Chapter Six

Remy and Asher erupted out of the Shift, panting as if they’d just sprinted from South America. Asher gaped at Baku, who rocked from toe to heel with his hands in his pockets, grinning like a drunk at a comedy show.

“Christ, what is that hovering around him?” Asher asked.

He could see the dragon-mantis-phantom-thing still hovering around the lawyer? Up until now, only I had been able to see the wraith’s true forms. Then again, I’d never seen a wraith while it inhabited a body, as I could now, so something had obviously changed when it stuck its ghostly fingers into my neck. Which wouldn’t explain why Asher could see it, too.

“What talking about?” Remy checked the guy out. “Just the lawyer looking all smug.”

“Asher can see the guy’s wraith,” I said, “and I’m not sure why yet. Ever heard of a wraith named Baku?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.” Asher finally looked at me, his gaze lingering on my torn dress and the blood seeping out of my bandaged shoulder and through the bodice. Teeth clenched, he rushed across the pavement and tackled Baku, riding him to the ground and then proceeding to pound the ever-loving tar out of him.

“How dare you?” Asher screamed in his face, his body humming with raw violence. He had an air of sorrow about him, as if something about the scene on the street had struck a deeply buried nerve. “Nobody will ever take her from me again, do you hear me? You’re dead. Dead!”

Take me from him? Was he having some sort of flashback from when I’d almost died? Or maybe he was living in the memory of his childhood, terrified his father would kill his mother? I wasn’t sure what to do.

I shuffled closer. Now that Asher had stopped punching Baku, a grin spread across the lawyer’s bloodied face. “I expected more from you,” Baku said. “You’re pathetic.”

Asher brought his fist down with frightening force again.

“Enough, brah!” Remy shouted. “Think we need to know the deal with this one, so we need him alive.” He jumped on the guy’s legs, and either he or Asher—or maybe it was Izan, I wasn’t sure—took us deep into the Shift.

Empty worlds passed by like a fast-forwarded movie. Towers of stone stretched from a green land to a purple sky. In another, small glass houses reflected the light from three pale moons. We finally landed in a grassy field full of strange, glowing insects. Although people and animals didn’t live in the Shift, we had come across some strange bugs now and then, some of them as big as my shoe. Gross.

When Asher started choking Baku and reached to the back of his dress pants for his gun, I knelt beside him. “Asher, stop. Asher! Look at me, please.” I pressed my hand to his cheek and forced his face in line with mine. “This man is innocent, so let’s kill his wraith and not him, okay?”

Huffing like a bull, Asher offered a snarling face that might have sent me running if I didn’t have a desperate need to take the fear out of his eyes. As if recognition slowly drove back the beast, he blinked at me and didn’t resist when I took the gun from him and passed it over to Remy.

“I can’t,” he whispered, staring inward, leaning harder into my hand. Maybe he couldn’t even see me through the rage that still seemed to be simmering under his skin. At least he’d loosened his grip on the lawyer, who’d stopped struggling as if exhausted. “I won’t watch you die again,” Asher continued. “Never again.”

Remy’s head whipped back around, the tattooed half of his face bunched up with a hammer-to-the-forehead stare that must have matched mine. Why had my almost-death three weeks earlier hit Asher so hard just now?

Trying not to choke up, I said, “I didn’t die, Asher. I’m right here. You took me to the infirmary, remember? You saved me.” I wasn’t dead; Baku was just screwing with my mind. My instincts insisted that this was real, and I was alive.

Asher blinked and finally seemed to notice me in front of him, reaching out tentatively as if he didn’t trust his own eyes. Such raw emotion in his face, in the set of his parted lips, it broke something inside of me. I ached for him to make contact, but the lousy shit on the ground laughed, and Asher snatched his hand back.

“Such a tender moment on the eve of war,” Baku said from where he lay placidly in front of us. “Such a sight is as rare as a rose in the dead of winter. You’re still a sentimental fool within a bastard, I see.”

What? “Do you know this guy?” I asked Asher.

“No. He’s just screwing with us like they all do.” He put a two-handed choke on Baku again, growling out primal sounds of pure hatred. “Who are you, and what do you want?”

I jerked on his arm, drowning in what-the-hells. “Stop it. Crap, look what you did to his face.” I inspected the lawyer for other injuries, but only his nose and lip bled. “He needs to answer a few questions, and then we’re going to do this how it’s supposed to be done.”

Asher stared at me for seconds as the violence receded from his eyes. Were they brighter than normal? No, it was probably just because it was mostly dark in the barren reality we’d landed in.

He gave a curt nod and let Baku take a breath, rubbing his hands together. “Something locked us in the Shift a few minutes ago,” he rasped out, “so let’s get this done and get the hell back to the facility while we still can.” How had he flipped his switch from violence to normal so fast?

“Yeah,” Remy added, flickering a wary glance at Asher and back to the lawyer. “This guy give me the creeps way down deep. I couldn’t feel him before, but now…this one scare me, brah.”

“I couldn’t use the Shift, either,” I said. “What happened when you tried to come through?”

Glancing up, he said, “We went to the washroom and slipped into the first layer, so we could follow you outside unseen. When we tried getting back to the true reality, we might as well have been pushing on a brick wall. We just had to stand there and watch him attack you.” His lip curled up, and he glared down at the guy. “We nearly gave ourselves hernias trying to break free, and then it just let go as if someone purposely opened it at that moment, and we pretty much fell down here. I suppose we have you to thank for that, asshole.”

Baku started up with his wicked laughter again, both his human and dragon-like mouths open wide with it. Every hair on my nape saluted.

I grabbed the lawyer’s bruised face and lined it up with mine, reconsidering my guilt over his bloody face. “Are you doing something to Izan? Is that why the Shift is locked?” I asked. “Who are you really?” I considered asking him about the walking dead comment, but I wasn’t about to embarrass myself if he was only messing with us. Since I had a pulse, and there wasn’t a wraith in me, I hadn’t the foggiest clue what he’d been insinuating.

Baku lurched up and licked my face. Ugh! “It was a pleasure being inside you again, Adaline. I shall be there again soon, and if you do not give me what I want, then I will take it from you.”

Again? Asher clenched his teeth, no doubt pondering another round of fisticuffs with the lawyer. Remy gave me a funny look, probably wondering the same thing I was about just who the flying hell was Adaline, since my full name was Addison. I had enough nicknames; I so did not need another one.

Scrubbing his slobber off with the remains of my skirt, I faced Asher, who still seemed to be staring the guy to death, and tried to keep my utter horror out of my eyes. Maybe the first time we’d tried to share power had been a fluke failure. “Will you try to do this with me one more time?” I asked.

“Allow me.” Baku thrust his hands up with incredible speed before I registered any movement. One of his fists closed around my throat, and the other around Asher’s, who was forced to let go of the lawyer.

I struggled in his grip, damn glad I could still draw in air, terribly aware of the strength in that hand that could probably break my neck like a twig. Asher thrashed, roaring wordlessly. Remy let go of Baku’s legs and tried to crawl up his body, probably to pin him down, but the lawyer kicked hard, and the gentle giant went ass over teakettle backward.

The ambient temperature around my physical body dropped at least twenty degrees. Was something else about to come through the veil? Shit. I unleashed my storm and gripped the lawyer’s wrist, trying in vain to pull his hand from my throat. I forced my power into him, hoping it would be enough to make him let go before the veil opened and spilled out a few dozen wraiths.

My essence fell into him faster than I expected, like rushing at a door only to have it swing free and send me falling on my face. Something sucked out my Machine mojo like an industrial-strength Hoover. It was Baku, swallowing it down like a fine wine, the knot of cold he caused in my stomach growing instead of shrinking.

“Oh, that can’t be good,” I ground out, my hands shaking.

Asher jerked as if he’d been electrocuted, so I guessed Baku was siphoning his power, too.

“What doing?” Remy shouted.

“Stay back!” I screamed as he stepped closer.

Only a few seconds passed before an invisible force slammed into me. I landed hard on my back, blinking up at stars, both the sky kind and those caused when I’d had my bell rung. Baku hadn’t just released me but had thrown some of my own power back at me. At the same time, he must have pulled us all down to the true reality, because we were once more on the Chicago street, still empty of cars and people. Normal people couldn’t sense the dead, so had the wraith done something to send them away?

Asher coughed beside me, and Remy groaned somewhere nearby. I rolled over and inspected Mr. Grumpy, running my fingertip over his scraped hand. “Are you all right?” I asked.

Baku—still inside the lawyer—stood over me, and I gripped Asher’s wrist, hauling myself closer to him. Baku closed his eyes and inhaled the night air. “I’ve forgotten what a rush that is. Behold your gift, Adaline.” He threw his head back and opened his mouth. The blue Machine energy he’d swallowed shot out like a laser, obliterating the veil right above us to leave a black scar against the deep blue night. Hundreds of wraiths poured into the sky as if they’d been waiting at that precise spot knowing what would happen. There were several different classes of them, from half man, half insect to more humanlike, all with hollows where eyes should have been but weren’t.

Holy mother of crap.