Treasure of Light (The Light Trilogy) by Kathleen O’Neal Page B

sculptures still filled the flower gardens. But today the scents of the roses had vanished—replaced by the bittersweet odor of death. To his left, the Seine glinted a rich green in the morning sunlight. In front of him the ruined towers of the cathedral of Notre Dame stood, broken and battered against a tarnished mustard-colored sky. Overhead, a Pegasan battle cruiser hung like a black oblate coin. The roar of cannon fire split the air as violet arcs streaked from the cruiser to lash the earth, kicking dust and debris a hundred feet high.
    “Maggie?” he screamed to the blonde woman running headlong in front of him. “No, no! Not that way! Turn left. Left!”
    She vacillated, confused. Terror had held them both by the throats over the past half hour as the battle intensified. “No, Cole, this way! We have to …” Her voice faded as she turned right, leaping a pile of bloody corpses and racing down a dark alley.
    He glanced at the cruiser, seeing the arcs sweeping their way. “Maggie!”
    He ran after her, jumping the bodies and bounding into the alley just in time to see the cruiser’s fire slice through the medieval buildings lining the alley. As though in slow motion the ancient walls tumbled inward, cascading down around them like a gray mountain.
    “No!” he shouted in agony and—for a brief moment—felt the sleek fabric of his own bed … sheets … but where? He couldn’t quite find it in his memory.
    Then it was gone.
    He woke in the streets of Paris, blinking at yellow skies hazy with airborne dust. The bars of his light cage gleamed. Agonizingly, he rolled to his side. Maggie lay in the next cage, wavy hair spreading like a blanket of sunlit cornsilk over her bloody uniform.
    But she must be alive or they wouldn’t have caged her!
    “Maggie?”
    “Cole … oh, Cole, forgive me … forgive me….” The sound of her muffled sobs made every muscle in his body go tight.
    “Maggie, don’t. We’re alive. They have obligations under the Treaty of Carina. Prisoners of war have to be treated humanely.”
    He pulled his battered body forward and extended a hand through the bars, snaking it across the dry weeds toward Maggie’s cage. “Take my hand. Can you reach me?”
    Weakly, she rolled to her stomach and wiggled her arm through the bars. They could just barely touch fingertips. But the warmth of her hand eased his fears.
    “It wasn’t your fault we got captured, Maggie. Don’t blame yourself. Isle St. Louis was cut off. They’d have gotten us sooner or later anyway.”
    He struggled to get closer to her, pressing his wounded shoulder hard against the bars of the cage. Pain lanced him, but he could just curl his fingertips around hers.
    The dream shifted.
    Hallucinatory images swirled, spiraling down on him, random, terrifying. Wave after wave of pain tormented him. He screamed … and could hear Maggie’s screams, high, breathless. Darkness, so much darkness and pain, constant pain. Agony seared his back and legs, as though a thousand tiny saw blades spun through the hot wounded flesh.
    Someone asked him a question, but he felt too drained of strength to answer. The attempt brought on nausea. A short time later, lights flashed through his skull. Probes! He recognized the feel, like hot tendrils of wire snaking through his thoughts. His throat had gone too raw to scream. Only a soft groan escaped his lips. Why torture if they had probes? Why? He caught a glimpse of a hideous face: a gruesomely twisted ruby-eyed demon. It hovered over him, smiling, teeth bared. Then the pain returned, stunning in its intensity. Someone asked another question. He vomited and vomited. …
    After days, he learned a trick to evade them. He reached inside himself, found his soul, and put it in the rocky fortress of the walls of Notre Dame, a place so cold and hard the probes couldn’t reach him there. Abandon yourself. Leave your body in the cage and just go ….
    And he did. He stayed gone for what seemed an eternity.