"The last forty-eight hours have been eventful," she said. "I just wish I had been more useful for some of it."

He snorted. "You saved my life, and you got one of the nastiest ent.i.ties on the planet on the run. If you were any more useless, they could make an atom bomb out of you."

A short laugh broke out of her. It hurt, and she gripped her injured shoulder to brace it. Then she sort of pitched toward him and he leaned forward too, and somehow they ended forehead to forehead, looking deeply into each other's eyes.

The somberness of his gaze. The emotion pouring out of her. They told each other so much, and all of it in silence.

She stroked his broad, bare chest. Then she said, "I don't know what to do for your other wounds."

She didn't specify further. He seemed to know exactly what she was talking about anyway, as he nodded and straightened. "You do nothing for now. We get dressed, we pack up the car, and after you examine the drones, we leave."

After she examined them. Not after she healed them. He didn't believe that she could do anything for them.

Her face tightened, but she said, "Okay."

She didn't even try to wriggle into another T-shirt. Instead, he helped her to ease into one of his flannel shirts that could be b.u.t.toned down the front. Even though her jeans had gotten smeared with gra.s.s and dirt stains, at least she had managed not to bleed on them. Michael constructed a sling out of a kitchen towel, and slipped it over her head.

Then he limped into the bathroom. A moment later she heard the sound of running water. While she waited, she went to the sink and drank more water. Then she collected her purse, a pillow and a blanket. Packing was easy when you didn't own anything.

She put the blanket and the pillow on the table, and sat and put her head on the pillow until Michael came back out.

He wore a fresh pair of jeans and another of his flannel shirts that he left loose and unb.u.t.toned at the waist. She caught a glimpse of the hard muscles of his bare chest and a flash of white bandage at one wrist. His limp was more p.r.o.nounced, his long mobile mouth bracketed with lines of pain. She watched him stuff weapons into his long black bag.

She cleared her throat and said in a rusty-sounding voice, "I dropped your other gun outside. Round the back by the path."

"I'll get it in a minute." He looked at her. "Ready to go?"

She stood and scooped up the pillow and blanket with her good arm.

He looked at the way she clutched the bedding. A fugitive amus.e.m.e.nt ghosted across his face. "Right. Let's hope he was too rattled and busy to f.u.c.k with our car, because otherwise we're going to be on foot and then I will really be p.i.s.sed."

Her eyelids dropped in a slow blink. Now there was a thought. How could they make it if they were on foot? She looked at the leg Michael favored.

"Well," he said wearily after a moment. "Let's not borrow trouble. Come on."

He carried his weapons bag and her kit outside. She followed him out to the car. With a pained grunt, he heaved the kit and the weapons bag into the back. She stuffed the pillow, blanket and her purse into the pa.s.senger seat.

When she turned to scan the clearing for Nicholas, she found the ghost standing in sunlight near two p.r.o.ne bodies. In full sunshine, Nicholas looked like the faintest extra shimmer of light. She was only sure it was him because she could sense his presence, warm and strong.

It was only then that she remembered she had seen his death when she had connected with his energy. Too easy tears p.r.i.c.ked at her gaze. She had never met him when he was alive, and yet he had helped her. He was generous and brave, and it was terrible that he too was dead.

When she walked toward Nicholas and the two unconscious drones, she heard a quiet whisper of steel. She looked over her shoulder. Michael had reached into the backseat and drawn his long knife from the weapons bag.

Her stomach tightened. She turned away, and without looking back, she said, "Would you please bring my kit?"

His pause stretched her already frayed nerves. "Of course."

He walked beside her with the first aid kit in one hand, his knife in another. The growing warmth in the sunny morning messed with her already shaky equilibrium. She fought it off, staying alert by force of will. When she reached the first man, she knelt beside him and said to Nicholas, Thank you for watching them. Thank you for everything.

You're welcome. He knelt beside her. Thank you for trying to do something for them.

No need to thank me, she told him. I have to do this.

Flanked on either side by the men, one alive and one dead, she examined the unconscious drone. A bullet had grazed his head. As far as she could tell, that was what had knocked him out. As head wounds so often do, it had bled a lot, but it was by no means fatal.

Then she opened her other senses and examined him psychically.

The man's spirit was gone, and there was no way to recall it. She could even see how the Deceiver had killed the spirit but left the body still animate and functional. The long slashing psychic scar was readily apparent to her mind's eye.

Her breathing turned ragged, and tears p.r.i.c.ked at the back of her eyes again. Had he committed this atrocity on Justin before he had stolen Justin's body?

How did he do that?

She looked at Nicholas, into the faintest impression of dark, intelligent eyes. At the ghost of a courageous and extraordinary man who had not deserved to die.

A chilling possibility opened in front of her. She almost hated the fact that she had the capacity to be so clinical to consider it. But on the one hand, there was one man who did not deserve to be dead. While on the other hand, according to Michael, the Deceiver created lots of drones that no longer deserved to live.

If the Deceiver could take over another's body, could someone else do it too?

It was one thing to harvest separate organs from a body once a person was declared dead. It was an entirely different thing altogether to consider harvesting the whole body.

She shook off the train of thought. At the moment, she had no answers, only questions. Sitting back on her heels, her heart aching and her mind in turmoil, she shook her head at the other two. "I can't do anything for these men."

Without bending his bad leg, Michael bent over and cupped the back of her head gently. "Now will you go to the car and wait for me?"

"Yes, all right." She took a deep breath, clasped the hand he offered and climbed to her feet.

Michael looked at Nicholas's insubstantial, shimmering form. Thank you for coming to help her. Will you do one more thing?

If I can, said the ghost. What do you need?

Just check on Astra. Make sure she's all right.

I'll do that.

Then Nicholas seemed to turn to her. She felt extra warmth on her right cheek, as if he had touched her face, and he faded from the clearing.

Her eyes welled again as she put a hand to her cheek. Then, glancing once last time at Justin's body in silent farewell, she turned to walk to the car without looking back.

While she waited for Michael, she leaned against the car by the pa.s.senger door and tilted her face up. She may not have a summer of peace in this place, but she could still let the warm, bright sun wash her clean and new.

As a doctor she'd learned to accept that sometimes, despite all her best efforts, death and tragedy happen.

But so does love, life and pa.s.sion. She lost herself in memories of last night, Michael moving over her, and in her, and the words he had whispered to her.

My miracle. My home.

The next thing she knew, Michael stood in front of her. He had retrieved the gun and held it, along with the knife, in one hand. He leaned forward and kissed her, and she lost herself in the touch of his lips.

He took her free hand. "Listen to me. We're both hurt, and Astra's strength is depleted. Thanks to you, the Deceiver has to recover too, but we don't know how much reinforcement he has, so we can't stop in one place again. I can drive for a while, but you need to concentrate on healing yourself. Nothing else matters. Heal yourself so you can take over driving, because soon I'm going to need your help. Do you understand?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"Good."

He kissed her hand. She curled her fingers along the lean edge of his cheek, hating how he looked so haggard, so worn. His physical wounds would be exhausting enough. Coupled with those worrisome fractures in his energy, he seemed drained of all vitality. He opened the pa.s.senger door for her, and after she had slid in, he walked around the car and eased into the driver's seat.

They shared a quick, tense glance. She whispered, "Come on, start."

He turned the key.

The engine purred into life with smooth perfection. It was such a mercy she could have wept. "Now we need to make tracks," he said. "We've miles to go before we sleep."

She eased the seat belt around her aching body. "'Miles to go before I sleep.' That was a Robert Frost poem, right? It was some poet anyway."

"Whoever it was," he growled. "I've got a bone to pick with him."

"At least we're alive and together," she pointed out.

He shifted the car in gear and pulled onto the gravel drive. "And at least we get another day or two. Maybe more."

"A veritable wealth of minutes."

One corner of his mouth lifted. "A staggering fortune in seconds."

Struck by a thought, she said, "Hey. You never did steal any flowers for me, you know."

"I'm with a woman who is developing a memory like a steel trap." His lips pulled into a real smile. "I'll have to get right on that."

They drove off, into the morning's falling light.

Epilogue.

HE DROVE AWAY from the cabin in a white heat.

Out of his whole elite strike force, he was the only one that had escaped.

As the armored black limousine roared down the highway he made a rapid series of cell phone calls. His first call insured that Mary and Michael became fugitives from the Michigan state police. Then he called for reinforcements to meet him at a designated place. He was still raging when he hung up several minutes later.

Dead or alive, he'd told his people. Dead or alive. He would rather wait for the conflict to come to a head in another lifetime than risk them reuniting with Astra in this one.

d.a.m.n them, d.a.m.n them, G.o.dd.a.m.n HER.

Once upon a time, long ago and far away, he had nursed such pretty hopes. With a little effort and experimentation, he believed he could alchemically change Mary's spirit. He wanted to weaken it in all the right places so he could take over her will. He had intended to turn her into a drone, so she would be as obedient as his human servants and yet still retain her healing abilities. He had wanted her as his insurance policy against accidental death or intentional harm.

Living a high-roller life meant he enjoyed some juicy perks, but there were a lot of risks too. It made sense to maintain a personal physician. What better physician than one of their own? Besides, he had also imagined such lovely hypothetical scenarios of getting at Michael through her. He might even be able to control Michael in a way that no one else ever had managed before.

So today, what did he do? He'd let that old acquisitive l.u.s.t take over his judgment. He had panted after Mary like a stallion after a mare in heat, when a part of him knew he should have ripped apart the bird he'd had at hand.

In that one dazzling moment, when he had Michael's spirit straining toward a fractured dissolution, the victory had felt too quick, too easy over the cunning b.a.s.t.a.r.d who had so plagued him throughout the ages.

He hadn't wanted Michael destroyed in the work of a few moments. That seemed too much like premature e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. He had wanted Michael to suffer while he turned Mary into his creature, a pet obedient to his beck and call.

But now it was abundantly clear that she had become more trouble than she could ever be worth.

Phantom pain shot through his chest. He had existed for so long without suffering more than the brief discomfort entailed in changing host bodies, or the ache he felt as those bodies wore out. The memory of the heart attack still shocked him. He pounded the steering wheel.

"This is my world," he growled.

Mine.

He had been the one to discover this world. He had been the first one of their kind to learn how to transmigrate from his original self and come here to lay claim to it. Yet the closest he had come to fulfilling his vision of conquest had happened thousands of years ago when he had killed the soul of a princely fetus.

He had entered that tiny body while it was still in the womb and drifted through the long months of gestation with dark patience. He had suffered through the primitive birth and early childhood, his old soul watching the world through young eyes as he plotted and laid his plans. His mother, the queen, had sensed the infanticide but had not understood what had really happened. She claimed lightning had struck her womb. His father, the king, had been overjoyed.

When he was twenty, he had the king a.s.sa.s.sinated and he ascended the throne, and he consolidated his power by murdering all his other rivals. Then he reinforced his borders, crushed rebellions, and he swept through the Persian Empire with the unstoppable force of a juggernaut. Asia Minor, the Levant, Syria, Egypt, India-he made them all bow down when he took his rightful t.i.tle as King of Kings.

His cadre of bodyguards had been specially trained. The group had been unable to get close to him. Rather than using direct force, they had killed him by using subterfuge and trickery. They had bribed a caravan trader who persuaded his cook to serve him poisoned dates as he summered in Nebuchadnezzar's palace in Babylon.

Those early defeats always come back to Babylon. Once he had loved the city with its legendary beautiful hanging gardens. Now he loathed it. His memories were filled with betrayal and vomit, and the claustrophobic defeat from that earliest life when he huddled deep in the city's catacombs and choked on the dust of the dead.

Now that little b.i.t.c.h all on her own had forced him into another ignominious retreat. She had forced him to leap into the body of a soldier that he did not want. Sure it was strong enough, but its strength was ugly, coa.r.s.e and brutish. He preferred his cruelties and his hosts to embody more elegance, and preferred to live his life with some sort of refinement. This body was little better than an ape. He looked at the meaty hands in disgust. It had hairy knuckles, for Christ's sake.

His rage needed an outlet. Pounding the wheel just fed a sense of futility. He had been working too close to his limits anyway. The battle had left him feeling too stretched thin. He had also lost twenty highly trained drones. Now he had to call in all his reserves.

Worse, much worse, Mary and Michael were still free.

He needed a quick infusion of energy, and he craved the bitter taste of violent death that was so like a dark chocolate liqueur. His gaze roamed the pa.s.sing scenery with restless hunger as the black limo purred along the roads toward his rendezvous point.

At last he came upon a roadside establishment named Northside Restaurant, twelve miles northeast of Wolf Lake. He counted eight vehicles in the parking lot. The nearest buildings were two gas stations, easily fifty yards away.

This was perfect.

The limousine rolled to a smooth stop. As he stepped out of the vehicle, he checked that the drone's handgun was in place in his shoulder holster. Then he strolled into the restaurant, his energy compressing in antic.i.p.ation like a snake coiling to strike.

He stood just inside the doorway and counted the humans inside. Look at them, as lovely and vulnerable as a herd of gazelles. It was too bad he didn't see anyone that would be suitable as a new host. He would have been happy to get rid of the ape suit. There were two waitresses, a short order cook (he might have to slaughter that greasy little man from a distance), a father and son, a couple of men lounging on stools at the counter, and a trio of bored teenagers.

Teenagers: young wanton, chaotic energy. Delicious.

"Mine," he whispered to them. "You are mine."

Look at them, living their lives in such ignorance. They should all bow down to him, the King of Kings.