Кей Хупер - Out of the Shadows

At first, Miranda ignored the voice. It was distant and hardly discernible, and besides, she was too tired to care what it was trying to tell her. She didn't know where she was, but it was quiet and peaceful. She had no reason to worry anymore and just wanted to be left alone there.

Miranda.

At the extreme edge of her awareness, she understood that something was touching her. She didn't feel it yet somehow knew the touch existed. And without thinking about it, she realized that without the contact she wouldn't be able to hear .. . him ... at all. Not that she was hearing him, not really. She understood what he was saying, but not because her ears told her.

That was strange. She considered it idly, still not caring but mildly interested in the puzzle of the thing. AH her senses, she realized eventually, had shut down. Shut down completely, turned themselves off. And because of that, her body was turning itself off as well. She had the vague impression of a heartbeat slowing down, of lungs no longer drawing in air, and other organs ceasing to function.

Miranda, listen to me. Hear me.

She didn't want to listen to him. He would hurt her again. She knew he would. He would hurt her and she never wanted to be hurt like that again.

You have to let me in, Miranda.

Oh, no. She couldn't let him in. It was dangerous to let him in. Because he'd hurt her again and because . . . because it wasn't time. Why wasn't it time? Because . . . something else had to happen first. That was it. Somebody else had to die. There had to be five, that was it, that was why she had to wait.

There had to be five.

Please, Miranda. Please let me in. Something's wrong, you have to let me in.

No. She couldn't. She turned away from him and drifted back toward the peaceful darkness. But there was a tugging deep inside her that she hadn't expected, and it was painful. She wanted so badly to let him in, to feel what she had never felt with anyone but him. But that frightened her too, her own need, the hunger that shattered control.

She shied away from it, tried to escape the demands of emotions she didn't want to feel. Tried to break the gossamer thread that seemed to connect her to something . . . outside . . . something . . . someone . . .

Miranda . . . you're dying. Can't you feel it?

She didn't want to listen to that, because of course she wasn't dying. She couldn't die, not yet. There was something she had to do, something . .. important.

Except nothing seemed to matter very much to her. Not now. The darkness was warm and peaceful, and she knew that outside held only anguish and worry and grief. And him. Him, making her life painful and prickly with complications she didn't need. Him making demands. She was so tired.

Let me in . . . God damn you, let me in . . .

She almost got away, got free, that faint connection so wispy and frayed it couldn't possibly hold her any longer. But then defenses she was barely aware of gave way, and something grabbed her, captured her. Other gossamer threads swirled around her, and where each one touched her she felt a jolt that was pain and pleasure and certainty that seemed to her inevitable. Struggle though she did, she was drawn slowly but inexorably out of the peaceful darkness.

She felt the cold first, a cold that was bone deep, and she knew it had been the beginning of death. Then the slow, heavy beat of her heart, uneven at first, gradually steadying, becoming stronger. Her lungs drew in air in a sudden gasp.

And she was back.

Miranda thought her head was going to explode, and every nerve in her body throbbed. She was cold and she ached, but she could hear again, hear the wind outside whining around the eaves and sleet rattling against the windowpanes. A familiar softness beneath her told her she was in her bed, though she had no memory of being brought upstairs. She knew if she opened her eyes she would see her bedroom around her. And see him.

"Damn you," she heard herself murmur.

"Damn me all you want, as long as you let me in."

She felt his hands framing her face, felt his mouth moving on hers, and no matter how much she wanted to resist she knew she was responding to him. Her body was warming, the cold ache seeping away, and she could feel herself opening up to him, accepting him now willingly where before she had simply given way to his urgent insistence.

There was a hunger in her greater than her will to defy it. A hunger for him. His hands soothed her aching head and his mouth took hers in long, deep, drugging kisses more addictive than any narcotic.

"This isn't fair," she whispered when she could.

"Christ, do you think I care?" Bishop's voice was hoarse.

Miranda forced her eyes to open. She thought she had seen him in every mood, thought she would have recognized any expression his face could wear, but this was a man she had never seen before.

"I didn't let you in." She had to say it.

"I know."

"You promised you wouldn't — "

He kissed her again and said roughly, "Do you really think there's anything I wouldn't do to keep you alive? Even if it gives you another reason to hate me."

Miranda knew he'd find out soon enough that she didn't hate him, but she wanted to argue about this dying business because it didn't make sense to her. But his mouth was moving on hers and his hands were slipping beneath the covers to touch her, and all her consciousness focused on the need he was only feeding. Nothing else mattered.

Their eight years apart seemed to melt away, the clock turning back to a summer during which two new lovers discovered the most extraordinary intimacy either had ever known.

Their bodies remembered first, driven by an urgent hunger that had to be satisfied. Covers were pushed aside, clothing discarded, and they couldn't stop touching and tasting, couldn't get close enough to each other. It was familiar and yet new, their bodies altered by time and experience, more mature now, more aware of their mortality and less careless of life and the pleasures and pains it offered.

They explored the familiar and the different with the utter deliberation of two people who knew too well that each moment was a gift and that they might never get this chance again. They took what life and fate offered them.

Outside, the storm was building, wailing now, and inside there was warmth and intensity, another kind of force that raged silently.

It happened now as it had that summer so long ago, and Miranda was surprised and shaken all over again by the enormity of it. With the passionate physical joining came a mental union so deep and absolute it was as if their two souls merged and became a single entity.

In a flashing instant, Miranda saw his life in the years they had been apart, saw the pleasures and hurts of it, the triumphs and tragedies, the cases that had ended well and those that hadn't. She saw the faces of his friends and co-workers and enemies, saw the places he'd been and the things he'd done, and felt what he had felt. She knew that at the same time he was also reliving her life, her experiences.

It was a wildly exhilarating roller coaster of emotions, and coupled with the potent physical sensations of lovemaking, it pushed them toward an incredible peak so far beyond the reach of most humans that there were no words with which to describe the journey.

Except sheer joy.

Deputy Greg Wilkie was concentrating almost entirely on the tricky job of keeping his cruiser on the road, and probably wouldn't even have glanced into the alley if he hadn't been trying to keep a wary eye out for flying debris. He'd already nearly lost a side mirror to a flying branch. His only thought, when he saw someone moving around the car, was that Liz was leaving a bit late and that it was a good thing she had a front-wheel-drive vehicle.