Falling Light (Game of Shadows #2)(30)

With her psychic sense she could see a cloud of dark things, like ragged scraps of black lace, hovering outside the tunnel, but she didn’t dare look any longer. She ducked her head and raced in a wide circle around the burning chaos in the parking lot. Then she cut across the lawn to the water.

Almost there. The parking lot lay behind her and the long dock filled with boat slips lay just ahead. She heard more shouting from the direction of the building, more shots. Michael was drawing all the gunfire. Sirens wailed in the distance. The sound grew closer rapidly.

Her gaze bounced from shadowed boat to boat as she ran toward the slip. She tried to decide which one was the best to pick. Not that it mattered. She was sure Michael only meant to get her out of the way until he could join her.

Two dark-dressed men rose up from the nearest boat. They leveled guns on her.

“Well, shit,” she said.

There was nowhere to hide on the wide, open lawn. She had no time to do anything except get braced. Everything slowed down as her awareness heightened to a sparkling clarity. They fired on her even as she slipped and skidded, awkward on the wet, short grass.

She had the briefest of moments in which to feel a foolish sense of betrayal. They hadn’t shouted for her to halt. They didn’t identify themselves as police officers.

They fired on her when she carried no visible weapon.

The first bullet entered her torso just under her left breast. Her sparkling awareness centered on it. It burst through the fragile barrier of her skin.

She was already at the point of entrance saying, No. No. HEAL.

Her skin closed behind the bullet. The cells knitted together in an instant from the force of her command.

The bullet continued its destructive path. It passed between two ribs and tore through powerful tendons and muscle. It entered her chest cavity.

HEAL, she demanded.

The tendons and muscle obeyed her command, and healed.

The bullet pierced her lung and passed through, and left pink scar tissue behind.

Meanwhile the second bullet entered her abdominal cavity. It began to tear through her pancreas. The third struck her right clavicle, broke it and ricocheted off the bone to pass through the muscle of her shoulder. The fourth pierced her throat by the Adam’s apple.

No, she said.

No, and No, and No.

Her body continued to heal each time she demanded it, but each time a wound closed over, it cost her. Each time she weakened.

Her consciousness centered in the bloodred, lightning-quick battlefield her body had become.

In another, much slower reality, an unimaginable distance away, as the bullets struck her, someone else roared as if he was the one being shot. Someone else strained every ounce of mind and body to race toward her. He was impossibly, inhumanly fast, but he would still not reach the battlefield in time.

No matter how fiercely she demanded, she couldn’t heal all the wounds if enough bullets kept striking her. Her body would fail. She had to do something to stop the men from shooting.

She opened her purse and pulled out the nine-millimeter. As the men on the boat straightened, she pushed off the safety latch. She pointed the gun and emptied the clip at them, just like Michael had taught her.

Some of the shots went wild. She had forgotten what he had told her, that the gun would have a kick.

She sank to one knee. The world wobbled. She put a hand to the ground to steady herself on it.

“Now look what you made me do,” she said to the men, who had disappeared. She looked in disgust at the gun and dropped it.

She heard her name spoken in a voice gone hoarse from extremity. She turned her face up as Michael skidded to his knees beside her. His expression was unrecognizable, his chest heaved in sobbing breaths and the rain poured down his face like tears.

“Oh, God,” he said.

She reached out to grip the front of his shirt. Her hand slipped on the wet cloth. His shaking hands descended on her shoulders. She pulled his face down to hers and growled, “I don’t want to get shot ANYMORE TODAY.”

He knelt, gathered her into his arms and held her with his whole body. “You won’t be. I swear it.”

Lightning seared the sky overhead, thunder shook the air and the black glistening creature from the psychic realm attacked.

She was in such a weakened state she couldn’t struggle against the dark tentacle that wrapped around her right leg. The touch of it was so cold it seemed to burn into her bones. It started to draw the living warmth out of her.

Michael’s arms loosened, and he let go of her. She writhed in helpless agony as he surged to his feet. Then he erupted into a silver-hot rage that burned against her mind. His presence towered over her prone body, and a flaming sword appeared in his hand. The creature’s black tentacle fell away.

The storm flashed and thundered. Sheets of bitterly cold rain spewed down. His flaming sword arcing like lightning, Michael danced and struck with savage grace at the large, sinuous black creature. It undulated and hissed like a feral cat as it lashed back. Mary pulled her body into a small compact ball, squeezed her eyes shut and curled an arm over her head. But she couldn’t close off her psychic senses.

A complicated flurry of movements followed. Michael spun. The white-hot flame of his energy sliced deep into the creature’s midnight form. An eerie shrieking filled her head, almost like the whistle of a teakettle. The creature recoiled from Michael’s shining figure and dragged itself away.