Darkside Sun (15 page)

As gray ate the edges of reality, I wanted to tell him it would be all right, but I wasn’t sure it would be the truth. My vision narrowed to Asher who slumped over me, then slid down out of sight. He crashed to the floor, and I went tumbling, screaming into my own darkness.

Chapter 15

I groaned, too warm and snuggly in my favorite plaid comforter … wait, it didn’t smell right, like lavender or some perfumey flower instead of pine and the discount fabric softener we used at home. Definitely not mine.

“Wake up, sleepy head,” a woman said. I knew that voice, didn’t I?

I mumbled something incoherent with a throat gone dry as tree bark, blinking up at a blurred outline of … who?

“You’re in your room at the facility, Addison.” Sophia, yes, that was her name. “You’re dehydrated. If you can help me sit you up, I’ll bring a straw to your mouth.”

“Where …?” I managed before hacking on air-balls. I wanted to ask where Asher was and if he was okay, but it would have to wait until after the water. What had happened to us?

She slid her arm under my back and lifted. I didn’t have enough strength to do anything more than breathe. “This is an energy drink,” she said, bringing a straw to my lips. “Sip it slowly.”

I didn’t sip. I sucked and slurped like a starving infant, slopping the cold liquid down the front of flannel jammies that weren’t mine.

“Whoa, slow down girl. That’s enough.” The straw slipped from my lips, and I made grunts of protest. My mouth still tasted of sand and iron tang. Gross. “Is your throat better?” she asked. “I remember the morning after, and it sucked ass. When you think you can hold it yourself, I’ll bring you a Popsicle.”

The morning after what? There were so many words I could finish that sentence with. The morning after my mortal life ended and my new one began, whatever it may hold. The morning after I met the Mortal Machine in all of its non-touchy grouchiness. The morning after I’d been wrapped in Asher’s arms and had lived my remembered life with him. And we’d lived at least a portion of his together.

“What happened last night?” My words came out rasping like sandpaper over rough wood. “I remember lots of screaming, and Asher fell, I think. What happened after that? How did I get here? Is he okay?” A hard knot sat in the middle of my chest.

“I don’t know what happened. Remy showed up here with you two nights ago. You were covered in blood and out cold. Normally there’s not that much blood, and the initiate doesn’t pass out. They certainly don’t sleep for two days straight.”

“Crap, I’ve been sleeping here two whole days?” I found enough strength to pull the comforter up around my neck as I studied her for hints about what had happened. Dark circles bruised the hollows below her eyes. “Thank you for taking care of me. You look like crud. No offense.”

“I haven’t left you.” She drew her feet up onto the bed and hugged her bare knees. Each toe sported a different color of polish. Rainbow nails to go with her multicolor streaked hair tied up in a messy knot at the back of her head. If I’d been stuck in a gray prison for ten years straight, I’d have splashed on the color, too. “I remember waking up after my ceremony, feeling like poop, didn’t know where the heck I was. I was alone. I didn’t want you to be alone.” She shivered with whatever memory haunted her.

Thinking of the ceremony, one burning question rose and demanded an answer, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. “Am I a sentinel?”

She offered a sympathetic smile. “Your position and rank usually aren’t determined until after your training gets under way. Sometimes power rises and the eyes change immediately, others within a few weeks. It doesn’t seem to be an indicator of your rank, just different timing for every one of us, like puberty. Once your eyes come in, and your skills are assessed, then you’ll be assigned rank and position by the Colonel.”

I blinked at her, gasping in a breath. “You mean … my eyes will really change, like yours or Asher’s? But I have my dad’s honey-brown eyes.” I’d been so proud to have his and not my mom’s. I thought I should cry, but it wouldn’t come. I supposed part of me knew losing Dad’s eyes was a small price to pay if I could keep the wraiths out of our reality once I figured out how this whole Machine business worked.

“Sorry, Addison. The eyes always change; it’s just a matter of how much. Asher said it’s a reflection of the power that exists in our soul, awakened by the ceremony and the bible.” Hers were so pale and the green so slight… I wondered if that bothered her, but I didn’t ask.

Speaking of bright eyes … “Where’s Asher?”

She shrugged, staring at a thread she picked at in the comforter. “Nobody knows.” Her voice had fallen low, spoken into her knees.

“What do you mean nobody knows?” Had I hurt him somehow? Or was he angry for the ghosts I’d resurrected from his past? “Didn’t Remy see him when he took me from the chamber?”

A pause, then, “You’d have to ask Remy.”

Oh, yeah, something had gone wrong all right. “Can you please just tell me if Asher’s all right? That he’s not hurt?” I couldn’t bear the thought of him hurt. The emotion came raw and fierce, primal and deep, almost as brutal as the pain of his cuts on me with the dagger.

“No, he’s not hurt. At least, not the way you mean.” Her voice was utterly flat, hiding something, but what?

“Then why isn’t he here? He’s supposed to take me to see Dad.”

“Remy and I are supposed to take you once you’ve recovered enough.”

I wanted to yell at her, demand she tell me what the hell was going on, but she shrunk in on herself. “Has he forbidden you to tell me what’s wrong? Because I know something is—I just don’t know what or why.”

She shook her head, breaking loose a few aqua threads from her knot. “I can’t. Please don’t ask, because I don’t even really know, and even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to tell you.”

My stomach let its hunger be known to the room with a loud snarl.

“I’ll get you some soup.” She bolted for the door. “Be right back.”

Saved by the stomach.

I stared around at “my room” as she had called it. Mostly because I didn’t want to think about other things I should have been thinking about. Gray block walls. Drop ceiling, like the ones in most schools. Single bed in the corner of the dorm-sized space and a tiny chest of drawers beside it.

Home sweet home.

I missed my Mayan ruins poster and plaid comforter. Had Asher burned it all? Was someone else living in my dorm room now? Or was it still surrounded by yellow police tape?

“Welcome to your life, guardian,”
Asher had said.

Jesus, what had I done? Why, when Asher started talking to me like a human being in the chamber, did I just accept everything he’d said? That I was meant to be part of the Mortal Machine and become some badass chick guardian of the world?

I understood why when my mind stopped skittering around in my skull. Some corner of me, probably there since birth, had known what I would become even if I still didn’t. All of this, the sentinels, the rifts, the wraiths, the glowing tattoos, some part of me recognized them as normal, the way of things. So why wasn’t I braver? Why did fear still cling like a coating of tar to my soul, chilling it from the inside out? Why did I still want Dad’s arms around me?

Because I was human, I guessed. I’d seen the unusual all my life, but I’d never been faced with doing anything about it. I’d wanted to. A small part, anyway, that wished I was brave enough, smart enough, strong enough. Even though we’d never been churchgoers, I even tried praying for some way to keep Dad safe from what lay beyond the veil, to keep myself safe. Was this the answer to that prayer? Or just the final alignment of the cosmic forces coming together? Did it even matter? No, I supposed it didn’t.

The answer to my reality issues had come. I didn’t like the answer, but life is like that sometimes. At least I wasn’t alone on Lunatic Island anymore. That part, at least, was a giant relief.

Before I could concentrate on anything else, though, I had to resolve things with Dad and find Asher so I could determine just how pissed off he was at me. I wasn’t looking forward to either conversation.

Chapter 16

Remy, Sophia, and I stood outside a car rental place in Bracebridge in late afternoon. Remy had taken us through the Shift to a little patch of woods behind the small building, since we couldn’t exactly show up at my house without a vehicle and hope Dad wouldn’t notice.

They’d both been conspicuously mute since Remy came out of his room at the facility half an hour ago. I’d eaten two bowls of chicken noodle soup—apparently it was the universal cure-all in the Machine, too—but my stomach still grumbled.

Sophia had brought me a soft pair of jeans and a navy T-shirt to wear. I got the feeling, even through her current discomfort, that she liked having me there with her. It was a nice warm fuzzy in amongst the thorns of the day.

“You keep eyes on our
kolohe
, Outfitter,” Remy said, his gaze lingering on her for a moment before he started for the door into the car rental place. He wore dark jeans, a black shirt, and a leather jacket. With his half-tattooed shaved head and dark sunglasses, he appeared more like an extra in the
Hellraiser
movie than a tourist.

“Her name’s Sophia,” I snapped, “and stop talking about me like I’m not here. And try not to scare the poor clerk. You didn’t have to dress up like a giant Hell’s Angel, you know.”

He waggled his fingers in dismissal without turning around.

“And just when I was starting to like him,” I said. “What does
kolohe
mean, anyway?”

“Rascal, but he means it kindly. If he didn’t like and respect you, he wouldn’t bother calling you anything but your title.”
The way he calls me Outfitter
hung out there unsaid. How did she not see his little glances full of affection, or the way he shifted his body when she did? Seeing them together for five seconds told me he was totally into her. Did he speak coldly to her to keep her away from him?
Like Asher’s doing to me.
I waved that thought away. Skin contact could kill us now, anyway, so even if that’s what they were both doing, they had a good reason for it. The pain in my chest would just have to get over it.

Sophia hugged herself in the April breeze, her white long-sleeved T-shirt blending in with her pale skin. She wore dark gray leggings under a black skirt that, without the leggings, would have shown her undies. “You should like him,” she said. “Most of the sentinels suck, but he … he’s one of the good ones.”

I blinked at her, conjuring an idea. “You like him.”

She squinted at me. “Duh. That’s what I just said, isn’t it?”

“No, I mean, you like him that way. Like, as in boyfriend like.” Even I squinted at that one. They seemed polar opposites, but then again, they do say opposites attract. “There’s something about him that’s … attractive. Scary on the outside, but there’s something soft in that big guy, something kind.”
Especially when he’s around you
.

“Don’t even joke about that. You know relationships are forbidden.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I know. Sorry for bringing it up.”

While part of me danced with glee to know others like me existed, the rest of me rebelled against the idea that I was part of the Machine. “I don’t really feel any different. Maybe the ritual didn’t work on me? You said you were alone after your ceremony, but what was it like during?”

“That’s real personal, Addison. We don’t talk about things like that with anyone but our sensei.”

“Who is your sensei?” I watched her longing gaze shift toward the rental place, and I knew. “Remy is your sensei.”

“Was, but my training’s over now, and he didn’t waste any time cutting our ties.” Her voice held too many emotions for me to decipher, and I didn’t have time to work it out since King Kong came marching out of the building swinging a set of keys around his index finger. A waif of a girl came out after him with a clipboard, darting glances up at the big guy.

The girl did a circle-check of a silver Honda CRV and rushed back inside.

“Lesgo,
wahines
.” Remy climbed in the driver’s side. Sophia reached for the back door, but I shook my head.

“No, you can ride up front with King Kong.” I had no desire to be that near him. It frustrated the bajeepers out of me that he wouldn’t answer my questions about Asher. I’d barely gotten my third question out when he had told me to “shut it.”

Her gaze darted back and forth between the doors.

“Oh, wait just a damn minute. Is this some sort of status thing, too? Soldiers ride in the back?”

“It’s just the way it is.”

“Well, I’m not either right now, and even if I was, it wouldn’t mean diddley-doo-dah to me what uniform you wear, so get your keister up front.”

I caught Remy’s approving grin in the rearview mirror as I climbed in the back, and he crawled into my like-zone a little further. After a load of hesitation and obvious indecision, Sophia got in the front.

“Just turn right out of the parking lot,” I told Remy.

“Know the way,” he said.

“You do?” I frowned, then remembered Asher knew where I lived.

It seemed strange to be home. I’d only been gone since September, and I’d been back for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and reading week, but something strange and awkward twisted in me as we took Highway 11 south. Somebody once said you can never go home, but I didn’t really understand that until now.

I didn’t quite fit anymore, like a foreign body that once blended in but now rode on the surface, not a part of but not completely separate. Tears heated the backs of my eyes, where they stayed. It wasn’t my time at U Waterloo that had pulled me away from that safe feeling of home; it was Asher and the Machine. Asher, who said he’d train me, be there for me, and hadn’t even bothered to pop his head in to be sure I was alive. Yeah, thanks a lot for that, buddy. Unless he really was hurt and Sophia had lied about that. A cold finger went for a stroll along my spine.

Thoughts turning to his memories I’d shared, I wondered how many other sentinels had grown up in violent homes, who’d only known abuse. They all seemed to be cut from that same dark cloth, worn around the edges like a stone battered too long by the river raging around it. It helped me understand him a little more, why he seemed so harsh and unforgiving, and why he’d reacted so fiercely to my petting of him. He wanted other to feel safe, even if he couldn’t, and he was willing to do anything to get it done.

It still didn’t explain his absence. It also didn’t explain why the Machine had marked me as one of them, since I’d grown up in the most loving home I could imagine. Other than the stains my mother left on the family, of course. Even though she was long gone and had hurt us, Dad still disappeared into his office every year on her birthday. I hated her for that.

As Remy turned onto the road toward home, I returned my attention outside. How often would Asher allow me to return here? Or would this be the last time? No, that couldn’t be right. I wouldn’t let it be.

My mind had been in such a flurry, I realized I hadn’t asked the most important question. “So, what am I supposed to tell Dad?” I gripped the seat as we drove through the woods. “You need to let me know soon, because we’re almost there. He’s the most observant man I know, so he’s not going to accept some load of crap.”

“My brah’s already been to see your fadda,” Remy said, but not in a way that made him sound happy about it. “You just here to back it up an’ say aloha. Fo’ a while.”

Fingers digging into the plush upholstery, I leaned forward as much as my seatbelt would give. “He came here? Without me? What did he tell him?”

“He come as Professor Green. He tell your fadda he offer you a job with the International Anthropology Society. You eighteen, so he need no permission, but he visit to be nice.”

“And how does that explain my absence even if Dad wouldn’t flip his biscuit over it?”

“My brah say he take you to a dig in South America for six months.”

“Six months? I can’t be away for six months! I’d miss the summer with him and Thanksgiving!”

Sympathetic sentinel eyes met mine in the mirror. “Be grateful he no wipe you clean of your life while he in there base-lining you. Most sensei do.” The last came out with the sharp bite of anger.

I glanced at Sophia, who’d gone still beside him. “Did you wipe Sophia’s life away?”

Those eyes in the mirror glossed over, and fear stared back at me. Fear and horror, and then finally fury. Something more simmered just beneath the surface of secrets between those two. Did he hate that he’d had to violate her that way? Or was he angry about something in her past he’d wiped away?
So not my business.

“Never mind. Sorry I asked.” I let my thoughts tumble around in my head and liked the scenario less and less. “I didn’t think this through well enough. You can’t ask me to say good-bye to my life, all I know. This is my home.” Catching sight of the mailbox where I’d stopped every weeknight after getting off the school bus, I muttered, “Was my home. Why doesn’t it feel that way anymore?”

“You’re part of the Machine now,” Sophia said, as if that should answer my question.

“No, Asher went digging around in my memory and gave me a funky light show.”
And gave me the most perfect two minutes of my life.
“I haven’t trained or gone hunting wraiths or anything that would change me this much. Why do you say that like it means something more than the words alone?”

“Once initiated,” Remy said, steering us into Dad’s tree-lined driveway, “you get a sense a loyalty that make us
ohana
… family. You soul an’ you subconscious mind know you don’ belong here anymore, that you got bettah things to do now.”

“That doesn’t make any sense to me. Family? None of you talk to one another. You’re all a bunch of grouchy islands that happen to exist in the same small lake.” I crossed my arms and slumped back in the seat as the log cabin came into view through the trees. “You don’t know anything about family, since it involves touching and sharing feelings and the stuff you’re all phobic of.”

I’d never had a big family, but it was enough. Hugs when I came and went. Smiles that lit up the room the instant I walked in. Shoulders to cry on, people to laugh with, that was family. There were days when a pair of arms around me could make everything better. How could I survive without that personal contact? How did any of them? Maybe that explained why they were all so grumpy, other than Sophia.

The silence seemed alive in the CRV. As we pulled up in front of the separate garage, I asked, “So Asher talked to Dad. He’d never agree to let me go away for that long and ditch school, right? Did he tell Asher to piss off or what? How much convincing am I going to have to do here?” I’d never lied to Dad about anything other than covering my reality-unraveling episodes with talk of nightmares, and this was a doozy.

“He agreed,” Sophia said quietly.

“What?” I unbuckled myself. “Who agreed to what?”

She twisted in her seat to face me. “Asher told him about your passion for anthropology and archaeology. He told him you had an aptitude for it greater than any student he’s ever met and suggested this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for you to follow your dream and make a career out of it. He promised a steady salary and benefits, knowing that would be important to your dad.”

A great white noise roared in my head. One corner of my lips twitched up. “Asher said all that?” Nah. I’d believe in unicorns before I believed in that degree of thoughtfulness from Asher Green.

“I thought he been smokin’ the
pakalolo
when he say so, too,” Remy said, a smile in his voice. “My brah don’ talk nice ’bout nobody. You make some kinda impression during the ceremony, yeah?”

Oh, yeah, I’d made an impression on him all right, with my hands all over his body. “Such an impression, he hasn’t even bothered to see whether or not he killed me when he shoved my soul so hard it almost came out the back of me.” It should have been an exaggeration, but it wasn’t. What we’d done should have shocked or scared me or … something, but it didn’t. Part of me wanted to do it again, to see deeper into him, to hear that haunting voice of his split me open and fill me up.

I got out of the car, struggling to draw in a breath that didn’t shake. Dad had accepted me leaving for six months and abandoning school, just like that? Maybe Asher had messed with him in some way. Either way, I needed to know.