It moved to block the door. “The Darkside Sun has risen,” it said. “We have been waiting long, so long.”
“What’s the Darkside Sun?” I breathed out snow while my heart tried to beat its way through my chest.
“The beacon marking the doorway for the lost,” it said, as if that explained everything. It didn’t. Not a damned thing.
Oh, shit … doorway as in to come through into our world? If this sun had risen and would lead the wraiths someplace, where was it? How did we find it and extinguish the thing before they got a free pass to our reality?
I didn’t get a chance to fire off any questions before Remy and Marcus appeared beside Xavier. Where the hell did Asher get to?
Xavier flung both arms up and cracked the sentinels in the face before I could ask. Roaring, Remy dove at the wraith-man, and the two of them smashed into the door. The panel crumpled outward and hung askew on the hinges. Taka popped in, diving on top of Xavier.
I helped a dazed Marcus to his feet as the other three men grappled by the door. “Where’s Asher?” I noticed Kat was missing, too. She could stay away as long as she liked.
“I think he’s wasted,” Marcus said. “He was stumbling around, so the bouncers took him outside after his run-in with Xavier, and then proceeded to beat the hell out of him.”
“Oh, my God.” My legs tensed to take me to him, but where was he?
Remy threw Xavier across the room.
I yelped as Marcus shoved me onto the sofa so I wouldn’t get clobbered. “Drunk?” I asked. “But he only had one drink, and he was fine when he was with me.” Though he had slurred his words a bit when he was talking to Xavier and lost his footing when he walked away. “Where is he? Is he all right?”
“Kat’s getting him.” Marcus jumped into the fray, and they pinned Xavier to the floor in the corner. “Come and watch.” Marcus’s voice strained with the effort of containing the flailing man’s arm. Taka wrangled his legs, and Remy knelt on the other arm.
I stood behind King Kong as Kat appeared in the room with her arm around Asher, who could barely walk. Blood poured from his nose and mouth, and bruises bloomed purple around his left eye. She hadn’t been touching him skin to skin long enough to hurt him, had she? Was all that damage really from a fight? He sagged like a sorry-looking marionette whose strings had been cut. She let him drop to the sofa with a scowl of disgust. God, what a bitch.
“Just a second, Marcus.” I rushed over and knelt in front of Asher. “Are you okay?” It was stupid question, but I needed him to speak so I could tell if Marcus had been right about the alcohol. Asher’s eyes were glassy as he tilted up and stared at me, but I couldn’t read them. He did kind of smell like whiskey, but he often did. His lips parted, and low words tumbled from them, but I couldn’t make sense of them.
“Dammit, Asher, I need you right now,” I said.
He coughed, curling in on himself.
By the time my focus swung back to the wraith, Marcus had released his storm, which crawled down his arms in those scrolling blue patterns, only not as bright as I expected. Not as bright as when I’d touched Asher.
Placing one hand on Xavier’s throat and the other on his belly, Marcus closed his eyes. “You have to look inside them, feel for the cold. When you find it, you have to pull it out.” He began to shake.
“Brah?” Remy asked. “What doin’?”
“I don’t know what the hell this is, but it’s nothing we’ve ever seen before. Strong, so damn strong.”
I piped in with, “The thing said something about the Darkside Sun, as if it should be in all caps, like a god or something. He said it had risen and would lead the lost to the doorway. What the hell does that mean?”
Taka let out a strangled sound, scrambled up, and started pacing around the room. What was his problem? Did that mean something to him?
A thunk sounded behind me. Asher had rolled onto the floor, his gun out. He used his elbows to crawl toward us, blood falling in ribbons from his chin. Jesus, how badly was he hurt?
“No guns,” I said. “Please stop moving until we can get you back to the infirmary.”
The great beating heart filled the room as Marcus glowed brighter, taking us into the Shift. I wasn’t sure why we all went when he wasn’t touching us, but the pulse in the room seemed different, so maybe it was part of the process.
We ended up in a grassy field, Xavier’s office still overlapping the image as if we were part of both realities at once. My head swam with dizziness. Thick white mist billowed out around Marcus’s hands, but it just hovered there.
Blood poured from Marcus’s nose as he shook and gritted his teeth. “Can’t pull it out,” he said. “Sorry, little rabbit, but this one has to go.”
“What? No, you can’t!” I rushed back and forth on the grass, certain I was missing something. I ran through everything Izan had told me the day I met him in the mirror. The Misgiver was a liar, he’d said. What all had this person lied about?
I stopped dead, thinking about when I’d touched Asher while suppressing my storm back in the bathroom. We’d created so much power, it could have lit up Asia. Could two sentinels generate the power to push out the higher caste wraiths? Had the Misgiver somehow killed Taka’s girlfriend to put the fear of touch in all of the guardians to cripple their abilities?
Yes, push, not pull. One of those little “knowings” told me so.
When my attention returned to the room, Remy had his gun in hand. He stared over his shoulder at me, sorrow creasing his brow. “Sorry, Addy. Wasn’t supposed to go like this. If we known, woulda picked another victim.”
Victim. Yes, Xavier was probably a good man without his wraith and didn’t deserve to die.
I put my hand on Remy’s shoulder. “You have to let me try first. Please.”
“If my brah here can’t—”
“Please,” I said again. The traitor couldn’t be Remy, could it? Was that why he didn’t want me to try? No, no doubts. I had to show them what I could do before I could figure out who was who and what was what. Izan meant for me to do this, had trusted me to figure it out. Whatever would happen to me would paint a target on my head and draw out the traitor.
Remy gave a curt nod and moved aside, keeping his foot on Xavier’s shoulder. I knelt beside the club owner, who’d stopped struggling and gazed up at me with hunger. Not the bedroom kind, but the teeth and swallowing kind.
“Where is the Darkside Sun?” I asked.
The wraith grinned with Xavier’s lips. “The dawn is already on the horizon. The exodus has already begun.”
“Over my dead body.” I cringed at my choice of words, hoping it didn’t turn out to be prophetic. Turning, I met Asher’s glazed eyes. “Just hang on, okay?”
He wobbled on his hands and knees, coughing again.
I thought about asking one of the others to take him back to the facility, but a terrible thought occurred to me. What if it had been one of the sentinels who’d beaten him up? Or … Oh, God, had someone put something in his drink? But I had to put on my show before I could get him back to the infirmary. I turned back to Marcus. “Put your hands back on Xavier. Hurry!”
Panting, he slowed his breathing. “Got nothing left.”
“You don’t need anything, just do what I say.”
Marcus repositioned his hands where’d they been on Xavier’s throat and stomach, his strongest chakra points. “What are you doing?” he asked.
Letting the cat out of the bag. Shaking only a little, I placed my hands over Marcus’s. “Don’t resist the flow. You’re my conduit. We need a ground, like lightning, to take our energy where it needs to go. Let mine flow into you, join with yours, and flow out again. I promise it won’t hurt you.” I hope. It would be a crappy time to be wrong.
Taka stared at me as if I’d turned into a many-headed dragon who would soon toast him to a golden brown. Was that a Misgiver reaction? Or Remy’s white knuckles where he knelt beside me? Kat, who paced by the door like a caged lion ab
out to be poked with a cattle prod? What would they do once I did this? Oh, God, what if they shot me?
Marcus nodded, brow raised, but he didn’t protest, only relaxed under my hands. “I’m all yours.” He flashed a genuine and exhausted smile at me, and I relaxed a smidge.
I should have been face to face with Asher. He was my other half, my conduit, and I was his. “Okay, let’s do this.”
Marcus opened his mouth, but I took the lid off my inner box before he got any words out. A scream came out instead. I realized too late I should have only tipped the lid a little, let my energy out slowly since it had been cooped up for so long. It roared out of me and through Marcus.
Everyone in the room lit up. The walls glowed blue, and the ceiling turned into a whitewash. I was a beacon. White ate my vision, and all of my senses flowed through Marcus and into Xavier. So dark and cold, like standing in a subzero night with no moon. I pushed out, down, deeper and deeper into the club owner until I found the coldest point, a frozen marble at the bottom of a warm pool. The wraith screeched at me, diving deeper into the man, digging through his soul to get away from me.
Marcus had stopped screaming, but he slumped over Xavier’s body. I couldn’t see him through the glow, but I felt his movements as if they were mine. I didn’t stop. The wraith needed killing, and I had to push it out before I could finish it off and get Asher the hell away from here.
I filled Xavier with my power. The wraith writhed and screamed before it finally had nowhere else to go but out. It flowed out of the body under our hands like a rush of cold wind.
Releasing Marcus, I jolted to my feet, turned my face up to the hovering tattered mist in the shape of a man with no eyes. Hands raised, I reached for the wraith, not with my body, but with my storm. I took that little creep by the throat, surrounded it with my energy, and squeezed. It exploded in a wash of snow and one final mewling cry.
It was gone. Hot damn, I’d really done it.
My victorious smile flattened when pain shot through my head. My eyes burned as if someone had shoved hot pokers into them. I fell to my knees, wailing, scrubbing at them.
“Addy, Jesus, Addy!” It was Remy. His arms clamped me to his Australia-sized chest. The others were shouting, frantic, amazed, terrified.
“How the hell did she do that?” Kat asked. “I could see the wraith when she touched it.”
“I don’t know. Shit, I don’t know.” That from Marcus.
“Open your eyes, kolohe,” Remy said. “Come on, yeah. I tell my Sophia I bring you back safe. She may be small, but she hurt me just fine if I don’.”
The pain eased back, but my body still shook. My eyes had changed, one of those inklings of mine told me so. The only question was: to what?
When the sound of Asher’s rasping breaths reached me, I launched away from Remy and came to my knees beside my sensei. I touched his cheek and found him ice cold. Whitish gray had replaced his Middle Eastern complexion. “Oh, God.” I pulled his head into my lap, his blood soaking into the collar of his shirt. “Someone put something in your drink, didn’t they?” I whispered in his ear. “Who did it? What do I do?”
His back bowed, and breaths gurgled out of him. Foam spilled over his lips, red with blood, and he screamed.
I clutched at him, my stomach knotted. My instincts urged me to get the dagger in the chamber, so that’s what I’d do.
Chapter 30
Remy and Marcus rushed over, staring down at Asher and the bloody foam spilling out of his lips.
“Stay away,” I screamed and covered his shaking body with my own while they shouted something I didn’t listen to. I thought of the chamber. Old stone, artifacts, the altar decorated with runes. Layers of the Shift piled up around me.
Eyes shut, I clung to him. “I’ll fix this. You’re going to be okay.” I kept talking to him, but only choked sounds spilled from his lips, sounds of pain.
I opened my eyes as the other layers of the Shift faded away, leaving us on top of the altar. “Don’t you dare die on me,” I said.
Inside my head, Izan said, The dagger is on the shelf behind you. Make cuts as if you were going to taste him, over his heart and one on his forehead. You know what should be inside his body. As you pushed out the wraith, you will push out the poison. Now, child, hurry!
I rolled off the table and searched the shelves full of old books and artifacts until I found the obsidian dagger. Hands shaking, I raced back and stood over him. After setting the dagger on the altar, I ripped his shirt open as he thrashed.
“Lie still, Asher. Can you hear me? I don’t want to cut you too deep.”
A gurgling scream tore open the silence. I climbed on top of him, straddling his waist, one hand against his head to keep him still. With the other, I took the knife and cut him just over his heart, the slice going jagged with his sudden jerk. After making a small nick on his forehead between my fingers, I sat up and stuck the tip of the blade into my palm. The pain was sharp and immediate, but I didn’t hesitate before doing the other one.
Blood trickled from my cuts as I put the knife down and pressed my wounds over his. Nothing happened. What now? Oh, please!
Just as panic threatened to overtake me, Izan filled my head with words in some language I wasn’t sure my voice box could form. But I repeated them aloud just fine as he told them to me. My energy came spilling out with the last word. Wind escaped me with a gale-force roar, as if I was the eye of some fantastic storm. I directed that force into Asher, let myself fall into him as if he were an endless drop. Free falling, I tried not to see his memories as I reached into every corner of his body. I could taste the poison, and it burned like acid on my tongue.
His screaming had turned into something heart-stopping, the sound of a dying man. I wrapped myself around his soul, keeping it in him while I pushed out everything else. Something warm oozed by my knees where my physical body still straddled his. Was it blood? No, poison. I was pushing the poison out of his body, forcing it through his skin.
A wave of exhaustion rippled over me, but the toxin wasn’t gone yet. My resistance to his soul and what lay within in it came down, exposing his memories to me. I watched him standing over his mother’s grave as a young man, maybe sixteen or seventeen. He didn’t cry; he was … relieved. Nothing more could hurt her. He’d done all he could to protect her, and he was glad she would never know what he’d become—an enforcer for the mob, a hired gun, a monster who couldn’t control his own rage. And immediately after his relief came a giant pill of shame for being glad she’d died young of cancer.
I watched him standing over the bodies of men he’d killed for no good reason other than the boss told him to. His regret and anguish over it all burned through me, forced a cry from my lips. There was more there, more darkness in his past if I could just get a little deeper into him, could just fight past his giant walls … but everything faded out as if he’d buried his secrets so well he’d almost forgotten them. Color bled back into his life as I followed him through his first days in the Machine. The memories came hard and fast, then, like a tap turned on too far, and I didn’t know how to shut it off. All about me. My power had called through the Shift to him, only him. He’d been afraid at first, that I was a wraith trying to lure him out.
He watched Dad and me cuddled on the couch watching hockey by firelight, watched me playing outside in the rain, riding my bike to Evangeline’s place so we could play. All with a smile, a light heart. Seeing him so content was like tasting a little piece of heaven. Why did watching me make him so happy when he treated me like a leper most of the time?
Something slammed into the part of my soul that had gone inside him. I ended up on my back, staring up at the ceiling from the floor of the chamber, where the runes faded from bright blue to flat gray as my connection to Asher weakened.
He lay unconscious on the table, but he was in there, and he was pissed, shoving the last connection I had to him out. What didn’t he want me seeing in his head? He’d been desperate to boot me
. His urgency had scorched me on the inside, like inhaling too close to a flame.
“Ouch, that freakin’ hurt,” I moaned, rolling over to rub my head where it had cracked against the floor. “I didn’t mean to go snooping, you jerk.” Climbing back to my feet, I limped back to the altar. “Nice thanks I get for saving your ass.” Just to be sure that wasn’t a premature statement, I checked his pulse and found it strong.
As my heartbeat came down out of its Mach 5 pace, a few realities hit me. Someone had tried to kill Asher tonight, which meant it was most likely someone who’d gone with us. Probably someone who didn’t want him to be able to help me with the wraith.
Had I seen any of them near him? Marcus had been with him, but knowing how keenly aware of his surroundings Asher was, I couldn’t imagine anyone slipping poison into his booze while he held it. Maybe someone bribed the bartender?
Kat and Taka were at the top of my list. But how would I prove it? And why would Kat kill someone she clearly lusted after? Taka. It had to be him.
I gazed around the room with my new eyes. Everything had a sharper edge, brighter color, more obvious texture. Was this how Sophia saw the world? Did I have a soldier’s eyes? I gave that thought the bum-rush. Couldn’t change it. Didn’t matter. I still had a job to do, a traitor to catch, and my mother’s stuff to go over. Izan seemed to think my little wraith-exploding trick would force the Misgiver to reveal him or herself. I agreed. Only wished I knew what to do once that happened.
Asher’s chest rose and fell a little easier as he lay there looking like a murder victim, blood smeared all over his chest and head. Too tired to really think about where we were going, I took his hand, too cool to the touch for my liking, and thought, “Home.”
Sagging with exhaustion, I had to close my eyes while the faint images of other realities overlaid the chamber. A few moments later, Asher’s body thunked to the floor beside me. I opened my eyes to a room I didn’t recognize. It wasn’t a log cabin, but it had that feel to it. It was more of a craftsman-style open concept with exposed beams above, reaching across the space that remained open all the way up to the peaked ceiling. The walls were all off-white around the beams. A giant triangular window allowed a view out to a small lake turned golden under the sunset.
Darkside Sun (Entangled Embrace) Page 26