Rising Darkness

Chapter Nineteen

MICHAEL PUT HIS hands on the bathroom sink and leaned over it. The pain in his head that had been plaguing him all day turned excruciating. He fought waves of nausea, and his body shook while his eyes watered until they overflowed.

He felt like he stood at the edge of a hot, howling darkness. He saw everything else as though at a distance, through blurred vision. Compared to the howling dark, everything else was pastel.

In their long search for clues about Mary’s disappearance, he and Astra had worked hard to recover his memories of the last time he had made contact with her, but they could not glean anything of significance. Why hadn’t anything surfaced?

For a long while they had believed that something must have happened to Mary in a lifetime before she had remembered who she was, or before she had been able to make contact with anybody else in the group.

But he knew better now.

They hadn’t recovered his memories because he couldn’t bear to remember. He couldn’t bear it, but the darkness was rising, and he couldn’t hold it off any longer. He sank to his knees, rested his head against the cold, hard porcelain sink and the memories came.

They hit him like shards of flying glass, a disjointed attack from within that cut him to shreds.

He had been a mercenary soldier, a captain in command of his own company. They wintered in his home base in Italy. Otherwise his company roamed throughout Europe to fulfill the contracts he accepted.

In that lifetime, he had recovered his memories and had known who he was. He took jobs from various principalities that were both lucrative and wide ranging, which helped to fuel his search for others from the group.

One spring, he heard a tale through traders, of a ruling family in Constantinople that looked for answers to arcane mysteries and paid good money to honest men. Trusting his instincts, he began to journey to the city.

One morning, early at his campsite on the road, he bolted awake to a sharp thrust of pain, though he had sustained no physical injury. The sharpness soon faded, but the pain stayed with him, a ghostly ache that infused him with urgency.

Leaving his company to follow as fast as they could, he rushed ahead to the nearest port city and boarded the first ship he could find. A couple of weeks later he arrived in Constantinople, only to hear a story of an inexplicable assassination attempt that had left a cherished daughter lingering near death, and her wealthy family shocked and grieving.

In the bathroom, Michael shook his head, his breathing growing heavy and uneven. He fell, and the howling dark consumed him.

Mary pounded on the bathroom door with the flat of her hand, a quick, urgent staccato. “Are you all right?”

“Leave me alone,” he said in a hoarse voice.

The memories continued to slice at him.

Try as he might, he couldn’t gain an audience with the wealthy family. They had closed themselves off from the public and were surrounded with a small private army.

“I can’t,” Mary said. “I’m worried about you. Talk to me.”

“Go away,” he managed to say.

So he had to break in to their citadel. He felt the cold stone beneath his hands as he scaled their walls, night shrouding him in a purple gauze of shadows. Combing patiently through the halls and apartments, and hiding when necessary, he eventually found her sickroom.

The guard at the door had been one of the Deceiver’s tools. He killed the man easily enough, but he knew that the Deceiver had sensed his presence. He entered the room and barred the door, but it was only a delay. Death rushed in a rage to snatch back its prey. They did not have much time.

Inside, the room held a scent like violets and putrefaction, and the air was tainted with the twist of her suffering spirit.

He walked over to the bed and lit a lamp.

The images. After being buried for so long the images assaulted him, as vivid as if they had happened yesterday.

The black fan of her long hair on the silk cushion. The haggard beauty of her face, carved with the graciousness of her spirit. The gorgeous, dark eyes that opened, immense with pain and dilated with opium.

The smell. It came from her body.

“Do I know you?” she asked. She could only manage a mere thread of sound.

He stroked her hair. She was so lovely. She was a treasure beyond the price of all princes. “We’ve known each other for a very long time,” he told her in a tender whisper. “I’ve come to help you.”

Her gaze lit with the fragile luminosity of wonder. She breathed, “I’ve been looking for you.”

He caressed her cheek, her dry lips. He whispered, “I’ve been looking for you.”

When she smiled at him, it lit the entire world. “Where have you been?”

Where have you been? Not, where are you from? Because even in those first few moments of reconnection, it was clear that they both knew where they were from.

“Florence,” he said. He smiled back at her. How could he not? His was an old, savage soul, and she had, in an instant, become the single, shining jewel that lived inside of him. “I’m sorry it took me so long to find you.”

“Have you found any of the others?” Cold, delicate fingers like twigs touched at his weathered face.

He shook his head. “No, only you.” Time winged away from them. He wanted to lunge after it and capture it in both desperate hands. He closed his eyes, touched his lips to the tips of her fingers, and with every ounce of passion inside of him, he willed everything to be different. “I don’t even know your name.”

“Maryam,” she murmured. “You?”

“Michel.”

No matter how desperately he tried to capture it, time would not halt its precipitous flight. Guards shouted outside in the hall, and the pounding began at the door.

He had still hoped against hope at that point. He entertained wild thoughts of tying her arms around his neck and scaling the outside wall, until he peeled back the covers and saw the leather corset. He slit the laces and opened it, and as the support fell away, he saw the long purple-edged wound gape open. He caught a glimpse of glistening muscle or organ before he wrenched his gaze away.

Curled on the bathroom floor of the cabin, Michael gagged.

The tiny movements of her rib cage, the ruined breasts, were a torture to witness.

The household guard began to take an axe to the door.

“I’m not going to get better,” she said in that ghost voice. “I’m so sorry. I would for you, if I could.”

He kissed her forehead, her eyes and her beautiful mouth.

“You’re going to get better,” he said. He settled on the bed beside her, moving with infinite care so that he did not cause her any more pain, and he laid his head on the silken pillow beside hers. At the same time, he pulled his stiletto and held it tucked against his arm so that she could not see what he did. “You will like my home, I think. I have cows, and a few sheep. In the winter, there is snow on the fields and nothing to do but laze abed with a fire roaring in the fireplace.”

She breathed, “I would like to see snow.”

The guards were halfway through the door. In a few more blows, it would splinter. He touched his lips to her temple. “A noblewoman nearby has gardens filled with irises and azaleas. We will make love in the winter, and I will steal flowers for you in the spring.”

“And I must learn how to milk a cow.” For a few fleeting moments, amusement and tenderness had banished the shadows in her thin face.

He rose up and leaned over her. “We will live until we are very old,” he said against her lips. “And we will be happy right up until the moment we die.”

“I love this dream,” she whispered. It was the last thing she said to him.

As the final blow from the axe splintered the door down the middle, he slipped his stiletto under her ribs and pierced her heart. Her spirit slipped so easily from her body, with a relieved sigh and the lingering brush of an insubstantial caress.

He’d had a few moments in which to decide against escape, when the realization of empty years stretched ahead of him. While he knew he had done the only thing he could, that he had been right to release her from her torment, something broke inside him.

Nothing mattered anymore, not their eons-long struggle, not the destruction of the Deceiver, nothing. Guards poured into the room. With an expert flip, he reversed the stiletto in his hand, positioned it and thrust it into his own heart. The gush of warm liquid flowed over his fingers, and his body settled beside hers on the bed.

Then he knew no more.

In the bathroom, Michael curled on his side and pressed a hand to his chest as his heart kicked in wild arrhythmia. He was aware, as if from a great distance, of strong, slender arms circling him, a feminine body pressing against his side and fingers pressing against his carotid artery.

Michael, Mary said in his head. He turned his head away at the intrusion, pressing his sweating cheek against the cold, tiled floor.

Broken.

Radiance cascaded into him. It surrounded and filled him, and soothed his heart back into rhythm. He gasped as it drenched the raw shards of darkness inside, and his spirit gulped at it with ravenous eagerness. He didn’t think he could ever get enough.

Michael. She pulled him onto his back and passed a hand over his hair. I have been looking for you.

Her serious, blue gaze was very different from those great, lovely dark eyes from so long ago, but he would still know her anywhere. Anywhere. He gasped, I have been looking for you.

She was stronger than she looked. She drew his upper body up and cradled his head against her shoulder. I would have loved to learn how to milk a cow.

And I would have loved to make love in the winter, and steal flowers in the spring. He closed his eyes. He had never been a man of peace, except with her.

She rocked him. The memories are terrible, but they are in the past. Don’t let them consume you. Acknowledge them, and let them go.

He nodded. Her physical scent and psychic energy mingled in his senses until he didn’t know where one began and the other left off. It was all the same: warm, fragrant, golden. It nourished him with a lavish, lustrous generosity. Twisting up, he wrapped an arm around her neck. “This was why you didn’t want me driving.”

She laid her warm, soft cheek against his. “You didn’t seem to remember, and—well, I knew how hard my memories have hit me. I would have protected you from them, if I could.”

“I needed to know.” He nosed her neck and rested his lips against the healthy, vital pulse in her throat. Alive, she was alive again.

She pulled back and cupped his whiskery cheek. “I’m going to run you a bath,” she said. “And I’m going to find you some clean clothes. Are you hungry?” He shook his head. “No? All right. Then afterward we’re going to rest, Michael. Mike. Does anyone call you Mike?”

Nobody called him anything. Only Astra knew that his name was Michael. He stood when she stood and let the soothing patter of her voice wash over him like a gentle rain. “You can call me whatever you like,” he said.

She put the lid down on the toilet and pushed him toward it. Obediently he sat.

“Can I? Mike,” she said. Her voice was thoughtful as she turned to start the water running in the bathtub. She bent to test the water’s temperature with her fingers then adjusted one of the knobs. The new T-shirt came just over the curve of her ass. She glanced over her shoulder with a small, calm smile. “Trevor.”

“Aloysius, even,” he said. “Or hey you.”

Whatever she called him, he would always answer.

She straightened and flicked water from her fingers. “I think Michael suits you best. We’ll stick with that.”

“All right.” He leaned against the back of the toilet and let exhaustion sweep over him.

“I found your razor and shaving cream earlier,” she said. She pulled the items out of the medicine cabinet behind the mirror over the sink. Her gaze ran down his lax posture. “You’re too tired to shave, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” he admitted. He was so tired, he could lie down and die if he thought it would offer him any chance at peace.

“Not to worry. I’ll do it for you, if you’ll let me.”

Incredulous, he watched her wet a washcloth with warm water. After coaxing him to tilt back his head, she placed the cloth on his cheeks and jaw. Then she squirted a mound of shaving cream into one small, capable hand. She lathered his face, rinsed her fingers, turned off the bathwater, and started drawing the razor over his skin with such a light, deft touch he barely felt it.

He regarded her in mute amazement. He couldn’t remember anyone doing such an intimate, caring thing for him before. Certainly no woman had ever done so. Perhaps one or two might have wanted to, but he had always rejected female overtures with a clinical efficiency. Relationships bred vulnerability, and he had known from a very early age he wasn’t going to lead a normal life. Besides, all the women he had met had been too pastel.

“Mary,” he said when she turned to rinse the razor under a trickle of warm water.

“Yes?”

His grave gaze met hers. “Are you fussing now?”

The corners of her eyes crinkled as she looked down at him. When she drew the razor across his cheek, it felt like a caress. “I think we can say I’m officially fussing now.”

WHILE HE WIPED his face with the washcloth, Mary found clean clothes for him and set them beside the tub. She had to step between his long, outstretched legs in order to move around the tiny bathroom.

A spark lightened his sober gaze. He took hold of her forearm, and she stopped moving. Watching her steadily, he stroked the callused ball of his thumb along the sensitive skin inside her elbow. Sexuality shimmered between them again. She gave him a crooked smile back, shook her head and slipped out of the room so he could bathe in private.

Linen, blankets and pillows were stored in tubs underneath the bed, packed with rings of cedar. She made the bed efficiently with old, soft cotton sheets, two cotton blankets, and a heavy, insulated green bedspread. With only the fireplace for heating, the cabin would get cold at night.

Then she tackled her neglected hair with the travel brush from her purse. The shoulder-length tangled mane was already partially dried, and she had a miserable fight with it. She had just managed to wrestle it into a simple braid when Michael strode out of the bathroom, his dark, wet hair slicked against his well-shaped head. He wore only black cotton pants that rode low at his hips, revealing a long washboard abdomen, and carried socks and a T-shirt in one hand.

She had known he was big, of course, but she hadn’t realized how massive he was across his chest, arms and shoulders. He had the heavy, mature muscles of a man who had spent his life fighting.

She forgot what she was doing and stared at him with her mouth open. Her body forgot how much it had been kicked around, as her long-dormant sexuality came to singing life, not as a brief shimmer of possibility this time but as a searing bolt of urgency. Red heat settled into a sharp, throbbing ache between her legs.

Then she closed her mouth with a snap, spun around and turned down the bed, her hands lingering unnecessarily to twitch the bedspread into better alignment. Maybe while she was fussing at the bed, she could find a way to stuff this attraction under the mattress.

Of all the times for this to happen. Could it be any more inconvenient?

She couldn’t remember when she had last been sexually attracted to someone. Had she ever been? After some experimentation, and her lackluster experience with Justin, she had shrugged, said no big deal and closed the door on the whole subject while she concentrated on getting through the rigors of her residency.

To tell the absolute truth, a part of her had been relieved and even eager to shut that door, for she couldn’t regard sex as just a physical act and she wasn’t able to handle the intimacy, the emotional involvement.

Michael gave her a long, deliberate look then walked over to the table and picked up his gun. He reached into the large black bag and removed a sword in a scabbard. “Do you know how to shoot a gun?” he asked.

Jolted out of her preoccupation, she lifted her head and stared at what he held. Then she sat down slowly on the edge of the bed.

She had been right earlier. That was an honest-to-goodness sword.

“I know how to point and pull a trigger,” she said. “Theoretically. I mean it’s pretty evident. Do I know how to aim, or where the safety catch is, or how to clean a gun or reload it? I do not. I’ve never held a gun before in my life, and I never want to either.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I hope you never have to. But in case you do . . .”

“Oh no.” She threw herself backward on the bed with a groan, flopping her arms flung over her head.

“Oh yes,” he said.

He knelt on one knee on the bed, caught her wrist and yanked her upright. Then he sat beside her and proceeded to show her the sleek, black weapon he held in one hand. She sighed as she thought of the BabyMamas.

“This is a nine-millimeter,” he said. “It’s my smallest gun, and it’s the only thing I have that’s halfway suitable for the size of your grip. Here’s the safety catch. This is when it is on safety, and this is how you turn it off. This is how you reload.” He removed the clip and slapped it back into place. “If you ever have to fire this or any other gun, remember it has a kick. Try to anticipate that and brace yourself as you shoot. Squeeze the trigger, don’t yank at it.”

She endured the impromptu lesson as he made her hold the unloaded gun, heft its weight in her hands and practice holding it in a shooting posture. The gun was lighter than she expected. She stared at it in revulsion.

“That’s it, I’ve had it,” she said. She flopped back on the bed again, a Raggedy Ann doll of passive resistance. “I’ve had-it-ten-hours-ago had it. I don’t want to see or do anything else.”

“I guess that’ll have to do for now. Just be sure to grab this one if you need to.” He placed the nine-millimeter on the dresser and laid the sword on the floor beside the bed. Then he went to the black bag and pulled out another, much bigger gun. His large hand gripped it with casual effortlessness. “This is my gun.”

She stared. “That’s not a gun, it’s a hand cannon.”

“It’s an assault rifle. It fires more than six hundred and fifty rounds per minute.”

“Yeah, well,” she muttered. “Like I said, hand cannon.”

His well-shaped mouth quirked. “Whatever. Just don’t grab this one, okay?”

“That is so not a problem,” she told him as she stared at the ceiling.

Guns are not sexy. They’re not.

Watching him, now, as he held a gun, checked the chamber for rounds, took it apart and reassembled it, his every movement economical and efficient, while his tough face remained thoughtful and calm—okay, that was sexy. That was very much sexy.

Damn it. She had never been a soldier-groupie, and she wasn’t going to start being one now.

“Good.” He placed it on the dresser alongside the other one. “Tomorrow I’m going to take you outside so you can practice firing at an actual target and reloading.”

“Just for the record,” she said to the ceiling, “I’d rather not.”

“Duly noted,” he said ruthlessly. “We’re still going to do it.”

She raised herself up on one elbow and glowered at him. Then she touched the edge of the sword’s scabbard with a delicate toe. The scabbard was plain leather, ugly with scratches and scrapes, the hilt of the sword worn.

This wasn’t a replica or a museum piece. This sword was used hard on a regular basis. No wonder his muscles were so built up across his chest and shoulders. She wondered where and how he practiced, and with whom. “Why a sword?”

“Sometimes it’s the best weapon.” He checked outside then bolted the door.

She brooded. “You know how to use a lot of different weapons,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

He sat on the bed beside her. “Yeah.”

“It’s what you do,” she said. “I know.”

He sat far too close. The mattress tilted down toward his greater weight. The pulse in her throat and wrists gave an erratic leap. Sitting upright, her gaze flew from him, to the fire dying in the fireplace, to the guns on the dresser like a trapped and panicked bird.

“Mary,” he said in quiet voice. He touched her temple and traced along the edge of her hairline. His callused fingers ghosted along her skin with remarkable sensitivity. She shivered. “We should sleep now.”

She nodded. She gave the wall a ferocious frown, miserable with confusion and desire.

She said with grim determination, “Those creatures we once were. They belong in the past.”

He said nothing. He stroked along the curve of her cheek and caressed the soft, sensitive skin of her lower lip.

The muscles of her thighs shook with fine, small tremors. She looked straight ahead then closed her eyes and said unsteadily, “We’re nothing to each other anymore.”

He curled his fingers around her ear. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “We were what we were, and we’ll always have a deep soul connection because of it.”

“We might have known each other for forever, but crazy as it sounds, we also met less than two days ago,” she insisted. Even to her own ears she sounded weak. “We’re human now.”

“We’re more than human. We’ll never be fully human. Look at me.”

She opened her eyes and turned her head. When their gazes met, she felt a deep sense of falling. His lean, tough face was serious. He said, “You are looking at your best friend in the entire world right now.”

She went still, both physically and mentally, everything going quiet and calm, as she realized she believed him. “I know.”

“That would still be true if I was seventy-five years old and looked like Santa Claus,” he said gently.

He surprised her into a small laugh. “Would it? What if I looked like one of Snow White’s seven dwarves?”

“Of course.” He cocked his head, considering her. “You do realize that we have been together in many lives, but we have not always been sex partners.”

She blinked. “I . . . haven’t had a chance to think about it.”

“Of course you haven’t. But the fact is, I am not Santa Claus, and you are not a bearded dwarf. We’re also not siblings in this life, or parent and child, or grandparent and grandchild.” He gave her a slow, male smile that creased his lean cheeks and lit up those pewter eyes. “Instead, you are a woman who is so beautiful and vibrant you take my breath away.”

“No,” she whispered. “Don’t you dare.”

His eyebrows rose, and his smile deepened. Who knew. The tough soldier guy had dimples. His fingers slipped under her chin and caressed the slender column of her throat. “Don’t I dare what?”

Her eyelids lowered to half-mast. Her recalcitrant lips kept trying to droop into a soft sexy pout. She folded them tight and warned, “Don’t you dare try to seduce me.”

“I won’t, I promise,” he murmured. “I’ll just kiss you instead.”

He gave her plenty of time to pull away, she had to give him that. He twisted at the waist and tilted his head, and somehow she found herself leaning forward as she lost control over her renegade mouth. When his warm firm lips took hers she was already kissing him back. Her pulse ratcheted to a higher speed.

His hand moved up to cup the back of her head as he deepened the kiss. The texture and pressure of his firm lips, the penetration of his tongue, were intensely sensual.

Just sharing that one, light kiss with him was more arousing than any sexual encounter she’d ever had. She curled a hand over his thick wrist as she lost herself in shocked pleasure.

He pulled back with obvious reluctance. She forced her heavy eyelids open as he took in a breath that shuddered through his muscled frame. He cleared the back of his throat and said in a husky voice, “I know the timing sucks. And maybe we are more human now than we were, and maybe we don’t know who the hell we are to each other any more. All I know is that we have a rare chance to find out.”

“It’s just all happened so fast,” she whispered.

“I know. But it would be a damn shame if we didn’t keep an open mind about each other. You have been missing for so long, and he took all of your choices away from you for hundreds of years. Give us a chance to find out who we are to each other right now, in this life. Whatever that might be.”

She touched her mouth as she stared at him. Her lips were still slick and moist from his. She whispered, “Yes, you’re right. Of course I will.”

He kissed her mouth again, more quickly, and then her nose, and the thin, tender skin at her temple. “And,” he said, “we need to sleep. I’ll warn you, I am horribly pragmatic.”

“I know,” she said.

Surprise bolted across his face. He burst out laughing.

She gave him a small grin and hurried on to say, “No, I mean, I agree. You’re absolutely right. We’ve got to get some rest.”

“All right,” he said. “Scoot over. You get the wall side of the bed.”

He was putting himself between her and the door, in reach of his weapons. She didn’t argue with that logic. Instead she slid over and slipped under the blankets. He stretched out on top of the covers with a weary sigh, reached for her and pulled her down against his side. She curled against his long body. He kept one arm around her shoulders, passed the other hand over her hair and kissed her temple one more time before closing his eyes, while she rested her head on his warm bare shoulder.

His male energy surrounded her, warm and nourishing. She relaxed, basking, and something cramped and long-starved melted away.

Maybe that had nothing to do with her ancient, alien self. Maybe that was her human self, relishing the simple pleasure of being held in a strong man’s arms, the exotic sensation of feeling safe and well. She blanketed him with her lighter, more delicate energy, and felt him ease into peace.

They seemed to fit together with such perfection. Contrast and confluence, two interlocking pieces that balanced and sustained each other.

“I’m so glad you found me,” she whispered.

His arms tightened. He murmured, “I am too. Rest.”

She did. She slipped gently into a deep, dreamless sleep, as light and silent and drifting as snowfall.