Darkside Sun (17 page)

I’d have felt less like a dirt-bag if I’d been going off to South America with Asher to a dig site rather than hiding the truth. I was going off to hunt wraiths and find a way not to kill people when the wraith didn’t want to go home. So much burned on my tongue, and I didn’t have a clue what to let come out. I settled for, “I would never resent you, Dad. And I won’t be gone forever.” Even as I said it, I wondered if it would prove true. I wanted it to be true. Where was Mom now? I’d never had a desire to find her before, but now there were questions that needed answering, and only she could tell me about the books since Grandpa was gone.

My next exhalation coated the air in snow. It hung in the sunlight like a million shards of glass. My initial thought was that Sophia wasn’t going to taste her first hot chocolate after all, and that pissed me off.

As if my thoughts had conjured her, she appeared in the doorway as the temperature plummeted. “Remy needs to see us all outside,” she said, her eyes wild. “Now. Please. Right now.” And she was gone, running down the hallway.

Chapter 18

“What was that all about?” Dad stepped into the hallway to watch her go. The door opened and slammed shut.

I glanced up, shivering. Already more than a foot of black showed at the top of the wall. Oh, God, I shouldn’t have come here. Why didn’t I listen to Asher?

I grabbed Dad’s hand. “Let’s go outside,” I said, my voice steadier than it sounded inside my head. “I’d like you to meet my … friend, Remy.”

“Why don’t you invite him in?”

“No, um … he gets a little claustrophobic. And just be prepared that he has some pretty wicked tattoos, okay? Just be nice.” Dad never put much weight in appearance, but in this case Remy did sort of warrant a double-take.

He shrugged and trooped out onto the stoop in his slippers. I wanted to make him come farther away from the house, but he already looked at me with suspicion, so I let him stop just outside the door.

I stared up at the sky. No rifts, no darkness, no cold. Why only inside? Being inside might concentrate a guardian’s power, maybe so it built up stronger the more time they spent in a single room? That didn’t make sense in my case, though, since Asher said my power wouldn’t come online until after the ceremony. I’d have to ask him about it when I saw him again. If I saw him again.

Remy came around from beside the house. Had he been a few layers into the Shift, watching over us? Long, urgent strides took him to us.

King Kong extended his tattooed hand to Dad. “Howzit, Mr. Beckett? We got troubles back at the shop, and we gotta go now. Sorry to cut out.”

“Oh,” Dad said, his smile breaking, “nice to meet you, too. Hope everything’s all right.”

“What?” I all but shrieked, meeting Dad’s guarded eyes. “But … I thought we’d have dinner and … I thought we’d have more time.” Like, forever.

“The prof need us back at the shop now.” Remy’s stare suggested I move my ass, or I wouldn’t like what would happen to Dad.

Oh, God. This was all my fault. “Dad, I’m not leaving you, I’m just going away for a while. You know that, right?”

He sidestepped Remy and hugged me hard. “It’s all right, Addy. You go off and chase those dreams, find your life, and be happy. You know how bad I am at good-byes, so you go on now with your new friends and let this old man go and cry where nobody can see.” Pulling away from me, eyes glassy, he slipped a key into my hand. “What I took from you is in that storage place out on the highway. When you come back from your adventure, they’re yours to do with as you like.” Glancing at the others, he added, “Real nice meeting you both. You tell that professor fella to take care of my girl.”
Or else I’ll be after you with the shotgun
, I finished for him inside my head.

“We will, Mr. Beckett,” Sophia said, her skin paling as she watched Remy, who seemed to be listening for something beyond what the rest of us could hear, his head tilted.

I couldn’t leave. I wanted to call out for Asher, but Dad would have thought I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had.

Remy herded me to the car, using the hulk of his body to make me move. Every step farther I took from Dad, my panic spiraled out of control even faster. “Now,
kolohe
,” Remy whispered. “My brah can’t clear the wraiths an’ do his thing ’til you gets gone. Now, gets you
okole
in the car, ’less you want this good-bye to be fo’eva.”

What?
Fighting to erase the terror from my face, I drew in a shaking breath, raised my hand to Dad, who mirrored me, and let Remy shut me into the front seat. Sophia got into the back. I rubbed my palms over and over my knees as he started the car and reversed out the driveway. Dad continued to watch us. The sun fell over him, sparkling against wetness on his cheeks.

“How can I just leave him like this?” I asked, choking on what-ifs. “How can I just drive away when I know the wraiths can get into the house? I put him in danger. No, I can’t just leave.”

“Asher won’t let anything happen to him, Addison,” Sophia said quietly from the backseat, but she didn’t sound certain of it.

“Has he been here the whole time?” It shouldn’t have mattered given the circumstances, but I didn’t like that he might have overheard my conversation with Dad. It was private, personal, and would sing in my heart for all time.

The books had been Mom’s. Had I been drawn to the books in the garage, even as a baby? Or had I just found them by accident? A few days ago I’d have said yes, but now … I just wasn’t sure. I squeezed the locker key in my hand, a treasure that held answers, I just knew it. “And how is he going to stop them from getting in?”

“He make the Shift do crazy things most us can’t,” Remy said, eyes intent on the road as he backed out onto the highway and roared toward Bracebridge town proper. “Once he send the wraith back an’ seal up the rift, he can scramble the Shift, move the layers ’round to hide a place. It costly on the power, and he only do fo’ this one place, not everywhere you fadda go or he drain himself dry, but the wraith only come to places you go lots.”

“Why only inside? And why usually during the day? I can only remember a few times the cold has woken me up all these years.” I voiced my theory on the greater concentration of power in the rooms we frequented.

“You real smart,
kolohe
. The more time we hang in a room, the more our energy imprint in the walls, furniture, floor. Normally only happen to full guardians, but they sense you even before. It never happen outside ’cause our power absorb into the atmosphere an’ dilute with the earth’s solar and gravitational jig. The wraith want us, an’ now that they taste our power, they come through those places we hang. Our energy stronger when we awake, so I guess they feel it stronger when we up and about. Most time if we not there, the wraith move on somewheres else, look for another guardian, and if they don’ find us, pick a human they like.”

“Someone crazy, psychotic, you mean. They can sense that from beyond the veil?”

“Most time, the wraith we jack out come from psych patient, serial killer, or functional sociopath, like lots of corporate tycoon-type. Something in those brains make it easier to hijack, I guess.”

“But they prefer guardians to regular mortals, right?”

“Yeah, ’cause we be the ultimate doorways fo’ them. If one of us get a wraith in us, it all sentinels on duty ’til the infected one is cleared of his rider or cleansed.”

“So that’s why the wraith-rider in Ava was so giddy when it realized what I was and I wasn’t yet bound to the Machine. It wanted to use me as a doorway. So, because I’ve taken that first step, does that mean I’m safer now? Not such a danger of being taken over?”

“They can still take you, but it harder. Once you training over, you be able to recognize them easy an’ put your own protection in place to safeguard you body an’ mind.”

My mind fish-tailed under thoughts I didn’t want to have. “So, back when the Machine was attacked, why didn’t the wraiths use the former guardians as doorways if they’d crawled inside them? Why aren’t there a bunch of real bug men running around now?” The book had said once that happened, they couldn’t be killed. I shivered.

“We think the soldiers and sentinels who survived killed the infected ones before the wraith come through, but nobody know for sure. All we know is no wraiths around, alive an’ in the flesh.”

“Jesus.” I hugged myself and huddled against the seat, cold even though the waning sun spread warmth over my lap through the window. How many had died? Were they aware of what was happening, trapped in bodies they had no control over? What a horrible way to go. A fierce anger bubbled up like lava, spilling hot and wild through my blood. It was a foreign emotion, as if it wasn’t my own anger. Weird.

“So who in the Machine survived?” I asked. “And why don’t they remember the knowledge Asher said is lost?” I wanted another look at the artifacts and runes in the chamber, and maybe the bible. Another item to add to my Asher list.

Sophia leaned forward, pressing her face between the bucket seats. “That’s the strange part. There isn’t a soul who remembers being part of the Machine before the massacre, so what happened to the ones who cleansed the rest? Marcus, Remy, Taka, Asher, and the Colonel woke up one day in the chamber without knowing how they got there. They founded the new Machine and began gathering knowledge again around sixty-five years ago.”

Remy pulled over onto the side of the road not far from Dad’s place. “I get the car later. I have to get you back or my brah gonna bust my balls. He don’ outrank me much, but I trust what he say.” It seemed entirely wrong that someone so large would have to listen to someone smaller than him.

I glanced around the car and felt like an idiot for it. “Is he talking to you now?” Was that what made Sophia so twitchy when she was getting me dressed for the ceremony? “Why doesn’t he just come out so we can all hear him? Is Dad okay? Is he safe?”

Closing my eyes, I thought of Asher as I reached out with those extra senses I’d gained from the book, hoping the Shift might take me to him. A surge of hot energy hit me before it sped off. Definitely his presence, bright and alive with that same rich emotion that surrounded him in the chamber. He was there even if he didn’t want to see me at the moment. He’d been with me all along. My heart hummed.

We got out of the car. Remy grabbed my cotton-covered wrist and Sophia’s with the other, his eyes never leaving her. I caught a hint of deep longing before the dial on the View-Master of the world twisted, adding layers and layers of new images over the real one.

Stomach clenched, I closed my eyes and reminded myself why I was leaving. I was part of the Mortal Machine now, like it or not. I didn’t truly know what it meant, but Asher implied I’d learn the skills to protect Dad. Not only him, but other dads and moms and children who didn’t deserve to lose their lives to a creepy bugman who wanted to crawl into their bodies and kill their souls.

When I opened my eyes again, we’d arrived at the facility in the hallway of the many steel doors. “Get the
kolohe
to her room, Outfitter,” Remy said, still gazing at her with a pained expression as he took his hand back from her sleeve-encased arm. “Real sorry, Addy.” He disappeared again before I could ask him what he was sorry about, so I asked Sophia instead.

Frowning, she shook her head as if thinking herself out of saying what she wanted to. “You’ll know soon enough. He’s waiting in your room.”

“Asher?” Sensation surged through my chest, urgent and primal and not entirely unpleasant.
WTH?
“You’re scaring me. Is he somehow whispering in your ear from the Shift so that I can’t hear it?” I had a sudden need to see his face. To hear his clear, deep voice that had torn my emotions apart and put them back together in the chamber. To apologize for whatever had gone wrong, even if I hadn’t done it on purpose.

“I want so badly to ask you what happened that night in the chamber, because … never mind.” She pulled a ring of keys from her pocket, flipped through them until she found a shiny silver one, and slipped it into the lock on one of the steel doors. I’d have thought a secret society would have been more high tech, but, then again, who funded them if they were secret?

Afraid to ask what she wouldn’t tell me, I chose a different question. “Why do you need keys? Why can’t we just use the Shift to get into the rooms here?”

“Asher locked up the Shift around everything but the common room and the main hallways, so nobody can get into the dorms or the weapons lockers without us knowing it.” She opened the door and rushed through.

Heart fluttering like a trapped bird, I rushed to keep up with her as she raced down yet another hall with many closed doors lining the gray walls. A few of the doors slammed shut. She’d told me most of the soldiers lived down this wing. Remy had come out of a different door from the main corridor. Better quarters for sentinels, probably.

My door stood open. A small wedge of light cut across the dim corridor like a golden blade.

“I can’t go any farther.” She stood close, shaking. “I’ll fix you something to eat in the kitchen. When he’s done with you, meet me there.” A slow sigh leaked out of her. “You’re stronger than you think, Addison. I like you and I’ve already seen how strong you are, even if you haven’t. Don’t let him break you. Don’t you dare.”

I watched her rush down the hallway. Why would he try to break me? My breath came too fast, my nerve too fragile to face Asher alone after all of her cryptic words.

“What are you waiting for, an invitation?” Asher asked from right behind me, as condescending as ever.

I whirled to face him. My anger died in my throat at the sight of him. Framed in the doorway, one hand propped on the jam, he fixed those glacial eyes on me.

His deep red button-down appeared immaculately pressed along with his black dress pants. The red caught between the raven black of his hair and the pants stunned me, sucked the IQ points out of my head like a sensory Hoover. I wanted to touch his face again, to trace my fingers over his jaw and the full bottom lip that drew my gaze. A need to get closer drew my hand toward him.

He stepped away. “Inside. Now.”

I walked past him, hugging myself. My room wasn’t much larger than my dorm at Waterloo, only it was almost entirely white and gray. How splendidly drab. Would this be my life now? Where would I go once my training finished? Did Asher live here, too? It was worse than a convent. Nothing personal, not even a splash of color to brighten the mood.

I rubbed my hands against my shirt, but it didn’t have enough interest or texture to soothe me, so I stroked my braid instead. Asher’s presence blasted a wall of heat against my back. I closed my eyes, wishing he’d say something. “Please tell me he’s safe. Dad, I mean.”

The door slammed behind me. “For now.” His voice slid over the air like silk in the wind, over my skin like a physical touch, gentle yet demanding. Only two words, but they wrapped me in warmth, opened something in the heart of me that burst into a rush of color behind my closed lids.

I glanced over my shoulder at him and realized instantly why his presence held such heat. His entire body vibrated with rage.
Shit
. “Why are you so pissed? If I’d known the wraiths would follow me, I’d have said my good-bye over the phone.” I recognized the lie the instant it left my lips. I had known the danger, the same danger I’d spent my childhood running from. And I’d knowingly marched right back to him, bringing them with me. The slight quirk of Asher’s brows confused me. He wasn’t angry about Dad? Then what?