"Don't need no ambulance."

I pushed the emergency b.u.t.ton. "You need a doctor."

He just looked at me and grinned, still sprawled on the gravel like some beat-up and forgotten doll. I waited for a dial tone, the emergency operator, for anything that would connect me to someone who could help, but the phone had gone dead. It must have broken when I'd dropped it.

I looked at the vagrant and knew I couldn't move him, but I couldn't leave him there either. I'd never leave someone else helpless and vulnerable, alone in the desert. "I'm going to drive my car over, and we'll find a way to get you in, okay?"

"No, no. I'm a quick healer," he said, and just like that the leg beneath him straightened with an audibly sickening pop. "See?"

I didn't. I thought I might vomit, but I didn't see. "Let me get my car anyway."

Ignoring his protests, I jogged back to the car and slipped into the seat. Then I pulled alongside the man, who was now, amazingly, sitting up, and-careful not to bean him in the head-pushed open the pa.s.senger door to view him through the other side.

"Told you I heal quickly," he said, waving at me with a hand that was broken just above the wrist. The torque of the movement was nauseating, but not as much as the way he suddenly jerked the arm upward, snapping it back in place. We both stared at the arm, poised midair. Then he gave me a little finger wave, grinning. "Bet you can't do that."

I opened my mouth but nothing came out. The wrist, obviously healed and fully functioning, appeared as good as new. That's when I realized the dusty ground, the man, and even my car, were as dry as they'd been before the accident. There were no body fluids or blood; no urine released as battered muscles convulsed then went lax with injury. I glanced from the wrist into clear eyes that watched me intently, corners crinkled in a knowing smile.

"Uh..."

Stepping from the car, I watched from over the hood as he slowly straightened. He was still bent at the waist, but he'd been stooped like that back beneath the underpa.s.s and appeared otherwise fine. Which brought me back to my original question. How had he gotten here?

"How-How..." It was about as much as I could manage, and I had to settle for the truncated version. "How?"

"I told you. Quick healer. Like you." And he began to walk away.

I put my hand to my cheek, where he'd pointed. It was the one Ben had touched, the one that had been bruised and tender. I frowned. The soreness was gone.

"Sir, come back." I rushed to catch up. "What's your name?"

He doubled over instantly and began to laugh; maniacal, breathless spasms rocking his body back and forth while tears streamed over his grimy cheeks. I looked around to see what was so funny, and came pretty quickly to the conclusion it was me. His laughter broke off into wracking coughs, and he bent over, hacking away. I pounded on his back, trying to help.

"You ever read comic books?" he asked, straightening suddenly, all signs of ill health vanishing with the movement.

I wiped my hand on my pants. "You mean like Donald Duck?"

"I mean like Superman, Wonder Woman...Elektra." He said this last word with all the panache of a seasoned lounge act, fingers splayed in the air with theatrical introduction.

"No." This whole conversation was getting stranger by the moment. I took a step back, muttering to myself, "What do I look like? An adolescent boy with cystic acne and bondage fantasies?"

"Not fantasies," he said, overhearing me. "History. Research. The truth multiplied by the collective consciousness equals fact stranger than fiction." He began chuckling again.

"Sorry?"

"I'm a superhero!" he announced, raising his arms like a compet.i.tor in Mr. Olympia. "Hero to the superheroes. Command leader of Zodiac troop 175, division of anti-evil, La-as Vegas!"

After what I considered an amazingly brief period, I closed my gaping mouth. I even formed words. "I really think you should get in the car, sir. I'll pay for an exam."

"You're sweet," he announced to the desert, grabbing my arm. "So sweet. So good. One of the good guys. Like me."

Yeah, I thought. Just like you. "Ah, look. At least let me take you to the shelter. They'll give you food. You'll have a place to stay for the night."

"Day is night and night is day in this, your city, your home," he said, pointing back toward the neon lights. "Vampires, if they existed, would love it here. Cats too." He craned his neck at me pointedly. "It's a great place for all nocturnal hunters."

"What did you say?"

"I said hunters. Like you. Like me too, because I found you." He jumped, performing a dusty heel click. "Eureka!"

Now, getting run over by my Jaguar XK8 coupe could hardly qualify as a discovery, but I wasn't going to argue the point with someone obviously suffering severe mental trauma. Then again, I thought, studying his lopsided grin, maybe I hadn't hit him hard enough. "Let me take you to the hospital. You really need help."

"Aren't you kind?" he said, tearing up, grasping my arm again. "Aren't you special? I can just smell the uniqueness on you."

I jerked away and stumbled as Ajax's short lesson on pheromones flashed through my mind. I was suddenly very aware I was standing in the middle of the desert with a complete-and, apparently, completely mad-stranger. "Look, mister, I don't know what you're talking about. There's nothing special about me. Got it? You just need help."

"You don't think you're special? How sad. So sad." He shook his head, and really did seem dispirited by the thought. "But you are. You have special skills. Warriors' skills. That's why you're being watched."

"By whom?" I asked, though I already knew of two people. Ajax. And Ben.

"Power is knowledge, and knowledge is power. Know thyself. All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing..."

I'd have sworn on my life Ben and I had been alone in my father's office, but we spoke the final words together. "...and a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

We both stared, the cold, dry night sharpening between us. He was no longer b.u.mbling about. And I was no longer feeling kind. "Where did you hear that?"

He tilted his head at my threatening tone. "You must develop your skills. Realize your potential. Your power, indeed, lies in your knowledge, but right now you know nothing."

I decided then I'd had my share of nutcases for one night. I turned my back and began to walk away. "You don't know me, old man."

His next words halted me cold. "You're Joanna Archer, sister to Olivia, daughter to Xavier and Zoe. You have a birthday tomorrow, midnight, an auspicious one..." He waited until I'd turned back. "Auspicious, that is, if you live long enough to see it."

And I was on him before I knew it, the lapels of his tattered jacket twisted in my fists, my face thrust in his despite the stench and craziness that lived there. "Who are you?"

He placed his hands over mine, and I felt the strength in them and was surprised by it. You couldn't tell by looking at him, and that was something I should have remembered. You could never tell who a person really was just by looking.

"Your second life cycle ends today. Tonight, Joanna." He lifted my hands from his lapels, gently, and returned them to my sides. "I've come to warn you."

I shook my head, and wrapped my arms around my body, but kept my eyes on him as I backed away. "You talk in riddles, old man."

"Ah, but you're a straight shooter, aren't you? An Archer, you are." He made a motion like shooting an arrow into the night, and tilted his head, considering me. "Not just a hunter, though. A target too. The hunter becomes the hunted."

The wind suddenly picked up, shifting so a breeze blew my hair across my cheeks, setting the hem of the man's trench coat fluttering around his ankles. He lifted his nose, and his nostrils drew wide, then narrowed again. "Smell that? They know you're here. But don't worry. They know I'm here too."

"I don't smell anything," I said, and I had no idea what he was talking about.

He tilted his head in that crazy way he had. "Because you haven't been taught to recognize their kind. Close your eyes and think of once living things decaying in the ground. A pet rabbit buried then unearthed after a week. Fungus rotting on overripe fruit. Hot sulfur rising from a hole in the earth to taint the wind. Now try again."

I turned my face into the wind just to humor him, and immediately caught a whiff of something that reminded me of sulfur. Possibly tin. A rusty can.

With the flesh of a long-dead animal sweating inside.

"Christ." It smelled like Ajax, and I turned my head away sharply, only to find the b.u.m regarding me solemnly. The look sent chills through my spine and into the soles of my feet. Someone this crazy shouldn't look so sane. I pivoted to leave. f.u.c.k this guy. He could just stay here with his riddles and delusions and rotting scents.

His voice rose, carried to me on the filthy breeze. "You were walking through the desert when you were sixteen years old, leaving your boyfriend's house in the early morning hours, smelling of pa.s.sion and love and hope, the same scent that clings to you tonight, in fact."

My heart was beating so hard I wouldn't have been surprised if it leapt from my chest into my hands. How did a homeless man who jumped in front of cars and smelled like a sewer know anything about my personal scent? How did he know about me? I turned to find him closer than I expected. So close I had to hold my breath.

"You were attacked by a solitary man who seemed to be everywhere at once," he continued, dark eye boring into mine. "You were raped, strangled, and left for dead. You awoke with a broken memory beneath the scorching midday sun, and no idea of who you really were. Your memory gradually returned, but you never fully recovered your burgeoning sixth sense. You mended your broken body and turned it into a machine, a weapon, a warrior's tool. Good thing too. You'll need it now."

"How do you know all this?" G.o.d, but I hated how small my voice sounded.

"I told you. I have my talents. You have others."

"You mean, like a superhero?" If that's what he thought, he obviously had the wrong girl; my life was a f.u.c.king soap opera, not a comic book.

The man pursed his lips and looked up as if reading the stars like a map. They were powerful pinp.r.i.c.ks this far out in the desert, brilliant and spearing sharply from the sky in the clear night. "I can't help you now, Joanna. It's too early by a moon's rise. I just came to warn you. If you survive, I'll be in touch."

Then he began trudging off in that halting gait, heading for the void of empty desert s.p.a.ce. But he paused a moment later, and for the first time his body language was uncertain. "Joanna?"

I stared back at him and shivered.

"Make sure you survive."

Funny, but that was the sanest thing I'd heard all day.

Sanity had been a relatively elusive state since my rape almost a decade earlier. The strange desert interlude with a man who had no business knowing about me brought back just how hard I'd fought since then for even a modic.u.m of normality...though I suppose the novelty of being threatened with a serrated poker might have had something to do with it as well. Either way, both strangers had talked openly about things that had gone unspoken in my family for years, chatting as easily about my patchwork past as if they were asking me to pa.s.s the salt...

What's wrong, Joanna? Seeing things that remind you of a sweltering summer night?

You were attacked by a solitary man who seemed to be everywhere at once.

You were beaten, strangled, and left for dead.

It was true, I had been. But as a rule-one meant to keep that hard-won sanity in check-it wasn't the truth I generally chose to concentrate on.

After the attack, after I'd healed about as much as a person can heal from such a thing, and after I'd spent nine months in hiding, I did eventually finish high school. I wasn't going to let myself be trapped, or further victimized by a man who'd already taken so much from me. My anger and fear were replaced by determination and the belief that just because someone tried to make you into a victim didn't mean that's what you had to be.

So I did normal things. I went to college, and majored in photography and art. I pushed my mind just as I pushed my body, stretching myself socially before I had a chance to freeze or petrify, and turn into something hard and brittle and dead before my time.

And I forgot, or told myself I forgot, about the child.

It also became important for me to escape Xavier's gilded cage, that architectural behemoth so falsely resplendent on the outside, but with the moldy invaders of sorrow and blame that'd moved in after my attack. So I lived in a dorm, I had a roommate who kept a record of the men she slept with on a wall calendar. I joined a sorority-okay, only for about a minute, but still-and I pushed myself to date, making sure my gut reaction, that first impulse to withdraw and automatically say no, was kept in check. That's when I made my rule: never say no. Of course, I sometimes cursed myself and the rigidity of that rule-I'd lost count of how many groping hands I'd had to wrest away-but fending off drunken frat boys was a cakewalk after what I'd been through.

And I'd been extremely careful not to wall myself off, which was why Ben's comments about hiding behind my camera had touched such a nerve. Okay, so I stalked the city streets when I should have been home preparing a meal for a husband and two-point-five brats. Big deal. But I'd found, in the shadows of this city-my glittering town of dollar buffets and neon dreams-a lack of judgment about such things as what was normal. When I took my camera to the streets, n.o.body cared about my past or my name. When I tiptoed through the shadows of ugly alleyways, looking into faces that stared fearlessly and openly back at me, I could stop striving and pretending to be whole. And I could just be whole.

But now some b.u.m who thought he was a comic book hero was telling me someone was going to try and attack me again. Worse, there were reasons, despite the man's incoherent rambling, to believe what he said. One, I already had been attacked. Pretty good sign. Two, our conversation had smacked of more than obscure riddles and hidden meanings. It'd mirrored Ajax's, if not exactly, then in word choice and content. They both claimed to know me from my scent. They both declared I was special in some way. They each said I was still being watched.

Thirdly, other than my name, family, and past, that scruffy, stinking vagrant had spoken of details n.o.body knew, some of which I'd purposely forgotten myself. The clincher was, he knew the words I used to describe myself, words that defined who I'd become, filling the holes left in my psyche by a young girl's inability to defend herself.

Weapon. Warrior. Hunter.

Because despite all my hard work to become a whole woman, and a relatively open one, I was still keenly aware that he-the attacker-had never been found. He never saw the inside of a cage...at least not for what he'd done to me. And he was still out there. I felt it in my ancient fractures. I heard his voice every time dusk set along the Strip.

But I had a place here; in this world, this city, these streets. I'd made it for myself through grit and determination, and I wasn't going to give it up now just because an anorectic psycho and some deranged b.u.m had knocked haphazardly into my life.

No, I swore, speeding home on the neon-slicked streets. Not me. Not without a knock-down, drag-out, f.u.c.k-you fight.

4.

The first thing I do every morning is make coffee, put on sunscreen, and take my birth control...the goal, of course, to be alert and protected at all times. Today I added a couple of aspirins to my caffeine c.o.c.ktail, showered away the stiffness from last night's train wreck of a date, and readied myself for a last minute meeting with the infamous Xavier Archer. His secretary had called just after eight to say he wished to meet with my sister and me, and though she asked my availability, I knew it wasn't a request.

I agreed to the afternoon appointment, then searched my closet for something Xavier might find appropriate, knowing, in truth, he didn't think it appropriate to be seen with me at all. I was a gross embarra.s.sment to him, for things I both could and could not control, and it was laughable to even try appeasing him, though long ago I had tried. By now it was just about keeping up appearances and playing the game.

As one might imagine for a gambling maverick, my father was big on games.

Comfort won out over making a good impression, and Isettled on a fitted T-shirt with three-quarter sleeves, stretch jeans, and my favorite leather boots-I'd already had them resoled twice-all in black. Throwing on a scarf and peacoat, I then drove the five miles from my modest tract home to my father's custom-built compound. You couldn't miss it. It took up an entire city block on the far west end of town. I was admitted by a guard with sideburns, large jowls, and a bodybuilder's physique-Elvis on steroids-and moments later pulled into the circular drive of a home more suited to the Cote d'Azur than the Las Vegas valley. On the way in I met up with Olivia.

Physically, my sister and I were opposites in all ways that counted. I sported a straight, uncomplicated chin-length bob, while she seemed to walk around in a perpetual shampoo commercial. My face, though unlined and fine-boned, was rarely made up, while Olivia regularly held court at the Chanel counter. Today she was also dressed in Prada pink-obscenely cheerful for the month of November-and flanked by her favorite accessory, her best friend, Cher. I sighed as I looked at the two of them standing together beneath the dome of the marble portico. They were like pastry figurines atop a wedding cake; just looking at them gave me a sugar high.

I lifted my hand to shield my eyes as I approached. "I think I just burned my retinas."

"Ha ha," Olivia said to me before turning to Cher, dimples flashing. "Joanna thinks being caustic makes her appear intelligent, not to mention morally superior to those of us with a Neiman's card."

d.a.m.n, that was a good one for a woman who'd once worn bunny ears and a fluffy tail.

"You know, it could just be the sun, Joanna, dear." Taking in my black-on-black ensemble, Cher snapped her gum loudly, also pink. "Olivia tells me you only come out at night."

"Only if there's a full moon," I replied, trying not to let it bother me that Olivia would speak of me to Cher at all. She and I had a long-standing enmity, born on the day we met, half a dozen years earlier. She was a southern version of Olivia, a sharp-tongued shrew in the guise of a belle, with a manipulative nature that would make Scarlett herself blush. She didn't take herself too seriously, which I rather thought a good thing, but she didn't take anything else seriously either, and that I just found irresponsible. She also had the ear of the woman I considered my best friend.

"Well, that explains your color, darlin'." Cher pressed a cool, bejeweled finger to my skin. When she lifted it, the color didn't change. She repeated the test on herself with more satisfying results.

"Touch me again and you'll lose your finger."

She lifted that finger to her lips and blew me a kiss.

I barely contained a snarl. "Flirting won't work on me, Cher. I don't have a p.e.n.i.s."

"Are you sure?" She smiled, lashes opening and closing like b.u.t.terfly wings, and before I could answer, turned away. "I'll be waiting for you in the drawing room, Livvy-girl. Don't forget, we have a date for high tea at four."

"It's a f.u.c.king family room," I muttered, watching until she disappeared from sight. I turned to find Olivia regarding me with sad eyes. "What?"

"Why do you have to take shots at her?" At us, said her expression.

"Easy target."