Indigo(29)

“Bad choice, lady.”

“No choice.” The note of regret in that voice didn’t keep the woman from coming for Indigo like a cat stalking a mouse.

Indigo didn’t like the idea of being the mouse in that scenario and moved in hard and fast on her enemy. Shadows wrapped around her fists and she struck four rapid blows, each aimed at the woman’s rib cage.

None of them connected. The blocks were hard sweeps of hands and forearms that knocked the attacks aside, and before Indigo could recover, the older woman had struck her twice in her stomach. Neither blow was devastating, but they kept Indigo off-balance. The assassin slammed a knee into Indigo’s abdomen hard enough to make her stagger and cough as she wrapped shadow tendrils around the woman and hurled her against the wall, shattering the filthy tiles that made the subway steps look like the entrance to a public bathroom.

Indigo caught her breath as the shadows around her faltered. She started down the steps toward her enemy and tried to remember how to breathe past the pain. The assassin had slid down several steps, but now she sprang up again, hatred in her eyes.

“Did you think you could walk the earth and no one would know?” the woman sneered. “That no one would try to stop you?”

“Can you translate that babble for me?” Indigo’s body ached in ways she hadn’t known were possible, but not enough to distract her from the nonsense words of her attacker. Whatever she was talking about, the words didn’t sound like the usual Children of Phonos screed.

“When you fall into hell, tell them Selene sent you.”

Selene?

The woman ran up the steps, leaped onto the handrail, and launched a kick that forced Indigo to dodge, caused her to stumble, bought the assassin a precious moment of advantage. The first blow struck Indigo in the skull and had her wobbling. The second caught her just behind her ear and made her see lights.

The third she stopped with a coil of shadows. It was close. Indigo’s entire body was shaking. The darkness gathered her in comfort. Early afternoon in New York, but here in this rare private moment, no one had yet noticed two women trying to kill each other. That wouldn’t last. Any second now someone would come up or down these stairs and would find themselves in danger. Indigo couldn’t allow that. This had to end now.

She reached out a hand and forged a sword from the shadows. “I don’t know who you think you’re fighting, and I don’t know who sent you, but I think maybe you’re as confused as I am. You caught me off guard. Come at me again, and I will cut you in half.”

The assassin paused, brow knitted in confusion. She stared at Indigo as if searching for some deception, then Selene took a step backward.

“You’re not him,” she whispered, seemingly to herself.

“Hell, lady, do I look like a ‘him’?”

Selene took three steps down into the station. “What does this mean?” she said, glancing around at nothing. When she glanced up at Indigo again, her eyes glittered with dark intellect, as if she’d just experienced an epiphany that had enraged her.

“I suspect we’ll meet again,” Selene said. Then she turned and raced down the narrow stairs and vanished into the subway’s darkness.

Indigo watched her go. “Oh, I can’t wait.”

Laughter bubbled down the steps from above, echoing off the tile walls. Indigo drew the shadows around her and hid as a pair of college-aged women passed her, descending into the station. She ought to follow them, ought to have followed Selene, but she couldn’t imagine herself jammed onto public transportation right now. Not when she had another way home.

She felt as if she were falling, and for once she let herself go. Her body knew where it wanted to be, her unconscious mind did the work for her. She slipped from the gloomy subway stairwell to a pool of darkness outside her own apartment, where the landing light had burned out, and Indigo became Nora again.

Her key was already in her hand.

The door opened and swung inward with a creaking of hinges, and Nora stepped inside, staring at the little studio as if every solid thing were now in doubt. This was her apartment, okay, but who the hell was she, really?

And if the woman who’d kicked the shit out of her had really been a Phonoi assassin, then why hadn’t she finished Indigo off when she had the chance?

Nora’s mind had already been reeling, but now she was more confused than ever.

What is happening to me?

She paused a moment to listen, as if she expected Indigo to answer. As if Indigo weren’t just herself, cloaked in shadows. Her gaze fell on the cats’ bowls lined up in the tiny kitchen. Where were the Assholes? She remembered wondering last night, before she’d rushed up to Shelby’s apartment and then … blacked out, or whatever, until she came back to awareness at work this morning. What kind of person was she if she didn’t even take care of the three animals she’d adopted? Maybe I’m not a person at all, she thought, and that was so terrible that she shut the thought down completely.

Nora forced herself to search. She was aware that despite all the people she—No, Indigo!—had killed in the warehouse, she would feel that she had gone past the point of no return if she had killed Red, Hyde, and Kelso. With shaking hands she began to move items around, looking for the cats. She even lifted her mattress, which was crazy. But she’d gone far beyond crazy, now.

Then she heard a little noise. It was undeniably a cat noise, and she even recognized that it came from Hyde. She sagged with relief. With faltering steps she followed the sound to the tiny galley kitchen. The storage space below the cooktop had a sliding door. Now that she was right in front of it, she could hear scratching. Nora slid the door open, and three insane cats rushed out in the blink of an eye.