It does not do to dwell on lives and forget to live.

  ~Gregorios

  Dressed in one of her favorite bodies, Eirene trailed a diplomatic entourage into the high-class residence of a Japanese general. His name no longer mattered. She climbed the stairs with a spring in her step, even though a distant worry tugged at the back of her mind. Something was wrong, wasn’t it?

  She pushed the distraction aside. It was ruining the moment.

  Just inside the doors, she scanned the crowd of well-dressed party goers and picked out the face she sought. He stood taller than most of the other guests since he was not Japanese.

  His dashing good looks and suntanned face stood out from the crowd. His cover was that of a member of the Hungarian consulate team, and he was an exciting secondary mark. After she finished scouting the hekha cell supposedly operating in the area, she would give him her full attention.

  With a start, Eirene realized she was re-living a memory. She’d visited this memory many times through dreams, but never in this state.

  She felt the pull of the memory, like an invisible undertow, pushing her to live the moment as she always had. For the first time, she felt as if she could break from that remembered sequence and alter her memory.

  As she turned a slow circle, amazed by the startling clarity of the moment, it ended abruptly, replaced by a rapid succession of other memories, like a slide show rippling through her mind. In seconds images passed of her meetings with high ranking Japanese officials, and didn’t even slow when she met in absolute secrecy with the emperor himself.

  One aspect of her tri-fold mission to Japan had been to negotiate deposits for potential soul transfers for several top officials in case the war went badly. The questions of honor and responsibility were complicated, but still they chose to meet with her.

  Enough of them preferred the idea of escaping justice for atrocities committed during the war that they gladly handed over large deposits of gold to secure their spots. Should the need arise, they could abandon their old lives and start anew with additional piles of hoarded wealth to enjoy. The lure of a second life was hard for anyone, any culture, to withstand.

  Time didn’t slow again until she crouched on a hillside outside of Tokyo. It was night and clouds blocked the moon and stars. She lay in the darkness as she studied an innocent-looking compound of ramshackle houses through a pair of powerful binoculars.

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  She had tracked the suspected cell of hekha operatives there and had studied their movements for several nights. The next day she planned to call in the strike team of enforcers to eradicate them.

  She swung her binoculars to the north and, after a moment of careful study, picked out her secondary target. The man supposedly from the Hungarian consul crouched far closer to the compound than she, peering through his own binoculars.

  She had spotted him the night before and enjoyed watching him. His people were not Hungarian, and they referred to the hekha as kashaph. She would learn to love how that word rolled off his tongue. He was eager, brave, and foolish.

  She could manipulate those qualities. She had.

  The next day she would arrange to run into him by chance and strike up a conversation. His name was Ronen, and he was a Hunter.

  Her memories began skipping forward again in rapid succession. A montage of images flashed past of their courtship, his proposal, and the wedding. She tried to linger on that one, but the memory was ripped away by an external force.

  Only then did she realize that another presence participated in her memories. Another will controlled the images. It was that presence that leapfrogged through her life as if sifting through an old scrapbook.

  It was a tenuous feeling, difficult to pinpoint, and hard to focus on as every shifting moment pulled at her focus. She tried to fight it, tried to concentrate, but then her mind locked onto that one fateful night.

  She stood in a darkened room near the window overlooking a three-story drop, invisible from outside. A shadowy figure moved just beyond the window and hands grasped the sill. She focused on those hands, one of which held a gun.

  Then the memory lurched forward again and she stood above a too-familiar body that lay on the floor, face crushed, and bloody, and unrecognizable. Those same hands she had seen at the window, now her hands, held a fire extinguisher dripping with blood.

  Footsteps approached from the hall.

  She rushed for the window, already preparing to block out the wail of anguish she knew he would make when he found his beloved wife lying dead in their room. That part always hurt. As she crouched on the window sill, ready to plunge to the ground, it was not howls of anguish that filled the room but screams of agony.

  Something was wrong. He wasn’t supposed to be hurt, just heart-broken. More screams, followed by crashing sounds of brutal struggle.

  With a great effort, she resisted the pull of the memory that pushed her to make the leap as she always had. Instead she rushed across the room, ignoring the dead woman lying on the floor, and flung open the door.

  A huge wolf, wearing the face of Mai Luan, stood in the shattered living room holding a limp, bloody Ronen off the ground. He looked old, far older than he should have the day he found his beloved dead.

  Mai Luan grinned through long, canine teeth.

  Then she ripped his throat out.

  Eirene screamed and lunged, enhanced hands reaching to rip the monster apart. The Mai Luan wolf swatted her aside with a laugh, and she crashed head first into a thick wooden door post.

  Her entire body convulsed as she snapped awake, once again in the council chamber. She sagged against the chair that still held her restrained, shaken from the memories and sweating with fear.

  What had just happened?

  And why did her face hurt so much?