Rising Darkness (A GAME OF SHADOWS NOVEL)

by Thea Harrison

  Then something else snagged its attention.

  A call reverberated through the psychic realm. The voice was a familiar one, dark and seductive as a siren. The spirit wavered in indecision but, while the people in the cabin had been luscious and tempting in the midst of their struggle, they had grown into too robust a force for it to feed on unless they became injured to the point of dying.

  Whereas the voice that called came from someone that led a life rich in all the dark paths. He birthed a fertile feeding ground of pain and suffering wherever he went, and he rewarded those that pleased him.

  Detaching from the cabin window, the spirit drifted upward like a feather on the wind. It began to travel in lazy swirls in the direction of the voice.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “WHEN DO WE have to leave?” Mary asked.

  The sound of her soft voice vibrated in his ear as he rested his head on her flat stomach. He turned to press his lips against her skin.

  She was unutterably gorgeous to him, her slender body perfect in every way. Small, high breasts, a narrow waist, the lightly rounded hips and calves and those long, delicately muscled thighs that could grip him with such surprising strength. Her wild, corkscrew curls spilled across the pillow, the tawny color glinting with threads of gold.

  The physical details were delightful, but absolutely the most important thing was that she was here with him now after so very long, and her body was healthy and strong, a temple that housed her unique spirit.

  He did not want to answer her question, but in spite of himself, his mind, ever pragmatic, turned to the subject. He calculated the hours they had taken against the risk of remaining in place.

  The cabin was secluded, and he had walked the perimeter of the clearing several times. They had rested, stabilized and eaten good, nutritious food. Their survival needs had been met. And, as he had mentioned to Astra, he had also set sentinels to keep watch along the gravel roads that led to his property.

  But information could be gleaned from the slightest of things. The fact was, the longer they stayed the greater the risk grew.

  What if Mary’s picture had been circulated in the press? What if the attendant from the gas station saw it and recognized her? Or the server at the drive-thru where he had bought breakfast and coffee? Mary had been asleep but clearly visible. And when they had stopped at the Wolf Lake store, even though she had remained in the car, he could not guarantee that she hadn’t been seen.

  They had so much they still needed to do. Her aptitude with a gun was almost nonexistent. She needed more target practice. He needed to show her basic defensive moves, and to see if he could coax her into learning knife work. Coupled with the element of surprise, just one or two moves could save her life.

  He needed to pin her down and cover her so that nothing so cruel could ever happen to her again.

  Finally he gave her the only reply that he could. “We need to go soon.”

  They lay tumbled across the tangled bedcovers where they had last fallen. In the fireplace, the fire had begun to die down again. Darkness was rising, and the dancing golden illumination that had crowned them at the peak of their joining had now begun to fade into a pulsing red.

  But the darkness had not yet taken them. The time that they had stolen for themselves was not yet done.

  His mind drifted. As part of his wider education, Astra had set him to study many of the most ancient texts. A verse from Psalms came to him:

  Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.

  In the shadowed light, her skin looked like honey, and she tasted like manna from heaven. He had wandered through a godforsaken desert, starving for uncounted years. Now, even though they had flung all the passion they had at each other, and even though their bodies were replete, he could not stop kissing or tasting her.

  Slender fingers stroked through his hair. Her torso moved as she heaved a resigned sigh, but she didn’t try to argue with him. She must feel it too, this gut instinct that said they could not stop moving for too long.

  “So we leave in the morning?”

  “Yes, first thing.”

  He wanted so desperately to say no. To say that they could have more than a single day together. That they could have years of leisure and safety together.

  But that old bastard time was winging away from them again. With every ounce of passion inside of him, he willed that everything would be different this time. But as much as he wished it to be otherwise, he could not lunge after the fleeting moment and capture it in both hands.

  Her fingers trailed along his collarbone. She touched his cheek and tilted up his head. Even in the growing shadows, her gaze was brilliant, glittering like precious aquamarines.

  “Oh good,” she said. “We still have hours and hours.”

  “A veritable wealth of minutes,” he said.

  She lifted her eyebrows and smiled. “A staggering fortune in seconds.”

  The sound of his own laugh shocked him. He was still not used to hearing it. He reached for her hand and laced his fingers through hers.

  Her expression turned vulnerable. “Do you have memories of us being together in other lives?”

  “Some,” he said. “Do you?”

  “Just flashes.” Her fingers tightened on his. “They keep hitting at random. So many memories. It’s like a floodgate has opened.”

  “You’ve only just healed,” he said. “Maybe the images are like aftershocks. I went through a period when images would bubble up unexpectedly, but after a while it calmed down. I think it will for you too, after things have had a chance to settle into place.”

  She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “They’re disconcerting, but I like them. Of course, it helps to know what they actually are.”

  He thought about telling her of his first, best memory, of that time they had lived together in England just after the Norman Conquest.

  See what I know? he wanted to say. Have you had memories of this time too? Are they the same for you?

  Were you happy?

  But he didn’t want to prompt her into any false memories. When he had been younger, Astra had been very careful to avoid prompting him too much, and he thought it best to emulate that example.

  Besides, his memories of that lifetime meant too much to him to risk corrupting them. It would mean so much more if Mary recovered images from that time independently of him. If she could say, as he thought and hoped she might, that she had been as happy during that time as he had been.

  Even though they had just made love twice, the hunger for her came back. It rode him hard and he succumbed to it. He slid down her body, coaxing her legs apart.

  Her breath catching audibly, she opened readily to him. He nuzzled the soft tuft of private hair at the graceful arch of her pelvis, breathing her in. Her scent mingled with his, musky, rich and evocative. While she stroked the back of his head, he fingered the plump, moisture-slick petals of her sex. Her breathing deepened and turned ragged, and her arousal drenched his fingers.

  He was enchanted with every sensual detail.

  As he had grown into maturity, abstinence had become just another part of his discipline. His knowledge and understanding about the sexual act, while detailed, remained purely clinical. Not only had every woman he met been a pale shadow in comparison to his memories, but in the end he had always found it so much easier and quicker to find his own release when his body had craved it. Being alone had been so much more preferable than looking with irritation into the uncomprehending expression of a strange woman he would never grow to care for, and would end up leaving soon enough.

  Everything about this intimacy with Mary transcended both his memory and imagination. It enveloped him utterly.

  The warmth of her body, the touch of her hands. The light, feminine scent rising off her soft skin.

  His own powerful response to her. The primitive urges that overwhelmed him,
to cover and take, and to penetrate, to discover a rhythm that his body already knew.

  The rich texture of experience highlighted all over again how starved and sharp he had become.

  He had already known that he was only half alive without her. Now he realized something else. Being with her brought him fully into the present, and fully immersed him in the experience of being human.

  Gently he parted the exquisitely shaped folds of her sex, bent his head farther and licked her. Even against his sensitive tongue her private flesh felt incredibly soft, like velvet. Her pelvis arched up to him as she gasped.

  Her response electrified him. Pausing for a moment to savor it, determination hardened in him. Those other lovers she had taken had meant nothing to her, and therefore they meant nothing to him. The decision to set all of that aside was an easy one for him to make, much easier, he suspected, than it was for her. After all, she was the one who had to live with the memory of those empty experiences.

  But she would never have another lover. Only him. They did not have to say it to each other. He already knew.

  He parted her farther and found the delicate, stiff little nubbin of flesh seated at the heart of her pleasure, and he put his mouth to it.

  A small scream broke out of her, and her torso lifted off the bed, and the intensity of his own reaction astonished him. He grew hard again as he licked and suckled her and listened to the incoherent, uncontrolled sounds of her pleasure.

  When the urge to penetrate became too much to ignore, he slid first one finger into her, then another. Her inner muscles tightened on him. He lost himself in the sumptuousness of it, fucking her tenderly, his fingers gliding in and out of her wet, hidden sheath as he massaged her clitoris with his tongue.

  He could feel her climax. Her inner muscles clenched on his fingers. Then the rippling began, and she shook as though she would fly apart at the seams. She cupped the back of his head, holding him to her, and he complied, licking at her rhythmically until she screamed and climaxed again.

  Then he could not stand it any longer. He rose up and reached for another condom, rolling it over his erection with hands that shook with urgency. As he came down to her, she was already reaching for him to guide him into place.

  Gentleness fled, along with his control. He thrust hard and impaled her. She tilted her head back and cried out again, wrapping her legs around his hips. Elbows planted on either side of her head, he succumbed to barbarity and sank his fists into her fabulous, wild hair, pinning her down as he moved inside of her, harder and faster, until his own climax twisted him up. The pleasure was excruciating, necessary.

  All the while he watched her face, her beautiful face. Her lips were parted, her gaze blind, as she stared inward, focused on what he was doing to her.

  I am the only one, he thought. The only one who has driven you to this extremity. The only one who has given you this kind of pleasure, this completion.

  And by God, I am going to be the last lover you will ever take.

  The very last, and only one.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  THEY SQUANDERED THEIR veritable wealth in minutes, their staggering fortune in seconds, on pleasuring each other. Then, as the last of the coals in the fireplace faded and the darkness was complete, they fell asleep. The last thing Mary knew was Michael resting his head on her shoulder, his big body sprawled over hers, a heavy, reassuring weight.

  She woke suddenly with a hand clamped over her mouth. Predawn filtered into the cabin, turning everything bleak and gray. Michael leaned over her, his broad, naked shoulders and head in silhouette. Her heart kicked. Staring up at him, she gripped his thick, strong wrist with both hands.

  His shadowed gaze was the polished steel of a drawn sword.

  “Get dressed,” he said. “Hurry.”

  She nodded. He rolled out of bed in one smooth, lithe motion. When she scrambled across the bed and would have risen, he gripped her shoulder. “Be careful. I kept the trees tall around the cabin on purpose, but long-range rifles can be remarkably accurate. Don’t take a chance and stand in front of the windows.”

  She nodded again, slid to the floor and scurried in a crouch toward the dresser where she had left her clean, dried clothes. As she went she saw Michael out of the corner of her eye. He stood at the table and had already slipped on a T-shirt and his shoes. He strapped the sheath of a long knife to his thigh. The assault rifle lay within his reach.

  She tore into her clothes, cursing her slow shaking fingers, and wriggled into her sweatshirt. As she yanked her shoes on and tied them, she heard a hawk scream outside. Her head lifted. When she had been attacked, she had heard that same sound coming from a countless number of hawks. There was no time to braid back her hair. She yanked it into a ponytail.

  Michael strapped the sword to his back. Then he settled two belts of magazine clips across his shoulders. His expression was calm, even peaceful. She took one look at him and a fresh wave of dread threatened to buckle her knees. What did he know that would make him arm himself like that?

  He pivoted toward her. “All right,” he said. “Now it’s your turn.”

  He grabbed her with one hand. With the other he reached for the vest hanging on the back of a chair. “What are you doing?” she said. With an effort she kept her voice as quiet as his. “What’s going on? What do you know?”

  “Meet Kevlar. It’s your new best friend,” he said. He didn’t wait for her to do it herself. He began to stuff her into the vest. It was far too big for her and felt strange, thick and stiff and heavy. “We have problems coming our way. Right now they think they’re being sneaky. You’re going to take your gun and slip out the back bathroom window. That path I told you about, the one that leads north to the lake—there’s an opening in the back clearing. It’s not very noticeable. I’ve kept that overgrown too. You’re going to take the path, skirt the lake and keep going north. I’ll catch up with you in a bit.”

  “No,” she said. She gripped his forearm. The corded muscle felt as hard as marble under her fingers. “We’ll both go. Michael, let’s just run.”

  “They would follow,” he said. “Then we would have to fight them a quarter of a mile from here, or a half a mile from here, and I wouldn’t have the advantage of the cabin or familiar ground for cover.” He grabbed her other arm and tried to force it through the second armhole. “You need to go. I need to stay.”

  “Stop it,” she said. She twisted away from him and slipped out of the vest. “I’m not going.”

  He took her by the shoulders and jerked her toward him. “Don’t do this,” he growled in her face. “We don’t have time to argue. They haven’t circled around the cabin yet but they will. You are getting out of here.”

  “I can’t just leave you!” she snapped. “I need to help.”

  He said with rapid force, point-blank in her face, “If you need to help then you will leave. Now. You’re a liability if you stay.” He grabbed the vest from the floor and began to stuff her back into it. “You’re a doctor, not a soldier. You don’t know how to fight, and we’ve had no chance to really train together. You’re vulnerable, and you’re a target. I need you to protect yourself so I can be free to do what I need to do. Otherwise I’m expending all my energy trying to protect you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” she said. She foiled his efforts by going limp, slithered out of the vest and sat down hard on the floor. He glared at her. She pointed to the vest. “I’m not wearing that. It’s too big. You make sense. I’ll go. But only if you wear the vest. Don’t argue with me about this. It’s a waste of time.”

  Looking furious, he dropped the vest and hauled her to her feet, scooped up two spare clips and slapped them in her hand. As she stuffed them into her pocket, he grabbed the nine-millimeter, marched her to the bathroom, unlatched the high window above the bathtub and opened it wide. He dropped the gun outside and swung her into his arms.

  Her gaze swam with unshed tears. She ordered, “You put the vest on when I’m gone, do
you hear?”

  “You’re quite the tyrant, aren’t you?” he said, his face grim.

  “Yes.” Her fingers twisted in his T-shirt. “I mean it, Michael. Put the vest on.”

  “Fine.” He gave her a brief, hard kiss then he raised her to the window feet first.

  She wiggled through the space as he pushed her, turning so that she rested on her stomach as she hung halfway out of the window. She grabbed his muscled forearms.

  “I’m going to be really pissed at you if you get yourself killed,” she warned. “Don’t think I won’t find a way to hunt your ghost down and kick your ass.”

  He kissed her again and stared hard into her eyes. “I’ll see you soon. GO.”

  He grasped her by the upper arms and helped to control her descent to the ground. As soon as she gained her footing, she searched for the gun and found it, and looked at the window as she straightened.

  He lingered long enough to point in the direction of the path. She saw the subtle break in the bushes and nodded. During target practice yesterday, she hadn’t even noticed it. He passed a hand over her hair in one last caress and disappeared inside.

  She looked at the tangled greenery and took a deep breath.

  That was an awfully big, strange forest. Whatever was sneaking toward the cabin would be crawling right through it. She could be intercepted on the path to the lake.

  Despite all promises or common sense she nearly tried to crawl back through the window. Then she saw a speckled kestrel perched in a maple tree by the path. It tilted its head, focused a huge amber eye on her and mantled its wings. It was such a fierce little thing that, in spite of everything, she almost smiled.

  “Okay,” she whispered. “I guess it’s just you and me for a while, kid.”

  She stepped onto the path, such as it was. It was narrow and as overgrown as the clearing. From a few feet away, she wouldn’t be able to see it. The kestrel took wing and followed.

  When she rounded a curve, a transparent, shimmering form of a man stood in front of her. She jerked to a halt in dismay, for she had already been caught.