“And I constantly wish you’d tread a little more carefully.” Marissa sighed. “Let’s face it, we’re never going to be what the other wants us to be.”

“Never say never,” Lina said with a mischievous wink. “If you’re up against the glass drooling over that, then I have tremendous hope for you!”

“That,” she said, pointing to the window, “is never going to happen. Not in a million years. So give it up.”

“Humph. Maybe so. Maybe not.” Lina moved toward the door. “You never know what the future holds.”

“Never, Lina. So stop bringing it up,” Marissa said sternly as Lina pulled open her office door.

“I’ve got to jet. Later, sis,” she said waving as she breezed out the door. “Hey Weiss!” she shouted across the bullpen. “Coffee and donuts on me!”

The office door clicked shut.

Marissa dropped down into her chair, completely exhausted by the tempest that was her sister as usual. She sat back with a deep exhalation.

Then, unable to help herself, she glanced toward her closed blinds.

“Never gonna happen,” she muttered to herself in reminder.

Chapter Two

Jackson looked to his left, a flash of movement briefly catching his attention. Rising to his full height, he smiled as he watched the blinds drop behind Marissa’s windows. A snap of his fingers brought Sargent to his heel. The dog took his position and gazed up at him, tongue lolling out of his mouth as he panted from his exertions and his excitement.

“Wow, Jacks, that dog’s a beast,” Officer Carl Manheim panted as he came toddling and hopping up to them, the bite suit he was wearing too bulky to allow for any grace and even less dignity. There were better made suits these days, but their tiny little department with only two k-9 units in training didn’t rate such costly equipment. They had to make do with ancient leftovers inherited from the Albany police department.

Jackson pulled his cap down to shade his face, his sunglasses protecting his burning eyes from the sunlight. He felt heavy and tired, as though he were slogging through a marshland full of thick, sucking mud. He would be glad when training was finally complete. This weakness to sunlight he’d inherited along with a certain Egyptian monarch was beating the Christ out of him. And from what he had come to understand, he was lucky to be moving at all. According to Ram and to Menes himself, the only reason he was able to move at all was because Menes was slowing down the Blending process to an infinitesimal rate and because Menes himself was incredibly powerful and had the strength necessary to buck the one weakness that dogged a Bodywalker’s heels.

This was perhaps why Menes was pharaoh over all the other Bodywalkers. Even above powerful, dominant men in their own right like Menes’s best friend Ramses.

Ramses II.

Holy hell. It had been three weeks since Jackson had nearly died, only to be saved by making a strange deal in order to save his own life. He remembered every single detail of everything that had happened. He remembered the agony of being hit with a searing blast of power known as the Curse of Ra. He remembered the force of it propelling him back through yards of air, and he very clearly recalled the feeling of crashing violently into a car windshield.

Then there had been nothing. A world of floating, disembodied nothingness. The Ether, they called it. A dimension of foggy clouds and barely existent beings you could feel rather then see. But then he had seen Menes, a tall, dark-skinned warrior, a tower of strength and well-defined musculature and very little in the way of clothing.

The he remembered the proposition.

Die now … or live as host to me. We will share your body; Blend our spirits. One man made of two souls. I am a king, a powerful central figure in a world beyond anything you have comprehended before this. With this position comes not only heavy responsibility, but also very persistent enemies. Enemies who will want us dead.

It had not been a prettied-up offer, had not been glorified, and Menes had made him no promises save one …

Join with me and I will show you many things you never would have expected to understand … but most of all, I will show you a love like no other. I will introduce you to the most perfect woman in all known history. You will know a love that will transcend anything you can conjure in your mind.

There had been many factors that had intrigued him into agreeing, but he secretly admitted to himself that this particular one had held a curious amount of appeal to him.

“Thanks Manheim,” he said absently as he bent to scrub at Sargent’s ruff. The dog grunted and groaned happily.

This would be the last safe day in the sun for Jackson. It had been three weeks since that bargain had been struck. Tonight the Blending would become complete, according to Menes, and daylight would be taken from him for the rest of his life. It had surprised Landon, his boss, when he had volunteered for third watch. Usually night watch was for rookies who hadn’t earned enough seniority to get the day shift. But it was the only option open to Jackson if he wanted to continue at his job.

Oh, he understood he would have to give up his position in the Saugerties, New York police department eventually. Perhaps sooner than later. The Bodywalker seat of government was somewhere in New Mexico, the desert apparently feeling very much like home to these ancient Egyptians.

But he had some unfinished business that needed taking care of, and Menes was inclined to agree. Together, he and his Bodywalker looked toward the set of windows that would have allowed him a straight view into Marissa’s office, had she not dropped the blinds in an effort, he imagined, to shut him out.

He didn’t know why the psychiatrist was a cause for delay exactly. After all, she’d been within reach for the better part of two years and, other than ogling her backside and other deliciously hot curves of her body as she’d walked back and forth past his desk, he’d never felt compelled to do anything more about his attraction to her.

But then his sister had disappeared—or so he had thought—and his entire outlook on the world, including his perspective toward Marissa “Hotbody” Anderson, had changed. How much of it was her doing, his doing, or because of Menes’s hijacking of his body, mind, and soul was truly unknown to him. All he knew was that he wanted her. Bad. Really, really bad.

Menes looked through his new host’s eyes, studying the drawn shades of the good doctor’s windows. As his and Jackson’s Blending neared the finish, Menes grew more and more aware of the strong attraction his host had for the redhead beyond the glass. Jackson may not understand his sudden compulsion to sniff after the resident shrink, but Menes did. Menes did because he was encouraging it. He was fanning the flame of it.

When he had first been reborn in Jackson, he’d been drawn too quickly to the surface, had exploded with an unexpected and dangerous surge of power. He had sublimated his host in order to speak and be heard. It was not something he was in the habit of doing. He was in the habit of unifying with his host, sharing the world they now lived in symbiotically. He gave Jackson enhanced strength, retarded aging, leadership of a great people, and a power the likes of which no one else among the Politic had claim to. Jackson gave him breath and body, sight and smell, and the resurrection of life so that there may follow a resurrection of his heart … so yes, it was a perfect symbiosis. They each brought something to the table. It would be wrong for him to reward Jackson’s invitation with an internal slavery, dominating him and forcing him to his will.

But Menes knew he would be sorely tempted these first years. It was so difficult in the beginning when two strong personalities had to learn the perfect rhythm to coexisting as one. Rather like a marriage or a great love. The first part—the infatuation and the fascination—was easy. The second part was where all the work lay. As many marriage vows have declared, in one version or another, throughout the ages he had lived in … in prosperity and in famine, in health and in sickness, in the daily cost of living and the tribulations of every soul, that was where the difficulties and best rewards were to be found.

And he would find it. But first … first he had to find a suitable host for his beloved queen.

He had delayed his return to mortal life even after his hundred years of waiting between resurrections had passed because his love, Hatshepsut, had been reluctant to return this time. Not through any weakness of her own, but because of his. In their last lives he had … well, that was neither here nor there. What it boiled down to was that she had finally claimed to be ready and he felt he must act with haste to find her a suitable host before she wavered and changed her mind once more. He did not have the luxury of waiting for Hatshepsut to choose in her own time when time was now his enemy. Besides who would know better what kind of host would best suit Hatshepsut than himself?

And, he considered, wouldn’t it be best if he chose someone his new host was already heavily attracted to? There was nothing wrong with stacking the deck in his favor, and he was not above it in the least. It was what marked the greatest of leaders, the ability to use whatever one could to bring harmony between two disparate worlds and make them as one in purpose.

“Time to give this pup some dinner and well-deserved rest,” Jackson said to Manheim after clearing his throat so the sudden licks of desire sliding through him at the thought of Marissa wouldn’t come out in his voice.

“No kidding. Want to catch a beer at Pauly’s?”

Jackson shook his head in the negative, even though part of him was wondering why he was no longer interested in going to have a beer with the guys. He used to like doing that. A lot. And from the look crossing Manheim’s face, he was wondering what was up with him just as much as Jackson was. That wasn’t good. He was supposed to be keeping a low profile, so that no one questioned him about any differences in his character. He understood why, of course. During the Blending process he and Menes were extremely weak and extremely vulnerable, even despite Menes’s great powers. So it was best to remain inconspicuous until it was complete. As it was, and as he had been made to understand it, the huge display of power he’d shown moments after waking up with Menes inside of him had done damage to the Blending process, slowing it down considerably. It had taken his sister Docia only a week, maybe two, to fully Blend with her Bodywalker. That was not the case with him. Although, Menes was apparently doing some of this on purpose so Jackson could maintain life in the sun for a little while longer. Or so he thought. The former and present pharaoh was not exactly a wordsmith. Which was good, Jackson supposed. It would suck to spend the rest of his life chained up with a chatterbox.

He walked away from the field after a wave of acknowledgment to Manheim and some of the officers who’d been watching at the edge of the arena. He’d practiced in full uniform, as usual. It helped define for the dog the difference between friendly combatants in a situation and unfriendly ones.

It was peculiar, really, Jackson thought for the hundredth time as he looked down at his dog in bewilderment. Up until recently Sargent wanted to obey him just about as often as a rabbit wanted to jump in a roasting pan of its own free will. Then it had been like someone had flipped on a switch inside the little bugger and now he was doing everything and anything in his doggy power to do all that Jackson asked of him. Eventually Jackson had to concede that perhaps Sargent hadn’t been the problem. Animals were very intuitive. In all probability Sargent had been able to tell right off that Jackson hadn’t wanted anything to do with him. Not through any fault of his own, but because Jackson hadn’t been over Chico just yet.

Funny how that all felt so distant now. As though it had been another lifetime. He had been so consumed with the strange experience of having to share his consciousness with someone else … someone very dominant and very powerful, that he hadn’t had time for wallowing. He had moved on with his life. Or rather, his post-near-death. He supposed that was the most sobering thing about all of this. If not for Menes’s interference and selection of him for host, he would be dead. He would have left his sister all alone in the world. No parents. No sibling. No …

Well, there was Ram, he conceded reluctantly. And because Docia was host to another Bodywalker, named Tameri, he supposed she would never be alone again for the rest of her life. But outsiders were one thing, and family quite another. He for one didn’t know what he would do without Docia. She was the only family he had left … outside of Leo. But the badass mercenary wasn’t blood. He was more like a brother of the soul. The two of them had raised Docia together and Leo had been there for him through some of the toughest times of his life.

He had been avoiding his best friend ever since the scene of his “death.” He didn’t know what Leo had made of what he had seen, and he had seen a lot. He had also killed Odjit, the vicious leader of the Templars, a sect of the Bodywalkers that was actively carrying on a civil war against the Politic, the lawful part of the Bodywalkers of whom Menes was the ruler. But Leo, as well as Marissa, had been made to believe everything they had experienced in that moment were nothing but a dream. So neither had any idea that Jackson had died and that Odjit had been killed.