Rising Darkness

Chapter Eleven

DRIFTING.

A bloodred petal in twilight.

She felt as empty and dry as a drained chalice. An abundant golden river flowed into her. Her parched soul soaked up the current. It was as strong and rich as burgundy wine, and as warm and nourishing as summer.

She surfaced from the black pit and became aware, as if from a great distance, of details around her. She was no longer hallucinating an out-of-body experience. Instead, she lay on the cold gravel between her Toyota and another parked car. Her body felt heavy and weak on the sharp rocks.

The unfamiliar car’s headlights threw a slant of harsh illumination on the scene. A pack of wolves ringed the area. Someone knelt over her, dark head and broad shoulders silhouetted against the angled light. Large, heavy hands rested flat on her torso, one at her sternum and the other on her abdomen.

The car headlights seemed thin and white, and as dim as shadows, compared to the man who shone from within like the sun.

The golden river poured into her.

A powerful sense of recognition flooded her, along with an incandescent joy. She took a breath and sighed, an easy expanding movement, for the moment free from fear and pain. Moving one hand across the uneven gravel toward the man, she smiled with relief at waking up from the long dark.

“There you are,” she said in a blurred voice to the radiant silhouette. “I’ve missed you so. I had the strangest dream. . . .”

Déjà vu swept over her, and her half-conscious mind groped after the feeling. Hadn’t she said this before? Hadn’t she said it many times as a small child, as she blinked up at her mother’s bewildered, frightened face?

Mommy, I had the strangest dream.

I dreamed I was—

She slammed awake for real. The brilliant radiance faded.

An unknown man knelt over her, silhouetted against the headlights of a car. She looked from the strange man to the ring of watching wolves and knocked away the hands that rested on her torso. Quick as a cobra, he grabbed her wrists and pinned her to the ground. She strained against the restraint, her heels scrabbling for purchase on the loose rocks.

The man shook her once, then again, harder, as she continued to struggle. “Stop it,” he ordered. His voice sounded harsh and rough as the rocks upon which she lay.

She was bewildered at the strange tricks her own mind played on her. She didn’t recognize this man. She had never seen him before in her life.

He was not Spring Jacket or Sport Coat. He was someone different. Someone new, bigger. Stronger, more deadly.

She made a terrified sound, bent her head and tried to sink her teeth into one of those iron hands shackling her wrists.

With an agile twist the man avoided her bite. The world pitched as he heaved her body up and around. He was so strong and fast, panic surged all over again at how easily he manipulated her weight.

She kicked and clawed for his eyes but somehow ended up sitting between long, powerful jeans-clad legs, crushed back against the man’s hard chest, her arms crossed in front of her while he held her wrists. She tried to butt her head back into his nose. He hugged her tight and buried his face in her neck.

She recognized the position. It was a safe restraint hold, and it was as effective as a straitjacket. The whiskery skin covering the man’s jaw abraded her neck, but no matter how she yanked or struggled, she couldn’t budge his long, tough body.

Finally, defeated, she stilled. Her blood pounded in her ears, her breathing serrated in the cold quiet night. Her captor’s breathing was unruffled. Gradually she became aware of the wolves’ sharp animal interest in the fight. She stared. The wolves, while a quieter presence, were as much of a bizarre image as the attacking hawks had been.

Hardly aware that she spoke aloud, she whispered, “I don’t understand.”

“Maybe now we can get somewhere,” the man said. His voice was rough velvet in her ear, the proximity mimicking a loverlike intimacy.

She shrank as far away as his tight hold would allow. The sense of profound recognition still beat at her, along with an upsurge of revulsion at his unwelcome nearness. She knew that she had never heard his voice before. The contradictory impulses were so strong, she felt like she was going insane.

“If you fight me or try to get away, I will tie you up,” the man said. “If you promise not to, I will let you go. If you break your promise, I tie you up and you stay tied up. No second chances.”

If he tied her up she was helpless and as good as dead. If she was free at least she had choices, and a chance to get away. Of course she said, “I promise.”

“Right,” he grunted. She knew he didn’t believe her, but he let her go anyway. She took the opportunity to scramble away from him, her shoes digging into the gravel until he warned her with three soft-spoken words. “That’s far enough.”

She’d only managed to get a couple of yards away, while her nerves screamed a chaotic, contradictory nonsense. She was still too close and needed to scramble farther away. But at the same time, she was too far away and needed to fling herself forward, into his arms.

And just as she had known about his voice, she knew that she had never seen his face before in her life.

INSANE INSANE INSANE.

The screaming in her head cut off abruptly as he raised himself up on one knee to strip off a battered jean jacket. He wore a gun in a shoulder holster. She froze.

[We’ll kill everybody. Not that we’d mind. We like to kill.]

Her breathing sawed at the air. Nails ripped as her fingers dug into the gravel. She clutched handfuls of the rock, ready to throw them while her gaze darted around the edges of his body.

She could see no sign of the smudged black that had surrounded Spring Jacket and Sport Coat.

But she didn’t even know what that meant.

The man flung his jacket at her. It settled over her head and shoulders. She dropped gravel to yank it off her head. A huge wolf padded over to her and sat down nearby. She froze and tried to control her jagged breathing. Her gaze slid sideways to the wolf then back at the man. The man was watching her with an intent gaze.

The harsh flood of light threw a mask of crags and hollows onto his face. Underneath the mask he was neither handsome nor ugly. He was not a young man, although he was still in his prime. His hair, cut military-short, was so dark it seemed black in the harsh light, and his eyes were colorless like moonstones.

She might have passed him on a busy street without a second glance, except for the lithe bulk of muscles that strained against his dark T-shirt and the taut material of his jeans, the piercing intelligence in those light eyes and the razor’s edge of toughness he wore as comfortably as a second skin. He bore himself with a soldier’s competent assurance.

He knelt on one knee as he faced her, the lines of his body strung as taut as a bow. Her gaze fell to the clenched fist resting on the upraised knee where broad scarred knuckles shone white. He looked ready to spring at her at the slightest provocation. Whoever he was, and whatever his motivations, this man was a whole different kind of danger than Spring Jacket and Sport Coat.

And he had that gun.

Her gaze left him again and traveled back to the wolf. The man and the wolf seemed to have something in common. At first she couldn’t pinpoint what. Then she realized what it was. They were both looking at her with the same expression.

She became aware she was shivering only when the man gestured at the jacket she held and said, “Put it on.”

Her shivering increased until uncontrollable tremors racketed through her body. She felt as hollow as a reed. After a frozen moment she shrugged into the jacket.

The material still held warmth from his body. It smelled like him, which set off the cacophony in her head again. Some part of her that felt horrifically starved wanted to bury her face in the material and inhale that clean, fresh male scent. At the same time, she wanted to tear it off and throw it screaming back in his face.

She struggled to find the soft calm voice she used to de-escalate violent situations in the ER. The only thing was, she wasn’t sure which one of them needed to de-escalate. She managed to say, “Thank you.”

He tilted his head, eyes narrowing. Then he rose with a light, fluid movement that made her recoil as her heart kicked. He must have decided that she was a pathetic flight risk, for he only moved to her car. He returned a moment later, the plastic bag from the convenience store held in one hand as he pocketed her keys with the other. After rummaging through the contents of the bag, he took one of the sandwiches then handed the bag to her.

She clutched the shopping bag then sat frozen. Shit, he took her keys.

He knelt near her again, tore open the wrapper on the sandwich and ate it in quick, strong bites. She watched every move he made out of the corner of her eye, her face half averted.

He nodded to the bag. “Eat something.”

She said, “I’d rather not.”

He frowned and shot a glance down her huddled figure. “Do it anyway. You need the calories, and it will help you warm up.”

Stung by his critical look, resentful that he was right and mindful of his greater strength and the gun, she dug out the second sandwich, opened the wrapping and snapped off a bite. As she tasted tuna, her stomach threatened to revolt. Then it settled and she managed to eat most of the sandwich until she caught sight of the wolf again.

She turned to look at the strong, powerfully muscled animal. The wolf’s yellow impassive gaze regarded her. Obeying a half-formed impulse, she took the last corner of her sandwich and placed it with care on the ground between them.

He held her gaze for a long moment. Then with slow deliberation and a remarkable delicacy, he bent his head and ate the offering. The strange man watched the interaction with an unreadable expression.

“Huh,” she grunted. She bent her head and knuckled her eyes. Sharp points from the gravel dug into her ass. Her body started to ache again in places where she had forgotten she had been hurt.

She must have pulled onto private property. The wolves had to be trained. Maybe they were wolf-shepherd hybrids. They must belong to the man. They would probably run her down if she tried to get away

Her flimsy attempt at logic crumbled. She spoke to the alpha wolf in the same way she spoke to her daemon. I had a dream about you. You said you had answered my call for help. You said you’re here to protect me?

Silence unfurled in the clearing. She felt like a fool.

Then the wolf said, Yes.

The simple word came into her head from a place outside of herself. Her lips parted. This was far beyond her daemon, which could, after all, be explained away as a construct of her own mind. She reached out to the wolf but didn’t quite dare touch him. I am . . . very grateful. Thank you.

Sister, the wolf said.

Beyond trying to make her experiences fit into any logical scientific framework, she thought of the hawks that had fought off her attackers, and rapid words burst out of her. I don’t understand what’s going on. Please don’t let this man hurt me—

The wolf lowered its head. We can only protect, he said. We cannot heal. The warrior can help you more than we can. You must let him.

But—but—Her gaze went back to the man who watched her with hard, expressionless eyes.

He had pinned her down. He scared her.

He pinned her after she woke and started fighting him. She had tried to bite him too.

But he didn’t have to pin her down. Why didn’t he just back away? He threatened to tie her up, and no amount of rationalizing could make that okay.

The man remained silent, as if knowing better than she the kind of thoughts that raced through her mind.

She said aloud, again, “I don’t understand. Who are you? What do you want?” An avalanche of questions piled up behind those two. She had to bite her lips to keep from shrieking them.

The man said, “You can call me Michael. What I want is irrelevant.”

He reached out a hand. The panic hit her low and hard, slamming into her gut. She cringed from the hand and scrambled away. She didn’t stop until she had put several feet between them.

Only then did she realize that he hadn’t moved. She huddled into the overlarge jacket, head down, and dared to look sideways at him.

He knelt frozen, his hand outstretched to her, palm up. Nothing moved in the clearing, not even the wind through the trees. The stoic expression in his hard face and blank eyes never changed. He looked prepared to take any blow and not budge.

It took a moment before she realized he was silently asking for her plastic bag of food. She hesitated then inched forward to offer it to him, holding the bag as far away from her body as she could.

Moving only his hand, slow and easy, he took the bag from her. He pulled out a packet of trail mix, tore it open and shook some into his hand as he said, “I hear you were attacked and some people were killed. Where did this happen?”

She pulled his jacket tighter around her torso. “How did you hear that?”

His colorless gaze lifted to her. “A wind spirit. Hawks.”

“My daemon talked to you?” She lifted her head but couldn’t sense any ethereal presence hovering nearby. “Where is it? You didn’t hurt it, did you?”

His glance admonished her for the question. “I sent it to someone, with news.” He chucked the handful of mix into his mouth.

She felt a sharp pang of loss. “You had no business doing that. It can’t leave me—I needed it. It was going to show me how to get somewhere.” Part of her found room for amazement. She laughed. “Listen to us. We sound like lunatics. We’re talking about something that can’t exist. The two of us are the same kind of crazy.”

“I’m not crazy,” the man named Michael said. He shook more mix into his mouth. He didn’t look crazy either. He looked like a tired man after a long, hard day. His gaze speared her. “But I figure you’ve got to be pretty close to it. I’m just trying to decide how close you really are.”

A fresh thrill of fear jangled along her nerve ends. She reached for her tattered dignity. “Whether I’m crazy or not has nothing to do with you.” She added bitterly, “And you had no right to send my daemon away.”

The man continued to study her. “What’s your name?”

“That’s none of your business either.” She hugged her knees, her muscles in knots.

His lack of expression was chilling. “Listen to me carefully,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of time to debate this at length. You can’t afford to take weeks or months to decide whether or not you’re going to like or trust me. I can either help you or I can kill you. There is no middle choice. I will not let you go.”

His words echoed in her head.

I can kill you.

He actually said those words to her.

She sucked air. “So what am I now, some kind of hostage?” she hissed.

“I didn’t say that, did I?”

She shook her head hard. “You want me to tell you things but you don’t tell me anything, is that it?”

“I didn’t say that either. All I said was that what I want is irrelevant, and it is.” He paused then added in an abrupt clipped tone, “You are mixed up in something far greater and older than you can understand at present. Right now you’re a danger to yourself and to others. You’re a danger to me. And you are dying, unless we can get you help from someone that I know.”

Even her daemon had said she was dying, yet she had no visible wound. She panted as if she had been running hard, but she couldn’t get enough air in her lungs. Her composure broke. She flung both arms over her head, and rocked back and forth. “I don’t understand!”

The man named Michael rubbed his face, his mouth held in a tense line. He said, “You don’t understand. I have answers. You’re in danger. I’m a fighter, a good one. You’re dying. I know someone who can heal you. This is not rocket science. Are you going to cooperate or not?”

She stopped rocking, lowered her arms and looked at him with eyes hollow from trauma and weariness. “Or you’ll kill me.”

His light, colorless gaze seared her. “No. Or I tie you up and take you with me. I’ll only kill you if you’re not salvageable, and we’re a long way from determining that. And I’ll kill us both before allowing us to be taken by the other creatures who are hunting you. Death is preferable to being at their mercy. But we have a greater chance of surviving if you cooperate.”

“Well isn’t that a goddamn comfort.” Her voice sounded like the rest of her, stretched too thin.

He stood. “Are you going to come willingly or not?”

“You’re not giving me much of a choice, are you?”

“No.”

She looked at the Toyota. First she lost her sanity, then her home, and now her car. Soon she would end up with nothing. “What are we going to do, just abandon my car?”

“Yes. With any luck, ditching it will slow the hunters down. It could buy us some time.” He didn’t sound like he had much hope for that to happen. He walked over and held out his hand.

She ignored it and forced her aching body upright. His hand fell to his side. He had a good foot on her in height. She came just to his shoulder and had to tilt her head back to look him in the face. She said cautiously, “I was supposed to go north to a grandmother.”

“I know where you’re supposed to go,” he said. “That’s where we’re headed.”

He knew? The lure of that pulled her more than anything else.

She was going to cooperate with a man who stood ready to kill her because—he said—the alternative was worse. Shuddering as the wind swept through the tangle of strange forest, she felt more lost than ever before. She longed to see a safe and friendly face, someone who genuinely wished her well. Someone who was not an enigma.

She told him, “I want my purse.”

“I’ll get it.”

She glanced at his gun. “I also have a first aid kit in the trunk. I want that too.”

“I have a first aid kit.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Are you a doctor?”

His tough, expressionless stoicism shattered. He looked stricken, as if she had knifed him without warning. She watched, uncomprehending, as his throat muscles worked. He whispered, “No I’m not.”

“Then I’m guessing mine’s better.”

A muscle in his jaw bunched. He gave her a short nod. He walked away to retrieve her purse and the canvas bag that held her first aid supplies.

Then he strode toward her. Even though his large body was heavy with thick muscles, he was so light on his feet he was a symphony of graceful movement.

Something about the fluidity of his body reminded her of the abundant golden river from earlier. His hands had rested flat on her torso as the shining stream had poured into her.

“Wait,” she said, instinct driving her words. “When I woke up you were trying to help me in some way. Weren’t you?”

He held the purse out to her, his gaze steady on hers. “I did help you. I bought you some time. But I can’t heal you. That’s beyond my abilities.”

Their eyes met. She experienced a moment of light-headedness at the intensity of the connection.

She almost said, I do know you. Don’t I?

But her gaze dropped to the gun in his holster, and she didn’t. Instead, silently, she took her purse.

He turned to the alpha wolf. You have fulfilled your promise with honor. Go in peace, brother.

Warrior, the wolf said.

She stuffed her hands against her mouth, filled with excitement and wonder for she had heard both of them as clearly as if they had spoken aloud. Even if she felt like she had lost her mind, she wasn’t creating everything that she was experiencing. The wolf looked at her.

She said, I’ll never forget you.

He paced forward and nosed her hand. Then, before she could stroke his head, the wolf whirled to leap into the forest. The pack poured after him.

When the last of them had disappeared, she looked at Michael. “My name is Mary. I have two hundred and ninety-five dollars in cash. I haven’t used my checks or credit cards since I was attacked.”

“Good.” He regarded her, his hard expression thoughtful. “And don’t worry about money. I have plenty. We need to go.”

She walked with him to his car and climbed into the passenger seat.

THE INTERIOR OF the Ford was worn but spacious and comfortable, with old-fashioned bench seats and much more modern installed seat belts. The backseat was piled with things that were unidentifiable in the darkness, but the front seat was clear. The car smelled faintly of engine oil, leather and the faint clean scent of aftershave.

She tucked her purse and the plastic bag of snacks between her feet. They were now the sum total of her worldly possessions. After she put her seat belt on, she rummaged in the bag for a bottle of water and the chocolate bar.

Michael twisted to look over his shoulder, and he backed the car onto the paved road. She caught a glimpse of a large red-tailed hawk perched on a low-hanging limb of a tree and craned her neck to stare as it launched into flight. It was soon swallowed by the dark night.

After a few minutes they approached the entrance ramp to Highway 131. Michael took the northbound ramp. The car accelerated to just under the speed limit and held steady. She sagged back in her seat with a sigh and unwrapped the chocolate bar.

The duality in her emotions continued. As afraid of him as she was, she was also intensely relieved to be on the road again. Losing her independent transportation worried her, but leaving her car behind meant that they also left her license plates behind, and she became a little more difficult to track.

They traveled in silence. Apparently you-can-call-me- Michael was a man of few words. He drove with competence and appeared relaxed, but she noticed that he checked the rearview mirror often and his expression remained a closed vault.

He didn’t offer to turn on the radio, and she didn’t ask. She looked out the window at the moonlit landscape and the occasional traffic, sucking on her candy. She didn’t offer him any chocolate, and he didn’t ask.

In the privacy of her own mind, she admitted that it was a relief to sit passive for a while with someone who seemed strong and capable, who wore a gun and knew how to use it and who appeared to understand the dangers they faced. At the same time her bruised, hypersensitive nerves jangled with awareness of the tough, dominant presence at her side. She could not get beyond her fear of him, or the threat that he had made.

Hawks, wolves, wind spirits and the strange haunt of inexplicable dreams. Two grotesque men and casual murder. The vision at the Grotto. Her house in flames. She was dying.

Why was she dying?

She was walking and talking like a normal person, but something was terribly wrong with her. She didn’t need to take Michael’s or her daemon’s word for it. Deep in her bones, she could sense that it was true. It felt like she had torn something open, some unseen spiritual ligament, and it was vital in some way to her existence. In the meantime everything she thought she knew about the world had crumbled into dust.

She said aloud, “It’s like all my life I’ve lived in some kind of painting. There was a lot of color and detail, and the painting seemed to make sense, but either somebody has smashed the frame or I’ve fallen out of it somehow. Now I’m in a totally different reality. The color and detail seem similar, but everything’s changed. I can’t go back into the painting. It’s two-dimensional, and I don’t fit. I don’t even know how to try. But I don’t understand this new reality either, or how to survive in it.”

The atmosphere in the car changed. She could sense his attention sharpening on her as she spoke. She paused, but he said nothing.

Anger sparked. She said, “If you’re not crazy, then I’m not crazy. I heard you speak to that wolf. I heard that wolf speak to me. Someone burned down my house. I saw it on the news along with other people in a restaurant, so I know I’m not making that up. Hundreds of hawks attacked two men who murdered four innocent people right in front of me. Those men called me by name. They were kidnapping me. Those hawks were the only thing that kept me out of their van. These things happened. I have the bruises to prove it. And I resent like hell that I might need you, but you might kill me for some mysterious unknown reason. As far as I know, maybe you’ll kill me on a whim—maybe just because you get indigestion and you feel cranky and trigger-happy tonight. By the way, you never thanked me for that sandwich you took without asking. And if I’m already dying, which you say, I don’t know why you’d even bother to kill me unless you just get cranky and trigger-happy sometimes. Maybe you’re the crazy one, and I’m the one who’s sane. Did you consider that, Mister Enigmatic?”

As she twisted in her seat to glare at him, a startled smile flickered across his face. By the dashboard’s dim illumination she caught how the brief smile shifted the planes and angles of his face into something quite different from his former grim endurance. He glanced at her, his light eyes glittering like a flash of bright gems glimpsed under a shadowed cloak.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She waited again, but he fell back into silence. “That’s it—you’re sorry?” she said after a while. Bitter anger scalded her words. “Thank you, everything has become crystal clear, and I feel so much better now.”

“I’m thinking,” he said. The trace of a whip was in his voice.

She shrank closer to her door, her temper chilling. Great, Mary. Release all your stress on the guy with the gun. You know, he really might kill you just because he’s got indigestion. How much more of an idiot can you be?

It was time to force some conciliatory words out of her mouth, whether she actually felt them or not. She said, “I shouldn’t have said all those things. It’s just that I’ve—”

“You’ve had a rough day, I know,” he said. “I should never have said anything about killing you. It was a cruel and useless thing to say, and I’m sorry. Let’s just say I’ve had a rough day too and try to get past it, all right?”

She mulled on that and found it unsatisfactory. She said, “Is it true?”

The fleeting smile was gone. In its place was something darker, much more savage. “Yes,” he said. “But you didn’t need to know it.”

“But why?” The thin-voiced plaintive question hung between them.

“All I can do is repeat myself,” he said. “There are some things that are worse than death. Someone is hunting you. If he captured you, what he would do to you would be far worse than death.”

She rubbed her face and forced herself to focus. “There were two men who tried to kidnap me.”

“They were dangerous in their own way and destructive enough, but ultimately they’re unimportant. They’re just tools for the person you need to worry about. If he had gotten hold of you, you wouldn’t have escaped, hawks or no hawks.”

She shuddered at the thought of someone worse. “Who’s that?”

“I don’t know what name he goes by these days. But he is quite old, powerful, inventive and wicked. I’ve dedicated my life to his destruction. So has Astra, the woman that I’m taking you to see.”

“The Grandmother.”

“Some call her that.” His voice had turned measured and expressionless, giving away no hint of his own thoughts or opinions.

She remembered that she was thirsty, opened the bottle of water and drank. After she’d had enough she hesitated then held the bottle out to him. He took it. “Why do I feel that you and the—wind spirit, as you called it—are right and I’m dying?” she asked. “Aside from some scrapes and bruises, there’s nothing physically wrong with me. And what did you do to me, back there by my car?”

“As far as the difference between you dying, and me killing you goes . . .” He blew out a short sharp gust of air, an exhalation of frustration, and she tensed in dread. “If I killed you, I would only be killing your body. What you’re suffering from is much more serious than a wound of the flesh. Somehow you’ve taken a wound of the spirit. If you expire from the spirit wound, you will be destroyed. Gone. You won’t exist any longer, so you could never be reborn.”

Spirit and body. Death and rebirth. Her lips felt numb. She rubbed her mouth. Gretchen had talked of spirits. “Are you talking about reincarnation?”

“Yes, or at least some form of it.” He glanced at her. “We don’t exactly lead typical lives.”

“We.” Her hand migrated upward. She rubbed at her dry eyes. He was grouping her with himself, and with this woman named Astra. Who were these people? Who did he think she was? Did he believe they were some kind of soul group that chose to reincarnate and live their lives together? Disorientation yanked at her. She felt unmoored and drifting, like she was coming apart at the seams.

He continued, “If your energy is dispersed, you—the spirit essence of you—will be gone forever. There would be no rebirth for you, no chance at another life. So you see, there is the physical death. Then there is the real death, the permanent one, from which there is no coming back.” He took a deep harsh breath. “What I was doing to you when you woke up . . . picture an arterial wound, only it’s a spiritual one and you’re bleeding to death. I gave you an infusion of my blood, or my energy, in the real sense. It’s strengthened you and we’ve gained some time, but it hasn’t closed the wound or stopped the bleeding. For that, we need the woman we’re going to see. She understands far better what has happened to you. She has the skills to heal you.”

The physician in her took over. “Wait, to use your analogy, if you killed me,” she said, “wouldn’t my spirit still bleed to death, so to speak?”

“Actually,” he said in a tired voice, “in some ways your spirit would be easier to heal if you were dead. You could make the journey north to Astra in a matter of moments. She could heal you. You could rest and then you could be reborn. But there are . . . other reasons why that isn’t an attractive option.”

Outrage held her frozen for a moment. Attractive option. How about like I don’t want to die, you son of a bitch? Is that one of your reasons? Struggling with her unruly emotions, she wrapped her fingers around the edges of the jacket he’d lent to her.

Finally she managed to say, “I’m pretty tired of being scared.”

“I know it’s asking a lot but try not to worry too much, at least about that,” he said. “As long as you are with me, I can infuse you with energy when you need it. When we get to Astra, she can heal you. You won’t die of that wound if we have anything to say about it. And we have a lot to say about it.”

“Astra,” she murmured. She was not just tired of being scared. She was also just plain tired. She leaned her head against her window. Astra, in Greek, meant star. “Do you know how I got injured in the first place?”

“What I know is that it happened a very long time ago,” he said. The caution had come back into his voice. “Lifetimes ago. It might be better if you tried to remember what happened for yourself.”

Somewhere along the line she had stopped being quite so terrified of him.

That might or might not be a good thing. She simply didn’t have the reserves to sustain such an exhausting emotion. Whether or not she believed anything he said was a different matter. She shelved that for another time when she could think about it in private. For now she suspended disbelief and tried to absorb what he chose to tell her.

“I went to visit the Grotto at Notre Dame University today,” she said. “Do you know where that is?”

“Notre Dame is in South Bend, right?”

“Yes. Anyway, I—well, I prayed for help, and I had a vision,” she said. “This lady told me I had to remember who I was, and that I needed to find her. She said I needed to travel north. At the time I wondered if she might be the Virgin Mary.”

“Maybe she was,” Michael said, surprising her. “But from what you’re telling me, it sounds more likely that she was Astra.”

Wait—was he saying that the Virgin Mary could actually exist? She stared. Concepts were coming at her too fast. Was she intrigued or disappointed that her vision might not have been the Holy Virgin? She caught up with what he said. “Astra could do that, make some kind of bodiless visitation?”

“Astral projection? Yes. But it’s exhausting, especially across long distances. She would only do it in an emergency, and if she was safe enough to recover from it afterward. She’s too important to risk.”

“Astral . . . But . . . How would she know to find me?”

“You’ve been blazing like a beacon in the psychic landscape ever since this afternoon. She might have traced you that way. I focused on finding you in the physical realm. I couldn’t afford the time or the energy on an astral projection.” He shook his head, took one hand off the steering wheel and rubbed at his neck. “We’ve been afraid something like this would happen. We’ve been looking for you for a long time.”

Blazing like a beacon since this afternoon. She remembered the sense of something vital tearing open and shuddered.

“How long were you looking?” she breathed. Was he talking years?

“Lifetimes,” he said. The brief reply blasted away her assumptions and shook her to the core all over again. “We know our enemy has been looking for you too, but it’s been like you’ve been hidden behind a veil. We’ve gotten brief glimpses of you and your life, but we never got quite enough information to find you until today. Today it felt like you ripped past the veil yourself. My guess is that’s what reopened your spirit wound, because you couldn’t have been bleeding like this your entire life. If you had been born like this, you would have died in a matter of days.”

“That beacon you mentioned. Is that how those two men were able to find me? No,” she said, in answer to her own question. “That doesn’t make sense. My house had to have caught fire before I prayed in the Grotto. The blaze was too far along by the time I saw it on the news.”

“It could be that your house isn’t connected to this,” he said. “Maybe the fire is just a coincidence.”

She heard the lack of conviction in his voice, and she was not reassured. “You think it’s more likely that your enemy was closer to finding me than you two were?”

“Anything’s possible,” he replied. “Especially that.”

“Why burn down my house? Wouldn’t it have been smarter to wait until I got home? It’s not,” she said in a caustic voice, “like I’ve had a clue about what I’ve been doing, or what’s really going on.”

“We don’t have enough facts yet to answer that question. But if your house fire was arson, most fires are started to hide something. It could also have been set to draw you back home, although that reason on its own seems excessive when all someone would have to do is wait for you to return.”

“I saw the fire on the news. I had contacted the police and was starting to return home when those two men attacked.” She rubbed her shaking mouth. She whispered, “What they did was excessive. There was no reason for it. They didn’t have to kill those people. They were brutal because they liked it.”

“Our adversary is like that. He enjoys cruelty, and he feeds on pain.” His profile had turned harsh, the bones of his face slicing through the shadows thrown by the dashboard lights. “When he creates his tools, he destroys something essential in their souls. They can still function but they no longer have a moral code, or creativity or any real free will, or whatever it is that makes them human.”

She closed her eyes. What kind of creature had the power to destroy someone’s soul? It was appalling, too much. She had to give up on the puzzle for now. She thought she ought to give up on all of it and try to rest. Her body and soul, or spirit, as Michael had said, felt frayed almost to tatters. Even though she had fallen into that black pit earlier, it had only been for a couple of hours. Her dreams had been so restless and vivid she had gained no real refreshment from it.

Her dreams.

A sudden flood of memory brought back the dream of the wounded woman. Like the sacred poison dream, the wounded woman was another recurring dream that she’d had throughout her life. Blood-shot and filled with disturbing imagery, she had tended to dream it only in times of great stress.

And her dreams . . .

Her breathing roughened, became erratic. Michael’s jacket no longer provided welcome warmth but became a stifling restriction. She couldn’t get enough air inside her lungs. She fumbled to unlatch her seat belt and struggle out of the jacket, and she began to claw her way out her T-shirt.

“Okay, easy,” Michael said, his voice sharp. “You need to take deep, slow breaths. Try not to fight it.”

She heard his words but not their meaning. All her attention was focused inward where an immense heat blazed up. She was burning to death. She felt suspended in time as though she had waited all her life in a silence so profound it seemed to roar, waited to hear the first sonorous clang of a terrible gong.

Remember who you are.

My dreams are real.

And she was racing back in her mind to the small child she had been, and what that child had said to upset her mother so badly, she had learned to bury it and eventually forget, and how ever afterward her mind would slide away from that memory because it was such a bad, bad thing. . . .

Mommy, I had the strangest dream, she had said.

I dreamed I was human.

Unspeakable loss welled up inside her again, only this time it was deeper and stronger than ever before. This time it wasn’t held at a distance or tucked behind a veil. It roared into her like a tsunami, and she cried out and doubled over from the force of it.