Midnight Dawn

by Jocelyn Adams

  “I’m proud of you both,” I said, meeting each of their gazes before focusing on Kyle. “I know this is weird, but you can do this. You don’t even have to touch Sam at all if you don’t want to. Just don’t fight when your storms call out to each other, and I know they already do, even if you’ve been denying it. But denying our nature isn’t healthy, and it doesn’t change who we are and what we need. Giving in to that doesn’t change you or make you weak, and it isn’t wrong no matter what Marcus or society led you to believe.”

  I released them, and they stared at their hands, the blue designs fading beneath their skin. Pretty sad that two gay men were more compatible with me than Asher, since we didn’t react to each other at all. Some of the tension went out of them, and a new determination and maybe acceptance replaced the fear that had been there since Sampson’s awakening as our Medic. They bowed to me before Sampson gripped Kyle’s shoulder and snapped out into the Shift with him.

  Painfully aware that Asher waited for his turn to unload his questions, I turned to Iris and Raldad, who fidgeted with the belt loops on his jeans. “The bus station in Switzerland has pages in two separate lockers. Do you remember which ones?”

  “Sixty-two, and one-oh-six,” Raldad said as Iris grinned and grabbed his hand. He talked for her. Sweet.

  I forced a tight smile. “Good. You can get those, and from the Viking dig site along the coast of Newfoundland, and the grave site in Yucatan in that locked mausoleum. I’ll hit the cottage in Wales and the Louvre in Paris with Caine. Don’t wait for us; just go back to the facility with your finds, and we’ll regroup there.”

  Raldad appeared peaceful as he raised Iris’s hand up and grasped it in both of his. “Will you not need my Iris to gain entry to the displays at the museum and Kyle to disarm security?” His deep voice rumbled in my chest.

  The way he’d said “my Iris” made me think those two had found each other a long time ago and hadn’t wasted any time getting together once we were allowed to touch again. The list of potential Shepherds was getting smaller by the day. “It’s around lunch or after in Paris right now, so nobody will notice an extra tourist wandering around the Louvre. As for the locks, I have a plan for getting around those, and I’m counting on Caine to teach me some of his nifty tricks. It’s more important for us to split up right now, get the pairs working together, and get this done faster. We’ll manage somehow.”

  “I feared your arrival in the Machine, but now I see the truth of you,” Raldad said. “Architect, we will not fail you.” The two of them bowed and flashed out, leaving me with Grump Master-A and Thor’s younger brother.

  “So forceful,” Caine said, catching his bottom lip with his teeth before letting it slide out again. “Such a sexy trait in a woman.”

  Heat rose in my cheeks.

  Asher pushed into the other sentinel’s face. “Keep looking at her that way, and you’ll be picking your eyeballs out of your ass.” Turning to me, he said, “Why are you being like this? Is this asshole trying to turn you against me? Or did Izan say something that upset you? You seem angry, and you never really get angry.”

  I laughed, but it held no humor. “You don’t need anyone’s help pissing me off.”

  “This isn’t pissed off, this is wrath. It should be me who’s angry after your stunt in the training room. I thought… I…” His sentence ended with a growl.

  “You should have thought I was doing my job, which I was.” I reached out with my senses to Caine, unwilling to put my physical hands on him after what he’d said. Thoughts bent on the pyramid-shaped glass entrance of the Louvre in Paris, I jetted into the Shift with him. I savored the cold rushing against the angry heat in my cheeks.

  I paused at the last layer of false reality above a brightly lit rectangular room filled with stuff that appeared Etruscan. Skylights in the ceiling cast natural light down on all of the pieces, some behind velvet ropes and others in glass cases. I didn’t have any weird hauntings, so I didn’t think I’d ever been here before. Only a few people milled around the exhibits.

  Asher’s presence prickled along my spine.

  “I’m going down,” I said to Caine. “Stay here and watch my back.”

  “My pleasure,” he said with a cadence that only belonged on porn sets.

  Why had I phrased it like that, as if I’d issued an invitation for him to look at my butt in tight leather pants?

  “And what about me?” Asher asked. “Or don’t I exist now that pretty boy over here came to town?”

  I shrugged. “Do whatever you want. You will, anyway.” Catching the strongest thread, I waited until the gawkers moved toward the far door and emerged into the corner of the room, behind a Plexiglas display case housing a stone tablet. When Asher popped out behind me, I sped along the center, hoping with quiet desperation he’d go away.

  “Slow down,” he said, sounding almost human with a tinge of concern. “Why are you going so fast?”

  “If you can’t keep up, then go back to the facility. I told you you’re not responsible for me anymore.”

  “I’m here because I want to be and because I believe in what you’re doing. I made a promise to see this through until the end, and I will, but that’s not what I meant.” He sighed, and his shoes stopped tapping the tile. “You have time to stop and look around for a few minutes. I know you want to. This place has been on your bucket list since you were six.”

  Since when did Asher Green want to stop and smell the roses? I halted and made a show of looking around at stuff that might have interested me once, but not anymore. I lowered my voice. “All I see is a bunch of old stuff designed by people on some other world. I’ve always been fascinated by this junk, proud to be part of a people who could make so many amazing things, but it’s all a lie, just like this whole damn planet. Play tourist if you want, but I’m going.”

  “Izan confirmed what Baku said about the artifacts? Dammit, talk to me!” Grabbing my arm, he spun me around to face him.

  A few gasps in the room let me know our exchange hadn’t gone unnoticed, so I waited until they went back to gawking at the art, tugged Asher, still attached to my arm, behind one of the displays, and jettisoned us a few layers into the Shift. We didn’t need an audience for this.

  We landed in a grassy meadow, the rooms of the Louvre faintly overlaying the strange landscape full of gnarly wildflowers. He repositioned his hand on my arm and made me look at him, his focus intent on my eyes.

  Before my mood could shatter under his unspoken demands, I yanked out of his grip and thrust my hands against his chest. My energy burst out of my palms in a blue flash and a rush of anger.

  He fell back onto the ground, gasping. His eyes grew large with shock and hurt.

  Without stopping to wonder how I’d done it, I straddled him and gripped his nape to hold him still.

  He coughed and sucked in air.

  I became viscerally aware of every hard inch of him beneath me. The strength vibrating through every hill and valley of his thighs and upper arms. His sweet whiskey scent swirled into my nose like some sort of perfume for the gods. For a moment, I wished he’d flip me over, tear off my clothes, and fill me up with him until I cried his name. Seriously? I located my off switch again. He didn’t believe in me. He didn’t want me, so I had to stop wanting him.

  I steadied my voice and lowered it into a sultry purr, pressing my lips against his ear. “We need to get a few things straight, sentinel. I am your Architect, and you will address me as such.”

  A moan rushed out of him as he went still beneath me. It was all I could do to stop myself from pulling back to see if it had been a sound of pleasure or of pain. His hips pressed up, and I caught my breath before it sighed out, trying desperately to ignore the hard ridge growing beneath the fly of his jeans, so close to my most delicate of places. What the hell was he doing?

  He cleared his throat and gripped my biceps, but I moved to dig my knee into a pressure point on his thigh, confused by the power surging up my arms, almost
like it had when I’d touched the bible earlier. Was it his or mine? Or both? No, it couldn’t be. I could have sworn my tattoos lit up, but I blinked, and it was gone.

  “Goddammit!” he groaned. “This isn’t you. Something is very wrong here. Is it the artifacts? Was there something on the pages that upset you? Is this about Caine? Tell me what Izan told you.”

  “You leave Caine out of this, and what goes on between Izan and me is none of your business. There was nothing on the pages I didn’t expect, and thanks to you, I’ve simply got my priorities straight. Now, listen up while I play a tune from your broken record. I’m not interested in discussing feelings with you, sentinel, and I’m not sure what you’re trying to pull on me right now, but stop confusing me. We have no time for sentimental crap, fairy tales, or dreams, and certainly not for your Oregon-sized ego. So get your ass up and shut your mouth, or I’ll shut it for you.”

  He took a deep one before he stopped struggling. In a flash, he rolled me onto my back and laid his full weight on top of me, pinning my hands into the ground above my head. His handsome face blotted out the world. The sight of his jade star eyes full of concern began to shatter my newfound control, and my insane need for him threatened to overtake all reason.

  “What do you mean, thanks to me?” he asked in that gentle voice that always weakened my bones. “Don’t shut me out. Whatever I did, I’m sorry.”

  The press of his body on mine tried to steal my strength and turn my fire from anger to other things. I pushed against him, wondering how I could use my storm to get him the hell off me before I forgot why I was mad at him, but it wouldn’t obey my commands at the moment. “Get. Off.”

  He stopped clenching his teeth as he stared at me. With his dark hair swept forward, the sight of him conjured something out of the fog of my memory. I strained to see it, shut out my external senses, and fought through the pain that stabbed my brain as I searched.

  I’d been like this before with someone, a man’s weight on top of me, his sweet breath fanning across my lips. I’ll always love you. It echoed from some distant corner of my mind, haunting and full of soul-deep emotion that burned me alive. The faceless man again, my memory searching for a point of warmth in the cold. He loved me, or maybe I made him up so someone would. That crushing sense of loss hit me right in the chest.

  When my senses returned, I shoved Asher off me and climbed back to my feet, fighting to keep from hyperventilating.

  He stood there with wild eyes. I leaned forward to dust off my leather-clad knees, wondering why he was shaking so hard. Probably just pissed I’d cleaned his clock again, or had weirded him out with the meaningless physical attraction between us. Sounded about right.

  The ice sliding through my veins worked like magic to quash my lingering fires. “You really are a jerk, you know that?”

  A few seconds passed, only the sounds of his harsh breaths breaking the silence. I had a silly urge to go over and comfort him. God, get over it.

  It took a little longer to find my numb place again, but I managed it. I exited back to the true reality behind a display sign and continued across the gallery in the Louvre, letting the thread lead me through the brightly lit space.

  I didn’t stop until I’d made it into the next rectangular room full of sculptures all done in white. Without too much thought, I knew the page waited inside the one in the corner, a woman draped over a man’s lap, staring up at him as if only he existed in her world. Her breasts were bare, but his sight fixed on her face as if he couldn’t look away. Such a powerful image, one that shoved the keen edge of a sword up the center of me.

  The pumpkin-sized sculpture we were looking for wasn’t in a locked case, only sat on top of a pillar behind a velvet rope. Some luck at last.

  When Asher moved in beside me, I glanced around, waiting until an elderly couple in the room with us moved on to the next display. “You wait here, and I’ll find the other page that’s here in the museum. Give me ten minutes to get up to it on the second floor, and then contact me however you do it through the Shift. We’ll grab them at the same time and go up one layer to Caine. Will you hear me back if I think at you?”

  “Yes.”

  We’d gone back to one-word responses. Fantastic.

  “Then play tourist so you don’t draw attention to yourself, and be ready.”

  “We should stay together. Baku might have followed us here, and Remy said he told you about the Colonel.”

  Stay together. Right. “I can take care of myself.”

  A pause, then, “I know you can. That doesn’t mean I don’t worry about you.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” I muttered on my way out the door. What was I, three years old? What the hell was wrong with him? Did he even feel guilty for calling me a mistake or wishing I was like Kat, and that he didn’t know I existed? Nah, this was Asher, and guilt wasn’t in his emotional range. It was time I cut it out of mine, too.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  On the second floor, I found the other page in a painting with an old wooden frame. Thankfully, it wasn’t one of the eight-foot-long ones and only stretched about three feet across and two feet high. I studied the muted golden hues of the image, recognizing the dark rip across the sky as a rift. The people on the ground pointed up at it, their mouths open in horror. They wore tunics and primitive robes, supporting Caine’s claim that he’d met Baku a thousand years ago, and the Machine really did exist back then.

  It hit me again just how long his life had been. He’d lived centuries, survived massacre after massacre, watched his family bleed out on the battlefield time and again. The world must have been so different back then, but it seemed he’d adapted. I liked that about him. Even hurting and angry, he’d carried on. There had to be more to that story, though. Had Izan kept him alive so he’d be around to help me now? Had our founder planned every moment of my life right up until it ended? Which would be how long?

  No, I couldn’t think about that now.

  After a few minutes, Asher’s velvet voice smoothed over the inside of my mind, crashing against my control like a keg of TNT. “Are you ready?” he asked softly, tenderly.

  A rush of colors lit up behind my eyes, and I was sure I could hear affection and apologies in the words. But this was Asher, and I’d have sooner believed fire would soon shoot out my ass.

  “Yeah,” I thought back, careful to blank my mind in case he was poking around in there. “On the count of three, grab the sculpture, and meet me one layer up.”

  He didn’t argue, just counted down. Compliant Asher would make the day go much faster. Once I let go of my ridiculous fascination with him, I could get on with my eternity, which may or may not end in the next few days. My heart gave a wild kick.

  When he made it to one, I touched the painting and called the Shift, thinking of the first layer where Caine waited. It drew me in, and I jumped up one level to the other sentinel. Asher’s presence joined us a second later. And so did someone else. A whole lot of someones.

  Wraiths flooded around us, hundreds of them, in all of the remaining layers of the Shift, if my senses hadn’t gone completely nuts. Why were they there? Because the entire Shift had started to collapse? Had Baku brought down the whole damned veil? Izan, what the hell are you doing?

  With my hands full, I threw energy around Asher and Caine and jetted us the only direction that didn’t burn my flesh with biting frost, back down to the true reality. We crashed into the ground. In the middle of a street, still in Paris. Oh hell, seriously?

  Horns blared over top of tires screaming against the pavement. Tucking the painting awkwardly under my arm, I braced myself as Asher knocked me sideways and onto the sidewalk, barely missing my chance to become a hood ornament on a Mercedes. By some miracle, the statue he held didn’t end up a messy mosaic on the pavement. Caine had been thrown clear during the rough landing and picked himself up on the other side of the car.

  Back on our feet, we all stared at one another. “We need to get out of the open,”
Asher said.

  No shit. I opened my mouth to agree and breathed out snow. My nape prickled as all of the downy hairs stood up and paid attention. I turned slowly, wishing I didn’t have to see what had come in behind me.

  “Bollocks,” Caine said as my worst fears were confirmed. Asher’s comment was a little more colorful.

  Baku, wearing a thin man in a fifties-style suit, leaned against an ornate black streetlamp, sucking on a fat joint, that same malignant humor shining from his pale eyes. “Enjoying Paris?” he asked, blowing out smoke as he stared at the glowing embers at the end of the doob. His wraith had grown again. The long, spiked dragon head peered at me from at least two feet above the man’s hair, maybe eight feet tall, and the mantis body was wider than it had been. His iridescent wings fluttered once before settling behind him. How many people had he sucked dry while I’d been bumbling around museums? Way too many.

  “I don’t see the appeal myself,” he continued. “Too much concrete and choking fog from these mechanical contraptions you drive around in. You have no respect for your planet. One day, she will decide to evict you herself.”

  He complained about smog, yet he was smoking? As I surveyed the rest of the mob on the sidewalk, far more than on the other side of the street and all wearing crazy like some people wear dollar-store perfume, I realized we’d landed among an entire herd of wraith-infected. Great.

  I focused on Baku again. “Get lost,” I ground out. “I’ve had enough revelations today, thanks.”

  “Oh dear, I can see in your face that Izan has finally told you the truth of what he’s done.” Baku gave a tight laugh, twisting his dragon head as if trying to shake off something horrible playing out behind his eyes. “When we merge the realities, I can help you destroy him before I take my people and go. You have my word.”

  So he didn’t know Izan was about to leave on his own? I didn’t correct him. Did he really mean to take his people and go if I gave him what he wanted? Not that I would, but what Caine had told me about Baku saving him, and knowing the king was trying to get back to his family, made me wonder if he told the truth more often than Izan did. And wasn’t that a scary thought?