My feline companion and I stepped out into a passageway facing a set of smoked-glass doors. I held one open, let the cat saunter in ahead of me, and followed her into a dimly lit room that arched around us like a steel womb.
And it was a womb of sorts. Cavernous throughout the middle, with an echoing concrete floor, the high ceiling looked to be drawn upward to a single prick of light, a bright star holding together the sides of the room. Though the walls curved elegantly into a 360-degree circle, length after length of paneled sheets gave the illusion of an octagonal shape. There were twelve emblems, two per sheet, and each individual panel represented one of the twelve zodiac signs. Grouped in pairs as they were, they looked like they were eyeing the entrance I’d just come through with great suspicion.
There was also another pair of eyes trained upon me, but these held surprise rather than mistrust, and-if I wasn’t mistaken-a healthy dose of awe.
“Hello,” I said to the young woman I’d seen earlier in the boneyard, feeling free to regard her with as much curiosity as she was showing me. She was petite, at least five inches shorter than I was, and slim-boned, though that meant nothing in the world of supermechanics. Pretty in the way of Victorian debutantes and romance heroines, she had a head of cascading mahogany curls Botticelli would kill to paint, and guileless eyes that sparkled with hope…a handy trait for a hunter of conniving, vicious, and deadly supernatural beings.
“You’re the Archer,” she said, the awe seeping into her voice.
“And you’re…” I couldn’t think of a polite way to say it. “Very green.”
She grimaced, revealing green gums. “Micah says it’ll wear off sometime tomorrow. It’s kind of embarrassing, but at least I’m not alone. Marlo,” she said, and held out a hand.
“Who tagged you, Marlo?” I asked, the question echoing through the room as we shook hands.
“Vanessa.”
“She’s a good shot,” I said sympathetically.
“I was just lucky to be included. Initiates aren’t usually invited to train with the troop, but Tekla prophesied dangerous trials ahead for me, so Warren said it was okay to start my advanced training early.”
I wouldn’t have sounded so joyous about grave tribulations in my future, and told Marlo as much.
“Oh, but it’s an honor,” she said, wide eyes going even wider. “Tekla usually only forecasts the fates of full-fledged star signs. All the initiates she’s ever cast for-Hunter and Zoltan and Mace and Stryker-have gone on to do great things. I’m the youngest yet.”
Hunter was certainly accomplished, but Zoltan and Mace were before my time so I didn’t know anything about them. Stryker, though, had been ambushed and murdered in the process of metamorphosis-no longer an initiate, but not yet a star sign-and I wondered if she’d thought of that.
Instead of mentioning the dubious honor of being aligned in fate with Stryker, I changed the subject. “So you must be the Libran initiate, am I right?”
Marlo nodded enthusiastically. She was only a couple of years younger than I, but her sheer excitement made her look much more so. “I’ve been training for a few weeks now. Hunter says I’m making great strides. He’s already designing a weapon he says will play on all my strengths.”
I raised a brow. You didn’t need super senses to tell she’d already developed a super-sized crush on our weapons master. She’d probably grown up idolizing all the older troop members, I told myself. Plus she and Hunter had both been born and raised in the Zodiac. They might make a good match in the future, probably a great one. Libra and Aries were opposites on the Zodiac wheel.
So why was jealousy shooting through my blood like warmed quicksilver?
“That’s great,” I told Marlo, and quickly crossed to the panel with an outlined rendering of a centaur on it. It glowed, reassuringly bright, and the tension drained from me as I looked up at it. As I glanced around at the eleven other emblems circling the room, most lit like mine, satisfaction coursed through me. Most of these signs had been dark when I’d first come to the sanctuary, dead like Stryker’s. The troop had been systematically “depleted” by the Shadows…Zane’s fancy way of saying murdered. But we were back up to ten members now: the Libran sign waiting for Marlo to mature enough to undergo metamorphosis, and for Tekla to either take up the Scorpio sign or pass it on. So far she’d refused to do either, and Warren seemed content to let her contribute solely from within the sanctuary.
I pressed the button next to the slats just below my sign, and spoke my password clearly and directly into the opening. Nothing happened.
“Wha-?” I slapped my palm against the metal panel, and cursed. “Not again.”
Repeating my password met with the same results. I sighed. The panel, actually a door, and the words, really a combination, were the only thing between me and the panel’s contents. Sometimes I hid things in there, and every once in a while I opened it to find a gift-some small trinket like a photo or article of clothing-though nobody could explain how or when it’d gotten there.
More often than not, however-especially lately-this happened. Which meant it now contained some important object, one that would eventually be helpful to my fight in the Shadows, if only I could get to it.
I went ahead and pushed the disks I’d carried with me through the slats, waiting to hear them thunk to the ground on the other side. I was met with only silence. “What kind of superhero can’t get into their own locker?” I muttered blackly, jiggling the latch below.
“Try giving it an offering.”
I turned to Marlo, who was busy spoiling the cat splayed on a stamped concrete star. She’d kept her distance, but was watching me carefully. “Sorry?”
“An offering,” she said, standing, wiping cat fur off her black trousers. “They can be testy sometimes. You might have to bribe it.”
“I’ve already put something in there.”
“Yes, but that was probably to keep it safe, right?”
“That’s what a locker’s for.”
She shook her head. “You need to give it something that’s the opposite of safe. These things are tools. You must be approaching a growth spurt in your education. Feed it something it can use to assist you in the future, and it’ll trade you whatever’s inside for that info.”
I’d have to go back down to the barracks and find something there. “I don’t have anything.”
“Here,” she said, turning away. “Try this.”
I watched her stride over to the Libran locker, and cocked my head. “You have a locker already?”
“Yeah…sort of. Well, no. It doesn’t really lock yet, or recognize my imprint, or respond to my voice…” She ducked her head like she was afraid I’d laugh, but I didn’t. I knew just how she felt. She pulled out a pad of paper and a pen from a duffel bag at the foot of her locker, and handed them to me. “So, anyway. Just write something about yourself and stick it in there, but make sure it’s something you wouldn’t want anyone else to know. Maybe a secret hope or desire. Something worthy of trade.”
“Worthy of trade,” I repeated, looking at the pad she’d pressed into my hand.
Her head bobbed rapidly. “Whatever’s in there is important enough that you have to work for it. The harder it is for you to access, the more useful it’ll be to you later.”
“Then why make it so hard to get?” I muttered.