Thea Harrison: Rising Darkness

The gun dropped from her nerveless fingers. It hit the ground.

“Excellent,” he said, smiling. He pushed from the limousine and strolled through the bodies toward her. “I guess I’ve made it rather obvious how much I want you.”

“Well, yes. . . .”

He lifted his gun and shot her.

She felt it punch her left shoulder. Her body arced backward as the clearing whirled. Then the ground came up and slammed into her. She thought she heard someone roaring.

Distantly, she got the impression of several men running out of the clearing. The dark spirits lifted from the trees and flapped away.

Two wingtip shoes came sideways into her vision. The Deceiver said, “As you might have gathered from your last life, I might want you alive, but I’m not averse to a little judicious maiming.”

Her mouth opened. She tried to take a breath. One of her hands scrabbled at the grass. Then she spiraled inward in an agonized epiphany.

Red was important to her.

Red filled her mind, a warm, glowing vibrancy like live coals except for one dark torn place. Her awareness flew in that direction, past the pumping heart and the working bellows of her lungs, to the jagged hole that ripped through her body.

The bullet had entered just below her collarbone. It had flattened as it moved through muscle and tissue, creating more damage where it exited than where it had entered. As she followed the damage to the back of her shoulder, she sent commands to her body that would stop the worst of the bleeding.

And just like Michael’s body had when she had commanded it, her body obeyed.

The abused flesh began to knit back together at the microscopic level.

She felt herself lifted and turned. The Deceiver probed curiously at her wound. As she tried to push the hard fingers away, she flashed back to that ancient horror when he had reached into her body and handled organs that were never meant to endure such exposure.

“The bleeding has already starting to slow.” He sounded thrilled. “You are remembering. How delicious.”

Inside, the door to her secret, golden treasure chamber opened, and precious knowledge scrolled out.

She staved off the lethargy of shock and kept her temperature controlled. White blood cells started to locate and destroy foreign bacteria.

Of course. How could she have forgotten?

She had always known she was a healer. This was how she healed.

The Deceiver picked her up and carried her toward the limousine. “You know, in that life when I found you, your family had sheltered you so much you never had a clue how famous you had become,” he said, his tone conversational. “I wanted you from the first moment I’d heard of you. I was sure that you were one of us.”

She only gave him part of her attention. Most of her awareness focused on her internal reality.

This was how she knew how close Michael had come to cardiac arrest, yesterday in the bathroom.

This was why she had poured so much energy into him, how she had calmed his heart. He had sunk so deeply into the memories of his own death he had almost killed himself again.

His heart. The blood, the arteries, and the rhythmic pumping of his heart, all normally so strong.

“You should have heard the names they called you in the city.” The Deceiver jerked his head at one of his soldiers, who sprang forward to open the back door. “Blessed of Allah, Daughter of Heaven. You were a legend before you were twenty. They said you had a face like an angel and a touch like Jesus. It looks like you still do, Mary, Mary.”

Quite contrary.

Before the intention had formed properly in her mind, she slapped a hand flat on his breastbone. She sent her awareness through that touch, thrusting into him like a scalpel.

And if she had the nerve to wield a scalpel, she could shoot this gun.

Justin’s heart was wonderfully healthy, thirty years old and strong as an ox. He should have lived to be a wisecracking, mischievous old man.

She tangled her awareness in veins and arteries. She gripped the rhythmic pumping muscle with her mind like a fist then she—

Yanked.

Shock bolted across his face. His arms loosened. She fell hard and awkwardly. She cried out as the impact shot burning pain through her left shoulder and lung. Pushing against the ground, she managed to turn onto her back. She looked up.

He hunched over, clutching at his chest. The normal healthy tan of Justin’s complexion turned purplish. His features contorted with astonishment, pain and rage.

DAMN YOU! he roared in her head like a cyclone. GODDAMN YOU!

Wheezing, he fell to one knee. His eyes turned toward her, and they were black diamond eyes, as vast as twin black holes, and they were filled with her destruction. He reached an unsteady hand toward her.

Oh God. She couldn’t let him touch her.

She rolled away and kept rolling as he lunged after her. How long before his hemorrhaging heart brought him to immobility, unconsciousness? Would it be soon enough?

He sprawled full length, his grasping fingers scant inches from her ankle. She glanced back at him. He fought to get his knees underneath him again.

Gunfire exploded nearby. She realized she’d been hearing gunfire in the background for a few minutes now.

The Deceiver grabbed for her ankle again. His fingers brushed the cuff of her jeans and hooked underneath the hem.

“WHY DON’T YOU JUST DIE!” she screamed at him.

She kicked him in the face. His head snapped back, and blood sprayed from his nose. Jackknifing away, she got to her hands and knees. The weight made her injured shoulder pulse with agony. She curled her left arm around her torso and scuttled away like a wounded crab.

After five feet, she sent a terrified glance over her shoulder.

He had to be close to death. He had to be.

He had abandoned his pursuit of her. He lay curled on his side, his psychic presence as malignant and as powerful as ever. The soldier that had opened the limousine door for him walked toward him. The man’s aura was smudged and dark, his expression blank.

The soldier bent over the dying man with the stiff disjointedness of a marionette puppet. Not-Justin grabbed the soldier’s hand. The soldier convulsed then collapsed on top of him.

She didn’t dare wait to see any more. Instead she pushed to her feet and lurched down the gravel driveway in a stumbling run, supporting her injured arm with the other.

Ahead of her, Michael lunged around the bend in the gravel drive. He was limping badly, sweating profusely and bleeding from several wounds. In one hand, he held an automatic weapon. In the other, he gripped a foot-long knife that dripped ruby liquid. The savage expression on his hard face made her sob.

She tripped and almost went down. He limped up to her, slung the gun onto his shoulder and sheathed the knife. Then, with as much care as if she were made of spun glass, he put his arms around her. She dropped her forehead to his collarbone. Heat poured off of him in waves.

“Thank you, God,” she whispered.

“Where is he?” His voice was gravel. His chest heaved.

“Back there.” She pointed with her good hand toward the clearing as she leaned against him, hungrily soaking in the sensation of his strong body next to hers.

He held her away from him. “Christ, you’re covered with blood.” His voice shook. “How bad is it?”

She shook her head and forced herself to take a deep breath. “It hurts, but I’ve slowed the bleeding. Michael, somehow he was in my ex-husband’s body. I induced a cardiac arrest. He went down, but it doesn’t feel like he’s gone. One of his soldiers collapsed when he touched him.”

“All right.” Michael turned an executioner’s expression toward the clearing. He asked, “Can you keep running?”