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 f**k 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.

Everything is connected, she realized. Everything touches something else.

When she discovered the thread, she also rediscovered curiosity. The thread widened to become a silver path, and she stepped onto it. She walked where it led her. The path was cool, quiet and filled with moonlight.

As she walked, she became aware of shadowed hedges that grew on either side of the path. The ragged tops of the hedges were higher than her head. The leaves rustled in a quiet breeze, lifting strands of her loose hair and pulling them across her face in a veil.

She ran her fingers through her hair and lifted the veil from her eyes. She wore a simple cotton shift. The night was balmy and punctuated with a gentle symphony of crickets, so she was quite comfortable to have her arms and legs bare. The worn dirt path was easy on the soles of her feet.

She came to an old, battered door in the hedge. It was locked. She pounded on the door and yanked at the latch. Something heavy swung from a chain around her neck. Surprised, she looked down to discover an antique gold key swinging on a necklace between her br**sts.

She fingered the key, studying it by the moon’s pale smile, then fit it into the lock and turned it.

The door opened. She pushed it wide to discover an immense meadow filled with wildflowers. Dawn had begun to illuminate the meadow on the other side of the hedge. The rosy gold morning sun picked up lavender, red, yellow, white and blue blossoms dotting the thick green grass. Honeybees, bumblebees and hummingbirds flew from flower to flower.

Mary closed the door behind her before she began to explore the meadow.

She wasn’t sure if she should pick the flowers, so she contented herself with bending over the blossoms to discover which ones gave off the rich perfume that permeated the air. Soon her cheeks were dusted with pollen.

A golden eagle plummeted from the sky. She watched it reach into a rosebush, grasp a stem in its talons and rise into the air again. As it glided overhead it dropped the rose, which landed at her feet.

This place was giving itself to her. She picked up the rose, careful of its thorns, and walked through the meadow until she saw the edge of a dark green forest. Still curious, she walked to the far side of the meadow. As the forest came closer into view, she came upon the most enormous tree she had ever seen.

The tree was so tall it reached higher than a mountain. The top disappeared into clouds. She had never seen anything alive that was so colossal. The Eastern dragon she had called for healing would have fit in its branches. The Lake that had sung such a strange, sweet song to her could have nestled between two of its roots. She walked and walked until at last she could lean against the smallest of its roots and rest.

The tree lived, and died, and was born anew with green, growing promise. As she leaned against its root, she knew it held a secret in its strength. It was the same as the secret of the silver thread. Mary picked up one of the fallen leaves and tucked it behind one ear so that the leaf could whisper the secret to her.

A brook ribboned through the land beside the tree. She had walked for so long she had grown hot and thirsty, so she went straight to the water. It rushed in a silvery tumble over a bed of slippery rocks. She let the rose fall and watched as it floated away over the rocks. Then she scooped her hair away from her face so she could drink.

Now that she had reached the brook, she realized it tumbled down to the sea. A wide tan beach stretched just ahead, and more old, tangled forest, and a glimpse of an ancient gray wall of ivy-covered stone. It looked like the corner of a wall or a building.

She searched for a place where she could ford the tumbling water. Nearby, a wide area was shallow enough she could pick her way across.

Running water for protection, she thought.

Or perhaps she didn’t think. Perhaps the brook whispered it to her as the cold water swirled around her calves. Or the leaf that she had tucked behind her ear told her, as it murmured of the sacred green places of Earth.

On the other side of the brook, she walked along the beach and looked over the white-capped waves. She would have liked to swim and explore the water’s edges, but first she needed to discover what story the old stone building would tell her.

She picked her way through the lush, tangled growth surrounding the ruins. At last, under the shadow of a white oak, she reached an open place where she could see the building.

It was the ruins of an ancient chapel. The door and windows were long gone but their arching frames, outlined in stone, still stood. The roof had long since caved in and decayed. She could see through the open arch of doorway that gold sunlight dappled the grassy green floor.

A bird flew by in the forest, trilling madly. Inside the chapel, the air was old, silent and still. The power that filled the place sank into her bones. The place might stand in ruins but it was still holy.

Bracing herself with a slim hand on a granite arch, she took a tentative step over the debris in the doorway. As she stepped inside, intense recognition flooded her.

“I know this place,” she breathed, eyes wide.

She was familiar with every moss-covered rock in this place. In wonder, she walked along one wall and saw that underneath the tangle of ivy, each stone bore a carved inscription. Careful to avoid breaking the vines, she pulled the curtain of ivy aside and read the word on the first stone.