Rising Darkness (Game of Shadows #1)(77)

Then she sensed something in the distance behind her, something so strange and wrong she stumbled over a tree root and would have shot a sock while it was still on her foot if she hadn’t kept the gun on safety.

She stopped, turned and scented the air like a bloodhound. Her kestrel flew around her, dive-bombing her head as it tried to shepherd her into moving in the right direction. She ignored it.

A massive black mass teemed and buzzed in the distance. She fumbled with her rediscovered abilities. She had none of Michael’s prowess. She swiped at her sweating forehead as if it would help her to see, but the mass wasn’t a physical one. It existed in the psychic realm, like the dragon or the dark creature, and it seemed to be coming from the direction of the gravel road.

What could it be?

She longed to be with Michael, or to at least feel able to contact him telepathically. But she didn’t dare to interrupt him a second time.

What IS that? she whispered to Nicholas.

That is a lot of creatures like the one I just killed, he said. He sounded grim. Thousands of them. Come on. We’ve got to go.

At a loss for anything else she could sensibly do, she turned to start running again after the ghost.

Behind her, the black cloud reached critical mass. It shot toward the cabin.

She jerked to a halt, made a noise and pressed the back of her hand against her mouth. If that many creatures attacked Michael, could they do any damage? He was whole and strong, and he shone like a tower in the backdrop of the psychic realm.

But according to Nicholas, if he were injured, those creatures could feed on him. That would weaken him further and expose him to greater injury, which would then in turn make him more vulnerable to their attack. Sometimes battles were not won in any dramatic, decisive move, but through the force of sheer numbers grinding the opposition into dust.

“Do as you’re told,” she whispered. Her voice was a ragged mess, but she was so scared and lonesome she said it out loud just to hear the sound of someone’s voice. “Don’t do something stupid. Don’t be a TV heroine and go in the basement where you know the vampires are.”

Nicholas seemed to look back at her, but he didn’t say anything.

She turned the statement into a marching rhythm and trudged, not ran, away.

Do as you’re told.

Do as you’re f**king told.

Would she know if he died? Were they attuned enough to each other so she would sense his passing? If she did, how would she bear it? They had just found each other. She’d barely had one day of feeling whole and sensual. One day of feeling the most astonishing and necessary passion.

One day of feeling real, not like a shadow of a person.

Give us a chance, he had said. But what if their chance was taken from them?

She remembered the final images from her last life. After an immeasurable endurance of pain, she had opened her eyes to find him bending over her. He had looked different, of course, but all she’d had to do was look into his gaze, and she had known him. They had only had time to exchange those few precious sentences, their only contact in almost a thousand years. Her chest felt constricted with something hot and hurting.

Just in case there was a God, and he had some time to spare, she whispered, “Why did you do this to us? How are we supposed to bear it? Or did we do it to ourselves? Is all of this our fault? It’s not my fault and it’s never been Michael’s. We’ve only tried to help.”

A sickening, vertiginous lurch clutched at her. She felt as if she were falling, followed by a sharp shock of impact. Gasping, she went down on one knee and struggled with disorientation.

Nicholas knelt in front of her. What happened?

She held up a hand and managed to articulate one word. Hush.

The ghost fell silent, watching her.

The feelings disappeared as quickly as they had come. She whispered, “Michael’s taken a bad fall.”

Even as she said it the spray of gunfire sounded again, several staccatos at once.

That was when she gave up all pretense of trying to reach the lake. She turned around to face the direction of the cabin and sent all her desperate attention toward him. The physical world dimmed as she concentrated on what she could sense in the psychic realm.

Images slammed into her. The air was thick and black with innumerable dark spirits. They swirled and swooped on two figures that blazed with light. One of them was tall and masculine. Michael had already regained his footing from the fall. The other was smaller and feminine. Even from that distance, Mary recognized Astra in her astral form.

Astra’s figure never appeared to move, but the dark spirits that swirled to attack her sizzled away to nothing, like moths encompassed by a pure, lethal flame.

Michael’s blazing figure wielded a bright spear of light that slashed through attacking dark spirits even as, in the physical realm, he killed the men that rushed him.

Pride and fear for him locked her throat. To fight like that in multiple realms at once . . . he was incomparable. But there were too many spirits, and too many men who were suicidal with recklessness.

As she watched, Astra’s bright figure flickered. Mary thought she heard the other woman call, I cannot stay any longer.

Then Astra disappeared from the scene. She blinked out of the scene as abruptly as if she had never been present.

Her departure left Michael all alone.

They battered him to the ground by sheer force of numbers.