Rising Darkness (Game of Shadows #1)(84)

She didn’t specify further. He seemed to know exactly what she was talking about anyway, as he nodded and straightened. “You do nothing for now. We get dressed, we pack up the car, and after you examine the drones, we leave.”

After she examined them. Not after she healed them. He didn’t believe that she could do anything for them.

Her face tightened, but she said, “Okay.”

She didn’t even try to wriggle into another T-shirt. Instead, he helped her to ease into one of his flannel shirts that could be buttoned down the front. Even though her jeans had gotten smeared with grass and dirt stains, at least she had managed not to bleed on them. Michael constructed a sling out of a kitchen towel, and slipped it over her head.

Then he limped into the bathroom. A moment later she heard the sound of running water. While she waited, she went to the sink and drank more water. Then she collected her purse, a pillow and a blanket. Packing was easy when you didn’t own anything.

She put the blanket and the pillow on the table, and sat and put her head on the pillow until Michael came back out.

He wore a fresh pair of jeans and another of his flannel shirts that he left loose and unbuttoned at the waist. She caught a glimpse of the hard muscles of his bare chest and a flash of white bandage at one wrist. His limp was more pronounced, his long mobile mouth bracketed with lines of pain. She watched him stuff weapons into his long black bag.

She cleared her throat and said in a rusty-sounding voice, “I dropped your other gun outside. Round the back by the path.”

“I’ll get it in a minute.” He looked at her. “Ready to go?”

She stood and scooped up the pillow and blanket with her good arm.

He looked at the way she clutched the bedding. A fugitive amusement ghosted across his face. “Right. Let’s hope he was too rattled and busy to f**k with our car, because otherwise we’re going to be on foot and then I will really be pissed.”

Her eyelids dropped in a slow blink. Now there was a thought. How could they make it if they were on foot? She looked at the leg Michael favored.

“Well,” he said wearily after a moment. “Let’s not borrow trouble. Come on.”

He carried his weapons bag and her kit outside. She followed him out to the car. With a pained grunt, he heaved the kit and the weapons bag into the back. She stuffed the pillow, blanket and her purse into the passenger seat.

When she turned to scan the clearing for Nicholas, she found the ghost standing in sunlight near two prone bodies. In full sunshine, Nicholas looked like the faintest extra shimmer of light. She was only sure it was him because she could sense his presence, warm and strong.

It was only then that she remembered she had seen his death when she had connected with his energy. Too easy tears pricked at her gaze. She had never met him when he was alive, and yet he had helped her. He was generous and brave, and it was terrible that he too was dead.

When she walked toward Nicholas and the two unconscious drones, she heard a quiet whisper of steel. She looked over her shoulder. Michael had reached into the backseat and drawn his long knife from the weapons bag.

Her stomach tightened. She turned away, and without looking back, she said, “Would you please bring my kit?”

His pause stretched her already frayed nerves. “Of course.”

He walked beside her with the first aid kit in one hand, his knife in another. The growing warmth in the sunny morning messed with her already shaky equilibrium. She fought it off, staying alert by force of will. When she reached the first man, she knelt beside him and said to Nicholas, Thank you for watching them. Thank you for everything.

You’re welcome. He knelt beside her. Thank you for trying to do something for them.

No need to thank me, she told him. I have to do this.

Flanked on either side by the men, one alive and one dead, she examined the unconscious drone. A bullet had grazed his head. As far as she could tell, that was what had knocked him out. As head wounds so often do, it had bled a lot, but it was by no means fatal.

Then she opened her other senses and examined him psychically.

The man’s spirit was gone, and there was no way to recall it. She could even see how the Deceiver had killed the spirit but left the body still animate and functional. The long slashing psychic scar was readily apparent to her mind’s eye.

Her breathing turned ragged, and tears pricked at the back of her eyes again. Had he committed this atrocity on Justin before he had stolen Justin’s body?

How did he do that?

She looked at Nicholas, into the faintest impression of dark, intelligent eyes. At the ghost of a courageous and extraordinary man who had not deserved to die.

A chilling possibility opened in front of her. She almost hated the fact that she had the capacity to be so clinical to consider it. But on the one hand, there was one man who did not deserve to be dead. While on the other hand, according to Michael, the Deceiver created lots of drones that no longer deserved to live.

If the Deceiver could take over another’s body, could someone else do it too?

It was one thing to harvest separate organs from a body once a person was declared dead. It was an entirely different thing altogether to consider harvesting the whole body.

She shook off the train of thought. At the moment, she had no answers, only questions. Sitting back on her heels, her heart aching and her mind in turmoil, she shook her head at the other two. “I can’t do anything for these men.”