Darkside Sun (9 page)

Chapter 10

We stood within the great beating heart again. Distantly, I noted Asher’s crushing grip on my satin-covered wrist and another presence with him … Sophia. Her presence carried like an echo across a vast distance, but nothing I could hear. Sense, but not a sense I could name, some combination of sight, sound, scent, and taste that went beyond my comprehension, something that hit me in the soul instead of the outer parts.

What happened to the no-touchy rule? She’d mentioned skin-to-skin, so I guessed touching through clothes didn’t count. Or hair, since he’d touched mine twice—I thought—and hadn’t croaked.

Shadow images layered thicker and thicker until the room appeared to be a faded replica of a Rorschach ink blot. Furniture, some foreign and some from the kitchen we’d been standing in, trees and buildings, people walking down city streets, what I thought might be a sunset peeking over a distant mountain, all blended together like a bunch of slides piled up on top of a light source.

They had to be the false layers of reality that made up the Shift. How many were there? A dozen? Hundreds? Thousands?

Pressure built in my chest. Was I breathing? I didn’t feel real, the way dreams screwed with your head when nothing worked right, leaving you all discombobulated. Other than the throbbing heartbeat and the sense of the other two at my side, a full, heavy silence draped around me. So strange, so complete, I wondered if I’d gone deaf. I opened my mouth to shatter that silence, but nothing came out.

The images collapsed all at once. I lurched forward, hands on my skirt-covered knees, head hanging forward. Breaths, jagged and wild, pumped in and out of my throat. Apparently I hadn’t been breathing. How long had we been in there?

“It’ll take a moment for your body to adjust to being this deep in the Shift.” Asher’s voice sounded faint, far away, even though he stood right next to me. “Keep your head down, and the dizziness will pass.”

Déjà vu. Hadn’t Sophia said exactly the same thing when I’d woken up in the infirmary? If that had been deep, then this was three-hundred miles beyond that. My ears needed to pop, but no matter how wide I opened my jaw, I couldn’t relieve the pressure.

Since I was still steel-edged pissed at Green, I had a need to thumb my nose at him. I straightened and managed to not topple over when someone took the world and sent it for a spin around my head. Never liked rides.

I made like a fence post and waited for the blur of images to slow down. I didn’t barf. I shook a little, but I couldn’t seem to help that. Yippee.

Sophia moved in front of me. Her solid form gave me something to focus on. Grinning, she winked at me. I didn’t need to look at Asher to know I’d surprised him, that I was on my own two feet and not spewing up my guts.

If I squinted really hard, I could just make out silhouettes of people moving around a street, which must have been the true reality, since that was the only one that had people in it. Trippy. When I stopped searching for the real thing, the layer I stood in came into sharper focus just like Sophia said it would. A few blinks cleared the rest of the lingering shadows.

We loitered in the front hall of a nice house. I immediately thought “plantation house” even though I’d only been to the southern states once when Dad and I went to Cousin Francine’s wedding. Ornate crown moldings ran around the top of the walls where it met the ceiling, stained dark. Raised panels made the walls more interesting. Everything but the trim had been painted a creamy white, making it seem light and airy even with all of the heavy texture around the room.

Stairs went up on the right side of the hall, the treads a dark mahogany while the risers remained the same cream as everything else. An old iron chandelier hung above with tiny black shades over yellow bulbs. It shone golden light down onto the parquet floor.

The place seemed harmless on the surface, but … but … something. My legs tensed to sprint me away from the unknown that hummed through the air like potential lightning. “What is this place?” I asked.

“We’re expected.” Asher pointed down the hallway left of the stairs. If he kept ignoring me, I was going to hit him.

“Expected by whom?” I asked.

Sophia gave me a shut-the-hell-up-and-walk look. I sighed and started in the direction Asher thrust his finger. Nothing in the barren hallway told me anything. Cream, cream, and more cream. No furniture, no pictures, no plaques stating, “You have now entered the fifth gate of hell. Please check your soul at the door,” or anything useful.

I turned back to them just before the hall came to a T, hallways jutting in both directions. Sophia and Asher were rooted to the parquet where I’d left them at the foot of the stairs. He appeared almost … uncertain. If he was uncertain, then I was in some serious poo.

My heart did a few jumping jacks. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

He turned to her and said, “Wait for us inside.”

After saying something low and growly against his ear, she smoothed her hands over the gray uniform as if trying to un-wrinkle her own temper before facing me.

I shook my head as she approached. “Please don’t leave me right now. Please!”

When she finally raised her pale face to me, her light-blue soldier eyes and shoulders held resignation. “Listen to Asher, okay?” she said. “Let him take care of you until you’re ready to take care of yourself. I’ll be waiting for you when he brings you inside.” With that cryptic comment, she continued past me and turned down the hallway to the right.

Left with Asher and my pulse that continued to jump around like one of those old-fashioned wind-up frogs, I focused back on him. “Tell me what’s happening. What is this place? Who’s down there waiting for us? The rest of the Machine? Why did you tell me you’re afraid for me?”

He came toward me with bold strides. Pissed? Or was that just his normal gait? I backed up until the wall halted my progress. My yelp careened around the space. Eyes half-lidded and guarded, he stopped so close I couldn’t see around him. As far as images went, his was a good one. If I ignored all he’d done to me and would soon do to me, anyway.

“You need to calm yourself before we go in there,” he said with no inflection, a careful, even nothingness to his voice. “I need the other sentinels to see what I see in you, so they’ll vote the way I want them to.”

He saw something in me? “Vote on what? And which way do you want them to vote?” At his silence, I resorted to begging. “Come on, you’ve gotta give me more than that. I don’t like surprises, not even as a kid. At Christmas I’d tear the house apart until I found all of my gifts. Birthdays, too. Drove Dad nuts.”

A smile hit his eyes and made them sparkle before his mouth formed the shape. Just like that he went from scary to swoon-worthy. It drained out of him as fast as it had come on. “Sophia thinks I can’t deal with you the way I do all of the other initiates who come through here.”

My heart still went pit-a-pat against my ribs, but I wasn’t sure it was because of the unknown waiting down the hallway anymore. “What do you mean?”

“She thinks you’ll respond better to kindness.” His lip curled up at the last.

My eyebrow did an all-out salute. “Well, duh. Doesn’t everybody? And no offense, but if you treat your fellow assassins the way you treat me, then I’m surprised one of them hasn’t offed you by now.”

He threw his head back and laughed. It was a good laugh, dark and masculine, coming up from somewhere deep. It seemed to slide over my skin, warm and inviting me closer. I had a feeling he didn’t do it often. A shame, that.

His chuckling died away. As I watched, all amusement vanished, and I wondered for a moment if I’d really heard that laugh or if I’d taken that last step into Whack-Nut City. “Kindness is for the world out there where ignorance is bliss. The Machine hasn’t survived this long coddling its guardians. If I’d asked nicely, would you have read the book?” His eyes challenged me to deny it.

I opened my mouth to do just that. Shut it again. Would I have? I liked old things, but being threatened with death if anyone discovered I had the book trumped that. I’d have wondered forever what the pages contained, but I’d have gotten over it. It went against my instinct to admit it, but he seemed to be waiting for an answer. “No, I wouldn’t have.”

“Would you have done anything I asked you to do had I left you a choice?”

I frowned, wondering where this conversation was headed. Nowhere good. “No.”

“Good, we understand each other, then. So turn your little tush around and march that way.” He pointed down the cream hallway where Sophia had gone, to a door that might as well have been an open shark’s mouth, and I was the chum.

“No.”

He straightened. “Now.” Whispers in the dark. I might as well have been six years old again the first time a room unraveled. Or in the cornfield at night playing Ghosts in the Graveyard with my one and only childhood friend, Evangeline, and her evil-ass brothers.

I darted out from Asher’s shadow, turning to keep him where I could see him. Give me spiders, hell, even wraiths, over him any day, and I’d have trembled less. “You’re not going to bully me into this, Green, so forget it.” Too bad my voice squeaked, ruining the effectiveness of my statement.

“You don’t think so?” Cracking his knuckles, he came away from the wall.
Here little rabbit
, those crocodile eyes said.
Come and see what big teeth I have.

I walked one step backward with every step he took toward me, my shaking hand sliding along the wall. “Just forget it and take me home. I came like you wanted, and now I’m going to leave.” Something bad would happen if I went through that door at the end. My nerves were sure of it.

“Have you forgotten what I’ll take from you if you don’t obey me?” As he passed under an overhead light, it filled his eye sockets with shadow. The monster was in there, but now I couldn’t see him. He made no sound as he stalked me, not even a swish of fabric from his snazzy uniform.

I panicked, and all of my earlier certainty that the Machine wasn’t going to harm me flew out of my head. “Forgetting Dad won’t mean much if I’m too dead to remember him. That’s why I’m in white, isn’t it? I’m to be some sort of sacrifice? I read your damn book, so now I know too much, right? Is this just some sort of sick torture you get off on, dragging me here through all of your secrets?”

Asher seemed to have run into an invisible brick wall. He teetered forward before recovering. “Is that what you think? That I’ve brought you here to kill you?” His smile wouldn’t have convinced anyone it was genuine. “Why would I have put up with you this long only to set you free so easily?”

“Easily?” I shrieked. “You think dying is the easy way out of this? Just how freakin’ insane are you?” A tear leaked out of my eye, and I scrubbed it away with my silk-covered palm. “I just want to go back home. My dad saved my life once, and he needs me now. Please. Just take me back, and I’ll forget all of this.”

A breath leaked out of him slowly. When he came for me this time, I didn’t move. I needed to touch something real, even if it was him. To make sure I hadn’t already died and didn’t know it.

“You’re not going to die tonight, Addison,” he said, and I believed him. Something in his voice, in his posture, said that he meant it.

When he came too close, I instinctively raised my hand to stop him. His jacket smoothed under my touch. Fascinated, I yanked my gloves off and slid my bare hands over the cool material. The sensation overrode everything else as I spread my fingers and explored him.

“What is this made of? It feels like woven threads of water. It doesn’t seem real, it’s so light and soft.” The tension leaked out of me as I traced the red piping up his chest, passed my fingers over the four golden pins on the mandarin collar, my gaze following my sensory adventure. Touch had always been my soother. The silky edge of my baby blanket. The fluff on my favorite teddy bear. The velvet dress from a doll Grandpa had given me when I turned seven. When the world became too much, I just needed something under my hands, and I could breathe again.

His thrumming energy and muscled body gave me sensory overload, far better than any blanket or teddy could. What would it be like to open his jacket and touch his skin? I had a sudden burning desire to know. It wasn’t wrong. I wouldn’t hurt him, would I?

His breath warmed my left temple, so he must have leaned toward me, and his heartbeat jumped harder under my hands. Was he afraid or excited? I was too caught up in the moment to search his face for the answer.

On my way south down his chest, my palms bumped something hard underneath his jacket. Lost to sensation and curiosity, I slipped my hand between the buttons and wrapped my hand around something solid. Metal. Heavy.

“You know it’s considered impolite to handle a man’s weapon without asking first,” he said in a way that sounded obscene.

I jerked back when I realized what I’d been feeling. A gun. The one he’d used to kill Ava. “Why do you have a gun on you now?” What had he done with her body? Left it for someone to find? Or did he take it away, and her family still didn’t know what happened to her?

“Give you a little texture and softness under your fingers, and you’re suddenly placid. I’ll remember your switch, Plaid. Now, we’re done stalling. Let’s go.” He picked up my gloves.

I crossed my arms over my cleavage and glared at him. “No.” God, how could I want to touch him so badly?

He chuckled, all smug and arrogant, as if I was the butt of some grand joke I wasn’t aware of yet. “While you were busy telling me how I’d never get you down the hallway, you walked here all on your own.”

I turned my head like a little kid who realized the bogeyman had been behind her the whole time. The door that had loomed so ominously at the end of the hallway now stood a mere two feet away. Whirling back to him, I said, “You manipulative bastard.”

He shrugged, all arrogance and nonchalance. “I’ve been called worse.”

The door opened. I squeaked and somehow ended up on the other side of Asher, peering around his back. He handed me my gloves over his shoulder, and I didn’t argue, just tugged them back on.