Rising Darkness (Game of Shadows #1)(35)

Warrior, the wolf said.

She stuffed her hands against her mouth, filled with excitement and wonder for she had heard both of them as clearly as if they had spoken aloud. Even if she felt like she had lost her mind, she wasn’t creating everything that she was experiencing. The wolf looked at her.

She said, I’ll never forget you.

He paced forward and nosed her hand. Then, before she could stroke his head, the wolf whirled to leap into the forest. The pack poured after him.

When the last of them had disappeared, she looked at Michael. “My name is Mary. I have two hundred and ninety-five dollars in cash. I haven’t used my checks or credit cards since I was attacked.”

“Good.” He regarded her, his hard expression thoughtful. “And don’t worry about money. I have plenty. We need to go.”

She walked with him to his car and climbed into the passenger seat.

* * *

THE INTERIOR OF the Ford was worn but spacious and comfortable, with old-fashioned bench seats and much more modern installed seat belts. The backseat was piled with things that were unidentifiable in the darkness, but the front seat was clear. The car smelled faintly of engine oil, leather and the faint clean scent of aftershave.

She tucked her purse and the plastic bag of snacks between her feet. They were now the sum total of her worldly possessions. After she put her seat belt on, she rummaged in the bag for a bottle of water and the chocolate bar.

Michael twisted to look over his shoulder, and he backed the car onto the paved road. She caught a glimpse of a large red-tailed hawk perched on a low-hanging limb of a tree and craned her neck to stare as it launched into flight. It was soon swallowed by the dark night.

After a few minutes they approached the entrance ramp to Highway 131. Michael took the northbound ramp. The car accelerated to just under the speed limit and held steady. She sagged back in her seat with a sigh and unwrapped the chocolate bar.

The duality in her emotions continued. As afraid of him as she was, she was also intensely relieved to be on the road again. Losing her independent transportation worried her, but leaving her car behind meant that they also left her license plates behind, and she became a little more difficult to track.

They traveled in silence. Apparently you-can-call-me- Michael was a man of few words. He drove with competence and appeared relaxed, but she noticed that he checked the rearview mirror often and his expression remained a closed vault.

He didn’t offer to turn on the radio, and she didn’t ask. She looked out the window at the moonlit landscape and the occasional traffic, sucking on her candy. She didn’t offer him any chocolate, and he didn’t ask.

In the privacy of her own mind, she admitted that it was a relief to sit passive for a while with someone who seemed strong and capable, who wore a gun and knew how to use it and who appeared to understand the dangers they faced. At the same time her bruised, hypersensitive nerves jangled with awareness of the tough, dominant presence at her side. She could not get beyond her fear of him, or the threat that he had made.

Hawks, wolves, wind spirits and the strange haunt of inexplicable dreams. Two grotesque men and casual murder. The vision at the Grotto. Her house in flames. She was dying.

Why was she dying?

She was walking and talking like a normal person, but something was terribly wrong with her. She didn’t need to take Michael’s or her daemon’s word for it. Deep in her bones, she could sense that it was true. It felt like she had torn something open, some unseen spiritual ligament, and it was vital in some way to her existence. In the meantime everything she thought she knew about the world had crumbled into dust.

She said aloud, “It’s like all my life I’ve lived in some kind of painting. There was a lot of color and detail, and the painting seemed to make sense, but either somebody has smashed the frame or I’ve fallen out of it somehow. Now I’m in a totally different reality. The color and detail seem similar, but everything’s changed. I can’t go back into the painting. It’s two-dimensional, and I don’t fit. I don’t even know how to try. But I don’t understand this new reality either, or how to survive in it.”

The atmosphere in the car changed. She could sense his attention sharpening on her as she spoke. She paused, but he said nothing.

Anger sparked. She said, “If you’re not crazy, then I’m not crazy. I heard you speak to that wolf. I heard that wolf speak to me. Someone burned down my house. I saw it on the news along with other people in a restaurant, so I know I’m not making that up. Hundreds of hawks attacked two men who murdered four innocent people right in front of me. Those men called me by name. They were kidnapping me. Those hawks were the only thing that kept me out of their van. These things happened. I have the bruises to prove it. And I resent like hell that I might need you, but you might kill me for some mysterious unknown reason. As far as I know, maybe you’ll kill me on a whim—maybe just because you get indigestion and you feel cranky and trigger-happy tonight. By the way, you never thanked me for that sandwich you took without asking. And if I’m already dying, which you say, I don’t know why you’d even bother to kill me unless you just get cranky and trigger-happy sometimes. Maybe you’re the crazy one, and I’m the one who’s sane. Did you consider that, Mister Enigmatic?”

As she twisted in her seat to glare at him, a startled smile flickered across his face. By the dashboard’s dim illumination she caught how the brief smile shifted the planes and angles of his face into something quite different from his former grim endurance. He glanced at her, his light eyes glittering like a flash of bright gems glimpsed under a shadowed cloak.