Darkside Sun (Entangled Embrace)

by Adams, Jocelyn

  “Shut your Goddamned mouth,” I said, then to Asher, “Don’t you dare buy into that poisonous shit. He’s just screwing with you like he’s screwed with the Machine all along.” I knew Marcus’s barbs had hit home when Asher lifted his chin and finally looked at me. His eyes held such pain it spilled out of them and into me.

  “Just let her go,” Asher said. “Use me to open the doorway.”

  The bible said only I could, but maybe Marcus didn’t know that? Not that I’d leave, anyway. “I’m not going anywhere. Just tell me what you want, Marcus.”

  Marcus smiled again, this time victorious. “I think you know very well what I want. We’re going to play a little game now. I’m going to ask you to do something. If you refuse, I’ll start filling lover boy here full of holes. I bet it’ll take a lot to make him scream since his father conditioned him to pain, but you’d be surprised how creative I can be when I’m bored.” Grabbing Asher by the ankle, Marcus dragged him closer to me, dropped him, and pointed the gun toward his groin.

  “This is no time for sentiment, Plaid,” Asher said, giving me a cold, hard stare. “If you do this, our world will end. I’m not worth it.”

  I tried to keep my face neutral, but tears broke over my lashes. “You’re wrong. Now, shut up, and let me think.”

  Izan had told me I had the power to get this job done; I only needed to embrace it. I also got the feeling that he not only wanted me to fix the Machine, but to save Asher, not only from Marcus, but from his own self-hatred. To do that, I had to go along with Marcus and shut him down on my own.

  Asher must have seen the resolve on my face, because he let out a choked sound. “No! Why couldn’t you just hate me like you were supposed to? I won’t be responsible for the end of everything.”

  “Your doubt in me is getting tiresome,” I said, swinging my stare toward Marcus, forcing out all of my own doubt along with the need to know if what he said about Asher was true. “Let’s play, asshole, before I change my mind and shoot him myself.”

  Marcus roared with laughter as he sauntered toward me. “The trouble with small town bleeding hearts is that they’re so predictable, don’t you think, Asher? It really is too bad we’ll never know just how powerful of a weapon the two of you might have become. I still haven’t figured out how Izan intended to use the Machine if it ever became operational—which, I assure you, it never will. It had to be more than simply acting as a shield against the wraiths, given the potential just the two of you have. But you’ve already wondered that, too, haven’t you, Asher?” Marcus held his hand out to me, the other still gripping the gun. “Let the games begin. Come to me.”

  What? Izan wanted to save our world; he didn’t want to use us as a weapon against anyone but the wraiths, right? Doubt began to fester in me, but I shut it out. Better to deal with Izan’s unknown motives later, after I’d taken care of the immediate threat before us. It took every ounce of willpower to make my feet take me to Marcus, but I did it. Yay me. “I really hate you, you know.”

  “I can live with that.”

  I met Asher’s near-violent stare and mouthed, “Trust me,” even though I was pretty sure we were toast. Out loud, I said, “If you hurt him, I will destroy you, even if I have to come back as a wraith and possess your treacherous ass.”

  “There are those little fox teeth,” Marcus said, grabbing my wrist. “Time to go. We don’t want to keep your party guests waiting, now, would we?”

  Guests? Crap, he meant the wraiths. The Shift began piling layers of realities on top of us, blurring by so fast it nauseated me. Asher bellowed somewhere nearby, dashing my hope that Marcus might have forgotten to bring him with us.

  The stone walls of the chamber where Asher initiated me solidified around us, and a few blinks cleared the shadows from the other realities. “Why here?” I asked, jerking my arm out of Marcus’ grasp. “Why couldn’t you turn me into a doorway anywhere?”

  He’d called his storm, his skin alive with vibrant blue tattoos. “Izan designed this room to amplify and focus a guardian’s power. And thanks to his greatest enemies, I’ve learned how to use mine to do anything I can imagine.”

  A grunt from Asher drew my gaze to where he’d dragged himself to the wall and managed to make it to a wobbling stand. Thank God his drugs were wearing off. As I watched, an iron shackle formed around his wrist, along with a thick chain that grew out of the wall. He yanked against it, eyeing Marcus with the same shock I imagined my face showed.

  Jesus. Marcus did that? “Look, just let him go. I’m here, I’ll do whatever you want. You don’t need him here.”

  “I’m not leaving,” Asher barked.

  “He kept you hidden from me for over a decade,” Marcus said. “I won’t underestimate him again, since, for reasons I can’t begin to guess at, he has Izan’s favor. Now, get on the altar, little rabbit, or I’ll make him bleed.”

  “Don’t do it.” Asher pleaded with his eyes, straining against his bindings, but I shook my head and went to the altar.

  If Marcus chained me up, it took fighting out of the equation, which left me with my brains and my storm. They’d have to do.

  I climbed up on the stone table and laid down. “Happy now?”

  My nerve threatened to snap as he laughed, his footsteps echoing in the room as he circled behind my head where I couldn’t see him. Frantic giggles brewed in my throat, but convulsive swallowing kept them contained as he secured the shackles around my wrists. I could do this. I could.

  Asher shouted curses and roared with strain as he continued to fight with his own chains.

  I wanted to take the utter terror out of his eyes, but for the moment, I was helpless to do anything but play along with Marcus. “What, exactly, are you going to do?”

  He came around beside me, keeping his hands below the lip of the altar. “Don’t worry your simple little head over it. Very soon your existence will be over, and you’ll have nothing more to fear. It’s a blessing for someone like you, really.”

  “Screw you. I get enough of that poor-little-dumbass crap from everyone else. I don’t need it from you, too.” I swallowed, straining to see what he held at his side. “What do you have in your hands?”

  “If you obey me, you won’t need to find out.” He smiled that country-boy charm, so disturbing after saying he intended to kill me.

  “But you voted against initiating me. Did you know right from the start that I knew there was a traitor?”

  “I knew that if you were the Darkside Sun that Izan would tell you about my past antics. You hid the knowledge well, I’ll admit that. I wasn’t sure you knew about the betrayal of the original guardians until the night at the Swan Club. You were watching us all like hawks.”

  “Antics?” I asked. “Murdering a group of people who are supposed to be closer than family does not fall under the heading of ‘antics.’”

  He flashed a grin. “Call it what you will, the end result is the same. I needed to make sure you didn’t immediately nail me as the traitor while I waited for Asher to bring about your evolution, and you didn’t. It’s amazing how far a little fake flirting will take me. You really are pathetic, you know. As if someone like me would ever find someone like you beautiful.”

  “Yeah, like that’s a newsflash. Why do you want the wraiths here?”

  Eyes closed, he twisted his head left and right, his jaw contorting as if in pain. “I feel their despair, ever since I became sensitive more than two hundred years ago when Izan brought me to this very room and inducted me. Did you know it was him who, in his infinite wandering, inadvertently brought them to our reality? How do you like your savior now, hmm?”

  Izan brought them here? But … there had to be more to the story. My mind chewed over why Marcus would want to open the doorway. They were dead, so … shit. “You’re trying to create a new heaven for them. They can live again, through us.” At his peaceful smile and nod, I asked, “Then what does that make you?”

  “Why … God, of course.”


  “You bastard!” Asher bellowed. “I’ll kill you!” Another jerk of his arm crumbled some of the stone around the chain that held his shackle. Had Marcus not given him a full dose? The shaking of Asher’s body made me think he was running on pure adrenaline and rage, which was somehow overcoming the drugs.

  Marcus twisted his head and whirled around. While he strode over to Asher, I shouted, “Stop! Just shut up, Asher. Goddamn it, don’t hurt him!”

  More chains grew out of the floor, snaking around his ankles, and another grabbed his other wrist. I choked on terror. Dammit, why had I let that shit chain me up?

  Instead of raising the gun, Marcus cracked his fist against Asher’s jaw so hard the sentinel crashed against the wall, the sick sound of his limp body impacting the stone echoing in my ears. He dangled from the chains, one of which he’d partially ripped out of the wall.

  I tried to see if his chest was rising and falling, but Marcus blotted out the world as he tucked something into the back of his dark jeans, put a knee on the altar, and swung his other leg over to straddle me. “He always did have a big mouth. I’ve been waiting decades to shut him up that way. Now, open your power to me, Addison, the way you did at the club. Unlike the rest of you, that was positively extraordinary, an even greater payload than your mother had by a hundred miles. I do see the family resemblance now a little in the facial structure. Now, open to me, and I won’t have to hurt you.”

  My mother was the former Architect of the Machine? Why couldn’t I remember her name or what she looked like? Had she hidden me away in the true reality so Marcus wouldn’t find me? Who was my father, and was he also part of the Machine? How did they meet? My brain cramped, searching for answers I didn’t have since I couldn’t seem to remember anything farther back than the day of my induction.

  I refocused on the crisis at hand. “How do you know my mother?”

  He leaned down, a curl of his hair falling onto his brow above those still-peaceful eyes. “Izan hid her from me, or I’d have freed the Fallen the first time I attempted this. He probably led her to your father, too, and when she was stupid enough to spawn a child, Izan thought Asher would keep you out of my reach. He succeeded for a while, but my will is stronger than any of yours.” Marcus began passing his hands over me, looking for my chakras just like Asher had once done.

  My lungs took off at a sprint. Why wasn’t Asher making any sound? He couldn’t be dead, but if he was hurt that badly, I needed to move my ass. Had the chamber locked everyone else out as well as me in? “How does the chamber work?” Maybe if I kept the slime-ball talking, he’d forget about hurting me. Yeah, and the sky would soon turn pink with purple polka-dots.

  “Unlike most of the others, I can lock it up with a thought, use it as a prison, reconfigure the walls, among other things that have come in handy over the years.” So that was how he’d locked the guardians into wherever he’d let the wraiths loose on them. Bastard.

  “So how did you learn that? From the wraiths?”

  “No more talking, Architect.”

  “What does an Architect do, exactly?”

  He growled and gritted his teeth before unclenching them. “You are the knowledge keeper and the key designer of the Machine. You make sure every part is in the right place, the mechanic of sorts, as well as hold us to the laws that have now been forgotten thanks to me. Not that you’ll be needed once this is done. In fact, none of you will.” He laughed as if just getting the punch line of his own joke.

  Wow, no pressure or anything. “So what do you think the Machine will do when it’s running right? If we can learn to trust our conduits and wield the power of emotion?”

  His smile wasn’t pleasant this time, but the snarl of a tiger poked too many times with a stick. “Time to say good-bye to your physical existence. I’d like to say having the entire frozen realm’s dead passing through your body won’t hurt, but that would be a grievous lie. Once they come through, I’ll open the Shift to them, and they’ll finally be free.” Glancing over at Asher, he said, “And lover boy over there will be the next to be eaten by a wraith. So much for true love conquering all.”

  I couldn’t help but yank against the chains, little helpless sounds falling from my lips, but I succeeded only in cutting up my wrists. Where was Izan? Was he blocked from the chamber by Marcus’s powers, too?

  “Open the box, Addison,” Marcus ordered. “Give me your storm. Give it to me, or I’ll cut it out of you.”

  Jesus. What am I supposed to do? Did anyone know where we were? Was Remy trying to find us? No, I would not sit back and wait to be saved like a total nancy. Tired of being afraid, of running from the monsters, I let my anger boil up. As I considered my options, I noticed the change in my storm hadn’t gone away but had continued to evolve even though Asher wasn’t touching me. If my energy pool had been deep before, it stretched down a hundred miles beyond that now, swirling in a controlled spiral, waiting to be unleashed. I could work with that.

  I stared up at the psycho glaring down at me, and I smiled.

  His grin fell. “You’re going to make me cut you, aren’t you?”

  I spit the words at him, “Do what you gotta do, ass wipe.” And I’ll do what I have to. I sifted through everything I’d learned from Izan over the last few weeks, somehow calm in my anger. Anger was better than fear, and I ate it up like an aged steak.

  One idea popped out of the chaos. I’d pushed the wraith out of Xavier. I’d pushed the poison out of Asher. Would I be strong enough to push Marcus out of himself? Oh, yeah, that might just work with the new surging universe of power at my disposal, wherever it had come from. Without a better plan, I threw caution to the stale air and grinned wider. The connection was different with blood as I’d discovered with Asher, better, stronger. I needed Marcus to cut me. Shit.

  Concern flitted across his features before he sighed and sat up, flipping the dagger into his palm with frightening skill, which was what he must have stashed in his jeans earlier. I should have known. “I guess we do this the hard way, then. So be it.” He emptied out the good ol’ country boy until nothing remained but cruelty.

  Okay, maybe this was a bad idea. “Give it your best shot, dickface.”

  I expected him to cut me a little like Asher did, but he launched the knife up to the hilt in my shoulder. Pretty sure it hit bone. A scream cannonballed up my throat. Pain ripped through me, burned along my veins and bones until I wondered if flame would soon shoot out of my fingertips and toes. After ripping the knife back out, the pain arching me off the altar, he cut himself and pressed his palm against my wound. He began chanting in that ancient language Izan had spoken to me while I was trying to save Asher.

  Hold on, I thought to him.

  Tears streaked down my face as I swam into my head again, crawling up to tread water on the agony. I could feel him in me now, Marcus’s soul, the part of life’s miracle that was intangible and unmistakably him.

  “Do not fight me,” he said, panting. Blue veins crawled over his body before lighting up the room. I eased the lid off my box just a little so he’d know I’d done it. He groaned, marking my success. “Good girl. Let it go, let it spill into me. We’ll create heaven for the Fallen.”

  I caught his gaze and let him see my fury. “Or we’ll send the would-be God to hell along with them. I warned you about hurting Asher, but you didn’t listen, so now you die.” I unleashed my power and poured it into him as the ceiling vanished, leaving a dark circle of frozen night as the veil disintegrated. My new storm, tasting subtly of Asher, raged around and through us both.

  White forms crowded into the opening above me, swirling and bucking, waiting to devour my energy and live again. I held the wraiths out with concentration. If I passed out before I got the job done, they’d be on me, and life as we knew it would end. Asher would die before I could love him the way I’d begun to believe he loved me. I’d killed one wraith, and they knew the danger of my energy now even as they were drawn to it like wasps to a bug-zapper.

>   What Marcus didn’t know would soon kill him. I could be the doorway, but I could also be the final nail in their coffins. If my nerve didn’t break first. Or my body. I should have been mortified by what I was thinking—taking a life. But what was the life of one sociopath against a world of people? Against the man who loved me? Choices, choices. There really wasn’t one in this case. Kill or get dead. I’d once asked Remy how many people a person had to kill to get those cold, pitiless sentinel eyes. “Enough it kill the soul,” he’d said. “It diff’ for all us. For you, I think only take one.”

  I guessed I’d soon find out.

  “What are you doing?” Marcus gritted out, his fear spiraling around me like hoar frost.

  Between rasping breaths, I said, “This little fox is showing you her teeth.” I force-fed him a keg of my power, emptied a hundred-mile-wide ocean of energy into his soul. Pushed and rammed it in so hard and fast, he didn’t have time to do anything but scream. I joined him, more a battle cry on a sparring mat than a wail of pain. It was inhuman, merciless, and not a sound I ever wanted to hear out of my throat again, but I let it come as I filled Marcus’s body with everything in me.

  His screaming cut off abruptly when white mist rose above his back, no form except a face that was still open with a wail. When I went to crush him with my energy, my vision faded. I didn’t have enough left to close the veil and kill him. Out of options, I pushed harder against him. He drifted up to the gaping hole into the other side, and as he passed through it, the other wraiths scattered. It took two of us to open the path, apparently, and when Marcus’s connection to me broke, the rift was mine to control.

  With his physical body dead-weight on top of me, I imagined the opening knitted back up, and it began to weave together, the fabric sewing itself up using my energy as the thread and trapping his soul on the other side. I found it kind of pretty. Sophia would have liked seeing my mad sewing skills. Where was she? Was she all right? She’d be safe now, I thought.