Chapter Twenty-Five
After a long ferry ride, one stop for supper, gridlock on the M25, one toll bridge, and a switch of drivers since Caine knew the way better than Asher, we kept heading toward the last page I could feel on this side of the world. The wraiths had been conspicuously quiet, which meant they were probably waiting to pounce on us the instant we left the security of the grid Caine and I had erected in the car.
Leather pants and boots might have worked for Kat in a fight, but I needed something else. I picked up the backpack Asher had retrieved from the train station locker and opened the zipper. Soft jeans, some tank tops, a plaid shirt or two, all covered in a scent that was familiar and welcoming, and a new pair of size-eight hiking boots at the bottom.
“Eyes forward, you two,” I said. “I’m not sitting in this leather a second longer.”
While I shimmied my pants off, Asher shifted in his seat. After a second, he put a hand over his eyes. He’d seen me in my skivvies before, so what was the big deal? I pulled the tie out of my hair and shook it out around my shoulders. Then I whipped off my violet tank and pulled on a black one carrying that divine scent. Had it been from the home I grew up in? It reminded me of the man in my dreams who might have been my dad, so it could have been.
Wearing only that and my boy shorts, I squeezed my upper half between the bucket seats and nudged Asher’s arm. “Why don’t you turn us on some tunes? The silence in here is killer.”
He whipped his head around and ended up nose to nose with me. His breath slid out in short bursts, filling my nose with hints of whiskey and his spicy scent that wasn’t quite right, missing something I couldn’t put my finger on.
I raised my hand and patted him on the cheek, letting my fingers linger, sliding along the pleasant roughness of his shadow beard before letting them drop to his knee. “Earth to Asher. Did you hear me?”
He flinched, ramming his knee against the door. “Christ.”
“Holy—jumpy much?” I probably shouldn’t have been touching him. It came so naturally, I hadn’t even thought about whether or not it was okay.
“Allow me.” Caine flashed me a grin over his shoulder as Asher grumbled, spinning the dial on the radio until a catchy tune filled the silence.
I finished dressing with a pair of jeans and a plaid shirt, socks, and the hiking boots. Sweet comfort. Now if I could untwist the knot in my brain and in my stomach, I’d be ready to run the potential gauntlet to get the page. Would Izan clear the Shift once I had it? Or did I need to do something else?
We turned onto a narrow road. I rubbed my forehead. “Oh yeah, we’re getting close,” I said. “One lobotomy, coming up. Can you step on it?”
“No,” Asher said. “Stop here.”
Caine eyeballed him, stopping in what appeared to be an abandoned driveway that led to a rickety old church. “What the bloody hell for? My cottage is just down the road.”
“I want to have a look around before we go. It’s been hours with no Baku, and I have a bad feeling.”
Maybe he was having a case of the heebs at being stuck inside Caine’s house with me. That made two of us.
“There’s nothing here, mate, as I said there wouldn’t be.”
“Yeah, I still don’t trust you. No harm in making sure we stay alive.”
“I’ll go ahead and put the tea on, then.” Caine got out and retrieved the bags of groceries we’d picked up after supper out of the back and slammed the lid down. “Best not to linger out in the open for too long.” His footsteps faded into the night.
I left the car and moaned while I stretched, inhaling the dewy breeze while I rubbed my hands up and down the plaid shirt to keep my nerves from unraveling. Strange how a bit of cotton could center me, make me feel powerful and sure of myself, when all the aggressive leather in the world would only give me heat rash on my thighs.
Maybe it had to do with Dad. Echoes of him inside me, brought to life by the clothes I wore when we were together. He was a good man, and I wouldn’t let him down.
Asher did this for me, my inner voice piped up. The stories he’d told me about the croissants and visits with my grandfather, the Snickers bars. Knowing how Dad had carried me through the snow during our trip to New York, I had a feeling he’d have liked Asher for looking out for me, too. I hoped she would bring out the kindness in Asher even more once I sent Baku into his prison made of light and reunited them. I surrounded my aching heart with the knowledge that he’d have a happy life when he’d known only pain.
My chakras slowly opened again, and I could feel my connection with myself and the rest of the world returning. That final thread attached to my forehead kicked in, and nothing else mattered but getting to it. “I have to go, now.” I made my way across a country road, and Asher rushed to stay near me.
“Is it stronger than the others? Is it different this time?” he asked.
I rubbed my forehead. “Yes. No. I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Stay beside me. Let’s make sure Baku isn’t in there luring you in. You’re not ready for that fight yet.”
No, but I had to be soon. My gut knew it. When I kept rushing forward, he grabbed my hand and squeezed. It cut through the urgency and centered me further. “Thank you,” I said, meeting his eyes, which held an ocean of worry in their bright depths. I considered unleashing my storm to see if there was another reaction between us like I thought I’d felt while straddling him at the Louvre, but it probably wasn’t the time. Maybe it never would be.
Trees loomed large in the darkness, frosted silver by the light of the moon climbing the sky. We rushed by the corner of the church with ivy and moss clinging to the old siding. Crumbling gravestones dotted the hill to the right, and old rock fences ran in haphazard lines around the property. Choosing my steps carefully, I headed toward the small cottage at the bottom of the hill.
“It’s too quiet.” Asher crouched in the shadow of one of the fences, pulling me down with him. His stare fixed on the aging structure below where amber light flooded out of the small windows. “There should be some noises, insects, animals. Something’s not right.”
I peered around his shoulder. “Caine just walked down here, so he probably spooked them. I don’t sense anything. It isn’t even cold here, only in the Shift.” On the tail of that came a lick of frost up my neck, and my senses went haywire.
Caine appeared out of the house, his shirt torn off one shoulder, highlighted by the light flooding out his windows. “Go!” he shouted.
The adrenaline had barely hit my bloodstream when a blur passed my eyes. Asher’s hand ripped out of mine, and he and another man tumbled down the hill toward the house.
“Asher!” I made it one step toward them and went from vertical to horizontal in an instant, staring up at the stars. My left temple hurt from whatever freight train had hit me there.
Baku leaned over me. He wore a beefy man, his dragon mantis form more like a baby Godzilla hovering around him. Both his dude costume and his bug opened their mouths to speak, but I rocked my hips up and hoofed him in the chest before he popped a syllable.
Holding in frantic girlie sounds that shouldn’t come out of people in charge of ending the apocalypse, I hopped the fence and found Asher and Caine back-to-back in a battle royal. At least six wraith-infected piled on them, punctuating the night with the kind of screams you’d hear at an asylum. On top of that, my guys switched between battle cries, grunts of exertion, and curses. More people came into focus, dotted all across the hillside, as my vision adjusted from having my bell rung.
Overflowing with adrenaline’s fire, I ran full tilt down the hill with Baku’s mad-scientist laughter rushing after me. When Asher flattened a muscular lady, I dove over her and tackled a middle-aged man with a handlebar mustache who was about to crack Caine over the head with an ax handle. I hit hard on my left side and rolled back to my feet while Mustache lay still.
“We have to get into the cottage!” Caine thrust his foot backward into a kid that couldn’t have
been more than twelve who swung a wicked-looking knife at him.
Asher shoved me toward the house of stone and spun around to face them as we backed up. I watched behind us as Caine leveled the last tall woman in a business suit and rushed over to help me clear two more young men from between us and the back door.
“Why no guns?” I asked with a voice strung as tight as a high wire.
“Because Baku wants us all alive,” Caine said. “And he probably doesn’t trust his people not to shoot us in the dark.”
“How close are we?” Asher asked between heavy breaths.
“Almost there,” I said. The others from the hillside sauntered toward us as if in no great hurry. “Why do I have a really sick feeling right now?” I asked. “Are we about to be motivated again?”
“Such a clever girl,” Baku said without a smile as he rounded the house as casually as the rest of his mob.
Asher and I rushed inside, and Caine slammed the door shut behind him, fiddling to get it locked. “Put up the damn grid,” Caine said. “Fighting the masses outside is one thing, but if they get in here, we’re buggered.”
I couldn’t catch my breath as I paced around on an old wooden floor behind Asher, who shoved his shoulder into the door to keep it shut. Not that anyone banged on it. Wait… “Why isn’t anyone trying to get in?” I asked.
“I knew this cabin was a bad idea,” Asher muttered.
“Oh Adaline dear,” Baku sang, his voice muted through the walls. “I’m growing impatient with you. I’m almost strong enough to take you, so here is how this night will go. My people will keep you in this quaint cottage. Fight through them, and hundreds more are waiting to take their place, and any damage to those new minds will be on your conscience. Others still wait for you in the Shift, and millions more beyond the veil. This siege will end when you choose your Shepherd and become what Izan promised me so long ago. Do not disappoint me as he has. You do not want to know what will happen if my patience should run out.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Asher and Caine, their bodies still against the door, stared at me as if I’d just given birth to a zombie, part horrified, part shocked.
I stared back while listening to Baku’s words echoing around my inner halls. Choose your Shepherd. How the hell was I supposed to do that?
“Well, I don’t know about you lot, but I didn’t see that one coming,” Caine said. “All right if I put up the grid while we deal with the aftershocks of that one? Addison, you with us?”
“I’ll do it,” Asher said. “Just keep that damn door shut.”
My sight had gone so far inward, I jumped a mile when he touched my arm.
“How do we get out of this?” I asked, hugging myself. “We’re stuck here while he sucks back the rest of the souls he needs to win. Even if we blow out the wraiths, he’ll bring more through the veil, and more people will get involved and have their brains scrambled.”
“Let’s put up the grid, and we’ll figure it out. Come on, Plaid, don’t check out on me now.” He slid his finger under my chin and lifted.
The sight of his eyes, deep and clear, snapped me out of my inner meltdown. “Yeah. You do it. I don’t think I can right now.”
His energy brushed by me, raising the hairs on my arms. It felt the same as what had touched me at the Louvre, like it had the potential to turn me nuclear, so what did that mean? I concentrated on breathing instead of moaning as I let out my storm to meet him. My body became a quiet symphony of pleasures from the sensations going off in my soul.
The mesh-like grid spread around the room, and Caine came away from the door, shoving aside the curtain on the window before turning to us. I pulled away from Asher so I didn’t have to watch him wipe me off on his pants. Something felt different. He seemed open to me the way he’d never been before, and that whiz-bang I’d been searching for was there, though muted. Could he be my conduit? Had he been keeping me out on purpose, or…what? I didn’t know what to think.
The far end of the room held a kitchen open to the small living area, so I assumed the only other door led to the bathroom and bedrooms. I moved closer to it, desperate to escape the conversation I could see Caine assembling in his head.
“You need to make a decision, Addison,” he said.
“No,” Asher said, “she doesn’t.”
Caine drew up close to the other sentinel, his arms loose at his sides. “I’m sorry, what?” He gestured to the window. “Were you having a little daydream for the past ten minutes? Maybe you missed the part where we’re stuck here until Addison chooses her Shepherd, because your head’s shoved so far up your ass.”
“If she doesn’t choose, Baku can’t use her to merge the realities, and she stays alive.”
The way Caine looked at him caused a full-body shudder in me. “I’ve watched my Architect die six times, and I will not watch it again. Their deaths caused a sonic boom that leveled the landscape ten miles in every direction and damn near crushed our will to carry on. None of them had bonded with their Shepherds, and I know in my heart that doing so is Addison’s, and our, best chance to come through this alive. She has to face this fight; the only question is who will be standing next to her when that happens.”
They all died. Like I could die. How had Mom survived? Or maybe Izan had saved her only because he needed someone to protect the pages and give birth to me? The last thread holding me together snapped as Asher’s and Caine’s voices crashed together. I couldn’t hear what they were saying as my flight instinct took hold of me. Whipping open the door beside me, I launched myself through it, opening a bedroom door along the narrow hallway before I found the bathroom.
With shaking fingers, I locked myself inside the tiny blue room, leaned back against the door, and slid down to the carpet. The shouting had stopped, and someone knocked on the door.
“Addison?” It was Asher. “I know you’re scared right now, and us yelling isn’t helping. We’re sorry. Please come out so we can talk about this.”
This. He meant choosing my Shepherd. No way. Nuh-uh. I shook my head, realized he couldn’t see it, and said, “No.” When the word wobbled out, I steadied my voice before adding, “I need a minute.” Or a million years. “I’m fine. Seriously. Badass guardian of the world just has to pee before making a major life decision. No big.” I got up and banged the toilet seat up, waiting until his footsteps receded before moving in front of the oval mirror hung above a wicker table beside a pedestal sink.
My reflection showed signs of the shock that had me by the throat. Violet star-shaped eyes dull and glassy. My hair sat in an espresso explosion around my head, full of sticks and bits of leaves. A bruise painted a small circle of purple on my left temple where Baku had thumped me. My lips were parted and pale. Maybe I hadn’t been breathing in more than shallow sips.
“Izan,” I whispered. “I’m still wicked pissed at you, but I need a little help here. How am I supposed to choose a Shepherd out of those two? One of them is a complete stranger, and the other one is madly in love with someone else, and I’m not even sure what our compatibility status is. And I’m guessing once I do this bond thing, it’s for keeps, right? There isn’t any divorce for Architects? What if I don’t choose? Baku’s going to have a hissy fit, and more people will die, right? Izan?” I waited for an agonizing few minutes and then roared into my hands. “You know what, forget it. I’ll figure it out myself like every other effing thing around here.”
At the bathroom door, I stood there with my eyes closed, searching for my emotional off switch so I could think. Couldn’t have found it with a map and a flashlight. Even the page’s call had disappeared into the riot going on in my body, though it was still close by.
What was I supposed to say to them? Maybe I needed to go out there and do eenie-meenie-miney-mo, wanna be bonded to me for eternity? Or maybe my instincts would pin a tail on one of the jackasses? Hell if I knew. If I did manage to find the mystery sanctuary, and I did have to sacrifice myself to open it, what would happen
to my Shepherd? If the bond was eternal, and I died, would he be alone for the rest of forever? Or could he double-dip?
I waved that thought away and exited the bathroom. No more thinking. I had to make a decision, and I couldn’t do that without involving them. I couldn’t have the one I wanted, but could I live with the one who wanted me?
Low voices drew me back to the living area. I cracked the door open but didn’t go through it yet. Caine and Asher both sat at a wooden table, their hands wrapped around cups of steaming tea by the smell of it. They both stilled, as if afraid any sudden move would send me for the hills. It might have. The scene seemed too mundane given what was going on outside, and my legs tensed with my flight instinct.
Feeling stupid and cowardly for standing there when obviously they’d heard me coming, I pushed the heavy wooden panel open farther and stepped through. My foot knocked something that went rolling under an old-fashioned wooden-legged sofa a few feet away.
“What’s that?” Caine asked, coming to his feet as Asher did the same.
“I don’t know. Probably just me being a klutz.” I bent down, wondering why my pulse started a set of jumping jacks in my neck. I froze, half expecting Baku to lurch out and turn me into a Happy Meal, but the grid still painted a crisscross of blue energy around every surface.
A small green tin sat there in the darkness under the sofa. I reached under, nudged it with my knuckle, and when it didn’t chomp on me, I wrapped my fingers around it. My emotions went ballistic, their volume cranked up full blast.
“Addison?” Asher shifted into my peripheral vision. “Why are you hyperventilating again?”
I jumped up and went toward the kitchen. “Nothing, just stay over there.” It took a while for me to find the nerve to open my fist, but I finally uncurled my fingers. In my palm sat a tub of lip balm that stirred my mind with a whisper of echoes that were trying to shout. I unscrewed the cap, dipped in the tip of my finger, and swiped it over my lips. Coconut filled my nose and rushed through my mouth, my body coming alive with sensation. It was the same taste that had haunted me since the day everything went wrong.
Midnight Dawn Page 23
