Hunter had been right about that. Right enough that I’d also begun to question the other theory he’d so desperately put forward…that I wouldn’t have ever let Regan near Ben if I’d really loved him.
“I do love you,” I repeated, as if he’d heard the thought and I had to argue against it. “But no matter what’s going on inside of me-this war of Shadow and Light-some things just need to be a little more black and white.”
I packed him up in the Porsche then, and drove to the Bonanza underpass, where I’d asked Warren to meet me. As I pulled to a stop along a clearing next to the Art Deco bridge, I saw Micah and Gregor exchanging looks. They scented the mortal. They said nothing as they lifted Ben from the car and loaded him into the back of Gregor’s cab. It was fast, less than thirty seconds. He was with me, then he was not, and I was left staring blindly in the direction the cab had sped off.
“I didn’t give up on him, you know,” I told Warren, as he came to stand beside me.
He put a hand on my shoulder as cars raced beneath the underpass, engines both hollow and loud, exhaust choking me and making my eyes water. “I know.”
I turned to find him watching me with a kind sadness, like he really did understand the final act in a long goodbye. “He’s a good man. He just needs to remember it.”
Which could only happen if he forgot the rest-a man named Magnum, a woman named Rose. A girlfriend who was also a superhero. I knew now that mortals had no place in our world. One disturbing conversation with Regan’s father had taught me that.
So I wished goodness for Ben, so much so that I was willing to let Micah rewire large chunks of his memory and restructure his neural architecture so that Ben’s original personality could rise to the forefront of his mind. He wouldn’t be the boy I fell in love with, but he’d have a chance at becoming the man he would have been if horror and savagery hadn’t entered his life. And that’s who I wanted him to be. Unscathed. Unharmed.
An innocent.
“You knew it would come to this, didn’t you?” I whispered, swaying slightly in Ben’s wake, his sudden absence devastating, even though he was still alive. At least he had a better chance of staying that way now. “That’s why you didn’t pressure me.”
A half-dozen cars raced by before he answered. “I didn’t want you distracted.”
That made sense, I thought, turning to head back to my car parked on the shoulder, in the shadows. Then I paused, lifted my gaze from the concrete, and felt Warren hesitate behind me.
I whirled suddenly, not caring who saw it or what someone might make of Olivia Archer kicking the shit out of some homeless guy underneath a concrete bridge. But Warren blocked my fist, grinned apologetically, and blocked again.
“Joanna,” he chided, sounding disappointed with my predictability.
“How long have you known?” I said coolly.
“You mean what the doppelgänger was? What she wanted? Who was behind it?” He smiled, and I thought of hitting him again, but knew he’d be expecting it. “Since her appearance in the sanctuary for sure, but I suspected it as far back as our talk in the warehouse.”
Up in the crow’s nest, where he’d already been trying to convince me to release Ben.
“How? What tipped you off?” Why didn’t you tell me?
“For one, you couldn’t describe what she smelled like. Yet when we encountered her I realized she smelled exactly like you.” No agent could smell themselves. The inability was an evolutionary defense, though this time it’d been a liability. Warren went on, obviously relieved now that he could speak of it. “Then, in the sanctuary, she used a nickname on me that only Zoe had known. Once she fled I also realized she’d been less physically stable under the collective stares of the entire troop. She was morphing under our influence, which told me she didn’t leave because she was afraid of us, merely because she couldn’t become you in our presence. The Tulpa too has trouble materializing under the influence of multiple stares and expectations.”
I felt my face crumple with confusion. “And you didn’t help me?”
“It wasn’t my help that was needed.” The calmness in his voice didn’t transfer to me. Instead it infuriated me, driving home how at odds his personality was with his deceiving appearance. He looked like a have-not in a city built for the haves, and beneath that, a leader bowing to the wishes of his troop. But looking even deeper, I saw the craftiness accompanying his words, his every act. “I needed to stay out of your way. I cleared a path by ordering Chandra to let you go out alone, then I sent you out into the world so Zoe, or her creation, would continue to reach out to you.”
He sounded so fucking proud of it. “You used me as bait.”
“It was necessary to see if she’d contact you.”
Yes, but would you have let her eat my heart if it came down to that?
“It was ruthless.”
“She was getting desperate.”
And it was telling that he didn’t know I was speaking about him.
“What about the mask? Did you know what it could do as well?”
His pride, even his features, sank at that. “Of course not. I really thought we’d stolen that mask out from under his nose. The visions of victory seen by our troop while wearing it made me believe it was the tool allowing the Tulpa to anticipate and counteract so many of our actions.”
Our visions of victory?
What about my visions? Or didn’t I count because I was still part Shadow?
“You fucked up, Warren,” I said, wanting to be hurtful and harsh.
“Big time,” he freely admitted, which pissed me off all the more. I held my breath, bottled my emotion, and looked away.
And after a minute, I softened. I knew as well as anyone that we all acted from the information we had at the time. The thing that made us most like the mortals we sought to protect was that despite our abilities and powers, we could still only choose rightly, work blindly, and hope for the best. My own actions-seizing the kairotic moment-had required not the work of the body I’d honed for years in anticipation of physical battle, but faith, and the work of my soul.
But as for Warren…
“You let me keep Ben,” I said in a whisper, “merely so I wouldn’t be distracted.”
It meant he’d have taken Ben from me earlier if it wouldn’t have interfered with my focus on the doppelgänger.
“I bought Skamar time to form, to contact you, and gave you the opportunity to bring the third sign of the Zodiac to life. Of course that backfired a bit. The Tulpa couldn’t wait for you to act, so he began to draw on his mortal beards for more power in tracking and fighting the doppelgänger.”
“Like Xavier,” I said, remembering the thin frame on the giant man.
“How is Mr. Archer these days, anyway?”
I looked at him sharply. So he knew I’d gone to check. Warren always knew far more than he ever let on. Why hadn’t I kept that in mind?
“Better. Still an ass.” And undergoing his own metamorphosis. Xavier Archer appeared to be giving Howard Hughes a run for his reclusive billions. He wasn’t even leaving his house for meetings anymore. But I pushed that concern out of my mind. “He’s not my responsibility.”