Midnight Dawn

by Jocelyn Adams

  “Jesus,” Asher said.

  I didn’t know how to take the utter pain out of Caine’s grief-racked body. Nobody could fake that, so he had to be who he claimed. Before I could come up with a way to comfort him, he jumped up and rushed to the far end of the room where the pinball machines blinked in the dim corner.

  I went after him, catching him by the arm. “I’m so sorry, Caine.”

  Turning, he threw his arms around me and sobbed into my shoulder, his muscular form heaving. There weren’t any words to soothe him, so I held him tight, stroking his soft hair until he quieted.

  When Asher cleared his throat, I stepped back from the other sentinel and found my sensei glaring at the wall next to us. His hands were deep in his pockets again. What of hers did he have in there? A ribbon from her long, luxurious hair? A locket with her stunning face smiling up at him? What?

  He seemed to notice me staring at him, and abruptly turned, heading for his stash of booze on the serving counter in the kitchen. After pouring two glasses of amber whiskey, he came back and offered one to Caine.

  “I hope whatever’s in that glass is something strong, mate.” Glancing at me, Caine said, “Just tell me what happened to Marc-Antony. Tell me he suffered like we suffered. Like I still suffer every hour of every day. Wondering all this time who took my life from me, not knowing if any others survived…it’s been agony.”

  I gave him the abbreviated version of what I’d done to Marcus. “I’m pretty sure Marcus’s suffering is still going on,” I said. “After he stabbed me, I pushed his soul through the veil and sealed him out there in the wraith world. So he’s basically been turned into one of them. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for whoever you lost. I’m guessing you were really close to them?”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I loved them all like family, some more than others. Bollocks. Izan could have stopped it, but as usual, he set us on a collision course and stood back to take notes. We’re but rats in a maze to him.” Raising the glass, he swallowed his drink in one go.

  “Um…what does that mean?” I asked. “If Izan could have helped, I think he would have in his own cryptic way.”

  He waved me off. “Forget I said anything.”

  I supposed I could understand his level of bitterness. If I’d been cut off from my family, alone and without a clue what had happened to them, I’d have been pretty pissed, too. “I can’t believe he exiled you. He is trying to save us, right?”

  “Most of us are expendable to him, no more than hairless laboratory apes,” Caine said. “All but you and your Shepherd, perhaps. As for his intentions, you’d have to ask him that, since you’re the Architect, and he only speaks to you.”

  What did he mean I wasn’t expendable? I bled like everyone else, and dead was dead if it came to that. Not to mention if I failed at my latest mission, Izan would probably leave us to our doom, so in that thinking, we were all throwaways. Like I needed that thought chewing on me at the moment.

  Asher’s stare swept to me and back to the Thor lookalike. “Who’s the Shepherd?”

  Caine straightened, staring right at me with pain and something darker that made me shiver. “Whoever the Architect chooses for her conduit, and who chooses her back.”

  What he’d said was clearly too much for me, because my brain broke it into a checklist. I was the Architect. Check. Which meant I had to choose a conduit. Erm…okay. I couldn’t choose Asher, and I wasn’t zinging about any other guys in the Machine. Was it like a marriage? Lovers? Ugh. Sharing myself like that with any of them would be like sleeping with my brother. Would something mystical happen when I made my choice, joining us for eternity or some junk? Could I divorce a conduit once I’d chosen one? I didn’t think so. So what the hell was I supposed to do?

  When Caine returned to the sofa, I joined him there, desperate for a subject change. “Have you ever heard the name Baku?” I asked.

  “The wraith king?” He propped his elbows on his knees, all sorts of emotions crossing his features, none of them good. “If you’re asking, that can only mean the cycle has come round again. No wonder my spine is itching. Bollocks.”

  “Again?” Asher asked, or accused more like it. “Are you saying he’s been here before?”

  Shooting him a sideways glance, Caine said, “I encountered Baku for the first time a millennium ago, before we really understood why Izan had assembled us. We were just beginning to write the Machine bible and had only heard of the wraiths’ existence at that point, so the great asshole in the sky must have known what was coming before it did.”

  I couldn’t have heard that right. Caine had lived for a thousand years? No, more than that if he’d been in the Machine that long. Holy mother-loving crap.

  Caine slumped back on the sofa, scrubbing at his face as if he was tired. “Our first battle with Baku ended bloody with more than half of the Machine wiped out. After that, the lesser wraiths started trickling through the veil, and everything went to shit in a hurry. The king hopped bodies for a while and then disappeared after a month or two. At first I thought Izan had forced him out somehow, but if he had that much power over them, they wouldn’t still be here. Now I think Izan was letting him in to test the effectiveness of the Machine, because Baku would return usually once per century.”

  Asher unclenched his jaw. “Are you saying Izan and Baku are working together?”

  Caine raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Just speculation, but if you ask me what I think, that’s what I’d tell you. It adds up.”

  Our founder had hooked up with the wraith king? Was it another experiment? My head buzzed with thoughts and a black stew of emotions that wanted to lead me places I didn’t want to go. I shut it out so I could think. “If you’ve really been around that long, and Baku has been attacking the Machine once per century, how did you survive?”

  Asher’s frown deepened, and I wished I hadn’t put any more doubt in his head about our new sentinel.

  Caine wrung his hands together. “I’ve often wondered that myself. With so much time alone these last decades, I’ve pored over every memory of those battles. So many guardians fell, but there weren’t even any close calls for me or for Marcus. Maybe it was my military training from my mortal life, or maybe I was just lucky. As for Marcus…” He shrugged halfheartedly.

  “Or maybe your loyalties lie elsewhere,” Asher offered, “and Baku left you alive because you’re working with him, and maybe Marcus was, too, and that’s why he went batshit crazy.”

  What? The dark look Caine shot my sensei raised the hairs on my nape, and I raced to change the subject again before the situation turned violent. My gut said Caine was loyal to the Machine despite his exile. “Caine, you said Baku hopped bodies. If he’s been eating souls off and on for that long, why isn’t he super powerful already? Because he’s only swallowed a lawyer that I know of, and he’s already swelling up and freezing my bones worse now than he did last night.”

  “He saves up energy for the fight, but the dead can’t do much without burning up great gobs of it, and they can’t generate their own. Once the later battles ended, he was weak enough we could push him back through the veil and seal it up. If he’s beefing up now, then the cycle is almost upon us again.”

  “What’s he testing the Machine for?” Asher said quietly. “It has to be something Baku wants, too, because he’s going to a lot of effort to provoke Addison’s evolution. Did Baku put Marcus up to massacring most of the Machine sixty-five years ago?”

  Oh, crap. I hadn’t even thought of that. After the last Machine was wiped out, Asher, Marcus, Remy, and the Colonel had been drafted by Izan, and had woken up in the Chamber with all of their memories intact—except how they’d gotten there—with a desperate urge to fight wraiths. They began assembling the Machine again from that point and only knew about the former guardians because of our book. My mom must have put that information in there, because she was the only one—other than Caine—who we knew for sure had survived.

&
nbsp; “I think Marcus was acting on his own, but I can’t be sure.” Caine hung a hand over the back of his neck. “I’ve no idea what Izan has planned for us, but whatever he’s trying to make us into, he has built Machine after Machine in different configurations of guardians, and my guess is he hasn’t found the right combination yet for whatever he needs.”

  Asher stared at me as if I might disappear. “So he’s about to test us again, and if we don’t get it right, we’ll be wiped out.”

  “Sorry to be the bearer of crap news, mate, but yeah, pretty much. I haven’t seen Baku in a couple of centuries, so I thought the cycle had been broken. Guess not.” Caine pulled his tie off and opened the top two buttons of his shirt to reveal a smooth, hairless chest, paler than Asher’s but just as eye-catching. Not that I noticed.

  I cleared my throat to relieve the tightness there. “And I’m guessing you don’t know why he was gone for that long or what happens if we pass their test? Do you know anything about artifacts from the other worlds?” I rushed toward the kitchen and paced back again, trying to outrun the images of Sophia, Remy, and Asher lying dead with a dragon mantis standing over them. How did the artifacts from other worlds fit into it all?

  Caine shook his head, cocking his head in confusion. “Artifacts? Sorry, I’ve no idea.”

  “You need to talk to Izan again, Addison,” Asher said. “You tell him we’re not his goddamned puppets, and he’d better have a good explanation for all this, or I swear I’ll find a way to blow him out of the Shift.”

  I tossed up my hand, holding off all-out hysterics by a thread. “And how are we going to do that? Even if he isn’t the good guy we’ve always thought him to be, and we could blow him out of the universe, that would leave us alone to fight Baku. We’re not even close to ready for that yet, if we’ll ever be. I’ll talk to Izan, and I won’t let him out of my head until he tells me how to stop this fight.”

  Caine came to his feet as I railroaded past the sofa. “You need to breathe, Addison. You’re looking green. I’m here now. I’ll help you become a fully realized Architect, and that will be our best chance. We’ll face this together.”

  “She doesn’t need you.” Asher blocked my path before I made my next pass, staring at me while he said, “Just tell us how she finishes her evolution so she can beat the king, and then get lost.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that, mate.” Caine pushed fingers through his long hair, giving an awkward smile. “I think it’s best I speak to Addison alone about that.”

  “Not alone. I don’t care who you are or what you’ve been through.” Asher loomed over me as if trying to figure out how he could throw me over his shoulder and dash me out of there without me clobbering him.

  “I don’t want to keep secrets, Caine,” I said. “This is as important to him as it is to me.”

  “This isn’t directly to do with Machine business, only its Architect. And it’s more of a…personal nature.” His gaze darkened, and he grinned. “But, by all means, if you want an audience for this conversation, that’s your choice.”

  I swallowed hard. Asher didn’t budge. Oh, hell.

  “I can eject him from this reality if you wish.” Caine shifted toward my sensei.

  If I hadn’t shot my hand out and grabbed Asher’s arm, I had a feeling fists would have been swinging. I considered his protectiveness of me, and after him feeling helpless at Marcus’ hands, I couldn’t order him to go. “No. He’s seen everything inside my head, so he can stay if he wants to. If he keeps his mouth shut.” I came around to face Asher, waiting until he tore his laser-beam stare from the other sentinel and pointed it at me. “Can you be civil for five minutes until I find out what he has to say?”

  Some of the fire went out of his jade stars, and he gave a quick nod before leaning around me. “Stay on your side of the room and behave like a gentleman, asshole, and we won’t have a problem.”

  Caine laughed. “Because you’re a good judge of gentlemanly behavior. You didn’t even bring the lady a drink.” Shaking his head, he circled behind the sofa and pressed his palms down on the back of it, the pose causing his biceps to test the limits of his shirt. “Before you can fully realize your Machine power and make these paranoid strangers a family, you need to forge a bond with another guardian, who will then become your Shepherd. The two of you form the foundation and heart of the Machine. Have you chosen someone?”

  I said “No” over top of Asher’s “Yes.”

  “I mean not yet, but she’ll find her match when she’s ready,” Asher added, his posture going suddenly ramrod straight.

  Shit. Maybe I should have made him leave. I moved forward to hide my expression from him. “My future is not up to you.” To Caine, I said, “I’m not sure what you mean by a bond.” Something about that tweaked a memory. I rubbed my temples, bracing for the pain creeping up on me as I searched my Swiss-cheese mind. “I think someone said that to me before, but I can’t remember who or what it meant. Maybe Marcus, because my memory from the day I confronted him is full of holes.”

  Asher made a breathy sound behind me, but when I looked back at him, he was a blank slate.

  “Why are you listening to him?” he ground out. “He’s just trying to get into your pants.”

  Huh? “Even if he was, why would you have a problem with that? It isn’t like you’re available, and you’re certainly not into plaid-loving rednecks.”

  “That doesn’t mean… He’s not right for you.” He flicked his fingers toward Thor.

  “Well, then, oh sensei of mine, who is? It’s not like I have a lineup of guys falling at my feet like Kat does. Book-loving nerd chicks aren’t exactly high up on the dating menu for most guys.”

  Caine rounded the sofa, his hand outstretched, that gorgeous hair settling around his face. “We all need options, mate. Clearly you don’t want the honor of her affections, if you’re even capable of handling a power such as her. Let’s see if I’m even on the menu as a possibility before you get your feathers all ruffled.”

  He might as well have been asking to see me naked. I didn’t want him to be my anything other than a brother-in-arms. He was spectacular-looking and obviously powerful, knowledgeable, great body, with a smile that could probably take any other woman to her knees, but…God, what was wrong with me? I couldn’t have Asher, so what was the problem? Still, I didn’t want him to see me share my storm with Caine.

  “You need to leave,” I said to Asher, crossing my arms.

  “No.” Asher mirrored my defiant stance.

  “Leave with dignity, or I’ll kick you out myself. After everything we’ve been through in the last few weeks, don’t make me do that. He’s not going to hurt me, and this is private, between him and me. You’ve been keeping me alive so I can finish this, so let me finish it.”

  Hurt and panic tightened his expression, his eyes pleading. “I would do anything for you, but you can’t ask me to leave you with this stranger.”

  Liar. The one thing I wanted him to do, he wouldn’t. I couldn’t even get that mad at him, because we couldn’t control who we had romantic feelings for. I stood firm, meeting his gaze with a determined one of my own. “If I’m not out in ten minutes, then come back with guns a-blazing if you like, but for now…go. Please.”

  Fingers snarled into his hair, he whirled away, pulling a fence post for seconds before his arms dropped back to his sides. If he was so worried about her, why wouldn’t he be encouraging my matchup so I’d be powerful enough to help him be with her again?

  Caine headed for the kitchen, holding up his empty glass. “Need a refill.” No, he was giving us a chance to talk. Dammit, good-looking and thoughtful. Why couldn’t he be a douche bag?

  Really? A beautiful man who seems to be attracted to me, who had already shown me his grace and good manners, comes to my rescue, and I want him to be a dick? Seriously, I must have lost the last of my marbles.

  “Is this really what you want?” Asher asked once we were alone, turning only his head to give m
e his profile. He didn’t move, as if afraid he’d scare me away with even a flutter of those long, dark lashes I’d loved to have played my lips across. Gah!

  I thought for a moment before answering, choosing absolute truth with something so important. “No, this isn’t what I want, you know that. But I have a duty to the Machine, and I’m coming to realize that what we want doesn’t always line up with what we need or what we can have. I have to bond with someone, whatever that means. I’m guessing lifelong partners in crime, maybe romance, I have no idea, but I do know that I don’t want someone who feels duty-bound to protect me, but someone who wants to…I don’t know…maybe love me the way you love her.”

  He drew in an uneven breath. Still, he said nothing, didn’t even move so much as a toe while I waited in agony for him to say something. That he really had feelings for me, and she wasn’t real.

  “I want that for you. You deserve nothing less.”

  With my last hope shattered, I wiped away tears. “Can you tell me her name? At least then I can accept her as real, and maybe it’ll help me let you go.”

  He hid his face from me again, and I resisted a desperate urge to spin him around and make him look me in the eye. “She’s the reason my heart beats. She’s the strength in my bones. My world begins and ends with her, and I’ll keep hurting her because I love her with every piece of me, and I want her to live. That’s all you need to know.”

  I folded into a chair, sure I could feel the broken pieces of my heart falling against my ribs like shards of glass.

  Caine started humming, and a moment later he emerged with another glass of liquor.

  Asher focused on Caine. “You do anything she doesn’t want you to, and you’ll answer to me.”

  I wanted to scream at him as a violent fit of rage filled me with fire, but a few deep breaths helped me bury those flames. I offered Asher what I hoped was an unaffected expression.

  Caine swept his arms out and dipped in a dramatic bow. “I’d expect nothing less from a sentinel of the Machine. Now, out you go, there’s a good lad.”