Rising Darkness (Game of Shadows #1)(49)

“Man, you’re hot,” he said to the image. If he ended up occupying this body for any length of time, he would have to visit his tailor.

He had a particular style he favored. It was killer chic.

Chapter Sixteen

MARY WOKE UP hard from her dream. She sucked in deep, ragged breaths as she stared at the battered interior of the car, at the grim man beside her, at the highway.

Memory settled into place. She scrubbed her face with both hands. Christ, she was getting tired of being tired.

“What’s wrong?” Michael asked. He shot her a sharp, pale-eyed glance.

She shook her head, not wanting to answer him. She looked instead at the bags of fast food on the seat between them. “Is some of that for me?”

“Yes. The coffee in the holder is yours too. It’s probably cold by now. I didn’t want to wake you. I figured you needed to sleep.” His mouth tightened, a pale, grim line. “What’s wrong?”

To avoid answering him, she ducked her head and rummaged through the contents in the bags. There were a couple of large lukewarm hamburgers, French fries that had congealed and stuck together, and a piece of cardboard with a picture of apple pie on the outside. She opened the plastic lid on the coffee cup and sipped at it. The brewed liquid tasted harsh. It was cooler than the food. She sighed.

“I want a month in a hotel by a beach,” she said. “I don’t want dreams. I don’t want to ask a single scary question, and I don’t want anyone to tell me anything useful. I plan on practicing the art of cheerful incuriosity. And I want room service to bring me a mushroom and asparagus omelet, a fruit salad and fresh-ground French roast with cream.”

Steel entered Michael’s voice as he repeated, “What’s wrong? If you dreamed it might be important.”

She snapped, “I’m sure it is important, but I’m not ready to talk about it. Quit pushing me.”

He blew out a breath between his teeth in a sharp, impatient sound but fell silent. She forced herself to eat some of the starchy food while she thought. Then she drank all of the coffee, grimacing at the bitter taste.

She could no longer summon even a pretense of disbelief at what was happening. A bleak resignation settled in her chest. It rested in a lump where the assassin’s sword had cut into her, all those many centuries ago.

“There isn’t going to be any month on the beach, is there?” she said. “This is the sum of our existence. We’re born, we’re haunted, we work to understand what has happened to us, to remember and to find each other, and we try to destroy the Deceiver. Then we die and are reborn, and it starts all over again. Over and over.”

Michael gave her a long, thoughtful glance, clearly assessing the change in her attitude, although he didn’t remark on it. Instead he said, “That’s not quite true. There can be years of peace at a time. It’s possible to have a good childhood. This life has been harsh for a lot of reasons.”

She thought of the sprawling, gracious home in that ancient city by the sea, of the people who had been so mystified by her and who had loved her anyway. Her eyes pricked with tears. “Yeah,” she said, her voice thick. “When was the last time you knew peace?”

He remained silent. Somehow she knew he would.

She said, “I need to go to the bathroom. Can you stop as soon as possible?”

“We’ll make a quick stop at the next rest area. It should be in about ten minutes.”

“Thanks.” After a few minutes she said, “Do you even think it can be done? Destroying him, I mean. It’s been such a long time.”

“It can be done,” he said. “He’s powerful, but he’s not a god. This world is a big place, and he has gotten talented at hiding. We spend a lot of time just hunting him. And not all of us have been involved in every conflict. I was alive when the Deceiver destroyed two of the group in the fifteenth century, and Astra’s told me something about the other two and how their lives ended. She doesn’t know for sure exactly what happened to Gabriel and Raphael, only that they died together.”

Shadowy memories of people ghosted through her head. She asked in a hushed voice, “How did they die? But I guess that’s the wrong way to ask the question, isn’t it? How were they destroyed?”

He rubbed the back of his neck, and the lines of his face settled into that habitual grimness. “One of his favorite tricks is to capture one mate and use torture to try to control the other. Ariel and Uriel were the two he killed when I was alive. He caught Uriel while Ariel was imprisoned by the English. It—the local politics of the time don’t matter. He destroyed Uriel, and Ariel’s spirit dissipated as well. I couldn’t get to her in time. I couldn’t get to either one of them.” The bones of his face stood out in the dim light of the dashboard. “They both died alone.”

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. The back of her throat felt thick with unshed tears.

He glanced at her. “This situation we’re involved in right now—it’s important for a lot of reasons.”

Then he fell silent. She didn’t ask anything more about the other pair, rubbing her arms as she thought. “Is it important because the four of us are all in one geographical area?”

He nodded. “That’s part of it. You’ve managed to resurface, which is another part. Also, early yesterday morning one of our allies in the Secret Service was assassinated. That means the Deceiver is preparing to try to take control of the U.S. Presidency.”