Rising Darkness (Game of Shadows #1)(38)

Her dreams.

A sudden flood of memory brought back the dream of the wounded woman. Like the sacred poison dream, the wounded woman was another recurring dream that she’d had throughout her life. Blood-shot and filled with disturbing imagery, she had tended to dream it only in times of great stress.

And her dreams . . .

Her breathing roughened, became erratic. Michael’s jacket no longer provided welcome warmth but became a stifling restriction. She couldn’t get enough air inside her lungs. She fumbled to unlatch her seat belt and struggle out of the jacket, and she began to claw her way out her T-shirt.

“Okay, easy,” Michael said, his voice sharp. “You need to take deep, slow breaths. Try not to fight it.”

She heard his words but not their meaning. All her attention was focused inward where an immense heat blazed up. She was burning to death. She felt suspended in time as though she had waited all her life in a silence so profound it seemed to roar, waited to hear the first sonorous clang of a terrible gong.

Remember who you are.

My dreams are real.

And she was racing back in her mind to the small child she had been, and what that child had said to upset her mother so badly, she had learned to bury it and eventually forget, and how ever afterward her mind would slide away from that memory because it was such a bad, bad thing. . . .

Mommy, I had the strangest dream, she had said.

I dreamed I was human.

Unspeakable loss welled up inside her again, only this time it was deeper and stronger than ever before. This time it wasn’t held at a distance or tucked behind a veil. It roared into her like a tsunami, and she cried out and doubled over from the force of it.

Chapter Twelve

EXHAUSTED BY HER long-distance astral journey to talk to Mary, Astra rested on her narrow bed under a pile of every blanket in her bedroom, but she still couldn’t get warm. A deep chill had settled into her aching bones last winter, and it had never gone away. Despite all her best efforts, her body was wearing out. She knew part of the reason why was her spirit was as worn as her flesh.

There used to be some things that mattered to her more than existence. Sometimes now it seemed neither existence nor those things mattered at all.

Time and again the group had struggled, and for what? They died and they died, and now some of them were gone forever.

Raphael and Gabriel. Ariel and Uriel. All destroyed beyond reclaiming.

A tear rolled down her cheek, sliding down the furrows and creases of her face.

A gentle tap sounded at her doorway. “Grandmother?”

She wiped the tear away and turned her head. “What is it?”

Jamie still refused to lift his head and look directly at her. “Your light was still on,” he said. “I wanted to ask you if you needed anything.”

“No.” She needed nothing this kind child could give her. “How is your grandpa?”

He shuffled his feet and cleared his throat, and said hopefully, “He’s resting well. I think his color looks better.”

“Good.” She said it like she believed that Jerry’s condition would improve, or like she cared anymore. Jerry wasn’t getting better, and she didn’t. He would be dead in a week, and she didn’t care about any of the people on this earth anymore. She wanted to go home. “Go to bed, boy,” she said in a rusty-sounding voice. “You’ll not be of any use to your grandpa if you don’t get some sleep.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He hesitated as if about to say something else but then, for a mercy, he kept silent and turned away.

At last, filled with dread, she crept into sleep.

She dreamed. She had known she would.

She stood in a dry wasteland devoid of any green or growing thing. There was no wind, no day or night, just a vast barren grayness. Even when her dream self closed her eyes, she saw the image of the gray landscape. If she had been in control of the dream, she would have changed the landscape to add color and life, but she wasn’t in control. This wasn’t her dream.

She waited in despair for what would happen next.

A figure appeared and strolled toward her. It shone with a ferocious black light. In its hands it held an agonized slip of lavender mist.

Old woman, the Deceiver said.

She looked at the wind spirit he held and recognized it immediately. It was the one she had sent to help Mary. She said, This is unbelievably petty, even for you.

I promised you a long time ago, the figure said. You remember, don’t you? I will destroy every creature that you hold dear, even down to the smallest one.

Creator, have mercy, not for me but for your fragile child who is in such pain.

Forgive, forgive.

She didn’t bother to try to gather her strength. She had none, and she couldn’t have acted even if she had. Neither she nor the Deceiver could actually hurt or touch each other in this dream, for it was merely a sending, a message filled with events that had already occurred. He liked to show her his executions.

The black radiant figure took the wind spirit in both hands and savaged it to shreds. The delicate creature had no defense. It made a muffled whimper as it was destroyed almost instantly.

The Deceiver showed her its empty hands. Until next time, bitch.

How many times must she be summoned to this killing field?

The world wasn’t large enough to contain her grief.

Chapter Thirteen

WHEN ALL WAS said and done, Michael found himself surprised that he was walking and talking with any semblance of coherency.