Falling Light (Game of Shadows #2)(3)

Still, the Deceiver must be stopped.

It is worth the price, he said.

At the time, he could not know that they would keep paying and paying.

“Michael,” Mary said.

As he blinked the sun out of his eyes, he got the impression that she had called his name more than once. They still sat at the stop sign of an empty intersection, the car idling quietly.

A tight band circled his wrist. He looked down. She had taken hold of his arm in a strong grip.

Mary’s expression was tight. “You blacked out.”

“No, I didn’t,” he said. “Not quite. I had a memory resurface, that’s all. It’s okay, I’m all right.”

He could tell by the doubt in her eyes that she didn’t quite believe him, but there was nothing she could do. They didn’t have any other choice. They had to get moving.

“Did you remember anything important?”

He smiled a little. “I remembered what you looked like a long time ago.”

Her tight grip relaxed. “Promise me that you’ll pull over if you have to.”

“Of course.”

With obvious reluctance she let go of him to settle back into her seat and close her eyes. He found his sunglasses tucked in the glove compartment of the dashboard. He slipped them on, blocking out the sun and the details of the events that had happened so long ago.

The past was no longer relevant. Their future was uncertain at best. The present was all they had.

It was time to make the most of it.

Accelerating gently, he turned onto the intersecting road. They traveled east until they reached the highway. Then they turned north.

They had to join Astra and combine their strength before the Deceiver got the chance to attack them again.

Then finally, finally, they would take down that bastard once and for all.

• • •

ALL TOO AWARE of Michael’s injuries and his grim, dogged endurance, Mary did as he directed and focused on healing her own gunshot wound so that she would be able to help him and take over driving. She was tired and in pain, and not thinking as clearly as she would have liked, so she fumbled the job at first.

When the Deceiver had shot her, she had a crisis-driven epiphany. Shock, pain and instinct had driven her awareness into her own body, and a floodgate of ancient memories had poured out, like golden treasure from a secret, inner chamber. Somehow she had staved off shock and started healing her own body.

How had she done it?

She remembered quite well the experience of having the epiphany, but replicating what she had actually done was a different matter. She needed practice before she could do any kind of healing very easily.

The color red had initially triggered the memories. As soon as she recalled that, it did so again. Her perspective shifted, and she saw the interior of her own body as a warm, glowing red vibrancy like live coals, except for the wound. That area was a dark, jagged hole.

She sank her awareness deep into herself. The entry wound was small and located just under her collarbone, but the bullet had flattened to inflict more damage where it exited than where it had entered. The scientist in her grew fascinated as she studied the area. She could see and sense where the initial healing had already begun.

The first time she had worked on healing herself, she had been in imminent danger as she confronted the Deceiver who had stolen her ex-husband’s body. She had shoved commands into her own flesh with all the finesse of a bulldozer. This time, she nudged more gently.

Once again, her body responded. Veins fused, and torn flesh knitted together. As she watched, she realized she was only accelerating what would have happened naturally over the course of time. It didn’t erase the damage that had been done to her, or cause her body to return to the state it had been in before she was shot. She would have to exercise her shoulder and arm carefully to stretch and condition the area, and she would retain the scar. . . .

Maybe there was a different way to promote the healing so that she erased the scar, but if so, she couldn’t remember it. Hopefully the more she used this newly recovered skill, the more memories would return.

For now, though, she didn’t care that her skin puckered in rough circles at the entry and exit points, or that her shoulder felt stiff and sore as the last of the wound knitted together. She also noticed other, less urgent imperfections in the glowing, scarlet landscape of her body—various scrapes and contusions she had collected over the last few, very eventful, days.

Those wounds were minor, so she ignored them. Michael needed help more than she needed a few bruises healed. As she studied her handiwork, she felt an immense satisfaction and a sense of completeness.

She had always known she was a healer. This was how she healed.

As exhilarating as the experience had been, it had depleted her body’s resources. She needed a quick nap before she was safe to take over driving. So she coaxed herself to sleep, and as she had done so often over the last few days, she drifted into another dream.

Chapter Two

ASTRA HAD SIMPLY done too much.

Somehow, nine hundred years ago, the Deceiver had injured Mary so severely, she hadn’t reincarnated for generations. Astra had spent that time playing cat and mouse with the Deceiver while she reconnected with Michael every lifetime she could, and she searched for clues to what had happened to Mary.

If Astra could have destroyed the Deceiver by herself, she would have done so long ago. But she couldn’t. They were too well matched in strength. She needed the others to fight by her side in order to overcome him.