The feeling of her slender, warm body against his was the most amazing thing he had ever experienced. It was a haven that he couldn't have known to imagine before they had come together, and it felt like salvation. He meant to tell her all of that, but his overtaxed body hauled him into darkness.

No. His spirit rebelled and fought back to awareness.

He was not done yet, and he would not accept his body's limitations.

Mentally he a.s.sessed Mary. Like he had, she had fallen deeply asleep, nestled against him with her head on his shoulder. He eased into her mind. She had not yet started dreaming but lay drifting in darkness.

Mary, he whispered.

Mm, she grunted. Her body nuzzled closer to his, and his arms tightened around her.

You can let your body rest while we talk, he said, keeping his mental voice easy and quiet. Remember when I did it earlier?

She murmured, Don't know how to do that.

Just follow my voice and let go.

Still sounding mostly asleep, she asked, You sure?

He had to smile, in spite of himself. I'm sure. We need to finish our earlier conversation. Come with me. Please.

He felt her spirit rouse, and as she joined him, he created a scene around him.

A great hall in an early Norman castle appeared, with a long, scarred wooden table, a ma.s.sive fireplace and suits of armor displayed at various points around the room. The castle was from the first strong memory he had recovered of a lifetime he and Mary had spent together long ago. This was the life that had taught him the simple, powerful lesson of happiness.

After he formed the image of the great hall, he created a mental construct of his physical self. This time he chose to wear a simple gray T-shirt and jeans.

Mary was learning fast. When the scene appeared, she formed a construct of her body too. She still looked sleepy, and she was wearing checked flannel pajamas and fuzzy slippers. Her tawny hair lay loose on her shoulders, curling in crazy directions. He almost laughed out loud when he saw her.

She looked around the great hall, blue eyes wide. "I know this place," she breathed. "I've been here before."

"Yes, you know this place," he told her. "We lived here once. I wasn't going to say anything about it. I meant to wait and see if you remembered it on your own, but I changed my mind."

"I'm glad you did." Her face filled with wonder. She wandered over to the table to touch it with the fingertips of both hands.

He walked up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. "You were trying to tell me something earlier, and I did a bad job of listening. I'm sorry."

She turned around to face him. "What changed your mind?"

"Your growing closeness to Nicholas."

Her expression filled with wary confusion. "I don't understand."

"I was jealous as h.e.l.l, but that's beside the point." He touched her cheek, her lips. "You said earlier that you thought I was beautiful, but I couldn't hear you. But then today I watched how you were with Nicholas. It's remarkable how much the two of you have bonded, even though he's a warrior too, and I realized that I really had put up a wall between you and me. Astra had told me repeatedly over the years that while we might hope to reunite with you, twinned souls don't always come together or see eye to eye. I . . . listened too well to her warnings."

"Of course I think you're beautiful. How could I not?" She clasped his wrists gently. "Killing is an ugly thing, but that doesn't make you ugly. If you enjoyed the killing you would be ugly. If you killed for ugly reasons, that would make you ugly. You don't, do you?"

He stroked that fabulous hair off of her face as he thought through his reply. He wanted to get their talk right this time, so he chose his words with care. "I enjoy the physicality of a fight, the intellectual challenge and pitting myself against a worthy opponent. I enjoy winning and exacting justice-no, that goes beyond enjoyment. I need that. Do I enjoy killing someone, or watching their life drain out of them? No. I can see how I might become twisted that way, though."

"But you're not twisted that way. I've seen so much of you these last several days. You're not just a warrior." She gave him a smile. "You are a champion. Don't you see? That's one of the reasons why you're so beautiful to me. Part of healing is the knife. Sometimes you have to cut the cancers out."

"Yes," he said.

Her smile faded. "Please listen carefully to what I say. It's important to me that you don't misunderstand this either. Astra's warning carried some weight. We've been here before, you and me, haven't we? I don't mean this place." She gestured around at the great hall. "I mean at this kind of juncture in our relationship. We haven't always understood each other, or been successful in resolving the differences that lay between us."

"Yes, we've clashed and walked away from each other. I refuse to do that this time."

Her expression eased. She nodded. "I don't want to either. This life is too precious to waste. So I want you to know that what I say next is about me, not you."

He stroked her cheek. "I'm listening."

Her bright, blue gaze shadowed. "I am making a choice not to pick up a gun again. If I take that path, I feel like I would become someone else, someone that's not me. I would have to grow callused in ways that I'm not right now. I think some parts of me would have to die and I wouldn't be the healer I need to be, because I don't have your spirit, Michael. I'm not a fighter. Maybe I'm making a selfish decision. I know it means I take certain risks in our fight, but if that's the case, so be it-"

He shook his head and put his arms around her. "Hush. You'll take no more risks than I do."

"Well, that's not exactly true." Her voice was dry. She slipped her arms around his waist. "You're freakishly fast."

He started to laugh, and it felt good and healing. "I guess I am."

He sank to his knees and rested his face against her flat abdomen, basking in her warm, vital energy. She bent over him and ran her hands down his wide shoulders and strong back, and stroked his short, dark hair. For a while they rested against each other in silence.

Then he stirred and lifted his head. "If fighting-my type of fighting, anyway-is a kind of healing," he said, "then would you say that healing is a kind of fight?"

"Makes sense," she said. "Yin and yang. Two sides of a coin." She touched the tip of his nose with her finger.

He captured her hand and kissed her finger, then stood. "I've calmed down and I'm listening to what you said, but this isn't a simple either/or kind of topic."

She bit her lip. "What do you mean?"

"You're not comfortable with guns, and I can respect that. But just as being afraid to do something doesn't make you a coward, you can't look at what I do and then say that you're not a fighter. I don't think that's the right way to think of this issue. You may not be a fighter like I am, but you still have a lot of fight in you. Look at how hard you've fought over the last couple of days. Jerry should have died twice over, and he didn't because of you, and of course there's Nicholas."

"Okay," she said slowly. "I get what you're saying."

"I think you might enjoy some of the martial arts I know, especially the disciplines that are defensive in nature."

She ducked her head and scowled. He cupped her face with both hands and tilted it back up. "Keep an open mind. You promised."

Grimacing, she said again, "Okay."

"You're so s.e.xy when you're sullen," he told her.

He bent his head, and his mouth covered hers. She closed her eyes, draped her arms around his neck and kissed him back, and he lost himself in the raw, animal physicality of the moment.

He pushed her back and lifted her so that she settled into a sitting position on the table. Then he nudged between her legs and wrapped his arms around her, holding her tightly.

She linked her legs around his hips, hugging him with her whole body.

When he pulled away, Mary rested her head on his shoulder. She fingered her swollen lips and said in a drugged voice, "Wait. That was all just inside our heads, right?"

He nuzzled her ear with a husky chuckle. "Yeah. Think of how good it will be again in the flesh."

She stroked his hair, and it felt better than before. It felt better than ever, pa.s.sion and completeness, yin and yang.

"I haven't had a chance to say thank you," she said. "Jerry and Nicholas are alive because of you too."

"They are alive because of what we both did." He took her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers. "About your image of the chapel that you showed me earlier. I have an image I want to show you too."

She smiled up at him. Everything about her had lightened until she glowed, her spirit burnished bright. "Do you?"

"Yes." He looked around at the great hall. "It's here, deep inside the fortress."

Chapter Twenty-two.

SO THIS WAS supposed to be a new day.

He had read all of the most successful self-help books. He had been determined to turn his frown upside down and keep a positive att.i.tude. Cultivating a positive att.i.tude was supposed to create a positive outcome, wasn't it?

What had that gla.s.s half full of bulls.h.i.t got him?

Nothing. Nada.

He had scrambled so hard to get his traps in place along the coastline. For a brief time, at Jerry Crow's pathetic little hovel, he had felt on top of the world, ahead of the curve and in control of the game. He just knew he was onto something good.

Until Michael and Mary intervened, he had been onto something good. Jerry Crow had almost come home . . . from somewhere. Then Michael and Mary swooped in . . . from somewhere . . . and his monkey suit still ached from when Michael shot out the front tire of his and Martin's SUV and sent them crashing into a tree. Only his seat belt had saved him from hitting the windshield.

By the time he had been able to get people searching that specific area of the Lake, everybody had vanished again. The only thing his people had located was a drifting, rusty motorboat, full of blood and bullet holes.

He was spending a king's ransom on manpower and equipment, and the expenditures no longer came just from state and federal resources. Now they poured out of his own bank accounts, along with those of his wealthier drones.

He was, by far, the richest man in the world, because not only did he have his own wealth, but he also had access to all the wealth that his drones had ama.s.sed.

(He adored Swiss banks and electronic access to numbered accounts. It made life so convenient as he moved from host to host.) But many of those a.s.sets were dispersed through various individual, business and government accounts, and those funds took time to access. Because the situation was developing so fast, he was forced to fund the more esoteric aspects of the manhunt for Mary and Michael out of his own pocket.

He was spending his own money.

That offended him mightily, but even then, he spared no expense. He was willing to squander every cent he had acquired over centuries of plundering. He would be willing to bankrupt several small nations as well-if only he found out where Michael and Mary were hiding.

He was also willing to destroy major cities if he could just be a.s.sured of their destruction too, but what ultimate use was nuclear or bioweapons when they could return-and return-and return? They were a plague maddening him to the point where he could howl like a dog, a fugitive pestilence he would gouge out of his own flesh if he could only get his fingers on it.

WHY COULDN'T THEY LEAVE HIM THE f.u.c.k ALONE? He only fought for the right that was every creature's, to live his life on his own terms and do what was in his nature. He ground his teeth and growled in fury.

The worst of it was he didn't dare call off any aspect of the manhunt-just in case.

So his drones drove along the coastal roads of Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin, just in case. Armed federal agents worked in coordination with the Coast Guard to comb the waters of the Lake. Just in case.

Authorities from all three states were canva.s.sing every bed-and-breakfast establishment and every last squalid roadside motel. His creatures from the psychic realm had orders to fly over every inch of the landscape.

Early that evening, he took to the air in a private helicopter in order to travel quickly between Michigan's Lower and Upper Peninsulas. Every minute that trickled by was uselessly weighted in gold.

Because Mary and Michael had vanished, and they did it not once, but twice.

People didn't just vanish, not even his people. If they were alive they were corporeal. Like all physical creatures they could be measured and weighed, captured, imprisoned, dissected, tortured and killed. Their spirits were d.a.m.ned slippery and infuriating, but while they were embodied, they were bound by certain physical properties and limitations.

Last night, he had actually wondered if Michael and Mary might have been killed by the storm that had roared along the Michigan coast.

But they weren't at the bottom of the Lake. They were hiding really f.u.c.king well, which led him back to the need to squander his fortune.

They were either waiting for the search to die down before they moved again or-and this was the kicker, this was what had him suffering from indigestion and would have given him nightmares if he could have afforded the luxury of sleep-they had met up with Astra.

If they had united with Astra, they would have no need to travel anywhere, because they had already arrived at their destination. And if that happened, all of his frantically complicated efforts to tighten a search noose around Michael and Mary had failed.

Each puzzle piece had a name. He whispered them over and over again. Nicholas Crow. Jerry Crow. Michael and Mary. Astra.

How could Michael and Mary have known to come to Jerry Crow's aid, except through Astra?

He had a bad feeling, and it wasn't based on any conclusive evidence. It was purely based on the need to a.s.sume the worst-case scenario, because making that a.s.sumption was what had kept him alive for so long.

So he prowled through the air in his private helicopter, tracing and retracing the same pathways in gigantic loops, as he sniffed for the slightest sign of any of the three. The day pa.s.sed into evening, and still, he gained nothing.

No scent of Astra.

No sign of Michael.

No hint of Mary.

That last clinched his bad feeling into a graveyard's certainty. He should have picked up something from Mary by now, some kind of indication of what the little s.h.i.t was up to. She didn't have the skill to hide with complete efficacy from him. She hadn't had the time to remember how, and Michael couldn't have had time to teach her.

For the last several days, Mary had been trumpeting through the realms with all the finesse of a brain-damaged elephant, but ever since yesterday, she had grown very quiet, almost as if a powerful, dexterous hand had come down over her to m.u.f.fle her noise.

The only time he had really sensed Mary was earlier in the afternoon, just after she and Michael had rescued the old Crow and the boy. Then her presence blazed powerful and bright, escalating in intensity until it reached some unknown conclusion. He wondered if that had something to do with all the blood they found in the old motorboat.

After that, again there was nothing.

Time drained away and silence told a tale. If the three of them had joined together, then Astra's hiding place had to be accessible from the Petoskey and the Charlevoix marinas in Little Traverse Bay.

The old b.i.t.c.h was close, very close. He couldn't smell her on the airwaves, but he could feel it in the bones of his current body. He knew she was there, like a spider, lurking right across the next hilltop, around the bend, down the road.

One day he was going to look over his shoulder, and she would be standing there, smiling, as she plunged a dagger into his back. Her very presence on this planet had turned it from a playground into a prison. So many of the people he had slaughtered over the millennia had died as poor subst.i.tutes because he couldn't manage to get his hands around her G.o.dd.a.m.n neck.

Millennia ago, back on his home world, he had researched the properties of spirit until he had thrown open the cage of his existence in one of the greatest alchemical acts his people had ever seen.