“Yeah, the lights are on a separate system, but first I should tell you what I found out about Baku. Asher summoned me from an internet café just now.”
“Please tell me it’s something that’ll lead us to my mom.”
“I doubt it, but Baku does seem to enjoy…um…ladies of the night.”
I snapped my head around and found him blushing. “You mean hookers?”
“Yeah. He’s run up every single credit card the lawyer owns, and the limits on them all are huge. Mostly escorts, but also large cash withdrawals, so my guess would be that he’s buying some black market stuff that he can’t steal for some reason. Maybe guns or weapons of some kind. Maybe drugs. The purchases have been all over the world, too, so he’s getting around the Shift just fine.”
Baku probably liked the idea of screwing the lawyer over, since he could presumably zap into anywhere and take what he wanted. “I had no idea a wraith in a body could travel the Shift. I’m not sure why that freaks me out, but it does. So you’re saying the guy’s a perv, might be high, and is probably armed. How does any of that help us, especially since it sounds to me like he’s going to be hopping bodies as much as possible to absorb their energy? After he ran up the lawyer’s cards, he probably hopped into someone else, maybe more than once since last night if he can eat that fast. We’re always going to be one step behind until we identify his new host.” I might have rethought my no-gun rule if killing Baku was an option. My inner coward screamed at me to get the hell out of the museum, but I locked her in one of my many mental closets.
“I’m not sure it does yet. After we’re done here, I’ll keep following the trail of his victims, see if I can pinpoint a pattern, maybe figure out where his home base is, if it’s in the true reality.”
“Yeah, okay, you do that. Izan says he’s keeping Mom in the Shift so far, though. I don’t suppose there’s anything on the internet about the false realities?”
“Since only those of us in the Machine know about them, I highly doubt it. Hey, I know wraiths can come through a body, but do they regrow their original one, or do they fully take over the body, pushing out the other soul, and use that one?”
“From what I gather from Izan, they regrow their own body using the power of the soul once it’s weak enough it can’t fight.” I shivered. “It’s all really creepy.” How could a soul fight, anyway? It wasn’t a thing that could be seen or measured or even understood. It was some weird mystical word philosophers gave to the miracle of life, so how did it have its own power?
“Yeah, nasty,” he said, caught in a visible shudder. “Hey, are you okay? Because you seem okay. If I had to deal with all this, I think I’d be a basket case.”
“Oh, believe me, I’m a basket case, but…I don’t know. Like Remy said, if Izan didn’t believe I had a chance, he’d take off and leave us to the wraiths, right? I’m trying not to think about it, so I don’t end up cowering under a bed somewhere.”
He laughed, but it cut off short when Asher flashed in beside me with a flailing body in his arms. In a blink, Iris ripped out of his grasp, did a gymnastics half backflip, hands and shoulders pressed into the floor, and kicked him square in the chest with the heels of her combat boots. Wheezing, Asher had a hard meet-and-greet with the floor. He came back to his feet in a graceful move, and only a slight wince gave away that he was hurting somewhere.
I was torn between rushing over to see if he was all right and grinning, but given his wounded pride the one time I’d cleaned his clock, I went with the grin. “You totally have to teach me that move,” I said to the waif of a girl, her purple hair swept over her face. It was hard to see her eyes through it, but I did catch the curve of her lips. She had mischief written all over her. “Care to pick a lock for me?” I asked.
She grinned back at me and nodded. Yep, definitely liked her.
Kyle went to his knees and closed his eyes. He began uttering melodic words that sounded like our ancient language, which lit him up faintly. Tendrils of his energy crawled around the room beneath us, and after a few seconds, he said, “Okay, security is off for this room, but I’m not sure how long the program will believe what I’m telling it.”
Ohhhhh-kay. He could talk to a computer? What had he told it? To ignore the alarms? I’d have liked to think I’d now heard everything, but given my life so far, I highly doubted my weird-shit-o-meter had plateaued.
“I’ll watch the door.” Asher grabbed my arm and pulled me down to the museum. “I think the guard’s still downstairs.”
“Are you all right?” I asked, wondering why he still held my arm and was using it to reel me in close to his body, which filled out his shirt and jeans like nobody else’s could. Not that I minded.
He released me like I was made of thorns and marched toward the door. Wounded ego, or what? I couldn’t reconcile the man who’d poured his heart out to me only minutes ago with the one muttering to himself by the hallway.
Shoving the Asher quandary from my mind, I followed the thread to a narrow glass case that held a Tibetan woven tapestry. Iris popped in beside me and went to work at the side of it while I pressed my hands to the glass. Would I really get to hold something so old and neat? I glanced around at so many fascinating things: pottery, carved boxes, artwork. So not fair that I wouldn’t have a chance to really look at any of it. Considering the mission weighing on my shoulders, I stopped feeling sorry for myself.
As Kyle had done, Iris sent out fingers of her energy that slipped into the mechanism of the lock, and seconds later, it clicked. I didn’t hear her say anything. Maybe she just thought the words?
“Wow, that’s going to come in handy,” I said. “Thanks.”
She saluted and faded up a level while I wondered what kind of life she’d had and why she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, talk. Did she have someone out there she loved? Did all of the guardians? Were they all counting on me to protect their significant others? Why was I adding more pressure to myself? Who the hell cared? I had to get it done, and worrying about the hows and whys would drive me insane.
I turned the tapestry over, but the page had been woven into the center of it. There weren’t any seams or places that appeared to be sewed up. How would we get it out without cutting the thing to shreds? How had Izan gotten it inside? Or had Mom done it? Duh. He didn’t have a body, so it had to have been her. My senses were sure it was in there, so we’d have to take it with us and deal with it later.
We found three more pages that held old-fashioned script in tea-colored ink. One was in an African drum we were able to disassemble to get it out—which I folded gently and placed in my pocket—and another trapped within a hollow wall of a Korean ceramic pot that we added to our homework pile. The last had been in a forearm-sized sarcophagus, also coming with us since we couldn’t pry it open.
“Okay, let’s get out of here,” I said, my nerves twitching for some reason as I paced the first layer of the Shift while Kyle and Iris rested. They appeared ghostly pale where they sat on the ground, slouched as if their arms weighed a million pounds, after having expended so much energy. Their lips were turning blue as the mercury continued to plummet.
“Come on, get up.” Asher appeared agitated, his body tense. “My senses are screaming at me that something’s coming—probably Baku—so we need to move ass before it gets here.”
“It can’t be him,” I said. “There’s no way he could know we’re here.”
“You’re the Darkside Sun. If he’s the most powerful of them, he probably feels you the strongest of anyone, sentinel or wraith. What I want to know is why only you and I felt him come through. Maybe he’s manipulating us somehow, or because you’re the Architect, your senses are growing.”
“But you can feel him, too, so what does that mean?” I stretched my brain in every direction, but no useful answers came to me.
His lips parted. Shut again. “I don’t know, but we have to assume it’s him locking the Shift. If he has that much control, he might be anywhere around here, hidi
ng out there in the cold, and we won’t feel him coming. If he only has two days or so to convince you to do what he wants, then he’s not going to waste an opportunity like this to corner you.”
“Awesome. Okay, rest time’s o—” The ground suddenly disappeared from under my feet, and I came down hard on the museum floor in the true reality. “Ouch, what the hell?” The other three tumbled down beside me, moaning, and the artifacts appeared by my feet. Thankfully none of them had broken. Who had thrown us out of the Shift?
Two muted pops sounded on the floor below, followed by three more. I covered my ears as the alarm’s shrill wail broke the quiet. Crap, crappity, crap! Were those pops from the guards shooting at a wraith-infected dude coming after us? Or the guards getting shot?
Asher jerked up to his feet, staring toward the door at the end of the room we were in. “Baku’s here with some friends. We need to go. Right now.”
“What?” I followed his gaze. “How do you know? I don’t feel anything other than the cold.”
“Get out now, questions later. Move!”
I snatched the tiny sarcophagus as Asher lifted Iris over his shoulder. We raced over to Kyle, who’d already picked up the pot, leaving the tapestry rolled up by his sneaker. Footsteps pounded down the hallway, a whole lot of them.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Baku shouted down the hallway. So the guards had likely gotten shot rather than doing the shooting. The cadence of the wraith king’s words sounded the same, but the voice was off. He’d jumped bodies again. Dammit.
Yep, time to go. I put a death grip on Asher’s arm with one hand and nudged Kyle with a foot to make contact. Doing my best to slow my breathing and concentrate, I drew up images of the facility and called the Shift.
Deafening silence pressed against my ears, as if I’d slipped into a soundproof booth under two miles of ocean. And cold, so bloody cold. “What’s happening?” I asked Asher, whose eyes had widened, his grip on Iris tightening.
“He’s locked the Shift again. This way!” After shoving the rolled-up tapestry into his shirt, Asher sprinted through displays of animal skeletons with Iris bobbing on his shoulder. When Kyle stumbled with obvious exhaustion, I hooked my free arm through his and tugged him after my sensei. The sarcophagus seemed to get heavier as I ran. We made it into a corridor and headed for the stairs. Shouts echoed up from below over the top of the alarm. Why couldn’t anything be simple?
We were so freaking close to being done. Stupid Baku. I shot Asher a what-the-hell-do-we-do-now grimace. He scanned both directions, then raced past the stairs that would have taken us down to the first floor or up to the third, passing through another hallway toward where we’d found the first artifact. Instead of ducking into the room, though, he found another staircase.
The screeching alarm went quiet, and somehow the silence pressed harder on my ears than the bells. Murmured voices carried up from below.
“Get going up, Plaid,” Asher whispered while staring over the railing. “I’m right behind you.”
“How long before the cops come?” I asked.
“Maybe five minutes, so we need to get out of the museum now. If Baku has to search the building for us, then I’m guessing he only has a general sense of where we are and can’t jump to our exact location, which gives us a bit of a head start.”
A bit of luck was better than a kick in the boy shorts. “I’m really starting to hate that dragon bug.”
Kyle appeared perkier, probably shot up with adrenaline like me. He raced up the steps beside me, still clutching the pot. Asher still carried Iris, who had begun to stir, the tapestry poking out of the back of his shirt. My skin crawled with worry over the possibility that he’d wrinkle it. Really? We were running for our lives, and I was fussing about damaging a bunch of old fabric? Idiot.
More shouting behind the door at the next level pushed us up another two flights to the fourth floor. How many people had the wraiths possessed? Asher rushed by me and heaved the door open. I didn’t see much as we sped along corridors and ducked in and out of rooms, only caught blurs of awesome stuff I’d loved to have been able to look at if we weren’t running for freedom.
After setting Iris down by a window, Asher climbed onto the interior ledge, kicked out the glass with awesome force, and leaned out into the city-lit night.
“Get up.” He jumped back down and heaved Iris to her feet, taking the tapestry from his shirt and putting it in her hands. “Everyone out. There’s a ledge right outside this window. We only have to go about ten feet to the right to that scaffolding, and then we can climb down to the ground. I’m hoping the Shift is only locked in this vicinity and, once we’re clear of this place, we can go back to the Machine facility. If not, we’ll find someplace safer to hide out until the Shift opens again.”
“Because we have lots of spare time,” I said, wincing at my own sarcasm.
Kyle helped a mostly limp Iris up to the inner ledge, over the wicked-looking jagged glass, and onto the narrow shelf outside. Handing the pot to Iris, he leaned back in and extended his free hand to me. “It’s all clear out here. Come on.”
I handed the sarcophagus over to Kyle. As Asher boosted me up, something creaked on the far side of the room. He jerked me down again as Kyle ducked back outside, and I ended up with my back against the wall behind a display case with Asher’s tense body pancaking mine.
Oh. My. God. I might have squealed if there’d been any air left in the room. I wiggled my hands up between us and pressed my trembling palms against the forbidden land, half blind with the pyrotechnics going off in me. Not now, body. Off-limits. Proper girls do not poach other girls’ guys. Please, for the love of God, do not sigh or make any ridiculous sounds.
A spark of familiarity lit up behind my lids, which had closed, as if my fingers had once explored the lay of his spectacular landscape and knew every rise and fall. But he’d never let me get that close to him before, except when he’d carried me to my bed last night. That had to be it, but why had it stirred such an emotional rush for me now? Maybe it was the adrenaline.
I couldn’t keep my fingers from crawling up into his hair. Just as I’d always imagined, it was the best damn thing I’d ever touched. Thick and soft, cool on my skin, the satin threads tickled as they gave way to my stroking. So good. No drug could ever suck out my anxiety and fear and fill me with such utter peace. I could have stayed there for hours, until I knew every strand by touch alone, which way it waved, especially the ones that curved around his ear on his left side.
He made a choked sound, thrusting me out of my tactile wet dream and back to reality. I cracked my lids open and ran head-on into his demon stare, which seemed nuclear-bright in the dim lighting.
Oh yeah. Bad guys. Trouble. Yep, head in the game, Addy. Jesus. I gave an awkward smile, and mouthed sorry. Thank goodness my energy storm hadn’t come out to light me up—as much as I could without a conduit. Nothing like a glowing beacon to draw the bad guys right to us. Then again, I was the Darkside Sun, so it was only a matter of time before they followed their senses right to me. Dammit, we needed to get out of here before I ended up getting Asher killed, and then his girlfriend would be on her own, like me.
A small eternity passed with no more sound. Had it been the air-conditioning we’d heard? A mouse? Part of me wanted to stay right where I was, pinned to the wall by the hot professor’s hips. Why was I torturing myself with fantasies of what he could do to me like this without our clothes on? The rest of me wanted to schedule a freakin’ lobotomy, since my brain seemed to be stuck in an Asher groove that would lead me into a padded room if I didn’t pry myself out.
Releasing me, he kept a finger over my lips as he scanned the room. Said finger trembled slightly at first, but he rolled his shoulders and ironed himself out. What was his problem? He was the king badass, so he couldn’t have been nervous about the wraiths.
He pointed to me, and then to the floor, his expression cleared of whatever had been messing with him. Yeah, I wasn’
t going anywhere. Not until the bones in my legs solidified again.
In a crouch, he edged around the display case of a wildcat skeleton. For a moment, he paused, his legs flexing beneath those well-fitting pants before he glided through the shadows, stopping at the next display. He gave me shivers when he was being all lethal stalker.
Another squeak by the door. And another. Sweet mother of crap. Had Iris and Kyle made it to the ground? She’d been so shaky, I couldn’t imagine how she’d be able to climb down the scaffolding on her own, let alone while juggling the artifacts, too.
Even though Asher was only ten feet away, it suddenly seemed like a bottomless canyon separated us. When he swiveled his head my way, his eyes large and bright, I waved frantically for him to come back. Why was he so worried? If Baku needed me to do whatever, he wasn’t going to hurt me. But he could hurt Asher. Shit!
As if he’d shared my thought, he tipped his head forward, his black hair sliding down to hide his expression from me. When he lifted his chin again, he appeared calm, determined, and something profound, almost like he was saying…good-bye.
No!
I shook my head, continuing my nonverbal commands to get his butt back to me where he belonged. He pointed to himself, made a circling motion around the room, and then made his fingers walk before pointing to me and to the window.
What? I shook my head and mouthed, Don’t you dare. I am not leaving without you.
He mouthed back, Do. Not. Follow. Me. Pointing to me and the window again, he added, Go. I’ll be right behind you. And then he was gone, sprinting across the room and out of sight.
You lying idiot! I wanted to scream at him that he had nothing to prove. Why did he go all Superman and rush into what was probably a small army of wraith-infected, gun-toting crazies? Dammit!
My throat tightened as footsteps thundered after him, the sound fading as the entire herd went down the hallway. I scrambled up over the jagged shards and onto the outer ledge.
Kyle and Iris had made it to the scaffolding with the artifacts but hadn’t yet started to climb down. Thank hell they were doing construction on the building. Kyle waved me toward them, whispering, “Come on!”
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