Midnight Dawn

by Jocelyn Adams

  “Someone help me,” Asher said. His eyes had opened wide, and he had a frantic air about him as he waved the sentinels closer. “Now, hurry.”

  “I’ll do it with you,” Kat piped up with a little too much cheerleader pizzazz.

  I couldn’t contain my scowl, and if I’d had an ounce of energy, I’d have marched over there and slapped her. “Yeah, I just bet you will,” I mumbled.

  Kat knelt in my place, across Overalls’s chest from Asher. Leaning over as far as she could get, no doubt giving him an eyeful of tits, she slid her hands over his while I wrestled with my rising need to knock her head in. Her markings began to glow.

  Feeling useless and unwanted, I stumbled to the side for a better view and leaned my back against the wall of the bar. Thankfully, everyone else in the Podunk town stayed inside, their drunken chatter a hum against my ears.

  Asher released his sentinel energy again, his inner storm. Wind curled out from his body and stirred up tiny dust devils on the pavement, lifting his hair to expose every exquisite line of his face. The scrolling designs lit under his skin again, only far brighter than they’d been just with his own power. So beautiful. I should have known Kat would have been compatible with him, but it still killed me to watch them together.

  “Now you,” he said, his eyes locked onto the blond beyotch. “Push your energy through me, mix with mine, and then into the guy. Once the wraith has nowhere to go, it’ll spill out around our hands. Then you have to wield our storm, fold it around the wraith’s true form like a fist, and crush it.”

  I could have listened to him talk all day long, which only pushed the hurt deeper. His voice always tweaked something deep in me that shouldn’t be reachable with my clothes on. Or my skin on, for that matter. I’d have done anything to gouge that part out of me so I didn’t end up with needy nethers and an achy heart every time we were in the same area code. I couldn’t begin to understand why he affected me that way after all of the insults. Maybe it was just more Machine weirdness in my body that I’d never understand.

  Kat released her energy, moaning as their storms merged. Bile rose in my throat, and I couldn’t make myself look at Asher’s face to see if he enjoyed having the ice princess’s mojo inside him.

  The wraith finally erupted out of the man’s body, fleeing their force. I was the only one who could actually see them—the rest of the sentinels could only sense their presence. Lucky me.

  At first, it looked like a blob of congealed mist, but then it formed into what appeared to be a ghostly, translucent spider with several empty sockets where eyes should have been but weren’t. Oh, gross. We knew of at least six castes of wraiths, but I’d never seen one of those before, and it brought the hairs on my nape to attention.

  Kat stood and raised her arms, closing their storm around the spider thing, her face tight with concentration. The wraith burst into an explosion of snow. I wasn’t sure why they did that when we killed them. Maybe because their reality was so cold, their energy broke apart that way.

  “Now speak, woman,” the Colonel said, standing to face me. “What did the wraith mean? Who is coming for you?”

  I swayed with dizziness, but managed to keep my feet. “I told you, I don’t know.”

  He whipped out a gun and pointed it at me in a two-handed grip. Holy shit. I threw my hands wide and shut my trap. Adrenaline shot me up with lava, and I saw stars that usually preceded a face-plant into the ground. He wouldn’t really do it. We were on the same team. Right? I swallowed a frantic giggle, my standard scream camouflage.

  “Brah, what the hell, man?” Remy growled, tossing aside Overalls, who’d passed out again now that he was wraithless.

  “Just take it easy, Colonel,” I said, hoping I didn’t pull a Fainting Fanny and that gun didn’t have a light-action trigger.

  Asher slowly rose to his feet in my peripheral vision, his stare intent on the dick with the gun. For the life of me, I couldn’t bend my mind away from that silver barrel long enough to figure a way out of this before anyone could get hurt. Namely me.

  “You’re in league with the dead,” the Colonel said. “You are the traitor among us. Did Marcus find you out? Is that why you killed him?” His laser-beam stare never strayed from me. “I will not allow you to destroy us, woman. I am now, and always will be, the authority in the Machine.”

  I’d expected mutiny to some degree, but I never in a million years expected this. My pulse fluttered harder when he blew out a breath, and his eyes grew empty. He was really going to do it.

  Oh God!

  Chapter Two

  A blast of hot wind hit me as a Machine-powered-up body knocked me sideways. I went from going cross-eyed around the barrel of the Colonel’s gun to staring up at the dark sky full of little white fairies dancing around my eyes. Kat screamed, and Taka shouted something wordless.

  “If you ever threaten your Architect again, I will snap your neck.” It was Asher who’d pushed me out of the way, his voice wavering with barely contained rage. I rolled to my side and propped myself up on an elbow. He choked the Colonel against the wall, his face screwed down into a terrifying mask.

  He’d saved me. I stared in shock as the sparkles circling my head closed in, turning everything a paler shade.

  “You follow her to your demise, sentinel,” the Colonel rasped as Remy grabbed his arm and yanked him out of Asher’s grasp.

  “I’ll follow wherever she leads, and that’s how it’s supposed to be.” Asher thrust an accusing finger at him. “Step in line if you want to live.”

  So he still believed in me? A few thousand pounds slid off my shoulders. I realized I’d been terrified that I’d somehow let him down during the last few weeks of hunting and had shattered his idea that I was destined to save us. “Thanks,” I said, the adrenaline cocktail draining out of me so fast, it took effort to keep my eyes open.

  He stood there with his hands on his hips, staring at the bricks as if thinking of ways to hurt them. “You need to deal with the Colonel. Treason can’t go unanswered.”

  “What?” I asked, my voice sounding distant to my own ears as I sat up. “Why do I have to?”

  “You’re the Architect, remember? That means in addition to assembling and conducting the Machine, you’re our judge and jury, so make your call about what we should do with him, and I’ll get it done.”

  “I lock him up at the facility for now,” Remy said. “Decide tomorrow.”

  Everyone would be watching to see how I’d handle that live grenade, my first big decision since becoming the Architect. What were my choices? Kick the Colonel out of the Machine, suppress his sentinel energy, and wipe his memory? No, I wouldn’t do that. Not that I could. It seemed only Asher had those skills, except for Remy who could also manipulate memory. And like it or not, we were all part of this, or we wouldn’t have been chosen as guardians—a term we used for everyone in the Machine, forgetting our positions.

  “Sentinels” referred only to the warriors among us. I wasn’t sure how we were chosen, but Asher seemed to be able to feel when someone showed signs of sensitivity to the dead and brought them to us. From there, the Machine took that person in and helped her—or him—realize her full abilities. I hadn’t yet figured out everyone’s role, but I needed to put that puzzle together soon.

  Dizziness sent the alley for a spin, and the ground tilted. Slowly, the alley faded out.

  A hand slapped my cheek, and someone shouted, “Addison!”

  I blinked up at the best damn sight I’d ever seen, Asher’s upside-down face, his star-bright eyes overflowing with concern. “What happened?” I mumbled. “And why are you upside-down?”

  “You passed out.” He crouched beside me, his jaw tight with his obvious fury. “You haven’t slept in two days, and you keep forgetting to eat. What did you think was going to happen?”

  “What?” How did he know that, when he made a point of keeping a continent or a few layers of reality between us most of the time?

  Dizziness sent the
world for a spin when I tried to roll over. Between one blink and the next, I went from the grungy alley pavement to feeling light as air. One strong arm hooked under my knees and another around my back, cradling me to a muscled chest. My legs swayed with someone’s footsteps, and my temple brushed against beard stubble.

  Asher was carrying me? Still half unconscious, I pressed my palm to his chest and turned my face into his shirt, which smelled of spicy cologne and something uniquely him. I inhaled him deeply, aware of his muscles bulging in his arms and the flexing of his pecs beneath my palm. God, I’d missed him, grouch and all.

  After some jostling that made me aware of a throbbing pain in my shoulder, a door clicked open. He carried me inside a room and set me down onto something soft. I opened my eyes to my tiny gray room at the facility where we all lived, except for him.

  “Why did you carry me?” I asked, a smile twitching one corner of my lips.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on knees, and once again, he appeared broken somehow. His black hair was sticking up as if he’d been running his fingers through it the way I wanted to. “It was either that or leave you back there in the dirt, since neither Kat nor Taka would touch you with a ten-foot pole. You ripped out some of your stitches again when you fainted, and I had to redo them.” I’d been stabbed a few weeks ago in the confrontation with Marcus, and the long days of hunting hadn’t helped my healing any.

  That much time had passed? That was the third time I’d been re-stitched. No wonder I hurt so much. “Well, thanks, for whatever reason you did it.” Marcus had been a sentinel, like us, and had tried to force me to use my Architect energy to create heaven on Earth for the wraiths, which would have made him their god. Asher and I had been the only witnesses to Marcus’s insanity, and doubt lingered among the Machine about my loyalties.

  He sighed, and the emotion radiating from him filleted my guts and left them bleeding. “By the way you’ve been eyeing me lately, I’m guessing you hoped I’d be your conduit, but I’m not. You need to accept it and find someone else.”

  Had I been that obvious in the five whole minutes we’d spent together over the last few weeks? “Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe you just weren’t trying hard enough to let me in, or it didn’t work because we’re both tired, or—”

  “Stop it!” He turned toward me, though he stared at the blankets. “It’s a connection more intimate than sex, deeper than love, and longer-lasting than soul mates. Even if we were compatible, I don’t want that with you. I never have, and I never will. Why can’t you get that through your simple country mind?”

  It took some effort to untie the knot from my throat, but I managed to pry open my teeth long enough to say, “Then why have you been taking care of me since I was six years old?” He’d watched me grow up from a distance and kept the wraiths away even though I’d never seen him. So he’d told me, anyway.

  “Because it’s my job as a sentinel and your former sensei to protect my Architect, so get these delusions of romance between us out of your head, because that’s the only place that relationship exists.”

  My eyes burned, but I held on to the tears for dear life. Why did hearing what I already knew hurt so much? Was I really that stupid, that some part of me still held out hope that we’d have some pathetic happily ever after with picket fences and two-point-whatever kids? Especially since I finally had solid proof that he wasn’t my conduit. And it wasn’t like he’d ever shown me even a hint that he had any feelings for me outside of duty. I knew almost nothing about him. Still…

  “Okay,” I said even though it wasn’t, not by a million miles. “Even though you’re a jerk, I’m kind of worried about you. Are you okay?”

  He gave that arrogant laugh I hated. “I don’t need you to worry about me, Plaid, I need you to do your goddamned job. For starters, that means keeping yourself alive. You’ve got bigger things to worry about, so keep your head out of the clouds and help me undo all of Marcus’s damage to the Machine.” He went to the door and stood there for moments, the air hanging with an ocean of words unspoken between us.

  Plaid. I used to hate it when he called me that, but now, having him address me at all set off a chain reaction of oh-my-God in my body, no matter how much I didn’t want it to. I still had no idea why he’d given me that particular nickname, but it might have been because I’d been wearing a blue plaid shirt when he’d brought me to the facility. I remembered everything after waking up in the Machine infirmary, but nothing before. If I’d had more energy, I might have asked where I’d grown up and why I had a love affair with country flannel.

  Why wasn’t he leaving? Maybe he wanted to talk about what had happened three weeks ago? I’d tried bringing it up before, but he’d pounded his fist into the closest solid object, which thankfully wasn’t me.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I mumbled, fighting a wave of darkness that climbed the walls of my mind again. “What happened with Marcus, I mean. There was nothing you could have done differently.”

  Marcus had stabbed me in the shoulder—the one whose stitches I’d just ripped out again—right before I’d killed his ass, and Asher had been forced to watch, chained and helpless. Marcus was the only one I’d ever been truly compatible with, the two of us generating enough power once to clear a high-caste wraith out of a host. But we’d never had anything close to the emotional—or physical or whatever it was—connection I had with Asher, or with whoever my true conduit was. I hoped there was an even stronger power match for me in the Machine than Marcus, or I was totally screwed.

  Asher strangled the doorknob, tension cording the muscles along his back. “I told you not to bring it up again, and I meant it.” His tone took on that terrifying whispers-in-the-dark quality that usually made me want to pee my boy shorts. “Just go to sleep, or I’ll get something from the infirmary to knock you out.”

  I rolled away so he wouldn’t see my frown, not that he bothered to look at me, anyway. “I don’t want to sleep,” I mumbled, but clearly not as softly as I’d intended, because he said, “Why the hell not? You passed out twice.”

  Fighting sleep, I pulled the blanket up farther. “I don’t like to dream,” I said, since it seemed he was waiting for an answer.

  Painful silence lasted for seconds before he spoke again. “You’re having nightmares?”

  I shook my head, settling farther into my pillow as sleep sucked at me. “Never mind. I’m not your problem anymore, remember? Just go away.”

  I dreamed of men without names. One swung me around as if I were a little girl. He had a finely wrinkled face I didn’t recognize, but it was kind and honest. That one talked to me and smelled like soap and the outdoors. He always made me feel safe and loved.

  “You brought it up, so tell me.” Asher’s tone said he wouldn’t go away until I spilled my guts, and I didn’t have the will to fight or endure his presence in my room any longer.

  “Fine, Your Bossiness. I think I’m dreaming of Dad. I know you took away the memories of my past so Marcus couldn’t use my family against me, and that I asked you to, so I can’t even be mad at you, but this really sucks.” And it had backfired, anyway. While I was disoriented from the memory wipe, Marcus had arrived and drugged Asher, using him against me instead.

  It had taken me about half a day after I’d woken up in the infirmary three weeks ago to figure out I couldn’t remember anything before my induction into the Machine, and I was glad Asher had been straight with me about why he’d done it. There were a few random blank spots in my mind from post-induction—which I assumed included visits to my family that I needed to forget.

  “Do you dream of anything else?” he asked blandly, as if I bored him.

  “No,” I lied, “just an old guy who’s nice to me, unlike you.”

  The other man I dreamed of had no face, no image at all really, only intense emotion that he drowned me in. He lit my belly on fire with a brush of his fingers, just a shadow against the darkness whose features never came into focus, but he was al
ways there to hold me while I slept. I had a few theories about who he might have been, possibly a boyfriend from my former life or someone I’d imagined to keep me company in my loneliness, but I wasn’t sure. Whoever it was touched me the way a lover would, and since every guy in the Machine was either terrified of me or thought I was an idiot, he couldn’t have been someone from my new life.

  It wasn’t the dreams I hated so much but having to wake up to my gray room and my gray future, alone.

  “Whatever you’re dreaming about can’t be real, just a concoction of your mind. Stop trying so hard to reach for memories that aren’t there, and the dreams will go away.”

  I yawned. “Thanks, Dr. Phil.”

  “Promise me you’ll take better care of yourself,” Asher said, still lingering by the door. “The Machine needs you.”

  The Machine needed me, not he needed me. The distinction stuck a knife in me, and I had no idea why I cared anymore. “Yeah, whatever. I guess I’ll see you around.”

  Chapter Three

  “He lied to me,” the man I thought might be my dad said as we stood at the edge of a babbling river. He wore green work pants and a red plaid shirt. Pine trees that weren’t green but the same shade of violet as my new Architect eyes surrounded us. It mostly sucked having eyes that wouldn’t pass as normal, even alongside the other sentinels. Mine were sky blue with violet star-shaped coronas as a mark of my queen freak status.

  The rainbow-sherbet-like light and the odd trees clued me in that I’d slipped into a dream again. I should have known, since it was the only time I felt anything other than lonely and out of my depth.

  “Who lied?” I asked, squinting at the strange, tinny sound of my voice.

  “He lies to you, too.” The man held a hand to shield his honey-brown eyes and tilted his graying head back. “The cold is coming on hard, dontcha think? Something’s changing. Can you feel it?”

  The quieting of the river sounds drew my focus. Ice spread from the edges, up the cattails and strange psychedelic wildflowers, and crackled across the water’s surface until it froze solid. When the frost patterns raced across the grass toward me as if they had a will of their own, I grabbed the man’s hand and ran. “We have to get out of here,” I shouted.