Rising Darkness (Game of Shadows #1)(2)

For all its shabbiness the ivory tower embodied an ordinary yet powerful magic. In the view from the second-story picture window, there was no sign of the street below or the neighboring houses that dotted the dead-end road. The scene gave the generous illusion she was in a cabin in the woods, far away from anyone else. She could stare out the window for hours at the evergreens, oaks and sycamores, watching flurries of white snow swirling in a snowstorm, or the moving shadows in the trees as daylight changed and faded.

Witch Road was a nearby street in the same neighborhood, part of a loop she had mapped for a daily two-mile run. The route cut close by the nearby river and had gradually pulled her under its spell as she jogged it repeatedly through the change of seasons.

Small houses were overpowered by tall, thick deciduous trees whose bones were uncovered with the death of every year, from the ones with straight willowy lines to those that had a more arthritic beauty, their gnarled joints and twisted limbs that shot in unexpected directions, ending in thousands of spidery-thin fingers grasping at air.

The underbrush was secretive and tangled. Thick vines and fallen limbs discouraged trespass from outsiders. The trees met overhead to rustle and whisper in the ebb and flow of restless, windy days, enclosing the narrow asphalt road with a leafy green canopy in the summertime.

She was too tired for her normal run. She walked the route instead.

The leafy canopy was fast returning with the warmer weather. On the other side of the green-edged lattice of tree limbs, fluffy cumulous clouds traveled across the sky at such speed, they seemed to be running from some unseen menace. The trees shifted and rustled. Leaves and twigs, the detritus from the death of the forest last autumn and winter, danced in circles that followed her down the street.

The swirling circles whispered to each other in small voices.

She’s not the one, stupid.

Yes, she is! She smells like blood. He’ll feed us well for this.

Mary paused and turned to look behind her. What a thing to fantasize.

She was imagining that, wasn’t she?

Other than the murmurous trees and the distant report of a car door slamming, the day was silent, while the wind tumbled sticks and leaves around like a child playing at jacks. A shadow covered the dancing debris, smearing it with darkness.

How could a tree cast that kind of shadow when the sun was not yet high in the sky? She glanced upward. Or perhaps it was a shadow thrown by a cloud.

Malice brushed the edge of her mind, and the tiny hairs at the nape of her neck rose. Or perhaps the darkness was something else, with an unfriendly agenda.

She shook her head at her own overactive imagination, turned back around and resumed walking again.

You saw! She looked at us. Does that mean she heard us?

Normal people don’t hear us. We must tell!

She jerked to a halt and broke out in a fresh sweat.

I didn’t just make that up.

I’m hearing voices.

I’m. Hearing. Voices.

An internal quake rattled her bones. She turned backward in a circle, staring around her with dry eyes. There was no one else close by. Down the street a couple of children exploded out of the front door of a house, their school bags slung over thin shoulders.

A few yards away twigs and pine needles tumbled in a dark pagan dance.

Everything else had stopped. There was no wind, no lick of breeze against her skin. Even the trees overhead had gone silent, waiting.

There was nothing around that would cause that wrong, impossible turbulence of air.

Her teeth clenched. She stamped her foot at the dancing sticks and leaves, and hissed, “Stop it!”

The small voices burst into chatter.

Yes, she heard us. She did.

We must go!

As abruptly as they had started, the voices stopped. The leaves and twigs dropped to the ground.

Nothing else disturbed the stillness, just a few cars pulling out of driveways as people headed to work under the watchfulness of the looming forest, as some of the trees only tolerated the humans who had moved into their territory—

Where had that thought come from? Why would she think such a thing?

Panic clawed her. She was used to dreaming strange dreams. She’d done it her entire life. Hearing voices though, and seeing what she saw—seeing what she thought she just saw—that was psychosis.

She clamped down on the panic. No. She was just too tired and not fully awake yet. She was still half-caught in a dream state where Dalí’s clock melted and Escher’s stairways led on an endless loop to nowhere.

Coffee would shake off this crazy fugue. She turned around and headed back in the direction of her house, working to a lope as she rounded the corner.

Her ex-husband, Justin, stood on her deck at the bottom of the concrete stairs. His dark hair shone with glints of copper in the early morning sun, his narrow, clever face bisected by dark Ray-Ban sunglasses. He was dressed for the office in a functional yet elegant suit, the jacket unbuttoned in the unseasonal warmth of the spring morning.

When she caught sight of him, she groaned under her breath and slowed to a stop. Justin caught sight of her before she could pivot and jog away.

Oh, great. Just what she needed, on top of everything else.

Well, the sooner she talked to him, the sooner he would go away again. Resigned, she walked forward to meet him.

Chapter Two

MICHAEL HAD BEEN in a rage for as long as he could remember, long before he understood the reasons for it.