Rising Darkness (Game of Shadows #1)(33)

He knelt near her again, tore open the wrapper on the sandwich and ate it in quick, strong bites. She watched every move he made out of the corner of her eye, her face half averted.

He nodded to the bag. “Eat something.”

She said, “I’d rather not.”

He frowned and shot a glance down her huddled figure. “Do it anyway. You need the calories, and it will help you warm up.”

Stung by his critical look, resentful that he was right and mindful of his greater strength and the gun, she dug out the second sandwich, opened the wrapping and snapped off a bite. As she tasted tuna, her stomach threatened to revolt. Then it settled and she managed to eat most of the sandwich until she caught sight of the wolf again.

She turned to look at the strong, powerfully muscled animal. The wolf’s yellow impassive gaze regarded her. Obeying a half-formed impulse, she took the last corner of her sandwich and placed it with care on the ground between them.

He held her gaze for a long moment. Then with slow deliberation and a remarkable delicacy, he bent his head and ate the offering. The strange man watched the interaction with an unreadable expression.

“Huh,” she grunted. She bent her head and knuckled her eyes. Sharp points from the gravel dug into her ass. Her body started to ache again in places where she had forgotten she had been hurt.

She must have pulled onto private property. The wolves had to be trained. Maybe they were wolf-shepherd hybrids. They must belong to the man. They would probably run her down if she tried to get away

Her flimsy attempt at logic crumbled. She spoke to the alpha wolf in the same way she spoke to her daemon. I had a dream about you. You said you had answered my call for help. You said you’re here to protect me?

Silence unfurled in the clearing. She felt like a fool.

Then the wolf said, Yes.

The simple word came into her head from a place outside of herself. Her lips parted. This was far beyond her daemon, which could, after all, be explained away as a construct of her own mind. She reached out to the wolf but didn’t quite dare touch him. I am . . . very grateful. Thank you.

Sister, the wolf said.

Beyond trying to make her experiences fit into any logical scientific framework, she thought of the hawks that had fought off her attackers, and rapid words burst out of her. I don’t understand what’s going on. Please don’t let this man hurt me—

The wolf lowered its head. We can only protect, he said. We cannot heal. The warrior can help you more than we can. You must let him.

But—but—Her gaze went back to the man who watched her with hard, expressionless eyes.

He had pinned her down. He scared her.

He pinned her after she woke and started fighting him. She had tried to bite him too.

But he didn’t have to pin her down. Why didn’t he just back away? He threatened to tie her up, and no amount of rationalizing could make that okay.

The man remained silent, as if knowing better than she the kind of thoughts that raced through her mind.

She said aloud, again, “I don’t understand. Who are you? What do you want?” An avalanche of questions piled up behind those two. She had to bite her lips to keep from shrieking them.

The man said, “You can call me Michael. What I want is irrelevant.”

He reached out a hand. The panic hit her low and hard, slamming into her gut. She cringed from the hand and scrambled away. She didn’t stop until she had put several feet between them.

Only then did she realize that he hadn’t moved. She huddled into the overlarge jacket, head down, and dared to look sideways at him.

He knelt frozen, his hand outstretched to her, palm up. Nothing moved in the clearing, not even the wind through the trees. The stoic expression in his hard face and blank eyes never changed. He looked prepared to take any blow and not budge.

It took a moment before she realized he was silently asking for her plastic bag of food. She hesitated then inched forward to offer it to him, holding the bag as far away from her body as she could.

Moving only his hand, slow and easy, he took the bag from her. He pulled out a packet of trail mix, tore it open and shook some into his hand as he said, “I hear you were attacked and some people were killed. Where did this happen?”

She pulled his jacket tighter around her torso. “How did you hear that?”

His colorless gaze lifted to her. “A wind spirit. Hawks.”

“My daemon talked to you?” She lifted her head but couldn’t sense any ethereal presence hovering nearby. “Where is it? You didn’t hurt it, did you?”

His glance admonished her for the question. “I sent it to someone, with news.” He chucked the handful of mix into his mouth.

She felt a sharp pang of loss. “You had no business doing that. It can’t leave me—I needed it. It was going to show me how to get somewhere.” Part of her found room for amazement. She laughed. “Listen to us. We sound like lunatics. We’re talking about something that can’t exist. The two of us are the same kind of crazy.”

“I’m not crazy,” the man named Michael said. He shook more mix into his mouth. He didn’t look crazy either. He looked like a tired man after a long, hard day. His gaze speared her. “But I figure you’ve got to be pretty close to it. I’m just trying to decide how close you really are.”

A fresh thrill of fear jangled along her nerve ends. She reached for her tattered dignity. “Whether I’m crazy or not has nothing to do with you.” She added bitterly, “And you had no right to send my daemon away.”