Liam remained sitting long after Tabitha left, thinking about many things while the scent of basil and rosemary and mint rose in the air, drawn out by the sunshine. It was Melly's mental request for his presence that brought him back to reality. An instant later he was standing next to her by the open grave.

"They're just getting ready to bring the coffin up." Melly told him, displaying no curiosity about where he'd been.

"I assume the sawhorses are to set it on so we can open it."

Melly nodded. "It's been long enough that decomp shouldn't be a problem, but you might want to make sure you're up wind just in case." She already was. "I told him we were about to open it. He wants us to go ahead, he doesn't want to be here he says.

The brothers had positioned lifting straps under the coffin and were now straining to raise it. Eventually they had it out of the grave and on the ground, brushing the dirt off it prior to placing it on the saw horses. Then they opened it.

Melly and Liam approached it from either side. Decomp wasn't a problem. What was a problem was that it clearly wasn't Doni. Doni had had long brown hair. What was in the coffin had no hair at all. In fact, Melly, scrutinizing the remains was somewhat startled to discover, first, based on the shape and size of the skull that the skeleton was not human and that the only way she could account for all the bones was to give the decedent wings, and quite possibly, she saw leaning in closer to confirm her vision, a sort of boney tail. It reminded her of the remains of a the small, tailed and animal-headed, human-like figures with wings she'd seen in some of the oldest of cave drawings perfectly laid out.

Melly stood back up to find Liam's eyes waiting for her across the coffin. "That is not what we buried," he stated quite emphatically. "I was there, I helped seal this thing. And when we sealed it, it was Doni inside."

"Yes, well, so was I as I recall, along with a large number of other people and they and I would agree with you. However, she is also most certainly not here now. But it without a doubt explains the Reverend's assertion he found demon sign here."

Liam made an angry, helpless sort of gesture with his hand towards the coffin, "What is that?"

"I don't know, though it reminds me of some drawings I've seen. More immediately important is, what do we tell Stephen?" She had pulled a digital camera from her pocket as she spoke and was now busy taking photographs from various angles.

"Melly, in God's name, what are you doing?"

"If we have pictures he doesn't have to come out here. I don't think that would be a good idea, do you?"

Liam, recalling his recent conversation with Tabitha found he agreed with her without qualification. None of this was a good idea, not from any point of view at all.

Melly took one last picture and stepped back, motioning for the brothers to close the coffin. "Come on, Liam, we need to go tell him. I'd like to get this over with."

A few minutes later they were back in Stephen's office.

"So, what, if anything, did you find?" He asked them as they approached, Melly in the rear having closed the door behind them.

"Stephen, get a hold of your self." Liam said as Melly held out the camera.

Stephen, who had stiffened at Liam's words took it without thinking and began scanning the images. "I don't understand what you're showing me. What are these? What did you find out there?"

"Stephen, those are pictures of what we found in the coffin." Melly found she'd had to force the words out past paralyzed lips. "We found that, not…we didn't…not Doni."

Stephen went from stiff to absolutely and rigidly still as he took in what the words meant. "You're saying she wasn't there?"

Melly nodded.

"Show me." Stephen demanded, beginning to rise from his seat.

Liam and Melly exchanged glances. "I…Stephen I really don't think…"

Stephen never gave him a chance to finish; between one word and the next he was gone. Liam and Melly followed him.

Stephen headed straight for the coffin. "Open it," he ordered the brothers. He stood then, looking down into it for a long time. When he looked back at Liam his face was a terrible thing, twisted in dazed disbelief and shattering confusion. "Where is she?" he asked, as if Liam had been hiding her from him. "If that's not her, then where is she?" He turned towards Melly, his voice harsh and low, thick with emotion, imploring and desperate. "Where is she?" He was pleading with her for an answer and she had none to give him. "Melly, Liam, where is she?"

Liam gestured to the brothers to close it again; then he put a hand on Stephen's shoulder and got them back to his office. He forced Stephen into a chair before going to the desk and pulling out the bottle he knew Stephen kept there.

"Here," he said, forcing Stephen to grasp the glass and guiding it towards his mouth, "Drink that." When he had Liam poured another measure into the glass and sat down next to him, waiting for the shock to pass.

Stephen took another drink and set the glass on the table. He sat leaning forward, his elbows on his thighs and his face in his hands while an interminable length of time passed. Finally he looked at Liam, still waiting patiently, and then walked over to the window where he stood staring out over the valley. "Liam, you don't need to baby sit, you know. I'm OK. I just need sometime to take it all in."

"Stephen, I really think it would better if…"

Stephen interrupted him. "I would really prefer to be alone, if you wouldn't mind. Later, after I've had a chance to think we can decide what to do next, but not now. Now, I just would really like to be alone."

Liam stood, reluctant and worried. "If you need me, you've only to ask," he said.

Stephen smiled, a grotesque, twisted imitation smile, "Funny, that's what Marc told me, too. I've only to ask."

Stephen waited until Liam had gone, shutting the door behind him before zapping out of the office to his house. He had one thought, one goal, one need…to find her, no matter what, to find her now. He chose a high backed arm chair in the living room, and composed himself in it. When he was comfortable he consciously forced his body to relax, moving through each muscle group at a time, tensing and releasing them, while breathing deeply and evenly. Then he opened the bond still living in his mind and reached outward, following it to the wall that had always been there, since the moment he lost her; lost the core of himself. He had never found a way past this wall that rose smooth and pale, cold and permanent before him.

The way to her, he'd always known, lay on the other side of the wall. And he had always assumed that meant the way to her lay through death, that that was what the wall represented, the separation between the living and the dead. He could remember long nights spent here his palms and forehead flat against it, praying for his death so he could just be with her again. There were other nights when he had explored every piece of it in both directions, from top to bottom hoping for some way past it. He had even, in impotent despair once, tried to create a door for himself.

Now, he stood there in front of it and began drawing to himself the energy around him. He wooed the power with a song, a promise and it came to him like molten light, ready to dance at his command, to play free from constraint whatever game he desired. He praised it with his song, wove it into himself and out again hurling it against the wall, pouring everything he could into it.

The wall stood, unblemished, so he drew more energy, more power, into himself, from everything around him and slammed it into the barrier, feeding the power on the depths of his grief and rage and sorrow, containing it with his need, overwhelming and endless for this one woman who alone held the key to make him whole again, without whom he sometimes thought, he would not be able to go on for much longer.

He fed it also with his regret, bitter and terrible in its corrosiveness, filled with blame that he hadn't known, that he'd let her down, left her where ever she was, to suffer, to need without him because he hadn't been paying attention. He added his desperation and love of her, the strength of the commitment he made to her and never wavered from. Still the wall held, not the slightest sign that he'd done anything, fanning his rage and determination higher.

He demanded then, from the earth, control of the wind and the tides, access to the fire at her boiling core, to the potential of the currents aloft, the moving weather systems, and the stationary, in the skies, the power of all of nature. He grasped hold of the light from the sun and fed it into the weave, pulling power from the sun itself. He reached with all of himself, pulling energy, impossible amounts, from deep within the earth, from the sky above, from the magnetic bands around the earth, from places of seemingly limitless power without care or thought for the consequences. The only thing that mattered to him was her, to find her, to reach her, to save her, even if he had to destroy the world to do it. And the power answered his call, heard his song of demand, of challenge and come forth to his command and he mastered it, doing things with it no one had ever done before. He reached into time, and into space adding the power from those, then sending it against his enemy, the wall that stood between him and her.

Outside, unknown, uncared about, the wind was rising, keening and roaring into the valley while the sky was growing black, the results of his demands forming in the sky above, announcing itself in thunder and cracking of lightening, letting loose in torrential rain. The strength of his demands was pulling energy through the earth's crust, sending ripples through the tectonic plates toward the New Madrid fault lines. The air was thick with the smell of ozone, taut with tension and waiting.

Stephen, oblivious, uncaring, increased his demands sending all the energy he could find, from wherever he could find it against the wall.

Liam, who had not been happy about leaving Stephen alone had first walked down the hall towards the kitchens, looking for Tabitha. Not finding her he had returned to Stephen's office, thinking to wait there for a while before trying to talk to him. He had just finished explaining to Tommy what had happened, when the sky suddenly went black and the rain started to come down in sheets.

It was Tommy, going to look outside who saw that Stephen's house, just visible from there was consumed by the energy he was drawing into himself and the epicenter of the lightening strikes pouring into a funnel shaped vortex descending into the house.

That was the tableau that Reno and Marc found, coming to look for Stephen for a planned discussion of the reorganization plans. They arrived in time to hear Tommy demand that Liam do something.

"Do something about what?" Reno asked, lowering himself in a chair.

Liam would have given anything at that moment to anyone else. Instead of speaking he gestured to the window.

Marc took a look and returned his eyes to Liam, pinning him.

Without waiting for the question, Liam said, "We opened Doni's grave this morning and she wasn't there. She's alive somewhere, so now he's trying to find her through the bond, and he won't stop until either he has or he destroys us all." How he knew with such certainty that she was alive he didn't know. He only knew that it was true; it was the only explanation that fit everything he knew.

"Excuse me?" Reno said. "You found her gone? He's looking for her?"

Liam nodded, his attention on Marc. "The body in Doni's grave, it wasn't her. He thinks she's alive and he is trying to reach her. Now someone's going to have to stop him."

Marc stood perfectly still, and then his consciousness was gone, even as his body stood there.

"I hate when he does that," Reno replied, looking worriedly at the maelstrom lowering over Stephen's house.

"Can he stop it?" Liam asked.

"Let's hope so," Reno replied tensely.

Marc's consciousness streaked down into that house. Stephen was focused on his task, drawing energy from every conceivable place in the universe. Marc inserted himself into the maelstrom and followed it to its target. He saw the hopelessness of the task, having at first thought if he augmented Stephen's raw power with a more focused attack, one not colored by the emotions swirling in and around Stephen, that he could have battered through it. But as it was.... It wasn't going to work. This much energy still wasn't even denting the block. Something else would have to be done. But Stephen was in no condition to consider rational thought.

So Marc did the only thing he could at that point. He began blocking the incoming power bands, turning them back and outward to where Stephen had originally taken them from. This power from the earth, this one from the fault lines, this other from the sun itself.

Stephen, still battering at the barrier with everything he had, recognized that the power was diminishing and reached for yet more, desperately, hopelessly really. He would self-destruct if he couldn't batter his way through to her.

Marc, focused on his task, cut this link, sliced that one and as he did so he called upon his equipment that lay in a shed in a forgotten part of the Refuge.

Liam saw its arrival. Reno swore. Marc's body, that they'd thought forgotten, was suddenly enveloped in a dull black sarcophagus, leads and power cables snaking off of the metal coffin and disappearing into nothingness.

The black metal sarcophagus rose, where it had stood the floor was left dented as if a massive weight had sat there, the room suddenly going frigid as if the black thing that now held Marc were sucking every erg of energy from the room. Then, the black thing that was Marc just winked out.

Then things went from desperate to worse.

Liam and Reno stood, hands up protecting their eyes from a brilliance that seemed to rival the Sun itself. The vortex feeding down into Stephen's house began to slow, and then it stopped abruptly. The silence that resulted seemed ominous. Then they knew why. The vortex began spinning, in the opposite direction. Power, all the power Stephen had been drawing into his body began to expand outward.

Reno and Liam threw themselves to the floor as the windows they'd been looking out exploded outward, drawn toward the vortex, all the power feeding up into the sky.

Stephen's house began to come apart, the roof flying off and then other bits of it, being sucked up into the vortex.

"Stephen!" Liam screamed, his voice lost in the noise of a tornado unlike anything Earth had ever produced. It was as if all of Stephen's power was being augmented and the world was tearing itself apart.

Then, with a snap, the vortex shot upward into the atmosphere and was gone. Silence. Stillness.

Stephen's house was a mass of rubble.

The coldness returned, and the dark, deadly sarcophagus was back. It cracked itself open and Stephen, naked and unconscious, fell out.