You have nothing to be sorry for, she told him. Nothing.
He didn"t reply. His p.r.o.ne body went still.
Two more men darted forward to bind Michael"s arms and legs. The black diamond man waited in the clearing with his guards until they were finished. Then he strolled toward her, his elegant figure silhouetted by the blazing cabin behind him.
She froze. Could he see that she had cut partway through the tangle of net? She was lying on one of her arms. She shifted the knife to that hand and, using just her wrist, she surrept.i.tiously worked at sawing through the strand of net that bound her calves.
"h.e.l.lo, cookie," said the man.
His voice was young and male. She had never heard it before but it still held a terrible familiarity. It was the voice from all her night terrors.
Still talking, he drew closer. "Michael"s body count is already at twenty-three. The amount of money and manpower that b.a.s.t.a.r.d has cost me is unbelievable. Well, it could be worse. Thank G.o.d for modern pharmaceuticals, huh? The drug in those darts is one of my own concoctions. I created it specifically for just such an occasion, and I"m glad to see it worked."
"Did you kill him?" Her mouth shook. She didn"t recognize her own voice and she couldn"t sense Michael"s energy. She had almost cut through the strand.
"Not yet. The amount of sedative he took would have knocked out a giraffe. I would have preferred talking to both of you at the same time, but it is impossible to reason with Michael. There"s nothing you can do except shoot him like a rabid dog. Sometimes that can be kind of s.e.xy, but it"s so d.a.m.n infuriating. Personally, I always thought you could do better. Just because he"s your soul twin doesn"t mean he has to be your lover." His footsteps stopped by her head. "Know what I mean?"
She froze, her breathing coming in quick, shallow pants. She clutched the knife in a death grip. During my summer on the beach, she thought, my summer off . . .
The black diamond man bent over her. The unspeakable nightmare whispered in her ear, "All right, cookie. Where is the b.i.t.c.h?"
She said in that stranger"s raw voice, "She left us. She was gone when we woke up."
"I think she"s still close," he said. "What do you think?"
"I swear I don"t know anything," she gasped. "I swear it."
Something exploded in the bay.
The black diamond man leaped to his feet. Five others in quick succession followed the first explosion. Deep booming concussions shook the trees, all sounding from different points around the island. Light flared from beyond the tree line, an incandescent necklace of destruction.
"Jesus f.u.c.k," someone said.
"Report!" the Deceiver bellowed. "Report now, G.o.dd.a.m.n it!"
And another man"s voice: "There were six. Six explosions. Somebody just blew all our boats."
In the tiniest breath of a whisper in her mind, Astra said, Buy me some time. Just a few more moments, cookie.
At the same moment the Deceiver turned on her. He roared, "TELL ME WHERE SHE IS!"
Time.
A kind of insane fury took her over, built on centuries of struggle. It was clear and cold like freezer-chilled vodka, and it sliced away all of her terror. She barked out a laugh. "Right. I"m so motivated to do that."
He kicked her. "Tell me, you sack of s.h.i.t!"
"f.u.c.k you," she gasped. "Oh wait. You"re already f.u.c.ked." Still laughing, she curled tighter to protect herself from the blows.
Just a few more moments, cookie.
He continued to kick at her. A crescendo of pain swept away her laughter, until she began to disconnect from her physical body. She fought to stay present and connected.
No, she said to her body when his steel-toed boots slammed into her. Heal.
Dampening the pain, she managed to snag another groove on the knife with her fingernails, and she pulled out a thin, sharp blade.
Then she noticed an oddity in the tableau of forty or so watching men. A small, skinny shadow puppet, held together with pins and wishes, stumped up to an army of alert, trained guards who didn"t appear to notice anything. Astra.
Shots rang out. Mary had no idea who was shooting, but two men fell and didn"t move again, and another one writhed on the ground, screaming. The rest erupted into frantic movement, most of them running toward the trees. The Deceiver whirled with a roar to face this new threat. He didn"t appear to see Astra either.
Part of healing is the knife. Sometimes you have to cut the cancers out.
Mary rolled and pushed to her feet. She aimed for his cervical spine at the back of his neck and drove the blade in deep. She wasn"t picky. Anywhere between vertebrae C1 and C8 would do. She sent her awareness spearing down the knife"s edge to make sure she struck her target-and she severed his spinal cord.
The Deceiver"s bellow of rage choked into silence. His head fell back and his back arched, and his body collapsed to the ground. Almond-shaped dark eyes blazed with a nuclear-hot fury, but his body was now effectively a quadriplegic. He was trapped as long as he couldn"t touch anyone else to leap into another body.
"a.s.shole," Mary said, still in that stranger"s ragtag voice. Ignoring the rapid, staccato sound of gunfire, she wiped the blade on her thigh, snapped it shut and shoved the knife into her pocket, sucking in deep draughts of the cold night air as she stared down at him.
The black diamond man sat up, out of his paralyzed body. His head tilted back as he looked at her.
Well, s.h.i.t.
She whirled and lunged for Michael"s body, fell to her knees and swept her hands over him. She grabbed every dart she found. Come on, d.a.m.n it. There-several darts had stuck in his Kevlar vest. They couldn"t have discharged the drug into his system. She s.n.a.t.c.hed at them and whirled, just as the black diamond man bent over her kneeling figure. He wrapped his arms around her.
Time to say good night, cookie.
A discordant humming dug bitterly sharp talons into her mind. Pain scalded her. She fell to the ground, her back arching. The talons ripped at her. She heard herself start to ring like strained crystal.
"Oh no, you don"t," she gasped. She concentrated on crawling forward toward his body. She managed to claw forward a few feet.
Was she close enough? She had to be. Blinded with pain, consumed by the lethal noise that threatened to shatter her mind, she reached out as far and as hard as she could and stabbed downward with her fistful of darts.
She connected.
The black diamond man screamed in her face. With a groan she twisted away, straining to get distance from his malignancy.
His presence flickered and weakened. Gathering her energy, she shoved at his spirit with the full force of her revulsion. His hold on her slipped and fell away.
The sound of gunfire came closer. She didn"t look around. Her eyes refused to focus, and her ears kept ringing.
Only one thing mattered. She crawled back to Michael, running her hands up his body until she found his neck with shaking fingers. His pulse was slow, strong and steady. She pulled out her new best friend, the pocketknife, and opened up a blade to cut through the bindings on his arms and legs.
"Sorry, lover," she muttered. "Time to wake up."
She had lost the ability to finesse a long time ago. She shoved her awareness into his body, located his adrenal glands and punched them into the next week.
Michael"s back arched so violently his torso left the ground. She lost her hold on him. Her ear itched. She scratched at it, and her fingers came away slick with wetness.
Michael grabbed her, and he held her so tight her bones creaked in protest. He was dragging in deep breaths as though he had just run a marathon. Apparently he had lost the ability to finesse as well, because his bright, golden presence pierced her like a spear of light as he scanned her.
Her senses were too bruised and abraded. She gasped and flinched away from his touch.
His hold loosened and he shifted suddenly. As she squinted at him, he s.n.a.t.c.hed at his rifle and snapped it to his shoulder.
"Ease up, Michael," a familiar voice said sharply. "I"m friendly fire."
Jamie was here?
Not Jamie. Nicholas.
"What are you doing here?" Michael rolled to his feet. "You"re supposed to be with your father and sister."
"I saw them to the safe house and came back to see if there was anything I could do. I got here as fast as I could."
Mary struggled to stabilize her senses so that she could see. Her head throbbed as her vision remained blurred, and she kept seeing double. She swiped at her eyes. Where had Astra gone? She could have sworn that she had seen Astra earlier.
Nicholas stood nearby, his long hair bound tightly off his strong, sensual face. He had found black jeans and a black sweater somewhere, and he still wore Jamie"s silver and leather bracelets and held a semiautomatic in one hand. Michael strode over to him. Figures raced across the clearing toward them, and both men lunged into a brutal counterattack.
The black diamond man huddled in a sullen cloud over his p.r.o.ne body, the crystalline force of his presence weakened. If there hadn"t been enough of the drug in the darts to knock him out, the effect wouldn"t last long.
She groaned at the thought of moving, forced herself up on her hands and knees and groped along the ground. There were bodies all over the place. Someone had to have dropped one of those dart guns somewhere.
She could barely see anything beyond three feet in front of her with any clarity, which was why she didn"t see the figure that slipped past Michael"s and Nicholas"s guard to reach the Deceiver, until it was too late.
No, no, he couldn"t migrate to another body and escape. The figure bent over his body, and she sucked in a breath to scream.
Then she realized the small, shabby figure was Astra. Astra reached out a hand and touched him.
The Deceiver roared. Power surged, like the dark stone-like power from her altar. Only what had happened in her dream was a small mote compared with the force that poured from the ground like Mount Vesuvius erupting.
She cowered to the ground and covered her whirling head with her arms. We caused the end of the world, she thought. I don"t think we were supposed to do that.
A figure appeared out of the formless roar. It was a most elegant shape, a black diamond figure overlaid with a shining web of white radiance. The pattern reminded her of a harlequin, beautiful and deadly. It bent over her.
Perhaps she made a terrified noise. She was beyond noticing. With glowing hands, the figure gathered her close.
She could feel physical arms holding her body, but the power in the psychic realm was so gigantic it overwhelmed all her other senses. The power washed over and through her, until she felt tumbled head over heels by an enormous wave. All she could see was the harlequin"s black-and-white face in front of her.
It had a bright blackbird"s gaze. She cried out and clutched at it.
"There, there." The figure spoke with Astra"s briskness as it patted her shoulder. "I"ve already healed you. You took some psychic damage, a ruptured eardrum, bruised ribs and a bad scare. It could have been worse."
"We thought you left us," Mary said. "I thought you left."
"That would have been most foolish," said the harlequin, who pressed a kiss to her forehead. Mary distinctly felt physical lips on her skin. "Because I wasn"t supposed to leave until right now."
"I don"t understand."
The figure laughed, and it was a carefree sound. "There isn"t much to understand. The land is lending me strength so I can hold him prisoner while I say good-bye."
"Good-bye?" She clutched harder. "You don"t have go. You can choose to live without him. You said you could."
"But I don"t want to," it said.
"Then let go of this life, rest for a while and be reborn," she said. "You can start over in a new life."
"I"m too tired to start over. I"m ready for a different kind of ending." It pa.s.sed a hand over her hair. "I am so proud of you. Thank you for all of your years of exile and sacrifice. Thank you for everything. Your obligation is finished. Make your future bright and new." It paused and c.o.c.ked its head. "Oh, and one last thing." A bright blackbird eye winked at her. "Remember, my canoe is in my favorite place."
"Your canoe? Wait." She reached for the figure again, but this time she couldn"t seem to touch it.
The harlequin stood. It reached into its chest with glowing, white hands. The black diamond energy roiled and emitted a howl of despair and rage.
The harlequin said, "Michael, it"s time."
Michael joined the black-and-white figure. His radiance shone as golden as the sun. A clarion sound belled from him, as sharp and piercing as an angel"s sword.
Astra"s white energy picked up on the vibration and intensified it until it stabbed through the fabric of reality and rang with unearthly purity.
It shattered the black diamond.
The harlequin flung out its hands and scattered the black energy, dissipating it completely. At the same moment, the harlequin broke apart. As the white energy faded, it seemed to give a peaceful sigh.
The roar of the land faded from the psychic realm. Mary lay curled on the ground. After a time, she became aware again of her physical surroundings, the cold night, the cabin"s fading fire and men shouting in the distance. She ran her fingers along the quiet, unbroken ground in amazement.
Nearby, Astra"s frail body lay beside the body of the Deceiver"s last victim.
The nightmare is over, she realized. The Deceiver is gone. They were both gone.
Strong arms s.n.a.t.c.hed at her and turned her over. Michael gathered her up and held her with bruising force. She wrapped an arm around his neck, holding him tight as he ran shaking lips along the curve of her cheek.
Michael said in a rusty voice, "Are you all right? She said you"re all right. She better not have been lying, or I"ll piece her back together just so I can kick her a.s.s."
Mary stroked his hair. "I"m okay," she said. "You had a chance to talk to her too?"
"Yeah." He kissed her temple and rocked her. "She said she loved me. She said I fought well."
"You did. But I"m awfully glad you didn"t get a chance to kill me," she told him.
His gaze darkened, and he held her tighter. "I am too."
Nicholas walked up to them, his semiautomatic pointed toward the ground. His slim, rangy body moved with lithe animal grace. His strong, copper-toned features still held the younger man"s sensuality, but Mary"s mind kept trying to see the tall, mature man. "That took care of the last of them. The body count is pretty extreme." He looked down at Astra and the Deceiver, and whispered, "Haokah."
Mary looked down too at the young man and the old woman. By some trick of chance, they had fallen so that they curled around each other like lovers. The young man was dark and beautiful, the old woman pale and so very frail. They made a perfect contrast to each other.
She huddled against Michael"s chest. "This was never about us. We were always just secondary players."
"Maybe we were more like foot soldiers," he said, his expression shadowed. He smiled down at her, and the shadow faded. "Now it is our time."