Rising Darkness (A GAME OF SHADOWS NOVEL) (12 page)

Oh
,
she said, or pretended to say,
aren’t you gorgeous?

Lady
, the wolf said.
You called.

Did I?
She blinked.
I don’t remember.

Another wolf stepped out of the forest, then another, and then three more. Overcome with astonishment, she stared. What a lovely but incomprehensible dream. More wolves poured onto the gravel road. Soon her car was surrounded.

The one that had spoken was the largest and most powerfully built. It approached and sat near her transparent leg. It said,
You asked for help
.
We have come. We will do what we can to protect you.

She flashed back to the cloud of hawks that had attacked her abductors. Some had fallen and hadn’t risen again.
You mustn’t try to help me
, she said. She looked around at the pack of wolves. They were so beautiful.
Don’t risk yourselves. It isn’t worth it. Apparently I’m already dying.

The alpha wolf fixed its intelligent, lupine gaze on her.
Sister, we stay.

Overcome by their generosity, she said,
My heart is full of gratitude
.

Only much later did she realize how stylized her words had been, as if they belonged to another place and another time.

Chapter Ten

THE PAIR OF
hawks that followed Mary rode thermals high above the rolling landscape. They had hurtled in pursuit of the car as she turned east, falling back only after fresh hunters swooped in to take over the chase. If an ornithologist had been asked whether the aerial predators were capable of such a sophisticated tactical interaction, he or she would have laughed the questioner out of the room.

The hawks weren’t finished with their task after they had been relieved by newcomers. Instead they winged west until they located a nondescript, battered blue Ford with a transplanted, meticulously maintained BMW engine.

Michael drove south on Interstate 94, which took him out of Wisconsin and along the outskirts of Chicago. As he wove through the crowded traffic, he rarely let the hybrid Ford’s speed fall under a hundred miles an hour, even if it meant that he sometimes had to plunge onto the shoulder to pass snarls of slower vehicles. The pace was suicidal in the greater Chicago area and required absolute concentration and prescient reflexes.

While he drove he maintained a cloak of secrecy around the car, projecting a kind of psychic null-space, a void where the mind’s eye preferred not to look. Troopers patrolling I-94 had radars flash with something inexplicable but their minds slipped away from the occurrence and they forgot it almost at once.

The man maintained minimal contact with his fellow hunters and companions, just enough to sense their presence without glancing away from the road, and to hear the simplest of messages. None had spoken after the first hawk had returned to make its presence known to him.

We have found her
, it had said.
Follow.

They came. They made contact.

It was enough. He followed.

All other questions and all other answers could be gleaned at a later time. If they lost her again, none of the questions or answers would matter, anyway.

As he drove, he thought back to another life and time, and another trip he had undertaken with almost the same desperation as this one. Another one of their group, Ariel, had been betrayed, captured by Burgundians and sold to the English.

She had begun that life as a peasant girl and fallen prey to the pitfalls their group faced as they grew to adulthood. Confused by her abilities and imperfect shards of returning memory, she became consumed by the voices she heard in her head. When Michael first made contact with her, she believed him to be a saint, and she laid claim to a holy vision. Even as a teen she had been a charismatic and formidable warrior, rousing the countryside to defeat their enemy both at Orleans and Patay.

Then their enemy’s spies spread their poison well. Abandoned by her king, she had been tried for witchcraft and heresy by French clerics who worked in service to the English.

Spring in France had been a messy business that year. The roads to Rouen were churned to thick mud from the downpour of several days of rain. He remembered the heavy strike of hooves as his horse thundered along the treacherous route, and the stomach-churning sound of bone snapping.

He had roared with frustration as his horse went down and threw him from the saddle. He had been forced to slit the suffering beast’s throat in the mud and the rain. And though he scoured every stable in search of another mount, and he had hurtled forward with every ounce of his considerable strength, he had arrived too late to prevent anything.

She should have been fine. He had told her to recant and keep quiet, to wait until he could break her out of prison, but their enemy had captured and tortured Uriel, her mate.

It had broken her. She had pleaded and demanded to be freed, had insisted the voices she heard in her head were real, and the frightened ecclesiastical court had burned her for it.

There had been no last-minute Hollywood appearance or rescue as the flames licked at the bottom of the woodpile. When he had arrived, there had been nothing left of her but the smear of ash and the memory of an outcry on the wind.

Thus was the sum of a noble life: loss and pain and defeat in a foreign place, and the strange, empty gift of sainthood almost five hundred years later, long past when she and her mate had been destroyed, and their real stories and original identities had been buried under the weight of human superstition and history.

Goddamn, he had forgotten how much he had loved that horse. He had raised it from a colt. It had given him everything it had, including its life.

Michael was forced to stop just past East Chicago to refill his depleted gas tank. The pause was agonizing.

Throughout the day as he traveled, the psychic realm rustled and whispered. Ethereal energies were more agitated than usual by the day’s disturbances. Dark beings as well as lighter ones crossed the landscape at the edge of his awareness. Once something fled past him, sobbing inconsolably.

Through all of it, he could feel the woman’s psychic presence radiating with uncontrollable force, a star blazing into a supernova before it died. Creatures attracted to such extremity moved with purpose and stealth toward her, hopeful for an easy kill.

Murder was a child’s picture drawn in bright crayon compared to the savagery he felt. In contrast to his current mood, his former state of rage had been pastel.

Night fell. His speed never lessened except once, briefly, to make the turn north. After an agony of waiting, his current feathered guide said,
Turn here
.

He was traveling at such a high speed that he shot past the exit. The Ford screeched onto the road’s shoulder. He reversed and gunned the engine until he could take the ramp. Then he drove the side road with more care as he followed the terse commands, for he had to translate everything from a hawk’s perception into information that he could use on the ground.

At last he cruised down a country lane. In the sweep of headlights a red-tailed hawk sat motionless on a low-lying limb of a huge oak. Huge golden eyes flared as the hawk turned its head and stared at his car. The oak tree grew beside a one-lane gravel drive.

He made the tight turn gently onto the gravel road. The forest was thick with night sounds, tangled underbrush and overhanging trees. His headlights picked up a dark parked Toyota yards ahead. At least thirty wolves surrounded the car. They rose to their feet and turned to face his vehicle with bared teeth. A few were half-grown pups.

He took a careful breath, put the Ford into park and killed the engine. Whatever he might have expected, it hadn’t been this. He touched the nine-millimeter in his shoulder holster then opened his door and got out, leaving the car’s headlights on.

Along with the quiet rush of chill spring air came the flutter of a small wind spirit. It batted around him like a trapped and bruised butterfly.

Dying
, it said.
She’s dying—

Hush
, he told it. He brushed it away gently with his mind.

The alpha wolf of the pack paced toward him. He stared down into the powerful male’s steady gaze. The wolf said,
Warrior
.

He replied,
I will pass. Let me do so in peace. I do not want to hurt you.

The alpha male said,
We have answered her call for help, and we have promised to protect.

It was another loyal beast. His mouth tightened.
Your clan is an honorable one. Can you heal her as well, or save her life?

The wolf remained silent.

I will pass
, he repeated.

The alpha male turned to his pack. One by one the wolves moved out of his way. He walked to the Toyota and looked at the woman who curled in a crumpled heap in the driver’s seat. She was small with a snarled braid, her shoulders two thin, vulnerable points under her jacket, but he couldn’t make out any other details in the indirect light.

The old woman had taught him well. Staring down at the woman, he remembered the eight-year-old boy he had been. He thought of all the reasons that his old mentor had for being ready to kill him should it become necessary.

Those same reasons applied to this young woman.

He must be prepared to kill her if she wasn’t salvageable.

Chapter Eleven

DRIFTING.

A bloodred petal in twilight.

She felt as empty and dry as a drained chalice. An abundant golden river flowed into her. Her parched soul soaked up the current. It was as strong and rich as burgundy wine, and as warm and nourishing as summer.

She surfaced from the black pit and became aware, as if from a great distance, of details around her. She was no longer hallucinating an out-of-body experience. Instead, she lay on the cold gravel between her Toyota and another parked car. Her body felt heavy and weak on the sharp rocks.

The unfamiliar car’s headlights threw a slant of harsh illumination on the scene. A pack of wolves ringed the area. Someone knelt over her, dark head and broad shoulders silhouetted against the angled light. Large, heavy hands rested flat on her torso, one at her sternum and the other on her abdomen.

The car headlights seemed thin and white, and as dim as shadows, compared to the man who shone from within like the sun.

The golden river poured into her.

A powerful sense of recognition flooded her, along with an incandescent joy. She took a breath and sighed, an easy expanding movement, for the moment free from fear and pain. Moving one hand across the uneven gravel toward the man, she smiled with relief at waking up from the long dark.

“There you are,” she said in a blurred voice to the radiant silhouette. “I’ve missed you so. I had the strangest dream. . . .”

Déjà vu swept over her, and her half-conscious mind groped after the feeling. Hadn’t she said this before? Hadn’t she said it many times as a small child, as she blinked up at her mother’s bewildered, frightened face?

Mommy, I had the strangest dream.

I dreamed I was—

She slammed awake for real. The brilliant radiance faded.

An unknown man knelt over her, silhouetted against the headlights of a car. She looked from the strange man to the ring of watching wolves and knocked away the hands that rested on her torso. Quick as a cobra, he grabbed her wrists and pinned her to the ground. She strained against the restraint, her heels scrabbling for purchase on the loose rocks.

The man shook her once, then again, harder, as she continued to struggle. “Stop it,” he ordered. His voice sounded harsh and rough as the rocks upon which she lay.

She was bewildered at the strange tricks her own mind played on her. She didn’t recognize this man. She had never seen him before in her life.

He was not Spring Jacket or Sport Coat. He was someone different. Someone new, bigger. Stronger, more deadly.

She made a terrified sound, bent her head and tried to sink her teeth into one of those iron hands shackling her wrists.

With an agile twist the man avoided her bite. The world pitched as he heaved her body up and around. He was so strong and fast, panic surged all over again at how easily he manipulated her weight.

She kicked and clawed for his eyes but somehow ended up sitting between long, powerful jeans-clad legs, crushed back against the man’s hard chest, her arms crossed in front of her while he held her wrists. She tried to butt her head back into his nose. He hugged her tight and buried his face in her neck.

She recognized the position. It was a safe restraint hold, and it was as effective as a straitjacket. The whiskery skin covering the man’s jaw abraded her neck, but no matter how she yanked or struggled, she couldn’t budge his long, tough body.

Finally, defeated, she stilled. Her blood pounded in her ears, her breathing serrated in the cold quiet night. Her captor’s breathing was unruffled. Gradually she became aware of the wolves’ sharp animal interest in the fight. She stared. The wolves, while a quieter presence, were as much of a bizarre image as the attacking hawks had been.

Hardly aware that she spoke aloud, she whispered, “I don’t understand.”

“Maybe now we can get somewhere,” the man said. His voice was rough velvet in her ear, the proximity mimicking a loverlike intimacy.

She shrank as far away as his tight hold would allow. The sense of profound recognition still beat at her, along with an upsurge of revulsion at his unwelcome nearness. She
knew
that she had never heard his voice before. The contradictory impulses were so strong, she felt like she was going insane.

“If you fight me or try to get away, I will tie you up,” the man said. “If you promise not to, I will let you go. If you break your promise, I tie you up and you stay tied up. No second chances.”

If he tied her up she was helpless and as good as dead. If she was free at least she had choices, and a chance to get away. Of course she said, “I promise.”

“Right,” he grunted. She knew he didn’t believe her, but he let her go anyway. She took the opportunity to scramble away from him, her shoes digging into the gravel until he warned her with three soft-spoken words. “That’s far enough.”

She’d only managed to get a couple of yards away, while her nerves screamed a chaotic, contradictory nonsense. She was still too close and needed to scramble farther away. But at the same time, she was too far away and needed to fling herself forward, into his arms.

And just as she had known about his voice, she knew that she had never seen his face before in her life.

INSANE INSANE INSANE.

The screaming in her head cut off abruptly as he raised himself up on one knee to strip off a battered jean jacket. He wore a gun in a shoulder holster. She froze.

[We’ll kill everybody. Not that we’d mind. We like to kill.]

Her breathing sawed at the air. Nails ripped as her fingers dug into the gravel. She clutched handfuls of the rock, ready to throw them while her gaze darted around the edges of his body.

She could see no sign of the smudged black that had surrounded Spring Jacket and Sport Coat.

But she didn’t even know what that meant.

The man flung his jacket at her. It settled over her head and shoulders. She dropped gravel to yank it off her head. A huge wolf padded over to her and sat down nearby. She froze and tried to control her jagged breathing. Her gaze slid sideways to the wolf then back at the man. The man was watching her with an intent gaze.

The harsh flood of light threw a mask of crags and hollows onto his face. Underneath the mask he was neither handsome nor ugly. He was not a young man, although he was still in his prime. His hair, cut military-short, was so dark it seemed black in the harsh light, and his eyes were colorless like moonstones.

She might have passed him on a busy street without a second glance, except for the lithe bulk of muscles that strained against his dark T-shirt and the taut material of his jeans, the piercing intelligence in those light eyes and the razor’s edge of toughness he wore as comfortably as a second skin. He bore himself with a soldier’s competent assurance.

He knelt on one knee as he faced her, the lines of his body strung as taut as a bow. Her gaze fell to the clenched fist resting on the upraised knee where broad scarred knuckles shone white. He looked ready to spring at her at the slightest provocation. Whoever he was, and whatever his motivations, this man was a whole different kind of danger than Spring Jacket and Sport Coat.

And he had that gun.

Her gaze left him again and traveled back to the wolf. The man and the wolf seemed to have something in common. At first she couldn’t pinpoint what. Then she realized what it was. They were both looking at her with the same expression.

She became aware she was shivering only when the man gestured at the jacket she held and said, “Put it on.”

Her shivering increased until uncontrollable tremors racketed through her body. She felt as hollow as a reed. After a frozen moment she shrugged into the jacket.

The material still held warmth from his body. It smelled like him, which set off the cacophony in her head again. Some part of her that felt horrifically starved wanted to bury her face in the material and inhale that clean, fresh male scent. At the same time, she wanted to tear it off and throw it screaming back in his face.

She struggled to find the soft calm voice she used to de-escalate violent situations in the ER. The only thing was, she wasn’t sure which one of them needed to de-escalate. She managed to say, “Thank you.”

He tilted his head, eyes narrowing. Then he rose with a light, fluid movement that made her recoil as her heart kicked. He must have decided that she was a pathetic flight risk, for he only moved to her car. He returned a moment later, the plastic bag from the convenience store held in one hand as he pocketed her keys with the other. After rummaging through the contents of the bag, he took one of the sandwiches then handed the bag to her.

She clutched the shopping bag then sat frozen. Shit, he took her keys.

He knelt near her again, tore open the wrapper on the sandwich and ate it in quick, strong bites. She watched every move he made out of the corner of her eye, her face half averted.

He nodded to the bag. “Eat something.”

She said, “I’d rather not.”

He frowned and shot a glance down her huddled figure. “Do it anyway. You need the calories, and it will help you warm up.”

Stung by his critical look, resentful that he was right and mindful of his greater strength and the gun, she dug out the second sandwich, opened the wrapping and snapped off a bite. As she tasted tuna, her stomach threatened to revolt. Then it settled and she managed to eat most of the sandwich until she caught sight of the wolf again.

She turned to look at the strong, powerfully muscled animal. The wolf’s yellow impassive gaze regarded her. Obeying a half-formed impulse, she took the last corner of her sandwich and placed it with care on the ground between them.

He held her gaze for a long moment. Then with slow deliberation and a remarkable delicacy, he bent his head and ate the offering. The strange man watched the interaction with an unreadable expression.

“Huh,” she grunted. She bent her head and knuckled her eyes. Sharp points from the gravel dug into her ass. Her body started to ache again in places where she had forgotten she had been hurt.

She must have pulled onto private property. The wolves had to be trained. Maybe they were wolf-shepherd hybrids. They must belong to the man. They would probably run her down if she tried to get away

Her flimsy attempt at logic crumbled. She spoke to the alpha wolf in the same way she spoke to her daemon.
I had a dream about you. You said you had answered my call for help. You said you’re here to protect me?

Silence unfurled in the clearing. She felt like a fool.

Then the wolf said,
Yes
.

The simple word came into her head from a place outside of herself. Her lips parted. This was far beyond her daemon, which could, after all, be explained away as a construct of her own mind. She reached out to the wolf but didn’t quite dare touch him.
I am . . . very grateful. Thank you.

Sister
, the wolf said.

Beyond trying to make her experiences fit into any logical scientific framework, she thought of the hawks that had fought off her attackers, and rapid words burst out of her.
I don’t understand what’s going on. Please don’t let this man hurt me—

The wolf lowered its head. We can only protect, he said. We cannot heal. The warrior can help you more than we can. You must let him.

But—but—
Her gaze went back to the man who watched her with hard, expressionless eyes.

He had pinned her down. He scared her.

He pinned her after she woke and started fighting him. She had tried to bite him too.

But he didn’t have to pin her down. Why didn’t he just back away? He threatened to tie her up, and no amount of rationalizing could make that okay.

The man remained silent, as if knowing better than she the kind of thoughts that raced through her mind.

She said aloud, again, “I don’t understand. Who are you? What do you want?” An avalanche of questions piled up behind those two. She had to bite her lips to keep from shrieking them.

The man said, “You can call me Michael. What I want is irrelevant.”

He reached out a hand. The panic hit her low and hard, slamming into her gut. She cringed from the hand and scrambled away. She didn’t stop until she had put several feet between them.

Only then did she realize that he hadn’t moved. She huddled into the overlarge jacket, head down, and dared to look sideways at him.

He knelt frozen, his hand outstretched to her, palm up. Nothing moved in the clearing, not even the wind through the trees. The stoic expression in his hard face and blank eyes never changed. He looked prepared to take any blow and not budge.

It took a moment before she realized he was silently asking for her plastic bag of food. She hesitated then inched forward to offer it to him, holding the bag as far away from her body as she could.

Moving only his hand, slow and easy, he took the bag from her. He pulled out a packet of trail mix, tore it open and shook some into his hand as he said, “I hear you were attacked and some people were killed. Where did this happen?”

She pulled his jacket tighter around her torso. “How did you hear that?”