Darkside Sun (2 page)

Chapter 2

The
scritch-scratch
of pencils moving on paper filled the lecture hall. The heat of everyone’s anger hung in the air like smoke, thick and choking. Could a person pass out from embarrassment? Not even that would get me out of the paper I had to write on the subject we hadn’t yet talked about. Good thing I’d already read everything I could find about the Mayans. By the moans and grumbling around the room, I didn’t think the rest of the class had been so industrious.

My hand cramped when I started my third page, having finished with the
Long Count
, the first of the three Mayan calendars, and moved on to the
Tzolk’in
, the calendar marking religious and ceremonial events and, to me, the most fascinating. I shook my fingers out and rubbed my palm against my jeans, reading over the last paragraph.

While I grinned like a fool over my progress, a current of arctic breath ruffled the downy hairs on my nape. Subtle, but enough that I looked up.

Not again. Piss off, would you!
I’d been spilling the words out just fine, but if that thing had followed me to the lecture hall, it would be nearly impossible for me to concentrate. I still hadn’t even mentioned the third calendar. I needed to impress Green, and only a completed paper would do.

Darkness fuzzed along the corners of the sloped room where the ceiling met the wall. Maybe it was just a trick of the light. Or I really was losing my mind. Either way, I would not flunk out of the only class I never felt like sleeping in.

My hand and mind worked furiously to fill the rest of the page while I slipped back into glorious denial. The walls were not falling apart. Nothing was out there. Just us ants.

The temperature dive-bombed at least fifteen ticks on the centigrade scale. I imagined most of the brown of my eyes had disappeared, eclipsed by my pupils. They felt stretched, the light too harsh with my shutters open too far. Snow crystals from my breath peppered my hands, stinging with frost and coating my paper. Glancing left and right, I picked up my binder and shook the snow onto the floor—not that any of the other people in the room would see the crystals, anyway. They all slouched over their papers, blissfully unaware.

That little blip of blackness sped back and forth along the wall, unraveling more and more. At least a foot of the dark, icy nothing beyond the wall showed now. It was fast this time. My body shook with cold and the now-familiar terror walking my spine with spiked heels. Hard to deny something when it was so good at being scary.

While I considered how much of an aneurism Green would have if I high-tailed it out of the AL, something shimmered out of the endless, deep black in the front right corner of the room. It slid down the wall and then pushed away from it, sweeping out over the lowered heads of my classmates like a faint, jet-propelled cloud.

Something had come through. I’d been half joking about it, but it had happened.

I’d been denying what I could see since my first rift at six years old. Even then, I’d known telling would land me in the doctor’s office. A white coat would have only one diagnosis for me: crazy. Since the unraveling walls always restored themselves once I left the room, I kept my strangeness to myself. I’d rather have been an accountant than live in a padded room where I couldn’t escape the thing that would come for me.

And for the first time, it had finally come.

Sweet Jesus.

The clouded image hovered above a girl with fire-truck-red hair two rows back and a few seats to my right. As it sniffed at the girl’s hair, it solidified just enough that I could make it out, as if it had drawn upon her energy to become more real, more a part of our world. Not made of flesh, but something like congealed mist.

The front half appeared almost human with a face, too-large nose, and two hollows where eyes should have been but weren’t. The lower half appeared more insect than man. A bulbous body, like a wasp. Wings lay flat against its rounded back. Spindly legs dangled beneath. My weird-shit-o-meter hit a new notch on my ever-rising scale.

Breaths rattled up and down my throat as I calculated my odds of making it to a door before it could get me. I picked up my backpack, knocking my mechanical pencil onto the floor, the sound comparable to a scream in an empty room.

Mr. Bugman turned my way. I could have sworn it stared at me with its non-eyes, first startled, then interested.
Nothing to see here.
I dropped my pack and scribbled on my paper again, nonsensical, waving lines so it wouldn’t know I’d seen it. I somehow knew it would be bad if it figured out that little detail. I hoped it wouldn’t notice the pearl of sweat freeze-popping to my forehead.

My breath puffed out harder. I resisted the urge to bat away the crystals hanging in the air like a spray of glitter. What was it doing back there?
Just a little look.
I scanned the whole room with forced casualness. Bugman, a mostly translucent mirage I could see through, hovered over the girl’s left shoulder.

Its ghostly fingers slipped into her long curls. Though she remained mostly oblivious, she suffered a violent shiver before returning to her paper. Moving closer, the phantom shoved its face into her hair, its hand slipping forward to grip her throat.

I must have made a sound, because it jerked back and swung its empty eye-sockets toward me. When had I started staring at the thing again? And why couldn’t I look away?

Oh. My. God.

Head cocked at a strange angle, it floated in my direction. Dammit.

Breathing like a prank-caller, I righted myself in my seat, wiped the snow from my paper, and pressed my pencil down with a shaking hand.

Please, please, please go away.

Prickling energy leaned against my back as it arrived behind me, as if the air itself was trying to force its way through my flesh. Through my lashes, I watched it circle around my head several times, twisting this way and that as those empty sockets inspected me.

My muscles tightened into painful knots while I considered my options. If I left, would it go back through the wall before it sealed up again? Was it smart enough to wonder why I’d leave class before it was over and follow me out?
Crap, crap, crap.
I just had to go and think of that.

It circled around behind me and stayed there. Oh, God, did my hair just move? Or was it just air swirling around from the overhead vents? I shifted in my seat, my teeth threatening to chatter. An urge to scrub at my neck and run had my body vibrating, but I held still.

A cool breeze chilled my nape. Definitely not the air vents. The harder the wasp thing sniffed at me, the colder I got. When a long, icy finger curled over my shoulder, I shot to my feet and dove head first over the seats in front of me. My boots hit shoulders as I went, causing shouts of protest. I ricocheted off the next row of seats and then the floor with the grace of an egg launched from a cannon. The air rushed out of me.

“What the hell’s your problem?” some chick with a mohawk shouted down at me, brushing dirt from her pink T-shirt. Chuckles rose in waves around the room while I tried to convince my lungs to accordion in some air. I managed to wheeze in a breath so I wouldn’t buy the farm right there on Green’s floor.

I’d gone from evil day-wrecker to complete lunatic in two seconds flat. Well, that was just great.

The sound of a pair of shoes tapping a quick beat up the center aisle echoed in my ears. Green coming to hand me my ass on a platter, no doubt.

I pushed up to my knees and scanned the room for the bug thing. Nothing but human eyes glittering with laughter, some with lingering pissiness, stared back at me. The walls were reforming as quickly as they’d come apart, sewing up like fabric. It was warm. The frost that had coated my arms had melted to droplets of water, soaking my flannel—tangible proof that at least I hadn’t imagined that part.

Green stood at the end of my aisle, arms loose at his sides. “Time’s up,” he barked. “Everybody out.”

A dull roar of moans accompanied a round of “Thanks a lot” from the crowd. I didn’t want a creepy alien bug to feel me up, so sue me. Everyone filtered out, handing him their bundles of paper. Hopefully they followed his anal demands and put their names and page numbers on every sheet, or I knew from experience they’d get zeroes.

But more importantly, where did Mr. Bugman get to? Of all the things that could have crawled out of the dark, it had to be that. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but an insect man hadn’t made my list.

I pulled myself upright and hurdled Mohawk’s seat to get back to my stuff. In my dive-bomb, I must have knocked my binder to the floor. The metal rings had popped open and barfed paper everywhere. Some lay covered in dusty footprints. Perfect. I’d get a zero for that, too. Mustn’t have filth on something he would touch. You’d think the guy was made of white silk instead of washable flesh.

I gathered up the sheets, trying to ignore him still standing in the main aisle one row down, glowering at me. I glanced up and discovered I was alone with him, the others having fled in record time, probably sensing the imminent verbal explosion about to occur.

Had he not tortured me enough? His glasslike eyes, now as empty and heartless as a toy soldier’s, stared back at me. Nope. Clearly he hadn’t. It was hard not to look away from those eyes—and the danger, destruction, and mayhem in them. Too bad I wouldn’t fit under my chair.

I wasn’t supposed to be afraid of a teacher, especially not one who made my inner fan-girl swoon like an idiot. Dad had always said school was the safest place in the world. I should have stopped believing him after the walls in my kindergarten class had melted before my eyes, but I hadn’t. I’d been forced to feign an imminent need to barf and had ended up in the office where Dad had to pick me up. After that, I’d found more creative ways to be somewhere else for a while. Once, I’d even crawled out the window while Mrs. Clancy wasn’t looking.

Backpack reloaded, paper in hand, I rushed toward the aisle, hoping to get out before he could cut me off. The other way would only lead me down to his desk and inevitably back to him—no need to humiliate myself further—and even though he scared the hell out of me, I had a strange and morbid curiosity to see him up close.

At the last possible second, he moved and braced one hand on the back of the seat, trapping me. “In my office, Plaid. Now.”

“What?” I asked. Nobody got called to his office. Except for that kid, Kyle Whatshisname, one of the other unfortunate souls who had shown up late and had mouthed off when Green called him on it. I hadn’t seen Kyle again in class. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen him on campus, either.

Crap.

“I have Business Law next, Professor Green. Have to go, so sorry.” It didn’t technically start until two in the afternoon, but he didn’t need to know that. I kept moving forward, thinking he’d step aside. He didn’t. I stopped about a foot from running into him. He thrust out a hand, probably afraid I’d slam into him, but pulled it back as if I’d burned him. Damn, he was even better looking than I’d thought, with full lips, thick, black lashes, and perfectly bronzed skin. His scent filled my nose, like spiced heaven. God, really?

“I wasn’t asking.” His gaze swept over me, lingering on my face before he turned abruptly and went for the doors at the top of the stairs with angry strides. Did he just assume I’d follow him?

Hell, who was I kidding? I hated to get in trouble so much that I never nudged a toe out of line. Ever. Which meant I would inevitably follow him. Being predictable really sucked sometimes.

After one last longing glance around the room—in case I was about to be banished from it forever—I hiked up my pack, crawled out from under my mental bed, and went after the monster.

Chapter 3

Professor Green didn’t even look back after he went through the door into the main hallway of the AL. I tried not to notice how those dress pants hugged his firm behind, but my gaze kept zeroing in there like his ass had its own gravity.

Shaking off my idiocy, I padded along behind him, feeling too underdressed to be going to his office. I imagined an immaculate space arranged just so, complete with a golden throne or a sacrificial altar. Or a torture chamber. What did one wear to a torture chamber? If said chamber belonged to him, a dress or suit at the very least. And polished nails. And high heels, not dirty hiking boots. Not that I did heels or dresses, but I almost wished I’d dressed better today. Perhaps worn my Sunday-best plaid.

My pulse ricocheted around my body when he stopped by an oak door that said “Professor of Anthropology” and opened it. What did he want, anyway? Publicly humiliating me wasn’t enough—he had to give me a private thrashing, too?

Everything would be fine. It would.

Hopefully the creepy bug thing stayed on the dark side of the veil. He’d gotten me into enough trouble today. What would Green have done if he’d discovered something had invaded his lecture hall from a black hole in his wall? Find some way to insult it, no doubt.

He held the door open. “Inside.” Heaven forbid he’d spend the breath on a few extra words to make him sound like a human being. I expected him to step aside, but he stayed, half-blocking the doorway.

My right arm brushed his body as I entered. It was warm and hard like stone, or great gobs of muscle polished with a heavy-duty workout schedule. Every hair on my body leaned toward him, while the rest of me wanted to run or attack myself with sandpaper to get the lingering sensation of him off me. Not that it was entirely bad. There were definitely a few zings zooming around my nether regions that had nothing to do with fear.

Ignoring my odd bodily reactions, I shuffled toward his polished, possibly antique cherry desk. Its surface appeared spotless and immaculate, as I’d figured it would be. Just like him. Only glimpses of beige walls were visible around the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves holding old, leather-bound tomes as well as glossy hardcovers. All in alphabetical order, of course. He probably color-coded his sock drawer, too.

The small space smelled of him, a mixture of leather, booze, and undertones of cologne. Something sweet and no doubt expensive, with a French name I’d have a hard time pronouncing. Except for the cologne and booze, the room reminded me of Grandpa’s library at our cabin in the woods before Dad had boxed it all up when I was twelve and donated it for reasons he’d never shared. It was one of the saddest days of my life outside of losing Grandpa to cancer a few years later.

I’d have given my right lobe to have a week to spend rifling through the yellowing pages on Green’s shelves, soaking up their knowledge. Ancient Egypt, Pompeii, Indus Valley, the Khmer Empire, the Minoans, it was all there for the reading. I reached up for a particularly old one, smiling at the memories the books stirred.

“Don’t touch anything.” Green slammed the door shut.

My bones rattled. Scowling at him didn’t make him go away. I wanted to ask him why he was such a dick, but instead I said, “Look, I’m sorry I was late for your class, but … I haven’t been sleeping well, okay? You made your point. It won’t happen again.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. Knowing something might ghost through the wall while I slept did not make for good nighttime experiences.

He blinked those strange, blue eyes at me, and a few more sporadic zings had their way with me. “You lie horribly, Plaid,” he said. “I wouldn’t suggest taking up poker.”

“My name is Addison. Addison Beckett.” My growing indignation snapped the words out.

He wasn’t much taller than my five-foot-eight, maybe five-eleven. Before now I’d assumed he was much taller. Even up close he didn’t appear much older than me, if I only looked at his splendid body. The eyes, though, told another story. He’d seen some heavy crappola. It swam in those eyes like a crocodile in dark waters, waiting to reach up and snap my head off if I came too close. The hints of green around his pupils turned out to be jade starburst-shaped coronas lying over a field of ice blue. Pretty, if you could ignore the crazy in them, and unlike any eyes I’d ever seen. My heart gave a little bump and wiggle when he turned them on me.

Expelling a sigh, he went to a little cabinet built into one of the bookcases and opened the door. After pouring himself a glass of amber liquor, he sat down behind his shiny desk.

“Why am I here?” I asked. “I already know you’ll give me zero on my paper even though I rocked it. It’s not three-thousand words, but it’ll tell you a lot about the Mayan calendar.” I dropped it on his desk. He stared at the pages dusted with large sneaker prints. Then he stared at me. I picked it back up.

He sat back in his leather chair, using one hand to undo the first two buttons of his shirt, baring a tanned wedge of bronzed, hairless chest. Oh. My. God. The professor persona melted away in an instant, as if someone had turned a key on his back, and he slipped into a darker guise.

Appearing terrifyingly delicious, he lounged back, languid and lazy as a cat, and only those strange eyes let me know he was stalking me. I had an errant thought that it might be fun to be chased by him.
What?

One defined arm lay along the armrest. The other bent at the elbow as he brought the glass to his lips and moaned as he sipped. I shivered, my idiot mind conjuring other reasons he might make sounds like that. Seriously, what was wrong with me?

“How long have you been able to sense the rifts?” he asked. Not brute force attack, but whispers in the dark good for scaring people like me in places where shadows were thick and full of screams.

He couldn’t be referring to what I’d been seeing since I was little. “Rifts?” I asked.

He leaned forward, the glass pinched between his middle finger and thumb. “Don’t be coy. How long have you been able to feel them?”

I supposed I could feel them. It wasn’t the sensation that rattled my bones, it was the seeing. Still, he couldn’t know about that. “I don’t know what you’re—”

He slammed his hand down on the desk. I half expected said desk to collapse into a pile of kindling by the shockwave of sound careening through me. “How long?”

I shook my head, backing toward the door. He was a teacher. Couldn’t hurt me. Safe place. Yeah, right, and babies came from the stork. How could I tell him? How did he know in the first place?
Danger
, my inner voice warned.
Get out of here.
I wanted my little pink blanket, the tattered one tucked under the pillow in my room that I rubbed between my fingers after a hard day or when I couldn’t sleep. Dad had given it to me when I was born, and even in its threadbare state, I still loved it to bits.

Green launched up. With a little squeal, I turned and ran for the door. He met me there, threw his weight into me, pinning the door shut and me against it, my pack sandwiched between us.
Oh crap, oh hell, oh crap.
He knew about me. Did that mean he’d seen Mr. Bugman, too?

“How long, Miss Beckett?” he asked, his voice sliding over me like a physical touch.

He’d called me by my name. It sounded worse than Plaid, like when a parent used your full name to get your attention and let you know just how much double-doo-doo you were in. I tried to push back against him, but I’d have had better luck starting a dead-stopped freight train with my little finger.

Small, helpless sounds trickled from my lips. I answered the only question I could imagine he was asking. “Since I was six, okay? What do you want?”

Silence for a moment, and then he took my pack off my shoulders, set it on the floor, and returned to his desk. “Sit down, Plaid. Try to run again and I’ll put you in chains.”

Put me in … what? Why was he trying to scare me? Hell, he’d gone way beyond trying. Anger spiked along with the fear eating me alive. “My name is Addison.”

“I’m not deaf. I simply don’t care.” He thrust his finger toward the empty chair across from him. “Sit down, or I’ll sit you down.”

I sat. I gave him a ripe, snarling face, but dammit, I sat like the obedient puppy I’d always been. “Teachers can’t threaten students. It’s against policy. And against the law.” I didn’t really think he’d do it. Maybe. Nah. When my fingers ached to test the softness of his black hair, I rubbed my thumb against the velvet cover on the chair, the movement of the fine pile calming against my hand.

Maybe this was just a really bad dream. Or the one shred of sanity I’d managed to hold on to had finally snapped. Something had to be causing my strange attraction to Professor Jerkface.

“You’ll find I get away with whatever I please. I’d suggest not testing it.” He reclaimed his cushy leather chair, throwing the last of his sweet-smelling alcohol down in one swallow, all casual as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on. Maybe for him this was a daily occurrence, scaring the flipping heck out of people.

He lounged against the armrest again, using a finger to swipe on another layer of balm from that green tin that smelled of coconuts. Some men might have appeared girly or vain, but the way he moved was all predator and sensual grace.

I tugged at my collar. Was it getting warm in here? I’d have bet those full lips were kissably soft and oh-so-demanding.
Huh?
I scrubbed that thought from my head, stunned that it had taken a random trot through my brain.

“What’s with you and that stuff, anyway?” I asked.

Returning the tin to his pocket, he said, “I spend a lot of time in the cold.”

I squinted at that one. “Cold? But it’s April. It’s not that cold out.”

A smile slid across those lips, as if he’d made a joke I didn’t get. “Describe exactly what you felt that led up to your less-than-graceful swan dive over the seats.”

Oh, crap.

Too tired, too freaked out, I couldn’t dissect how he knew about the thing trying to get into our world, but he did. No point in dragging it out when clearly the jig was up. I told him about the drops in temperature. I told him how it only seemed to happen in the rooms I spent the most time in, like my bedroom at home, my classes at school in my hometown, the studio where I took gymnastics, and now my dorm room. “It’s never happened in your class before today,” I finished, feeling strangely unburdened having spoken it out loud. “And I’ve never seen Mr. Bugman before today, though I was pretty sure there was someone all along who’d been pulling on that thread that opens the veil.”

He lurched forward again, hands flat on the desk. His eyes went moonstruck, glittering with interest. “You saw it? Truly saw it? Or only sensed it?”

Somewhere in the pit of my stomach, I knew what I said would decide his next move, whether it was to cap me or shove me out the door. Honesty never hurt anyone, right? “I don’t want to tell you.”

One second, he’d been sitting. The next, he shot around the desk and stood before me, leaning forward until we were nose to nose. For a second, I wondered if he’d kiss me before my danger sirens shouted in my head loud enough that I rejoined reality.

I sat there, taking short breaths, wondering if he’d really do what his I-am-demon-hear-me-roar expression threatened. Nah. Professors didn’t kill their students in my reality.

Just like insect men and other worlds beyond ours don’t exist
, my voice of reason told me. It could shut the hell up.

“What did you see?” he asked, the muscles in his arrogant jaw straining. Nothing about him seemed human. Beautiful, but not human. Sociopath? Assassin for the gods?
Jesus.

I told him about the half-man half-bug. “It was pawing that redhead, Whatshername, from Woodstock,” I whispered, glad I could talk around the knot in my throat. “Then it came and sniffed my neck.”

He straightened and took a step back, his expression blank. “Did it see you? Did it know you saw it?”

No flinching, no shock. He did know about them. Hot damn, I wasn’t the only freak on the wrong side of the crazy door. “What is it? What does it want?”

With the gentleness of a raging bull, he spun away, pacing a short circuit in front of my chair. Those jade-blue eyes traced me up and down, appraising, as if he stared at a piece of art and wondered if it’d be worth the price on the tag. He didn’t seem impressed. Probably my bargain-rack outfit. Or my non-supermodel body, lack of makeup, and plain-Jane hair that had never been cut by a professional. I wasn’t fat, but I certainly wasn’t rail-thin, either. Sturdy, my Uncle Oliver called me. For the first time, I wished I’d taken better care of myself and opened a fashion magazine once in a while. God, why did I even care?

He tugged at the collar of his Oxford shirt, his other hand propped on his hip. For a moment, I could have sworn he was afraid, but boots didn’t fear anything an ant could tell them. He did the stomping. The rest of us did the squishing beneath his heel. It was the way of the world.

“How do I stop this from happening?” I asked. “What are they?”

“Don’t move from this spot,” he said.

I stood and opened my mouth to ask him what in hell’s half acre was going on, but something cold rolled along my skin, sucking the words out of my head.

We stood in a beating heart. Or … no, it was only inside of me. Or was it?

Each thump hit me from the inside like a concussion wave, just like in my room earlier, only stronger by an order of magnitude. I could hear nothing with my ears, only the pressing of something against my flesh, like the vibration of hard rock music. I thought maybe I should scream and run for the hills, but the air seemed too thick to move through.

My arms were lead. Legs welded in place. The beating pulse grew and grew into something large and overwhelming, spreading through me like warm fingers that passed through flesh and bone.

Seconds passed, and I could breathe again if I concentrated hard enough, but everything appeared distorted. He moved, or a blur of him did. Must have been a trick of my eyes. There was two of everything in the room. What a trip, throwing off my equilibrium enough that my stomach clenched.