“As the Golden One does,” I said.

She gave me a stern look. “The Golden One, power mad as he is, at least works for the human race.”

“He created the human race, he claims.”

“He had help,” she replied, allowing a small smile to dimple her cheeks.

“But this other creature… Set, the one with the lizard’s face?”

Her smile vanished. “He comes from a distant world, Orion, and he seeks to eliminate us from the continuum.”

“Then why are we here, in this time and place?”

“To find him and destroy him, my love,” said Anya. “You and I together, Hunter and Warrior, through all spacetime.”

I looked into her glowing eyes and realized that this was my destiny. I am Orion the Hunter. And with this huntress, that warrior goddess, beside me, all the universes were my hunting grounds.

BOOK I: PARADISE

A book of verses underneath the bough A jug of wine, a loaf of bread—and thou Beside me singing in the wilderness— Oh, wilderness were paradise enow!

Chapter 1

Anya pulled off her glittering silvery robe and flung it to the grassy ground. Beneath it she wore a metallic suit of the kind I vaguely remembered from another time, long ages ago. It fit her skintight, from the tops of her silver boots to the high collar that circled her neck. She was a dazzling goddess with long dark hair that tumbled past her shoulders and fathomless gray eyes that held all of time in them.

I wore nothing but the leather kilt and vest from my previous existence in ancient Egypt. The wound that had killed me then had disappeared from my chest. Strapped to my right thigh, beneath the kilt, was the dagger that I had worn in that other time. A pair of rope sandals was my only other possession.