He laughed. “Is that cowardice or common sense?” He pushed her against one wall, while he peered around the corner of the building. After a moment, he pulled back. The streetlights had come on in the darkening night. Illumination from a nearby street lamp sliced across his cheekbone and jaw. “Besides, I don’t believe you.” He looked down at her and ran callused fingers down the side of her upturned face. “You complain when you’re scared. You don’t run. Are you ready?”
She gave him a jerky nod. His dark head swooped down and he gave her a quick, hard kiss. She felt his warm, firm lips, the scrape of his short whiskers against her cheek, and her mouth moved against his in startled response.
He lifted his head too soon. “There’s a mile-long waterfront park, with a small municipal marina located at the western end. I’ve docked there before. The marina’s our best chance for quick access to a boat. When we exit the alley, it will be about a quarter of a mile west, to our left. We’ve got to cross the highway to get to it. There are two obvious places to cross the highway. One is at a stoplight at Lake Street or there’s a lighted tunnel that runs under the highway. Both are being watched, I think by humans.”
“There’s something else out there,” she said. “Something in the psychic realm. I don’t know what it is, but it’s big. It feels malevolent.”
“I know,” he said. “I sense it too. It’s watching the shoreline. We could wait for a break in the traffic and dash across the highway to the park. That would avoid the two crossings, but there’s not a lot of cover in the park, and that’s where the creature is lurking.”
She watched his face as she said, “We’re not going to get to a boat without a fight, are we?”
“No. The question is do we pick a human fight, or a psychic one? And either fight might draw attention from the other realm.” He cocked his head, which brought his gray eyes into the light. “How do you want to play this?”
She licked dry lips and twisted her hands together. “You’re the fighter,” she said. “Use your best judgment. I’ll back you up. Just tell me what you want to do, and I’ll do it.”
He said, “I’m tired of skulking. We’ll cross at the stoplight on Lake Street, and humans be damned.”
She tilted her face up and looked into the light-filled eyes of the tiger. With sudden surety, she knew he wasn’t afraid. He stood poised and balanced on the balls of his feet, an archetypical warrior wearing only the lightest of human facades. A realization occurred to her that felt as though it echoed back through time.
“You’re a madman,” she muttered. “I’ve always known it, haven’t I? And I’m mad too for following you.”
“I gave you a choice,” he said. His gaze sparkled with brilliance.
She glanced in the direction of the Lake, toward the black thing that waited to wrap them tight in its tentacles and suck the life out of them. She said again, “We’ll do it your way.”
He smiled.
They stepped out of the alley. They walked west toward the Lake Street intersection and Petoskey’s municipal marina. The sidewalks were deserted. Once again, Mary had to trot to keep up with him.
The wind had increased to a ferocious velocity. Across the vehicle-lit highway she could see the wide stretch of lawn that was the park. Beyond that curved the vast shadowed bowl of Little Traverse Bay. The water foamed with high, white-capped waves.
They approached a tree that creaked audibly as the wind whipped its upper limbs back and forth. Mary eyed it with wariness as she walked past. Ahead she could see the stoplight where they would have to cross the street. She caught a glimpse of the white arm of the dock as it protruded into the bay.
As the first heavy drops of rain lashed down, she thought perhaps the storm was already beginning to help them. People had moved inside to shelter.
Hopefully any guards watching for them would have wanted to get out of the storm too, and would be less vigilant. Wouldn’t they?
All too soon she and Michael reached the intersection. They had to wait for the light to change to create a break in the constant flow of traffic. Michael squeezed her shoulders one last time before his arm slid away.
Feeling anchorless, Mary shifted from one skittish foot to the other as her nervous gaze darted over the brilliantly lit, moving traffic. A parking lot dotted with cars lay on the other side of the highway along with a building attached to the marina.
The light changed. Traffic rolled to a stop. Michael moved across the highway with the smooth, purring grace of a Porsche. She followed humbly, clutching her purse.
They reached the other side of the crossing. She noticed what she had forgotten to look for before. A railing and sidewalk led downward to the entrance to the lighted tunnel. She looked sideways at it as she caught the faintest echo of chittering. Humans weren’t the only creatures that guarded the tunnel that night.
“Mary,” Michael said in a conversational tone.
Her attention snapped to him. “Yes?”
“When the fighting starts, I want you to move to the slips. Pick out a boat and wait for me there.”
“All right, but I’ve got to warn you, I don’t know anything about boats.”
“Just pick one that seems big and fast,” he said casually over his shoulder. “If it looks racy, it probably is.”
She nodded, although he was already four feet ahead of her and picking up speed.
Heavy clouds lit with lightning. Moments later, the rumble of thunder reached her ears. The rain started to fall more heavily. In the glow of the street lamps, the air was filled with streaks of silver.
Michael reached into his backpack, pulled out a bulky ammunition belt and slung it over his neck and one shoulder. Then he drew out his knife sheath and belt and buckled it to his waist, all while he walked in a fast, ground-eating stride toward the parking lot and building.
Last he pulled out his semiautomatic. He held it in one strong, muscle-corded hand, nose pointed to the ground. He let the backpack fall to the ground and broke into a run.
Four men appeared around the end of a nondescript van. The increasing rain obscured visibility, but she thought they were uniformed policemen. They started to pull their guns.
Michael whirled. He threw a black missile with such force it shattered one of the van’s windows. Then in the same seamless, balletic movement, he spun until he faced the building adjacent to the parking lot. He sprinted headlong for the nearest wall.
Mary watched as he ran up the side of the building and disappeared onto the roof.
She blinked, feeling slow and stupid with surprise.
Did she just see what she thought she saw?
Her footsteps brought her beside the backpack Michael had dropped where she came to a stop.
The men by the van finished pulling their weapons. They shouted to one another and began to run. They were all much slower and clumsier than Michael.
Her astonished gaze traveled from them back to the roof of the building. She felt like she had just been transported into a John Woo movie.
The van exploded.
A fireball enveloped two neighboring cars. The concussion knocked the men off their feet.
A scant fraction of a second later, a fast-dissipating blast of hot air slammed into her. She staggered, more from shock than anything else.
Michael said in her head, Mary. Get to the boat slips NOW.
She nodded. As if he could see her. Idiot. She bent to pick up the backpack he had dropped.
A fresh burst of chittering broke out behind her, sounding like nothing so much as a flock of disturbed bats bursting from a cave. She looked back at the tunnel. A man, dressed in black, raced toward her.
Whoops. She bolted.
Someone shouted. In the parking lot, the frames of three cars boiled with heat and light. The men struggled to their knees. A short, staccato burst of gunfire sounded from the r
oof, then another. The men in the parking lot fell again and didn’t move. She threw a glance over her shoulder. The man chasing her had fallen to the ground as well.
With her psychic sense she could see a cloud of dark things, like ragged scraps of black lace, hovering outside the tunnel, but she didn’t dare look any longer. She ducked her head and raced in a wide circle around the burning chaos in the parking lot. Then she cut across the lawn to the water.
Almost there. The parking lot lay behind her and the long dock filled with boat slips lay just ahead. She heard more shouting from the direction of the building, more shots. Michael was drawing all the gunfire. Sirens wailed in the distance. The sound grew closer rapidly.
Her gaze bounced from shadowed boat to boat as she ran toward the slip. She tried to decide which one was the best to pick. Not that it mattered. She was sure Michael only meant to get her out of the way until he could join her.
Two dark-dressed men rose up from the nearest boat. They leveled guns on her.
“Well, shit,” she said.
There was nowhere to hide on the wide, open lawn. She had no time to do anything except get braced. Everything slowed down as her awareness heightened to a sparkling clarity. They fired on her even as she slipped and skidded, awkward on the wet, short grass.
She had the briefest of moments in which to feel a foolish sense of betrayal. They hadn’t shouted for her to halt. They didn’t identify themselves as police officers.
They fired on her when she carried no visible weapon.
The first bullet entered her torso just under her left breast. Her sparkling awareness centered on it. It burst through the fragile barrier of her skin.
She was already at the point of entrance saying, No. No. HEAL.
Her skin closed behind the bullet. The cells knitted together in an instant from the force of her command.
The bullet continued its destructive path. It passed between two ribs and tore through powerful tendons and muscle. It entered her chest cavity.
HEAL, she demanded.
The tendons and muscle obeyed her command, and healed.
The bullet pierced her lung and passed through, and left pink scar tissue behind.
Meanwhile the second bullet entered her abdominal cavity. It began to tear through her pancreas. The third struck her right clavicle, broke it and ricocheted off the bone to pass through the muscle of her shoulder. The fourth pierced her throat by the Adam’s apple.
No, she said.
No, and No, and No.
Her body continued to heal each time she demanded it, but each time a wound closed over, it cost her. Each time she weakened.
Her consciousness centered in the bloodred, lightning-quick battlefield her body had become.
In another, much slower reality, an unimaginable distance away, as the bullets struck her, someone else roared as if he was the one being shot. Someone else strained every ounce of mind and body to race toward her. He was impossibly, inhumanly fast, but he would still not reach the battlefield in time.
No matter how fiercely she demanded, she couldn’t heal all the wounds if enough bullets kept striking her. Her body would fail. She had to do something to stop the men from shooting.
She opened her purse and pulled out the nine-millimeter. As the men on the boat straightened, she pushed off the safety latch. She pointed the gun and emptied the clip at them, just like Michael had taught her.
Some of the shots went wild. She had forgotten what he had told her, that the gun would have a kick.
She sank to one knee. The world wobbled. She put a hand to the ground to steady herself on it.
“Now look what you made me do,” she said to the men, who had disappeared. She looked in disgust at the gun and dropped it.
She heard her name spoken in a voice gone hoarse from extremity. She turned her face up as Michael skidded to his knees beside her. His expression was unrecognizable, his chest heaved in sobbing breaths and the rain poured down his face like tears.
“Oh, God,” he said.
She reached out to grip the front of his shirt. Her hand slipped on the wet cloth. His shaking hands descended on her shoulders. She pulled his face down to hers and growled, “I don’t want to get shot ANYMORE TODAY.”
He knelt, gathered her into his arms and held her with his whole body. “You won’t be. I swear it.”
Lightning seared the sky overhead, thunder shook the air and the black glistening creature from the psychic realm attacked.
She was in such a weakened state she couldn’t struggle against the dark tentacle that wrapped around her right leg. The touch of it was so cold it seemed to burn into her bones. It started to draw the living warmth out of her.
Michael’s arms loosened, and he let go of her. She writhed in helpless agony as he surged to his feet. Then he erupted into a silver-hot rage that burned against her mind. His presence towered over her prone body, and a flaming sword appeared in his hand. The creature’s black tentacle fell away.
The storm flashed and thundered. Sheets of bitterly cold rain spewed down. His flaming sword arcing like lightning, Michael danced and struck with savage grace at the large, sinuous black creature. It undulated and hissed like a feral cat as it lashed back. Mary pulled her body into a small compact ball, squeezed her eyes shut and curled an arm over her head. But she couldn’t close off her psychic senses.
A complicated flurry of movements followed. Michael spun. The white-hot flame of his energy sliced deep into the creature’s midnight form. An eerie shrieking filled her head, almost like the whistle of a teakettle. The creature recoiled from Michael’s shining figure and dragged itself away.
She jerked as two large hands gripped her.
Michael said in a hoarse voice, “It’s just me.”
She uncurled and tried to push herself up on one trembling arm. Rain poured into her face. She scrubbed at her eyes. Michael slid his arms under her knees and shoulders and picked her up.
Vehicles crowned with the screaming flash of sirens pulled into the far side of the parking lot. Michael sprinted down the long, slippery pier. Black water boiled and foamed around the planks. Her head bounced as he ran. She hooked an arm around his neck.
“Jesus Christ, how bad is it?” he demanded. “Are you bleeding?”
“No,” she stuttered, quaking from cold and shock. “I’m just shaky.”
He stopped running and tipped her carefully over a rail, onto the deck of a boat.
“Try to get below,” he shouted in her ear. He unsheathed his knife, slashed at the moorings, then vaulted onto the deck. He lunged to a small, enclosed cabin. There was a sound of splintering glass. Moments later he disappeared inside.
Disoriented, bewildered, she forced her chilled muscles to work. She didn’t trust her shaky balance on the streaming wet deck. She crawled past the cabin Michael had entered until she reached some kind of flattened door.
Think nautical. Maybe that was the hatch. She tried the latch. It was locked. She stumbled toward the cabin again as the boat’s powerful engine growled to life.
She managed to grab hold of the edge of the narrow doorway as Michael slammed the boat into reverse and gunned the engine. It roared out of the slip. The water was so rough the boat bucked violently as they pulled out. It slammed against the neighboring boat and dragged along the side with a long, earsplitting screech.
“Is the hatch locked?” Michael asked without looking at her. As soon as the boat was clear of the slip, he spun the wheel hard and changed gears, and the boat’s engine labored to comply.
“Yes,” she gasped. She looked through the rain-smeared glass back toward shore. Fire trucks ringed the bombed vehicles, which were still blazing in spite of the storm’s deluge. Silhouettes of armed men raced toward the dock.
“Get down,” he told her.
She got down.
Mo
re gunfire. Some of the bullets may have struck their boat. She wasn’t sure. With her head so close to the deck, the roar of the engine filled her ears. The boat creaked in complaint as Michael threw the throttle wide open. He returned fire in short, sharp bursts. Then the gunfire ceased.
She couldn’t see anything so she closed her eyes and waited. It felt like a long time. Nothing was stable, nothing. They rose and fell, shuddering with each wave they hit. With the small cabin door broken, they were exposed to the storm. Frigid, filthy water swirled around her.
She thought of sliding out the open doorway with the next toss of the waves, and she groped until she found something that was bolted to the deck. She wrapped an arm around it, anchoring herself in place.
At last, Michael said, “Okay. We’re out of gunshot range. Mary. You can get up now.”
She nodded in the dark. It sounded good in theory.
A hand connected with her shoulder, groped down her arm and tightened in a grip just above her elbow. “Come on,” he coaxed.
With his help, she forced her cramped and trembling body upright. He pulled her back against him with one arm and held her tight, while he maintained a strong grip on the steering wheel with the other. The control dials provided a slight illumination. Beyond the tiny cabin she could see the Lake swelling into waves that had to be as high as fifteen feet.
Michael put his mouth by her ear. “How bad off are you?”
She said through numb lips, “I’m pretty depleted.”
“I want you to do one last thing if you can,” he told her. “We need to try to get farther out into the bay. Take the wheel and hold us on our course while I break into the galley. It’ll be just for a few minutes. Can you do that?”
She nodded. He pulled her in front of the steering wheel. Her cold hands and feet were about as wieldy as blocks of wood, and she had lost most of the strength in her grip, so she wedged her forearms in between the spokes of the wheel. She felt the power of the storm vibrating through the tension in the structure.
Michael disappeared. She kept her hold on the wheel by leaning her body against it. She held on through a dark, swirling space of time, while the engine strained and the boat rose and plummeted again and again.