Fortunately, most of the time there was no disputing a star sign’s lineage; it went from mother to daughter, or if there was no younger female left, to the eldest son. But every once in a while a sign opened up with no obvious heir, and according to the manual, that’s when things got “interesting.”

I grimaced and flipped the page, remembering the way Warren’s mouth had curled when he spoke about the independents. Why did I get the feeling “interesting” was a euphemism for “deadly”?

I also had to wonder how my ascendancy into the Archer sign would be viewed by the star signs in his troop. If the Archer sign had been empty since my mother’s disappearance, might some of them liken my sudden appearance to that of a rogue agent? At the least, wouldn’t it be seen as “interesting”?

Not having these answers, and not liking the direction my questioning was taking, I quickly flipped that manual shut and picked up another. This time I ignored the chronological ordering and just snagged the one with the best-looking superhero on the cover, shoving the rest back into my pack. Stryker, it was called. Agent of Light.

“Stryker is striking,” I murmured, settling back. The rating on it was PG-17, and I could see why; leather clung to the man’s thighs, snug in all the right places, and a loose-knit cashmere sweater revealed tremendous biceps…as well as the glyph pulsing like a heartbeat on his chest. It was, in fact, pulsing on the page. Though no expert in astrology, I thought it might be the glyph for Scorpio, the sign and month before mine. Stryker was holding what I assumed to be a weapon, bent like a crossbow, but with a chain attached. Its use was totally unfathomable to me.

“I’d be willing to find out, though,” I said, my eyes grazing his figure again. Note to self: side benefit of being a superhero? Getting to know other superheroes.

I paused as my eyes caught the author’s name stretched across the top band in black stencil. Zane Silver. The same Zane who worked in the shop? I wondered, before my eye caught the second name illustrated there. Carl Kenyon, penciler.

“Wookie-boy?” I wondered aloud, shifting so the comic was lit from the streetlight above the store.

Ten minutes later I had a tenuous grasp on some of the events that had plagued me recently. I followed Stryker—a character, or a real person?—through a series of events leading to his metamorphosis. He’d been taken to an empty warehouse on Industrial and Pollack, and was surrounded by eleven other men and women, though it was difficult to tell one sex from the other. Each person wore a loose-fitting robe, white and dotted with what I took to be golden-threaded constellations.

“Nice job, Carl,” I said, placing a finger on one of the sparking star clusters. It pulsed warmly beneath my hand. I smiled and continued reading.

“Your first life cycle ended at puberty, and the second ends tonight.” The words bubbled up from a man who looked suspiciously like Warren. Only it couldn’t have been Warren, I thought, tracing the image with my fingers, because Warren had never been this clean-shaven. “To enter the third life cycle, you must go through metamorphosis and be willingly initiated into the seventh house of the Zodiac, under your mother’s sign of the Scorpio. Do you accept?”

“Crap dialogue,” I muttered. “Who wrote this shit?”

“I accept,” Stryker said with dignity befitting the gravity of the ceremony. “As my mother did before me.”

“And you do so of your own free will?” the man asked, a slash of lightning outside the warehouse sinking him into silhouette. The storm clouds, I knew, were gathering outside. I could almost hear them erupting in my head the way they’d once erupted around and above Olivia’s apartment.

“As my mother did before me,” Stryker repeated, inclining his head. Behind him the windows had begun to streak with rain.

“At least you knew what you were choosing,” I muttered, turning the page. A shaft of light shot up from the pages. It was like a paranormal pop-up book! The manual trembled between my fingertips, and the words, panels, and dialogue bubbles dissolved in an explosion of thunder. I watched as Stryker was pummeled by the same force that had entered me not long ago, dropping him to his knees and turning him into a helpless supplicant. The other star signs made a tight wedge around him—their bodies shown from above to create the symbol of his star sign—Stryker at the center. The book was more of a screen now, revealing images that flashed and burned away in turn, only his bright star immobile in the middle of the page.

There was a crack so great it shook the pages between my fingers. I almost dropped the whole thing as the sound of the sky rending in two joined the stabbing light, and with it a cry as horrible and intensely feral as I’d ever heard.

“No!” I heard a voice, perhaps Warren’s, scream in response.

The symbol was broken, its bright points—the other agents of Light—splintering and turning outward to face an invasive red glow. I couldn’t follow, the action was too chaotic and confused; like I too was caught in the turmoil. Blows rained down around my head, the air filled with words I’d never heard before…nd screams I wished I hadn’t. Every so often the action would slow, like a tape being caught in a recorder, and a clear image—one more reminiscent of a traditional comic—would pause, burning on my retina, before being swallowed again into chaos.

I saw Warren slaughter a man with nothing more than a rope and his fists.

I saw Micah use his surgeon’s hands to slice first the scalp and then the face from an attacker’s falling frame.

And I saw, with a sort of disbelieving numbness, the man who’d attacked me as a teen. A name bubbled up through the air in long capitalized letters—JOAQUIN, followed by SHADOW AQUARIAN—then it popped, the lettering cracked into shards and shooting out beyond the confines of the pages, gone.

“Joaquin,” I said aloud. I knew him. I knew the look of death on his brow.

And I knew, as I turned the page, that he would kill Stryker.

And there he was. Gorgeous and helpless and immobile in the center of this maelstrom, his head grasped between Joaquin’s large hands. The Shadow Aquarian began to pull, and I watched, horrified, as the strong but tenuous cording in Stryker’s neck stretched, the tendons beneath straining, a cry catching in his throat. Then, in what seemed like slow motion, his flesh gave. A horrible gurgle was yanked from a newly rent hole in that throat, and his head, popping, was hauled from his body. The light in the center of the page blinked out and was no more. The red glows dissolved and were simply, suddenly, gone. And the cacophony of martial voices died until there was only one.

A woman, dressed in the same robe as Stryker’s, rushed forward and sobbing, lifted Stryker’s head—just the head—into her lap. It lolled there, and she bent to it, crying and stroking his hair. I could see the familial resemblance through the tears and faint lines webbing her face.

Our lineage is matriarchal.

“God.” Unable to bear the scene any longer, I turned the page.

The woman was still there, but she was standing now, fists clenched, eyes burning, her shift sodden with her son’s blood. “There’s a traitor among us,” she said in a destroyed voice.

Jesus, I thought, slamming the comic book shut. This was a Light comic?

And was that what I was up against? Beings who appeared out of nowhere to rip heads from bodies? Off of superheroes?

“Ex-Excuse me.” Jolted, I looked up to find the photo clerk staring at me, eyes wide, face pasty, a scattering of photos at her feet. She swallowed hard, and I didn’t have to wonder how long she’d been standing there. “Th-These are the f-first few. I thought you might want them immediately.”