Falling Light (Game of Shadows #2)(66)

One day he was going to look over his shoulder, and she would be standing there, smiling, as she plunged a dagger into his back. Her very presence on this planet had turned it from a playground into a prison. So many of the people he had slaughtered over the millennia had died as poor substitutes because he couldn’t manage to get his hands around her goddamn neck.

Millennia ago, back on his home world, he had researched the properties of spirit until he had thrown open the cage of his existence in one of the greatest alchemical acts his people had ever seen.

He had transformed himself and left the universe of his birthplace forever. He had expired in a transcendent blaze of power, and rose reborn from the ashes, all so that he could free himself from the perpetual nightmarish connection with his soul mate.

He had hoped his transformation would destroy her. No such luck.

He had broken free, but mutating his spirit had changed hers too. His greatest triumph had carried the seed of potential failure, for by studying his accomplishment, she and the rest of the group had learned how to follow him.

One fact remained that provided both comfort and warning. He cuddled that fact close throughout the long years. At least now they lived independent of each other’s existence. At least he had achieved that much. Congratulations, ladies and gentlemen, the operation was a complete success. The conjoined twins survived the separation.

That meant he could destroy her and survive. She also had the potential of surviving his destruction, but that didn’t mean anything to him. When she followed him to Earth, he knew she was prepared to destroy herself if that was what it took to bring him down.

If he could find her, if he could only just find her.

She was the opposing queen on the chessboard, the most powerful piece in the shadow game. Mary and Michael weren’t strong enough to defeat him on their own. If he took the old bitch out, he would achieve checkmate. Destroy her, and he would have conquered this world. Then it would only be a matter of time before the inhabitants of the Earth realized it as well.

The endgame was so close.

The helicopter completed another massive circuit.

“Do it again,” he said to his pilot.

They hovered over the rugged south coast of Michigan’s central Upper Peninsula. The area spanned four million acres of protected state and federal forestland.

One could wax poetic about the panoramic beauty of the sky on that late afternoon. The storm had left nature lovers a present in its wake, for they were going to have a spectacular sunset.

One was not in the mood. He curled a contemptuous nostril.

“Sir?” the pilot said, glancing at him sideways.

For this trip, he hadn’t brought one of his drones. He thought he might need a pilot who would be able think with more creative independence. Now he wanted to pull his hair out, only his monkey suit, with the hairy knuckles and hairy ass, didn’t have enough hair on his head, just a receding hairline and that wretched, army-style buzz cut.

He said icily, “What part of ‘do it again’ did you not understand? Oh forget it, just put us on the f**king ground.”

“Certainly.” The pilot spoke with smooth courtesy and an impassive face. “Where would you like to land?”

The interior of the helicopter felt too close. He was passionately sick of confinement. The pressure building in his head was intolerable.

He whispered, “Find a spot.”

The pilot found a spot. He settled the helicopter down on a high bare outcrop of rock on the eastern shore of the Garden Peninsula, which overlooked Lake Michigan. They landed a comfortable distance back from the cliff’s edge.

“Wait here,” he told the pilot.

He removed his helmet and climbed out of the helicopter on stiff legs. He sucked in deep draughts of clean, chilly air and jogged in place to wake the meat up. Then he paced the length of the short cliff. White-capped waves churned against the rocks at the foot of the outcrop forty feet below.

He looked over the water as he paced back.

Wisconsin lay south and west. Michigan’s Lower Peninsula lay southeast. He spun north, a slow narrow-eyed pan that encompassed the wilds of the Upper Peninsula.

Where are you, bitch?

An early evening sky smiled down at him.

He pressed monkey fists to his forehead, concentrating ferociously. The psychic landscape was as bare, open and peaceful as the windswept hilltop view.

I know you’re out there, he thought at her. I know it.

Silence told a tale of her laughing at him.

“Sir,” said the pilot from behind him. “I thought I’d remind you—”

A body could only take so much. He snapped, and the pilot died in midsentence.

After he recovered from the convulsions of the migration, to his startled pleasure, he realized what he had been too preoccupied to notice before.

The pilot was a beautiful male, as graceful as a dancer with lean, whipcord strength, coffee-and-cream-colored skin, a clever aristocratic face and black almond-shaped eyes. He paid more attention to the pilot now than he had when the young human had been alive.

He stretched and looked at the long, dark fingers with satisfaction. Now that was more like it. He booted the body of his old host over the edge of the cliff and stood staring over the Lake, hands planted on slim hips.

So the bitch wouldn’t show herself. She probably thought she had things under control.

It was time he stopped indulging in temper tantrums and shook her out of that control, and past time he reminded her of whom she fought.