Rising Darkness

Chapter Ten

THE PAIR OF hawks that followed Mary rode thermals high above the rolling landscape. They had hurtled in pursuit of the car as she turned east, falling back only after fresh hunters swooped in to take over the chase. If an ornithologist had been asked whether the aerial predators were capable of such a sophisticated tactical interaction, he or she would have laughed the questioner out of the room.

The hawks weren’t finished with their task after they had been relieved by newcomers. Instead they winged west until they located a nondescript, battered blue Ford with a transplanted, meticulously maintained BMW engine.

Michael drove south on Interstate 94, which took him out of Wisconsin and along the outskirts of Chicago. As he wove through the crowded traffic, he rarely let the hybrid Ford’s speed fall under a hundred miles an hour, even if it meant that he sometimes had to plunge onto the shoulder to pass snarls of slower vehicles. The pace was suicidal in the greater Chicago area and required absolute concentration and prescient reflexes.

While he drove he maintained a cloak of secrecy around the car, projecting a kind of psychic null-space, a void where the mind’s eye preferred not to look. Troopers patrolling I-94 had radars flash with something inexplicable but their minds slipped away from the occurrence and they forgot it almost at once.

The man maintained minimal contact with his fellow hunters and companions, just enough to sense their presence without glancing away from the road, and to hear the simplest of messages. None had spoken after the first hawk had returned to make its presence known to him.

We have found her, it had said. Follow.

They came. They made contact.

It was enough. He followed.

All other questions and all other answers could be gleaned at a later time. If they lost her again, none of the questions or answers would matter, anyway.

As he drove, he thought back to another life and time, and another trip he had undertaken with almost the same desperation as this one. Another one of their group, Ariel, had been betrayed, captured by Burgundians and sold to the English.

She had begun that life as a peasant girl and fallen prey to the pitfalls their group faced as they grew to adulthood. Confused by her abilities and imperfect shards of returning memory, she became consumed by the voices she heard in her head. When Michael first made contact with her, she believed him to be a saint, and she laid claim to a holy vision. Even as a teen she had been a charismatic and formidable warrior, rousing the countryside to defeat their enemy both at Orleans and Patay.

Then their enemy’s spies spread their poison well. Abandoned by her king, she had been tried for witchcraft and heresy by French clerics who worked in service to the English.

Spring in France had been a messy business that year. The roads to Rouen were churned to thick mud from the downpour of several days of rain. He remembered the heavy strike of hooves as his horse thundered along the treacherous route, and the stomach-churning sound of bone snapping.

He had roared with frustration as his horse went down and threw him from the saddle. He had been forced to slit the suffering beast’s throat in the mud and the rain. And though he scoured every stable in search of another mount, and he had hurtled forward with every ounce of his considerable strength, he had arrived too late to prevent anything.

She should have been fine. He had told her to recant and keep quiet, to wait until he could break her out of prison, but their enemy had captured and tortured Uriel, her mate.

It had broken her. She had pleaded and demanded to be freed, had insisted the voices she heard in her head were real, and the frightened ecclesiastical court had burned her for it.

There had been no last-minute Hollywood appearance or rescue as the flames licked at the bottom of the woodpile. When he had arrived, there had been nothing left of her but the smear of ash and the memory of an outcry on the wind.

Thus was the sum of a noble life: loss and pain and defeat in a foreign place, and the strange, empty gift of sainthood almost five hundred years later, long past when she and her mate had been destroyed, and their real stories and original identities had been buried under the weight of human superstition and history.

Goddamn, he had forgotten how much he had loved that horse. He had raised it from a colt. It had given him everything it had, including its life.

Michael was forced to stop just past East Chicago to refill his depleted gas tank. The pause was agonizing.

Throughout the day as he traveled, the psychic realm rustled and whispered. Ethereal energies were more agitated than usual by the day’s disturbances. Dark beings as well as lighter ones crossed the landscape at the edge of his awareness. Once something fled past him, sobbing inconsolably.

Through all of it, he could feel the woman’s psychic presence radiating with uncontrollable force, a star blazing into a supernova before it died. Creatures attracted to such extremity moved with purpose and stealth toward her, hopeful for an easy kill.

Murder was a child’s picture drawn in bright crayon compared to the savagery he felt. In contrast to his current mood, his former state of rage had been pastel.

Night fell. His speed never lessened except once, briefly, to make the turn north. After an agony of waiting, his current feathered guide said, Turn here.

He was traveling at such a high speed that he shot past the exit. The Ford screeched onto the road’s shoulder. He reversed and gunned the engine until he could take the ramp. Then he drove the side road with more care as he followed the terse commands, for he had to translate everything from a hawk’s perception into information that he could use on the ground.

At last he cruised down a country lane. In the sweep of headlights a red-tailed hawk sat motionless on a low-lying limb of a huge oak. Huge golden eyes flared as the hawk turned its head and stared at his car. The oak tree grew beside a one-lane gravel drive.

He made the tight turn gently onto the gravel road. The forest was thick with night sounds, tangled underbrush and overhanging trees. His headlights picked up a dark parked Toyota yards ahead. At least thirty wolves surrounded the car. They rose to their feet and turned to face his vehicle with bared teeth. A few were half-grown pups.

He took a careful breath, put the Ford into park and killed the engine. Whatever he might have expected, it hadn’t been this. He touched the nine-millimeter in his shoulder holster then opened his door and got out, leaving the car’s headlights on.

Along with the quiet rush of chill spring air came the flutter of a small wind spirit. It batted around him like a trapped and bruised butterfly.

Dying, it said. She’s dying—

Hush, he told it. He brushed it away gently with his mind.

The alpha wolf of the pack paced toward him. He stared down into the powerful male’s steady gaze. The wolf said, Warrior.

He replied, I will pass. Let me do so in peace. I do not want to hurt you.

The alpha male said, We have answered her call for help, and we have promised to protect.

It was another loyal beast. His mouth tightened. Your clan is an honorable one. Can you heal her as well, or save her life?

The wolf remained silent.

I will pass, he repeated.

The alpha male turned to his pack. One by one the wolves moved out of his way. He walked to the Toyota and looked at the woman who curled in a crumpled heap in the driver’s seat. She was small with a snarled braid, her shoulders two thin, vulnerable points under her jacket, but he couldn’t make out any other details in the indirect light.

The old woman had taught him well. Staring down at the woman, he remembered the eight-year-old boy he had been. He thought of all the reasons that his old mentor had for being ready to kill him should it become necessary.

Those same reasons applied to this young woman.

He must be prepared to kill her if she wasn’t salvageable.