Darkside Sun (12 page)

Chapter 13

Marcus sighed. “Fine, I concede that she has spectacular potential if she has the favor of the book and can call the Shift even before being properly initiated. If she’s to be made Machine, then I’ll take her as my own.”

“This one’s mine,” Asher said in a near growl. “I will train her.”

Something shifted in Marcus. The boy next door disappeared into contained violence as he crowded Asher. Clearly my professor wasn’t the only one who had issues respecting others’ personal space. “I outrank you, sentinel,” Marcus snarled. “This isn’t some finders-keepers game you’re playing here.”

“You voted against. You gave up your right.”

“Enough.” The Colonel stepped in, and he finally stared directly at me, squinting as if unsure if he could trust what he saw. “We’ve not had an initiate fought over in all of my years, but there are rules in place for such an eventuality. Whoever draws first blood shall have her as his protégé. If she truly becomes a sentinel. It wouldn’t surprise me if she winds up a soldier like the last twenty we’ve found.”

“What?” I shrieked. “What is this, the freakin’ Roman Coliseum?”

Everyone moved back to leave Asher and Marcus in the center. Remy herded me back against the wall. “This get more and more interesting,” he said close to my ear, having to bend almost in half to reach it. “Kat look like she want to kill you.”

“Why?” I asked, because I agreed with his assessment of her death glare.

“Because Asher still her sensei even though her training done, an’ we all know he drop her to have you instead. She no get it. You a natural
wahine
, adorable, and she a blonde goddess in her own mind. Even though it obvious to a blind man you got Machine power twice us all.”

Something ugly twisted inside me as Marcus and Asher circled each other, having done nothing more than glare like lions over a kill. “Are they like … together? Asher and Kat?” I whispered to Remy. “But … how can they be a couple if they can’t touch?”

God, who cared? And why did it bother me so much, anyway? I certainly had no designs on the guy. He killed people, for crying out loud, but … maybe it was just that she was such a bitch, and I thought maybe Asher deserved a little better than her. Nah. What was I saying? They totally deserved each other.

“My brah not that stupid. Relationships are distractions, forbidden between guardians. And he have better taste than that.”

Relief warred with a slight stab of disappointment. “So they date regular people, then? But what about the whole immortality thing?” A shadow of fear crawled up from my depths, but I couldn’t let myself think about it.

“No dating long-term, but most have a mortal for a night to satisfy their lusts. If the Colonel find out someone getting attached to a mortal, both the guardian and the mortal are wiped clean of each other.”

No emotional attachments? Ever? What a cold, meaningless existence that would be. I knew there were more important issues on my plate, but my future non-love-life made for a good distraction.

Marcus launched forward as if turbo boosted. Asher dove right, rolled, and came back to his feet with more grace than I’d have managed if marionette strings had lifted me back up from that position. Roaring, Marcus swung his leg around, missing when Asher did a funky limbo move, a sort of bridge, his hands pressed into the floor above his head.

They continued the same way for minutes. Marcus attacked, and Asher avoided with amazingly creative moves that appeared to be a combination of martial arts, gymnastics, and strangely, some sort of modern dance. It was kind of beautiful, or at least, Asher was.

How had I gone from invisible nobody to having the two most attractive men I’d ever met fighting over me? Oh, right. It had nothing to do with me and everything to do with some sort of power trip to own the freak who could see dead things from an alternate reality. Silly me for forgetting. And not only that, but once they drew blood, something would happen to me. I’d become part of the Machine in some way. I’d be as lost and trapped as Kyle, who kept staring at me with haunted eyes.

I’ll become immortal.

No, I wouldn’t. So I didn’t have a perfect life, a strange, lonely life, but it was mine, and dammit, I would not give it up. Asher would listen to reason. He would.

As the two sentinels continued their battle dance, I realized Asher hadn’t thrown a single swing. Wearing Marcus down, I thought, before he made his strike. Smart, if you had the patience for it. Whatever gave Marcus a higher rank, it had nothing to do with his fight moves. Asher had yet to make a sound, not even a grunt of exertion.

Something subtle shifted in Asher. Stance? Expression? Something had changed to make him appear more lethal. I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been watching so closely. When Marcus threw a punch, Asher stepped aside, grabbed his arm, and slammed his own elbow across the other sentinel’s back.

Marcus’s own momentum took him to the floor. A solid crack broke the silence. I knew the sound of a broken bone when I heard it. Sure enough, Marcus came up with a bloody nose, cursing a storm of words so vile and full of hate, it seemed to melt the air.

I had no idea whether to feel better Asher had won or to be more afraid. I was leaning toward afraid.

“Marcus,” the Colonel said, “return the Outfitter to the facility. The rest of you, go back to work, all but Remy and Taka.”

Taka, wasn’t that the sentinel Sophia had mentioned, the one who’d accidentally killed his girlfriend?

In small groups, they blinked out of the room while I tried to figure out which one of those who remained might be him. Marcus went to Sophia, who sneered at him. He stared long and hard at me, but I couldn’t decipher what was going on in that twisted mind of his. If he was still angry, it wasn’t at me. I thought maybe he was trying to figure out what I’d become and wasn’t sure he’d like someone else holding my leash.

“It’ll be all right, Addison,” Sophia said, though her wavering tone failed to convince me of what she promised. “I’ll see you soon, okay?”

Tears heated the backs of my eyes, but I held on to them so tight the muscles in my face hurt. I didn’t want her to leave me with the crazy, but I wasn’t about to beg, either.

Remy herded me back to Asher, the Colonel, and the tall Asian guy I assumed was Taka since he was the only one left with us that I didn’t know. His hair was that gleaming, glossy black, longer on top and shorter at the back. He seemed like a boy until you got a glimpse of his almond-shaped eyes. All of the sentinels appeared normal at a distance, but every one of them had the same glacial eyes full of lethal potential. A murder looking for a person to happen to.

I licked my dry lips and swallowed cotton from my throat. “How many people do you have to kill to get that look in your eyes?” I asked Asher, who couldn’t meet my gaze. “Like nobody’s home.”

“Enough it kill the soul,” Remy said quietly. “It diff’ for all us. For you, I think will only take one.”

“I guess we’ll never find out, then. I’d rather let some Bugman kill me than take someone else’s life.”

“You’ll understand soon enough that the time for choices is long past for you.” Asher nodded to the Colonel. “I’ll keep you updated on her progress.”

“Make sure she obeys, sentinel,” the Colonel said. “It would be a shame to waste this raw power simply because we were unable to tame it.” With that ominous comment, he disappeared into the Shift.

I wanted to ask what he meant by that. Couldn’t be what I thought it meant, that if I didn’t cooperate they’d kill me instead of just wiping my mind clean of them. I didn’t ask. Denial, sweet denial. Without acknowledging my desperate attempts to get him to look at me, Asher turned away. “Taka, Remy.” Those two words held command, sadness, and exhaustion. He didn’t like what was about to happen, but I had no doubt he’d do it anyway. “Bring her to the chamber.”

I didn’t know what the chamber was, but I sure as hell didn’t want to go there. Taka reached for me. In my state of panic, instinct sent my bare fist into his nose, my legs twitching to get me away from here.

Taka screamed into his hands, which he’d cupped around his now bloody nose. “How dare you touch me?” he mumbled around his fingers.

Oh, bloody hell. “You shouldn’t have tried to grab me. And I thought only prolonged contact could hurt you.” Didn’t I feel like a shit, saying that after knowing the ghosts I must have stirred in him?

“Marcus’s ‘rabbit’ nickname flawed,” Remy said. “I say she like the fox. Her instinct may be run, but once she inna a corner, she got plenty a teeth.”

“Idiot,” Asher barked at Taka, who cursed and moaned. Blood streaked down his black uniform. “Never mind. I’ll take her myself.”

Asher took my wrist from Remy, and my fear erupted at his touch. Even through the fabric, his humming energy called to me, threatening to open something inside of me. What would come out if that part of me answered his call? No, I didn’t want to know.

I jerked backward, breaking free of him. Strangled by panic, I only made it a few running steps toward the door before Remy snatched me up and clamped me to his ginormous chest. “Let me go, please!” A sob burst out of me as I kicked and bowed my back to get away, but he just held me tighter.

“Brah?” Remy said hesitantly. “May you give her a minute, yeah?”

Asher sighed. “Prolonging her wait isn’t going to help. This has to be done. You know it does.”

“Then why I feel sick while she cry?”

“Just bring her to me and go.”

Remy held me tighter for a few seconds before carrying me forward and setting me down. “Real sorry,
kolohe
. Like Sophia say, Asher take care of you. You see.”

“Liar,” I said, turning to watch him fade into the Shift while he stared at his giant shoes. When Asher grabbed my glove-covered wrist, I pulled back, ending up closer to him when he yanked me forward. “Don’t do this,” I said.

He met my gaze, his ripe with conflict as he squeezed my wrist tighter. “I have to. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry, too.”

Huh. For some reason I believed him. Not that it changed anything, not really, but I stopped fighting his hold on me.

When the great beating heart swelled around us, I closed my eyes, screaming inside my head as dizziness engulfed me. When the dizziness passed, he took his hand off me. “Now that you’re here, I’ve asked the Shift to keep you in this room until you’ve been initiated.”

Adrenaline burned through my bloodstream. Where had he taken us? What would he do to me? My inner chicken finally had enough when I found the nerve to crack a lid and saw the furniture in the new room solidifying around us.

The room had sacrificial chamber written all over it, with ancient carved circular rock walls, a stone floor with a drain in the center, shelves upon shelves heavy with old things I had no name for, and the last, a stone object I could only call an altar. Honest to goodness shackles hung from either end of it. A freakin’ altar, and me in my virgin sacrifice outfit.

Asher stood on the far side of said altar. Something glinted in his hand. He tried to slip it behind his back, but not before I made out the roughly honed glass blade of a ceremonial dagger poking out of his palm.
Oh, sweet Jesus.

“What are you doing with that?” I asked, my mind a snarled twist of oh-hell-nos. “You aren’t actually going to make me immortal, right? That’s just another way you’re trying to scare me.”

His head tilted forward, his dark hair sweeping down to shadow his eyes. “Come here, Addison.”

“I’m not just going to let you shackle me down and stab me. How can you just take my life away like this? I won’t survive being what you are. Why can’t you just teach me how to keep the wraiths away and let me go?”

Silence stretched through the dim room, thick enough to lean on. Asher stared at me, the ice in his eyes melting away to leave them conflicted. A low, heavy breath leaked out of him. He raised his hands out to his sides and slowly came around the table. His knife glinted in the single light shining down upon the altar, the blade made of black glass—obsidian? “You belong in the Machine, Addison. Your growing list of abilities has made me more certain than ever, not to mention you can see the wraiths when no others can. It’s in your blood, and even if I wanted to, I can’t change what you are with any memory-wipe. If you leave now, the wraiths will hunt you for the rest of your life and will use everyone you love against you. If the wraiths make a doorway out of you, this world will come to an end. And I know this whole scene looks frightening, but I’m not going to hurt you.”

I rushed left to keep the solid table between us, trying to ignore the weight he’d just placed on my shoulders. “Coming at me with a dagger is not the way to make me believe that.”

He stared at his hand as if surprised to find the dagger blade extending out of his fist. Slowly, he placed the knife flat on the stone and backed away, arms out. A cautious smile curled his lips. “Witty even under duress. It’s a useful skill in our line of work.”

“I don’t want to be eighteen forever.” And how could I survive without being able to touch anyone? Without touching
him
? Even now, with everything else I should have been thinking about, the need to slip my hands under his shirt rose to the forefront.

“I need you to listen to me, now.” He began a slow shuffle around the altar. “Your mind will still mature like everyone else, and if you have to choose an age to be stuck at, yours is a good one. And I’m really not going to hurt you the way you think I am.”

“You don’t pick up a dagger like that near a rune-covered altar with shackles on it unless you intend to carve me up like a sacrificial lamb, so cut the crap, Asher.” I palmed away the wetness from my eyes. “Teachers don’t threaten and kidnap and cut up their freakin’ students. I mean … you are a teacher, right?”

He stopped at the long side of the altar, hands flat on the surface. The muscles in his neck tensed a moment before he went over the top like a gymnast over a pommel horse. I pushed back hard, tripped on the heels, and landed on my rear. Unwilling to take my eyes off him, I crab-walked backward. My lungs refused to work, going into spasms as I kept trying to gulp air. I met with the wall hard, jarring my head up at a severe angle. Back pressed against the wall, I hugged myself as he came to crouch in front of me, hands out as if showing me he was unarmed.