Besides, taking Michael’s and Mary’s lives didn’t feel right, no matter what kind of brutal sense it made or how she was tempted.
They were flawed and inconvenient tools, but wasn’t she just as flawed and just as inconvenient? Who could say that they would become any better in their next life or the lifetime after that?
How twisted had her reality become if she had to kill them to keep them safe?
Over the centuries, she had watched Michael’s spirit grow more edged and feral without Mary’s presence to balance and temper him. Astra had been poised to kill him as a child because of his potential danger to society. She had also been relieved he had responded to her so that she never had to make that choice.
She would wait and hope he still responded to her. Maybe she had pushed him hard enough already. She sucked on her withered cheeks and said nothing more.
Besides, she had warned him enough over the years. Now she had to sit back and trust him to remember.
Soul mates did not always equate with romantic love.
Balanced energies did not always equate with compatibility. Opposites not only attracted. They also repelled. Completion did not guarantee hearts and flowers, or even friendship.
Yin did not necessarily see eye to eye with yang. Sometimes the twinned pairs struggled through terrible conflicts.
Then there was nothing pretty about life. It became a fight for survival, a bone-breaking bitch-slap of a brawl.
She should know.
Just look at how sick to death she and the Deceiver were of each other.
Chapter Sixteen
IT TOOK MICHAEL another forty-five minutes before he was confident the stolen boat’s engine would not only start on the first attempt, but also take more punishment on the water. He kept barrels of gas stored in a shed at one side of the small bay, and after he finished tinkering, he topped off the tank.
He wished he had his own boat at hand. His was a sleek cigarette boat, a drug runner’s wet dream. Like a good thoroughbred, it was a little flashy and, at roughly one-point-five mil, worth the price for its speed. Now that boat sat useless, moored at Charlevoix.
This boat was an older model, built in the late seventies with a clunky hull design and lots of dated wood paneling, but its owner had lavished a lot of care on it.
Now hopefully he and the others would reap the benefits of that devotion. After a rough night, it was battered and the worse for wear, but the hull was not taking on water and the engine was still good to go. None of them were as young or as resilient as they used to be, boats included.
Most important, very much most important, the cruiser was here and useable.
Of course if Astra had her way, she would take to the Lake in her little bark canoe and hand-carved paddle. She would never set foot on one of these newfangled, motored contraptions if she had a choice.
He shook his head with a snort. She must have experienced some powerful motivation to step onto the boat’s deck, let alone to pick a fight with him right after she had put Mary to bed.
He closed up the engine, and stretched. His tired joints popped.
He could run five miles in ten minutes, twenty-six miles in under fifty and swim almost a mile underwater with a single breath. By the time he had turned seventeen, he had reached expert levels in half a dozen forms of martial arts and adapted them to his peculiar abilities, among them karate, tae kwon do and the different forms of jujitsu, including judo and the aikido “way of harmony” with its Zen principles.
He had mastery over a variety of weapons, a two-handed broadsword, a katana, a bamboo pole and a rapier. He had yet to find a motor he couldn’t hot-wire, could slip past the most sophisticated electronic firewalls and knew to a fine point the relative merits of a Glock versus a Mauser or a Walther. He could sever the stem of a maple leaf at a hundred yards with a crossbow bolt, and could either construct or dismantle explosive devices within seconds.
It’s what he did.
He didn’t figure out women. He especially didn’t figure out shriveled-up, mischievous, horrible, cranky, old, contrary women. That’s not what he did.
Astra was dangerous as only an entity thousands of years old could be. She was one of the most dangerous entities on Earth. He had known it since he was a child. He had come to understand it more as he had grown older, or at least he had come to understand it as much as he was able.
Creatures that were so old simply thought a different way. They had different priorities that arose from different perspectives. As Astra said, human lifetimes seemed to go by in an eyeblink. It was very easy to look at such fleeting lifetimes as disposable commodities.
Both Astra and the Deceiver had retained something or had aged into something—he wasn’t sure which—that aped humanlike behavior but could commit a shattering act on an instant, for reasons that no other creature could comprehend. He compared it to a family dog that might behave in a loving, predictable manner for years, but then one day without warning, it might savage a baby in its crib.
For example, Astra had charged onto the boat and provoked him into a recreational spat. Then she had lectured him to make peace with the world, kumbaya, yadda yadda yadda. All of that was decent enough advice as far as it went.
Then, like a cloud passing over the sun, her energy underwent a subtle change.
His instinct for danger was one of the few things in the universe that he trusted implicitly. That instinct was honed finer than the most delicate butterfly’s antenna. When Astra’s energy changed, he knew that he was closer to death by her hand than he had been in over twenty-five years.
A few moments later, just as inexplicably, the cloud passed. She reverted back to the harmless, careworn and eccentric old biddy she enjoyed pretending she was.
He and Mary had their shards of ancient memories and subterranean motivations, yet they were entirely different creatures than either Astra or the Deceiver. He and Mary had become far more humanlike. They might do something bewildering, to both themselves and to others, but he didn’t think it would be on such a dramatic scale.
He grunted and rubbed the back of his stiff neck with a callused hand.
Here was some irony:
As he had grown to adulthood, the only person who had felt real to him had held his life in iron jaws poised to snap shut and send him into oblivion.
Astra railed at him for locking himself inside his fortress and holding the world at a distance, but she bore the responsibility for having the most influence on him in recent lifetimes.
She valued his warrior energy as a useful weapon. She squandered a fortune of time and money on his training. Then she became alarmed when that weapon turned razorsharp and dangerous.
Not that he was complaining. Growing up with Astra as an adversary and teacher had brought him to the peak of his abilities. Learning how to survive in the teeth of those iron jaws had heightened his instinct for danger to an exquisite sensitivity.
But they shaped each other in ways that even the oldest and wisest of them didn’t fully understand. Then they rampaged across this vulnerable earth wielding their rage, hatred and power.
Sometimes when he fell into this bitter mood, he thought their very existence was an unforgivable sin.
He climbed the hill to the cabin. Astra had disappeared somewhere. He could have found her with his psychic sense if he had been so inclined, but a little of her company went a long way with him. He would be happy if he didn’t see her again for another month, or even a year.
A pity that wasn’t possible.
Perhaps they were, in spite of everything, like a lot of normal human families. They might love each other but they didn’t often like each other much. At least life was never dull when they got together.
His biological family was another story. He had been unable to respond to his human parents in any meaningful way. To him their existence was rel
entlessly banal, and he had gradually lost touch with them. He hadn’t seen them in years. Feeling a rare sympathy for them, he was glad that they had other children. He hoped it lessened their disappointment in losing him.
He entered the cabin on quiet cat feet and cast around for the other occupants. Jerry rested in one of the guest bedrooms, and Jamie was sprawled facedown on the couch. He didn’t sense Nicholas in the immediate vicinity.
Mary sprawled asleep in the loft. His attention lingered on her sleeping presence. He marveled at her light energy that was, nevertheless, most distinctly not pastel. Her delicate, tensile strength held resilience and purpose. She was stronger, and so much better than he. In the midst of their group’s worst battles, their most malicious creations, she retained a wealth of compassion and caring for others, which was a fineness of being he would never achieve.
He moved to the room that was a combined office-armory and keyed in the combination on the electronic lock. Almost all of Astra’s visitors had slowed to a trickle, then stopped, and Michael had known Jerry and Nicholas from the time he was a child. Still, the contents of the room were dangerous enough that he didn’t take chances by leaving it open and available when he wasn’t present.
Astra was the only other person who knew the combination. She rarely bothered to enter the room anymore. She preferred to use her more esoteric, less technical tools. When he pushed the door open to the windowless room, everything was as he had last left it.
He accessed the Internet by satellite and used a uniquely designed search engine to gather news. Highly placed individuals from various government agencies, banks, private businesses, risk assessment companies and a few international nonprofits would have had fits if they knew of the ghost that glided past their sophisticated, expensive firewalls to make use of their databases.
He also scanned public news networks. His grim mood darkened further as he read the various headlines and data that had accumulated over the last week.
The body of a young male had been found in the ruins of Mary’s burned-out house. The police claimed the body was as yet unidentified. In reality, they had identified the man from dental records. The victim was twenty-nine-year-old Steven Ellis, a computer salesman from Joliet, Illinois, reported as missing by his wife, Vicki, over a month ago.
In Mishawaka, Indiana, the site of the kidnapping attempt on Mary, two gunmen killed a family of four in front of a T.G.I. Friday’s restaurant. The victims were James Atkins and his wife, Christine, their eleven-year-old son, Robert, and Christine’s mother, Gina Barclay. Gina Barclay’s husband, Ray Barclay, a retired bank manager who had gone to a baseball game with friends, had suffered a heart attack when he had received the news.
After murdering the family, the gunmen had also been killed. Different sources said several eyewitnesses saw an unnatural flocking of birds in the area, but no official statement had yet been made. Police reports stated that the two gunmen had been plainclothes undercover cops, supposedly investigating a series of arsons that spanned four states. Police had not established a known motive for any of the killings.
From St. Joseph, Michigan, on the evening of Mary’s house fire, Justin Byrne had been reported missing by his partner, Dr. Anthony Sheffield. Earlier that same evening, St. Joseph police had acknowledged that Justin’s car, a late-model Lexus, had been parked at Mary’s house. They were investigating possible connections between Justin’s and Mary’s disappearances, the house fire and the dead victim, Steven Ellis.
Michael’s eyes narrowed as he read through other reports.
The police had also connected Mary to something else. News of that crime had exploded onto national networks early yesterday evening and had been picked up in syndicated newspapers and online news services.
Eight people had been massacred in a small country diner in midstate Michigan yesterday. A state trooper who had stopped for coffee discovered the multiple homicides. Those killed were: Ruth Tandy, Jackie Parsons, Emilio Gonzales, Greg and Jeffrey Macomb, Beau Chambers, Dickey Boxleitner, Bobby Jackson, Cherry Tandy and Sue Evans. Three of the victims had been local high school students. Several of them had attended the same church.
The authorities had already made several public statements indicating they knew of some connection between Mary Byrne, an unidentified dark-haired man and the massacre. Various news service websites speculated whether Mary, who initial investigations revealed to have lived a quiet, law-abiding life, was the victim of a kidnapping. Some wondered if Justin was her kidnapper and also the killer.
Then there was the car bombing and shoot-out at the Petoskey municipal marina, in which several people, including some members of the local police force, were killed. Survivors described how a small blond woman fitting Mary’s description drew a weapon and fired on two police officers down by the dock.
Mary’s purse, along with her identification, had been found on the scene. The FBI had instigated a nationwide manhunt for her, along with her male companion. Very accurate sketches of both him and Mary had been shared with the public.
He sighed. That damn purse. He had to rub his eyes before he could resume reading.
No official database or news agency carried any information on the battle at Wolf Lake, or the twenty bodies left strewn throughout the clearing and surrounding forest. That carnage might not have been discovered yet. The cabin was, after all, in a remote location.
More likely, Michael thought, the Deceiver had sent in a crew to clean up the mess, not because he was in the habit of cleaning up his own messes but because something might have been left behind at the scene that could inconvenience him later. The Deceiver might also have hoped to discover that Michael had screwed up and left evidence behind of where he and Mary were headed.
Dream on, he thought, picturing the last face he had seen his opponent wear. Dream the fuck on.
At last he leaned back and rocked in his leather chair, his sightless gaze fixed on the wall behind his computer screen. Close to sixty people had been slaughtered in the last few days. Some of their names and their smiling faces, from published photos, lingered in his mind.
Sixty people.
Collateral damage, modern war professionals called it.
Chump change, considering the panoramic glut of WWII, when the Deceiver had run amok with a pack of human-born monsters.
Sixty people were a drop in a bucket, compared with the World Trade Center, the desecration of Afghanistan, Iraq or any of the monstrosities that had mowed down millions of people in Germany, Russia, Cambodia, China, Tibet and Africa.
The last century had been the century of mass murder. It was the Deceiver’s century. This world had become riddled with people who had looked into the Deceiver’s eyes and lost their souls, puppets that sat in powerful places and committed his atrocities while they pretended to their families and the rest of the world that they still lived.
Sixty people didn’t sound like much, stacked up against that kind of past, the entire unimaginable, crushing weight of the Deceiver’s dead.
It might take someone with the sensitivity of a butterfly’s antenna to hear in the stories of those sixty people the soft-building crescendo of six thousand years of hatred.
But he heard it.
He rubbed at his tired eyes. His thoughts switched to Mary.
I don’t ever want to shoot a gun again, she had said, her eyes dark with remembered horror. After craving to find her for such a crushing long time, he had suddenly become wild to get away from her.
Not because he didn’t understand, but because he did.
Each bullet took a life, and each life was a world, and Mary was a healer. She flung everything she had at each world in an attempt to save it. He knew that. He remembered that much.
But the Deceiver sat upon a mountain of bodies so high it reached the sky. If each life was a world, he was the destroyer of a cosmos. Now he was poised to slide onto the
modern-day international stage in yet another grab for power. He was an addict who would do anything to get his fix. Unchecked, he would turn the earth into a charnel house.
Once long ago, Michael had been a military general in a society far removed from modern Western thought. That society had understood the essential energy of action and existence, that which flowed behind the physical realm. To bring the understanding of the Tao onto the battlefield had been to raise warfare to an art.
He had written, If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose. If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.
It was essential to recognize the truth of what lay behind the mask of a face, the truth of the forces that moved behind nature. Know your enemy, he had warned that long-ago people. The one who wages this war will never tire. He will always deceive.
Michael’s reason for being, his entire ageless passion, had forged into a singular purpose, and that was to bring that destroyer down.
So he fought to save innocent worlds from dying, just as Mary did in her own way. But his skill was in violence, which bore its own cost.
He needed to know Mary existed. He hungered for her healing energy, for both the wounds he created and the wounds he sustained.
But he would either win this battle by violence or die by violence. He wouldn’t stop. Not ever. Not even for the horror in her eyes as she looked at what he was, and all because each life was a world.
Irony:
Make peace, Astra said, when she of all people should have remembered.
That’s not what he did.
Chapter Seventeen
FOR A WHILE, Mary floated in a soft darkness without dreaming.
Then she remembered that something slippery had happened, something subtle and lightning quick, and a thin, silver thread formed in front of her. In some deeply recessed part of herself, she knew the silver thread was part of a much larger tapestry than she could comprehend. It was a single shining piece in a measureless web.