Rising Darkness (Game of Shadows #1)(22)

They didn’t shoot me. They recognized my face. They called me by name. They want me for something.

What do they want from me?

Then she twisted into Spring Jacket’s body and brought one knee up hard between his legs. As he groaned and doubled over, she jerked her arm free to stab at Sport Coat’s eyes with stiffened fingers. He caught her wrist before she hit his face.

Sport Coat spun her around until she faced away from him. He forced both of her arms behind her back. She knew she was in serious trouble even as she tried to kick Spring Jacket in the head. He ducked to the side, and she missed.

With a grunt Spring Jacket stood upright. He backhanded her. Her head snapped from the blow. She bit her tongue so hard blood spurted in her mouth. Then she had to stop screaming because she started to choke.

“I’ll pay you back more when we’ve got time,” he said. She spat a mouthful of blood in his face. He wiped it off with a sleeve. “Keep it up, bitch. I’m running a tab.”

Neither man had lost his empty mannequin smile. The four murders and the fight had taken less than a minute.

A short distance away, cars shot down a busy five-lane highway. She willed them to keep moving so that no one else got shot.

Even if someone noticed the fight and called 911, it wouldn’t do her any good. The men picked her up, one at her torso and the other at her legs. They jogged with her toward a dark unmarked van.

That van was the embodiment of every kidnapping nightmare.

She couldn’t go in there.

She was as good as dead if they got her in that van.

She bucked and kicked as hard as she could, and she barely made them stagger.

Panic enveloped her, a pure bolt that was as sharp and cold as a scalpel of ice slicing open a vein. It was followed by a blinding wave of white heat that filled her mind and body. A roaring madness took over the world.

She was aware, as if from a great distance, that both men had started to curse. They dropped her. She hit the ground hard and tried to roll into a ball. The roar of white noise filled her body and mind then began to recede.

She was being rolled on the ground, wrapped up in something.

Voices:

“Hurry up, goddamn it. Cover her legs with your jacket.”

“I’m going as fast as I can. What the hell did she just do? Somehow she f**king burned my hands.”

“I got burned too, ass-wipe, and I’ve got her shoulders covered. Come ON!”

The sound of a door sliding open. She stirred. Rough hands slid under her shoulders and legs. She opened her eyes. Felt herself being lifted. Looked up into two smiling mannequin faces. Liquid spilled out of her mouth.

A hawk with splayed talons plummeted out of the jewel-toned sky. It raked Spring Jacket’s head from nape to crown, slashing him open to the bone. Wetness sprayed her again. The man rocked forward from the blow. He dropped her legs.

Spring Jacket wobbled and turned toward what hit him. A second hawk dove for Sport Coat’s face. One of his eyes split like a grape under the slash of its talons. He lost his hold on her shoulders. She hit cement hard a second time. She would have whimpered if she’d had any breath. She managed to roll several times before she dared to lift her head.

Both men were bent at the waist, covered with dozens of attacking hawks. They beat at the air and slapped at the birds. Red streaked their flailing figures. One pulled his gun and fired blind. A few birds dropped to the ground. A dozen more took their place.

She struggled to her hands and knees but didn’t dare rise to her feet, for a shrieking cloud of raptors wheeled and dove in the parking lot. Red-tailed hawks, rough-legged hawks, turkey vultures, Cooper’s hawks, falcons, goshawks, harriers.

Calm descended on her for the space of one pulse beat.

She was not on earth. She was somewhere else where things like this could happen.

A breeze whipped around her damp neck, and that small voice said, They die for you. Don’t waste their sacrifice. Run!

She ducked her head to crawl away from the battle. Gravel bit into the heels of her palms and her knees. Her hearing was filled with the sound of her harsh wet breathing.

Car. Keys. Purse. Where’s the damn purse?

She had been carrying her purse by its strap. She had dropped it somewhere when she had been attacked. She crawled toward the front of the restaurant, searching the ground of the parking lot as she went.

She had to go back around the corner of the building. Her purse was lying close to the woman named Christine, near the dead woman’s outflung arm.

She touched Christine’s still-warm fingers and said in a harsh croak, “If your spirit is still here, I’m so sorry. I don’t understand why this happened. I would have done everything I could to avoid your family if I’d known.”

She snatched up her purse, struggled to her feet and ran, bent over, back around the corner and down the line of parked cars until she reached her Toyota.

Scrape, fumble.

Get the damn key in the lock. There.

She yanked at the door and fell into the car. Locked the door. Started the engine.

It stalled. A sob broke out of her. She tried again.

The engine roared. She jerked the stick shift into reverse, misjudged the distance and clipped an SUV as she pulled out.

Thunk!

Something hit her trunk. She screamed and twisted at the waist to look out the rear window. A blood-covered figure pushed off of the trunk of her car and fumbled along the driver’s side toward her door, one arm curled over his head while shrieking birds continued to dive and rip his skin to ribbons. His raw, red flesh was unrecognizable as a face.