His shoes stopped tapping the tile behind me. I peered over my shoulder, half expecting him to clobber me, but he stood in front of one of the always-locked doors wearing that grin again, posing like a GQ cover model, one knee slightly bent, one elbow propped against the open door. “You’re getting bolder. I like it.”
My inner hussy swooned as I surveyed every sleek line of his muscular body, studied how his shirt hugged his chest and shoulders. I wanted to climb him like a jungle gym and … wait, why was he just standing there letting me ogle him when he normally discouraged any thoughts in that direction? Oh, wait just a damn minute. “Are you really trying to flirt with me? What, you go all sex and candy on me and think I’ll just forget about the question you haven’t answered yet?”
He only smiled brighter and thrust his finger toward the door. “Inside.”
“We’re back to one-word demands now? Fantastic.” I marched to him and through the door without sparing him a glance. Nobody had ever confused me as much as he did. My blood rushed hot to my right side, nearest him, as it did that day in his office. Had I been sensing his storm even then? Was that what he felt when touching me? Ah, hell, who cared?
I stared at a room about the same size as the training warehouse. On the side nearest to me, stalls were set up with divider walls. Industrial ear muffs hung from a rack to my right. A cable with clips ran from the top of each stall down to a backdrop where I imagined you could clip a target and roll it down there to shoot at. Just like in the movies.
A funny smell tickled my nose, that acrid, oily scent that lingered after a gun went off. I’d gone hunting enough with Dad to recognize it. I’d never shot anything, but I liked being out in the woods if I didn’t think too hard that Dad was there to kill Bambi’s mom.
“I don’t like guns,” I said.
“Like them or don’t, it’s your choice.” He moved up to one of the shooting stalls and set a small black handgun on the counter there. “This is a Glock 26, nine millimeter, with a modified grip for your delicate hands. This clip holds ten rounds, and the mechanisms are fairly simple.”
I looked at the gun. I looked at him, my lip curling up. “So what, I shoot a couple of bull’s-eyes and you take me to wherever you stashed my books? Which is where?”
He rolled his eyes. “They’re in another protected part of the Shift. Prove to me you can handle this gun, from how to work the safety, to switching out the clip, describing the parts in detail, cleaning, shooting from every position, and I’ll consider taking you out of this facility. One does not simply step up and shoot a bull’s-eye the first time.” He beckoned me forward with a curl of his finger. “Come here, Plaid.”
A funny feeling whizzed over my stomach. It was a good feeling. Dammit. How did his calling me that give me warm fuzzies? Because it wasn’t as cold as when he called me “Initiate,” or worse, didn’t bother to address me at all. Human beings were so weird. If I was still one. That was up for debate.
He curled his finger again. “There’s nothing to fear. I’ll teach you.”
I shivered at the dark look he gave me, not anger this time, but … what? “Nothing to fear, he says. It’s not the gun that’s the threat in this room, and we both know it. Not to mention the last time you were supposed to teach me something … well … you know how that went.”
He glared at me, one of those slicing-dicing stares that made me hope for a spontaneous sinkhole to open up and eat me. “Pick up the gun,” he said, stepping aside so I faced the shooting alley.
I wrapped my right fingers around the gun. It was cold and heavier than I’d thought something so small should be. It fit in my hand as if designed for it. A pistol made for small hands. How wrong was that? Not that I thought women weren’t capable of using guns, but to make a gun so small a kid could use it should have been against the rules. Like making cigarettes in flavors like vanilla and chocolate. Look at how small and harmless this is. Want to ice somebody, little girl?
Asher stepped in behind me. Heat and buzzing energy massaged my back. With my own energy quiet, I was suddenly very aware of his nearness and his own power surging within the confines of his control. It beckoned mine to reach out to his and … do what? Something hot and explosive.
He reached his right arm along mine, hesitating, close but not quite touching. He hovered like that until I said, “Asher?” hating the soft whisper of my voice.
Clearing his throat, he disappeared for a moment, returning with gloves on. He wrapped his fingers around mine where they were curled around the gun. Million-volt tingles swept across my skin even through the leather. His other hand slid along my left arm, cupping around my free hand and placing it around my other fingers just beneath the trigger guard. His heat crawled along my spine at the press of his body against mine.
“Two-handed like this is steadier for beginners. Use the left to steady the gun, the right to move it enough to line up the sights.” He spoke so close to my ear I could not only hear the low, almost intimate quality of his voice, but also feel the vibration of it in my bones. The coconut scent of his lip balm filled my nose and made me sigh inside my head. Thank hell he couldn’t hear it.
I swallowed, turning toward him. I wanted to brush my cheek against the roughness of that shadow beard. My imagination painted the picture for me, and my body responded with a coil of heat around my thighs. Just like in the chamber, he was so real and touchable, so warm. I wanted to drink him up and feel vibrantly alive again, to run my hands up the strong planes of his back and feel his breath against my ear as his pulse quickened.
What would it be like if I could open my box and let my storm go without him fighting it? Spectacular is what it would be. Not just physical pleasure, but healing and bonding that went beyond my current understanding. We wouldn’t hurt each other no matter how long we were tangled in the other’s arms, surrounded by our mingled energy. I’d never been so sure about anything.
“Did you hear me? Earth to Plaid. Pay attention. I’m not showing you the same thing twice.”
“Then you need to stop touching me,” I said, or wheezed more like it. Oh, no, no, no. I did not say that out loud. “I mean, I’m not twelve. Just tell me what to do, already.”
He hesitated, his hands sliding along my arms before he stepped back. It took every ounce of self-control not to back up into him again. Or to turn and see if touching me had affected him at all. Nah. “Line up the sight at the end of the barrel between the notched piece, then pull the trigger slowly,” he said. Taking the muffs from the wall, he put them over my ears.
Why did he sound winded? I glanced over my shoulder, but his expression told me nothing. “Aiming for what? There’s no target.” I probably shouted it. I tended to do that wearing anything over my ears.
“It doesn’t matter,” he shouted back. “I just want you to get used to the feeling of the gun going off in your hands. It’ll jerk a bit, so hold on to it.”
We haven’t time for this. He must take you hunting wraiths now. Tonight. Izan’s voice flitted through my head. Do you trust me?
I jumped a little, and Asher made a scoffing sound behind me. “In theory,” I said. “What do you have in mind? What about my books?”
“What are you talking about?” Asher shouted, drawing my focus over my shoulder to him.
Crap. I shouldn’t have said that out loud. “Nothing.”
“Then what are you waiting for? Squeeze off a shot.”
The knowledge in the pages can wait until tomorrow. Do not fight me, child, Izan said in my head again. Let me guide you.
I nodded, unsure if he could see it. The great beating heart rolled up from my deep places. I moved the gun without meaning to. Izan was moving me somehow. My instinct wanted to force him out, like something caught between my teeth, though this guy was caught between my soul and my body, but I let him drop my arms. “Give me something to shoot at.”
Asher stared at me for moments before he went to a cabinet behind me—us—and retrieved a target in the sha
pe of a person’s upper body. After attaching it to the little clip on the cable, he sent it to the wall about twenty feet away.
He watched me as if I’d turned into a wild animal. What, did he think I’d shoot him? Wasn’t a bad idea if I was that kind of girl.
“Do it, then,” he said, the words muffled through my muffs.
Izan raised my arm and pointed the gun toward the target, my other palm cupping my opposite hand as Asher had taught me. We stared along the barrel to line up the sight at the end between the notched bar closer to me. A nudge against the trigger-safety had it clicked off. I tried to clench up, knowing it would jump in my hand and be crack-bang loud, but I’d retreated so far into the background of my own body it wasn’t listening to me, only to Izan. To say it sucked would be an understatement.
Izan exhaled all of the air from my lungs as the sights lined up with the circle in the middle of the paper-dude’s chest. My arms wavered a bit, but once I was empty of air and held my breath, I went death-still. He—we—squeezed the trigger slowly. The gun jerked in my hand. I flinched inside, but he held me still on the outside, aiming and shooting every last bullet.
Not all of the shots were in the circle. Two of them went wild, out to the shoulders on either side of the target in the middle, but eight of them had found their mark. I turned to Asher, or rather Izan did, and he spoke out of my mouth. “While we are wasting time with this nonsense, the Misgiver is growing ever closer to that which he needs to destroy us all. You will take me hunting. You will arrange to have the other senior sentinels accompany us so we can gauge their reaction to what I do this night.”
Asher did a good impression of a gorgeous statue. He was afraid of me. Hot damn. “Who am I speaking to?” he asked. “Because it sure as hell isn’t Addison.”
Double-oh-crap.
“I am Izan, and I am beginning to believe I made a grievous error in judgment regarding you. If you wish to rectify this, then you will listen to this woman, for she is the key to a future that is fading. She speaks for me, because I do not have a voice of my own, and clearly she is the only one deserving of my trust. You feel her potential as I do, and the pure soul that is the foundation the Machine so desperately needs. And you need. This is my gift to you, and you try to smash it beneath your boot. Fail me again, and I will return you to whence I found you and find another who will cherish all that she is.”
Asher sagged against the wall.
Izan left me in a rush of heat, and that squeezed feeling took a little longer to go. “That really sucked,” I said, rubbing my temples. “Hearing him is bad enough, but having him stretch out in me like a giant in a too-small car royally blows.”
“He had you like a wraith might have you, but he’s not,” Asher said, his face drained of color to leave it a grayish white. “There’s no cold in you, at least none I can detect with my extra senses.” Straightening, he asked, “What are you going to do tonight?”
I stopped rubbing myself and blinked at him. “What?”
“Izan said we needed to gauge the reactions of the other sentinels to what you do tonight. What is it?” He was practically shouting at me.
“How the hell should I know? But I’d suggest doing what he says. Do you know of a wraith-infected person you can use to show me how to hunt and how to pull it out?” Izan’s words came back to haunt me: This is my gift to you, and you try to squash it beneath your boot. “What do you suppose he meant by the whole gift thing? And where did he find you that his threat of sending you back there would make you pale like a dead fish?”
“I’ll find someone to hunt,” Asher said without looking at me. “We’ll hunt, and then we need to scour those books of yours.” He raised his gaze to me, shiny with fear, and more. Something, but I didn’t know what. Admiration? Respect? Nah. “You’re drawn to them, which means the Shift—Izan—wanted you to have them for some reason. There have to be answers there.” Striding to the door, he muttered, “Too many questions. Too many goddamned questions and never any answers. What do you want from me?”
He wasn’t talking to me, clearly, but I answered anyway. “When he lets me in on it, you’ll be the first to know.”
Chapter 26
I sat on one of the sofas in the common room, hugging my knees, rubbing a little piece of silk Sophia had given me between my fingers. Asher had gone off cursing to himself an hour ago. The steak Sophia and I had shared for supper made my stomach hurt, the first real meal I’d had in forever.
What would I be doing tonight that would evoke a reaction from the Misgiver? No, wait, I so did not want the answer to that. What did all of the others think of my little display with Asher earlier when I’d used the Shift to fight? Had they felt my surge of power as it came online, too? Was the Misgiver among them? The little twinge in my gut thought so.
Sophia burst through the door, searching first through the kitchen serving window before spying me on the sofa, huddling in the dark. “We’ve got a location. I need to get you dressed.”
Her nervousness while we’d eaten had made a shift to excitement. “What’s going on?” I asked. “Why do you seem … different?”
She shrugged, digging fingers into the pockets of her jeans. “I like this part of my job.”
I got up, my own tension easing with hers. “Okay, let’s go.”
She went out, practically skipping. I followed her down the hallway toward the warehouse. “Do I get one of those spiffy suits like you and Asher wore to my initiation?” I asked.
Smiling over her shoulder, she said, “No, something much cooler than that. Most jobs you have to blend in with whatever crowd the infected keeps. I only made this one yesterday with you in mind, hoping you’d get to wear it someday.”
“There’s something cooler than that suit? But it looks so neat and badass and … wait, tell me a skirt isn’t involved.” I was frowning, but I couldn’t help it. Suspicious? Who me?
She faced forward again as she came to the door, but her pout came through the words. “Why does the one person who I enjoy hanging around with have to be a total tomboy?” Using her butt, she shoved the door open.
“We’re going hunting, not clubbing.” I followed her inside. When she stared at the floor, grinning, my heart fell. “Oh, no. Are you saying we are going clubbing?”
“The Swan Club in New York, to be precise. It’s a Latin dance club.”
Silly, but I’d imagined us out in the woods stalking some poor idiot with a wraith-rider, not going about business among other people and doing real stuff. “Well, that blows.”
“I’ll get the dress.” As she started for the giant carousel of clothing covered in plastic, she muttered, “Not that you’ll like it anyway.”
“Ah, damn. I’m sorry,” I called after her, but she waved her arms over her head in a flurry of annoyance. Why did I keep feeling like I had to apologize for being who I was? I couldn’t help that I’d been a daddy’s girl, more comfortable chopping wood or fishing in jeans and flannel than flouncing around in a bloody dress, so why did I keep trying? Because I’d found my first real friend since Evangeline in Sophia. Would it really kill me to wear a dress for one stinking night, one she probably put a lot of thought and effort into? No, it wouldn’t.
She came back after a few minutes, still murmuring to herself. “Try this on. If you hate it, I’ll find something else.” A garment bag lay over her arm, showing red through the little window, which she thrust in my direction.
“I’m sure it’s beautiful,” I said, taking it from her. “Thank you for making it for me. Nobody’s ever made clothes for me before.”
The parts of her pale blue eyes I could see through her rainbow bangs appeared shocked. “What?”
“I’m sorry, and you heard me. I didn’t mean to be difficult. Friends aren’t supposed to dis their friend when she does something nice.”
Beaming, she dragged me over to the makeup chair, styling my hair with an iron so it lay in bouncing curls down my back, nattering on about Remy and something
about the Colonel and Taka coming to blows over something nobody knew about. I was only half there, too distracted by the coming night to do much other than smile and nod. Some mascara, eye liner, a little blush, and red lipstick to match the dress, and I was ready to put it on.
I ducked behind a circular curtain hanging by the platform and mirrors, hung the hanger on a hook at the top, and unzipped the bag. Deep red fabric spilled out, flowy and luxurious. I rubbed my hands down it, lifted the hem to my cheek, and enjoyed the cool softness. I’d have worn it for the fabric alone.
I shed my clothes and pulled the dress on over my head. It was a halter-style with a built-in bra—my size, of course—and tied behind my neck. The skirt flared every time I moved, settling just below the knee when I stood still, like a play of wind across my legs. I could see why someone might wear it dancing. It was so alive, like it had its own mind every time I shifted even a little.
Staring down at my wow-worthy cleavage, I stepped out of the curtain. “How does this thing make my boobs look so huge?”
A tiny “eep” sounded from Sophia, bringing my focus away from Mount Titty-caca. Marcus had arrived with Remy and Taka. “Well, that’s just fantastic.” I glared at her, as she quietly laughed. “A little warning we had company might have been nice before I said something embarrassing.”
Certain my face had caught on fire, I crossed my arms over my chest that suddenly seemed way too out there for the looking. I found a scuff mark on the tile to focus on. Sophia set a pair of dainty sling-back heels at my feet. I slipped them on, glad for something to do other than blush.
“Beautiful,” Marcus said, his feet clad in black shoes beneath dark gray dress pants, coming into view. He stood before me, leaning into my ear. “But I think you’d look better wearing a well-worn-in pair of blue jeans and my silk shirt.”
My face snapped in line with his. Stupidly, I asked, “If I was wearing your shirt, what would you be wearing?”
Darkside Sun (Entangled Embrace) Page 23