Falling Light Part 9

Michael said in her head, Mary. Get to the boat slips NOW.

She nodded. As if he could see her. Idiot. She bent to pick up the backpack he had dropped.

A fresh burst of chittering broke out behind her, sounding like nothing so much as a flock of disturbed bats bursting from a cave. She looked back at the tunnel. A man, dressed in black, raced toward her.

Whoops. She bolted.

Someone shouted. In the parking lot, the frames of three cars boiled with heat and light. The men struggled to their knees. A short, staccato burst of gunfire sounded from the roof, then another. The men in the parking lot fell again and didn't move. She threw a glance over her shoulder. The man chasing her had fallen to the ground as well.

With her psychic sense she could see a cloud of dark things, like ragged sc.r.a.ps of black lace, hovering outside the tunnel, but she didn't dare look any longer. She ducked her head and raced in a wide circle around the burning chaos in the parking lot. Then she cut across the lawn to the water.

Almost there. The parking lot lay behind her and the long dock filled with boat slips lay just ahead. She heard more shouting from the direction of the building, more shots. Michael was drawing all the gunfire. Sirens wailed in the distance. The sound grew closer rapidly.

Her gaze bounced from shadowed boat to boat as she ran toward the slip. She tried to decide which one was the best to pick. Not that it mattered. She was sure Michael only meant to get her out of the way until he could join her.

Two dark-dressed men rose up from the nearest boat. They leveled guns on her.

"Well, s.h.i.+t," she said.

There was nowhere to hide on the wide, open lawn. She had no time to do anything except get braced. Everything slowed down as her awareness heightened to a sparkling clarity. They fired on her even as she slipped and skidded, awkward on the wet, short gra.s.s.

She had the briefest of moments in which to feel a foolish sense of betrayal. They hadn't shouted for her to halt. They didn't identify themselves as police officers.

They fired on her when she carried no visible weapon.

The first bullet entered her torso just under her left breast. Her sparkling awareness centered on it. It burst through the fragile barrier of her skin.

She was already at the point of entrance saying, No. No. HEAL.

Her skin closed behind the bullet. The cells knitted together in an instant from the force of her command.

The bullet continued its destructive path. It pa.s.sed between two ribs and tore through powerful tendons and muscle. It entered her chest cavity.

HEAL, she demanded.

The tendons and muscle obeyed her command, and healed.

The bullet pierced her lung and pa.s.sed through, and left pink scar tissue behind.

Meanwhile the second bullet entered her abdominal cavity. It began to tear through her pancreas. The third struck her right clavicle, broke it and ricocheted off the bone to pa.s.s through the muscle of her shoulder. The fourth pierced her throat by the Adam's apple.

No, she said.

No, and No, and No.

Her body continued to heal each time she demanded it, but each time a wound closed over, it cost her. Each time she weakened.

Her consciousness centered in the bloodred, lightning-quick battlefield her body had become.

In another, much slower reality, an unimaginable distance away, as the bullets struck her, someone else roared as if he was the one being shot. Someone else strained every ounce of mind and body to race toward her. He was impossibly, inhumanly fast, but he would still not reach the battlefield in time.

No matter how fiercely she demanded, she couldn't heal all the wounds if enough bullets kept striking her. Her body would fail. She had to do something to stop the men from shooting.

She opened her purse and pulled out the nine-millimeter. As the men on the boat straightened, she pushed off the safety latch. She pointed the gun and emptied the clip at them, just like Michael had taught her.

Some of the shots went wild. She had forgotten what he had told her, that the gun would have a kick.

She sank to one knee. The world wobbled. She put a hand to the ground to steady herself on it.

"Now look what you made me do," she said to the men, who had disappeared. She looked in disgust at the gun and dropped it.

She heard her name spoken in a voice gone hoa.r.s.e from extremity. She turned her face up as Michael skidded to his knees beside her. His expression was unrecognizable, his chest heaved in sobbing breaths and the rain poured down his face like tears.

"Oh, G.o.d," he said.

She reached out to grip the front of his s.h.i.+rt. Her hand slipped on the wet cloth. His shaking hands descended on her shoulders. She pulled his face down to hers and growled, "I don't want to get shot ANYMORE TODAY."

He knelt, gathered her into his arms and held her with his whole body. "You won't be. I swear it."

Lightning seared the sky overhead, thunder shook the air and the black glistening creature from the psychic realm attacked.

She was in such a weakened state she couldn't struggle against the dark tentacle that wrapped around her right leg. The touch of it was so cold it seemed to burn into her bones. It started to draw the living warmth out of her.

Michael's arms loosened, and he let go of her. She writhed in helpless agony as he surged to his feet. Then he erupted into a silver-hot rage that burned against her mind. His presence towered over her p.r.o.ne body, and a flaming sword appeared in his hand. The creature's black tentacle fell away.

The storm flashed and thundered. Sheets of bitterly cold rain spewed down. His flaming sword arcing like lightning, Michael danced and struck with savage grace at the large, sinuous black creature. It undulated and hissed like a feral cat as it lashed back. Mary pulled her body into a small compact ball, squeezed her eyes shut and curled an arm over her head. But she couldn't close off her psychic senses.

A complicated flurry of movements followed. Michael spun. The white-hot flame of his energy sliced deep into the creature's midnight form. An eerie shrieking filled her head, almost like the whistle of a teakettle. The creature recoiled from Michael's s.h.i.+ning figure and dragged itself away.

She jerked as two large hands gripped her.

Michael said in a hoa.r.s.e voice, "It's just me."

She uncurled and tried to push herself up on one trembling arm. Rain poured into her face. She scrubbed at her eyes. Michael slid his arms under her knees and shoulders and picked her up.

Vehicles crowned with the screaming flash of sirens pulled into the far side of the parking lot. Michael sprinted down the long, slippery pier. Black water boiled and foamed around the planks. Her head bounced as he ran. She hooked an arm around his neck.

"Jesus Christ, how bad is it?" he demanded. "Are you bleeding?"

"No," she stuttered, quaking from cold and shock. "I'm just shaky."

He stopped running and tipped her carefully over a rail, onto the deck of a boat.

"Try to get below," he shouted in her ear. He unsheathed his knife, slashed at the moorings, then vaulted onto the deck. He lunged to a small, enclosed cabin. There was a sound of splintering gla.s.s. Moments later he disappeared inside.

Disoriented, bewildered, she forced her chilled muscles to work. She didn't trust her shaky balance on the streaming wet deck. She crawled past the cabin Michael had entered until she reached some kind of flattened door.

Think nautical. Maybe that was the hatch. She tried the latch. It was locked. She stumbled toward the cabin again as the boat's powerful engine growled to life.

She managed to grab hold of the edge of the narrow doorway as Michael slammed the boat into reverse and gunned the engine. It roared out of the slip. The water was so rough the boat bucked violently as they pulled out. It slammed against the neighboring boat and dragged along the side with a long, earsplitting screech.

"Is the hatch locked?" Michael asked without looking at her. As soon as the boat was clear of the slip, he spun the wheel hard and changed gears, and the boat's engine labored to comply.

"Yes," she gasped. She looked through the rain-smeared gla.s.s back toward sh.o.r.e. Fire trucks ringed the bombed vehicles, which were still blazing in spite of the storm's deluge. Silhouettes of armed men raced toward the dock.

"Get down," he told her.

She got down.

More gunfire. Some of the bullets may have struck their boat. She wasn't sure. With her head so close to the deck, the roar of the engine filled her ears. The boat creaked in complaint as Michael threw the throttle wide open. He returned fire in short, sharp bursts. Then the gunfire ceased.

She couldn't see anything so she closed her eyes and waited. It felt like a long time. Nothing was stable, nothing. They rose and fell, shuddering with each wave they hit. With the small cabin door broken, they were exposed to the storm. Frigid, filthy water swirled around her.

She thought of sliding out the open doorway with the next toss of the waves, and she groped until she found something that was bolted to the deck. She wrapped an arm around it, anchoring herself in place.

At last, Michael said, "Okay. We're out of gunshot range. Mary. You can get up now."

She nodded in the dark. It sounded good in theory.

A hand connected with her shoulder, groped down her arm and tightened in a grip just above her elbow. "Come on," he coaxed.

With his help, she forced her cramped and trembling body upright. He pulled her back against him with one arm and held her tight, while he maintained a strong grip on the steering wheel with the other. The control dials provided a slight illumination. Beyond the tiny cabin she could see the Lake swelling into waves that had to be as high as fifteen feet.

Michael put his mouth by her ear. "How bad off are you?"

She said through numb lips, "I'm pretty depleted."

"I want you to do one last thing if you can," he told her. "We need to try to get farther out into the bay. Take the wheel and hold us on our course while I break into the galley. It'll be just for a few minutes. Can you do that?"

She nodded. He pulled her in front of the steering wheel. Her cold hands and feet were about as wieldy as blocks of wood, and she had lost most of the strength in her grip, so she wedged her forearms in between the spokes of the wheel. She felt the power of the storm vibrating through the tension in the structure.

Michael disappeared. She kept her hold on the wheel by leaning her body against it. She held on through a dark, swirling s.p.a.ce of time, while the engine strained and the boat rose and plummeted again and again.

Then he was back, shouldering through the narrow doorway. He came up behind her and enveloped her in a dry blanket.

"Waste of a g-good blanket," she stuttered. Her clothes were as sodden as if she'd tripped and fallen in the water.

"There's more down below."

He reached over to turn off the engine and pulled her away from the wheel.

"What are you doing?" she gasped.

It was terrifying to hear the sound of the engine die away, to be replaced by the wild sounds of wind and rain and the interminable roar of the Lake.

"There's nothing more we can do," he said. "The boat's engine is too small-we're not making any headway against the storm. We have to trust Astra now, and the ent.i.ties that are allied with her. Come on."

He clamped an arm tight around her and supported her drunken progress along the treacherous slippery deck. Then he transferred his grip to around her waist. He half-carried her down the narrow steps to the galley, twisting to slam the hatch shut behind them.

A battery-powered emergency light was fastened high against one wall. By its faint glow she could see a tiny kitchenette and a small table bolted to the floor, surrounded by booth seats. Against the far wall of the kitchenette was a narrow doorway that led to darkness.

The boat rolled, and Michael staggered. He pushed her into the nearest seat. "Can you strip off your wet clothes and shoes?"

"S-sure." She fumbled with the b.u.t.tons of the flannel s.h.i.+rt but she couldn't feel her fingers, so she dragged it over her head and dropped the sodden material on the floor.

The boat creaked and groaned. It sounded like it was alive and in pain. Michael made his way to the shadowed doorway beyond the kitchenette.

She struggled to remove her wet shoes as he dragged two narrow mattresses onto the floor from bunks on either side of the doorway. He stacked them on top of each other. Then he opened a cabinet, pulled out a pile of blankets and pillows and threw them on the mattresses.

He walked back to her, maintaining his balance with bracing handholds on nearby cabinets. She managed to get her jeans unb.u.t.toned and unzipped as he knelt in front of her. He took one of her narrow feet in his hands and stripped off her sock.

"Jesus," he said. He took her other foot and peeled the sock off. "Your feet are like ice. Lie back."

She complied, flopping back in the booth and lifting her hips when he told her to. He dragged her heavy wet jeans over her slim legs. She sighed in relief as the freezing denim left her skin.

Michael pulled her back to a sitting position. The blanket she'd kept draped across her shoulders fell away. She was naked except for her panties. He stared for a long silent moment at the high, gentle curve of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, her narrow rib cage and the slight swell of her abdomen.

Her blue-tinged skin was raised with goose b.u.mps and mottled with several small purplish marks. He gently touched the purple mark on her rib cage under her left breast, then the one at her collarbone.

"Jesus," he said again. "How many times did you get shot?"

"F-four or five," she replied. "I l-lost count."

His eyes were stark and black in the dim light. They s.h.i.+mmered with sudden wetness. "I'm so sorry," he said from the back of his throat. He pulled the blanket tight around her with hands that shook. "I didn't sense them hiding there. I never would have told you to run to the dock if I had. I didn't sense anything but that creature guarding the sh.o.r.eline-"

"Shut up, Michael," she said wearily. A convulsive shudder rippled through her aching body. "It's not your f-fault. G.o.d, I feel like I'm never going to be warm again."

He reacted immediately, standing and drawing her to her feet. With one arm around her waist and the other protecting their progress against the roll of the boat, he helped her to the mattresses on the floor.

She crawled on them and, wracked with violent s.h.i.+vers, she fell face-first onto one of the pillows. She felt weight on her body increase as he piled more blankets on top of her. They smelled like mothb.a.l.l.s.

The small room was in near total darkness, like a cave, shot intermittently with white flashes of lightning that showed through two small, round portholes set high near the ceiling. Michael tucked cus.h.i.+ons from the booth on either side of the makes.h.i.+ft bed. Then he lifted one corner of the blankets and slid the length of his naked body next to hers.

Compared with the hazardous chill of her body temperature, his skin felt furnace-hot. He pulled her against the wide bulk of his chest, wrapping his arms tight around her, and he hooked one heavily muscled leg over hers. She put her arms around him, rested her head on his chest and groaned as spasms racked her body.

"Shh," he murmured. He rubbed at her back, her arms and her legs. "It'll get better in a minute."

"I know," she gritted.

Soon the combined warmth from their bodies soaked in deep. Bit by bit the clench of her muscles loosened. She rubbed her cheek against the sprinkle of crisp hair on his chest, savoring his warmth and the simple animal comfort of being held. That was when she realized he was shaking almost as badly as she had been.

She tried to lift her head but his hold on her was too tight. She stroked the broad, taut muscles of his back. "Michael?"

In a voice so low and raw, she could barely hear it over the creak of the boat and the lash of the wind, he whispered, "I can't lose you. Not so soon after finding you again. Not after so long."

She was glad she had warmed enough so her reply could be steady and gentle. "You won't lose me. I'm not going anywhere. My memories are returning, and I've got my sense of ident.i.ty back. I'm not about to let go when I've just started to really live. Did you see? I even shot your d.a.m.n gun."

With one hand at the back of her head, he pressed her face into his neck. A smile threaded through the other emotions in his voice. "I know, I saw."