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  She stared daggers at him. “Spare us the history lesson. Just tell us where to find Meical.”

  He turned his back on them and paced along the shore a few feet. For a moment she thought they were wasting their time. He stretched out his hand and the waves at his feet churned and boiled and rose to form a swan that licked his palm and flapped its wings before disintegrating with a splash.

  “We’re born from a crimson sea,” the Ancient said hoarsely, “and long before we perish in the same way, we watch the world we know dip beneath the waves, drift out of sight and go under. We grapple to begin again, to forestall the inevitable, by seeking our salvation in the gaze of someone who is new to this world…someone with soft eyes full of trust and hunger strong enough to forge a new world…”

  Ellory cleared his throat. “You do have some idea about where Meical is being kept, don’t you? Or else you wouldn’t be here.”

  The Ancient nodded. “Benemerut is not without talent. He clothes your friend’s whereabouts well. I am only certain of the general area. Benemerut himself is invisible to me, as yet.”

  Ellory nodded. “That’s Neshi. If he doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be. And if he’s hiding Meical, it will be next to impossible to find him.”

  “No, sooner or later, I will find them, although I doubt that will improve your friend’s chance of survival. And so, I have come to offer you my condolences and inform you of his eventual demise, as a courtesy to you.”

  Ellory shook his head. “Meical doesn’t deserve to die. Let’s pool what we know. If we work together, we can—”

  Talisen caught his arm. Hold on. He has an agenda and we don’t know what it is. We shouldn’t volunteer any information until we at least know his name.

  “My name, sweetmeat,” the Ancient spoke up, having picked up on her thoughts, “is Badru. Millennia ago, you would both be on your knees right now, begging for a sip of my blood.”

  Talisen snorted. “Change happens. Get over it.”

  “For the duration of your stay,” Ellory warned, “if your needs are extreme, satisfy them in the neutral zone that borders my domain. Keep clear of my inn. And under no circumstances will you approach those in my household.”

  “Be at peace. I am no threat to your children.” Badru bowed his head and shuffled from one foot to the other. For a moment he looked as young and vulnerable as one of their fledglings. “You are wise to fear the insanity in me. It will claim me, just as it has claimed Benemerut. Just as it will claim us all. Your friend Grabian will not have to endure that horror. I hope that gives you some comfort.”

  “Stop talking about Meical like he’s already dead,” snapped Talisen. “If you get to Neshi before we do, you can set Meical free. You can save him. You’re powerful enough to do that.”

  When Badru met her gaze, there was no malice in his eyes, but neither was there sympathy. He’d show no mercy. The deadly resolve in his gaze made her skin prickle with warning.

  “If I find your friend before you do,” he murmured, “you have my word, I will free him. But you will not see him again.”

  In a heartbeat, he vanished, leaving Ellory and Talisen stunned by the implication of his words.

  Ellory’s mouth parted and his words came in a rush. “He knows Meical is a victim. He’s trying to be fair. That warning is the closest thing to a reprieve Meical is going to get.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense. Why kill Meical? What’s he done to deserve that?”

  “It’s a sanctioned kill. There will be no survivors.”

  “Sanctioned by whom?”

  “Considering how many enemies the Alchemist has, it could be anyone. We can only be sure of one thing: If Meical is still with Neshi when Badru finds them, he won’t survive.”

  She wrapped her arms around him. “Then we’ll find them before Badru does.”

  Meical tried not to stare at Caroline’s bedroom door while waiting for her to wake up. Dr. Calvin and the Hicks children had stopped by to visit, but he could scarcely follow their chitchat. His entire being seemed tuned to Caroline.

  Last night he had kept her fast asleep while he washed the lovemaking off them both. She surfaced once while he was dressing her for bed and smiled at him like a sleepy child, then fell asleep again nestled against him. Even his second sunrise that morning couldn’t match the thrill of the trusting, pretty smile she’d given him in that moment.

  Fool that he was.

  He’d come to a discovery about himself in the watch hours of the night, holding Caroline while she slept. He wanted to live, if only for a few weeks. He wanted all the power Neshi’s dark experiment could afford him, all of which he’d put to use for Caroline’s sake.

  Not that he’d hang around. He’d leave before she realized he’d told her the truth last night, that he was a danger to her. He wouldn’t wait until she had to ask him to go. He wouldn’t put her through that, knowing how tenderhearted she was.

  This morning, he could hardly wait for her to wake up. Yet he dreaded it, too. She’d wake to her reality, pain and haunted past.

  “Your friend Neshi is brilliant,” John Calvin spewed. “Most fascinating young man I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. We need more doctors like him.”

  Of course Calvin had no recollection of the events of last night. Neshi had seen to that, just as Meical had done with Caroline. She would remember nothing but the dream.

  “Tell me, Dr. Calvin,” he asked, “how much do you know about Caroline?”

  Calvin hesitated. That was as it should be. He was a true friend to Caroline and could be trusted with her secrets.

  “Hey, you two,” Calvin said to the children, “I’m sure Ms. Bengal won’t mind if you get the toys out and play with them.”

  The children went to a cardboard box in the corner and opened it. The box was labeled “Manipulatives” in orange crayon. Out came an assortment of playthings, families of little dolls, plastic soldiers, modeling clay and a dozen toy vehicles.

  It seemed such a simple thing, yet so ingenious, that Caroline could make use of the language of childhood to help her young patients with their problems. What had she called it? Play therapy.

  Her world was so different from his. It had never mattered to him before, the abyss that existed between him and humanity. The only common ground he could hope to find with Caroline would be in her dreams.

  Calvin lowered his voice. “I can tell you what I know, and I can tell you what I think. Which do you want first?”

  “Let’s start with what you know.”

  “She showed up at my clinic one day,” Calvin began, “in a lot of pain. She’d run out of her prescription. She wouldn’t let me send for her records. She wouldn’t tell me who her surgeon was or even where she’d had her surgery. I wanted to start over on all her tests, so I’d have my own reference point for what she needed, but she wouldn’t go for that either. So, I just picked up where her last doctor left off. It didn’t take Millie and me long to realize she was hiding from someone. We keep an eye on her as best we can. She’s the closest thing to a child we’ve ever had.”

  Meical touched Calvin’s mind briefly to confirm that he wasn’t holding back anything. “And she’s never discussed what happened to her?”

  “I don’t think it’s all come back to her yet. I hope it never does. But even if it does, I don’t think she’ll risk putting us in danger by talking about it. Based on what I’ve managed to put together, she was attacked about eight months ago. She was doing her psychiatry internship at the time, and the attack had something to do with an emergency case she was called in on, late one night. As for the severity of what she went through, the surgical procedures she needed to salvage her legs were bad enough that the shock alone would have killed most people.”

  Meical fixed his gaze on the sunlight glistening through the window, recalling what he’d seen when he’d delved into Caroline’s memory of her attack. Whether he lived a day or a thousand days, this was a score he wanted to settle before he
left this world. By the time he was done, there wouldn’t be enough left of her enemies to bury.

  Perhaps John knew who it was who had reached Caroline that night, in time to frighten her two assailants away. “How did she survive it, John?”

  “She calls it a miracle. They were closing in on her, and she thought they were going to finish her off, but they turned around and hightailed it out of that basement. She blacked out, and the next thing she knew, she was waking up in a hospital.”

  Meical remembered from Caroline’s recollection how the two men had run for their lives. They had looked straight through him—at whom? The only person he’d seen in that room, besides them, was Caroline. Of course, considering he’d been half-dead from hunger himself when he’d gleaned that memory from Caroline’s mind, there was no telling what he’d failed to notice.

  “Physically speaking,” John went on, “she’s been a fast healer, but emotionally? It takes a normal person a long time to come out of a trauma like hers, let alone someone who’s special like she is.”

  “Empaths are very special, yes.”

  “Caroline has blown my mind so many times, I don’t rule out anything anymore.” Calvin’s gaze softened and he looked at the Hicks children. “Before she started working with that little guy over there, he wouldn’t speak a word. He just made noises. But the two of them came up with a game, a language actually, using nondisruptive sounds and some hand signals. Mrs. Hicks and Sandy have been able to really interact with Ray for the first time in his life. Caroline says when he feels safe enough, something will click for him and he’ll start really talking.”

  She knew this, of course, because she could speak to one’s heart and mind the way only empaths could. There was nothing a person like Caroline couldn’t accomplish. Perhaps even with him.

  Meical caught the sound of the bed creaking beyond Caroline’s door. He tuned out everything around him and listened to the swish of the sheets against Caroline’s skin as she sat up. The sound raised a fire in him that went straight to his groin. There came the sigh of her yawn, followed by the scrape of her crutches as she dragged them to her and stood, and the soft shuffle of her small bare foot on the wood floor. When she opened her bedroom door, the crisp soapy scent of her pajamas reached him, and he clenched his teeth.

  John grinned at her. “G’ morning, sleepyhead. Hungry? Millie sent me over with breakfast, along with a coat and some clean clothes for Meical.”

  Meical sensed Caroline’s glance in his direction as she sat down beside him and set her crutches aside, but he kept his gaze fixed on the children. She might be a bit embarrassed after her “dream” and the least he could do was not ogle. The better to preserve his lie, of course, to say nothing of her modesty.

  The husky contentment in her voice was most gratifying. “Just coffee for now, Doc.”

  Meical made an illicit probe of her emotional state. Her heartbeat was swift, her spirits serene, but she was irked by his silence. Meical smiled inwardly. Oh, yes. She was all curiosity this morning. Perfect.

  The soft undertone of intimacy in Caroline’s voice drew at his heart. “Meical, I haven’t seen you eat since we found you. Have some of Millie’s oatmeal.”

  Meical looked up and smiled at her. “Last night I helped myself to your pantry.”

  Her face became rosy, and he caught the scent of Caroline’s sudden rush of arousal over his choice of words. Her breathless half smile made her mouth intolerably tempting. The longer he regarded her, the deeper her blush, until he felt a flush of warmth pour out of her, and she looked down at her plate.

  “Well, that was last night,” she said. “It’s a brand-new day.”

  She got up, hobbled into the kitchen and returned with a bowl and spoon. Pulling a casserole dish closer, she opened it up and scooped a cup or two of the oatmeal into the bowl and set it in front of him. “Eat.”

  Meical smiled again. “I’d better not.”

  A small, hesitant voice filled the silence. “My mom says oatmeal’s real good for you, Mr. Grabian.”

  He thought at first it was Sandy who’d spoken, but when he looked, he found Ray looking up at him like an owlet.

  Caroline’s exuberance flooded his being. She, John and Sandy beamed at him as though he were a ruddy saint. Hope shone in their faces, the hope that he wouldn’t waste this opportunity to coax Ray a little further out of his shell. He returned their gazes, inwardly aghast that he, of all people, should be someone who made Ray feel safe.

  Meical crossed one leg over the other and regarded the little guy with as gentle a smile as he was able to manage. “I’m sure your mother is right. Mothers always are. But I’m not sure I’m supposed to eat oatmeal.”

  “You probably just don’t know how to make it taste right,” the boy said sagely. He came to the table, squeezing close to Meical and reached for ingredients. “First, you put in the butter. Never put your milk in first.”

  Meical eased his arm around the boy’s waist. “Okay. Why?”

  “’Cause cold milk keeps the butter from melting.”

  “Good point.”

  Of course, the idea of refusing to eat the sticky mess was out of the question. He’d eat it, and he’d act like he liked it even if it killed him. After all, it wasn’t as if he could actually taste any of it. He’d just slip away in an hour or so and rid himself of the noxious mush. But for Caroline’s sake, he would do this.

  While Ray reached for the sugar bowl, Meical lifted him onto his lap. He’d never held a child before. Ray was light and small and warm, covered in a mixture of scents. Mostly life and youth and crayons, the syrup he’d eaten on his pancakes and the milk mustache on his upper lip. A tiny pink lip that looked like it belonged to an infant. It hurt to feel the boy’s utter defenselessness.

  “That’s enough sugar,” Sandy said in a big sister voice.

  “No, it’s not,” argued Ray. He heaped half the contents of the sugar bowl onto Meical’s oatmeal. “It’s gotta taste good if he’s gonna like it.”

  Caroline covered her laugh with a cough. Meical glanced at her. The admiration in her eyes left his heart in pieces. It seemed criminal to let her feel that way about him, and yet it felt so good.

  “There you go,” said Ray. He sat back against Meical’s chest. “You can eat it now. It’ll taste real good.”

  Meical nodded grandly and reached for his spoon, ready to make a to-do out of Ray’s culinary accomplishment. Before he could scoop up a little dab to taste, Ray giggled and grabbed the spoon out of his hand.

  Ladling up a glob, most of which dripped down the front of Meical’s shirt, the boy held the spoonful of oatmeal up to Meical’s mouth, making circling motions with it while he recited, “Buzzy, buzzy, buzzy bee, open up your mouth for me.”

  Meical complied and opened his mouth, braced himself to swallow the tasteless toxin, and closed his eyes in complete surrender.

  The first thing that startled him was the sweetness. Then there came the taste of the milk and butter, and the undertone of grain. It took him back to his mother’s kitchen hearth where the two of them shared a bowl of barley porridge for breakfast every morning. Freddie was hard at work on his studies with Father. Father was working on his next sermon. The girls were playing on the floor with the kitchen cat’s latest brood.

  Meical was there, if only in spirit, in that golden, safe place, enjoying the treasured company of his mother, the one person who had ever understood him.

  “Well?” asked Ray.

  Meical squished the bite of oatmeal against the roof of his mouth to get every nuance of taste. Stunning. What had Neshi done to him? He swallowed the bite, murmuring “Delicious” before Ray poked another into his mouth and patted Meical’s lips with his soft little hand.

  Meical waited for the nausea to set in, made ready to counter it with his very will to keep from ruining this moment for Caroline. Instead of nausea, he felt a strange rumbling in his stomach. It was sharp and vaguely familiar. Rather like hunger, but…

&
nbsp; “Your stomach’s growling,” Ray said with a squeal. “Miss Bengal’s right. You are hungry.”

  Meical took the spoon from Ray and took another bite. Maybe he’d pay for it later, but for now, he wanted it. All of it. It was as though he’d never eaten. Well, he hadn’t. Not like this. Not in two centuries.

  And the more he ate, the better it tasted. The growling ceased and a feeling of contentment settled into his belly. A nice full feeling, rather like when he’d been all vampire and had a decent slaking.

  Meical set the spoon down in his empty bowl and lifted his gaze to Caroline’s. “I think I’d like some more.”

  Chapter 8

  Tracking one’s prey meant figuring out their particular mixture of preconditioning and habit.

  Usually Burke found his targets predisposed toward behavior that was easy to follow and therefore easy to infiltrate. Routine was always their downfall. It opened up pathways into their personal lives—invitations to become a new friend, a regular face at their favorite pub, an innocent bystander in the background of their lives.

  Burke sat at the table in his roadside motel room, sifting through the intel he’d gathered since he’d accepted the job of killing Caroline Olek—or Caroline Bengal, as she preferred to call herself.

  In the months since he’d been on her trail, she’d taught him just how exceptional her survival skills were. She never made mistakes. She never left a dent in her surroundings. She left no paper trails, paid no bills, received no mail and owned nothing. She had no habits. She maintained no predictable behavior whatsoever.

  The flawless prey.

  He turned to the copy of a newspaper clipping his associates had faxed to him. Missing Child Found by Anonymous Psychic, the headline read. After skimming the first paragraph, he reached for the phone and dialed his contact in Rivera’s organization.