His spirit and body resonated in instant, magnificent response, not with the strained keening she remembered from earlier, but with a healthy harmonious vibrancy.
Then the radiance she poured into him doubled back on her in a tremendous gush. She too began to resonate in a deep, melodious thrumming that was as old as their existence.
She had intended to be as sensible and sparing with him as she had been with healing herself. She had meant to focus her energy on his worst injuries and let the rest heal as they would, but she quickly lost control of the connection.
Helpless to stop, surprised by joy, her energy poured into him, and his came back into her, doubling and redoubling. As he healed, so did she, completely. All of the aches, pains and bruises she had collected over the last couple of days smoothed over, until together they reverberated throughout the realms with a pure belling power like Roland’s horn and a sweetness like children singing.
Gradually, she became aware of their bodies. They had come together, wrapping around each other. Michael bowed over her, his head resting on top of hers. She had one hand splayed at the back of his neck, the other arm locked tight around his waist.
He lifted his head, and her eyes slit open. He glowed with such a fierce, arcane light she could hardly look at him with her human eyes. He laid his cheek against hers. Either his face was wet or hers was, or perhaps both.
“Holy cow, Batman,” she whispered. She touched his face, ran her fingers over the planes and angles, reading him like Braille. “Talk about having so much to relearn. I had forgotten this. I had forgotten that I’d forgotten. How could I do that? How stupid, how wrong of me.”
“You were bent.” His voice was gruff. His presence felt steady again, and as powerful as ever. He kissed her fingers as they passed over his lips.
“You’re being charitable,” she told him. “I’ll never get cocky about what I think I know again. I don’t deserve it.”
“You deserve to have the world laid at your feet.” He hooked his arm around her neck. Her head fell back against his forearm as his head came down, and he kissed her. His hard mouth moved over hers with a gentle reverence that brought fresh tears to her eyes. She murmured and touched his lean cheek as she kissed him back.
He lifted his head, looking blinded. She gave him a tentative smile. Gradually the blind look left his eyes. Together they had banished Mister Enigmatic again. He looked like a different man from the hard-bitten, expressionless stranger she had first met.
He said vividly, “Well, that’s got to have pissed him off.”
“I beg your pardon?”
He grinned, a rakish, wicked sight on that dark, unshaven face. “Sweetheart, we were making about as much noise just now in the psychic realm as a couple having sex in a cheap motel.”
“Ooh-kay,” she said, her cheeks burning with heat. She laughed. “That’s certainly an image I didn’t have in my head before.”
He looked unrepentant. “I like it, but what we did was definitely an attention grabber, and the Deceiver will have heard it loud and clear. Now we’ve really got to haul ass.”
“I know.” She wiped at her face and saw that her hands were still emitting a silvery glow. She spread her fingers and turned them over, staring at them. She gave her hand an experimental shake. It still glowed.
He had started to tear off his bandages. He paused to look at her. “What on earth are you doing?”
“I can’t get it to stop,” she told him. She shook the other hand.
He started to laugh. “That isn’t going to help.”
She gave him a fierce frown, delighted with him, his laughter, the forest around them and the whole universe. “It might.”
He was still laughing. “You need to stop it the way you started it.”
“Right, but what did I do?” She thought back.
Michael tore off the rest of his bandages, tossed them on the floor of his old car, shrugged on his shirt and grabbed the bags of food. He gestured to her. She ran to collect the pillow and blanket and her purse from the Ford before clambering into the Jeep’s passenger seat.
He dug into his weapons bag and pulled out the nine-millimeter, which he set in the driver’s door pocket. When they had both snapped on their seat belts he turned the SUV around and inched past the Ford toward the main road.
Then she remembered. She had to will it to start. She flung out her hands and commanded, “Stop!”
Michael slammed on the brakes. He scanned the surrounding scene. “What?”
She waved her hands at him in triumph. “I did it!”
He looked at her from under lowered brows. “Try doing it silently next time.”
It was a look of such ordinary exasperation she grinned. “I will,” she told him. “Come on, lighten up. I just remembered how to do something else. This is a good thing.”
A corner of his well-made mouth lifted. Really, he was sexier than any man had a right to be.
“Yes,” he said, as he accelerated the Jeep again. “This is a very good thing.”
Chapter Six
AFTER ASTRA LEFT the dream with Mary, she cast her awareness through her house, checking on her uninvited guests.
Jerry lay in the bed of one of her guest rooms. He had been a big, strong man in his youth. Astra remembered his childhood well. Now his body looked shrunken under the covers, and his copper skin had an unhealthy pallor. His grandson Jamie had pulled his long, dark gray hair out of the ponytail, and it rippled over the pillow. She sighed. Jerry was a good man. It was hard to watch him die.
Jamie had dragged a chair in from the living room. He sat in it, slumped sideways in a dejected heap, resting his head on the crook of one arm on the bed beside Jerry’s right hand. Like his grandfather, he wore his hair long and pulled back in a ponytail. Leather and silver bracelets adorned his lean wrists.
He was a good-looking boy, Astra thought, as she studied him. He was tall and rangy, around twenty-two or twenty-three. His body had yet to finish filling out the promise of power in those wide shoulders. His hair gleamed black like a raven’s wing, and he had his grandfather’s strong, proud features, only Jamie’s were molded with more sensuality, with large, dark eyes and full, sensual lips.
There was a third person in the room, a ghost of a tall man.
He was a faint shimmer in the quiet bedroom, a strong, steady presence. Jerry wasn’t awake, and apparently Jamie didn’t have the capacity to see or sense him, because the boy never reacted when the ghost laid a hand on Jamie’s shoulder.
Astra, however, could see the ghost very well. He had short black hair, distinguished aquiline features and the same copper skin as his father and nephew.
Nicholas Crow had indeed come, and just as she had expected, he had gone straight to his father’s sickbed.
She couldn’t do anything for any of them. She had no platitudes to speak. Nicholas was already dead. Jerry was going to die. And she didn’t have a clue what she was going to do about Jamie.
Thanks to Jerry, now Jamie knew where she lived. And soon Jerry would no longer be around to teach the boy. Left alone, Jamie would mature without either Nicholas or his grandfather’s discipline or steadying influence.
In Astra’s mind, that turned him into a loose cannon. She might very well end up having to kill the boy just to ensure his silence, and wouldn’t that be a pretty turn of events. Then the deaths of all three males in the Crow family could be laid at her feet.
She turned away and put the sadness in that room out of her mind. She had work to do, and being maudlin wasn’t going to get any of it done.
As she regained energy, she worked while her old body rested.
She sent out psychic calls and waited for responses. When they came, she issued orders. Her creatures flew off to do her bidding. The Deceiver might have his spies, but so did she.
She still couldn’t discover
how the Deceiver had traced Michael and Mary to Michael’s cabin. She knew he hadn’t found them through conventional means. As far as legal documentation went, the cabin didn’t exist. Finding the discrepancy in the county records would take a land surveyor with a significant amount of extra time on his hands.
Besides, nothing Michael carried or used could be traced back to his original identity in this life. Michael’s name and his Social Security number were pristine. From the time he had been a young boy, Astra had constructed several different aliases for him, complete with work, family and credit histories, mailing addresses and medical records. She created an elaborate web of smoke and mirrors that Michael had taken over when he had become an adult, and through which he now walked as easily as he breathed.
Perhaps it mattered how the Deceiver had found them. Perhaps it didn’t. Spies were everywhere. Michael had already admitted to being exhausted and overstretched. Either the issue would become relevant or it wouldn’t. She decided to concentrate her efforts on more productive tasks.
Then she heard something in the psychic realm, a sound so faint at first it was a mere tickle at the distant edges of her consciousness.
It grew rapidly in strength and harmony. She hadn’t heard anything like it for so very long, at first she almost didn’t recognize it.
Then memory settled over her like a warm blanket. Once her life had been filled with so many harmonic vibrations of such similar caliber that they had resounded to the heavens in a vast, ebullient symphony. Their crystal-shot planet had resonated with the thrum of their existence.
Though she had grown to enjoy Earth’s own unique complexity of vibrations, its interconnected psychic web that made up its own web of life, this world would never be the same for her. A part of her would forever remember her home. That part had listened, yearning through eons of silence.
Now her consciousness strained toward the gorgeous unearthly sound.
She laughed, a ghostly exhalation comprised of incredulity, pain and genuine amusement. Mary and Michael. What were those idiots doing now?
While the harmony lasted, she scanned for the direction from which it came, knowing all the while that the Deceiver was doing the same. Mary and Michael were traveling to northern Michigan and getting closer to her. That was both good news and bad, for she saw with her wider vision how much of the Deceiver’s attention and resources had been focused in that direction.
Meanwhile her spies began to fly in. They whispered of human activities, roadblocks erected along major highways and intensive police searches in port cities and towns. So much of Michigan’s borders were coastline that she knew the Deceiver had to be stretched to the utmost of even his massive capacity.
That passing realization gave her a grim smile. He couldn’t police the entire Michigan coast, but he was giving it his best shot, which would make life extremely challenging for her two idiots.
She had to get in touch with them, but she couldn’t do it with another dream sending because it was quite obvious they were wide awake. A spirit messenger would be prey to all of the Deceiver’s creatures in that realm, but a physical messenger would take too long and be just as vulnerable. She thought hard, but she didn’t have any other real choice.
She sighed. Either way, she had to wake up and get out of bed. She shifted levels in her consciousness, settled her psyche back into its fragile human body and surfaced to full wakefulness.
The body that housed her spirit groaned. She yawned and struggled to a sitting position, reacquainting herself with all the various aches and pains that attended her extreme old age. She sucked a tooth. Actually she didn’t feel too bad, all things considered. She heaved out of bed, drew on her bathrobe and slippers and shuffled out of the bedroom.
Jerry’s grandson had left his bedside. Jamie sat at the dining table, with his head in his hands. An empty coffee cup sat in front of him.
“I guess Jerry’s asleep,” she said, even though she already knew the answer.
The boy’s head jerked up. His eyes swam with misery. “Yes. Can you check on him now?”
“I will in a minute,” she said, stifling a sigh.
The boy whispered, “I think he should go to the hospital. The thing is, I’m not sure he’s well enough to be moved. Grandmother, I’m scared.”
The boy was beginning to realize that Jerry wouldn’t be getting any better. Astra’s mouth tightened. Jerry should be in his own bed, surrounded by the love and respect of his family and friends as he passed, not lingering here like some unpleasant household chore.
She nodded. “I’ll be right back.”
She walked outside. The early evening air felt fresh and peaceful. The freshness was always welcome, the peace always illusory. She paused by her favorite tree, a massive four-hundred-year-old oak, and braced a hand on its trunk. As always when she touched it, the tree responded by generously giving her energy from its deep, green strength.
She patted it, braced her back and sent out a call. Moments later, Nicholas walked to her. Sunlight shone through his tall, transparent figure.
She remembered the generous, kind boy he had been, and the strong, young warrior who became a Green Beret. In maturity he had been a powerful, quiet man. He had only been in his early forties when he’d been killed. Sudden moisture dampened her eyes, surprising her, and she gritted her teeth against the unwelcome emotion.
Some would say that Nicholas had already given the ultimate sacrifice and that he deserved peace. Both of those things might be true, but she couldn’t afford pretty sentiment. She needed to use every tool she could in order to defeat the Deceiver.
Jamie is right, Nicholas said. My father is dying.
As a spirit, Nicholas would be able to see how Jerry was beginning to disconnect from his physical body.
She didn’t try to prevaricate. Instead she said simply, yes.
In the pale, shimmery figure, a hint of dark, intelligent eyes regarded her. Is there nothing you can do for him?
I’m sorry, no, there isn’t, she said. Now she was lying to a ghost. But I need to ask you to do something for me.
He said nothing, but just watched her. It was so reminiscent of Nicholas’s impassive expression when he had been alive that it goaded her into talking.
I know you would rather stay with your father right now, she said. I’m sorry, but this is important, or I wouldn’t ask. I need you to find Michael and Mary for me. I need to get a message to them.
You have creatures that serve you, he said. Why not ask them? Why me?
She nodded. You’re right, I could ask one of them to do it, but you are so . . . Valuable. Lucid. Reliable. Because of your skills and your intelligence, you have the best chance of getting to them and delivering the message safely. And that’s what matters right now, getting the mission done. She searched his expression for any sign that her words had resonated with him. Will you do that for me? For them?
He still didn’t answer right away, and his face was too blurred and indistinct for her to read. Instead he appeared to be scrutinizing her.
Astra felt an uncharacteristic uncertainty. Had he sensed that she had been lying about Jerry? She was a damn good liar, but often ghosts and spirits could sense things that embodied creatures couldn’t, and as a young man, Nicholas had witnessed her helping some of his people with healing from time to time.
It goaded her into saying, Nicholas, please. I will work to see that your father doesn’t pass until you return and can be by his side.
That would be good of you, he said.
His guarded, measured tone stung, and her mouth tightened. Damn it, she would not feel chastened by him. After his years in the army, he should understand better than anybody the concepts of utilizing limited resources and necessary loss. Jerry would, if he were conscious.
Her voice was curt as she asked, So will you do it?
Yes, he said. What
do you need me to tell them?
She gave him the message, and he nodded and turned away. Her eyes stung as she watched his figure fade. She wondered if he would succeed or fail in finding Michael or Mary, or if the Deceiver’s minions would find him and tear him to shreds
She added the fate of Nicholas’s spirit to her own crushing list of burdens as she turned back to the cabin. Maybe she could indulge in the luxury of maudlin emotions at a later time. For now she had to keep her end of the bargain and bolster her dying friend’s strength. Then she had a lot more work to do and more favors to ask.
Chapter Seven
THIS HAD BEEN a bitch of a day, he thought, but things were looking up.
After his scalding shower, he tried to dress in the clothes he’d already had in the motel room. Of course none of them fit. They were sleek and streamlined, and had been much more suited to his last two human hosts.
One had been a handsome, young computer salesman who had been a fitness fanatic. The other had been Mary’s clever, charming ex-husband Justin, who had also been handsome.
He had enjoyed Mary’s ex. Justin had dealt with his kidnapping with a remarkable composure, and even a certain wry humor, and he had been smart enough to recognize a predator when he saw one.
He had enjoyed taking over Justin’s body even more, but he had only inhabited the body for a day before Mary had killed it. What a waste of a good host.
The monkey suit he currently inhabited was much bulkier than the bodies of the previous two men. When he tried to slip on a clean pair of slacks, the monkey’s thigh muscles strained at the expensive material, and he couldn’t fasten them at the waist. He tore off the pants, kicked them across the room and sneered at the pile of clothes he had tossed in the corner earlier. He refused to put on the monkey’s filthy clothes again. Instead he tied a towel around his waist and got to work making more phone calls.