treason will remain concealed until we show our hand, but this is different. It’s too big.”

  But what wasn’t? JJ thought, as she spoke. Walking down the street was a big thing if there happened to be a drunk driver heading your way. Throwing an innocent smile at a stranger was big if she later became your lover. Everything was big, but then, he thought, watching Sola with her furrowed brow, everything was small, too. And the small things often mattered most.

  Still, she was right. Things were omitted from the manuals because for knowledge to be useful it had to be earned, same as for mortals, but not all of this would be left out. And, ultimately, it might be better if it was revealed anyway. Because that would mean they’d gotten away.

  “We must either part ways,” he said, wiping his mouth, “which is not going to happen, or disappear—”

  “Difficult, but not impossible,” she interjected. In some cases, rogues blended with humanity for years.

  “Harder once the baby comes,” he pointed out. As rogue agents, they’d both be disavowed, which meant they’d be driven from the city. Or killed. Not the most ideal circumstances under which to raise their child. “Or we change our appearances entirely.”

  Even if the manuals showed them doing that, and they probably would, the drawings wouldn’t depict their new identities. Universal checks and balances were still in play.

  But Sola had stopped chewing mid-bite, a wistful expression blanketing her face as she stared at him.

  “What?”

  “You. You,” she said agai
n, giving it a lover’s inflection, as her eyes gained a sheen. “I just wish I could see you.”

  He frowned. “You mean—”

  “I mean before this.” She indicated the length of his body with a nod of her head, her sigh spiced with regret. It smelled like her, him, and his child.

  “It’s not much different. Just bigger.” He reached over to squeeze her hand. “Besides, you did. Once.”

  “As a child,” she said dismissively, before squeezing back. “But who did that child become? What would you have looked like if you’d been allowed to remain entirely you?”

  “It’s still me, Sola. I’m in here. What does it matter what’s on the outside?”

  “Because I want to make love to you. I want you buried inside of me. Not a facsimile, not a mask hiding you from me as if I’m just another person in this world. I’m your wife now, and our child will have your features. I’d like to be able to recognize them in her, that’s all.”

  Her sentiment touched him, and he bent to place his forehead to hers. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to do that.”

  She bit her lip, fought back her tears, and nodded. Glancing at her plate, she pushed at her food with her fork, before stilling. Then she looked up again, tilted her head, and narrowed her eyes. Her tears fell, squeezed out by the considering look.

  “What?”

  “Well, I might…there may actually be a way. But…no. Too risky.”

  “What is it?”

  “No. I can’t ask it of you. Not now, after you’ve done so much. Let’s just move forward, okay?”

  “Please, Sola, just tell me. If I can’t be heroic for my own wife, who can I act for?”

  It surprised a laugh from her, but it took a minute more of convincing. When she finally told him, he sat back in his chair, mind spinning. She was right; it was dangerous. It was also taboo.

  Each side of the Zodiac possessed a human ally called a changeling, a child young enough to still believe in comic book heroes and epic causes. Their job was to protect an agent from his or her enemies when within a safe zone, and not just the agent, but the agent’s identity as well. When the changelings willed it, they could mold their aura around an agent’s form to hide the person’s current identity by revealing the original.

  Despite this ability, the kids were truly mortal. As soon as they reached puberty, the willingness to believe in comics and superheroes waned. They lost their powers, practically overnight, and put the Zodiac world behind them as they would a toy train. Their posts and duties were then passed on to another.

  Asking a changeling to perform this function outside a safe zone was taboo because it was also dangerous. An agent could survive injury by a mortal weapon, but if the agent was attacked while wearing a changeling’s aura, the child would still suffer mortal damage. There was also the issue of securing the changeling’s earthly body. When an agent was using the aura, the child’s was immobilized, as fragile as an egg until the aura was returned. That emptied mortal body couldn’t survive beyond twelve hours.

  All these considerations raced through JJ’s mind as he studied Sola. What ultimately settled it was putting himself in her position. If she were clothed in a fleshly disguise, wouldn’t he want to see his true love beneath? The way her body moved below his, how her face looked when focused solely on him? Besides, despite the warnings, a changeling had never been harmed before. The warnings were just that: like notices on the back of poison. Only dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands.

  “And only once, right?” he asked, though he wasn’t really talking to her.

  “It would be enough,” she said simply, and that was it. She didn’t want to hurt anyone, she only wanted him. And this would be her sole opportunity to see whom she was giving up her entire world for.

  “Well, as long as we’re living dangerously,” he said, and a small jolt at the illicit—the same dark desire Sola had known lived in him from the beginning—thrilled through him as they kissed, sealing the decision.

  7

  It was JJ’s responsibility to acquire the changeling, but Sola set the stage. She chose a penthouse downtown, one with an old-school feel but new-city glamour. In the bedroom, she’d created a cocoon of pillows to shelter the fragile shell the changeling would become once JJ borrowed his aura. Their room, he assumed, was up the winding staircase she descended when JJ and the boy arrived.

  “I’m going to put on something a little more comfortable,” Sola whispered, her body twining with his, already smelling of wet heat. “I suggest you do the same.”

  She ascended the staircase like a wisp of smoke, and JJ smiled after her, until the kid, Ricky, finally cleared his throat. He was watching Solange with narrowed eyes, but he trusted JJ enough to follow.

  “Right. Come with me.”

  Once inside the bedroom, they wasted little time. The kid reminded him that it was imperative to return his aura within twelve hours, then, making it look easy, shrugged off his aura as simply as he’d remove his clothes. His body elongated into a shimmering outline of JJ’s, thinning to a finger’s width to achieve the same height, the transformation reflected in the mirror across from them. The boy’s glimmering form deepened to opaqueness, so that his features disappeared. Now JJ’s could appear through him.

  What are you doing?

  JJ, watching all this as though from a distance, immediately dismissed the voice. He was being transparent, that’s what he was doing. Being truly seen, perhaps for the first time since Solange had looked at him across the distance of his parents’ broken bodies. How appropriate that it was she who would see him again now, not as an enemy or superhero, just him and her and the child they’d created between them.

  He stepped forward, through the elongated form, and felt the aura mold to him like wet gauze, healing and cool. He avoided looking in the mirror as he made sure the boy’s now lifeless body was safely cradled on the bed before heading upstairs. He wanted his wife to be the first to see him. The first in years.

  She killed in black silk. Though the staircase surprisingly led to a rooftop terrace that mirrored an outdoor bedroom with the sky spread above, and downtown Vegas winking below, he marveled only at her. It was a toss-up as to what possessed a deeper sheen, her hair or the chemise, or perhaps, JJ thought, it was her eyes, fixed on him as she handed him a glass of champagne, then clinked her glass to his.

  “To quintessence,” she said softly.

  “To relevance,” he added, which made her smile. She lifted to her toes, mouth open and inviting on his. JJ moved to deepen the kiss, but she pulled back and held him at arm’s length, studying the man who was really her husband.

  JJ shifted under her stare. “Well?” he finally asked, sipping nervously at his glass as her eyes trailed him from head to toe. He felt vulnerable, small beneath the night sky they both loved. Though he knew the stars were there, they were unreadable from the city, and he had a sudden flash of being suspended amid all that dark matter, not knowing if he was on an upswing, or a down.

  What are you doing? His inner voice again, more urgently, but his eyes had already slid to Sola’s smooth legs as she poured more champagne, the black silk rounding out her behind, cutting low on her back to reveal the ridges and muscles and strength he so loved. He caught his reflection in the oval floor mirror and startled at the sight. But he was only sizing himself up in relation to her, and in his eyes—scotch-colored, the same as always—they were a perfect fit. And that’s what she commented on.

  “She’ll have your eyes.”

  He lifted her, kissing her neck as he dropped her to the center of the bed, also draped in black, so only her limbs shone in the ambient light. Her lips and eyes were dewy, and so was her body as his mouth trailed downward. She was his drug, he decided, as he grew dizzier with her taste and scent and sight. Her moans echoed like a shifting wind as he lingered at her thighs, her desire driving his need. Champagne poured over her torso, and he licked it clean on the way back up to her mouth, where he entered her, di
viding her twice. She spread her limbs like a five-tipped star, encouraging him to mirror her with her hands and hips. He did, and she sucked and sucked at him, like she was trying to pull his soul loose and bury it inside her. Already dizzy, he actually became breathless, but her need was relentless. She wouldn’t stop.

  And he couldn’t stop it.

  His eyes winged wide—sent another wave of dizziness through his head—and found she was already watching him. He tried to pull away. The strong arms he loved tightened, and her heels hooked around his. She sucked harder.

  The wine.

  More dizziness as the realization coursed through his body, and into his loins. Too late now, he couldn’t help it. He came. She took—his seed, his breath and, he realized as he finally passed out, the changeling’s aura from his body—all in a small, inaudible pop.

  His last thought before all faded to black? The small things mattered the most.

  He searched. God, did he search. And as he did—stumbling across the highway, racing down stinking alleyways, and canvassing all the places he knew Solange had once been—the scales fell from his eyes.

  Solange had convinced him to gain the changeling’s aura, knowing full well the boy, as one who championed the Light, would never trust her. It made sense that she hadn’t tried the same with the Shadow changeling. That would compromise their side, angering her leader, and it was obvious now—as it should have been all along—that she was still very much a Shadow.

  What JJ couldn’t understand was what she needed with the aura anyway. By the time the twelve-hour window was almost up, and he still hadn’t found Solange and the aura she was hiding beneath, he knew he’d never know the answer to that question. He returned to the penthouse, determined that the boy who’d trusted him so completely wouldn’t die alone.

  Yet he did die.

  JJ entered the bedroom where Ricky lay, instantly shocked at how tiny he looked. Curled into the fetal position, hands tucked prayerfully beneath his chin, his head was bent low as if braced for a blow. He was so small…