For once, I wasn’t afraid. I wondered how long it would be before I changed my mind on that. I gave myself a good thirty seconds, tops.
Chapter 21
Kat and I stared at each other across the short distance that separated us. I inspected her ridiculous boots and wondered how she’d be able to train me to do anything while wearing those spike heels. Maybe she just wanted something to stab me with. Yeah, that sounded about right.
She sized me up and didn’t appear any more impressed than Asher had been when he did the same back in his office that first day of the end of my life.
“Are we actually going to do something,” I asked, “or are you just going to drip your bitch all over me today?” I flashed her a smile.
She motioned to the track with another jut of that so-perfect chin. “Run,” she said.
Fine, I figured that was where we’d start once I’d seen the room. “How many laps?”
“No questions. In fact, you won’t speak to me, ever.” Her Eastern European accent thickened with her growing fury. “You’re not good enough to speak to me. You run until I say stop or until your pathetic frumpy body collapses like I know it will.”
Ah! I was not frumpy. Strong, a little soft around the middle, but not frumpy. I wanted to roll my eyes at her, but I wasn’t completely stupid. Instead, I went to the track and ran.
Asher had shown up during my second lap around the track. He didn’t even glance my way, only talked up close and personal with the blonde beyotch. Her laughter, bright and fake, blared into the room, drowning out my running shoes pounding against the floor.
Why flirt with someone he could never be with? My teeth clicked together at their intimate huddle. Did he have a smile on his face? With his back to me, I couldn’t tell. My mind wanted to paint an image of them naked together, but I slammed it out. Logic told me they couldn’t be together that way, but even if they could, I didn’t care.
By my fourth loop around the large track, my lungs burned, and I sucked wind. I slowed to a walk. Asher had gone at some point while I’d tried not to gawk at them. Good riddance.
“I said run, Initiate!” Kat stalked over to me, all feline grace and predator. I had a momentary wish that I could be that refined, that beautiful, so Asher would like me better, before remembering I was a proud redneck and I didn’t give a flying monkey’s butt what he thought of me.
I took off at a jog again. My thighs and calves began to cramp, but my pride kept me going. She said run, I’d run. I’d show her I wasn’t worthless. I managed two more laps before a cramp in my calf half crippled me, and I stopped, wheezing and trying to hop-rub it out.
Pulling on a pair of black gloves, Kat rose from where she’d been posing on one of the weight benches, striding to me with those swaying hips that seemed to come with the territory of wearing heels that high. I’d have fallen on my ass, but she made it look graceful and utterly sensual.
My muscles protested when I straightened, wondering if I should flee, but she grabbed me by the hair and all but dragged me toward the large mat at the far end before I’d made up my mind. I didn’t freak out. Okay, I did a little, but I didn’t think it showed. I grabbed on to her leather-wrapped wrist so she wouldn’t pull my hair out at the roots as I made my legs move to keep them under me.
Upon reaching the mat, she shoved me hard enough I slammed down face first into it. “Put these on.” She dropped another pair of gloves beside me.
Anger started its slow boil in my center. When Asher left earlier, had he gone up one layer in the Shift to watch? Sophia had told me most rooms couldn’t be accessed that way, but since he’d done the locking-down of them, maybe he could still go wherever he wanted.
Either way, Kat wouldn’t be doing anything he hadn’t asked her to. After pulling on the gloves, I pushed up to my feet, pain a frantic hum in my legs and abs. Hello, muscles, where did you come from?
She lowered into a crouch, battle ready. Knees bent, hands loose at her sides, eyes open and eager, amused. She was going to kick my ass. Fantastic. “Defend yourself,” she said through a grin, “if you can.”
“But you haven’t taught me how yet.” I mirrored her stance, quite sure mine didn’t match hers in grace or posture.
“That’s your problem, now isn’t it?” She swung her leg around so fast her foot connected with my side before I saw her move. I went down hard on my right side, coughing. Pain stunned me breathless. What hadn’t gone numb screamed obscenities at me.
“Get up.” She struck a pose, hands on her hips.
I did, wheezing to get my lungs working again. Her next blow came straight at my chest. By the time I saw her coming, I had no time to do anything. I must have blacked out for a second, because she seemed to appear over me between one blink and the next. “Pathetic. Why am I wasting my time with you when there are so many other things I could be doing with my day?” Like batting her lashes at Asher, my idiot mind finished for her.
I couldn’t argue, because at the moment I kind of agreed with her. We continued that way until most of my body either hurt too much to use or had gone completely numb and didn’t work. She left me a parting gift of a boot to the gut.
When I stopped sucking wind and lifted my face off of the mat, she’d gone. I wanted a shower and my bed so I could curl up and hurt where nobody could watch.
I noticed with quiet horror that she hadn’t hit me anywhere that would show bruises, only connecting between my chest and knees, all covered by clothing. And I had no doubt I’d be black and blue before long. Who didn’t she want knowing what she’d done to me? Certainly not Asher, since he probably put her up to it.
Too proud to crawl to the door, I rolled onto all fours and came to a crouch, drained and completely panicked that I’d been so helpless against her. What if she never taught me anything? Would that affect the outcome of my judgment in the Machine? I had to grow stronger, learn, even if she wouldn’t teach me. I put out a silent plea to the universe to help me. It never answered before, but no harm in trying.
Instead of going to the shower, I trudged over to one of the weight benches and started doing ab crunches. Pain? No stinking pain would keep me from getting back home.
It was Friday, Sophia told me during breakfast that morning when she crashed around the kitchen like a madwoman. She’d come into the bathroom after yesterday’s ass-kicking session with Kat had ended and seen the state of my body. When she stopped crying and ranting after I’d come out of the shower, she wrapped me in a towel and hugged me gently and briefly. Her hug hurt, but the contact made up for it. I’d needed it so badly I cried along with her. The facility and the Machine too, for that matter, acted like a sensory deprivation chamber for me. No touch, little sound, only pain. Sophia had kept my sanity from taking that last step into the abyss.
Ten days in a row of pure hell and the beyotch, Kat, still hadn’t shown me anything other than her skill at beating the ever-loving tar out of me. I could run farther and faster. My body had hardened a little with all of the weight training, lack of real food, and abdominal workouts I’d done on my own, but I still couldn’t ward off half of Kat’s blows and usually ended up dazed on the mat when she left for the day, laughing. My body didn’t have time to heal. I had bruises overlapping bruises. Even clothing against my skin chafed like thorn-laced sandpaper.
Asher came in each morning while I ran. He never once looked at me, only had his tête-a-tête with the ice princess as if taunting me with the fact that I meant nothing to him.
Despite all that he had taken from me, every day that passed when I couldn’t be near him, have his voice wrap me in velvet, or touch him, an ache that was in no way physical, grew larger inside me. It was like starving, and it only seemed to get worse. I hated him like I’d never hated before, a raw emotion that ate away at the meat of me.
Everyone else had come to gawk at me while Kat pretended to train me in one way or another: Remy, who appeared as if he wanted to kill her; the Colonel, who only stayed for five minu
tes at a time, taking Kat aside where she told him God only knew what lies about me, Taka, and the five other male sentinels I hadn’t yet met.
Marcus came the most, and he didn’t appear any happier about my situation than Remy or I were. He watched me with curiosity and something more profound—longing, I thought. I’d begun to wish it had been Marcus who’d won the challenge. I had no doubt he would have taught me like he was supposed to instead of shuffling me off to Kat.
Sophia came out of the kitchen, snapping me out of my thoughts, her multi-toned hair pulled back in a braid. She banged my glass of sludge down so hard some of it splattered over the side and onto her hand. “Today, after she leaves, if she still hasn’t taught you defensive maneuvers, then I’ll teach you myself. I don’t care what Asher says and does to me.” When had her like of me grown larger than her fear of Asher?
I perched on the very edge of my chair, afraid to move and have my body scream at me again. “I’m not sure how much more my body’s going to take. Something has got to give, and it’s going to be me. I don’t even know what he wants. Right now, I just think he wants to humiliate and hurt me.” I drank my sludge, every last drop. I’d need it to get me around the track today.
Sophia glared at the door the whole time I ate my breakfast, as if willing the one who would come through it to burst into flame. “Asher was always strict, but he’s like a different person now. There are days when I really hate him. The next time he comes here, you need to show him your bruises.”
“There are days you don’t hate him?” I was dead serious, but she laughed, sobering as if staring into memories that ran deep.
“He takes this sentinel business really seriously, but the odd time I get this glimpse of someone under it, you know? He’s got a rich sense of humor when he’s not being a dick, and he feels things really deeply even though he tries to hide it. I just don’t understand why he’s doing you wrong like this. And it is wrong. He has to know it’s wrong.”
“I’m pretty sure he knows exactly what she’s doing to me and either approves or just doesn’t care.” My gut clenched. My inner voice shouted at me that it couldn’t be true, but I just didn’t know anymore.
“Some sensei he turned out to be,” she said. “It’s almost like he wants you to fail, which doesn’t make any sense after trying so hard to convince everyone you’re going to fix everything.”
A bitter laugh rushed up my throat. “Maybe he’s finally realized his assumptions about me are dead wrong and decided not to waste his time on this stupid plaid-loving redneck.” I pushed my chair back and managed to stand without falling. Go, me. “But I’m here now, so I’ll make the best of it. I’ve never failed at anything I set my mind to, not anything that mattered, anyway. I will not abandon my father, even if it means I need to feel like I’m dying for the next six months to do it.”
Sophia opened the door and walked silently beside me to the training room as she did every morning at six-thirty. “He doesn’t think you’re stupid, Addison. And I’d take your place if I could.”
I sighed, closed my eyes, and savored my name. “I know you would, and I’d do the same if our predicaments were reversed. And you’re the only one who calls me that. Everyone else calls me some stupid name. You remind me I’m still me, that I’m still real and not a forgotten piece of meat left in the grinder of the Machine. Thank you.” Smiling over her shoulder, she headed back to the common room.
Kat watched me enter and stretch while pretending to inspect her polished nails.
I mounted the track and ran as hard and fast as I could, impressing myself. Nothing impressed Kat, of course, but I was nearly giddy by the time my body reached its limit. I made it to the mat under my own power, facing off with her again.
Asher waltzed in, later than normal. He stood at the edge of the mat, arms crossed. “Show me what you’ve learned, Initiate.” Bored, annoyed, so devoid of feeling his voice seemed hollow, dead, just like his eyes.
I laughed at that. “I guess I’ll just stand here, then. That would about cover it. Have a look at my teachings, oh sensei of mine.” I pulled up my shirt to show the evidence, but he turned away.
“If you have learned nothing, then that is no fault of Kat’s. I trained her. She’s skilled at hand-to-hand combat. Save your excuses, and show me.”
I showed him, all right, only not what I’d hoped to. Kat gave me simple instructions about where to put my feet, how to stand to defend myself. When she struck out, she didn’t hit me hard enough to damage. Even with her direction, because I didn’t have the practice I should have had blocking her by now, she landed every blow.
“Pathetic.” He shook his head and stalked off. Watching him go tightened something in my chest that relaxed every time he came near me. Why wouldn’t he listen? Oh, right, because I was just a stupid waste of skin. How silly of me to forget. My heart broke a little, the pieces shifting to fill me with a pain nobody else but him could make me feel. Except maybe my mom.
“Now, where were we?” Kat smiled, crouching in her battle-ready stance the instant Asher disappeared behind the door. Maybe he hadn’t been watching from the Shift or he’d have known what she was doing, and she wouldn’t have played him like that. It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t care even if he had seen what she was doing to me. If he didn’t care, then to hell with him. A new hatred of him slicked over me like molten tar.
While she stalked around me in a crouch, I tried to mirror her, riding my anger like a leviathan. “Be afraid,” she mocked. “Be very afraid.”
A moment of dizziness swayed me. Time stilled in my perception. Little flecks of dust hung frozen in the light shining down from overhead. WTH? Had I passed out and gone off to dreamland? Did I die and my brain hadn’t caught on yet?
An image filled my mind, like watching myself from above. It wasn’t real, since Kat still crouched on the other side of the mat, both images lying over top of each other like the layers of the Shift, and I understood that someone was trying to show me something. But who? I should have been freaked right the hell out, that something was crawling around in my mind. No fear, no panic. I didn’t care who it was if they could help me avoid her strikes. I’d worry about the how and why later.
In my mind’s image, Kat launched at me. My imagined-self ducked left, grabbing her arm to pull her off balance and over my outstretched leg. Her own momentum took her to the mat. My true physical body hummed, as if it had the knowledge all along and had waited for my brain to give the order.
As time resumed, it seemed like I had forever to react when she came at me. I managed to duck left, but mistimed my attempted grab of her arm, still a little disoriented from whatever—or whoever—had injected me with knowledge, and she recovered herself, clearly startled that I’d avoided her.
“Lucky,” she said with that evil laugh of hers.
Maybe the universe had heard my plea after all? Nah. “I don’t believe in luck.”
Each time our little battle dance began, someone hit the pause button on the world again, and a martial arts movie played behind my eyes, starring me. I learned more in those two hours than I had in the entire ten days I’d been working with Kat. I needed practice, strength in places I didn’t yet have it, but the know-how, technique, and muscle-memory were all there. By the time Kat left for the day, I had only a few new bruises to add to my collection, and she actually had one on her arm where my foot had connected. A red-letter day.
Sophia came in, stalling in the doorway when she spotted me still standing. Remy came in behind her, his giant half-tattooed self a wall of muscle, dwarfing her slender frame, yet somehow they matched. They both gaped at me.
I laughed, a little giddy with my small success. “Is this the first time you’ve found me on my feet?” I rubbed the ache spiraling out from my ribs from Kat’s parting blow.
Remy glanced around the room, looking for what, I didn’t know. “Something different.” Raising his hands, he moved them through the air, rubbing his fingers against his thumbs
as if testing the softness of fabric.
“Something’s different, all right,” I said, then shut up when, Not yet, echoed in my ears. Not my words, or my voice, since it sounded male. I wanted to ask why I couldn’t tell them how I came to be standing upright, but I wasn’t sure how it all worked, the silent communication with my strange savior. Not to mention saying out loud that some phantom person had been showing me videos of my own body would have required an explanation I didn’t have.
Shifting my focus back to my training, I let an idea take shape in my mind. “I’m guessing Asher forbade you to teach me anything, am I right?” I asked.
Remy made an unhappy sound between a cough and a growl. “True dat.”
“Yeah,” Sophia said, shrugging. “He’ll probably have me scrubbing his toilet with a toothbrush, but I don’t care. She needs to know this, sensei.”
A smile lifted my lips, my mischief-is-about-to-be-hatched smile. “Did he forbid you from training Sophia, Remy? Since I have a feeling she’ll be leaving the facility a little more now that Asher thinks he can use her against me, she’ll need to brush up on her self-defense techniques. Am I right?”
Remy grinned. I worried that he might balk at touching Sophia, but he appeared eager, relieved. “No, he say nothing ’bout that, or sparring. I make a good attacker. Sophia, too.”
She lit up like a sunrise breaking across a winter field. Ah, because he’d said her name. I hoped he’d say it more often if it had that effect on her. I nodded, gesturing toward the Nautilus equipment, understanding which muscle groups I needed to focus on. “In that case, don’t let me stop you. I’ll just be over here working out while you train Sophia. After that, maybe I could practice with you.”
Sophia disappeared for a few minutes, returning with a long-sleeved shirt and black leather gloves. Remy, who’d also donned a pair he retrieved from the cabinet, swept his arm toward the mat, winking at her. “We go, ku`uipo.” I wasn’t sure what he’d called her that time, but the word was intense and so full of affection, it had to be something good.
Darkside Sun (Entangled Embrace) Page 19