Darkside Sun (18 page)

“Why am I angry? she asks.” He crossed his arms over the broad expanse of his chest and leaned against the wall, shoulders hunched, forearms flexing. My gaze zoomed in on the small wedge of chest visible through the open V at the top of his shirt, over his face, down to what I could see of his wrists that were folded against his arms. My hands tingled as I imagined exploring him again like my own personal wonderland.

Why was he was hugging himself so hard? As sometimes happened when I was scared, my lips spilled out everything in my head without any filtering. “Why do I want to touch you so badly?” I asked. “This is more than just curiosity or the need for comfort. I can’t stop staring at your skin and imagining running my hands over you. Is that a side effect of the ceremony? Of the tasting? Why would that instinct be so strong right now if we’re not supposed to touch? It’s like gravity, or … like I’m the lightning and you’re the ground. Something in me wants to reach out and touch you, more than my hands.” I frowned at how odd that sounded.

He went utterly still. A snake trying to decide whether to wait for its prey—me—to move along or to strike out with venom and eat me for supper. He took one step forward before throwing himself backward, slamming into the wall again. “I thought I made myself quite clear in the chamber, and you will keep your distance from now on. Your tactile junkie issues are your problem.” How did he talk with his teeth clamped together?

“Why won’t you tell me what I did to make you so mad? Is it only because I touched you? Or because I saw … stuff? Because you can talk to me about that if you want. And I won’t tell anybody.”

Knowing his past changed my opinion of him just a little bit, made a soft spot for him in my heart. He’d lost his childhood to an abusive father. Nobody can survive that loss of innocence so early and grow up whole. I didn’t need to have lived through his heartache to get it.

When he came away from the wall this time, I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. “You saw nothing, images your mind created to make sense out of me and nothing more. Speak of it again, and I will shatter your mind into tiny crystals of useless, disconnected thought and set you adrift in one of the false realities to rot.”

A slap couldn’t have hurt more than his rage beating against my flesh. Tears warmed the backs of my eyes, but I had enough anger crawling up my chest to chase them away. “Were you just nice to me in the chamber so I’d do what you wanted? Was that all a lie?”

His voice was utterly cruel when he said, “I had to get you on the altar somehow, and it was better than dragging you there and listening to your pathetic screaming. Acting is part of our arsenal, Plaid, and I’ve gotten pretty good at it, wouldn’t you say?”

Something broke inside me, some fundamental structure that kept my soul from collapsing. It took a Herculean effort to keep my chin from quivering. “Oh, yeah, a total Oscar-worthy performance, Green.”

He thrust his hands into his pockets. “I am your sensei, and you will address me as such. You think I’m a monster? You have no idea just how much of one I can be.”

“I don’t think you’re a …” Wait, I had thought that right after he’d shot Ava. “Is that why you’re so mad? Because you picked that thought out of my head during the ceremony? I was distraught, and I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t be absurd. Your opinion of me means nothing. You will follow the training schedule and diet I’ve outlined for you without complaint. If you continue to be a pain in my ass, I will push you every day until you wish you’d never met me.”

My stomach dropped, and confusion addled my mind. “Oh, I’m already there,
Sensei
.” I said his title the way I’d say “douchbag.”

His lip twitched, but he didn’t otherwise acknowledge that I’d spoken. “Obey me, put everything you’ve got into training, and you might just come out the other side of this with your mind intact and become more than a small-town, plaid-loving redneck.”

I didn’t need a mirror to know my expression held the promise of violence. How could I have wanted to touch him? Or have believed, even for a minute, that he’d enjoyed the time we spent together in the chamber? All I wanted to do now was throw my fist into his face. “Fine, you want to grouch at me, whatever. As long as you teach me how to keep the wraiths from getting to Dad, then you can crab at me all you like, and I’ll take it like a good little
plaid-loving redneck
.” God, what a prick.

“The wraiths have always been drawn to you, but after what happened with your roommate, they’re focusing all of their attention on you now,” he said so seriously it raised the hairs on my nape. “Either they’ll try to destroy you and everything you hold dear because they see you as a threat, or they’ll try to climb inside you. I know Remy told you we would become the ultimate doorway, a permanent one between us and the wraiths’ world if they can get one of us and stay long enough to come through. I can train you to prevent the latter and to protect yourself, but there is only one way to protect your father.”

The air grew heavy. I couldn’t draw it in. He couldn’t have meant … no. Hell, no!

He closed the distance and stopped in front of me, and I could have sworn he was afraid for a moment before the emotion disappeared like a ghost slipping away from his face. His gaze fell lower, to my lips. My heart stopped before giving a kick.

“Asher,” I whispered, suddenly terrified to be so close to him.

Lids closed, he drew in a shaky breath. When he opened them again, his eyes were glacial, empty, and without compassion. I wondered if I’d turned to stone since I couldn’t seem to move.

He reached up and gripped either side of my face with his bare hands. The contact blinded me to him for a few breaths. It hadn’t been like that before. My back bowed as power surged in my center, arcing out. Toward him. It liked him, my storm. It needed a conduit to draw it out of me, and he was made for me.

One of us let out a cry. Shock, pleasure, pain, it was all in there, rippling into the silence like the cry of a hawk and just as haunting. I didn’t think it was me since my throat had seized like the rest of me.

Power beat against me, crawled up my arms and into my heart, into my head, and launched a firestorm in my soul. Wrapped in Asher, his spicy cologne and that underlying scent that was all him, all male, I drew him in. Warmth enveloped me, filled my belly and everything below.

Why had I been afraid? How could I ever be afraid while he touched me, filled me, surrounded me with his power? No, our power. He had his own and I had mine, even if it wasn’t yet born, but combined it would become something else, something more. We would complete a circuit when we touched, become less, more, one machine that hummed with enough potential to create our own universe. We were the heart of the Machine, the foundation, the protectors.

I couldn’t remember why he’d touched me, but as he filled me up, his emotions a tempest inside my head, I never wanted him to let me go: worry, sorrow, anger, affection, and fury so hot and red it burned me from the inside out. The negative feelings weren’t directed at me, I didn’t think, and I wanted to take it all from him, calm it, cool it, free him from his troubles. I’d caught a glimpse of what haunted his past the night we connected, but I could feel so much more boiling in the heart of him, waking nightmares that had been eating him alive for decades. Too much pain, too much blood stained his life before he’d been able to live it. In that moment, I knew that if I could find a way to heal Asher of his wounds, we could fly, and the Machine would fly with us.

Chapter 19

I floated in a sea of white stars against a dim background, like phantoms flitting through my own private night. Blinking in the dimness, I identified the surroundings to be my gray room at the facility. What just happened? Oh, right. Asher had put his hands on me.

“What happened to the no-touchy rule?” I asked.

“It was necessary and didn’t last long enough to damage.” Asher gripped the door knob, shaking. Slowly, he composed himself, flattening out his shoulders, unhinging his jaw, as he slid some balm over his lips. He’d told me he spent a lot of time in the cold. I hadn’t gotten that at first, but now that I knew what he hunted, it made more sense.

One limb at a time, he stretched and stilled, as if rebuilding himself from the mind and soul out. “I should never have agreed to you seeing your father, or letting you cop a feel of me. You will never endanger us again, Initiate,” he said with all the heart of a dead fish. I preferred “Plaid” to “Initiate.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, afraid I knew already. “If you mean I can never see Dad again, then I can’t accept that. I can only promise not to go until I learn how to do what you can do, meet him some place away from the house, some place different every time. I’ll work hard, and I’ll go back to making a life for myself.”

“You have no choice but to accept it.” Rubbing his hands against the sides of his jeans, he turned away. What was he wiping off? Me?

His words finally melted into my brain, that I had no choice, as in literally. I drew in a breath, held it for a second. “Oh, God, Asher, what did you do?”

“Sensei.”

“Fine, sensei, whatever. What do you mean I’ll have no choice?” I climbed to my feet on unsteady legs, holding the block wall for support. “You can’t keep me from him. He’s my life, my only reason for being. You’ve been watching me, so you know what he means to me. If you say it’s forever then you might as well kill me now. I’ll find a way back to him once I’m ready. You can’t keep me here forever.”

He propped a palm against the wall, his body all graceful lines and arrogance.
Just see which one of us is smarter
, his posture said. “What’s the name of your hometown?”

It seemed a ridiculous question, but when I opened my mouth, nothing came out. I ran through the halls of my memory, unable to come up with it. Blank and blurry, everything that surrounded my childhood had vanished into thick white fog, only emotions and Dad’s face flitting out of the blankness.

“Good,” Asher said. “Now tell me your father’s name.”

Dad … no, he had a name. That, too, had been lost in the nothing Asher had created in my head. Without the name of my hometown, or at least an image of it, I couldn’t make the Shift take me there. Without Dad’s name, I had no way of finding it out. “You bastard!” I screamed, the tears finally crashing over the dam. “I won’t let you do this. Please!”

He rested his forehead against the door. “I could have taken it all. Be grateful I only hid it away. Behave yourself, and I’ll allow you your sentiment.”

I took a step toward him, desperate to change his mind, but he whipped the door open. “You have three days to regain your strength before your training begins,” he said. “Sophia will have your instructions. Prepare yourself for your new reality, Initiate. The life you will be building is for one single purpose, to stand between this world and the wraiths. Everything else is wishful thinking. We have no room in the Machine for dreams or softness.”

He left. All of the careful walls I’d erected around myself through the years to protect my sanity, all of the denial I’d blissfully wrapped myself in, broke. No, not broke, exploded, crashed, shattered into a thousand daggers that all stabbed into me at once. There really wasn’t any going back. No path I could have taken would have led me anywhere else but here to this tiny gray room with the biggest jerk I’d ever met as my guide out of it.

I collapsed against the bed and sobbed, heaved, and clutched at the scratchy blanket while grief wracked my body. Dad’s face smiled back at me from my memories. Asher had left me a few pieces of him, but nothing else. I couldn’t survive on love’s crumbs. I needed something real. I wanted my blanket, something familiar and soft, something of home.

My right hand hurt. I thought I’d dug my nails into my palm, but a little squeeze defined the rough edges of the key Dad had given me. If only I knew what town the storage facility was in, I might be able to get the books. I needed to get them. Some instinct buried down deep in my psyche told me so. Maybe the same one that had led me to those boxes in the garage when I could barely crawl.

Asher thought he’d won, but he didn’t know me as well as he thought he did. Us country girls knew how to work hard, and we were resourceful out the wazoo. I’d play along until I figured out what was happening in my body, in the Machine, and what I would become. If I outranked Asher, then he’d have to listen to me. I intended to fill my head with so much knowledge he’d respect me. If not, well, maybe I could shoot his ass.

It was six a.m. I sat at the dining room table in the common room, waiting for Sophia to get up. Everything was Fort Knoxed, even the fridge. It had been three days since Asher left me sobbing in my room. I still hadn’t grown accustomed to my world narrowing down to one tiny gray room, two long, many-doored hallways, and the common room. Oh, and the shared bathroom with no private showers. That was just fantastic. I’d never been good at being naked, especially where someone might see me. At least there were separate bathrooms for guys and girls.

I couldn’t go anywhere without Sophia and her giant ring of keys, and Asher had forbidden her to let me see behind the other doors. I couldn’t eat without her, either, and even then it was usually some nasty crap in a blender that tasted like sewage and looked like pond scum. Protein rich, perfect for muscle development and stamina or some crap, she’d said.

I wanted to be mad at her, but I just couldn’t. It seemed she hated Asher about as much as I did—other than the part of me that wanted to roll all over him like a cat on catnip, of course—and her only choice was to obey him or suffer his wrath. I’d have done the same in her place. Maybe. Okay, so I would have done a lot to never have him look at me the way he had in my room ever again, as if I’d skinned his mother and made her into a pair of boots.

It irked me that my belly grew warm every time I remembered how he’d stared at my lips. How could I hate him and want to touch him all at once? It made about as much sense as high heels on sheep.

Sophia shuffled into the room wearing her jammies: shorts that hung low on her hips, blue with pink hearts, and a white tank top. Her hair did a great impression of finger-in-a-light-socket meets a punk-version of Einstein. If I hadn’t been so nervous, I might have laughed.

I regretted not hitting the gym more when I’d seen the workout gear Sophia had given me. I’d begged her to change out the sports-bra-type top for a full tank top. I didn’t have a pouch or anything, but you couldn’t bounce a coin off my abs like you probably could with Kat’s. I ended up in a sky-blue tank top and black yoga-style capris, socks, and running shoes. “Morning,” I said.

“Mmm,” she groaned, scratching her hip and gazing around as if lost on an alien planet.

“How late did you stay up last night?” I’d gone to bed at nine o’clock during the fourth episode of the
True Blood
marathon she’d been watching, unable to get my mind off whatever torture Asher had in mind for me today. Not that I’d actually been able to sleep more than a second here and there. Old habits and all that.

She moaned again, still scratching, and went into the kitchen. “What time is it?” she asked, and by the muffling of her voice, I guessed she’d unlocked the fridge and had stuck her head in to look for whatever junk she made my shake with.

“Just after six. Asher said to be ready by six-thirty.” Or rather, he had told Sophia to tell me to be ready by six-thirty. That bugged me, made me wonder if he was avoiding me because he hated me or because he wanted to touch me as much as I wanted to touch him. I hadn’t seen even a hint of him over the last three days. I wasn’t sure if that was a blessing or a punishment. Nah. Definitely a blessing.

“Stupid Asher. Of all the hours in the day, he had to pick this one. This is my favorite time to sleep, dammit.” Jars clinked together. Cupboards opened and clapped shut. “I’ll try to make this one more palatable and heavier on the protein. I have a feeling you’re going to need it today.”

“And you really won’t tell me what he’ll have me doing?” I wished I could have stopped the clock over the door into the kitchen from clicking another second off.

“It’s different for all of us. Remy just put me through some basic self-defense stuff, weapons training, and that’s it. By the time we got through that, he figured out I was a dud, and that was the end of my training.” She sighed hard enough that I heard it through the door. “Except for orientation for this job, but I’m kind of a natural at sewing. I think maybe I had an affinity for design before I came here. At least I didn’t get a crappy job, like that poor guy, Kyle. Could you imagine having to clean up after a cleansing?”

Nobody should have to do that, guardian or otherwise. “Wait … you make all of the clothes? The uniforms and everything?”

“Well, duh. Where else would they come from, designed for our custom shoulder holsters and stuff? These things don’t come off the rack, you know.”

“Wow, that’s amazing,” I said, wishing I could see her face. “I mean, I can hardly mend a sock without it looking like a rat’s nest. I’m really impressed.”

“Um … thanks.” Her grin carried through her tone. “Nobody ever cares about what I do. They just think I’m a doe-headed needle-pusher and not much else.” The blender roared, mixing my gut-twisting breakfast.

Idiots, all of them. How could they not see how amazing she was?

I’d rebuilt some of my crumbled emotional walls over the last day or two. My survival demanded it. I’d put Dad out of my mind, just a warm presence lingering in the background. I could go home to him whenever I wanted. Denial, denial, denial. I’d shoved the wraiths into a mental closet, too.

I’d avoided the mirror. That way when my corneas finally changed from brown to blue, I wouldn’t have to see it.

Sophia came out of the kitchen with my giant tumbler sloshing over with green slime and a bowl of cereal for herself. I’d have given anything to have that cereal.

Eyes still puffy from sleep, or lack of it, she sat down across from me and shoved the drink across the table. “Sorry, but you really will appreciate it later. I’ll have more ready for you when you crash.”

“I’m not sure I’ll ever appreciate this crap, but thanks for not letting me starve.” I sipped the drink, gagging at the texture and vile spread of ground spinach and whatever else that slid across my tongue. “God, this is torture. How am I supposed to live on this? I’m starving, and I think hunger pangs are better than drinking this.”

Her eyes crinkled at the corners. “You should see the look on your face. Sorry, but that’s funny right there.” Laughter bubbled out of her, gaining momentum the more she let out.

I laughed with her, because I’d always rather do that than be grouchy if I could manage it. As I sipped the sludge, I glanced at the door, thoughts wiggling up from wherever they’d been stewing.

“This place is all wrong.” My idea began to grow, take shape, and it made me aware of a discomfort in me, like a twisted muscle or a joint that needed to crack before it would be comfortable again. “Narrow hallways, locked doors, tiny gray spaces … it’s like someone is trying to depress everyone who comes here, steal their heart or spirit or whatever. It’s not supposed to be like this. This is supposed to be the heart, the center of the Machine, and it’s supposed to be a place for camaraderie and learning and bonding, and that’s what makes the Machine run.” I squinted at that. “Okay, that was really creepy. It’s like someone else’s thoughts just came out of my mouth.”

Sophia sat up straighter, all traces of sleepiness disappearing to leave her bright-eyed and frizzy-haired. “Whose thoughts? And what does that mean? This place has always been like this.”

“That you know of,” I said, my brows squishing together harder as I tried to grasp at the thoughts bingo-balling around in my head. Cold fear went for a trot down my spine. Was I inhabited by a wraith? Did one slip into me while I was sleeping? Another thought—
No, you are as you as you should be—
came almost on top of my worry.

I didn’t have time to decipher my newest oddity, because someone came through the door, and not the someone I’d been expecting.

Sophia came to her feet. “What are you doing here, Marcus?”

“Is that any way to greet your superior?” he asked, and even though his tone remained light and joking, his jade-star eyes promised mischief and maybe a little mayhem. He wore black fatigues and a black tank, showing off the swell of his shoulders and the definition in his toned arms. He could probably bench press my Civic and do it without grunting. The same good ol’ country-boy charm shone from his face, and his full lips twisted up in what seemed to be perpetual amusement. “I’m just stopping in to check on the fresh meat before she gets tenderized.”

Oh, that made me feel
muuuch
better. The clock said it was already quarter after six. I was beginning to believe Sophia, that I’d be thankful for the energy boost later, and I only had fifteen minutes to down my sludge, so I picked it up and gulped it down while Marcus watched.

Gag me with a freakin’ baseball bat. I’d be lucky if I didn’t barf green slime all morning. “Where’s Asher?” I asked.

Marcus shrugged. “Probably off sulking somewhere.”

Sounded like something he’d do. “Sulking about what?” That I’d thought he was a monster? That I’d seen his memories? I had no idea exactly what had earned me the level of wrath I’d received three days ago.

“That’s what I need to know.” He refocused on Sophia, and she came down to a defensive crouch between us. “Leave us,” he said.

“No,” she ground out. “She’s to focus on training, no distractions.”