Shattered Sky

19. Deep Gathering

A double shock wave spread from the shore of lake Miraflores—a blast of undefined radiant energy, accompanied by a slower-moving sonic boom, like thunder after lightning. The boom echoed within the hulls of the freighters and pleasure craft traversing the Panama canal, but while its power faded with distance, the strength of the first wave did not.

Some felt the psychic blast as a visceral flash of deja vu, gone before it could be grasped. Others felt it as a burst of mental static that mo­mentarily derailed their train of thought. But there were three indi­viduals whose reactions were far stronger.

On a cruise ship between locks of the canal, Lourdes Hidalgo col­lapsed and began to convulse in a grand mal. Since her physiology controlled all those within her immediate sphere of influence, so did all others on the vessel.

Toward the rear of a plane that had just touched down in Dallas after an emergency landing, Winston Pell began to scream uncontrol­lably, unable to catch his breath, and unable to understand why.

And on a two-lane interstate in rural East Texas, a stolen pickup truck flew off the road and wrapped around a tree.

Half an hour earlier, Dillon and Maddy had crossed from Louisiana into Texas.

Maddy had begun to liken Dillon to a shark again—a creature that could not stop moving, lest it sink and drown—so powerful, yet a slave to its own motion. He spoke little, kept the radio off, and de­manded the wheel, claiming that driving kept his mind focused as they plunged West through the lush East Texas foliage. For the longest time, there was nothing but trees on either side of the straight road, until they passed a huge, incongruous blue billboard. The billboard featured a bold yellow 800 number, and beneath it the words “vasectomy re­versal.” Seeing that sign all by itself in the middle of nowhere made Maddy laugh aloud.

“See, Dillon,” she said, nodding at the sign, “there are things in this world more bizarre than you.”

“I could do the job without an 800 number,” Dillon deadpanned. “And I’ll bet I charge less, too.”

“I’m glad to see you have a sense of humor,” she told him.

Dillon considered that. “Do I take myself too seriously, Maddy?”

“You are the most somber deity I know.”

He chuckled at that. It made Maddy feel a touch more powerful in the situation.

More hints of civilization passed around them, until they actually began to see homes through the trees.

“At least we’re getting somewhere,” Dillon said.

Maddy reached over to wipe some sweat dripping down the side of his face. He had a beautiful profile, in spite of the scars. To her he was perfect, and she wondered when it was she had fallen in love with him. Perhaps it was the first time she had touched him, reaching in through that horrible face mask to scratch his nose.

All at once she felt a sudden, uncomfortable surge in her solar plexus, and for an instant forgot what she was thinking about. Then Dillon screamed and jerked the wheel left, pulling them across the double-yellow. Maddy’s shoulder slammed into the side window with the force of the turn.

“Dillon!?”

In an instant they were off the road entirely, and the feel of the asphalt beneath them gave way to airborne numbness as they flew over a ditch, toward the trunk of a huge oak.

Even before the wheels contacted the ground, the pickup hit the massive tree at seventy miles an hour.

The old pickup had no air bag, and Maddy’s seatbelt tore loose from the impact. Her skull smashed the windshield. Her shoulder hit the tree. Her broken body tumbled in the dead grass.

Intense pain.

Darkness.

But no loss of consciousness.

In a few seconds the pain was gone.

Maddy was on the ground, looking up at a gray sky beyond the branches of the oak. Her hair was matted and wet with blood. It covered her clothes. She saw the bloody hole in the windshield through which she had ejected, but no wounds remained on her body. She had been healed so quickly, her battered body hadn’t even had the chance to die before being restored.

Dillon was still in the pickup, pinned by the steering wheel, wail­ing—but his screams didn’t seem to be about the pain. Maddy climbed on the crumpled hood, punching loose what was left of the windshield. “Dillon! Dillon, calm down!”

It was as if he didn’t see her—his eyes were wild, like the eyes of the people he shattered.

“They’re here!” he wailed. “They’re here!”

“Who’s here?”

He gritted his teeth, fighting the steering wheel, pushing back, and it seemed as if he made the crushed cabin longer again. Until Maddy realized that the truck was indeed stretching. She tumbled from the hood and watched in disbelief as the crumpled steel of the totaled vehicle unfolded. Shattered glass fought the pull of gravity, crawling back into place.

“My God . . .”

Another fifteen seconds and the Nissan pickup was in mint con­dition, its grill kissing the bark of the oak. Not a dent; not a scratch.

Dillon’s power had never acted this quickly—it had never been this strong. Maddy could feel his strength now. She could always feel his power simmering beside her—but not like this. Now his presence was like the heat of a furnace. Whatever had set him screaming in the first place had charged him to a new high.

Dillon barely noticed hitting the tree. He was faintly aware that his body had been crushed and healed at a speed unlike anything he had done before. But none of that mattered . . . because they were here.

He had no idea who they were, or why their entrance to this world was of such significance. He didn’t even know why he had been dreaming about them. Even as his powers spiked, he felt weak, vul­nerable and powerless in the face of what they were. For a moment he saw Maddy trying to get his attention, but there wasn’t room enough in his mind to hold her. She was little more than a snapshot as he ran past her through the trees that lined the highway and onto a service road, where several people had already come out of their homes to view an accident that was no longer there.

There were three homes on the street and a business with a gravel parking lot. Through an empty lot there were more buildings on what must have been the main street of this one-stoplight town.

There was a steepled building across that lot. A church. Plain beige brick. Humble and unprepossessing. He reached for the cross around his neck—the one his parents had given him when he was a boy—and remembered that it was gone—that it hadn’t been there for years. He had lost it in his days of infestation, when the wrecking-hunger consumed him, and the parasite of destruction co-opted his power to feed itself. He remembered stumbling into a church during those dark times—but even the poor priest who had heard his confession had been destroyed by his presence. So helpless and confused he had been. It was the same way now. Suddenly the sanctuary of this homely church seemed the most inviting place on earth, and he longed to curl up in the protective shadow of something greater than himself.

He tried to make a beeline to the church, but found himself stum­bling all the way through the field. The path of brown grass and dried autumn leaves greened like a living stream around him, spreading out­ward like a wake on water. As he approached the church from the back, he tripped over a waist-high wrought iron fence around the property. He found himself on the ground, facing a row of headstones. The church had its own graveyard. A sizeable one. The brown grass on the graves was already turning green. He sensed what was about to happen, and he closed his eyes, desperately praying that it wouldn’t—but he had no faith in his own prayer. He knew that today his prayers would go as unheeded as the prayers of pigeons.

“Dillon, look at me!”

It was Maddy again. She grabbed him and rolled him over, pinning his shoulders. “Focus on me!”

“No! No—I can’t be here!” But it was already too late, because he could hear—he could feel beneath the reviving grass, a deeper gath­ering of life.

Holding Dillon down was like gripping a live wire. His irides­cence burned through Maddy, an intense sensation her body could not decipher as either pleasure or pain, but an amalgam of both. Then when she heard the first voice, it caught Maddy off guard, and she loosened her grip on Dillon just enough for him to push her off and scramble away. He didn’t get far; just a few yards, before he crumpled by a tombstone, weeping and slowly shaking his head like a bull struck by a car.

“Hey!” someone had shouted. “Hey, is anybody there?” She looked around. The voice was muffled and distant. She couldn’t place the direction from which it came.

Then there was a second voice and another, and another. “What is this?”

“Somebody answer me!”

“Hello?!”

And it dawned on Maddy with a jagged, penetrating chill that these voices were not coming from the church or the woods, or nearby buildings. They came from beneath her feet.

“What’s happening?”

“Help me!”

“Who’s out there?”

It began as confusion and curiosity, then when some rudimentary understanding kicked in, their cries turned fearful, their fists pounding in the dark upon the satin-lined caskets that confined them. At first it was just a few, but it soon grew into a chorus screaming for release beneath the tons of earth that covered them.

“No no no!” Dillon cried, covering his ears, “Make them stop! Make them stop!”

Maddy stood there, dumbfounded. She had no response for this. Nothing in her tactical training had prepared her for this.

Suddenly a rhythmic roar swooped down from above, for a brief moment overwhelming the cries of the underchorus before it passed. Maddy knew it was a helicopter even before she saw it. Generic gray, with no markings. It buzzed the treetops, then set down in a clearing a hundred yards away.

Then, when she turned back to the graveyard there was a flak-jacketed, rifle-armed force—at least a dozen men—storming the graveyard from two directions. Once in range, they brought up their rifles and took aim. Some were trained on her, but most were on Dillon. She went to Dillon, shielding him with her body, trying to keep him from making sudden moves, because he was still within himself, oblivious to it all. And beneath them, the chorus grew in desperate intensity.

A figure approached from the helicopter. He wore a dark suit, and had a familiar stride. Even though she had a clear view of him as he approached, it wasn’t until he stepped into the graveyard that she locked on his identity. It was Elon Tessic.

To Elon Tessic, disguise was a simple trick of perception; once he became defined by his white attire, he merely had to shed it to become invisible. Even personal friends had failed to recognize him when he wore anything other than pressed Mediterranean white. Today he was just another man in a dark suit.

As he approached, Tessic found his overzealous mercenaries to have far too much firepower for his liking, so he signaled to their leader, a militia-bred mercenary named Davitt, to lower their weapons.

Even before he stepped into the graveyard, Elon could hear the distraught voices underfoot, and feel the waves of psychic energy strob­ing off of Dillon. It was intimidating to say the least, but not entirely unexpected. Once he had stepped over the fence, he approached Maddy, whose confusion had already taken a turn toward anger.

“Tessic!” she screamed. “You son of a bitch.”

“My men will escort you to my helicopter,” he said calmly.

“If they come near us, I’ll break their necks.”

“I have no doubt you would . . . but if you decide to stay here, I can guarantee that your military friends won’t be far behind.”

She hesitated, studying him. “You’re not working for them?”

“I’m an independent contractor,” he told her. “Today I’m here to help.”

She threw a glance at the armed men around them. “Are they?”

Elon grabbed one of the mercenaries’ rifles, opened the barrel, and showed it to Maddy.

“Tranquilizer darts, in case we encountered your resistance.”

The moment of silence between them was punctuated by the muf­fled voices hopelessly calling from the grave.

“We must get Dillon away from this place,” he told her. “Do you hear around you? Do you understand?”

Without answering, Maddy knelt back down to Dillon, who had been subdued by the voices of those he had called back from the dead. She helped him to his feet and threw an untrusting glance at Tessic, but in the end, got Dillon out of the graveyard, and moved him toward the helicopter that waited in the nearby field.

A dozen yards away, a scraping of concrete drew Tessic’s attention. A man labored to push up the concrete lid of his own crypt, his fin­gertips already raw from the task. A scene from the Haunted Mansion, but far more disturbing.

Disturbing, thought Tessic, but not frightening—for these were not ghouls, but ordinary people, unable to know the cause of their situation. Not comprehending their own death, much less their call back to life.

“Help me. Please,” said the man, straining against the concrete lid. “Someone’s put me down here . . . someone’s buried me alive . . .”

A few of Tessic’s mercenaries, now fearful themselves, looked at Tessic for direction. Even Davitt was affected by it. “What do we do?” he asked.

“Go help him!” Tessic ordered.

Two men forced off the lid of the crypt and it tumbled to the ground. They pulled out a middle-aged man in a tan, pin-striped suit that was pressed and clean. The style was at least thirty years out of date.

“Who in blazes are you?” the man asked, when Tessic approached. Since no response would have made sense to him, Tessic chose not to answer. Instead he turned to Davitt. “We’ll take him with us as well.”

“What about all the others?”

Tessic looked around the graveyard. The voices were growing weaker. There were only two crypts with lids that could be removed. The rest were earthen graves. Even if he had had a hundred men with shovels, he couldn’t have unearthed a single one of them before they all suffocated. So Tessic had his men remove the occupant of the sec­ond crypt, then forced himself to listen to the other voices, giving them at the very least, the dignity of a witness.

He could hear in their fading voices a mix of emotions. There were those who had some rudimentary understanding, and accepted this moment as a gift, and those who saw it as a curse. There were the sounds of love, comfort and surprise between husbands and wives whose departures had been years apart. There were also wails full of the agonized loneliness of those who had no one to comfort them in this all too brief hiatus from eternity.

“Yitgadal V’yitkadash sh’mei raba . . . " Elon began. It was the mourner’s kaddish—the Jewish prayer for the dead. He said it without the required minyan of ten. He said it alone, with the same conviction he had afforded his parents, his sisters. Loved ones who died old, and those who died before their time. He intoned the holy words with reverence, and respect. And when he was done, he could no longer hear their voices. The dead were dead once more.

When he looked up, he saw half a dozen spectators across the street, keeping a safe distance from the armed men. None were close enough to know who, or what they saw.

“What languages do you know?” he asked Davitt.

“English . . . German.”

Tessic tried to hide his distaste. German would actually work to his advantage. “Go to those people. If any of them have cameras pull out the film. Tell them to leave—but do it in German. Everything must be done in German.”

Davitt accepted his orders, and took two men with him.

Tessic could only assume that the intelligence of every nation now knew that Dillon had escaped. When the authorities came, these townsfolk would tell of an unmarked helicopter, a man in a dark suit—and a SWAT team spouting German. The trajectory of blame wouldn’t even come close to Tessic.

Satisfied, he strode back toward the helicopter which would deliver Dillon, Maddy, and himself, out of harm’s way.

20. Tango In False Light

Lourdes was certain she had suffered a stroke; that her hedonistic lifestyle of excess had hemorrhaged an artery in her brain. Darkness enveloped her peripheral vision, and although she never actually felt her legs give out, the bruising slap of the deck against her face told her that she had collapsed. Her senses all but gone, she awaited fearfully a lapse of consciousness, and the moment when the darkness would close in, her heart would heave itself still, and her life would end. But it did not happen. Instead her heart pounded so force­fully it sent veiny streaks of lightning across her imploded vision, beat after beat. Pain in her eyes and ears crested with every pulse. Then the pain found a home in the base of her neck, and radiated from there to her temples, and out to her extremities. She lay like this in throbbing paralysis for at least ten minutes. Then gradually her vision began to return, and her muscles began to obey her commands. She brought a hand to her face, feeling the pressure of blood swelling the bruise, then pulled herself up into a sitting position. Her body felt heavy and pon­derous, as it had in the days when she was obese. She had to look around to remind herself where she was; her private sun deck of the Blue Horizon, overlooking the pool deck. Up above the cloud-speckled sky was the same, but she knew something had fundamentally changed about the world; something intangible that she chose not to consider right now. At this moment just getting to her feet took enough of her concentration.

To her right were a pair of grossly overweight crewmen that had been waxing the wooden railing of her private deck. One struggled to his feet, the other still lay on the deck, not moving at all. A god-awful sound pulled her attention to the left, where her latest boy toy crouched on all fours. He was a twenty-year-old blond, unencumbered by a brain—an Adonis she had taken to her bed, if only to prove to herself that she wasn’t looking for a harem of dark-haired Michael Lipranski look-alikes, as Winston had claimed. Now her blond boy hunched on his knees, retching up what looked like pulverized crab meat. The sight of it quickly removed him from her list of lovers.

She stood, gripping the guard rail for balance, and looked to the pool deck below. At the far end of the deck, the breakfast buffet had been in full swing, but now it looked like a blast zone. Her frightened, moaning passengers hauled themselves to the nearest chairs, not even concerned with the plates that had broken on the ground. It was dif­ficult for Lourdes to discern whether this devastating event had hit all of them, or if it had only hit her, and the others aboard were just mimicking her own physiological response.

A few feet away, the conscious crewman checked the pulse of his fallen crewmate, then turned to Lourdes, his eyes a study in terror.

“Esta muerto!” he said, and glanced again at the dead crewman in disbelief.

Although Lourdes was no stranger to death, neither did she wish to linger with it. “Entonces llevalo para abajo,” she said, not sure where down below the body should be taken, only that it should be taken there. She assumed someone would deal with it, and it would cease to be her problem.

“Por favor . . . necesita un sacerdote,” the crewman said.

A priest? Lourdes had neither time nor capacity for such compas­sion. “Llevalo!” she ordered.

The man obeyed without further word, dragging the body out of sight, and out of mind.

What happened to you, Lourdes? Winston’s words and that doleful expression on his face came back to her, like the hint of a conscience crawling back from wherever she had banished it to. She knew full well a conscience came with heavy baggage of regret, and she was determined to regret nothing, not now, not ever. She suppressed thoughts of Winston, until they, too, were out of mind.

Shielding her eyes from the sun, she looked at the shores around the ship. By the look of it, they were in a lake larger than the first lake they had encountered in the canal, but the sea was nowhere in sight. She put in a call to the bridge, and demanded to speak with the canal pilot, whose job it was to shuttle them to the Atlantic.

“Three more locks, senorita,” the pilot told her with a tremor of fear in his voice. “But the . . . the fainting spell, it set us a little off course. We need to reposition the ship before we bring her though the Gatun Locks.”

Lourdes signed, exasperated, and told him to get to it. She had grown accustomed to the open sea, and found the canal to be con­stricting and claustrophobic, even at its widest points. Now that sen­sation of being closed in was even stronger, and she was anxious to reach the Atlantic.

She left the open deck, returning to her suite. Although her cabin stewards stumbled over one another to assist her in her slightest needs, she waved them off. Her head pounded too much for her to bother with anyone right now.

Only after she had lain down on her bed and tried to relax did her thoughts settle enough for her to parse from the pain what had hap­pened.

The more she considered it, the more she was certain; there was no mistaking the signature of the psychic wave that had floored her. The three performers from her dreams had left the stage, taking their act on the road.

Not my problem! she told herself, summoning up a healthy dose of protective anger. Dillon set this all in motion—let him struggle with it; I’m on vacation.

Twenty minutes later, she was informed that a pilot ship was ap­proaching from Gatun station. For some reason, a new canal pilot was requesting permission to come aboard.

“One pilot,” Lourdes asked the captain, “or three?”

The captain apologized, and explained that it was only one pilot, but that, for some reason, he was bringing his family along with him. “Shall we let them on?” the captain asked. After more than two months he had fully accepted Lourdes’s authority over him, and deferred to her on everything.

Lourdes gave permission for the new pilot and his escorts to come aboard, knowing that the Gatun locks would not be setting her free until she faced her trio of players.

The S.S. Blue Horizon left the queue of ships anchored in Gatun lake, and Lourdes put on her most festive party dress. She received her visitors in the observation lounge, overlooking the bow of the ship. She made sure the lounge was well populated and full of chatter, de­termined to maintain the atmosphere of a party throughout her con­frontation with the three. Their meeting would be a simple chat on an ordinary cruise. She would not let it intimidate her.

When they arrived, and were shown to her table, she almost laughed. They were not even close to what she expected. A small gray-haired Panamanian man with weathered skin, a bat-ugly woman with bad hair, and a child.

“Welcome aboard the Blue Horizon,” she said. The man shook her hand, the woman smiled dismally through her cleft lip, and the boy’s attention was lost on the view through the slanted glass window. “Ichole!” he said, the Spanish equivalent of “wow.”

“Would you prefer English, or Spanish?” the man asked.

“English,” she told him.

“Then you have to excuse the accents,” the man said. “Our speak­ing, it is limited by the experience of . . . of. . .” He turned to the boy “Como diçe?”

“Human hosts,” the boy answered.

“Yes. We are limited by the experience of our human hosts.”

She was stunned by how blatant they were in declaring their su­pernatural nature, as if it were nothing unusual. She offered to converse in Spanish, but they refused.

“We learn speak more very soon,” said the split-lipped woman, who had the least command of the language.

“Although we are limited by the past of these bodies,” the man said, “our future has no limit.”

The cocktail waiter brought Lourdes her usual, and she stirred the white Colada into the pink daiquiri, but didn’t drink. Best to keep all of her faculties. She offered her guests a round, but they declined.

“Pleasures later,” the man said.

“Alcohol es caca,” the boy said, sticking out his tongue. “Grandpa says so.”

Memories of his host? thought Lourdes. Were those memories an asset, or a hindrance? Whatever these creatures were, did their newly acquired bodies weaken them? How much danger was she in just being with them?

Since they were frank, she chose to be frank as well. “You talk of host bodies,” Lourdes said. “Are you spirit parasites, or spirit preda­tors?”

The boy giggled at the question, but none of them answered.

“Well, what are you?”

They looked to one another, and the boy reached out, gently touching Lourdes’s face. She recoiled from his touch. The boy was unbothered by her reaction. “You must soon learn to love us, I think,” the boy said.

“And why would I ever love you?” Lourdes sneered.

“Because,” said the boy. “We are angels.”

The Blue Horizon anchored for the rest of the day in the lake, drawing attention and suspicion from canal authorities, who already knew the strange reputation of the rogue ship. They were marginally eased by a spread of stalls and outright lies given them by Carlos Ce­ballos, their own most respected canal pilot.

Lourdes dined with the “angels” in the main dining room at her own table but surrounded by a full seating of guests, never allowing these creatures to get her alone. During the meal, she sensed that nei­ther their breathing, nor their heartbeats were in synch with hers, or with anyone else’s on the ship. Everything about the three was under their own control. It left her feeling vulnerable, unprotected.

Their conversation, which had been so direct in the lounge, lapsed into pleasantries around the dinner table. Apparently her guests had already learned the circular art of conversation.

“How did you come upon this ship,” the woman asked, her En­glish already better. “How long have you traveled in it?”

They revealed little more about themselves, but asked questions of Lourdes she sensed they already knew the answers to. Yet they feigned surprise and interest in her answers, all the while studying her as she studied them. Lourdes obliged them, joining in their gavotte, making her own glib conversation.

“What is your destination?” the woman asked, always the one pressing for information.

“I have none,” Lourdes answered truthfully. “I intend to enjoy myself from here to the end of the world.”

“The world won’t end,” the man told her. “It only will change.”

“Not according to Dillon,” Lourdes said.

They didn’t deny knowing who he was. “His world ends,” the boy told her. “Not yours.”

When the food arrived, the boy shoved it into his mouth with a disregard for manners that typified any eight-year-old.

“I didn’t know angels were gluttons,” Lourdes quipped.

“These bodies need to eat,” said the woman. “And we enjoy the pleasure of it.”

“Since when do angels enjoy pleasures of the flesh?”

“We do when flesh is our temple,” answered the woman, with a pious lift of her eyebrows that made Lourdes squirm.

“So, as angels do you have names I might know? Michael? Gabriel? Do any of you play a horn?”

“People give us names,” said the man, “but they are not our own.”

“I don’t play the horn,” offered the boy. “But my host would like to learn the guitar.” Their little dance went on through the meal, a very civil affair. It was during dessert that Lourdes decided to change the step.

“I’d like to know why I’m dining with angels,” she asked, letting some of the graciousness drain from her voice. “You’ve been here half the day, and still haven’t told me why.”

“That’s easy,” said the boy, sucking mousse from a chocolate swan shell. “We want you to help us.”

“If you’re angels, why would you need my help?”

But the boy seemed more interested in devouring the chocolate swan than answering, so the man took over.

“Even the best craftsmen need tools for their craft. We’ve come to offer you the chance to be a tool in a task more important than you can know.”

“Important to who?”

They chose to ignore that question. “You already have all the money and power you can use, but I know something is missing. Something you feel you were born to do, but what, you don’t know.” He leaned in closer, grinning. “But we know.” He paused, looking Lourdes in the eye. “You were born to serve us. If you serve our needs, for the first time in your life you will truly feel contentment.”

So that was it. Servitude. That wasn’t a dance Lourdes knew. “I don’t serve anyone.”

Then the woman chimed in, oozing self-righteousness. “Do this not for our benefit, but for your own,” she said. “For your own sal­vation.”

Lourdes laughed, spraying a fine mist of mousse in her direction. “My salvation?” Their inflated pretensions grew more annoying by the moment. “If my immortal soul needs saving, I don’t need the three of you as intercessors. Besides, I’ve grown used to the idea of going down with the ship.”

Apparently they weren’t all-knowing, because they had no quick comeback. Lourdes felt herself taking the lead in their nasty little tango.

“We can fill your spirit in ways it has never been filled,” the man pleaded.

“I was offered that once before,” Lourdes told them. “By a creature that called itself Okoya.”

The angels bristled at the name, as if their spirits seethed rage deep within their host bodies. Lourdes smiled. “Ah, I see you know that particular interdimensional scumbag.”

“We are angels!” the man insisted. “Don’t anger us.”

“So perform a miracle.”

It caught them off guard. The man stammered. “What?”

“Perform a miracle. If you’re an angel, make me believe; show me some magic I’ve never seen, and make it good, because I’ve seen a lot.”

The boy looked at her quizzically, the woman looked down, her long hair dangling toward her food. So much for her sanctimonious airs.

“Te podria matar a hora mismo!” the man growled, his anger lapsing him into Spanish.

“Fine, then kill me.” She slammed her fist down on the table, loudly enough for a dozen guests around her to turn.

The “angels” did nothing; only smoldered deep within the bodies of their hosts. Now with the upper hand, Lourdes wielded her disdain from the bottom of her belly. “You pretend to be divine, you talk of salvation, but you’ve forgotten one thing: I’ve pretended to be divine as well—made a lot of people believe it, but it didn’t bring me any closer to being a god. I have no patience for your pretensions.”

She stood from the table, looking each of them in the eye, daring them to lash out at her, but they didn’t. Either they can’t, or they truly do need me for something, she thought. Either way, it was a victory for her. Oddly, the boy’s face began to go red, and his lip to quiver. She saw tears in his eyes; his host body reacting to the stimulus of being scolded. But in the man and woman, she saw bitter anger.

“Dinner is over,” she said. “I want you off my ship.” Then she stormed to her cabin and waited to see what their next step would be. Either they would leave and cease to be her concern, or they would make some move. Either an attack, or reconciliation. She waited, keeping her own anger simmering in case she needed to call on it to help battle theirs.

The boy came to her cabin at ten in the evening, alone.

“Why are you still here,” Lourdes scoffed. “Isn’t it past your bed time?”

“My name is Guillermo,” said the boy. “But people call me Memo. It is the name attached to this host body. You may call me that. The others are Cerilla and Carlos.”

“I couldn’t care less.”

“Please, sit down.”

Lourdes reluctantly crossed to her most comfortable chair, and took a seat. If there was anger, sorrow, or any other emotion in this creature before her, Lourdes could not sense it. There was a complete lack of passion to him—a direct, businesslike tone to his voice. Perhaps, thought Lourdes, the tango has ended.

“I’m listening,” she said.

“We are not what we claim to be,” Memo began, “and at the same time, we are what we claim to be.”

“You’ve come to me with riddles?”

The boy ignored her and continued. “You would call our realm heaven, but it is a place humans will never see. We don’t come here often, because human beings have never been important to us. We appear in a caul of light, becoming the one thing your spirit most desires. Some have seen us as angels, some see us as loved ones. Some see us as God. We shine with glory, turning your hope to our advan­tage. We lure you close with promises of heaven and love. Close enough, so that we may devour your souls, and leave your shells to walk the earth.”

She felt the hair on her neck rise, the skin on her arms and legs tightening into gooseflesh. His candor was almost as disturbing as his revelation. “Then you are like Okoya,” she said, surprised to find her voice quivering. She tried to summon her anger and bitterness to use as a shield, but could not find it. She was suddenly bereft of anger, and instead found fear in its place.

“Okoya is the least of us,” he said. “A criminal spirit, weak, worth­less and unimportant.”

Lourdes wanted to push herself away, but the chair sat in a corner. She wanted to expel this boy-thing from her suite, but sending it away now would be a show of weakness.

“Do you want me to go on?” he asked.

Every ounce of her soul said no. “Yes,” she told him, and he continued in the same easy, forthright tone.

“Humanity,” he said, “has always struggled to learn its purpose. We know the answer, and always have. Your purpose is to feed our appetites. You are food of the Gods. You’ve never been anything more. And never will be.”

His dispassion made it sound like a simple fact of life, as if the ramifications were insignificant. As if humanity was insignificant. She wanted to deny his claims—she was always so skilled at strategic denial, but somehow this boy had sliced through her defenses. That was, after all, his skill. But instead of showing her spirit the thing it most desired, it showed her instead the thing she most feared, capturing her just as effectively. She felt her soul bare and open to this child-faced predator. This was the vulnerability she had sensed within herself; these creatures knew ways of shoving a hook deep within one’s soul.

“You can see why it would have been much easier if you had simply accepted us as angels when we arrived,” he said. “We didn’t want our meeting to have to come to this.”

“Stop . . .” her voice now came as a faint whisper. “Please, for the love of God, stop.”

“God?” said Memo with the sweetest of voices. “Everything your world has ever seen as divine has been our hand at work. We are pretenders, you could say, showing the world a false light, so that we can feed.”

Lies lies lies everything it says is a lie. But that voice in her was fading, what little faith she had was extinguished beneath the boy’s thumb.

“More of us are coming,” he said. “We need you to help us pre­pare.”

Lourdes was crying now, bawling uncontrollably. Could all this be true? Could the universe be such a hostile, loveless place that this vile blasphemy could be true? In spite of herself she found herself infected by him, accepting every word he said, like it was gospel.

“Do you believe me?”

But why did he have to ask? He knew she did. He had snared her, and she longed for him to devour her soul. She longed now for the death of her consciousness, so she did not have to live with the knowl­edge he had forced down her gullet.

But it didn’t devour her, instead it took a step closer. Then, the boy suddenly seemed no more than a little child again, frightened and lonely. She didn’t understand the change in him, only that it served to shift her even further off balance.

“Abrazame,” Memo pleaded. “Hold me. My mother—she never does. It is her ruined face—she feels she is unworthy to hold me. But you can, Lourdes. Hold me. Hold me now.”

Her arms swung open. He stepped forward, her arms swung closed, enveloping him, and in that embrace, her last failing ember of faith was snuffed into darkness. With nothing left to cling to, she held him tightly, and cried, rocking him back and forth. Let my life end. Let the world end. Let every last human vanish from existence, for what does it matter now. What does it matter now?

By midnight, the Blue Horizon had moved through the Gatun Locks, and was sailing into the flat blackness of the open sea.

21. Sanctuary

Dillon awoke on a lounge chair in paradise. His eyes focused, revealing a flagstone patio within a colorful flower garden, surrounded by a grove of wild-limbed, white-barked trees. A large, free-standing umbrella shielded him from the sun.

Although his mind still struggled to fit together his memories he was fairly certain that none of them would logically lead him here. He remembered driving along the Texas highway, and then came the flash of sudden awareness of an unearthly arrival so disturbing it sent him flying off the road. He recalled his unintended stunt in the graveyard. And Tessic. Tessic was there. Why was Tessic there?

As he lay on the lounge, he could still feel the threat of the strange trinity that had infected the world, but it felt distant now. Whoever they were, whatever they were, their arrival had changed something in him, amping up his power to a new extreme.

Dillon heard footsteps, and turned to see that Elon Tessic ap­proached through the knotty olive trees that only stood a few feet taller than he.

“Good to see you awake,” Tessic said, and sat in a chair beside him. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d come out of it today at all.”

“Where am I?” Dillon asked. “Where’s Maddy?”

“Lieutenant Haas is perfectly fine. Off entertaining herself, I think.” Tessic studied Dillon for a moment. “What do you remem­ber?”

A bit more was coming back to Dillon now. There was the heli­copter, the relieving sensation of being spirited away from the grave­yard.

“I remember an extremely large needle,” Dillon finally said.

Tessic laughed. “You might also remember I gave you the choice of being sedated or not. You chose sedation.”

“I must not have been in my right mind,” Dillon said.

Tessic raised an eyebrow. “No, you weren’t.” There was a small table between them, and a bowl of fresh fruit. Tessic picked through the fruit until he found a few dark, shiny cherries. He popped one into his mouth and spit out the stone. He offered the bowl to Dillon, but Dillon declined.

“I’d like to know how you found me,” Dillon said.

“Trade secret,” Tessic answered. “But rest assured, no one else searching for you will find you here. Not even our friends in the military.”

“You still haven’t told me where ‘here’ is.” But Tessic only grinned. Dillon took a deep breath and tried to get a sense of his surroundings. More often than not, his ability to reach out and sense distant subtleties in the world around him was a distraction, but there were times it helped to orient him. Although he could feel the olive grove around him, he felt nothing beyond it. It was a discomfiting feeling.

“Are we on an island?” he asked. But if it were an island it must have been in the Dead Sea, because even on an island, he’d be able to feel life and currents within the water.

“Come and see for yourself,” Tessic answered, getting up. He of­fered Dillon a hand, but Dillon wanted no assistance. He stood, ex­pecting his balance to be clumsy, and his knees to be weak, but apparently the rest had done him good.

Tessic led him slowly through the olive grove. “This garden was designed by a feng shui specialist,” Tessic told him, “for maximum harmony and vitality.”

A dozen yards further and the grove came to an abrupt end at a glass wall seven feet high; a dramatic barrier separating Tessic’s world from everyone else’s. Beyond the glass wall was a city, stretching out beneath them.

“An ounce of perspective begets a pound, yes?”

“So we’re on a rooftop?”

“Sixty-seventh floor.”

“I don’t recognize the city.”

“Houston. We are atop Tessitech’s southern headquarters.”

But there was something wrong. Dillon closed his eyes, and tried to sense the patterns of the city. He had learned to avoid cities, because their intensity overloaded his thoughts. The world shouted at him enough without him having to feel the blare of a city. But, oddly, there was none of that here. All he could feel were the faintest of echoes of the city patterns below.

Tessic tapped on the glass wall. “Three inches of crystal inlaid with twelve micro-fine layers of lead mesh.” he explained. “Wonderful stuff—a neutron bomb could go off, and you wouldn’t get a sunburn.” He beamed. “I own the patent.”

“Why am I here?”

“That is for you to find out.”

“I’m not in the mood for guessing games.”

“You misunderstand,” said Tessic. “I mean this literally. You see, all five floors of this penthouse were built with you in mind. The entire place is lined, floors and walls, to contain your energy and sensory field. It keeps you from being overwhelmed by what lies outside, and will keep those on the outside from sensing you. This place can serve whatever function you choose. A retreat, perhaps, as it is for me.”

Dillon got the gist. “Just another cell. Only prettier.”

Tessic bristled at the suggestion. “There are no locks here. You can leave whenever you please. My hope is that you will see the wis­dom of staying.”

“And Maddy?”

“She is my guest as well. In fact, she told me that you needed a place like this to settle your mind. That you lacked a certain clarity.”

“She said that?”

“In so many words.”

Dillon put his hand to the glass, then turned to look at the olive grove. An oasis in the sky. A world apart. He turned to Tessic. “I don’t think I was meant to live a life of leisure.”

“None of us are,” Tessic said. “We are all called to action in one way or another. But sometimes we need a place to regroup, and to stage our operations. Even superman had his Fortress of Solitude, yes?”

Dillon chuckled at the thought. “If you saw me in the graveyard, then you should know I’m not a man of steel.”

“There are substances more useful than steel.”

Useful, thought Dillon. Yes, for a man like Tessic everything had to have utility. There would always be something in it for him. “So what do you want from me?”

Tessic pondered the question, but didn’t respond quite yet. “Come, I’ll give you the grand tour.” They strode back into the grove, taking a different flagstone path that led to an artificial stream. Hidden speakers pumped the sounds of birds and other wildlife into the air, adding to the illusion. By the time they reached the stream, there was no telling they were on the roof of a skyscraper.

“Until a few years ago,” Tessic said, “I was arrogant enough to think I was the greatest man of our time. Then you appeared on the scene.”

“Jealous, Elon?”

Tessic shook his head. “No. Envy never brings a man true success. Certainly there are men like Bussard in the world, who are threatened by anything more powerful than themselves. But I am not Bussard. To me you are not a threat. You are . . . an opportunity.”

The path wound them back to the garden where the two lounge chairs sat. But this time, Dillon saw the vine-covered wall behind it, and the opening that led to an elevator. “Opportunity for what?”

Tessic paused, picking up his bowl of fruit, popping a few grapes. “I have so much money, I can’t find enough things to do with it—and the curse of wealth can be as potent as its blessing. You see, when money ceases to be an issue, a man can either become a slave to his passions, or buy his freedom from them, seeking more worthy objec­tives.”

“Meaning?”

Tessic patted Dillon on the cheek, and offered up a wry smile. “Simply put, Dillon, I am helping you because you’re good for my soul.”

Dillon glanced at the oasis around him. There was something tempting about it, and somehow that made it feel dangerous.

Sensing Dillon’s reluctance, Tessic reached over and twisted a twig from the tree beside him. “This has always been a symbol for hope and peace,” he said. “I hope you’ll accept my olive branch.”

When Dillon didn’t take it, Tessic placed it on a boulder beside them, and turned the key that opened the elevator doors.

The multi-story penthouse was part office and spa, part museum, and part spiritual sanctuary. “Not exactly Hearst Castle,” Tessic com­mented. “I like to think my tastes are not so garish.”

Perhaps not, but every last amenity seethed excess, from a reading room that featured a priceless collection of medieval Jewish artifacts, to a four-story indoor rock-climbing wall, which towered above Tes­sic’s personal gym. Maddy clung to the top of the wall, focused on her climb; “entertaining herself,” as Tessic had said. Dillon chose not to disturb her.

The sixty-second floor, the lowest floor of the penthouse complex, was set aside for what Tessic called his “professional hobbies.” It housed his private office; an uncharacteristically modest space, with some shelves and a simple cherrywood desk, within a larger gallery of high­tech toys. Some projects were complete, others still works-in-progress. In one corner sat an elaborate model train that ran on magnetic levitation. Nearby was a drafting table overflowing with schematics for a large-scale version, that Tessic was clearly drafting by his own hand.

“The stuff of dreams,” Tessic told him. “Or at least my dreams.”

There was a work bench full of computer viscera, reminding Dillon of the hands-on inventiveness that was Tessic’s calling card, even be­fore he became known for his business acumen. It was comforting to see that the man was still elbow-deep in nuts and bolts.

“Let me show you my latest interest.” Tessic led Dillon to a Lucite-covered display case that held a matchbox city. Row after row of three-inch high-rise apartment buildings.

“Another dream?” asked Dillon.

“Reality,” Tessic answered. “We’re already on the third phase.”

“I didn’t know you were a developer.” Dillon’s eyes blurred as he looked at the three-dimensional grid of towers. “There’s got to be a hundred buildings here.”

“A hundred and twelve. The largest single housing complex ever conceived—and it’s just one of several I have planned.”

Dillon moved around the box, to view it from another angle.

“It interests you,” observed Tessic.

“I’m just a little stunned. I mean, it must cost billions. No matter how rich you are, I can’t believe you can afford this.”

“I have no one to leave my money to. So I intend to leave this world penniless.”

“This is a good start.”

“Besides, money’s not quite the same over there.”

“Over where?”

Tessic drew Dillon’s attention to a map on the wall, pinned up between artists renderings of one of the buildings. “I have purchased several large plots of land in Belarus and Poland. The labor’s cheap, and so are the raw materials. Some leverage with a few friendly Eu­ropean banks, and my out-of-pocket expense is under fifteen million.”

“Oh, is that all,” Dillon scoffed.

“Of course they’re not the most beautiful of structures, but form follows function. The goal is to get them up quickly. We can always beautify them later.”

“What’s the rush?”

“I’m nothing if not efficient,” Tessic answered, then added, “And besides, as you’re the author of world chaos, you should know how little constructive time is left.”

Dillon shifted uncomfortably. Tessic was prodding him, gauging his reaction. “I may be responsible for what’s happening in the world,” Dillon said, “but I won’t take credit as its author. I never intended it.”

“You have plans to repair it, then?”

Dillon found he couldn’t look Tessic in the eye.

“Hopes then,” Tessic prompted. “Hopes in search of a plan.”

“Yes, you could say that.”

“Perhaps I can help you there,” offered Tessic. “Strategy is one of my specialties.” Tessic exuded confidence like a musk, and Dillon found himself half believing Tessic really could help. He wondered whether or not it was just wishful thinking.

Dillon studied the lattice of model buildings, which was more like a starburst than a grid, the buildings radiating outward from an octag­onal park in the center. A bold design, like the man who conceived it. “So, are these housing complexes part of some strategy?” Dillon asked. “These people obviously can’t afford this type of housing, unless you give it away. What could you possibly get in return?”

Tessic paused. “Always with you, I must have some angle.”

Dillon waited, and Tessic looked away. “The great wall of China is the only man-made structure visible from space,” Tessic said. “I intend to add to the tally.”

Dillon nodded, but knew that Elon Tessic was not so shallow a man. He served more than just his ego. “That’s a nice cover story. Now tell me the real reason.”

Dillon refused to back down, and, cornered, Tessic sighed. “You read me too well.”

“One of my specialties.”

Tessic looked at his miniature city, and gently stroked its Lucite lid, as if it were a lover. “You can call it my mitzvah project,” Tessic said quietly. “A holy deed in a faithless world.” Reflexively, Dillon’s thoughts ricocheted to Deanna. It irritated him that the mere mention of faith could bring her to haunt his thoughts. But if nothing else, it helped to sober him.

“We could go there,” Tessic offered. “I could show you the site.”

“Why would I want to go there?”

Tessic had no immediate answer.

Dillon looked around the workshop. If this was Tessic’s sandbox, Dillon didn’t want to play. “I appreciate your hospitality, Elon,” he said. “But I can’t accept it. I’ll be leaving in the morning.”

Although he thought Tessic might deflate with the news, he showed no signs of it. “That is, of course, your choice to make.”

Dillon nodded. “I’ll tell Maddy.” He turned to leave, but Tessic called to him.

“You’ve always spoken of your desire to pull back your energy field—contain yourself. Do you still believe you’ll ever be able to do that?”

“Yes, I do.” Although he was no closer now than he had been in Hesperia.

“Has it occurred to you,” said Tessic, “that perhaps I was brought to you as your means of containment?”

Dillon hadn’t considered that. It was a seductive thought, for it implied a grand design, and if there was anything that Dillon longed for it was grand designs. Perfect patterns. An ordered universe.

“From the moment I was brought in to build your prison,” Tessic said, “I knew that our meeting was bashert. Fated. I built you this sanctuary, knowing fate would bring you here.”

Dillon maintained his distance, keeping a buffer zone between himself and Tessic’s persuasive intensity. “Fate didn’t bring me here; you did,” Dillon reminded him. “In a helicopter, backed up by your own personal army.”

“If it wasn’t meant to be, I would have failed.”

Dillon laughed. “What? Elon Tessic? Fail?”

Tessic hesitated, becoming quiet. “It has happened more often than you know.”

There was deep sorrow to his words. Dillon found himself trying to decipher the source of the sorrow, and found the path convoluted and clouded. Dillon knew if he pushed himself, he could decode Tes­sic’s complex patterns and truly know the man, but Dillon didn’t have the heart to do it. He much preferred Tessic as an enigma.

“Do you know how I became successful, Dillon?” he asked.

Dillon shrugged. “You’re a genius. Everyone knows that.”

“Most geniuses starve,” Tessic reminded him. “I succeeded, be­cause I took the time to listen. I learned to be still. But you—you spend your time running. Running away, running toward, but always running.”

Tessic paused, perhaps waiting for Dillon to defend himself, but there was no defense. Tessic was right.

“Be still,” Tessic said, his voice soothing and calm. “You are like some beacon that is never in the same place twice. What good is that to anyone? What good is that to you? Imagine yourself, for once at the center of the universe, Dillon, and the shadows you chase, your purpose here—everything you seek will be drawn to you. And in that stillness, when your fate does come to you, you will be ready to seize it.”

On the rock-climbing wall, Maddy was already seizing what Tessic had to offer. She had earned it. Years of busting her ass to gain ad­mittance to a military machine that stuck her with the likes of Bussard, then created a backspin of lies that turned her into America’s Most Wanted. AWOL and disgraced; a fugitive only six months after a high-honor West Point graduation—yes, she had earned the right to lux­uriate in Tessic’s penthouse.

As she scaled his magnificent rock-climbing wall, she thought back to easier times; Bryce Canyon, two summers before, when the only challenge in her life was the stone faces of the rocks she climbed, and her stone-faced instructors come Fall. This had once been a predict­able, rational world she could sink her teeth into.

She reached up, deftly inching her way higher, trying to block out everything but the wall. Tessic called it his climate-controlled Everest. He called the entire penthouse complex his “urban cottage.”

“You’ll find it pleasant,” he had told her while their helicopter was still en route. He took pride in his ability to understate.

She didn’t know what to expect of the place before she arrived. Somewhere in the back of her mind were images of a pleasure dome replete with large-breasted, iron-thighed amazons running the whole operation. But instead she found, to some disappointment, a staff no more exotic than any other. A plump Midwestern woman ran the penthouse staff, and went on about how the military had stonewalled her son Jimmy after Desert Storm, “so I can sympathize, honey.” Maddy wasn’t sure how much she knew of their situation, but she knew enough. It could have been a security problem, but the woman’s loyalty to Tessic was unwavering. “Elon paid all of Jimmy’s medical bills, when the Pentagon SOBs were still denying Desert Storm Syn­drome,” she had told Maddy, as she led her to a lavishly appointed bedroom suite.

She was introduced to the gardener, a small Asian man with a nominally effective artificial eye that Tessitech Labs had designed. “It bionic,” the man told her, “Like-a Lin-a-sey Wag-a-ner.” It appeared that for everyone here, Tessic had descended upon their particular misery, assuaging it with some well-conceived act of kindness. It was the most effective security measure she had ever seen.

While Dillon still slept off a massive sedative, and before she at­tempted to climb the wall, Tessic had visited her in her room.

“I wasn’t certain of your sleeping arrangements,” he told her, “so I prepared you and Dillon separate rooms.”

“That will be fine,” she said. If he were fishing for the state of her and Dillon’s relationship, he would not find out from her. She briefly wondered if he might try to seduce her—after all, he did have a rep­utation as a playboy, but reputations and reality rarely went hand in hand. There was nothing in the penthouse to suggest he was a wom­anizer. “So, are we your guests, your prisoners, or your experimental subjects?”

Tessic laughed and wagged a finger at her. “Still you only trust me as far as you can throw me.”

“Actually, I can throw you farther.”

“Well, perhaps I will give you that opportunity in the gym later on.”

She hated that he was always so disarming, deflecting her barbs with the facile skill of one of his weapons systems. “Good,” she said, trying hard to hide a smirk. “I think I’d enjoy putting you in traction.”

Tessic opened the blinds, bringing in the afternoon light, and a spectacular view of Houston. “I must confess, I’ve taken a liking to you, Lieutenant Haas.”

“You can drop the Lieutenant,” she told him. “I think we can assume my military career is over.”

“Then may I call you Maddy?”

“Miss Haas will do fine.”

“Very well, then,” he said. “A minor victory in our little cold war.” Then he paused for a second, contemplating her—not looking her up and down, but simply considering her as a whole. “Perhaps, Miss Haas, if things ever settle down, you might consider working for me.”

“That depends. Is hell freezing over any time soon?”

“We’ll have to ask Dillon,” he said. She laughed in spite of herself. “You know,” said Tessic, “you might have a problem in trusting me, but after what I’ve seen you do for Dillon, I trust you implicitly.”

She sighed. “So . . . what about Dillon?” In spite of their cushy sanctuary, nothing had really changed. Dillon was still at the center of events raging out of control. They weren’t free from the hurricane, they were merely in its eye.

“Yes, what about Dillon?” echoed Tessic, waiting to take her lead, rather than pushing forward with his own ideas. She had no answer for him. She was still grappling with the events of the past few days. A graveyard resurrection—a spirit that devours souls. Before knowing Dillon, she had never been truly convinced of the existence of souls, much less the possibility of them being ripped away. This past week was enough to process; she was light-years away from considering tomorrow.

“No one knows him better than you,” Tessic reminded her. “You know what he needs, perhaps better than he does himself.”

Yes, she did know him, and while Tessic’s motives were still in question, she and Tessic shared the common goal of Dillon’s well-being. That was reason enough for detente, even alliance. And so, in the end, it was Maddy who suggested that Dillon be allowed to wake in the garden; a tranquil environment where Tessic might be perceived as more of a friend, and less of a threat.

She found herself avoiding Dillon for the rest of the day. After the rock-climbing wall, she took a massage at Tessic’s suggestion, then retired early to her room for a long bath in an oversized tub. After spending so much time tending to Dillon’s needs, she had forgotten she had needs of her own. She had never been one to pamper herself— that was her sister’s style—but perhaps it was time.

Her sister! It had been so long since Maddy had even thought of Erica. No doubt the FBI had found her in Brooklyn and was harassing her no end about her psychotically homicidal sibling. She wondered what Erica made of all this, and whether or not she believed the lies being spread about Maddy. She didn’t even want to consider what her parents might be going through. Perhaps Tessic could arrange to get messages to all of them. She would have to ask.

Dillon came to her that night. She had hoped he would, and yet at the same time dreaded being read by him, before she could really read her own feeling about being there.

“I thought I’d see you at dinner,” Dillon said, when she let him in. “Are you alright?”

“Just tired,” she told him. “Too much for one day.”

Dillon threw her an impish, scarred grin. “Ah, you’re such a light­weight.”

“I can see you’re feeling better.”

He hesitated for a moment. “Maddy . . . what you saw in that graveyard . . . "

But Maddy put a finger to his lips. “We’ll sort that out later.”

He kissed her, then she took his hand and led him to her bed. He touched her, moving his hands gently over her body. Being with him was different now. That radiant fire she had felt pulsing from him in the graveyard was still there, so strong that she feared being near him would push her threshold of pain. But she quickly found that being with him now was like slipping into that hot bath. Her spirit and flesh had to grow accustomed to the intensity of his aura, but once they had, it was marvelous. As his hands moved across her, the discomfort gave way to a hypersensitivity of touch. She felt each stroke as if it caressed every cell of her body all at once. Her entire being was coaxed into a hungry receptiveness, and when they made love, she could feel herself entirely enveloped by him. It was wonderful to be lost in him, but there was a sadness in knowing that it could never truly be mutual. That there would never be a time she could envelop him.

Dillon found one question plaguing him. It was a question he was afraid to ask Maddy, because any answer would be just as troubling.

“Do you trust Tessic?” Dillon finally asked in the silence after they had made love. He didn’t expect her to answer the question, but after his conversation with Tessic that afternoon, he had to ask. As he sus­pected, she sidestepped the issue, pulling back slightly from his touch.

“Whatever his agenda, it doesn’t seem to be hurting you.”

“You think he has an agenda?”

“Everyone has an agenda,” she said. “Whether they know it or not.”

“So what’s yours?”

She answered him with a passionate kiss that aroused him again. “I hope that’s always on the agenda,” he said.

He moved in to kiss her again, but she held him off for a moment. “Dillon . . . if Tessic’s offering you a safe haven, there’s nothing wrong with taking it.”

Dillon rolled onto his back, frustrated by her words. “You don’t believe that—even in the dark I can see it in your face.”

“I have a suspicious nature—you’d be stupid to hang your deci­sions on me.”

“Well it doesn’t matter, anyway. I’ve already told him I’m leaving in the morning.” He turned to her and gently touched her face, and when that didn’t seem like quite enough, he kissed her. Still, in spite of the passion they had generated just a few moments ago, the kiss felt forced. “I’ll understand if you don’t want to come with me.”

“Of course I’ll come.” But it was resignation he read in her voice. As if to stem off any further discussion, she shifted closer to him, and held him. “I love you, Dillon.” He knew it was a simple truth that transcended their tensions.

Some time later, he told her he loved her, too, but only after she was asleep. Why, he wondered. Why couldn’t he say it to her face? Did he love her? He loved who she was; he loved the feel of her body; he loved that she loved him.

But she’s not a Shard.

Damn it! He didn’t know why that should matter. He had seen how Michael and Lourdes had been so close in the dark days—just like he and Deanna had been—but once their parasites were gone, they no longer clung to one another with the same desperation. In the end, Michael had spurned Lourdes. Who’s to say that Dillon and Deanna might not have suffered the same fate had she survived?

He had a dozen logical rationalizations, but none that made him feel any better.

Let yourself love her, he told himself. Maddy is good for you. Learn to be still, and let yourself love her.

Dillon didn’t leave her room until dawn, but he didn’t go back to his own room. Instead, he crept quietly up to the garden to watch the sun rise, turning the glass towers of Houston into spires of fire.

Stillness. It was an amazing thing to Dillon. He had forgotten what it was like to have a barrier between his mind and a tumultuous world. Even a barrier of lead-lined crystal was better than no barrier at all. Perhaps this was a retreat worth lingering in for a few more hours. A few more days. Perhaps Tessic’s containment was the only contain­ment he’d ever know.

From the garden, Dillon went down to Tessic’s workshop, passing the sketches of towers and trains, until coming to Tessic’s desk. In the center of Tessic’s desk, Dillon left an olive branch he had taken from the garden. Then he returned to Maddy’s bed, pressed against her until he could feel her heartbeat, and finally released his resistance, letting stillness infuse him.

22. Chamber of horrors

Drew brushed an uncomfortably long lock of hair back from his face, then took a second Suprax and a third Vicodin in the hotel lobby before taking the elevator back to the room he shared with Winston. The antibiotic was a one-a-day deal, but he figured he could use all the protection he could get. As for the painkiller, he suspected he was developing an addiction, but it was worth it to numb the pain that now shot up his entire arm. He imagined his long, straggly blond hair and uneven facial growth already made him look like an addict.

The Dallas Galleria Westin was supposed to be an upscale estab­lishment, but the hotel’s infrastructure was in an accelerated decline. Only three of six elevators worked, the bell counter was permanently unmanned, the granite floors were unpolished and every corner bred forms of trash that no one bothered to remove. As service was the first thing to go these days, Drew found himself grateful for whatever serv­ices remained. Housekeeping, room service. Hotels were closing their doors at alarming rates, and once housekeeping decayed it was im­possible to stay open for business. All else considered, the Westin was holding its own.

As he rode up in the crowded elevator, he thought about the last few hours. Four hours of waiting at an understaffed clinic, on Hallow­een morning. Under other circumstances, it would have been hell, but instead it was a welcome respite from Winston.

“That’s some infection you got there,” the doctor had said with the weariness of a man who had little desire left to practice medicine. He studied the curved line of dark stitches across Drew’s forearm. “How’d this happen?”

Since Drew was already losing track of the lies he had to tell, he simply said, “Graverobbing accident.”

The doctor chuckled uncomfortably, not sure if it was just Hal­loween humor. Turned out the truth solicited fewer questions than any lie he could have told.

The wound looked awful. Rings of purple swelled around the gash, and streaks of red shot all the way down his wrist into his palm, which was also swollen. “How bad’s the infection?” Drew asked.

The doctor poked at his stitches gently, but not gently enough. Drew grimaced from the pain. “Looks like it goes pretty deep. Did the nurse take your temperature?” He looked at the chart to answer his own question. “101. Hmm.” He felt Drew’s glands, looked down his throat, then returned his attention to the wound. “There’s an odd pattern to it.” the doctor commented. “Mottled rings around the trauma, as if. . .”

“As if the flesh keeps dying and regenerating over and over?”

The doctor raised his gaze to catch Drew’s eyes, but only for an instant. “As if it wasn’t getting proper circulation.” And then he added, “Besides, flesh doesn’t regenerate the way you suggest.”

It does around Winston Pell, he wanted to say, but instead was silent, and endured a diatribe about cleanliness and maintenance of the wound. The doctor asked about other symptoms, then palpated his spleen. “Normally this kind of a bacterial intrusion would trigger an alarm in your immune system. The pus around the wound is actually a good sign . . . still . . .” He glanced once more at the chart. “Are you allergic to any prescription medications?”

He redid the stitches, then gave Drew an antibiotic injection and the two oral prescriptions, then sent him on his way, with instructions to return if his fever wasn’t gone in two days.

Now, as the hotel elevator rose, nearing the twenty-fifth floor, he could already feel his arm, which had grown mercifully numb, begin to ache again. He could feel the new flesh regenerating to replace the dying, gangrenous flesh around the wound—but not fast enough to battle the bacteria that had also begun to grow and reproduce at an unnatural rate. Winston’s broadcast of growth was not selective.

Winston’s effect on Drew’s wound had been bearable before, but something had happened that day on the plane. Something had in­explicably changed him. It was a change for the worse as far as Drew was concerned, because the last thing Winston needed was an increase in power.

Winston was exactly as Drew had left him that morning; curled up on his bed, curtains drawn. He slept while the TV flickered a god­awful 70s cop show on an off station. Drew’s bed was made, but only because he had done it himself before he left.

Drew pulled the “do not disturb” sign from the outside doorknob. “Dude, what good is maid service if you never let them in?”

Winston groaned and stirred beneath his covers. Drew reached into the bag he was carrying and threw a 7-11 po’boy at his head.

“I’ve checked us out, so get your sorry black ass out of bed.”

Winston glared at him. “Eat me.”

“Another place, another time,” Drew said with a wink.

Winston grunted, and rolled over, so Drew grabbed the covers with his good arm and tore them off. “I’m not kidding. We’re outta here.”

“Why the hell would you go and do a dumb-ass thing like check­ing us out?”

“A final act of sanity,” Drew answered. “Maybe you’ve grown used to it, but this room smells like roadkill in a rainforest.” Drew pulled on a peeling piece of wallpaper, revealing the flaky mildew that had taken hold of the drywall beneath. No doubt all the adjacent rooms were suffering from Winston’s effect as well. “Welcome to the petrie dish. A few more days and the mold in these walls is gonna demand the right to vote.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“Am I?” He reached up, flicking up the ends of his shoulder-length blond hair, for Winston to see just how long it was. “I don’t think so.

“You look like Jesus,” Winston commented.

“Well, I did come back from the dead once,” Drew commented, “but that’s old news.” He found Winston’s socks on the floor, and tossed them to him. “I don’t even want to know what’s growing in there.”

When Winston began going about the motions of dressing, Drew went into the bathroom. “Better watch out,” he called to Winston, “this morning there was a bedbug under my pillow the size of a Volks­wagen.” Drew studied his face in the mirror. He barely recognized himself anymore. “What the hell are we doing here?” he asked his reflection. He didn’t expect an answer, either from himself or from Winston. Four days ago, Drew had spirited a hysterical Winston out of the unfortunately ventilated airplane, and calmed him down enough to get him here. He wouldn’t discuss what had triggered that seizure on the plane—offered no explanation for the quantum leap in his power. It was, of course, just like Winston to keep such things to himself, but with Tory’s ashes thrown to the wind, Winston had also lost all direction, all motivation. That was unlike him. Winston was always up to something in his own abrasive, antagonistic way. To see him beaten left Drew treading water. He couldn’t leave him like this, but being in Winston’s presence was poisoning Drew with an aggra­vated infection. At the very least, Drew wanted to point them both in some hopeful direction, but Winston wanted to do nothing but sleep. Now he cultured futility like bacteria, and it was contagious.

Grabbing a can of shaving cream from the bathroom counter, Drew lathered up, as he had done every day for four days. He began with his face. His scant facial hair had come in fuller each day. Now he had straggly mutton chops that didn’t quite stretch to his chin. He shaved them off, losing every last bit of sideburn, and higher still, until the razor began to clog with longer hair. Even though the throbbing of his arm made it hard to concentrate on even this simple task, he found the slow, smooth strokes of the razor soothed him, provided him a Zen-like focus. The shaving ritual had begun to take on a mo­nastic flavor. He cut away his long locks with scissors, then lathered his scalp, picked up a fresh razor, and brought it back and forth in short strokes, clear-cutting inch by inch until his entire scalp was shaven and smooth. He was getting used to the shaving ritual, and that frightened him.

When he was done, he studied his shaven head in the mirror—a reflection as unfamiliar to him as the one he had first seen when en­tering the room. The only thing that seemed the same were his eyes, glassy from his growing fever. He watched his reflection for a minute or two, until he could see his clean shaven scalp begin to fill with fine peach fuzz. For an instant, a wave of anger over came him; a sudden surge of hatred. He closed his eyes, inundated by it. It’s just the pain, he told himself. It’s just the fever. He didn’t go back to Winston until it subsided, but the undercurrent was still there.

Winston, still in his underclothes, had made no move to get dressed. Instead he studied a particularly nasty spot of mildew on the wall near his bed. “We need Tory here,” he said longingly. “She’d sanitize the place. Maybe even kill the mold, too, who knows. Her power added to mine. It was really something, you know?”

“Yeah, but she’s not here,” said Drew, with hostility he didn’t expect. “She’ll never be here. She’s fertilizing half of Texas by now, okay?”

Winston turned to look at him. “You’re an asshole,” he said, and used it as an excuse to get back into bed.

“That’s it, I’m outta here. You can lie there until you’re eaten alive by athlete’s foot for all I care.”

“Close the door behind you,” was all Winston said.

He would have left. He had every intention of it, but as he neared the door, he felt his legs go out. He landed on his knees, and gripped the doorknob, but only to keep himself from flopping to the ground. He could feel the fever in every joint. It had skyrocketed in the few minutes he had spent in Winston’s presence. Damn Winston. Damn him.

He tried to get to his feet and complete his exit, but found he was just too dizzy. When he turned, he saw that, wonder of wonders, Winston had actually gotten out of his bed, but he kept his distance.

“I had a life, you know?” Drew found himself ranting, grimacing through the chills and body aches. “I mean, yeah, friggin’ high school track, not very important, but it was my life, mine, and I was happy keeping my head in the sand like everyone else, pretending the world wasn’t going to shit.”

Winston took a step closer. “Let me see your arm.”

“Just stay away. The closer you are, the worse it gets.”

Winston didn’t listen, and Drew didn’t have the strength to ward him off. As Winston came closer, the pain in Drew’s arm exponen­tiated. He could feel the pull of the stitches, smell the sickly stench of infection. He felt it would explode. The room now spun faster, the floor and walls switched places. A trap door sprung in his mind, and he found himself slipping away from consciousness. He offered no resistance.

There was nothing to mark the passage of time. If he had dreams, they were lost. When he came to, he was on his bed, and the curtains were open. Winston was gazing out at the late afternoon sun, fully dressed. Their back packs, that carried what little they had brought with them were packed and resting on a chair.

“The front desk already called,” Winston said, “wondering why we haven’t vacated the room.”

Drew’s left arm felt curiously light and numb. He raised it to find the dressing around the wound was gone. So was the wound. No stitches, scar or discolored flesh, no hint that his arm had ever been wounded at all!

“Winston . . .” Drew continued to stare at his arm. He turned his wrist, as if perhaps the wound could have switched to the other side. Although he did still feel a bit weak, his fever had broken as well.

“Winston, how did you do this? You can’t heal a wound, or fight an infection.”

“No, I can’t,” Winston said calmly.

There was a pillowcase in the corner, overstuffed and tied closed with a shoelace. “What’s that?”

“Towels, mostly,” Winston answered.

“Mostly?”

Drew got up to inspect it more closely. As he neared the over­stuffed pillowcase, he could see there were some stains on it. Blood stains.

Winston can’t fight an infection, thought Drew, his art is growth, and regeneration. The regeneration of flesh. And bone. Drew reached for the shoelace to open the mouth of the bag, but Winston grabbed his arm, before he could.

“I’m asking you not to look inside,” Winston said. “I’m asking you not to question what I did. Not unless you really want to hear the answer.”

Drew looked at the back of his left hand—his perfect left hand. It was a bit pale—substantially less tanned than his right hand. Drew felt a brief instant of nausea, but chased it away. “Trick or treat,” he said. This was a little bit of both, perhaps.

“I think I saw that bedbug you were talking about,” Winston said, grabbing the pillowcase with one hand, and his backpack with the other. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not hang much longer.”

They left the key in the room, the bloody pillowcase in a Dumpster, and drove out into the melee of All Hallow’s Eve.

The strangeness of the times only fueled Halloween. Usurped from the children, the holiday had fallen even further into the hands of adults. This year, the parties began early, for people were, now more than ever, eager to lose themselves in masquerade and alcohol. For those not satisfied with partying, the streets offered other recreation. It was amazing the things that would burn.

Winston saw eerily costumed commuters in the cars around them as he and Drew attempted to leave downtown Dallas. He supposed the fetid state in which they left their hotel room qualified as a partic­ularly macabre Halloween prank. With nowhere else to go, and most roads clogged with partygoers and traffic accidents, Winston drove them to the ballpark at Arlington, where the Cowboys played the Packers in an underattended game. Winston was not surprised by the lack of attendance. Since random acts of violence were no longer iso­lated incidents but a veritable plague, attending any large public gath­ering was talking one’s life into one’s hands. The most die hard sports fans were leaving their season tickets in the drawer. “All part of the big picture,” Dillon would say—as if the hammer on every gun was just a cog in some cosmic Rube Goldberg machine.

Winston and Drew didn’t watch the game. Instead they stood on the abandoned top concession circle, looking out over the parking lot and suburban Dallas beyond, counting the plumes of smoke.

“Hell night,” Winston explained. The fires had begun even before the sun had set, and now, as the last light of dusk slipped from the sky, the night was aglow with distant pockets of flame.

Drew shook his head. “They don’t do this in Southern California.”

“They will this year.”

Winston glanced at the space around them. The entire concession level was closed, and lit only by the stadium lights spilling through the access tunnels that led to the stands. Most everything else on the level was cast in shadows. It was as good a place as any to privately bring Drew up to speed. Winston told Drew everything he had kept from him. All that he knew, or at least all he thought he knew.

Rather than being distressed by the news of the three intruders, Drew appeared relieved. Perhaps knowing the face of doom was better for him than waiting for it in the dark.

“And these three . . . phantoms you’re talking about—you think they’re looking for you?”

“No,” answered Winston, “They’re not looking for me. That’s the problem.”

“Three ghouls out there, and they’re not looking for you. Maybe I’m a moron, but I don’t exactly see that as a problem.”

Winston sighed. “It means that whatever they’re up to, I no longer figure into their equation. They’ve completely dismissed me.”

“So, you think there was a point when you did mean something to them?”

“I know there was.”

“You were a threat to them?”

“Not just me,” Winston said. “Dillon, Lourdes—Tory and Mi­chael as well. Maybe even Deanna.”

“Fear of the dead?” asked Drew.

“Fear of their recovery,” Winston answered.

“But you’re not a threat anymore?”

Winston shook his head. “We’re nothing to them now. I can sense it.” Winston gave Drew a few moments, watching him piece it all together.

“They had to make certain one piece of the whole was destroyed forever.” Drew concluded. “So they sent Briscoe to destroy Michael’s remains, but he failed, so he went after Tory instead!”

“And the moment Tory’s ashes were scattered to the sky,” added Winston, “it was safe for the three to enter this world.”

Drew pursed his lips, shaking his head. “There’s still something that I don’t get. You’re not a threat to them, yet your powers increased the moment they arrived. Why?”

“I don’t know. It’s as if their intrusion triggered something. Like an alarm.”

“Or an immune system,” offered Drew. It was an offhand com­ment that almost slipped by. It took a moment for both of them to really latch onto it. Drew turned to face Winston, and Winston caught an intensity in his eyes. Excitement, fear, both beginning to blossom together. “Like an immune system,” Drew said again, slowly, like a spell. Winston could feel the spell open a door, and the scope of what was beyond it gave Winston vertigo.

A shadow moved in the dim service lights of the closed concession deck. They turned to see a figure approaching, something terribly wrong with the face. Only as the figure got closer, did they realize that he was wearing a latex mask over his head. The mask, a Halloween staple, featured a bloody, lopsided face, cleaved down the middle by a rubber hatchet. He smelled the part—a stench of organic decay as if he hadn’t washed for weeks.

“You boys looking to score some shit?” said a muffled voice behind the mask. “I got something for whatever ails you. Only the good stuff, guaranteed.”

“Get lost,” said Drew.

“C’mon, I got your number,” said the drug dealer. He turned to Winston. “You boys are looking to shoot up. Let me inoculate you against your pain.”

“Get the hell out of here before I put a real hatchet in your head,” Winston said.

The dealer put up a pair of dirty hands, and backed off. “Suit yourself. If you change your mind, I’ll be around.” Then he strolled off looking for fresh customers.

Sign of the times, thought Winston. When the dust finally settled, the only ones left would be the cockroaches and the drug dealers. Winston looked out over Dallas. There were more fires on the horizon now. The distant echo of fire engines blended with the sounds of the stadium behind them. A handful of firefighters, battling to break a fever raging out of control.

“Do you know how an immune system works, Drew?”

Drew shrugged. “The marrow and spleen kick out white blood cells. The white cells surround the foreign body, and kill it. Hey, man, didn’t you ever see Fantastic Voyage?”

“There are also antibodies,” Winston reminded him. “Different kinds, each with their own specific properties. Their own special charm. They lie dormant until triggered by either a disease, or a vac­cination.”

Let me inoculate you against your pain.

Winston glanced around for the split-faced drug dealer, but he was nowhere. He shivered, holding the thought in abeyance. “The thing is, it takes more than one antibody to do the job. To fight the most dangerous threats to the body, it takes specific types, in specific quan­tities working together.”

Drew considered it, and nodded a deeper understanding. “A quan­tity of six, maybe?”

“Maybe.” A roar from the crowd signaled that one of the two teams had scored, but neither Winston nor Drew ventured onto the field to find out which one. Winston scanned the deserted space around them, until spotting the nearest ramp leading down. “I do believe we have to find ourselves a drug dealer.”

The hatchet-faced dealer had left the upper concession level, and they did not spot him on the lower levels either. He could have taken off his mask and vanished into the crowd, but somehow Winston doubted that.

“The guy was dogshit on bad news,” Drew reminded him. “Why are we looking for him?”

Winston chose not to answer that. Instead he asked, “Are you familiar with fractal theory?”

“No, but I’m sure you are.”

“Only what I’ve read.” Of course, they both knew the library locked in Winston’s head had grown rather extensive. “The theory says that the smallest particle of something is just a smaller version of the whole.”

“You lost me.”

“A boulder on a mountain will, on some very basic level, contain the pattern of the entire mountain inside it. The way an acorn holds the pattern of the oak. The way every living cell contains the pattern of the whole organism.”

“DNA.”

“Right. But what if it doesn’t stop there? What if the organism is the blueprint for the species. And what if the species is the blueprint for the cosmos?”

Drew laughed the idea away. “Winston, I don’t doubt that you see yourself when you look at the stars.”

With the fourth quarter winding down, and their masked marauder nowhere in sight, they headed out into the parking lot.

“All I’m saying,” Winston continued, “is that if a star can be alive, and its death be the birth of six souls here on earth, what else might be alive out there? How much bigger is the picture?”

“And what does all this have to do with a ballpark pusher?”

Winston slowed as they neared their car. “I think we’re about to find out.”

Drew turned and caught sight of it, too. The elusive drug dealer sat on the hood of their car. The parking lot lighting cast a dark shadow of the rubber hatchet across one side of his face. Half in shadows, the mask was even more menacing.

Drew grabbed Winston’s arm. “I don’t like this. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“He’s on our car,” Winston reminded him. “Where are we going to go?” The hatchet man watched them, his face like a portrait that always held one’s gaze. They stopped a good five yards from the car.

“Leaving so soon?” the dealer said.

“Looking for you,” Winston answered, reigning back his own fear. “We were wondering what you had to offer. And what it might cost.”

“It just so happens I’m running a special today,” the dealer said. “Crystal Nova. Powerful stuff. Just a small piece of it is guaranteed to grow hair on your chest—and just about everywhere else, for that matter.”

Winston took a step closer to the car. “Take off the mask.”

The “dealer” slowly reached up, and peeled off the latex mask to reveal the sickly face of a Hualapai Indian nowhere near as beautiful as it had been a year before. The voice had lost its musical timbre, but the face was unmistakable. It was Okoya.

Winston should have warned Drew, for now Drew’s fear spiked suddenly. “Oh, crap—I thought Dillon took care of that thing.”

“Dillon did take care of me,” Okoya said. “He took care of me so well that I had no choice but to come back.”

“You have five seconds to start making sense,” demanded Win­ston.

“It will all make sense soon enough. Trust me.”

“Trust you?” Drew took a step forward, his initial shock trans­muting into rage. “You left four hundred people worse than dead, and left Dillon to clean up after you. He might take the blame for what’s going on in the world, but you’re the one who caused it.”

“Me, responsible for what’s going on in the world?” Okoya mocked. “I’m flattered you think me capable of such large-scale atrocity.

Drew lunged at him, but Winston held him back. “Save it,” he told Drew. “Save your anger until we need it.”

Okoya hopped off the car. Winston could see his body was frail, barely clinging to life.

“Drew has more reason to hate me than you realize, Winston. You could say Drew and I have an intimate history.”

“You have a sick definition of ‘intimate’,” Drew said.

“I tore his soul from him during that unpleasantness at Hoover Dam last year,” Okoya explained.

Winston turned to Drew, shocked by this disclosure, but before he could jump to conclusions, Okoya continued.

“Oh, he got it back, of course. When I tore his soul from him, I didn’t feed on it myself, I tried to serve it to Michael. But instead of devouring it, Michael gave Drew back his soul.”

Winston could feel Drew shudder.

“Rest easy,” Okoya told Drew. “While it was personal for you, it was tactical for me. However, troubling with you now would serve me no purpose.” Then he threw a mischievous gaze in Winston’s direction. “It’s more likely that Winston would chop off your arm, than I would devour your soul.”

Winston had to look away, and it made Okoya laugh. How long had Okoya been shadowing them? How close had he been? “No mat­ter what you choose to do, and not do,” Winston said, “we’ll never see you as anything but evil.”

The smile quickly drained from Okoya’s sallow face. “If so, I am the least of many evils. There are three creatures out there—I’m sure you’ve seen them in your mind’s eye. They prey on souls, but are much more powerful than I ever was. If you send me away, I promise you, this world—this universe—will fall into their hands.”

“Why would you help us?” Winston asked.

Okoya held out his hands, palms up. “I’ve made an enemy of them. I have no choice but to side with you.”

Winston nodded. A matter of necessity. Practicality. For once Okoya’s unfailing self-interest gave them the upper hand, and had turned him into a staunch, if somewhat sinister ally. The question was, did Winston have the stomach to deal with the devil?

“What would you want in return?” Winston asked.

“The right to exist. Nothing more.”

“And devour souls?” asked Drew.

Okoya sighed. “I’ve found I can get by on other forms of subsis­tence in this world, if I must. The modest life-force of animals, plants.” And then a broad smile. “Perhaps I’ll become a vegetarian.”

Drew threw up his hands. “He’s playing us for fools. You know that, don’t you?”

Winston kept his eyes on Okoya. “All I know is that the immune system is failing. Isn’t that right, Okoya.”

Okoya raised his eyebrows. “I’m impressed. Figured that out by yourself, did you?”

“Drew did.”

Okoya threw Drew a smirk. “An insightful soul. But I already knew that.”

While Drew didn’t exactly warm to Okoya, he seemed to step down his defenses a bit. “How do we know you won’t start feeding your old hunger?”

“When I broke through into this world, I had to feed once,” Okoya told them, “just to survive the shock of passage. Since then I’ve abstained. You could say I’ve been testing my new-found virtue.” He grinned, but no matter how mollifying he tried to be, his grins had all the warmth of a crocodile.

Winston dared to step close to him. He looked Okoya over, Win­ston’s nose clogging from the stench. Okoya’s muscles had atrophied, leaving swollen joints, and a belly beginning to distend. Apparently without his feasts of souls, he could not sustain his host body. “You’re starving that body,” Winston told him. “You’ll need to feed it to survive. Our kind of food.”

“I’ve been neglectful in that area,” Okoya admitted.

“What’s the matter,” taunted Drew, “afraid you’ll enjoy our prim­itive tastes?”

“There was no such nourishment where I’ve been. And lately I’ve been too busy tracking Dillon and the two of you to bother serving needs of the flesh.”

“Dillon?!” It was Winston’s magic word. “You know where Dil­lon’s at?”

“That depends,” said Okoya. “Do we have an understanding?”

Winston looked to Drew for support, but Drew wouldn’t meet his eyes. “We’ll see what your help is worth,” Winston answered.

Okoya considered it, and accepted. “Yes, I do know where Dillon is.” He said. “We’ll talk about it on the way to California.”

“He’s in California?”

“No—but there’s something we’ll need before I lead you to Dil­lon.”

We, thought Winston with a wave of discomfort. He talks as if he’s one of us now.

“You really want to do business with this thing?” Drew asked quietly, but not so quietly that Okoya couldn’t hear.

“I can’t see as we have any more choice than he does,” Winston answered.

Okoya took a step closer. “This universe is about to be infected by hundreds of thousands of my kind,” Okoya told them. “But some­times an ounce of the disease can be the cure.”

23. Gravity

Caymanas Park was heralded as the premier horse racing track in the Carribean. Nowhere near as exotic as the flamingo-laden turfs of Florida’s Hialeah, Caymanas was like most everything else in Jamaica: functional, but badly weathered by tropical storms that came one after another.

The track was frequented by locals, made up of native Jamaicans and American retirees, as well as tourists who had had their fill of palm trees and tropical beaches. They would all come to wager on thor­oughbreds whose bodies frothed in the oppressive Jamaican humidity. The racing season at Caymanas never ended—there were races every Wednesday and Saturday, as well as holidays, but without the luxury of night lighting, races always ended at dusk.

By Saturday’s ninth race, the last of the day, the sky was already bruising the colors of sunset. The horses paraded a loop on the home­stretch, studied by a crowd that had gathered on the asphalt apron between the track and the grandstand. The apron filled up as post time closed in, and the horses were led to the gate. For many, part of the thrill of the race was pressing up against the homestretch railing and feeling the thunder of hooves in their own bodies as the horses pow­ered toward the finish line.

Within that crowd was one American girl of Hispanic heritage, whose interest was not in the horses at all. Her interest was in the crowd.

Although no one noticed, by the time the gate crashed open and the race began, everyone standing in the homestretch crowd was breathing in unison, and their hearts followed the same adrenaline-pumped beat. Although everyone shouted different things, exhaling various words of encouragement and dismay at their respective horses, there was a silence on the inhale, leaving the shouts to come in a strange wave pattern.

The horses came out of the clubhouse turn, and flew down the backstretch. A bay horse named Eagles Dare had the lead by a length. With tight attention on the distant pack of horses, no one noticed as the American girl closed her eyes, finding her center in the midst of turmoil. The horses went into the far turn, the lead horse falling back, surpassed on the outside by a spotted stallion with an aggressive jockey, whipping his horse into the lead.

That’s when Lourdes Hidalgo lashed out, imposing herself on the crowd.

It began with the people immediately around her; a man waving his racing form in the air suddenly found his arm heavy by his side; a woman screaming for Calliope to move up from last place suddenly found her mouth no longer forming the words; a man with a cigar stub in his hand found he couldn’t discard it even as it began to sear his index finger.

The horses came out of the turn, hoofs pounding, dirt flying. By now the crowd at the rail had fallen eerily silent, and the grandstand quickly followed suit. Even the announcer, who barked the race like an auctioneer, found himself, for the first time in his career, speechless as the horses came into the homestretch.

A powerful impulse swept through the crowd, latching onto each nervous system, usurping control. It was an impulse to move. To gather. The spectators found themselves turning from the race, becom­ing a circle pushing inward toward the girl who had suddenly become their center of gravity.

For Lourdes, it was like screaming into darkness, for the place was so dense with bodies, she had no clue what the response would be. She feared her bid for control would be so diluted, it wouldn’t take hold. But as more and more faces turned to her, she realized she had succeeded in seizing them, just as her three “angels” had instructed her to do. She thought it a victory, until she realized that the crowd wasn’t just focused on her. They were pressing toward her, tighter and tighter—and it wasn’t just the crowd standing by the rail.

On the track, as the horses tore past the tote board, they veered from the finish line, bearing right, following a new command. Lourdes could see the wild eyes of the animals; neither the horses nor their jockeys able to control their tons of flesh. Like the curl of a breaking wave, the horses hurdled the rail and came down on the crowd. Spec­tators were trampled beneath their hooves, and crushed beneath the weight of their falling bodies.

Lourdes panicked, struggling to release the crowd from her grasp, but she had gripped them so tightly, she could not release them. A woman in front of her pressed up against her. Squeezed by the crowd behind her, the woman began working her mouth, trying to draw a breath of air, but her chest had collapsed under the pressure of the crowd. Lourdes, constricted and unable to move, craned her neck toward the grandstand, where people found themselves climbing down over rows of seats against their own will until reaching the front. Doz­ens upon dozens of people hurled themselves from the upper level like lemmings, their bodies obeying the command to draw close to Lourdes, even if that command resulted in death.

This was not what she wanted. She had meant to call the mob to crisp attention, but instead they were moths drawn to her flame.

“Stop!” screamed Lourdes, her voice a faint warble. She could barely breathe now within the growing pressure of the crowd. “Help me!” She knew the angels were somewhere watching, but if they heard, they did not lift so much as a finger to help her.

The woman who pressed painfully against Lourdes’s breast now showed no signs of struggle, and although her eyes were open, there was nothing there. She was dead. The man to her left and right were dead. She was surrounded by a minion of corpses crushed by the press of the crowd, unable to fall. In less than five minutes a simple day at the races had become an ordeal surpassing her worst nightmare, and although she tried to scream her terror, she found her own breath squeezed out of her.

Then she realized there was a way to stop this. She had pulled the crowd to her, and she couldn’t simply turn off that physical impulse: it had to be replaced by another impulse equally persuasive. So she closed her eyes and pushed forth to every one under her control a simple physiological imperative: the irresistible urge to sleep.

It took hold immediately, and bodies began to drop. Soon the pressure around her eased, and the dead pressed so tightly against her slid to the ground, like petals falling from a flower. She gasped a deep breath, filling her lungs over and over again until she was dizzy from hyperventilation.

In the orange glow of sunset, Lourdes regarded her personal Ar­mageddon. The grandstand was almost clear, bodies piled beneath, too deep to count. A dozen yards away, the head of a jockey protruded from beneath the carcass of his horse. Eagles Dare. The favorite. The lethal weight of the horse had forced a deluge of blood from the jockey’s nose and mouth.

Only three figures remained standing. A man, a woman and a child. Cerilla, Carlos, and Memo, or at least those had been the names of their human hosts. They waited in the winners’ circle.

Lourdes stepped over the carnage. It was impossible to know how many slept, and how many were dead—trampled by horses, or suf­focated by the press of the crowd. She leapt over the obstacle course of flesh, crying at the magnitude of the disaster.

“I can’t do it!” she screamed at her mentors. “I can’t—look at this, I can’t do it!” The boy came forward and dispassionately smashed the back of his small hand across Lourdes’ face. It came as a shock, and hurt more than she expected.

“She’s a disaster,” said Carlos.

“Worthless,” said Cerilla.

But Memo said, “She’ll do better . . . won’t you, Lourdes.”

She had once flawlessly controlled half a dozen people on a vol­leyball team. She had turned a group of twenty into a kick-line for her own amusement. She had forced dozens to dance, and kept a shipload of beautiful people emotionally dependent on her, irresistibly drawn to her magnetic personality. But all that was child’s play. She had never stretched her self as thin as this task required.

“There were too many people!” she told them. “I’ll never be able to do it!”

“You’ll practice.” Memo said calmly. “You’ll get better. You will master your control of fifty, then a hundred, then five hundred, then a thousand.”

“But why?” she demanded. “Why have you asked me to do this? How many people do you need me to control?”

“When you succeed, you will understand,” Memo told her. “And once you understand, you will revel in it.”

Cerilla shook her head, her chilly look made arctic by the grimace of her cleft lip. “She won’t succeed. We need to find another way.”

Carlos nodded his agreement, but little Memo waved them both off dismissively. “That’s for me to decide,” he said.

The other two nodded in reluctant acquiescence. If it had not been clear to Lourdes who was in charge among them, there was no longer a question.

Faint groans and cries around them indicated that Lourdes’s sleep was wearing off. “We should do something,” she said. “People are dying.”

“Since when did you care about human suffering?” asked Carlos.

She had no answer for him. For a year now, Lourdes had cultivated insensitivity and indifference. Compassion was never her strong point, but she still had to work hard to purge it, clothing herself in an attitude of disdain. It took a calamity such as this to remind her that she was human, or at least once had been. Perhaps it was easy for these creatures to see humans as nothing more than fodder, but it wasn’t so easy for Lourdes.

There were other people approaching now—people who were blessedly beyond the rim of her event horizon, and were not under her control; late arrivals, and curiosity-seekers who had heard the com­motion and came to investigate.

Memo glanced at the people wandering in, then turned to Lourdes. “I’m hungry,” he said. “Gather us some dinner.” Then he left with the two others, heading toward their limousine waiting behind the grandstand.

Lourdes took a deep breath, and released it. For days she had watched these angels dine, trying to desensitize herself to it, trying to see their feast of souls as something other than awful. There was a higher purpose to all this—or if not a higher purpose, a practical one. Why align herself with humanity, she reasoned, when she could align herself with something higher on the food chain? If the universe was indifferent—even hostile—what end was there besides self-preservation? No, it wasn’t easy to see people as cattle, but she was working on it.

A woman clinging fearfully to her husband approached Lourdes. “Did you see this here?” she asked in a rich Jamaican lilt. “Do you know about it? Were you here?”

“I was right in the middle of it,” Lourdes said.

The woman began to shiver. “This a dark happening here,” she said. “A dark happening.”

“It gets worse,” answered Lourdes. Then with a flick of her head, she took control of them, sending the couple marching toward the limo, where the angels waited to devour their souls.