Darkside Sun (19 page)

He outranked her, so why wasn’t she just leaving?

“You can walk away, or be carried out on a stretcher and be brought up on charges of insubordination.” His stare, somehow angry and amused at once, shifted to me. “Your choice.”

Ah, that sly bastard. It was
my
choice, because he was making it so. Sophia would stay and get hurt trying to protect me unless I told her to go. Were they all manipulative asshats? I was beginning to think so. Except for Remy.

Surprisingly, I was more afraid of Sophia getting hurt than I was of being alone with Marcus. I touched her arm, and she jumped. “Go. I’ll be fine. Just come and get me when Asher gets here. I don’t want to be late and give him a reason to grouch at me.”

Laughing, rich and dark and sensuous, Marcus went to the door and held it open. “Out you go, Outfitter. Three’s a crowd.”

Okay, maybe I’d made a mistake. I suddenly did not want to be alone with him after he’d said that. Sophia seemed to sense it, because she turned to me and asked, “Are you sure?”

Hell no.
“Yeah. I’m good.”

Face pinched in a scowl, she nodded and pitter-patted out the door. I once again found myself locked in with the beast. The only difference was that I didn’t want to touch this one or to let him touch me. Somehow I didn’t think the feeling was mutual.

Chapter 20

“What do you want, Marcus?” I put the solid table between us. Like that would help. Illusions kept my panic at bay, though, so I stayed behind the table. “Shouldn’t you be out hunting wraiths or … whatever else you do?” What else
did
they do? Did some of the sentinels have homes in the real world? Did they go to theaters and play golf?

“I want to know what’s got Asher so spooked.” Marcus sauntered forward, his arms out in the universal “I’m harmless” pose. He was charming, subtly arrogant, but definitely not harmless. “Your eyes haven’t changed, and your energy is still muted, so I’m guessing something … exciting happened between you and Asher in the chamber?”

I swallowed. It hurt. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. And I thought whatever happened in the chamber stayed in the chamber, like in Vegas. Isn’t that how it works?”

As he rounded the table, I mirrored him, keeping the table between us. Déjà vu. Hadn’t Asher and I just done this? “Come here, little rabbit. I need a brief touch, and I’ll get you to the training room on time. You already know I’m not going to let you leave until I get what I want, so be a good girl and come here without a fuss.” He spoke as if we were having a light conversation, but the coldness in his stare suggested otherwise.

I rushed for the door. He beat me there, slamming his palm against it. Heart crashing against my ribs, I backed into the dim part of the common room with Marcus stalking me, his grin growing ever wider. “You’re not allowed to touch me, remember?” I asked. A girl could try. “I kind of like my blood inside my body, thanks.”

“Brief skin contact won’t harm anything; only too much indulgence will. And as a sentinel, I can pretty much do whatever I want, and having a little feel will help to make sure you’re trained properly.”

“And what will your touching teach me?” I bumped into the wall.

“That I’m bigger and stronger and wiser than you, and you should obey me when I tell you to do something.” He crowded me, shoving his palm beside my head when I tried to slide away. “Be very still, little rabbit, and the wolf might let you walk away after he’s done scaring you.”

A frown creased my forehead. “Careful, sentinel,” I said. “Remy said I’m more like a fox than a rabbit. I might hide in the grass, but back me into a corner, and you’ll find out that I have teeth.”

He went mad-scientist with laughter. The sound slid over me like a lecherous, sensual touch. “I like your spirit. Now, hold still. I won’t hurt you.” I’d heard that before. Right before Asher stuck a blade in me. Twice.

Marcus raised his hand, holding it in front of my face as if giving me time to prepare. His fingers brushed a few springs of my hair that had come out of the messy knot at the top of my head. He closed his eyes, moaning. Could he really feel my storm, or energy, or whatever he called it?

Turning his hand, he brushed the backs of his fingers against my cheek. A surge of heat cannoned out of my depths, like lightning that had found something to take it into the ground, just as it had with Asher, only not nearly as intense by half. I might have screamed if I could have breathed, but my throat locked it out.

Iridescent blue patterns rose faintly under his skin all the way to his elbow before he jerked back and stared at his hand as if surprised to find it attached to him. “What was … how did you do that?”

I sprinted for the exit while he continued to eyeball his fingers. Before I got there, Asher blew in like a hurricane, the door slamming back into the wall as he came through it. “What are you doing here, Marcus?” he asked in a venomous singsong tone that raised all of the hairs on my nape. He stared past me as if I wasn’t there, his fury choking the room like volcanic smoke.

Dark laughter drew my gaze around to Marcus, who leaned against the pinball machine in the far corner, petting his hand over his jaw. “You’ve been holding out on me, Ash old boy. No wonder you’ve been trying so hard to keep her to yourself. If the contest had been weapons or tests of power, you’d have lost. How fortunate for you.” So that was why Marcus outranked Asher? He was a better marksman? What kind of test of power could they have done? I heard an unspoken accusation in the last. Had Asher and the Colonel rigged the fight so Asher would win? If it had only been Asher, I wouldn’t have been surprised, but the Colonel, too?

“Get out, Initiate,” Asher said without sparing me a glance. “Get to the training room. Tardiness won’t be tolerated no matter who stands in your way.”

The tension in the room soared, along with the testosterone. Were they about to come to blows? With the prickle of energy crawling up my skin, I decided I wouldn’t stick around to find out. But what if Marcus hurt him? When I hesitated, he barked, “I said get out!”

I got out. My pulse jumped in my neck as I rushed down the hallway, chastising myself for worrying about that grouchy bear. The door slammed shut. Angry voices collided behind it.

Sophia stood at the very end of the hallway, arguing with someone through an open door. When I came near enough to see her tight expression, I halted.

“This is wrong, Addison. This is so wrong, I can’t stand it.” Shaking her head, she marched away, disappearing through the door that would take her back to the barracks.

What was in there? I’d have thought Asher if he wasn’t still screaming obscenities at Marcus in the common room. I pictured the original torture chamber I imagined he would have in his office in the AL back at Waterloo. I pictured a room full of wraiths. Neither image matched the near-violent look Sophia had flashed before her abrupt departure.

I considered running. Hiding. If Asher wasn’t holding my memories hostage, I’d have done it, I was that scared. I didn’t run. Nope, I made myself move into the open doorway and peer inside. Go, me.

Remy towered over Kat, so close they could have kissed if her spike-heeled boots were five inches taller. She smiled a you-can’t-touch-me smile. They stayed like that while I wandered farther into another stadium-sized room, and I wondered if they were playing a sort of touch chicken. The first one to back off was the chicken, and if one touched the other, well, I wasn’t sure what would happen. Something violent that included a lot of swearing. Maybe blood if what Sophia and Asher were trying to sell me was actually true.

I tore my gaze from King Kong and Ice Princess to survey the room. It had that hollow quality that comes with very large rooms and high ceilings. I had a silly urge to shout “echo” to see how many times my voice came back to me. It was a torture chamber of sorts. A track, one of those rubberized ones some indoor gyms had, ran a ring around the perimeter. In the center oval, there were several stations. One held weight-lifting areas, complete with barbells and benches. Nautilus-style gym equipment took up another quadrant, with torture—er—weight training machines with racks of weights you could change by moving the pin up and down the stack. Beyond that, mats covered the floor, the kind I’d seen through the window of the local dojo where I grew up.

“Get gone, Kat. Won’ tell you again,” Remy said, his voice growly. “Get on, now, or I prove jus’ how much I outrank you. Wit’ heat, jalike.” I wondered if he’d really hit a girl before I remembered what Marcus had said, that she was just a guy who happened to be born without a penis.

Kat smiled wider, her fair skin radiant with whatever had tickled her. The cat who’d eaten not only the canary but the whole damn flock and licked up a few bowls of cream afterward. “And I won’t tell
you
again, you might outrank me, but you don’t outrank Asher. He wants me here, so I’m here.”

What?
I blinked at her. “Why does he want you here?”

They both snapped their heads around as if I’d just pulled a David Copperfield and appeared from thin air. Kat faced me, dressed almost identically to Marcus in black fatigues and a black tank that hugged her tight body and small, perky boobs. Her white-blonde hair was drawn up into a high ponytail at the back of her head. She appeared stunning and lethal all in one, and I once again felt like a ragamuffin beside her.

Whatever she was about to say amused her. Her eyes sparkled with it. “Because he said you weren’t worth his time, so he asked me to go through basic training with you.”

My stomach drew up tight, and my vile slime-shake breakfast thought about making an encore appearance. Frantic swallowing kept it down. A miracle, that. Was he really so mad that he couldn’t even stomach being in the room with me? And why would he choose her of all of the sentinels?

Remy curled his fingers, his ready-for-violence stance adding a layer of menace that, along with his tattooed half, would have made me run from the room had I not known him just a little bit. “This wrong,” he said, echoing Sophia. “My brah should be get’n you through this. He your sensei, not this
lolo wahine
. Don’ believe what she say, don’ you dare. He know you worth a thousand of this one.”

Had they been her words or Asher’s? I supposed it didn’t matter. When my initial disappointment faded, fury rose. Either Asher was a coward, or he didn’t give a flying leap about the outcome of my judgment by the Colonel. If he sent Kat, then he wanted nothing more than to break me. I wouldn’t break, though. With the life I’d lived, I’d learned to bend a long time ago or I wouldn’t have survived it sane.

“It’s okay, Remy,” I said, my voice as steady as my resolve. “If my sensei doesn’t have the balls for the dirty work, then Kat will do just fine.” The pit of my gut told me she had no intention of teaching me anything. I grinned. This fox would show her just how much little teeth could hurt.

Kat’s smile faltered for such a brief moment, I might have missed it if I hadn’t been gawking at her. “Get lost, sentinel,” she said, jutting her narrow chin toward the door. “Us girls have some business to discuss.”

If that much drama surrounded everything they did, it was no wonder they were being overrun.
Someone needs to take the bible, rip out the remaining pages full of lies, and assemble a new one.
I stumbled over yet another foreign thought. A fleeting idea, that I’d like that job, haunted me before it took off again.

Remy shook his head as he strode toward me. “I find out what doin’,” he whispered, stopping beside me. He hesitated a moment before marching to the door and going out without a backward glance. Did he want to touch me? No, he was just pissed.

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 minutes 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.