Darkside Sun (24 page)

Chapter 27

Everyone else faded out into the Shift. Kat flipped me off before she went.

“Nice,” I said. “Classy.”

“She hates that you look hotter than she does.” Sophia came around from behind me, offering a red beaded clutch purse.

I’d totally forgotten she was even in the room. She did the disappearing act really well. I wished I did. “Uh … if you say so.” I took the purse and tucked it under my arm.

“So, is it as bad as you thought?” Her body language changed, waiting for me to wound her, no doubt. “The dress, I mean.”

I hugged her, forgetting the rules for a moment, until she squeaked and jerked out of my grasp. “Sorry I startled you,” I said. “Hugging you felt good, and neither of us died, so please don’t be mad. And the dress is beautiful. It feels like walking in a cloud. You do good work.”

An innocent smile curled up her lips. She rubbed her own arms as if remembering mine around her. “Hugs are nice, I just wasn’t expecting it. Thank you. And watch your back tonight. From every direction, if you catch my drift. I’d say I wish I was going with you, but I’m not that brave, sorry.”

“Leave us,” Asher said.

Neither of us moved until he yelled it again. “Fine, fine, I’m going.” Sophia marched toward the door. “You bring her back to me in one piece, sentinel, or I’ll sew razors into the crotch of your next suit.”

She went out, and the instant the door shut, my anxiety cranked up. So did the gravity to the hot professor. The one I still wanted to touch the way I wanted to gulp ice water on a hot day. A compulsion that overrode reason. God, he looked good, his eyes like jade and blue fire, the suit fitted to him perfectly.

I stared at his feet, feeling naked in the dress. My skin grew tight and warm as I imagined him staring at me. I crossed my arms over my boobage. “Are we going, or what?”

“I’m always late to the party,” he said through a sigh, sauntering over to me.

Shit, I so could not handle being near him right now. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing, nothing.” He shook his head, ran his fingers through his hair. “It is a beautiful dress.”

A beautiful dress, not
I
looked
beautiful in the dress. The obvious distinction stung more than it should have. “Then why didn’t you tell Sophia? A girl likes to know her work is appreciated.”

“We don’t coddle feelings here, Plaid. The Outfitter does her job, and I do mine.”

“That’s part of what’s wrong with the Machine.”

He frowned at me, and even that didn’t make him any less gorgeous. When he spoke again, the words came glass-edged and hot with anger. “I don’t want you to do this. You were just supposed to watch and learn. How am I supposed to … I don’t want that asshole anywhere near you.”

I squinted at him, confused and all tingly at the same time. Maybe he did care about me on some level. “You know I have to do this after what Izan said. And Marcus outranks you, anyway.”

Asher nodded. A slice of his energy flared over me. “Yeah, I know, but I don’t have to like it.”

“Why does he outrank you, anyway? It wasn’t in sparring skills, because you danced around his grinning ass. He said something about weapons and power.”

His laughter rippled over me like hot fudge, but it stopped abruptly. “I wish I knew. His eyes are brighter, but I’ve never seen him do anything out of the ordinary. We don’t hunt together, though, so maybe he’s better at pulling out wraiths than I am. It’s forbidden to ask or to touch so I can taste his power, so I have to accept that there’s a good reason.”

“Well, we’ll see tonight. Do you think it’s him?” I didn’t have to say “Misgiver.” The tightness of his mouth let me know he got it just fine.

“It could be any of them, but I could only get the Colonel to agree to bring these four. It didn’t take much convincing to agree to a group going to protect you after your little display earlier. He was ready to put you at the bottom rank and be done with you before you got lucky. Now he doesn’t know what to do with you, and, quite frankly, I think he’s scared shitless of you.”

I snorted, couldn’t help it. “You think I got lucky?
Nice
.” I shook my head, getting back on topic. “Could it be him? The Colonel?”

“No, I can’t believe it’s him. He keeps us in line, keeps us to the law.”

“But the laws are wrong.”

The look on Asher’s face could have melted glass. “What?”

I shrugged. How could I explain a feeling I didn’t understand? Answer: I didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t. “They’re waiting for us. We need to go.”

A breath hissed out of him, long and slow. “Agreed, but you will explain once we’re clear of this night. You still don’t know what will happen to you tonight via your new
sensei
?” He made “sensei” sound like I did when addressing him with it, vile and insulting. Was he jealous of Izan? Nah.

“No idea.” I shivered, my fear rising like a black tide.

Asher closed the distance. Reached for me, stopped. Reached again.

“Yeah, you’re not good with the whole comforting thing, and you can’t stand to touch me, I get it.” I turned away. “Now, let’s go, before I totally lose my nerve.”

He made a sound between a growl and a roar. “I won’t let you out of my sight tonight. I may not like this, but Marcus was right, you will catch Xavier’s eye. He owns the club and makes sure everyone knows it. Just let that innocent charm you have flow over him, get him good and snared, and then ask him to take you outside.”

“What? Why would I want him to do that?”

“We can’t rip out a wraith in front of an audience. We need to take him someplace private.”

Ah, that made sense. Still, it meant I’d have to be alone with the guy. I hadn’t even met him, and I was already trying not to pee my boy shorts. “Okay. So how do I sense the wraith-infected through the Shift? That’s part of this whole hunt thing, even if you already found one, right?” It occurred to me it kind of happened by accident back at Waterloo when Ava and her jock friend were infected, but I had no idea how to go looking for one on purpose.

“Another time. For now, let’s just concentrate on you watching how to pull out the wraith.”

I swallowed hard.
Stay down, steak. Good boy.
“Okay, I’m ready.”

Warmth hit my lower back before Asher’s hand landed there. It was the sort of touch you’d give a sleeping baby, one you were afraid to jar awake in case it might cry. I hated that touch worse than him not touching me.

The great beating heart thundered inside my chest as realities piled on top of whatever one the facility had been built in. Mountains shone crystal white from noon-day sun shining down on their snowy peaks, faint but there, like the surreal out-of-focus landscape from a pleasant dream. Buildings overlaid that one, the windows all dark, the streets barren. More and more piled up and then faded out again until we arrived on a dark street between two brick buildings. No, not a street, but an alley. “Where are we?” I asked. My nose wrinkled from the stench of exhaust and that nasty sewer smell a lot of big cities had.

Asher started for the street at the end of the alley. The way he squinted into every shadow made my adrenaline surge. What was he looking for? Wraiths? Something else? I could only see a small cross section of the street, but it was alive with foot traffic and yellow cabs.

“New York,” I said, hurrying after him, remembering what Sophia had said about The Swan Club. I had a creeping sensation crawling over my flesh I hadn’t felt in years. Not since I was little and alone in the dark in the cornfield waiting for Evangeline’s brothers to come and scare the bajeepers out of me. My legs tensed to run, the urge overwhelming.

“Yes,” Asher said, his one word filled with the tension that seemed to be ringing through his body. “Stay close.”

“Is this Xavier guy close? What is it you’re looking for in the shadows?”

“The biggest threat tonight isn’t from the wraiths. Don’t forget that.”

Right. The Misgiver. Did Asher think he or she would be waiting to ambush us? If so, then why? Had I slipped and given away that I knew about the traitor? And why would whatever I did tonight make them react?
Izan, a little help here?

We came to the end of the alley. Asher made an abrupt turn before we made it out of the shadows and into the light of the street lamps. I stopped just short of ramming into him.

“A little warning,” I said.

The bedroom heat in his eyes welded me in place. “We’ll figure this out,” he said, his voice rich with that heart-wrenching emotion he’d shown in the chamber, and it sounded just as genuine now as it had then. “You can do this, I know you can.”

Beginning to squirm under his bold appraisal, I moved back a step when he edged closer. “Sensei?”

“Asher,” he said. “I don’t deserve that title.” Rubbing a hand along his jaw, he raised his gaze from my dress and moved closer until he blotted out the world. “You really do look spectacular in red.” He reached out a hand that swept gently over my hair, picking up the curl at the end and watching it fall back over my arm, mesmerized, as it slid through his fingers. “I’m sorry I made you think I didn’t believe in you, or that you were incapable of fulfilling the tasks Izan has written into your future. I’m the coward here, not you.”

Wow. Did he just admit to being coward? That was epic. I rejoined reality when he played his fingers through my hair again. “Your hair looks good down,” he whispered. “You should wear it this way more often.”

Oh, my God, he was touching me. I’d been aching for him to make contact in some way, and it had finally happened. I sighed, holding my energy inside by sheer will when it ached to rush out and meet him. What about the rules? I licked my suddenly dry lips, and as if I’d invited him, his gaze zeroed in on them. It lingered there until I squirmed harder, his expression as intense as it had been during the night of my induction. He raised his shaking hand, his thumb poised as if to run across my lips.

Words left me before I thought them through. “I don’t need convincing to go to the club, and I’m not on the verge of freaking out like I was in the chamber, so … is this real? Because it feels real. The eyes never lie, and yours are full of some pretty intense stuff right now. I can hardly breathe when you look at me that way.”
Crap, I did not just say that out loud.

I caught something dark and wild in his eyes before he stepped back, rubbing a hand over his mouth and then letting it fall to his side. “I uh … dammit.” He cleared his throat, his jaw clenching. “We don’t know each other tonight, Plaid. The Swan Club is just down a few blocks. Turn right out of this alley, and you won’t miss it. I’ll watch from the first layer of the Shift until you go in, and then I’ll see you inside. Your ID is in your handbag.” A moment later, after one last penetrating look, he vanished.

Stupid! Why did I have to go and open my big mouth and make him go away? My lips tingled as if his stare had physically touched me, or he’d been thinking so hard about kissing me that my body thought he had. Smacking them together, I rounded the corner and stopped at a window display. No, I was just being a hormonal idiot and had probably read more into our little moment than was there. Now, if I could just convince my body to stop with the hot thrills in my groin, I might be able to think about what I had to do.

Knowing he was up in the Shift, watching over me, I relaxed a smidge. What was he thinking right now? Was he pissed? Disappointed like me that I’d ruined the moment? While composing myself, I stared at a painting in the window of an art gallery. An elderly man sat on an old-fashioned porch swing with a little boy beside him, both of them engrossed in a book they held between them. The man reminded me of Dad in another twenty or thirty years.

I always thought I’d find someone, settle down into some job, and have kids of my own. Now there was one giant problem with that: nobody in the Machine aged, touched, or had meaningful relationships of any kind, only cold sex with strangers. That might work for the some, but I couldn’t imagine finding any satisfaction without an emotional connection.

Was that my fate? Destined to be alone, never have a boyfriend or a husband or kids? To work beside someone I wanted desperately to be with but had to keep my distance from? Something cruel and hard twisted in my chest. Too late, anyway. I couldn’t change anything, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

Ignoring the sick weight in my stomach, I tore my gaze away from the painting and started down the street. Where had the other sentinels gone? I wished I had some sort of spidey sense to tell me they were around so I wouldn’t feel so vulnerable, even with my grouchy guardian angel watching over me.

Everything was moving too fast. I had to keep my mind busy so I wouldn’t flip my biscuit about acting as the wraith-infected letch’s eye-candy for the night. Like I knew how to flirt. Would he really be attracted to me? I cleaned up all right, but Asher hit the nail on the head when he said Kat would be better at this. What was I supposed to do with the guy once I got him outside? Why didn’t I ask more questions? Because I was freaked out, that’s why. God, I wished life had a rewind or a pause button sometimes. Other than the one Izan seemed to have in his possession.

I could always use the Shift if I needed an escape. Disappearing within sight of someone might put a chink in that plan, though. I’d have to figure it out. It was a matter of pride. I’d hunt the hell out of Xavier Whatshisname and send his wraith-ass back to frozen hell. If I didn’t die first. Yeah, that would pose a problem.

Chapter 28

After almost forty minutes of waiting in a writhing snake of a lineup, I finally made it to the frosted glass doors of the Swan Club. Music beat against me as the large bouncer dressed in black opened the door and waved me in along with a giggling horde of wobbling drunk twenty-somethings.

At the ticket window, I went spelunking for my ID card and finally located it at the bottom of my clutch purse. Addison White, twenty-one years old. Although I couldn’t remember my real last name, my gut told me White wasn’t it. I knew Green wasn’t Asher’s real last name, either. Did everyone have color pseudonyms?

The chick behind the window took a long time, staring back and forth at me and my ID, but she finally asked for her cover charge and handed the card back to me.

I forked over twenty bucks from my purse and rushed down the hallway to wait for Asher to emerge from the Shift. Because I needed to know he was there watching my back and not to read his expression for clues about what he’d been thinking while petting me. Really.

I walked into a large, dark room alive with colored spotlights and neon. Latin music pouring from the speakers in the ceiling kicked me in the chest with every pulse. A bar ran the entire perimeter of the room. Above, balconies surrounded the place, probably leading to secret rooms where stuff I didn’t want to think about went on. The sunken dance floor in the center had stairs on all four sides leading from the bar area down to it. A live band was setting up to play on a stage in one corner of the lower level.

Clueless as to where to go or how to act in such a place, I wandered the perimeter of the room, dodging happy drunks. Remy and Kat were on the dance floor, and damn, for a big guy, he could move. So could she, not that I’d tell her as much. No big surprise there. If she could make walking look like a striptease, dancing would inevitably be worse.

I smiled at Remy busting a move, continuing my sweep to find Asher coming out of the men’s room at the far end of the bar, where I assumed he’d materialized in the true reality in private. Although he seemed to be scanning the room, I got the feeling his attention was all on me. No frown, no scowl or glare or anything.

A sigh of relief slipped past my lips, and I realized that I expected him to be pissed off about our interlude earlier. Which was stupid, because it had all been him. All I’d done was stand there. And possibly swoon a bit—equally stupid.

When he went to the bar and spoke with the tall Latina bartender, I grabbed a seat at a small table near one of the staircases that led down to the dance floor. What the flipping hell was I supposed to do now? That Xavier guy wasn’t going to notice a rabbit hiding in the grass unless I moved a bit. Did Asher expect me to get up and humiliate myself with my lack of rhythm and two left feet?

My focus gravitated back to where he perched on the edge of a bar stool, pinching a glass full of amber alcohol between his thumb and middle finger, sloshing it around and around in the bottom of the glass. He stared into it as if mesmerized, but the way he held his body told me he was on high alert, watching every movement.

Marcus sauntered up and plopped down on the stool beside him, leaning down to talk into his ear. Within seconds, Asher’s crumpled brow and rapid-fire lip action suggested they weren’t having a pleasant conversation.

A guy in a bargain-bin sport jacket swung around in front of my chair, scaring the bajeepers out of me. “Dance with me, beautiful.”

Did he just do the double-eyebrow-raise thing? Good lord, and I thought I was bad at flirting. Going with him might bring more attention to me, but the thought of being pressed up against his body that stunk of BO and sour wine turned my stomach. I shook my head, waving my hand. “No, thanks anyway,” I shouted over the thumping base. “I’d just like to watch for a while.”

“Ah, come on,” the guy insisted, running fingers through his greasy blond hair that needed a cut by someone other than his mother. But then his suave smile faded, and he abruptly rushed away.

I swiveled slowly in my chair, afraid to see what had scared him off in case it was Xavier. Nope. It was Asher, staring after the guy with murder in his eyes, his entire body vibrating with anger.

What the hell? The dude hadn’t even touched me, so why was he so mad?

Jumping up, I moved in front of my sensei to break his visual torture of the poor guy, who kept glancing back. When Asher’s expression lost some of its violence, I went toward the bar since we weren’t supposed to know each other, but he shot his hand out and grabbed my arm. His grip wasn’t hard enough to bruise, but firm and demanding.
You’re mine
, that hold said.

I sipped in a breath, startled by the hunger that radiated from him. A glance left and right didn’t reveal anyone beside me he might have been staring at that way. Was he really looking at
me
like that? I just stood there for seconds, trying to reengage my brain and steer it away from the image forming in there, of what Asher could do with that strength while we were both tangled in a silk sheet.

“Dance with me,” he shouted, and then softer, “try to fight me off, and make sure you control your storm, or our cover will be blown and Xavier will take off.”

Oh, I got it. We’d make a scene, draw some attention, hopefully from the club owner. Smart. I yanked against Asher’s hold, putting everything I had into keeping the lid on my inner box, and yelled to be heard over the music. “Let go of me. I don’t know how to dance to this.”

“Let me teach you, then.” Asher flashed a smile that nearly brought me to my knees. After twirling me away from the table, he used his free arm to clamp me against his body. Ho … ly hell, was he ripped in all the right places. And strong as freakin’ Godzilla. I’d been in his arms before, but I’d been so lost to sensation, I hadn’t appreciated him fully.

He stared down at me, breaths slipping in and out of his lips quickly and deeply, and I was helpless and languid in his arms. For a moment, only he and I existed in my world. I could have lived that way in bliss forever with his protective arms around me.

Movement over his shoulder broke the fantasy I’d been enjoying. It was Marcus making a little motion with his head to my right. Xavier was coming, was that it?

“Take your hands off the lady,” a guy with a voice deeper than Remy’s said from beside me, thickly accented. Spanish was his native tongue, no doubt.

Showtime. If my pulse didn’t leap right out of my body and take off.

“Pretty in Red and I were just about to dance, weren’t we?” Asher asked, his personality turning on a dime into innocent charm, though his words slurred a little. Relaxing his grip on me, he kept my hand without hesitation as I stepped away. He’d begun to sweat, his palm slippery with it. Was he nervous?

“Is that true?” Xavier asked. He had a good foot on me. Slender with a dark complexion, black hair tied in a braid down his back. His eyes were such a deep brown they appeared as though he had giant pupils with no color. My skin crawled, and although I didn’t breathe out snow, my lungs seemed to think I’d been running in the cold, aching and burning down deep. No need to see a thing to know he had a wraith in there with him.

“No, it isn’t.” I tugged my hand free of Asher’s to let him off the hook since he had to be freaking out with the skin contact. “I told him I didn’t know how to dance to this music.” I glanced up at the club owner through my lashes and gave him a weak smile.

He must have bought the act, because he smiled back. He was an attractive guy if I could overlook the evil staring out of him. Stepping in close, he grabbed Asher’s wrist and said something too low for me to hear into the sentinel’s ear, then, out loud, “Leave, or I’ll have you escorted out.”

When Xavier stepped between us, over his shoulder I caught Asher’s stumble backward. Grabbing a chair to steady himself, he shook his head, scrubbing a wrist over his eyes. Had Xavier hit him?

Where had the others gone? Returning my attention to Xavier, I said, “Thank you,” running my hands along the silk of the skirt. My head cleared a little with the tactile sensation, but it seemed a pale replacement for having Asher under my hands. I had a sinking feeling that everything I ever touched in the future would also fall short of him.

“Would you like to learn how to dance?” Xavier leaned against the railing, his white shirt glowing under the lights, all lean grace and sex done up Latin-style.

Hell no, I didn’t want to learn how to dance. I didn’t want his wraith-infected ass to touch me, let alone rub against me like everyone down on the dance floor was doing. “Are you offering to teach me?” I gave a shy smile. Gag me.

He licked his lips as he checked me over. “There’s no need to be nervous of me,
cariño
.” The last came on a different tone, like Marcus’s 1-900 voice, only much deeper and almost … sinister. Coming away from the railing, he took my hands in his.

I tried really hard not to barf as the heebie-jeebies having a party in my body kicked it up a notch. “Wh-why do you think I’m nervous?” Other than the fact that I was totally stuttering. “And what does
cariño
mean?” I didn’t pronounce it nearly as prettily as he had. Jeez, I hoped it wasn’t some lame come-on. I’d rather he’d insulted me than said something cheesy. Were they his words? Or the wraith’s? Creepy either way.

He leaned in, drawing my hands down so I couldn’t move away. “I can feel you shaking. Come, dance with me, and I’ll tell you all of my secrets.”

I just bet he would. “Okay.”

Fingers linked together with mine, he led me toward the stairs. I went, stiff-legged, searching the room for Asher. His empty glass sat on the bar, abandoned, just like me, apparently. I cursed under my breath.

I started a mantra of
I can do this
in my head so I wouldn’t hyperventilate. A wraith was going to teach me how to do the samba, or salsa, or whatever the hell they were doing on the dance floor. How did I go from accounting student at Waterloo to that? My weird-shit-o-meter had never known such altitude.

By some grand miracle, I managed to get down the steps on the dainty heels without tumbling down and taking Xavier with me. Instead of moving us to the edge of the crowd as I expected, he dragged me right into the heat of it. And I meant heat. Oven-worthy, stinking of perfume and sweat.

“Wait here.” He dropped my hand and pushed through the writhing mass to the stage. He said something to the guy with the mike, and a moment later, the song changed to something that a guy would have playing in the background at a candle-lit dinner, sensual and one of those beats that took hold of my feet and made them move. Too bad the rest of me wanted to hide under my own skirt.

His body was already writhing to the music when he returned, holding out his hand. “Come, let me teach you how to tease a man with your body.”

Oh, hell, did he have to say it like that? Did he have a Bugman in him or something else? I shivered again in the human sauna. Sighing, I took his hand and ended up pressed against the front of his body.

“Feel the rhythm of my body, how my muscles move. Don’t resist, just let me control you to begin with.” He slipped his arm around my back, my right hand in his left. With my free hand wrapped around the back of his muscled shoulder, I moved with him. Like I had a choice, being plastered to his front. There wasn’t enough space between us to slip in a piece of dental floss.

He had rhythm, I’d give him that. My body began to anticipate what he would do. Until he spun me away from him and made my skirt twirl up around my waist. Then my supper tried to come back out again.

I caught sight of Remy through the crowd. He pointed at his lips and exaggerated a smile. Right. I needed to encourage the creepy club owner. After all, I needed him to go outside with me, so I had to make him think he might get lucky, which disturbed me on a primal level.

I let out a little squeal as Xavier spun me back into him, relaxing until he held most of my weight in his arms. He smiled, and I knew I had him. Another of those moments like in the shower with Asher, when I understood the power of my new body. Xavier’s expression held heat. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to a guy looking at me that way.

“I’m so hot,” I shouted over the music and chatter after three songs-worth of dance-acting, fanning myself. It wasn’t a lie. Sweat had begun to slip down between the girls. “Do you want to go outside for a minute?”

“Yes, you are extremely hot, and I like the way you think. Let us find some privacy, shall we?”

I almost asked “For what?” but saved myself from looking like an idiot in time to keep my mouth shut. Now I not only needed a shower, badly, but to pour bleach into my mind to remove the image he’d put there.

He let me go, all except for my hand. I let him lead me through the sweaty mob and the sweeping lights, dizzy both from nerves and from the floor that appeared to be shifting with the movement of light and people.

We didn’t go toward the front of the club as I expected, but toward the back. I should have known there would be back doors in case of a fire, but I imagined there would be fewer people around back there.
Danger, danger, danger
, my internal bell clanged. At least he hadn’t taken me toward any stairs that might lead to the rooms on the second floor.

My pulse did its best to choke me as we neared a set of doors.
Calm down
. We needed him somewhere nobody could see. Although back there, he could beat the hell out of me and infect me with his wraith, too. Could that happen? Could they people-hop?

Was it polite to tell your own conscience to shut the hell up? I didn’t think so.