“Let me see,” Astra replied in a thoughtful tone. “In the last couple of days, she has lost her sense of her own humanity, her career and her home. She has suffered multiple gunshot wounds, been terrorized by monsters and survived a kidnapping attempt. She went up against the Deceiver and lived to tell about it. She lived through a killer storm, and she just saved a dying man’s life. I think she’s bloody fabulous.”

“That’s not what I meant.” His voice was low.

“Right now, her only friends are two reclusive lunatics on a mission. She leaked a few tears when she took a bath, but she’ll be all right. There’s nothing wrong with her that good sleep, good food and a little time won’t cure. I wove some protections around her and gave her a healing dream when I tucked her in bed.”

He frowned, a quiet, pained expression. “Good.”

Astra sucked a tooth and glanced at the wrench. She wanted to beat on him. She wanted to yell at him some more.

She wanted to say, Idiot. Blockhead. Are you getting my point? Don’t you think you overreacted a bit? All Mary said was she didn’t want to shoot a gun again. Make your damned peace. What happened was not that big of a deal.

But for Michael, for some reason it was, and she feared she knew why.

She feared he had gone and fallen in love, that somewhere in that maddening fortress of his, he had been nursing irrelevant and treacherously distracting fantasies. That he was sulking because his feelings were hurt.

Oh God, why did her tools and companions have to be so young and at the mercy of their human hormones, right when they most needed their focus and commitment? Would she really have to kill them after all, despite her impassioned lecture to Michael about rediscovering the sacredness of life? Distasteful as it was, she had to consider it.

On their home world, twinned pairs of soul mates were born at the same moment. Here on Earth, they were born and reborn in lifetimes that were compatible to each other’s. At least, they had been born at compatible times when their spirits hadn’t been damaged, as Mary’s had been.

During gestation, their human parents grew sensitive to the unique vibration of their energies. With a few notable exceptions, they tended to bear the same, or similar, names throughout history.

Now that Mary was whole again, if Michael and Mary died, they would be reborn, and Astra had every reason to hope for a new, more amenable start to their lives than what they had suffered in this one. With two new, healthy young children, she would have a far greater chance to control and shape their attitudes and destinies.

Gabriel and Raphael had managed a near seamless partnership. She had never seen a pair so closely connected as those two rapscallions, and it had all come about quite naturally. Time and again, they had been born as brothers, until their last sad, short life when they had been born as princes. The Deceiver had them imprisoned in the White Tower of London “for their own safety” until he could destroy them in secret and shove their bodies under a staircase where animals gnawed on their bones.

Tragic though it was, that was the only lifetime the Deceiver had successfully taken any of their group as children. Locating Mary and Michael again after their rebirth would be a dangerous scramble, but Astra had more talent than the Deceiver for hearing the vibrations of recurring dreams that their kind experienced during childhood.

Starting over would be a calculated risk. She could find Michael and Mary, snatch them from their birth parents, and raise them together like siblings.

Of course, nothing would destroy their spiritual connection. She wouldn’t think of attempting such a sacrilegious act. But they would be pair-bonded from an early age.

By the time they would be old enough to be effective in a fight, she could have them trained until they were a seamless partnership, as Gabriel and Raphael had been. That would bypass any maudlin irrelevancies like sex or romantic feelings that might get them all destroyed.

Her shoulders sagged. If she took that path, it would involve more decades of waiting and patient effort. She would have to watch as the Deceiver took control of the Presidency. He already stood at the brink, ready to shape this world again to fit his vision of conquest. Once he gained control, it would become easier for him to take it again and again as each new President took office.

How exhausting.

Also, the thought of raising two young, energetic children at her age made her want to crawl back into bed and pull the covers over her head.

Just staying alive took all of her enormous, sustained will and continual work at rejuvenation. It also took the generous, daily offering of energy from the living entities that surrounded her. The trees, bushes, the island and Lake, the spirits of air and water, the rich, life-sustaining dirt and the ancient rocks that were the bones of this planet, all sustained her in her purpose.

She had committed herself to remembering so much, not only for her people but also for this adopted world, but she had forgotten how to die. Somewhere deep inside, though, her body knew better and longed to return to the earth. She was so tired that drawing each breath was a conscious choice. Only Creator knew how long she might have to wait for all four of them to be in one area again, awake and aware and able to do battle.

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 relentlessly 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.