Rising Darkness

  She shook her head. “How?

  “I don’t know. None of the rest of us would do such a thing. We haven’t developed the knowledge or the skill for it. All I know is he’s created a lot of drones.” Michael’s chest heaved as he looked around at the bodies in the clearing. His bloody face was set in grim lines as he turned to her. “I really want you to go inside now.”

  She stood her ground, staring up into his gaze. “What are you going to do?”

  “If any of these survived, I need to put them down.”

  It was her turn to stare at the bodies scattered across the clearing. The physician in her rebelled against Michael’s implacable words. It was one thing to fight and kill in self-defense, but to slit a man’s throat while he lay helpless, unable to defend himself?

  “These are people,” she whispered. Or at least they used to be.

  “They’re drones.” He emphasized the last word. “They’re just like the men who attacked you. The Deceiver can control them. They will continue to act out the last orders they received from him. That means if any of them are still breathing and they get to their feet, they will attack us again.”

  “They’re his victims too. If any of them are alive, I need to see if I can help them.” She straightened her spine and said in a soft voice, “You already know this, Michael. That’s what I do.”

  He raked a hand through his hair and swore savagely under his breath.

  A shimmering presence formed beside them, appearing to focus all of its attention on her. It was Nicholas. He said, Two have survived.

  She sucked in a breath. There was her answer. “I need my first aid kit out of the car.” She looked at Nicholas. “Will you keep watch over the survivors and let us know if they start to stir?”

  Yes, said the ghost. What will you be doing?

  She turned her attention back to Michael. “I’m going to do triage.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  TRIAGE.

  Allocating treatment to patients according to a system of priorities. Usually triage was designed to maximize the number of survivors, especially in disaster situations.

  This time, she was going to allocate treatment according to the value of the injured. She eyed Michael’s wounds. “You first.”

  A complex expression passed over his grim face, acceptance and understanding, even, oddly, compassion. “We don’t have much time,” he said. “We have to leave here as soon as we can. You might have forced the Deceiver into retreating, but he can still send others after us with a single phone call.”

  “Then we’d better get to it,” she said crisply. “I haven’t even examined you closely yet, but I’m still fairly certain you’re going to need stitches. I need my bag.”

  “I’ll get it.” Gripping his upper right thigh, Michael made his way to the car.

  She put a hand to her injured shoulder. As her adrenaline faded, she felt too hot and cold at the same time. The skin around her shoulder felt raw and painful to the touch. She had slowed her own bleeding and cleansed the wound, but she still needed to be bandaged. She could use some pain medication too. Ideally she should get a blood transfusion, but there was nothing ideal about any of this situation. They should both be in a hospital, and that simply wasn’t going to happen.

  Sending a look of silent gratitude to Nicholas’s straight figure, she went into the cabin. Everything inside looked just as it had when they had left it. Items from Michael’s weapons bag lay scattered across the table. The sheets and blankets lay in a rumpled heap on the bed.

  Then she saw the bullet holes that scored the cabin walls. Not everything was quite the same. First things first. She couldn’t help anybody else if she was too bad off herself. She rummaged in her purse for a small bottle of Tylenol and dry swallowed two tablets. Then, because she had lost a lot of fluids, she hobbled to the sink and drank as many cups of water as she could. She sprinkled sugar into one cup and gulped it down. Then she sprinkled salt into another cup and drank that down too.

  Then she sagged against the sink as the world went gray and formless.

  A hand gripped her good shoulder, and she jerked back alert. Michael stood beside her, his eyes dark with worry.

  “I’m okay,” she muttered. Her mouth felt filled with cotton.

  “Sure you are,” he said. His voice was rough, his face clenched like a fist.

  He took a knife and cut through the layers of her sweatshirt and T-shirt. She hadn’t taken the time to put on a bra, so when the pieces of material parted, her torso was bared to view.

  They both looked at the wound where a blackened bruise the size of Michael’s spread hand covered her shoulder. She patted the area gingerly with a handful of the ruined T-shirt, until the point of entry was exposed. The merest trickle of blood seeped from the opening. It hurt. It hurt a lot, but she kept the expression on her face stoic.

  “See?” she said. “I told you I slowed the bleeding. I remembered how. You can dress it for me, but after I see to the worst of your wounds.”

  The tension in his features eased. “Okay.”

  All those years she spent in med school. All that money spent on her expensive education, and in some ways, she had been a more powerful healer nine hundred years ago. She sucked on her lower lip, thinking. What would she be able to do, now that she had a modern education and she was recovering her memories?

  Shaking two more Tylenol out of the bottle, she gave the pills to him to take, then with her good hand, she helped him to strip off his weapons, armor and clothing. When she found several marks on the chest plate of the Kevlar vest, she bit her lip hard but set it aside without comment. He leaned back against the table while she examined the wounds. He had been shot too, several times, but the wounds were very shallow, just glancing scores along the skin of his arms and legs, and one along the side of his neck. They had to hurt like a son of a bitch, but they weren’t serious.

  The serious wounds were made by something sharp. Deep knife wounds along his arms and a bad stab in his right thigh that might have grazed the bone. Thank God he had listened to her and had worn the vest.

  She noticed something else that troubled her deeply. His energy, normally such a strong, vibrant and bright presence, was mottled with dark lines, like fractures. Had the Deceiver done that damage? How could it heal, or be healed? He looked like he could be breakable. The sight scared her, but she kept the emotion from her expression.

  Michael helped her pull out the necessary supplies from her kit. She taped some of his deeper wounds with non-suture strips, and cleaned and dressed the more shallow wounds. Three of the cuts needed suturing. He held rock steady as she worked, and watched her face.

  Finally she said, “Okay. You’re done for now.”

  “Your turn,” he told her. She eased into a chair as he ran hot water in a bowl. He washed her torso and shoulder, covered the entrance and exit wounds with thick pads of gauze and bound them in place. He muttered, “Christ, you’re covered in bruises.”

  “The last forty-eight hours have been eventful,” she said. “I just wish I had been more useful for some of it.”

  He snorted. “You saved my life, and you got one of the nastiest entities on the planet on the run. If you were any more useless, they could make an atom bomb out of you.”

  A short laugh broke out of her. It hurt, and she gripped her injured shoulder to brace it. Then she sort of pitched toward him and he leaned forward too, and somehow they ended forehead to forehead, looking deeply into each other’s eyes.

  The somberness of his gaze. The emotion pouring out of her. They told each other so much, and all of it in silence.

  She stroked his broad, bare chest. Then she said, “I don’t know what to do for your other wounds.”

  She didn’t specify further. He seemed to know exactly what she was talking about anyway, as he nodded and st
raightened. “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 fuck 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.”

  Without bending his bad leg, Michael bent over and cupped the back of her head gently. “Now will you go to the car and wait for me?”

  “Yes, all right.” She took a deep breath, clasped the hand he offered and climbed to her feet.

  Michael looked at Nicholas’s insubstantial, shimmering form. Thank you for coming to help her. Will you do one more thing?

  If I can, said the ghost. What do you need?

  Just check on Astra. Make sure she’s all right.

  I’ll do that.

  Then Nicholas seemed to turn to her. She felt extra warmth on her right cheek, as if he had touched her face, and he faded from the clearing.

  Her eyes welled again as she put a hand to her cheek. Then, glancing once last time at Justin’s body in silent farewell, she turned to walk to the car without looking back.

  While she waited for Michael, she leaned against the car by the passenger door and tilted her face up. She may not have a summer of peace in this place, but she could still let the warm, bright sun wash her clean and new.

  As a doctor she’d learned to accept that sometimes, despite all her best efforts, death and tragedy happen.

  But so does love, life and passion. She lost herself in memories of last night, Michael moving over her, and in her, and the words he had whispered to her.

  My miracle. My home.

  The next thing she knew, Michael stood in front of her. He had retrieved the gun and held it, along with the knife, in one hand. He leaned forward and kissed her, and she lost herself in the touch of his lips.

  He took her free hand. “Listen to me. We’re both hurt, and Astra’s strength is depleted. Thanks to you, the Deceiver has to recover too, but we don’t know how much reinforcement he has, so we can’t stop in one place again. I can drive for a while, but you need to concentrate on healing yourself. Nothing else matters. Heal yourself so you can take over driving, because soon I’m going to need your help. Do you understand?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  He kissed her hand. She curled her fingers along the lean edge of his cheek, hating how he looked so haggard, so worn. His physical wounds would be exhausting enough. Coupled with those worrisome fractures in his energy, he seemed drained of all vitality. He opened the passenger door for her, and after she had slid in, he walked around the car and eased into the driver’s seat.

  They shared a quick, tense glance. She whispered,
“Come on, start.”

  He turned the key.

  The engine purred into life with smooth perfection. It was such a mercy she could have wept. “Now we need to make tracks,” he said. “We’ve miles to go before we sleep.”

  She eased the seat belt around her aching body. “‘Miles to go before I sleep.’ That was a Robert Frost poem, right? It was some poet anyway.”

  “Whoever it was,” he growled. “I’ve got a bone to pick with him.”

  “At least we’re alive and together,” she pointed out.

  He shifted the car in gear and pulled onto the gravel drive. “And at least we get another day or two. Maybe more.”

  “A veritable wealth of minutes.”

  One corner of his mouth lifted. “A staggering fortune in seconds.”

  Struck by a thought, she said, “Hey. You never did steal any flowers for me, you know.”

  “I’m with a woman who is developing a memory like a steel trap.” His lips pulled into a real smile. “I’ll have to get right on that.”

  They drove off, into the morning’s falling light.

  Epilogue

  HE DROVE AWAY from the cabin in a white heat.

  Out of his whole elite strike force, he was the only one that had escaped.

  As the armored black limousine roared down the highway he made a rapid series of cell phone calls. His first call insured that Mary and Michael became fugitives from the Michigan state police. Then he called for reinforcements to meet him at a designated place. He was still raging when he hung up several minutes later.

  Dead or alive, he’d told his people. Dead or alive. He would rather wait for the conflict to come to a head in another lifetime than risk them reuniting with Astra in this one.

  Damn them, damn them, GODDAMN HER.

  Once upon a time, long ago and far away, he had nursed such pretty hopes. With a little effort and experimentation, he believed he could alchemically change Mary’s spirit. He wanted to weaken it in all the right places so he could take over her will. He had intended to turn her into a drone, so she would be as obedient as his human servants and yet still retain her healing abilities. He had wanted her as his insurance policy against accidental death or intentional harm.