Falling Light (Game of Shadows #2)(4)

In this lifetime, Astra and Michael had become convinced that Mary had finally been reborn. They had searched for her for years, but they only managed to get the occasional glimpse of her in the psychic realm.

A few days ago, events had finally come to a head. Mary had torn that old spiritual injury wide open, and Astra had leaped into an astral projection in order to try to reach her. Then the Deceiver had drawn Astra into a dream to show her one of his executions. Only hours after that, she had thrown herself into another astral projection to join Michael and Mary as they fought off the Deceiver and his forces. She had fought in the battle for as long as she could before she finally had to drop out.

Now, after her prodigious expenditure of energy, Astra slept as her elderly, fragile body struggled to rejuvenate. The ancient, alien part of herself was always awake, always aware. It drifted patiently in the darkness of her mind.

That part of her could sense the rest of the battle that consumed the others. Even from a distance, their fight lit the psychic landscape. Astra watched and did nothing, because there was simply nothing more that she could do.

So she gathered her psychic resources. As soon as she had regained enough strength, she created the delicate web of imagery, illusion and desire that made up a dream sending. When it was complete, she loosed it in the direction of the one she targeted. Then she waited.

Some time after the battle, the one she waited for drifted into sleep. Astra felt her dream sending activate. She reached along the web she had woven. When she touched the mind of the sleeping one, the dream had already begun. She eased into it.

Her dream body found itself standing in the middle of a spacious, tiled hall. She walked down the length of it, passing rows of columns as she looked around with curiosity. The ceilings were high and vaulted, and thin sheets of carved marble covered the walls. There was no imagery anywhere in the carvings, just interlocking patterns of such delicate complexity that the cool, hard stone resembled lace.

It was daylight, and the dream carried a sultry heat. She could hear the silvery sound of splashing water nearby and followed the sound. She came upon a courtyard filled with a small, immaculate garden fragrant with a brilliant profusion of colorful flowers. A marble fountain carved with gracious dimensions spouted water in the middle of the garden.

A young woman, dressed in a simple homespun cotton tunic and trousers, sat on the edge of the fountain. She was too thin, her quiet face carved with stress, thick hair captured in a dark blond braid at the nape of her neck.

As Astra approached, the young woman turned wide, sky blue eyes toward her and said, “For some reason, I keep coming back to scenes from this lifetime. Even though I’ve healed, I must not be finished with it after all. You must be Astra.”

“Yes,” she said.

“I thought I recognized you. I’m Mary, if you didn’t already know.” Mary studied her with frank curiosity. “Michael said you were old, but you look like a young woman.”

“My body is old, although I don’t, thank God, have to be old in my dreams.”

“A few days ago, when you came to me, I was in the Grotto on the university grounds at Notre Dame.”

“I wondered where you were,” said Astra. “I knew you were some distance from me, but somehow still local, and certainly not as far as overseas. Of course things are different in the psychic realm than they are in the physical world. You were also too confused and distressed to be able to tell me anything concrete.”

“When you appeared, I actually thought you might be the Virgin Mary. I was pretty disappointed you weren’t.” Mary’s shoulders lifted in a wry shrug. “No offense.”

Astra laughed. “None taken.”

“Has Nicholas arrived yet?” Mary asked.

Surprised, Astra’s dream body stilled as her mind raced.

Millennia ago, when she had first been born on this earth, she had developed close ties with the people of the First Nations. She had taught them ways of the spirit in the hopes that they might become her allies in her fight against the Deceiver. PtesanWi, they called her. White Buffalo Calf Woman.

Over the years, she continued to maintain a connection with a select few of the First Nation elders. Nicholas’s father, an Ojibwa elder named Jerry Crow, was one of her most recent allies. Together she and Jerry had trained Nicholas, who for a human was unusually strong, both in mind and body.

The boy had fulfilled all their hopes. He had become a Green Beret and worked his way to the head of the Secret Service detail assigned to protect the President of the United States, where he stood guard against more than mere physical threats. Attuned to the spiritual realm, Nicholas had been their defense against the Deceiver attempting to make the President into a tool to enact his wishes.

A few days ago, Nicholas had been assassinated. Jerry and one of his grandsons, Jamie, had traveled to her house to give her the news. Even now, Jerry lay in one of her guest bedrooms, laboring for his life. After a life filled with too much smoking and stress, Jerry’s heart was finally giving out on him.

He needed to be in a hospital, but he had expended all of his strength in coming to tell her about Nicholas’s death. Astra’s place was in such a remote location, if Jerry tried to get to a hospital now, the trip alone would probably kill him.

While Astra was not primarily a healer, she had some skills. She knew that she could heal Jerry. It was, just barely, within the realm of her abilities, but she couldn’t afford to expend the precious energy it would take to save him.