“The first time you touch the bible, it opens up parts of the brain that aren’t used by most people. Part of it is language, maybe so no matter where the guardians are from, we can all speak our native languages and still understand one another. It doesn’t work for all languages, like creole mixtures of languages—which is why I don’t understand Remy sometimes—and some uncommon dialects of Chinese, but for most others. It also teaches us Hittite, which is the ancient language of the sentinels we use for induction ceremonies.”
“Oh, that is so cool. Are you speaking English?” I stared at him, realized I probably had a stupid excited-book-nerd smile on my face, and wiped it off. It had been a while since my curiosity had reared her geeky head.
His lips twitched, but he kept his eye on the shifting huddles as we continued through them. “Yes, but Kat speaks Norwegian, the Colonel speaks Russian, and Taka speaks Japanese. The wraiths’ language comes through disjointed, and Baku is the only one who actually speaks English.”
I knew he sounded different than the rest. We rushed by stalls selling pastries that filled my mouth with drool and made my stomach roar, and finally Asher swept into an alcove full of white square lockers.
“Stand watch out here,” he said, jabbing a finger at Caine.
Caine winked at me. “Only if Addison keeps me company.”
I raised a brow at him, but before I could tell him no thanks, Asher grabbed my hand and yanked me into a narrow hallway of lockers with him.
“Ouch,” I complained, stumbling along beside him. “Would you quit it already?” I planted my foot and ripped my wrist out of his hold. “What is your problem?”
He pointed toward where we’d left Caine. “Him. He’s my problem.” After fishing a ring of tiny keys from the pocket of his dark jeans, he opened one of the doors at the far end, took out a large sports bag and a smaller backpack, and came back to me.
I crossed my arms when he offered me the smaller pack. “We need to hammer this out right now,” I said, “because I have too many things on my brain without having to listen to you two going at it. Tell me why you’re so pissed.”
“Because he’s a dick.”
I tossed up my hand. “Well, there you go. I guess it takes one to know one. Even if he is, that’s no reason for the level of wrath you’re tossing around. Now, give me one good reason why you don’t want him here, and if it’s reasonable, we’ll go back to hunting just you and me when the Shift opens again.” I wanted to ask what had made him pale earlier when I’d asked why Izan would put me on a road trip with the two of them, but my inner chicken wanted no part of it.
Grumbling under his breath, he set the bags on the floor and stared at me. “Have you seen the way he looks at you?”
“He looks at me like I’m the Architect and halfway useful, unlike you. What’s the problem?”
“No, he looks at you like you’re naked and inviting him for a taste. It’s infuriating.”
I frowned, taking a step back. “Wait, wait, wait. You’re mad because he’s flirting with me? Why do you even care? It’s not like a few leers can kill me.” I waited, but he said nothing. “A reason, sentinel, or we keep going, and you keep your big mouth shut.”
He came at me, his eyes flashing with some primal emotion that raised all the hairs on my body. Sliding his palms along either side of my jaw, he drew me closer until his sweet breath warmed my lips, sending zings of something delicious and unwelcome into my deep places. He held me there for what felt like days, and I ached for him to close that last inch, to tell me she was a lie and he really wanted me instead, but he held me firmly in his grasp, just out of reach.
Always out of reach.
What was he doing? Whatever it was, I didn’t want him to stop, as pathetic as that made me.
“He can’t have you because you’re…because I…” His face blanked, and he drew back with a look of utter confusion crumpling his features.
“Because I’m what?” My anger wanted to shatter like spring ice, but I locked myself down again so he wouldn’t read the crushing disappointment in my face.
His shoulders flattened out, and he turned to give me only his profile. “I think you can do better than him. After this is over, you’ll find someone who will treat you right. Just…give it time.”
I short burst of laughter tore out of me. “Time, that’s a good one. Were you listening to anything I said before, or what Caine said about finding my Shepherd being part of my evolution? It’s do-or-die time. Heavy on the ‘die’ if the past Machines are good indicators. I might let you get away with controlling some parts of my life, sentinel, but my sex life isn’t included in that. No matter how hard I try not to, it seems I have a thing for arrogant bad boys. Maybe Thor out there is exactly what I need to cure all that ails me. If I want to take him back to my place later and have a marathon night of naked Olympics under my plaid comforter, then it’s none of your damn business. At least then I won’t die a virgin.”
He recoiled as if I’d hoofed him in the ball bearings, his lips parting as if he struggled to draw in air.
My expression felt as cold and cruel as his often was when I added, “Maybe Izan or the universe or whatever has dropped my very own hot Shepherd into my lap. Your pain-in-the-ass, small-town redneck will soon be out of your hair for good, and you can go back to taking care of your girlfriend without having to touch me ever again. Now, stuff your ego and control issues into that bag, and let’s go.”
I grabbed the backpack from the floor and made it two steps away from him before he spoke, his tone rife with that rich emotion that could eviscerate me.
“I only want you to be happy. On that, I will not compromise. You can hate me for a thousand other reasons, but not for that.”
I stopped but didn’t turn, fighting to keep tears from climbing out of my eyes. “I don’t even know what that means. Have I ever been happy?”
He stepped in behind me, his heat licking up my spine. “You had your moments.”
My knees wobbled, but I forced them still. I thought about all of the memory flashes I’d had and how the craftsman house I’d found had affected me. Was it his house? Maybe he’d had a moment of weakness as a man starved for the one he couldn’t touch, and had turned to me for comfort. Maybe he’d wiped it out of my head, because it hadn’t meant anything to him, and he knew what it would mean to me.
“Were any of those moments with you?” I asked.
A long silence passed before he whispered, “No.”
I clamped my lids down and held my breath until the great wave of loss boiled over me, and then passed to leave me numb again. “There’s a shocker,” I said with forced amusement. “Well, I have a feeling happiness isn’t in the cards for me, since I’m about to offer myself up as Izan’s sacrificial lamb, so don’t strain yourself.” I was pretty sure I had to die to open a sanctuary I had no idea how to find. “Welcome to my life, right? I’m pretty sure you’ve said that to me before, and it’s time I get off the fucking welcome mat.”
I marched off without looking back. God, men. If being in a working relationship with two of them was this hard, I didn’t think I’d ever want anything to do with romance. If Asher could fillet me with a few words, I couldn’t imagine what someone I loved could do to me.
I could do better, he’d said. Better than what, him? That put almost everyone on the menu. What did he know, anyway?
Something crashed in the locker bay. If he’d started pounding the hell out of one of the lockers, we’d end up surrounded by security, or worse, more cops. In case he might be in trouble, I waved Caine off, who gave me a questioning look, and went back to the entrance of the alcove.
The sight of Asher slumped against the lockers at the far end made me stop in the doorway. He was angled away from me, his shoulder pressed into the locker. He held his hands in a prayer position by his nose. Something stuck out above and below his fingers, but I couldn’t see what. The treasure from his pocket? As he breathed into the object, his posture relaxe
d, and he stilled back to the composed Asher I knew.
I drew in a shaking breath. The thought of her gave him comfort like I never could. Mad or not, I wanted to give her back to him. And I had to stop trying to let him go and do it.
Mind churning, I rushed back to Caine, keeping watch on the crowd beyond him. “Ooh, looks like that went well,” he said, hissing air in through his teeth.
I couldn’t find the gear that worked my voice box, so I shook my head and didn’t fight when he pulled me in and held me. His hands stroking down my hair worked wonders to smooth out my emotions, and his shoulder felt solid under my cheek when my world seemed unsteady. If I kept holding on to him, maybe my heart would eventually invite him in to fill up the emptiness left behind by Asher’s absence.
Caine let me slide out of his arms, leaning in to kiss my forehead. “Better?” he asked.
“Loads,” I said. “You make a pretty good stress toy. I mean…you’re not a…oh hell, you know what I mean.”
His laughter induced my own, and it lifted me a little further out of my mood.
When Asher finally came out of the locker bay, he appeared so unaffected and normal, he didn’t seem like the same guy I’d spent the last five minutes with. Maybe I needed something better in my pocket than a piece of silk.
“We should go,” he said. “The car I stashed is on the north side of the city, so we should take a cab to there, and then it’ll take quite a few hours to get to that cottage where the third page is.”
“What car?” I asked.
He gave me that pointed look he used when trying to make me figure something out. “What made you choose the pages in this part of the world, Addison?”
I didn’t bother correcting him on my title. “I don’t know, I just… Do you think Izan gave me some sort of subliminal message so we’d come here? And why a car? Are you saying we should drive to the next page, like normal people? But there are hundreds of wraiths out there hunting us.” My pulse took off at a trot, and I couldn’t immediately identify the cause. I didn’t think it had anything to do with the dead.
“How else would we get there?” Caine asked. “With the Shift locked up tight, it’d be an awfully long walk to Wales.”
“My gut is telling me this is what we need to do,” Asher said, “and we’ll worry about what comes next when we have to. If Izan has set this path for us, we don’t have much choice but to travel it.”
“This is completely and utterly insane,” I said. I considered why driving to the pages disturbed me on a primal level. In a car. With Asher and the love he kept in his pocket. Love for her. For miles and miles, across the ferry to the UK, all the way up to Wales. Would we have to spend the night together? Panic tried to strangle me, but I coughed it away and said, “No, nuh-uh, that’s not going to work.”
“Why not?” He checked around the corner, and we rejoined the masses.
“Yeah, seems like a decent plan to me,” Caine said. “What’s the problem?”
I weaved around a woman tugging a toddler behind her. “Um…just because.” Good one, Addy. Idiot. I caught up with them. “Because I can’t stand the thought of being stuck with you for that long, that’s why.”
Asher gave a harsh sigh and glanced my way, raising his voice as the roar of the crowd jacked up in volume. Stopping at one of the food vendors that were spilling delicious scents into the air, he said, “Your eye twitches when you lie.”
“What are you doing, mate?” Caine asked, his gaze darting around. “We really need to get out of this crowd.”
Asher ordered croissants in strange English that my Architect brain had to be translating from French, his voice tweaking parts of me I didn’t want him to. The rotund woman behind the counter handed him two paper bags, which he slipped into his duffel.
Glancing at me, he said, “Addison always gets hungry around this time, and she forgets to eat. Now, tell me the real reason you’re dragging your feet about the car.”
What? Seriously, how did he know my food schedule?
“Never mind. If I end up punching you in the face before the night’s over, just remember this was your idea.” I jumped on the escalator that would carry me back to the main floor, drooling over the thought of devouring those pastries. The two guys stepped up together.
Asher chuckled, deep and rich, the sound curling around my skin like a desert wind. How had he flipped his switch to light and easy? Not even he could be that good of an actor. Caine laughed along with Asher. What the hell? One minute Asher was ready to rip his throat out, and the next, they’re all buddy-buddy? I would never understand men. Were they both screwing with me for some reason?
I could hardly stand to be in a crowded room with the hot Asher Green, let alone in a car, and if Caine and I were going to bond, we needed some privacy. Tugging at my top didn’t relieve the invisible vise squeezing my chest.
“That leather really does suit you well,” Caine said. “The view from down here is spectacular.”
I turned sideways on the moving stairs. Why did I have to blush so easily?
“You’re wrong.” Asher watched me with that same calm…I’d almost have said pride if I’d been talking about anyone else. “Catch her in a well-loved pair of jeans and a plaid shirt, and you’ll meet the true Addison. Then you’ll understand the power of her.”
Um…what? My control rattled again, crumbling around the edges. What the hell did he want? Be myself, and I’m not good enough. Be aggressive like he wanted, and I’m not good enough. “Screw you,” I said under my breath. “You don’t know me.”
Clearly I hadn’t lowered my voice as much as I’d thought, because Caine started laughing again.
I shook my head and stared up at the high ceiling as the escalator carried me the rest of the way to the top. There were not two spectacular men behind me, probably still rating my ass in the leather pants. We were not going to be stuck in a small space together for hours.
I moved toward the exit, stopping before going out. “I think we should take a train over to London and go from there.” That way I could sit in a seat far away from him. Or in a separate car. Yeah, even better.
Asher raised a brow, humor carved into every curve of his features, as if it wasn’t a big deal to have an entire army of wraiths chasing us through a foreign country and we hadn’t just had an emotional fight. “And if the veil opens within the train while we’re miles beneath the English Channel, then what?”
We’d be sitting ducks. “Oh, fine, you win as usual. So hail us a cab, smart-ass, and we’ll get your crappy car.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
We rushed out of Gare du Nord onto the sidewalk. The traffic sat in a snarl of accidents and wall-to-wall gridlock. A VW Rabbit had rolled on its side down the street, and in the other direction, smoke trickled up from a crumpled hood. “We might have a problem, boys and girls,” Caine said.
I cranked my head around to stare at him. “You think?”
While Asher surveyed the chaos, I kept an eye out for any infected who might have been lurking. Everyone rushed around, some holding their arms or chests as if hurt, but none of them were looking in our direction, and none of them appeared to have white eyes. Still, we were too exposed standing there.
“If Baku wants me strong, why does he keep standing in our way?” I asked, buying time to think. “Is this another ass-backward kind of motivation in his eyes?”
“Perhaps Izan and Baku are working more closely together on this than he led you to believe,” Caine said.
“Nothing would surprise me right now,” Asher said.
I felt strange going on the defensive, but our dwindling morale wasn’t helping anything. “Yes, Izan and the founders royally screwed us all over, but I believe he wants to leave with a clear conscience, which means we have to shut down Baku and become the Mortal Machine without all of us dying. Let’s go with that until we know differently.”
As if someone flipped a switch, every single person stopped, whirled around, and stared a
t us. They all wore the telltale grin of the wraiths, and knots of cold formed in my stomach. Dizziness swept over me from the rushing adrenaline. “Holy crap, has the whole freakin’ world gone nuts? Can we push that many wraiths out before they’re on us?” Except I couldn’t call Caine’s or Asher’s power at the moment because of my blocked chakras.
“Take our chances running through them,” Asher asked, “or take our chances with the bodiless ones in the Shift?”
Neither Caine nor I had a chance to answer, because an old woman rushed us with a horde of other infected behind her. Asher threw one arm around Caine and the other around me. The Shift rolled over us, the cold stealing my breath away. Thousands of wraiths spread far and wide in every layer we moved through. Frigid hands grabbed for me, their startled cries trying to shatter my eardrums. We passed through their bodies, and my skin crawled with death. I clung to Asher until one of those icy fists wrapped around my wrist and almost tore me out of his grasp.
We piled onto the ground in dim light. I wondered why my landing hadn’t hurt more. Until Asher groaned and a wiggle of my legs and hands found the full length of his fit body beneath me. Caught in his whiskey scent and the hum of energy crawling up my arms, I closed my eyes and listened to him breathe. The rise and fall of his chest hit me like a lullaby. I could have gone to sleep and woken up that way every day in absolute bliss.
“Addison,” he rasped, and then coughed. “You need to move.”
I snapped out of the moment and scrambled off him, oomphing as I made an awkward dismount. My wrist still burned, and the icky feeling that something dead had touched me would probably take a while to go away. Like, forever.
Caine moaned beside me and sat up. “That was mostly unpleasant. You might warn us next time you take us on a ride through Death Valley. I’m guessing this isn’t Wales?”
While I tried to figure out which reality we’d landed in, desperate for the zings having a way with my nether regions to get lost, Asher sucked in air as he rolled onto his side on oil-stained pavement. It was dark save for a bit of light seeping in around a garage door. My nose wrinkled up with the smell of stale exhaust.
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