He hummed as he placed one hand down over my heart and pressed the other one on my thigh, the contact wet from our mingled blood. My body seized. Asher’s presence, so large and hot, filled me, and my soul tried to find an escape. There wasn’t one. I screamed, not because of pain or fear, but because that large something forced the air out of me.
Asher lit up my mind like a million candles in a black room. I cried inside, because I couldn’t seem to find my body, lost in his presence. Memories rolled through my mind, endless scenes of my life. I had enough darkness in my past it should have frightened me, made me queasy, but watching a horror movie with someone else was always less terrifying than watching it alone. So I—we—watched my life roll by inside my head like a fast-forward movie. All we needed was the popcorn. And maybe some Prozac.
In my mind’s eye, I blinked up through sleepy eyes at Dad. He was holding me as a baby. He was crying, jerking with those silent sobs men make when they don’t want anyone to know they’re crying. Not sad, though—but bright with joy. My eyes stung. It wasn’t a memory I knew, buried so deep in my mind I didn’t know enough to look for it. The day I was born? Nah, couldn’t be. People didn’t remember those things, did they? We sped through my first encounters with the rifts, my endless tears and shaking, my many nights hiding in terror in a closet or curled up outside Dad’s bedroom door.
The scene switched to my green bedroom at the cabin in Bracebridge where I’d lived my whole life, but the hand balling my blanket to my chin was little, maybe my six or seven-year-old hand. A woman stood over my bed in the dark. Only her silhouette gave suggestion to her form. Long, straight hair, slim at the waist and round at the hips. Like me.
Moonlight spilled in the window behind her, casting her face in darkness. She, too, was crying. Unlike Dad, her tears weren’t happy ones. The sounds she made cut through the night and made my heart hurt. “I’m sorry,” she said, voice thick with sorrow. “I’m so sorry. Forgive me.”
I tried to break free of the memory, certain it wasn’t mine, but Asher swept around me like a warm wind as if to say, “I’m here. You’re not alone.” Before I could wonder who the woman could be, my childhood rolled forward like a train without brakes. Dad reading Pinkalicious to me every night until he could recite it from heart. Dad taking me skating on the pond behind the house every winter, though we spent more time shoveling snow than actually skating, with much laughter and snowball fights. Dad taking me to gymnastics class in town every Saturday even though it cut into his fishing time in the summer, not that he ever complained. Dad struggling through the birds-and-the-bees speech and dealing with my first period.
I felt myself smiling out there in my body until my mental scrapbook landed me on the steps of the United Church in town. I remembered the day as if it had been burned into my memory. The sky rolled with slate clouds.
My childhood friend, my one and only, Evangeline, lay dead inside the church. It was her funeral, and I was twelve. A hunting accident, they’d said, but I’d snuck up to that white coffin and lifted the lid while everybody else wailed in a large huddle near the back of the church. She didn’t look like my Evangeline, but a pasty white-blue that appeared more like poured wax than a person. A perfect little hole destroyed the perfection of her forehead. Hunting guns didn’t make holes like that. Even at twelve, Dad had taught me enough about guns that I knew they’d lied.
The memories came hard and fast, then, every heartache, piece of happiness, embarrassment, desire, and hope I’d ever had came back to haunt me—us. I could sense Asher’s agitation growing with my own as we both relived the heat and passion of our desperate exploration of one another only minutes ago.
All at once, the drift of memories shifted, the tide coming in instead of out. I felt like I’d stepped into a firestorm, and after my confusion settled, I realized it was Asher’s rage licking me with imagined flames. How did he exist so full of anger boiling just under his skin? No wonder he had a short temper.
New images flashed through my mind just as fast as my own had, only they weren’t mine this time. Asher cowering on an old shag carpet, bleeding from his mouth, arms, and feet. A man—his father—stood over him with a belt wrapping his knuckles, the buckle glinting silver in the light spilling in from a doorway.
A woman cried somewhere else in the house, a low piteous sound of the long-abused, the broken and hopeless. She’d been teaching Asher her language in secret and had gotten caught, Asher’s guilt over it eating me up on the inside as it often did to him. He had intervened when his father had punished her and taken the beating himself. By the cold acceptance on his boyhood face, I knew it wasn’t the first time it had happened.
The scene shifted. Asher, older now, maybe fourteen or fifteen. He gripped a knife that dripped blood onto the carpet. His father lay a few feet away in a large pool of crimson. Asher’s mother, who appeared Middle Eastern, lay broken in the corner with nothing short of gratitude in her bruised eyes. He’d killed his father to save his mother. The last shred of innocence gone. The boy became a seasoned man, fully infected by his father’s rage.
Asher as a teenager standing guard alongside men with old-fashioned guns, dressed like old-time movie gangsters, his dark blue mortal eyes already holding that frosty edge they had now. Other than his mother, nobody had ever raised their hand to him in kindness, only to hurt. His secret desire in life was to feel safe, but he learned young that there was no such thing. Monsters didn’t solely live beyond the veil, but on this side, too.
I wrapped his essence harder around me, clung to him, and this time it wasn’t me who needed the comfort, but him. And I wanted to give it, to suck all of the heartache out of him into myself. I wanted to show him the comfort of gentle arms and make him laugh as he should have as a child.
My body seized harder. Yes, I had a body, and it let me know it wasn’t happy with whatever was happening to me—to us. The thrumming heartbeat pounded against us. Distantly, I could hear him screaming. Not a girl scream, but one of those male roars that only accompanies some profound horror or loss. Somehow, I’d made him see his memories, too, ones he’d desperately tried to forget and probably had until I’d dredged them up again. And somehow I knew that wasn’t supposed to happen.
Asher roared, “Get out of my head!” and stood rod-stiff over me as if he couldn’t move away. His jerking reminded me of someone who’d inadvertently grabbed on to a live wire and couldn’t let go. Breaths huffed out of him, and the pulsing of his veins and the runes in the ceiling went nuclear until I couldn’t see him.
As gray ate the edges of reality, I wanted to tell him it would be all right, but I wasn’t sure it would be the truth. My vision narrowed to Asher who slumped over me, then slid down out of sight. He crashed to the floor, and I went tumbling, screaming into my own darkness.
Chapter 15
I groaned, too warm and snuggly in my favorite plaid comforter … wait, it didn’t smell right, like lavender or some perfumey flower instead of pine and the discount fabric softener we used at home. Definitely not mine.
“Wake up, sleepy head,” a woman said. I knew that voice, didn’t I?
I mumbled something incoherent with a throat gone dry as tree bark, blinking up at a blurred outline of … who?
“You’re in your room at the facility, Addison.” Sophia, yes, that was her name. “You’re dehydrated. If you can help me sit you up, I’ll bring a straw to your mouth.”
“Where …?” I managed before hacking on air-balls. I wanted to ask where Asher was and if he was okay, but it would have to wait until after the water. What had happened to us?
She slid her arm under my back and lifted. I didn’t have enough strength to do anything more than breathe. “This is an energy drink,” she said, bringing a straw to my lips. “Sip it slowly.”
I didn’t sip. I sucked and slurped like a starving infant, slopping the cold liquid down the front of flannel jammies that weren’t mine.
“Whoa, slow down girl. That’s enough.”
The straw slipped from my lips, and I made grunts of protest. My mouth still tasted of sand and iron tang. Gross. “Is your throat better?” she asked. “I remember the morning after, and it sucked ass. When you think you can hold it yourself, I’ll bring you a Popsicle.”
The morning after what? There were so many words I could finish that sentence with. The morning after my mortal life ended and my new one began, whatever it may hold. The morning after I met the Mortal Machine in all of its non-touchy grouchiness. The morning after I’d been wrapped in Asher’s arms and had lived my remembered life with him. And we’d lived at least a portion of his together.
“What happened last night?” My words came out rasping like sandpaper over rough wood. “I remember lots of screaming, and Asher fell, I think. What happened after that? How did I get here? Is he okay?” A hard knot sat in the middle of my chest.
“I don’t know what happened. Remy showed up here with you two nights ago. You were covered in blood and out cold. Normally there’s not that much blood, and the initiate doesn’t pass out. They certainly don’t sleep for two days straight.”
“Crap, I’ve been sleeping here two whole days?” I found enough strength to pull the comforter up around my neck as I studied her for hints about what had happened. Dark circles bruised the hollows below her eyes. “Thank you for taking care of me. You look like crud. No offense.”
“I haven’t left you.” She drew her feet up onto the bed and hugged her bare knees. Each toe sported a different color of polish. Rainbow nails to go with her multicolor streaked hair tied up in a messy knot at the back of her head. If I’d been stuck in a gray prison for ten years straight, I’d have splashed on the color, too. “I remember waking up after my ceremony, feeling like poop, didn’t know where the heck I was. I was alone. I didn’t want you to be alone.” She shivered with whatever memory haunted her.
Thinking of the ceremony, one burning question rose and demanded an answer, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. “Am I a sentinel?”
She offered a sympathetic smile. “Your position and rank usually aren’t determined until after your training gets under way. Sometimes power rises and the eyes change immediately, others within a few weeks. It doesn’t seem to be an indicator of your rank, just different timing for every one of us, like puberty. Once your eyes come in, and your skills are assessed, then you’ll be assigned rank and position by the Colonel.”
I blinked at her, gasping in a breath. “You mean … my eyes will really change, like yours or Asher’s? But I have my dad’s honey-brown eyes.” I’d been so proud to have his and not my mom’s. I thought I should cry, but it wouldn’t come. I supposed part of me knew losing Dad’s eyes was a small price to pay if I could keep the wraiths out of our reality once I figured out how this whole Machine business worked.
“Sorry, Addison. The eyes always change; it’s just a matter of how much. Asher said it’s a reflection of the power that exists in our soul, awakened by the ceremony and the bible.” Hers were so pale and the green so slight… I wondered if that bothered her, but I didn’t ask.
Speaking of bright eyes … “Where’s Asher?”
She shrugged, staring at a thread she picked at in the comforter. “Nobody knows.” Her voice had fallen low, spoken into her knees.
“What do you mean nobody knows?” Had I hurt him somehow? Or was he angry for the ghosts I’d resurrected from his past? “Didn’t Remy see him when he took me from the chamber?”
A pause, then, “You’d have to ask Remy.”
Oh, yeah, something had gone wrong all right. “Can you please just tell me if Asher’s all right? That he’s not hurt?” I couldn’t bear the thought of him hurt. The emotion came raw and fierce, primal and deep, almost as brutal as the pain of his cuts on me with the dagger.
“No, he’s not hurt. At least, not the way you mean.” Her voice was utterly flat, hiding something, but what?
“Then why isn’t he here? He’s supposed to take me to see Dad.”
“Remy and I are supposed to take you once you’ve recovered enough.”
I wanted to yell at her, demand she tell me what the hell was going on, but she shrunk in on herself. “Has he forbidden you to tell me what’s wrong? Because I know something is—I just don’t know what or why.”
She shook her head, breaking loose a few aqua threads from her knot. “I can’t. Please don’t ask, because I don’t even really know, and even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to tell you.”
My stomach let its hunger be known to the room with a loud snarl.
“I’ll get you some soup.” She bolted for the door. “Be right back.”
Saved by the stomach.
I stared around at “my room” as she had called it. Mostly because I didn’t want to think about other things I should have been thinking about. Gray block walls. Drop ceiling, like the ones in most schools. Single bed in the corner of the dorm-sized space and a tiny chest of drawers beside it.
Home sweet home.
I missed my Mayan ruins poster and plaid comforter. Had Asher burned it all? Was someone else living in my dorm room now? Or was it still surrounded by yellow police tape?
“Welcome to your life, guardian,” Asher had said.
Jesus, what had I done? Why, when Asher started talking to me like a human being in the chamber, did I just accept everything he’d said? That I was meant to be part of the Mortal Machine and become some badass chick guardian of the world?
I understood why when my mind stopped skittering around in my skull. Some corner of me, probably there since birth, had known what I would become even if I still didn’t. All of this, the sentinels, the rifts, the wraiths, the glowing tattoos, some part of me recognized them as normal, the way of things. So why wasn’t I braver? Why did fear still cling like a coating of tar to my soul, chilling it from the inside out? Why did I still want Dad’s arms around me?
Because I was human, I guessed. I’d seen the unusual all my life, but I’d never been faced with doing anything about it. I’d wanted to. A small part, anyway, that wished I was brave enough, smart enough, strong enough. Even though we’d never been churchgoers, I even tried praying for some way to keep Dad safe from what lay beyond the veil, to keep myself safe. Was this the answer to that prayer? Or just the final alignment of the cosmic forces coming together? Did it even matter? No, I supposed it didn’t.
The answer to my reality issues had come. I didn’t like the answer, but life is like that sometimes. At least I wasn’t alone on Lunatic Island anymore. That part, at least, was a giant relief.
Before I could concentrate on anything else, though, I had to resolve things with Dad and find Asher so I could determine just how pissed off he was at me. I wasn’t looking forward to either conversation.
Chapter 16
Remy, Sophia, and I stood outside a car rental place in Bracebridge in late afternoon. Remy had taken us through the Shift to a little patch of woods behind the small building, since we couldn’t exactly show up at my house without a vehicle and hope Dad wouldn’t notice.
They’d both been conspicuously mute since Remy came out of his room at the facility half an hour ago. I’d eaten two bowls of chicken noodle soup—apparently it was the universal cure-all in the Machine, too—but my stomach still grumbled.
Sophia had brought me a soft pair of jeans and a navy T-shirt to wear. I got the feeling, even through her current discomfort, that she liked having me there with her. It was a nice warm fuzzy in amongst the thorns of the day.
“You keep eyes on our kolohe, Outfitter,” Remy said, his gaze lingering on her for a moment before he started for the door into the car rental place. He wore dark jeans, a black shirt, and a leather jacket. With his half-tattooed shaved head and dark sunglasses, he appeared more like an extra in the Hellraiser movie than a tourist.
“Her name’s Sophia,” I snapped, “and stop talking about me like I’m not here. And try not to scare the poor clerk. You didn’t have to dress up like a giant Hell’s Angel, you
know.”
He waggled his fingers in dismissal without turning around.
“And just when I was starting to like him,” I said. “What does kolohe mean, anyway?”
“Rascal, but he means it kindly. If he didn’t like and respect you, he wouldn’t bother calling you anything but your title.” The way he calls me Outfitter hung out there unsaid. How did she not see his little glances full of affection, or the way he shifted his body when she did? Seeing them together for five seconds told me he was totally into her. Did he speak coldly to her to keep her away from him? Like Asher’s doing to me. I waved that thought away. Skin contact could kill us now, anyway, so even if that’s what they were both doing, they had a good reason for it. The pain in my chest would just have to get over it.
Sophia hugged herself in the April breeze, her white long-sleeved T-shirt blending in with her pale skin. She wore dark gray leggings under a black skirt that, without the leggings, would have shown her undies. “You should like him,” she said. “Most of the sentinels suck, but he … he’s one of the good ones.”
I blinked at her, conjuring an idea. “You like him.”
She squinted at me. “Duh. That’s what I just said, isn’t it?”
“No, I mean, you like him that way. Like, as in boyfriend like.” Even I squinted at that one. They seemed polar opposites, but then again, they do say opposites attract. “There’s something about him that’s … attractive. Scary on the outside, but there’s something soft in that big guy, something kind.” Especially when he’s around you.
“Don’t even joke about that. You know relationships are forbidden.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I know. Sorry for bringing it up.”
While part of me danced with glee to know others like me existed, the rest of me rebelled against the idea that I was part of the Machine. “I don’t really feel any different. Maybe the ritual didn’t work on me? You said you were alone after your ceremony, but what was it like during?”
Darkside Sun (Entangled Embrace) Page 14