Darkside Sun (Entangled Embrace)

by Adams, Jocelyn

  His trembling grew worse.

  “Asher,” I whispered, starved of air and desperate to have more of him against more of me. “Please don’t stop now.”

  He opened his eyes that had gone nuclear bright. Uttering a quiet roar, he launched away from me. While I tried not to cry out my disappointment, he cursed in a language that sounded Arabic of some flavor at first, but my mind translated it into the f-bomb. “What the hell are you doing?” he snarled. “I give you an inch, and you take a God damned mile.”

  The heat switched from desire to fury in an instant. “Me? I just felt your hair and your jacket. It was you who went sprinting toward first base, not me. And why are you so pissed, anyway? I know you felt … what I did, and that you liked it. How can that be wrong? I don’t believe what Sophia said about Taka and that Holly girl. There has to be some mistake.” There had better be, or I was so screwed. I’d never been intimate with anyone. Without emotional attachment, it would be meaningless, so I wouldn’t get what I needed from one night stands like the others did. Then again, I had just met Asher and knew almost nothing about him. Why was my connection with him so intense? And how could I just accept never feeling that again with him? I’d just tasted the hot fudge sundae; I couldn’t go back to eating vanilla ice cream. Or finding satisfying cuddles with my baby blanket, as it were.

  “I was the one Taka called first.” Asher’s grief and horror carried in the words. Passing his accusing finger between the two of us, he said, “That can never be between us.” While his expression remained hard, I caught a note of regret in his voice.

  How long had it been since he’d been touched that way? Looking like a dark God of war, he must have had mortal girlfriends along the way. He was a guy, and so I’d heard, they had some pretty big needs. So why did he seem so upset that we couldn’t be together? “Why do you sound like you’re trying to convince yourself of that more than me? I mean, maybe you can just leave me as I am. I’ll still learn and help you with the wraiths, and we could—”

  “Stop, just stop!” He shoved his hair back. “You and I belong to the Machine, and every human being on this planet is counting on us to keep them off the endangered species list even if they don’t know it. There’s no room for personal wants. End of discussion.”

  Perspective was a nasty bitch. Maybe he’d never been touched like that since coming to the Machine and I’d just reminded him of what he’d lost. Or maybe he’d gotten someone hurt along the way? Feeling like a dirt-bag, I said, “Okay. And I’m sorry if I stirred up any ghosts for you by asking you to do that for me.”

  The crease in his forehead deepened. He turned on his heel and returned to the altar. “Forget it,” he said. “I mean that. It never happened. Let’s stop wasting time and get this done.”

  Yeah, like I could ever forget that.

  His fingers played over the jade handle of the dagger, reminding me why I’d been scared in the first place.

  “Can you please tell me what’s going to happen? You keep telling me you’re not going to hurt me, but if that was true, you wouldn’t need a dagger.” I made myself get closer so I could see it better.

  The knife appeared old and intricate. The handle turned out to be a stout man carved from jade. Mayan, I guessed. The blade had that scalloped look of something created before modern tools were invented, as if something had shaved away the obsidian until it held an edge enough to slice. “Why do you have a Mayan sacrificial dagger? And where did you get it? It looks pristine for something that has to be more than eleven hundred years old. If it’s real.”

  He’d shut down to that cold, icy facade I hated, making me wonder if I’d imagined the last ten minutes. “It’s real. The Machine has had it in its possession for as long as I’ve been here. How they came by it, I’m not sure. That’s one of those bits of knowledge we lost with the pages of the original bible.”

  I swallowed, afraid to know. “So what are you going to use it for? The book took blood from me to open, so I’m guessing the ceremony will involve that, too?” I shuddered, hard and violently. “I’m bad with blood and even worse when it’s my own.”

  “There are two parts to the induction ceremony. The first is sort of a … tasting of the soul, of the mind. In non-guardians, we can easily tell if someone has been inhabited by a wraith, but if one gets inside of us, it has our knowledge and training. It can hide undetected except from the one who holds our baseline, which for you will be me. The second aligns your chakras to prepare your power to move from where it lies dormant in your soul up into your flesh so you can learn to wield it. It might take minutes or weeks for it to manifest. At that point, your body will stop aging.”

  I ignored the aging part. “So you … what … take a look in my mental closet and take some sort of inventory so you’ll know if I’m infected in the future, because there’s something out of place?” How could he do that? Bumbling around life was embarrassing enough. Having him go skipping through my brain would no doubt turn up things that would mortify me to have him know. Would he know everything I’d been thinking while the man-handling-that-didn’t-happen had been going on?

  He managed a weak smile. “You really are taking this well. Nobody else has ever asked about the ceremony before—they just went in blind. I’d imagine most wouldn’t believe it was possible and would be squeamish to share themselves so intimately with me.” His lids flared wide. “I just mean it’s intense and personal, that’s it.”

  He just had to go and put the image of himself and me in a naked tangle of limbs on the altar into my head. “Oh, I’m squeamish, all right. In fact, I think I’d rather you were just going to stab me and call King Kong for his dinner than let you go spelunking in my head.”

  “Your secrets are safe with me.” Stone cold man had returned, all business. “Knowing you this way will not only help me to make sure you’re unaffected in the future, but will also help me design your training to our greatest benefit.”

  I hugged myself. “I believe in reality having sides and a flimsy piece of universe-fabric between them, but I’ve never been much of a believer in metaphysical stuff.” Metaphysics was just a fancy word for the stuff we couldn’t explain, natural magic, the workings of the mind and universe that defied the normal biological and scientific understanding. “It all sounds hokey to me, that you can somehow get inside my soul and wander around like a tourist at a freak show.”

  He patted his left hand on top of the altar and re-palmed the dagger in his right. “Hop up here. I’ll try to explain until it begins, then you’ll understand without me saying a word.”

  I hesitated, staring at the medieval shackles. “Are you really going to tie me up? Because I really, really don’t like to be confined anywhere. Knowing what’s beyond the veil, I don’t ever want to be locked up anywhere for any reason. Not to mention I’m pretty sure you’re pissed off at me and holding a knife.”

  He groaned. “I’m not pissed, I’m just … never mind. The wraiths don’t know about this part of the Shift, and I need to confine you for your own safety and mine. I told you this will be intense, and I’m not exaggerating.”

  I nodded, not really believing. “Okay. And you’ll let me out when you’re done?”

  “Yes.”

  Trying not to shake, I said, “Okay, I’ll do this without a fuss if you’ll promise me one thing.”

  He raised a brow. “Ask, and I’ll consider it.”

  “I need to see my dad, and stop scowling and let me finish. I need to explain to him in person why I’m dropping out of university. I can’t concentrate on this if he’s out there thinking I’m missing.”

  Something passed over Asher’s features, sorrow or … something, but it disappeared as fast as it arrived. He opened his mouth, but shut it again, shaking his head. “We’ll figure something out, some way to give him peace of mind, and you, too. It’s the best I can offer.”

  “You’re not taking my memory of him, so if that’s what you’re thinking, then forget it. I need to see hi
m and know he’s okay. Promise me you’ll let me see him when this is over.”

  He let his head fall back and stared at the ceiling. Maybe counting to ten so he wouldn’t yell at me. Had he been thinking of kissing me before? Or had it all just been a fabrication of my idiot mind? “I’ll take you to him myself, but you’ll tell him what I decide you’ll tell him and nothing more,” he said. “Understood?”

  A giant knot untied from my soul, and I finally took in a full breath of air. “I guess that’s the best I’m going to get.”

  “Up you go,” he said. “Let’s get this done before you think yourself out of it.”

  I took the last step that put me right beside the altar and stopped. My breath shuddered out.

  Curling his finger at me, he said, “Come around this side, and I’ll help you.”

  My trembling started again as I rounded the table. The dagger wasn’t in his hand. I hadn’t seen him put it down, but I wasn’t sure I really wanted to see it right now anyway, so I let it be. When I reached him, he picked me up at the waist and plunked me on my butt on the stone. I squeaked.

  He hissed out a sigh and retracted his hands as if I’d burned him. “It’s going to be fine, you’ll see.”

  “Why do you say that like an invisible pry bar gouged those words out of you?” I giggled, too frantic to do anything else. I wanted to beg for another touch, but one glance at his tense form, and I decided against it.

  “Lie down with your head this way.” Stepping left, he patted the place he wanted me.

  I did as he asked, slowly. My muscles were all squirmy and didn’t quite work right. I misjudged the angle and speed as I reclined, and my head cracked against the stone harder than I meant it to. “Ouch.” I reached up to rub at it as Asher moved up to the edge above my head. “What are you doing? I don’t like you where I can’t see you.”

  He took advantage of my arm stretched up while I rubbed my bumped noggin, tugging my hand back farther over my head and off the table. Something clanked and squeezed my wrist. “Sorry, I need to get you buckled in before your nerve breaks.”

  I took quick, sharp breaths. I would not hyperventilate. “You say that like it’s inevitable, that I’m going to freak out.”

  “Even the bravest of us don’t like to be chained up, Plaid. There’s no shame in that.” He’d gone back to using that stupid nickname. Fantastic. Maybe I had been imagining his enjoyment earlier, and he’d just been a guy starved for touch. Either way, he was right, I needed to forget it.

  The second I let go of that wonder, though, my predicament finally hit home. After tonight, I’d never get any older, and everything I knew would change.

  He secured my other hand.

  I tugged against him, my panic growing again. “Why aren’t you talking?” I asked when the silence stretched on. “What are you doing back there?”

  “I’m here. Calm down.” He returned and wrapped a thick leather belt around my waist, securing the tarnished brass buckle. My feet came next, and I had to open my legs farther than I might have liked to accommodate the more rigid shackles.

  Intense, he’d said. “Why will I be trying to get away? Pain? Fear?” I wasn’t sure which of those scared me more.

  “Shhh.” Those neon blue veins pulsed to life beneath his skin, in time with the too-fast beating of his heart that I could somehow hear. Or maybe it was that pulse that accompanied travel through the Shift. We hadn’t gone anywhere, though, so I wasn’t sure. His tattoos spread down his body like bolts of lightning. A moment later, the illumination spread up the walls, over the ceiling, running into runes carved in to the stone. I might have been even more terrified if it hadn’t been so beautiful.

  It was beginning. Whatever he was going to do would be done soon. And I was chained to a sacrificial altar in a white dress. Oh God, oh hell, oh damn.

  “Just look at me,” he said. “And slow your breathing. Watch me. Let me be your anchor on this journey.”

  “Please don’t leave me.” Why did I say that? It was true, though. He would keep me safe, I knew it. My mind pulled out of its downward spiral, my pulse slowing to a trot. Weird, but what in my life wasn’t?

  “I’m not going anywhere.” He met my gaze briefly, intensely, before returning his attention to the ritual.

  I watched his hands gliding over my body, not touching, but as close as he could get without making contact. His dark hair and Middle-Eastern complexion, along with the scrolling lights under his skin, made for a startling contrast. Were his lights warm? Would I feel anything if I touched him while those luminescent veins glowed? I hadn’t felt anything when it happened to me, so probably not.

  His left hand lingered over the center of my chest while the other one continued to wander. It reminded me of an old lady I’d seen in a convenience store passing her hands over the scratch lottery tickets trying to “feel” which one was a winner, like it would zap her with static or speak to her soul or some junk. I hoped Asher’s senses worked better than hers. She’d bought a dud and lost her five bucks.

  His eyes opened at the same moment he went still. His other hand hovered just south of my groin, closer to my right thigh than my left. “Your strongest chakras are different than the rest of ours,” he said. “I’m glad I checked. Everyone else was the crown and the throat, but you’re the heart and the base. Your base seems to be manifesting a little lower, though.”

  Thank goodness for that. The base chakra was smack dab in the girl goodies. The thigh was bad enough, if he had to touch me there given the way my body reacted to him. I wondered what was going through that mysterious head of his. In case he was as nervous as I was, I changed the subject. “You call yourself a sensei, which is Japanese, but chakras are Hindu, mythological metaphysical representations of a person’s life energy. And the dagger is Mayan. This room seems more ancient Rome than anything else. How many cultures does the Machine pull from?” Maybe I was attracted to neat old things for a reason?

  “Many. Now no more talking. I need to move your dress. If I’d known I’d need access to these chakras, I’d have had you take it off, but I’m not willing to unchain you now.”

  If he untied me now, I wasn’t sure he’d get me back on the table willingly, which was probably why he didn’t want to unchain me. Smart. I liked that; however, my nerves would have preferred he was an idiot.

  Dagger in hand, he pressed it to the table and leaned over me. His striking eyes glowed along with the patterns under his skin, and the jade starbursts stood out even brighter than normal. Seeing him that way sucked all of the worry out of my head. In the end, I trusted him to not make this any weirder than it was.

  “I need to make small nicks on your inner thigh and on your chest. I’ll make matching ones on my palms.” He held them up to show me.

  I blinked at him, swallowing a giggle, my standard scream camouflage. “What are we going to be, some sort of blood brothers … sisters … whatever?” Lovers, my inner voice added. Insanity. He’d been mostly mean to me since we met, so why did I even want that?

  Head bobbling he said, “More like blood warriors. The breaching of the flesh creates the small weakness my power needs to … taste what’s inside, metaphysically speaking, to mingle our energies.”

  “So you’re going to pass your energy into me so you can take inventory of what’s in my mind?” It was hard to be skeptical of mystical crap while tied to an altar with a man glowing at my side, so I decided to just go with it. My weird-shit-o-meter just found a new notch, that’s all.

  He positioned the dagger deep in his palm, his index finger along the blade. For precision, I thought. His other hand pulled the neckline of my dress down just a little, not enough to flash him anything other than my bra. “Hold still. Just a little nick, but it’ll still sting.”

  “‘Hold still,’ he says to the girl chained to an altar.” I’d meant it to break the ever-growing tension, but it came out too wobbly to be anything other than a whimper from a rabbit about to be prepared tartare.

>   His lips curved into a smile—unnerving with the delicate curling lines glowing in his face—and I remembered why my IQ kept plummeting around him. “Okay, you really need to stop talking now,” he said.

  I shut up as he moved the blade down beside where his opposite hand pressed me hard into the table. Little helpless sounds tumbled up my throat as I began yanking on the chains holding me.

  I turned my face away and cried out as the tip of the dagger bit deep. The resulting pain made me wonder if the tip of the blade had come out the other side of me.

  “All right, that one’s done. Calm down, or you’re going to pass out.”

  “And that’s a bad thing? That freakin’ hurt!” Oh, no, I didn’t sound on the edge. What the hell was I thinking, letting him tie me down?

  Warmth touched my knee, and I screamed, thrashing harder.

  “Listen to my voice; breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth.”

  Yeah, like that was happening when my great gulping didn’t get the job done.

  Leaning into me, holding me still, he pulled up my skirt with his free hand, careful to leave me covered and only exposing my right hip and some of my inner thigh. I wanted to read his expression, but he’d angled himself away. What was he hiding from me? Anger? Desire? Disgust?

  I stopped wondering when he lowered the blade to me again. Pain rocketed in both directions from the cut on my inner thigh like fire racing along a wick. I groaned. I didn’t scream. Yippee. When he turned the dagger on himself, I closed my eyes, only catching hissing breaths as he cut each of his palms.

  Some sort of sweet sound rose through the silence, like the hum of a church choir across a quiet lake in the dead of dawn. It grew and heated the air, vibrated it, sang in and around me, through me.

  It came from Asher. As he sang in a foreign language, his voice held that low, haunting quality of a monastery choir, radiating emotion that could bring a person to tears. Not because of sadness or joy, not completely, but because he wore his heart in his voice and made anyone listening feel whatever was in that heart. And his was overflowing with some heavy, soulful stuff.