Darkside Sun (13 page)

“I think we both know you don’t need that knife to hurt me,” I said, my chin quivering.

He sighed, and this one sounded like it hurt. “I think maybe Sophia was right. I need to change my methods with you.”

“What does that mean?”

He shook his head as if trying to dispel some unwanted thought that haunted him. “Doesn’t matter. I thought it would be easier on you if you knew less, so you wouldn’t worry about it until the time came. Most come willingly here, eager, because they see it as being part of something important, and they want to be important. I’m not sure what it is you want, but it’s not power or status or anything so cold as that.” He tipped his face up in line with mine, then, and his features were softer, welcoming. “What is it you want, Addison? How can I convince you that this is your destiny, maybe more so than the rest of us? I need—I mean
we
need you with us.”

I blinked at him, afraid to believe the man before me. He seemed too real, too genuine, too … unsociopathic-like. Since I had no answers for him, I asked a question of my own. “How do you just turn off the coldness like that? Ten seconds ago, just the look on your face made my belly tight, and not in a good way, and now … now you just look sad. I want to believe you’re my safe place, but if you can flip your own switch like that, you’re probably a really good liar.” I shrugged, wiping away a fresh tear rolling down my cheek. “Not that it matters, I guess. You’re going to do this anyway, and if this really is the only way I can make sure Dad doesn’t get eaten by a wraith, then I don’t have any choice. Besides, ants don’t get much say in what boots do to them.”

His gruff chuckle gave me a case of the shivers. “I think you give yourself too little credit. You’ve been seeing black holes in your ceiling since you were six. Even then, standing there in Mrs. Clancy’s class, you knew the others wouldn’t understand. They couldn’t sense what you did, and you knew not to scare them. You were terrified, yet you kept going, kept surviving. You are a resilient woman.” He gave my hair a playful tug, then watched it slide through his fingers.

When I finished preening at his shocking praise of me, I asked, “Wait, how do you know that? You talk like you were there. But if that was true, then you wouldn’t have had to ask me when I started sensing the rifts back in your office. And you wouldn’t have been surprised that I could see them.”

His smile turned sheepish. “I’ve been keeping an eye on you for a long time. I used my initial question to ease you into the conversation. As for the seeing, I couldn’t see them and I never could understand why you always looked up when I felt the cold coming on. I just thought it was habit.”

He’d been watching over me? A nice warm tingle spread through my chest, and I couldn’t help but smile back at him. “So how did you find me the first time?”

“I think our founder led me to you all those years ago so I could eventually bring you here. Your spirit rippled through the Shift and demanded my attention, like the scent of a warm apple pie drawing me to a window—which has never happened before. I can manipulate the Shift in ways others can’t, so I kept the wraiths away from you as much as I could, but with the increasing number of them, I wasn’t always there.” He wrung his hands together. Did he want to touch me again? “Our founder, or the Shift, or whatever it is that makes this all possible, wants you in the Machine. That’s what I told the Colonel that changed his mind. I kept it from all of the other guardians because I had the feeling I was supposed to. I also had the feeling that day in the lecture hall that the time had come to bring you in.”

I considered questioning his “feelings,” but since I had a few of my own, I shut up. “But why not let me finish school? And where is this founder person? Or if it’s the Shift that was guiding you, how can false realities lead you anywhere?”

“I’m not sure how to explain.” He stared at the floor for a second before continuing. “I don’t think the Shift is just a bunch of empty worlds. I think it’s tied to our founder, sentient somehow, and I also think it gave us our abilities. The founder doesn’t speak to me, but I get these urges to do things and go places.” When he met my gaze, a sense of purpose had settled into his posture. “The wraiths have been getting more brazen. They used to come through once in a while, and usually in the same places where they’ve already weakened the veil. Now they’ve started coming through all over the world in new places, spread out to make it harder for us to hunt them. They’re getting smarter, and I’m afraid if we don’t step up our game, they’re going to figure out how to combine their energy to bring down the entire veil all at once. Something terrible is coming, Addison, and I think the Shift wants you here for it—that urge to bring you here was so strong I couldn’t deny it. You are the key to our survival—and everyone’s survival for that matter—I know it.”

My pulse took off at a trot as I let that sink in. “But I could never kill someone, no matter what urges you or this Shift thing have. You can threaten me all you like, but I won’t do it.”

“I’m not sure what your role in the Machine will be, but my gut tells me you will be something extraordinary. Sixty-five years ago, the Machine was all but wiped out when a traitor somehow locked up most of the guardians in one place together and fed them to the wraiths. Only a handful of soldiers survived, who then had to cleanse the Machine. All of our knowledge was lost, most of the pages ripped out of the bible. We were broken, and we still are. If we don’t start becoming more efficient at sending the wraiths back to the other side, we’re going to be overrun, and soon. The Colonel said you may be the cog that makes me—
us
work again, and I’ve had that feeling all along.” He cleared his throat, taking interest in a crack in the floor.

Had that just been a slip of the tongue? What was I to him? Probably nothing. I wasn’t sure what to do with his utter faith in me, so I considered what he said, even as farfetched as it sounded. “I don’t have the nerve to go hunting the wraiths—my dive over the seats in the AL should have told you that. If it hadn’t been for Dad, I’m not sure I’d have kept myself sane this long. How can I just walk away from him? It would break his heart if I just disappeared from his life like my mom did. And I’m just one person. What can I do?”

Asher sat in front of me, arms looped around his knees. It made him appear younger, more approachable, and I had a burning itch to rub my hands along the soft fabric of his pants. “What if you’re the one who stops the wraith who would go on a killing spree in your hometown? What if you’re the one who stops the wraith who would possess the military leader who has access to nuclear weapons?” He seemed to be urging me to extend that further, but the icy knot in my stomach kept distracting me. That could happen? How close had the human race come to being annihilated by the wraiths?

Could I make a difference? Glancing around the room, I noticed artifacts lining shelves everywhere. Did my fascination with old stuff come along with my curse? I didn’t really believe in destiny, but maybe the universe or the Shift or whatever force let me see the rifts had pegged me as a sucker and designed me for this. Could I really save Dad? Others? Maybe. I wasn’t brave, but I was resourceful.

Thinking about myself sitting in a cubicle crunching numbers always made me break out in a cold sweat. Thinking about hunting wraiths—notice I said hunting, not killing—gave me a little thrill of excitement. Weird. I didn’t know what it would mean for me. I couldn’t let myself think too hard about it. “I’m never going to be an accountant, am I?” I asked.

He laughed again, and it was a warm, inviting laugh that tickled me down to my bones. I could have shed my clothes and bathed in that laugh as if it were sunlight. He’d been gorgeous before in a deadly hands-off sort of way, but now he was real, touchable, and my heart gave a kick at the sight of his iced jade eyes bright with humor. “No, you’re not going to be an accountant. I think you’re going to be something much, much more.”

“Said the devil to the girl about to sign away her mortal soul on the dotted line.”

“Sorry to burst your image, but your ticket was punched a long time ago. Though, this life is far from hell.”

“If you say so.” I’d believe I’d be something more when I saw it. If I lived long enough to find out. For some reason, that didn’t scare me as much as it did half an hour ago. “Then I guess you’d better get this Cinderella ready for the ball, fairy godfather.”

He laughed harder, and I wasn’t scared anymore.

Chapter 14

Asher stood, brushed off the back of his pants, and offered me a hand up. I extended my gloved hand, startled by the strength in his grip. He pulled a little too hard, and I wobbled on the stupid heels, stumbling into him.

“Whoa,” he said, shooting his hands out to my waist to steady me. My palms pressed against his firm chest. His heartbeat sped as I tilted my chin up in line with his. We were so close his warm, sweet breath fanned across my lips. I watched a gauntlet of emotions flit through his spectacular eyes that seemed to glow brighter. Conflict, desire, fear, it was all in there.

He jerked away and went to the altar, moving the dagger to the far edge before pressing his fists down on the stone, head hung forward. He’d made space for me to be shackled there.

I suddenly remembered why I’d been afraid. I yanked the gloves off and smoothed my hands over the dress, but the fabric did nothing to soothe me. I’d have given anything for my blanket or … would he let me? “I’m still technically a regular mortal, right?” I asked. “I know I have to do this, but I’m still scared, and … you’re the only thing in this room that isn’t made of stone.”

After tonight, I’d never be able to touch him again. My heart hurt as I considered spending an eternity beside him and never knowing what his hair felt like in my fingers, or knowing the curve of his brow. “Just two minutes. Please?”

A small eternity passed before he straightened and stared at me as if I’d asked him for his soul. As I waited, his apparent fear made a shift to what I hoped was acceptance, and he came to stand before me. “If that will help you through this night, then I guess it’s not too much to ask.” One corner of his lips quirked. “You have thirty seconds to cop a feel, and then it’s show time.”

He agreed? I hadn’t really expected him to. I couldn’t seem to move, staring at the smorgasbord of tactile treats suddenly available to me.

“Addison,” he said, snapping me out of my ogling.

What the hell was I waiting for, Christmas? One step took me close enough that I could run my hands up his chest, mildly calmer. Leaving one palm to stroke down his arm, noting every bump of the embroidered runes, I raised my other hand to trace my finger over his brow, along his temple. His sentinel energy hummed beneath his skin, but it didn’t hurt or burn, only seemed to sink deep into me, inviting something in me to answer.

He clamped his lids down and took shallow breaths as I combed my fingers through the silk of his hair. A moan escaped both of us in unison. I had a little “knowing” of my own, that he could awaken me in more ways than one, and I could awaken him. He wanted me to, I knew it.

Inhaling his delicious spicy scent, I pressed my cheek to his, my hand sweeping around to grip his nape and get as close to a hug as I dared for. I sighed, melting against his warmth. Nothing had ever been as right, and if he ever let me go, nothing would be right again.

He trembled for a moment before a growl crawled up his throat, and he wrapped his arm around me, clamping me tight against him.

Oh. My. God. My whole body came alive with heat and wants that would have made me blush if I hadn’t been so caught up in the moment. If I died right this second, I’d go out full of bliss and without a regret in the world.

Making little helpless sounds, he snarled fingers in my hair and buried his face behind my ear. His hot breath fanned out across my neck and over my shoulder. Shivers started a non-stop parade down my spine and caused deeper places to stir, awaken, and beg for more.

He raised his hands to cup my face, that surge of power in him pulsing beneath his skin like a giant heartbeat. Those luscious lips smelling of coconut and mild hints of whiskey hovered a mere breath away from mine, his lids still sealed shut.

I waited in utter agony for him to close that last inch. This had been the most perfect moment I’d ever known, and even motionless in his arms, I felt right in my skin for the first time in my life. Right and real and … alive.

His trembling grew worse.

“Asher,” I whispered, starved of air and desperate to have more of him against more of me. “Please don’t stop now.”

He opened his eyes that had gone nuclear bright. Uttering a quiet roar, he launched away from me. While I tried not to cry out my disappointment, he cursed in a language that sounded Arabic of some flavor at first, but my mind translated it into the f-bomb. “What the hell are you doing?” he snarled. “I give you an inch, and you take a God damned mile.”

The heat switched from desire to fury in an instant. “Me? I just felt your hair and your jacket. It was you who went sprinting toward first base, not me. And why are you so pissed, anyway? I know you felt … what I did, and that you liked it. How can that be wrong? I don’t believe what Sophia said about Taka and that Holly girl. There has to be some mistake.” There had better be, or I was so screwed. I’d never been intimate with anyone. Without emotional attachment, it would be meaningless, so I wouldn’t get what I needed from one night stands like the others did. Then again, I had just met Asher and knew almost nothing about him. Why was my connection with him so intense? And how could I just accept never feeling that again with him? I’d just tasted the hot fudge sundae; I couldn’t go back to eating vanilla ice cream. Or finding satisfying cuddles with my baby blanket, as it were.

“I was the one Taka called first.” Asher’s grief and horror carried in the words. Passing his accusing finger between the two of us, he said, “That can never be between us.” While his expression remained hard, I caught a note of regret in his voice.

How long had it been since he’d been touched that way? Looking like a dark God of war, he must have had mortal girlfriends along the way. He was a guy, and so I’d heard, they had some pretty big needs. So why did he seem so upset that we couldn’t be together? “Why do you sound like you’re trying to convince yourself of that more than me? I mean, maybe you can just leave me as I am. I’ll still learn and help you with the wraiths, and we could—”

“Stop, just stop!” He shoved his hair back. “You and I belong to the Machine, and every human being on this planet is counting on us to keep them off the endangered species list even if they don’t know it. There’s no room for personal wants. End of discussion.”

Perspective was a nasty bitch. Maybe he’d never been touched like that since coming to the Machine and I’d just reminded him of what he’d lost. Or maybe he’d gotten someone hurt along the way? Feeling like a dirt-bag, I said, “Okay. And I’m sorry if I stirred up any ghosts for you by asking you to do that for me.”

The crease in his forehead deepened. He turned on his heel and returned to the altar. “Forget it,” he said. “I mean that. It never happened. Let’s stop wasting time and get this done.”

Yeah, like I could ever forget that.

His fingers played over the jade handle of the dagger, reminding me why I’d been scared in the first place.

“Can you please tell me what’s going to happen? You keep telling me you’re not going to hurt me, but if that was true, you wouldn’t need a dagger.” I made myself get closer so I could see it better.

The knife appeared old and intricate. The handle turned out to be a stout man carved from jade. Mayan, I guessed. The blade had that scalloped look of something created before modern tools were invented, as if something had shaved away the obsidian until it held an edge enough to slice. “Why do you have a Mayan sacrificial dagger? And where did you get it? It looks pristine for something that has to be more than eleven hundred years old. If it’s real.”

He’d shut down to that cold, icy facade I hated, making me wonder if I’d imagined the last ten minutes. “It’s real. The Machine has had it in its possession for as long as I’ve been here. How they came by it, I’m not sure. That’s one of those bits of knowledge we lost with the pages of the original bible.”

I swallowed, afraid to know. “So what are you going to use it for? The book took blood from me to open, so I’m guessing the ceremony will involve that, too?” I shuddered, hard and violently. “I’m bad with blood and even worse when it’s my own.”

“There are two parts to the induction ceremony. The first is sort of a … tasting of the soul, of the mind. In non-guardians, we can easily tell if someone has been inhabited by a wraith, but if one gets inside of us, it has our knowledge and training. It can hide undetected except from the one who holds our baseline, which for you will be me. The second aligns your chakras to prepare your power to move from where it lies dormant in your soul up into your flesh so you can learn to wield it. It might take minutes or weeks for it to manifest. At that point, your body will stop aging.”

I ignored the aging part. “So you … what … take a look in my mental closet and take some sort of inventory so you’ll know if I’m infected in the future, because there’s something out of place?” How could he do that? Bumbling around life was embarrassing enough. Having him go skipping through my brain would no doubt turn up things that would mortify me to have him know. Would he know everything I’d been thinking while the man-handling-that-didn’t-happen had been going on?

He managed a weak smile. “You really are taking this well. Nobody else has ever asked about the ceremony before—they just went in blind. I’d imagine most wouldn’t believe it was possible and would be squeamish to share themselves so intimately with me.” His lids flared wide. “I just mean it’s intense and personal, that’s it.”

He just had to go and put the image of himself and me in a naked tangle of limbs on the altar into my head. “Oh, I’m squeamish, all right. In fact, I think I’d rather you were just going to stab me and call King Kong for his dinner than let you go spelunking in my head.”

“Your secrets are safe with me.” Stone cold man had returned, all business. “Knowing you this way will not only help me to make sure you’re unaffected in the future, but will also help me design your training to our greatest benefit.”

I hugged myself. “I believe in reality having sides and a flimsy piece of universe-fabric between them, but I’ve never been much of a believer in metaphysical stuff.” Metaphysics was just a fancy word for the stuff we couldn’t explain, natural magic, the workings of the mind and universe that defied the normal biological and scientific understanding. “It all sounds hokey to me, that you can somehow get inside my soul and wander around like a tourist at a freak show.”

He patted his left hand on top of the altar and re-palmed the dagger in his right. “Hop up here. I’ll try to explain until it begins, then you’ll understand without me saying a word.”

I hesitated, staring at the medieval shackles. “Are you really going to tie me up? Because I really, really don’t like to be confined anywhere. Knowing what’s beyond the veil, I don’t ever want to be locked up anywhere for any reason. Not to mention I’m pretty sure you’re pissed off at me and holding a knife.”

He groaned. “I’m not pissed, I’m just … never mind. The wraiths don’t know about this part of the Shift, and I need to confine you for your own safety and mine. I told you this will be intense, and I’m not exaggerating.”

I nodded, not really believing. “Okay. And you’ll let me out when you’re done?”

“Yes.”

Trying not to shake, I said, “Okay, I’ll do this without a fuss if you’ll promise me one thing.”

He raised a brow. “Ask, and I’ll consider it.”

“I need to see my dad, and stop scowling and let me finish. I need to explain to him in person why I’m dropping out of university. I can’t concentrate on this if he’s out there thinking I’m missing.”

Something passed over Asher’s features, sorrow or … something, but it disappeared as fast as it arrived. He opened his mouth, but shut it again, shaking his head. “We’ll figure something out, some way to give him peace of mind, and you, too. It’s the best I can offer.”

“You’re not taking my memory of him, so if that’s what you’re thinking, then forget it. I need to see him and know he’s okay. Promise me you’ll let me see him when this is over.”

He let his head fall back and stared at the ceiling. Maybe counting to ten so he wouldn’t yell at me. Had he been thinking of kissing me before? Or had it all just been a fabrication of my idiot mind? “I’ll take you to him myself, but you’ll tell him what I decide you’ll tell him and nothing more,” he said. “Understood?”

A giant knot untied from my soul, and I finally took in a full breath of air. “I guess that’s the best I’m going to get.”

“Up you go,” he said. “Let’s get this done before you think yourself out of it.”

I took the last step that put me right beside the altar and stopped. My breath shuddered out.

Curling his finger at me, he said, “Come around this side, and I’ll help you.”

My trembling started again as I rounded the table. The dagger wasn’t in his hand. I hadn’t seen him put it down, but I wasn’t sure I really wanted to see it right now anyway, so I let it be. When I reached him, he picked me up at the waist and plunked me on my butt on the stone. I squeaked.

He hissed out a sigh and retracted his hands as if I’d burned him. “It’s going to be fine, you’ll see.”

“Why do you say that like an invisible pry bar gouged those words out of you?” I giggled, too frantic to do anything else. I wanted to beg for another touch, but one glance at his tense form, and I decided against it.

“Lie down with your head this way.” Stepping left, he patted the place he wanted me.

I did as he asked, slowly. My muscles were all squirmy and didn’t quite work right. I misjudged the angle and speed as I reclined, and my head cracked against the stone harder than I meant it to. “Ouch.” I reached up to rub at it as Asher moved up to the edge above my head. “What are you doing? I don’t like you where I can’t see you.”

He took advantage of my arm stretched up while I rubbed my bumped noggin, tugging my hand back farther over my head and off the table. Something clanked and squeezed my wrist. “Sorry, I need to get you buckled in before your nerve breaks.”

I took quick, sharp breaths. I would not hyperventilate. “You say that like it’s inevitable, that I’m going to freak out.”

“Even the bravest of us don’t like to be chained up, Plaid. There’s no shame in that.” He’d gone back to using that stupid nickname. Fantastic. Maybe I had been imagining his enjoyment earlier, and he’d just been a guy starved for touch. Either way, he was right, I needed to forget it.