Since I was still steel-edged pissed at Green, I had a need to thumb my nose at him. I straightened and managed to not topple over when someone took the world and sent it for a spin around my head. Never liked rides.
I made like a fence post and waited for the blur of images to slow down. I didn’t barf. I shook a little, but I couldn’t seem to help that. Yippee.
Sophia moved in front of me. Her solid form gave me something to focus on. Grinning, she winked at me. I didn’t need to look at Asher to know I’d surprised him, that I was on my own two feet and not spewing up my guts.
If I squinted really hard, I could just make out silhouettes of people moving around a street, which must have been the true reality, since that was the only one that had people in it. Trippy. When I stopped searching for the real thing, the layer I stood in came into sharper focus just like Sophia said it would. A few blinks cleared the rest of the lingering shadows.
We loitered in the front hall of a nice house. I immediately thought “plantation house” even though I’d only been to the southern states once when Dad and I went to Cousin Francine’s wedding. Ornate crown moldings ran around the top of the walls where it met the ceiling, stained dark. Raised panels made the walls more interesting. Everything but the trim had been painted a creamy white, making it seem light and airy even with all of the heavy texture around the room.
Stairs went up on the right side of the hall, the treads a dark mahogany while the risers remained the same cream as everything else. An old iron chandelier hung above with tiny black shades over yellow bulbs. It shone golden light down onto the parquet floor.
The place seemed harmless on the surface, but … but … something. My legs tensed to sprint me away from the unknown that hummed through the air like potential lightning. “What is this place?” I asked.
“We’re expected.” Asher pointed down the hallway left of the stairs. If he kept ignoring me, I was going to hit him.
“Expected by whom?” I asked.
Sophia gave me a shut-the-hell-up-and-walk look. I sighed and started in the direction Asher thrust his finger. Nothing in the barren hallway told me anything. Cream, cream, and more cream. No furniture, no pictures, no plaques stating, “You have now entered the fifth gate of hell. Please check your soul at the door,” or anything useful.
I turned back to them just before the hall came to a T, hallways jutting in both directions. Sophia and Asher were rooted to the parquet where I’d left them at the foot of the stairs. He appeared almost … uncertain. If he was uncertain, then I was in some serious poo.
My heart did a few jumping jacks. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
He turned to her and said, “Wait for us inside.”
After saying something low and growly against his ear, she smoothed her hands over the gray uniform as if trying to un-wrinkle her own temper before facing me.
I shook my head as she approached. “Please don’t leave me right now. Please!”
When she finally raised her pale face to me, her light-blue soldier eyes and shoulders held resignation. “Listen to Asher, okay?” she said. “Let him take care of you until you’re ready to take care of yourself. I’ll be waiting for you when he brings you inside.” With that cryptic comment, she continued past me and turned down the hallway to the right.
Left with Asher and my pulse that continued to jump around like one of those old-fashioned wind-up frogs, I focused back on him. “Tell me what’s happening. What is this place? Who’s down there waiting for us? The rest of the Machine? Why did you tell me you’re afraid for me?”
He came toward me with bold strides. Pissed? Or was that just his normal gait? I backed up until the wall halted my progress. My yelp careened around the space. Eyes half-lidded and guarded, he stopped so close I couldn’t see around him. As far as images went, his was a good one. If I ignored all he’d done to me and would soon do to me, anyway.
“You need to calm yourself before we go in there,” he said with no inflection, a careful, even nothingness to his voice. “I need the other sentinels to see what I see in you, so they’ll vote the way I want them to.”
He saw something in me? “Vote on what? And which way do you want them to vote?” At his silence, I resorted to begging. “Come on, you’ve gotta give me more than that. I don’t like surprises, not even as a kid. At Christmas I’d tear the house apart until I found all of my gifts. Birthdays, too. Drove Dad nuts.”
A smile hit his eyes and made them sparkle before his mouth formed the shape. Just like that he went from scary to swoon-worthy. It drained out of him as fast as it had come on. “Sophia thinks I can’t deal with you the way I do all of the other initiates who come through here.”
My heart still went pit-a-pat against my ribs, but I wasn’t sure it was because of the unknown waiting down the hallway anymore. “What do you mean?”
“She thinks you’ll respond better to kindness.” His lip curled up at the last.
My eyebrow did an all-out salute. “Well, duh. Doesn’t everybody? And no offense, but if you treat your fellow assassins the way you treat me, then I’m surprised one of them hasn’t offed you by now.”
He threw his head back and laughed. It was a good laugh, dark and masculine, coming up from somewhere deep. It seemed to slide over my skin, warm and inviting me closer. I had a feeling he didn’t do it often. A shame, that.
His chuckling died away. As I watched, all amusement vanished, and I wondered for a moment if I’d really heard that laugh or if I’d taken that last step into Whack-Nut City. “Kindness is for the world out there where ignorance is bliss. The Machine hasn’t survived this long coddling its guardians. If I’d asked nicely, would you have read the book?” His eyes challenged me to deny it.
I opened my mouth to do just that. Shut it again. Would I have? I liked old things, but being threatened with death if anyone discovered I had the book trumped that. I’d have wondered forever what the pages contained, but I’d have gotten over it. It went against my instinct to admit it, but he seemed to be waiting for an answer. “No, I wouldn’t have.”
“Would you have done anything I asked you to do had I left you a choice?”
I frowned, wondering where this conversation was headed. Nowhere good. “No.”
“Good, we understand each other, then. So turn your little tush around and march that way.” He pointed down the cream hallway where Sophia had gone, to a door that might as well have been an open shark’s mouth, and I was the chum.
“No.”
He straightened. “Now.” Whispers in the dark. I might as well have been six years old again the first time a room unraveled. Or in the cornfield at night playing Ghosts in the Graveyard with my one and only childhood friend, Evangeline, and her evil-ass brothers.
I darted out from Asher’s shadow, turning to keep him where I could see him. Give me spiders, hell, even wraiths, over him any day, and I’d have trembled less. “You’re not going to bully me into this, Green, so forget it.” Too bad my voice squeaked, ruining the effectiveness of my statement.
“You don’t think so?” Cracking his knuckles, he came away from the wall. Here little rabbit, those crocodile eyes said. Come and see what big teeth I have.
I walked one step backward with every step he took toward me, my shaking hand sliding along the wall. “Just forget it and take me home. I came like you wanted, and now I’m going to leave.” Something bad would happen if I went through that door at the end. My nerves were sure of it.
“Have you forgotten what I’ll take from you if you don’t obey me?” As he passed under an overhead light, it filled his eye sockets with shadow. The monster was in there, but now I couldn’t see him. He made no sound as he stalked me, not even a swish of fabric from his snazzy uniform.
I panicked, and all of my earlier certainty that the Machine wasn’t going to harm me flew out of my head. “Forgetting Dad won’t mean much if I’m too dead to remember him. That’s why I’m in white, isn’t it? I’m to be some
sort of sacrifice? I read your damn book, so now I know too much, right? Is this just some sort of sick torture you get off on, dragging me here through all of your secrets?”
Asher seemed to have run into an invisible brick wall. He teetered forward before recovering. “Is that what you think? That I’ve brought you here to kill you?” His smile wouldn’t have convinced anyone it was genuine. “Why would I have put up with you this long only to set you free so easily?”
“Easily?” I shrieked. “You think dying is the easy way out of this? Just how freakin’ insane are you?” A tear leaked out of my eye, and I scrubbed it away with my silk-covered palm. “I just want to go back home. My dad saved my life once, and he needs me now. Please. Just take me back, and I’ll forget all of this.”
A breath leaked out of him slowly. When he came for me this time, I didn’t move. I needed to touch something real, even if it was him. To make sure I hadn’t already died and didn’t know it.
“You’re not going to die tonight, Addison,” he said, and I believed him. Something in his voice, in his posture, said that he meant it.
When he came too close, I instinctively raised my hand to stop him. His jacket smoothed under my touch. Fascinated, I yanked my gloves off and slid my bare hands over the cool material. The sensation overrode everything else as I spread my fingers and explored him.
“What is this made of? It feels like woven threads of water. It doesn’t seem real, it’s so light and soft.” The tension leaked out of me as I traced the red piping up his chest, passed my fingers over the four golden pins on the mandarin collar, my gaze following my sensory adventure. Touch had always been my soother. The silky edge of my baby blanket. The fluff on my favorite teddy bear. The velvet dress from a doll Grandpa had given me when I turned seven. When the world became too much, I just needed something under my hands, and I could breathe again.
His thrumming energy and muscled body gave me sensory overload, far better than any blanket or teddy could. What would it be like to open his jacket and touch his skin? I had a sudden burning desire to know. It wasn’t wrong. I wouldn’t hurt him, would I?
His breath warmed my left temple, so he must have leaned toward me, and his heartbeat jumped harder under my hands. Was he afraid or excited? I was too caught up in the moment to search his face for the answer.
On my way south down his chest, my palms bumped something hard underneath his jacket. Lost to sensation and curiosity, I slipped my hand between the buttons and wrapped my hand around something solid. Metal. Heavy.
“You know it’s considered impolite to handle a man’s weapon without asking first,” he said in a way that sounded obscene.
I jerked back when I realized what I’d been feeling. A gun. The one he’d used to kill Ava. “Why do you have a gun on you now?” What had he done with her body? Left it for someone to find? Or did he take it away, and her family still didn’t know what happened to her?
“Give you a little texture and softness under your fingers, and you’re suddenly placid. I’ll remember your switch, Plaid. Now, we’re done stalling. Let’s go.” He picked up my gloves.
I crossed my arms over my cleavage and glared at him. “No.” God, how could I want to touch him so badly?
He chuckled, all smug and arrogant, as if I was the butt of some grand joke I wasn’t aware of yet. “While you were busy telling me how I’d never get you down the hallway, you walked here all on your own.”
I turned my head like a little kid who realized the bogeyman had been behind her the whole time. The door that had loomed so ominously at the end of the hallway now stood a mere two feet away. Whirling back to him, I said, “You manipulative bastard.”
He shrugged, all arrogance and nonchalance. “I’ve been called worse.”
The door opened. I squeaked and somehow ended up on the other side of Asher, peering around his back. He handed me my gloves over his shoulder, and I didn’t argue, just tugged them back on.
“What doin’ out here?” asked the most ginormous man I’d ever seen in some island creole accent. The entire left side of him, at least what I could see around his shiny sentinel uniform, had been covered in black tribal tattoos. A line divided him across his shaved head, down his nose and chin. He was striking, unforgettable, I’d give him that. Scary, but striking. Gigantic arms crossed over a chest the size of Australia. “He wait’n on you, brah. You bring the malihini now, or he have me bring her.”
I was pretty sure my heart rushed up my throat and flew away. “I don’t want him taking me anywhere,” I whispered to Asher, still huddled behind him. If I was the virgin sacrifice, the giant framed in the doorway was most certainly King Kong. “And what does malihini mean?”
“It means newcomer. Fresh meat.” Asher moved aside, leaving me quivering on my own. “And if you don’t want Remy here to knock you out and drag you in by your hair, I suggest you get in there.”
I scowled at the amusement tickling his face. “Screw you.” Escape wasn’t an option since Asher was holding my memories hostage, and I so did not want that guy touching me, which left me one direction to go.
Hugging myself, I shuffled toward them. King Kong Remy moved out of the way. What kind of a name was that, anyway? It didn’t suit someone so mountainous, who could endure the amount of pain he must have suffered to get those tattoos. Not that I knew what would fit him better. Steve? Randall? I’d think of something.
As I trudged by Asher, he said, “The rule now applies, Plaid. You seemed to need to fondle me back there, but no more touching, of anyone, for any reason.”
I laughed at that. “Fondle—you wish. I like your outfit. The rest of you doesn’t hold much interest for me. Sorry to burst your bubble.” God, arrogant much? Had he really reacted to my touch? Or had I imagined his pulse speeding up under my hands? Yeah, that had to be it.
A drum-like sound bumped against my ears. It took me a second to realize Remy was laughing in a low, bass beat behind me. “She burns you, brah. May she got a backbone aft’ all. May have to change my vote.”
Chapter 11
I opened my mouth to ask Remy about the vote as I followed him inside, but one look from Asher, and I shut it without popping a syllable. A dull roar of chatter filled the room, of which I could only see a small rectangle of from the anteroom surrounding the doorway.
Remy lumbered off—there really wasn’t another word for how he walked, like he knew he was large-a-mungus and the world would simply get out of his way—and disappeared around the corner.
Hands worrying together, I stifled nervous laughter. I would not scream. I only had a few shreds of dignity left, if any, and I’d hold on to them for dear life.
“Get going, Plaid,” Asher said.
I turned to face him. He leaned against the door, all relaxed and comfy-like, grinning at me. Another joke I hadn’t figured out, apparently.
“Aren’t you coming?” I asked in a little girl voice. Nice and steady, there, Addy. Nice job.
“I’ll be right behind you.”
“Afraid I’m going to bolt out the door, huh?”
His grin grew, splitting his face as he watched me. “Perhaps.”
I had a sudden urge to touch his chin to see if the shadow beard was rough, but I curled my fingers into fists and dropped them to my sides. I would not be accused of fondling anyone ever again. How humiliating. I really needed to find a new hobby to cool my nerves.
“What’s the big guy’s story?” I asked. “I’ve never heard an accent like that before.”
“It’s some mix of Hawaiian and Canadian English, and because he’s been away from the island for so long, it’s become its own dialect, I think.” One of his eyebrows jacked up. “You’re stalling.”
“Yeah, I’m stalling. What’s with the name? Remy’s French, right?”
“His mother was from Quebec.”
“I thought you didn’t ask each other personal questions.”
His inner beast squinted at me. “Move it.”
After
scowling at him for another few seconds, I made my feet move toward the chatter beyond the anteroom that sounded heated rather than like pleasant party banter. I had an inkling they were arguing about me and whatever vote Remy had mentioned. Vote for what? Asher said they weren’t going to kill me, but what other options were there? Make me one of them, or … erase me from the planet was all I could come up with, in any number of creative ways.
Stopping at the corner of the anteroom, I leaned out just far enough for one eye to see past the cream wall. The room beyond made me think ballroom meets old-man smoking room. The walls were a dark tan. Leather sofas in a deep rich red color sat along two walls. An eclectic collection of chairs in complementary fabrics were arranged near the sofas, creating smaller meeting areas within the large room. It appeared a little frayed around the edges, so definitely not Asher’s place. Just spending a second in the room probably gave the guy the heebs.
A fireplace flickered with orange flame on the far wall, only a sliver of it visible through the mass of bodies that huddled around it. I counted nine black uniforms, ten if I added Asher to that. Ten sentinels. There were around thirty gray soldier uniforms standing farther back from the sentinels, and if what Sophia said was true, that the lesser ranking soldiers weren’t invited, then there were more than that in the Machine. If only the sentinels hunted, how did so few protect the entire world? He’d said they were shorthanded. Now I believed him.
I rounded the corner and baby-stepped toward them. One man stood on top of the stone slab that served as the lower mantel in a snazzy black pin-striped suit, complete with a black shirt and matching tone-on-tone tie. The only non-uniform in the place. The Colonel Asher had mentioned, I guessed? But he didn’t appear any older than me or Asher. Or anyone else in the room, I realized, surveying what faces were either facing me or in profile. Were they all frozen in their bodies at the age of eighteen to twenty-something?
The suit spotted me first. He shut up. The rest followed. Every pair of eyes in the room pointed toward me, none of them friendly except Sophia, who nodded encouragement. I hadn’t realized I’d backed up until my butt bumped into the hard, hot line of Asher. He drew in a quick breath, but I wasn’t sure if I’d hurt him or pissed him off. It wasn’t like I’d touched his skin.
Darkside Sun (Entangled Embrace) Page 9