Falling Light (Game of Shadows #2)(84)

“Report!” the Deceiver bellowed. “Report now, goddamn it!”

And another man’s voice: “There were six. Six explosions. Somebody just blew all our boats.”

In the tiniest breath of a whisper in her mind, Astra said, Buy me some time. Just a few more moments, cookie.

At the same moment the Deceiver turned on her. He roared, “TELL ME WHERE SHE IS!”

Time.

A kind of insane fury took her over, built on centuries of struggle. It was clear and cold like freezer-chilled vodka, and it sliced away all of her terror. She barked out a laugh. “Right. I’m so motivated to do that.”

He kicked her. “Tell me, you sack of shit!”

“Fuck you,” she gasped. “Oh wait. You’re already f**ked.” Still laughing, she curled tighter to protect herself from the blows.

Just a few more moments, cookie.

He continued to kick at her. A crescendo of pain swept away her laughter, until she began to disconnect from her physical body. She fought to stay present and connected.

No, she said to her body when his steel-toed boots slammed into her. Heal.

Dampening the pain, she managed to snag another groove on the knife with her fingernails, and she pulled out a thin, sharp blade.

Then she noticed an oddity in the tableau of forty or so watching men. A small, skinny shadow puppet, held together with pins and wishes, stumped up to an army of alert, trained guards who didn’t appear to notice anything. Astra.

Shots rang out. Mary had no idea who was shooting, but two men fell and didn’t move again, and another one writhed on the ground, screaming. The rest erupted into frantic movement, most of them running toward the trees. The Deceiver whirled with a roar to face this new threat. He didn’t appear to see Astra either.

Part of healing is the knife. Sometimes you have to cut the cancers out.

Mary rolled and pushed to her feet. She aimed for his cervical spine at the back of his neck and drove the blade in deep. She wasn’t picky. Anywhere between vertebrae C1 and C8 would do. She sent her awareness spearing down the knife’s edge to make sure she struck her target—and she severed his spinal cord.

The Deceiver’s bellow of rage choked into silence. His head fell back and his back arched, and his body collapsed to the ground. Almond-shaped dark eyes blazed with a nuclear-hot fury, but his body was now effectively a quadriplegic. He was trapped as long as he couldn’t touch anyone else to leap into another body.

“Asshole,” Mary said, still in that stranger’s ragtag voice. Ignoring the rapid, staccato sound of gunfire, she wiped the blade on her thigh, snapped it shut and shoved the knife into her pocket, sucking in deep draughts of the cold night air as she stared down at him.

The black diamond man sat up, out of his paralyzed body. His head tilted back as he looked at her.

Well, shit.

She whirled and lunged for Michael’s body, fell to her knees and swept her hands over him. She grabbed every dart she found. Come on, damn it. There—several darts had stuck in his Kevlar vest. They couldn’t have discharged the drug into his system. She snatched at them and whirled, just as the black diamond man bent over her kneeling figure. He wrapped his arms around her.

Time to say good night, cookie.

A discordant humming dug bitterly sharp talons into her mind. Pain scalded her. She fell to the ground, her back arching. The talons ripped at her. She heard herself start to ring like strained crystal.

“Oh no, you don’t,” she gasped. She concentrated on crawling forward toward his body. She managed to claw forward a few feet.

Was she close enough? She had to be. Blinded with pain, consumed by the lethal noise that threatened to shatter her mind, she reached out as far and as hard as she could and stabbed downward with her fistful of darts.

She connected.

The black diamond man screamed in her face. With a groan she twisted away, straining to get distance from his malignancy.

His presence flickered and weakened. Gathering her energy, she shoved at his spirit with the full force of her revulsion. His hold on her slipped and fell away.

The sound of gunfire came closer. She didn’t look around. Her eyes refused to focus, and her ears kept ringing.

Only one thing mattered. She crawled back to Michael, running her hands up his body until she found his neck with shaking fingers. His pulse was slow, strong and steady. She pulled out her new best friend, the pocketknife, and opened up a blade to cut through the bindings on his arms and legs.

“Sorry, lover,” she muttered. “Time to wake up.”

She had lost the ability to finesse a long time ago. She shoved her awareness into his body, located his adrenal glands and punched them into the next week.

Michael’s back arched so violently his torso left the ground. She lost her hold on him. Her ear itched. She scratched at it, and her fingers came away slick with wetness.

Michael grabbed her, and he held her so tight her bones creaked in protest. He was dragging in deep breaths as though he had just run a marathon. Apparently he had lost the ability to finesse as well, because his bright, golden presence pierced her like a spear of light as he scanned her.

Her senses were too bruised and abraded. She gasped and flinched away from his touch.

His hold loosened and he shifted suddenly. As she squinted at him, he snatched at his rifle and snapped it to his shoulder.

“Ease up, Michael,” a familiar voice said sharply. “I’m friendly fire.”