I shivered, pressing myself harder against my door. “A soldier, then. What’s the difference?” I didn’t want to admit to skimming through that part in the bible.
“Sentinels have the power to sense, hunt, and destroy the wraiths, as well as repair the rifts they make coming through to our plane from theirs. Think of soldiers as the support personnel. They gather intel on possible wraith-infected people, because with so few sentinels, we’re having a hard time keeping ahead of the influx of wraiths as it steadily grows worse. They also manage weapons, technology, and provide cleanup and cover-up services if a sentinel has to cleanse a host, which is what Kyle is now doing for us. His power falls low on our scale.”
Cleanup on aisle blood. Nice. “Murder, you mean,” I said. “And how about pulling a wraith out? Doesn’t that kill the host anyway?”
“Cleanse,” Green said, “not murder.” He said it in a way that made me think it was an old argument, one he made so often he finally believed it himself. “And no, if we’re lucky, the host will survive the extraction with no ill effects once we wipe the memory. It’s only the higher caste wraiths we aren’t powerful enough to pull out, but sometimes the weaker ones claw their way so deep, it’s impossible to get it out without causing major brain damage.”
I sat up straighter. Seriously? “Pin a flower on it if you want, Green, but ‘cleansing’ is still murder. You can’t just go around whacking people, or you’re as bad as the wraiths. There has to be another way.”
Although his face remained neutral, I got the feeling I’d struck a nerve way down deep in that psycho heart of his. “Don’t judge what you don’t yet understand,” he said. “The wraiths are intent on taking over this world so they can live again, destroying every soul on Earth to make it happen. Even if some of us survive, there’s no telling what the dead’s plans are once they regain their bodies. They have no morals, no conscience. We do what we have to. You’ll understand that soon enough.”
“I don’t want to understand. In fact, I don’t want anything to do with you or this Mortal Machine business. Just tell me how to stop seeing, and I’ll be on my way. This has nothing to do with me.” Did it? Then why could I see the wraiths and rifts when nobody else could? Was I like Green? No, hell no!
“I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way.” Amusement returned to dance across his features like a summer breeze giving life to a morning-still lake. “Now, ask your questions.”
There were so many I didn’t know where to start. “How do I already know and use most of the words and terminology in the book? Like veil and rift?”
He shrugged, but his expression made me think he wanted me to make a connection I hadn’t yet made. “They’re the most accurate words to describe the anomalies, I suppose.”
My chest tightened at some thought that was trying to break through, one I held off. “Yeah, I guess that could be why.” Remembering what happened when I unlocked the book, I asked, “Why was there a sudden windstorm in my room when I read the title? Because it ate my blood? Also, last night was the third instance I lost time yesterday, and I want to know why.”
My pack disappeared. He grabbed me by the front of my shirt and yanked me forward. I ended up straddling him on the seat, my palms pressed against the rock of his chest. Whimpers and shallow breaths heave-hoed from my lips.
A humming energy surrounded him, eating along my skin as if looking for a weak part to crawl inside me. And dammit, I wanted to open myself and invite it in. Midnight blue veins pulsed and glowed beneath the skin of his throat and part of his handsome face, scrolling designs that appeared more like a living tattoo than a simple pattern of veins.
“When was the other time?” He spoke through clenched teeth. “I caused one in my office. The book caused the other. Tell me when the third time happened.”
He held me out far enough I could see him without going cross-eyed, but I looked away, afraid to get caught up in those beautiful windows to his dark soul.
“No, look at me, Addison. Look at me, and tell me what I want to know. And the wind. Tell me about the wind.”
He’d called me by name again. Shit. And how could he not have known about the gale force that had rushed through when I’d said “Mortal Machine” the first time? It must have happened to him before, right? “Will you let me go if I do?” Part of me wanted to stay right where I was, straddling a hot professor in the back of my car. Jesus. My skin became hyper-sensitive everywhere he was touching me, even through the fabric of my clothes.
“Perhaps.” Heat reached up through my jeans from him. He was unnaturally warm, almost feverish.
When I met his gaze, my mind went on walkabout. Nobody could be that gorgeous. Was he even real? I could have fallen into him and happily drowned, but I gave myself a mental kick and wiped off the stupid smile growing on my lips. Losing my mind.
“The wind seemed to come from the book, or maybe me, I’m not sure,” I said. “The lock on the book sliced my finger and sucked up my blood. Is it supposed to do that?”
He smiled with what I took to be pride, and his hand slid along my back, filling me with erotic fire. “It needed to taste you to see if you’re worthy.”
“Worthy of what?” Afraid I’d start tearing his clothes off to get my hands on his bare flesh, I pushed against him, but he didn’t relent. “Forget it. Never mind. As for the time loss, it was in my room,” I said, still straining against his cotton-covered pecs flexing under my hands. “That’s why I was late for class this morning … yesterday morning … whenever it was.”
His study of me intensified, and considering it was damn tense before, that was saying something. “Are you certain?”
“I checked my watch. Started breathing out snow when the thing on the other side of the wall started pulling the thread, unraveling the veil. Something kind of hit me like it did in your office earlier, like a shockwave, and my body froze up until my roommate came in. I checked my watch again, and half an hour had gone by.”
The instant his arms relaxed, I scrambled out of his lap and pasted myself against the door again, my flesh alive with tingles everywhere he’d touched me. “That’s a very specific reference,” he said, too quiet, too guarded, “pulling the thread. Tell me what you mean by that.”
“Why are you asking me like you can’t see the black holes when they open?”
“I have extra senses that tell me when there’s a disturbance in our reality and when a wraith is near, but you’re the only person I’ve ever met who can actually see the rifts and the phantom forms before they take a human body.” He leaned forward, eagerness radiating from him as he reached for me, paused, and then formed a fist he set down on his thigh. “We’ve been drowning in wraiths, but I think our founder has thrown us a lifeline. You.”
He grabbed my pack from where it had settled on the floor and got out of the car.
I sprung out after him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that you’ve been destined to join us since birth, your future written into your genetic code. I’m not only a sentinel, Addison, I’m also a recruiter. You can call me Asher.” He stopped beside me, and something foreign spilled into his gaze. It took me a second to recognize regret.
I shook my head. “No.” I pointed a finger at him as he moved closer. “You stay the hell away from me. I am not like you. I’m going home to my Dad.” To do what? my inner voice mocked. How could I protect him?
“What is it you think we’re doing here? I’d bet my life that you’re a sentinel, and given what I’ve seen from you so far, I think you’re going to change everything. Why do you think I gave you our entire knowledge of the wraiths?”
Clearly, I hadn’t thought that far ahead.
Chapter 6
The sun should have been warm against my skin, but I shivered. “I’m going to be an accountant,” I said. “My dad mortgaged the house so I could come here and study without having to work while I went to school. Mom abandoned us the day I was born. I won’t abandon him
now, so you can just take whatever thought you’re having and shove it.” What he’d said earlier about Kyle, that he might have hated Green less if he’d bricked the gangly kid into a wall, finally made sense. “You didn’t give Kyle a choice about whether or not to join the Machine.”
“We’re rare, and we’re too few for the growing incidents around the world,” Asher said. Calling him that seemed strange and inappropriate. “There’s never a choice for people like us.”
“I told you, I’m not like you.” It was a whisper, but the lie rang in my ears like a gong. Was he human? Was I? Hell, yes. To think anything else would send me over the edge I teetered upon.
“Keep telling yourself that, and maybe one day you’ll believe it.” He hiked up my pack and started toward the road. “Come. We have to go.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.” I dug into my pocket for my phone, hoping the half hour hadn’t passed for me to call Dad. “Just tell me how to protect my dad and go away.”
“I intend to teach you all you need to know, but first you have to be inducted into our ranks so your abilities can be fully realized.”
No way did I want any other weirdness to deal with. I imagined having to hunt and destroy the very things I’d been running from my whole life, having to walk away from school, from Dad, and from everything I knew. Green hadn’t specifically said where he’d be taking me, but I assumed it would be away from here. If I left Dad, who would he spend Christmas with? Who would take care of him when he was old and make sure he had underwear that wasn’t holier than the Catholic Church? Who would rock my kids to sleep if I ever had any? If I went with Green, the life I’d always thought lay ahead of me would never come to pass, and Dad would end up alone. My heart knew it was true.
Palming my keys, I edged toward the driver’s-side door of my car.
“If you fight me on this, I’ll have no choice but to take you by force, for your own safety as well as ours.” He stopped, his head tilted forward. “Come with dignity, or come unconscious. The choice is yours.”
I opened my mouth to scream my frustration at him, but a puff of frost escaped instead. “Oh, God. It’s happening. It’s never happened outside before.” A quick scan of the blue sky turned up nothing out of the ordinary.
“Yes.” He nodded. “But not here. The bigger question is how can you feel it from a distance already?” He glanced at me as if I’d turned into a hissing cobra and he wasn’t sure if I’d bite him or not.
I ignored the last thing he said and concentrated on the first. “Yeah, not here. If I just go away, it’ll stop. Or is the wraith coming for you?” When I still couldn’t see any darkness above me, I asked, “Where is it? And why is today the first time I’ve ever seen a wraith?”
He composed himself, all shreds of unease evaporating to leave him calm as a sleeping babe. “I let in the one in the AL to see what you’d do, but this one is here all on its own. If you’d stuck around long enough, you’d have seen one before now. As for where it is, we might as well start your training early. You tell me.”
“How the hell should I know?” Even as I spoke, something in my body seemed to be reaching out of me of its own accord, some sense I hadn’t been aware existed in me. Unable to pull it back, I floated, detached from my body, my senses riding the air, using it to feel like a million fingers touching everything and everyone. A scream slammed me back into my body with Asher standing nose-to-nose with me.
Ava’s scream.
I puffed snow onto his face, and he wiped it off. “My room,” I said. “I totally forgot the walls were starting to come apart when I left. Why did I just leave Ava there like that? But nothing has ever happened before, though, after I left.”
“Did anyone see you with the bible? Speak!”
I backed up, but he followed. “Tell me!” he barked.
“I didn’t mean for them to see it, but they surprised me.”
“Dammit.” He threw my bag into the backseat of my car, pressed the key fob around my neck to lock the door, and then sprinted toward V2.
I’d put them in danger. Or the useless book did, but it had been in my hands. He’d warned me. Why hadn’t I been more careful? Could the wraiths sense his bible? Were they looking for it, and that was why Asher didn’t want me showing it to anyone?
I didn’t much like Ava, but I didn’t want her dead, either. What could I do? Would I be able to stop him? I had to try, and maybe I could learn how to send back a wraith and seal up the rift by watching him. That didn’t make me a sentinel, though.
I ran after him. Sucking wind, I sped across the grass, down the cement pathway that led to the door. No way he’d gotten inside already, but I couldn’t see him. Did all profs have keys to the dorms? Somehow I didn’t think so, so where did he go?
With my shaking hands, it took three tries to bring the key from my lanyard to the lock, and two more to actually get it to turn. Once inside, I raced up the stairs two at a time. I was nearly hyperventilating by the time I made it to the third floor.
Huffing, I hot-footed it toward my room. Two girls huddled together in the hallway, giggling, with towels wrapped around their hair. They stank of fruity soap. How had they not heard Ava’s scream? Then again, it had sounded like maybe it came from inside my head, which was equally odd.
My door remained shut. Low voices filtered out from beneath, and I recognized Asher’s as one of them. So he was a freakin’ Houdini as well as a hot professor and a wraith hunter. I put my key in the lock, breathing snow against the door. It swung open with a push of my hand.
I froze at the sight of Ava and her guy glowering at Asher, who did an impression of a menacing statue just beyond the threshold. When the giggling behind me grew in volume, I swallowed my fear like a black pill, stepped in, and shut the freak party in together. No need to wig out my neighbors.
Everything about the other two in my room was somehow wrong. Ava held her arms out at her sides for balance, as if she’d never walked on two legs before. Baldy stretched his neck out, something inside him clearly uncomfortable in its people costume. A knot of cold in my chest told me they both had wraith riders, something I didn’t understand but knew all the same. Maybe one of those extra senses down in my mind’s archives the book had unlocked.
Ava cocked her head, grabbed Baldy’s arm, and gaped at me. “Where is the knowledge?” she demanded.
Knowledge, as in book? Crap. I stared at Asher’s profile, as unreadable as a Chinese instruction manual. “Professor Green?”
He blinked, turned to me with worry etched into his features. Did he not hear me come in? “What are you doing? Get out of here. Now!”
Ava laughed, deep and throaty. If the swamp thing could laugh, it would sound like that. “You bring us an unbound guardian, sentinel? How terribly thoughtful of you.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, but it meant something to Asher because those scrolling blue tattoos lit up under his skin, turning my room into a Northern Lights show and making him even more beautiful than usual. I blinked. He grabbed my arm, and I ended up on my butt in the hallway with the door slammed shut in my face.
Brightness flared out from a crack under the door, but no noise came with it. The lack of sound pummeled my ears as if I stood in an invisible bubble. Could the wraiths do that, too? Was that why nobody but Asher and I had heard her scream?
My breath no longer turned to snow, but they were still in there, the wraiths. That pearl of cold in me had faded a little, but it was still there. Asher had done something to contain whatever he was doing inside.
A small amount of blue light still shone under the door, but not as much. What was going on in there? My pulse jumped in my neck as I considered what Asher might do to Ava and her guy. Shove me out, would he? Screw him.
I unlocked the door again and rushed inside. Baldy lay unconscious on the floor in a pile of snow, wraithless, I thought. Maybe that was why the cold in me had faded a bit, because there was only one of them left on our side of the veil.
Asher had a knee pressed into Ava’s chest, a hand on her throat. Her dark hair lay in a frizzy mass around her face. Her eyes were wild, and instead of their normal brown, they were almost white. She—it—seemed to be cursing at Asher in another language.
“What are you doing?” I asked between panted breaths. “Stop it!”
“I can’t pull it out,” he said. “It’s the highest of the common castes, and I can’t pull it out.” Something in his voice—sorrow, old and aged—tightened a screw in my heart. He twisted his head to look at me, still struggling with the girl he held down. His eyes were beacons, lit from within. As I watched, they grew empty, the man draining away to leave nobody home. Did that mean he had to …?
“Oh, God. Asher, you can’t!” I screamed. “She can be a pain in the ass, but she’s somebody’s family.” I rushed forward, but he shoved his free hand out and pushed me back on the bed.
“There’s no other way. This level of wraith can take over the body in a matter of days and use her energy to be reborn here on our plane. And it knows what you are. My duty is to the Machine first. Close your eyes, Addison. Listen to me.”
I shook my head, trying to convince myself he wouldn’t do it. Professors didn’t kill people. It was all just a bad dream. Wake up, dammit, wake up!
He pulled a sleek, black gun from the back of his jeans.
“Please don’t,” I said. A tear crested my lashes. Everything seemed to slow down, become unreal, like in a nightmare when you’re trying to haul ass but your legs won’t work right. It seemed to take forever for him to move that gun to point the barrel at Ava’s head. “Asher.”
His intense stare never strayed from me. “I’ve already deadened the sound to everyone outside this room using the Shift, which I’ll explain later. Remember, you have to destroy the mind where the soul lives. Destroying the brain is the only way to make sure the wraith doesn’t survive. Are you listening?” When I just kept shaking my head at him, he sighed. “You need to get used to this, anyway. Welcome to your life, guardian.”
Darkside Sun (Entangled Embrace) Page 5