Thief Of Souls

1.The Repair Man

Dillon’s arms had grown strong from his labors.

At first, his back and shoulders had filled with a fiery soreness that grew worse each day as he worked. His biceps would tighten into twisted, gnarled knots—but in time his body had grown accustomed to the work. So had his mind.

He dug the spade in the soft dirt, and flung it easily over his shoulder.

The chill wind of a late-September night filtered through the nearby forest, filling the midnight air with the rich scent of pine. He shivered. With knuckles stiff from gripping the shovel, he struggled to zip his jacket to the very top. Then he resumed digging, planting the spade again and hurling the dirt, beginning to catch the rhythm of it, giving in to the monotony of spade and earth. He made sure not to get any dirt on the blanket he had brought with him.

He realized he should have worn heavy workboots for the job, but his sneakers, though caked with mud, never seemed to wear out. None of his clothes ever wore out. He had just torn his jeans hopping over the wrought-iron fence, but he knew they would be fine. Even now, the shredded threads around the tear were weaving together.

The fact was, Dillon Cole couldn’t have a pair of faded, worn-out jeans if he wanted to. He called it “a fringeless fringe benefit.” A peculiar side-effect of his unique blessing.

The shovel dug down. Dirt flew out.

“I got a scratch.”

The small boy’s voice made Dillon flinch, interrupt­ing the rhythm of his digging.

“Carter,” warned Dillon, “I told you to stay with that family until I got back.”

“But the scratch hurts.”

Dillon sighed, put the shovel down and brushed a lock of his thick red hair out of his eyes. “All right, let me see your hand.”

Carter stretched out his arm to show a scratch across the back of his hand. It wasn’t a bad scratch, just enough to draw the tiniest bit of blood, which glistened in the moonlight.

“How’d you do this?” Dillon asked.

Carter just shrugged. “Don’t know.”

Dillon took a long look at the boy. He couldn’t see the boy’s eyes clearly in the moonlight, but he could tell Carter was lying. I won’t challenge him just yet, Dillon thought. Instead he brought his index finger across Carter’s hand, concentrating his thoughts on the scratch.

The boy breathed wondrously as he watched the tiny wound pull itself closed far more easily than the zipper on Dillon’s jacket. “Oh!”

Dillon let the boy’s hand go. “You made that scratch yourself, didn’t you? You did it on purpose.”

Carter didn’t deny it. “I love to watch you heal.”

“I don’t ‘heal’, " reminded Dillon. “I fix things that are broken.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Carter, who had heard it all be­fore. “Reversing Enter-P.”

“Entropy,” Dillon corrected. “Reversing entropy,” and he began to marvel at how something so strange had become so familiar to him.

“Go back to those people,” Dillon scolded Carter gently. He returned to digging. “You’re too young to be here.”

“So are you.”

Dillon smiled. He had to admit that Carter was right. Sixteen was woefully young to be doing what he was doing. But he had to do it anyway. He reasoned that it was his penance; the wage of his sins until every last bit of what he had destroyed was fixed.

The blade of Dillon’s shovel came down hard, with a healthy bang.

Carter jumped. “What was that?”

Dillon shot him a warning glance. “Go back to the house.”

“That woman won’t stop praying,” Carter com­plained, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, and back again. “It makes me nervous.”

“You go back there and tell them I’ll be back in an hour. And then you sit down and pray with them.”

“But—"

“Trust me, Carter. You don’t want to see this. Go!”

Carter kicked sullenly at the dirt, then turned to leave. Dillon watched him weave between the polished gravestones and slip through the wrought-iron fence.

When Dillon was sure Carter was gone, he took a long moment to prepare his mind for the task of fixing. Then he brushed away the dirt, and reached for the lip of the coffin.

Little Kelly Jessup, wrapped in a blanket, clung to Dillon Cole, shivering. Dillon braced himself as he car­ried her through the door of the Jessup home. Mrs. Jessup stood in the hallway, not quite ready to believe what her eyes told her, until the little girl looked up and said, “Mommy?”

The woman’s scream could have woken the dead, if the job had not already been done.

Dillon’s dreams that night were interrupted, as they always were, by the green flash of the supernova—a memory that had seared its way deep into his uncon­scious. It was the first flash of vision that there were five others like him out there . . . and the first inkling of what they truly were; the most powerful and lumi­nous souls on earth. Shards of the fractured soul of the scorpion star, incarnated in human flesh.

From there his dream took a turn into nightmare, and he knew where he would find himself next. The throne room of a crumbling palace, on a ruined mountain, within the red sands of what he could only call “the Unworld.” That non-place that existed between the walls of worlds.

And before him stood the parasitic beast that had leeched onto his soul for so many years, its gray mus­cles rippling, its veiny wings batting the air, and its face an evil distortion of his own. It was a creature that would never have grown so powerful, had Dillon’s own soul not been so bright.

I will be fed! it told him. You will destroy for me. I will feed on the destruction you bring.

In the dream, Dillon saw himself raising the gun to shoot it, knowing what was about to happen, unable to stop it. He pulled the trigger, the beast stepped aside . . . and there was Deanna.

The bullet struck the chest of the girl Dillon himself would die for.

He ran to her, took her in his arms, while his beast flexed its muscles, absorbing this act of destruction, feeding on Deanna’s dying breaths.

“I’m not afraid,” coughed Deanna; “I’m not afraid”— for after she had purged the parasite of fear from her own soul, terror had no hold on her.

Suffer the weight, Dillon, the creature said, as Deanna died in his arms. Suffer the weight of destruc­tion . . . and every moment you suffer is a moment I grow strong . . .

Dillon was shaken awake by small hands on his shoulders. He opened his eyes to see Carter standing above him. By now this had become a regular routine.

“The monster again?”

Dillon nodded. The thing was still alive out there, Dillon knew. Both his beast and Deanna’s still stalked the sands of the Unworld. The other four shards had killed their parasites, and Dillon suspected that if his were dead too, it wouldn’t invade his dreams with such alarming regularity.

“My dog had worms once,” said Carter. “They got to his heart and ate him from the inside out. Was that what it was like having that thing inside you?”

“Something like that,” said Dillon. He sat up, taking a moment to orient himself. Where was he this time? What had he done here? He was in the Jessups’ home. Yes—that was it. Kelly Jessup had been dead almost a year now, and her parents driven insane. Dillon had undone all that damage.

Dillon looked at his watch. Three in the morning.

“Get back to bed,” Dillon told Carter. “We need an early start tomorrow.”

Carter returned to the couch across the guest room. “Who do we see tomorrow?”

“A family called the Bradys. There’ll be more work than here.”

“What about my father?” asked Carter.

Like so many others, Carter’s father had gone insane, and died a nasty death last year. Dillon’s failure to find his grave was something Carter loved to hang over Dil­lon’s head, and was a constant reminder to Dillon that there were still a million and one things and people screaming to be fixed.

“I’ll find him,” said Dillon. “And I’ll fix him, just like I promised.”

Carter shrugged. “No rush,” he said, far too pleas­antly. “I like being called Carter instead of Delbert any­way.”

The thought unsettled Dillon. When the boy had been found last year, wandering the streets, he had been a mumbling, maddened lunatic, just like everyone else left alive here in Burton, Oregon. He hadn’t even known his own name.

“Carter was the tag on your T-shirt. Do you want to be named after an underwear company?”

“I don’t care.”

And that was the problem. Since Dillon had fixed the boy’s mind, he had latched on to Dillon like a puppy. Dillon didn’t mind the company, but he knew it just wasn’t right. Life with Dillon was a poor sub­stitute for life with his real family.

Dillon, knowing he would not sleep again tonight, turned to leave the room, but Carter stopped him.

“You were calling her name out in your sleep,” Car­ter said.

Dillon sighed, wishing he could forget the dream. “Was I?”

Carter rolled over on the couch to face him. “You know,” said Carter, “you could bring her back now . . .”

Dillon grimaced to hear the words spoken aloud. When Deanna had died, Dillon had had no skill in bringing chaos from order, life out of death. All he knew was how to see patterns of destruction and act upon them. But a year had honed his skills. Now it would be so easy to take Deanna’s broken body in his arms and bring her back to life, cell by cell. He imag­ined that moment when he could gather her life back and see her smile at him again. Hear the gentle for­giveness in her voice.

But he could not get to her. She was sealed away in the Unworld—a place Dillon could not reach. He was trapped in the here-and-now, and the people around him were constant reminders that he didn’t deserve Deanna. All he deserved was the endless, exhausting task of fixing the disasters he had created—because he’d never be able to forgive himself for willfully feed­ing his parasite—until he had repaired every last bit of his decimation. From the moment the other four sur­viving shards had left him, he knew what his job was going to be. And one of the first things he bought was a shovel.

“Yes, I know I could bring her back,” he told Carter. “Now go to sleep.”

Carter rolled over, and in a few moments, he was sleeping peacefully. And why not? thought Dillon. He had repaired the boy’s psyche so well, he never had nightmares, in spite of the horrors he had been through.

Dillon slid noiselessly out of the guest room. Down­stairs he found Carol Jessup sitting in the family room. The air smelled of sweet cocoa and smoke from the smoldering fireplace. The woman lovingly held her sleeping daughter in her arms, absorbed in stroking the little girl’s hair as she hummed a lullaby. She had been doing this for hours, unable to believe that her daughter was alive again. She stopped humming the moment Dillon stepped into the room. It took her a few mo­ments until she could speak to him.

“I’m afraid to ask who you are,” she said, “or how you did what you did.”

“It’s just patterns, Carol,” Dillon answered. “My mind can see patterns no one else can see, and my soul can repair them. That’s all I can do.”

“That’s all you can do?” she said incredulously. “That’s everything. It’s creation. It’s reversing time!”

“Space,” said Dillon calmly. “Reversing space.”

The woman looked down at her daughter and her eyes became teary. “Maybe I don’t know who you are,” she said to Dillon, looking at him with the sort of holy reverence that made him uncomfortable, “but I know what you are.”

Dillon found himself getting angry. “You don’t know me,” he told her. “You don’t know the things I’ve done.”

But clearly she didn’t care what Dillon had done in the past. All that mattered to her was what he had done here, today. “When the virus came,” she said, “my hus­band and I got lost in the woods, wandering insane like all the others in town. When we finally came out of it, we were told that Kelly had drowned in the river. I wanted to die along with her.”

“What if I told you there was no virus?” Dillon said to her. “That they call it a ‘virus’ because they don’t know what else to call it? What if I told you that I destroyed this town last year—shattered everyone’s mind—and that, in a way, I was the one who killed your daughter in the first place?”

Dillon thought back to the time of his rampage. It had taken so little effort for Dillon to shatter the minds of everyone in town. All he had to do was find the weakest point in the pattern, then simply whisper the right words into the right ear to set off a chain reaction, like a ball-peen hammer to a sheet of glass. Just a sin­gle whispered phrase, and within a few short hours, every last man, woman, and child in town was driven insane.

“In fact, what if I told you that I was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people . . . including my own parents?”

“If you told me that,” said Carol Jessup, “I wouldn’t believe you. Because I know that a spirit as great as yours isn’t capable of such evil.”

“Bright light casts dark shadows,” he told her, and said no more of it.

Dillon looked around the room. The furniture that had been well worn a day before was now in brand-new condition, and the carpet was thick and lush where it had once showed heavy tracking. Dillon wondered if Carol Jessup and her husband had noticed. He hoped they hadn’t. Lately it wasn’t a matter of him willing these things to happen anymore. Now they happened whether he wanted them to or not. He could sense his power was growing, and now his presence had its own sphere of influence, which affected everything around him. It made him not want to linger anywhere for long.

Little Kelly Jessup’s eyes fluttered open for a mo­ment, then closed again as she snuggled closer to her mother. She had already had a bath, but the child still had the faintest smell of the grave lingering behind the baby shampoo. But that, too, would be gone in a day or two.

“You need to leave here,” Dillon told Carol Jessup. “Before anyone sees your daughter, you have to go somewhere where no one knows you. Where no one will ask you questions. You can never tell anyone what I did here today.” Dillon knew there was still so much confusion in Burton, that one more abandoned house would not raise the questions it might raise elsewhere. It was that confusion which kept Dillon safely hidden from the view of the authorities . . . but the more he repaired, the less disorder there was to hide behind. Dillon knew his corner was getting tight.

“What if we do tell someone?” the woman asked. “What will happen?”

“You don’t want to know.”

The woman shrank back, and paled.

In truth, nothing would happen to them if she told . . . but if word of Dillon’s deeds got out, he didn’t want to think about what would happen to him.

“We’ll pack our things, and leave in the morning,” she told him. “And we won’t tell a soul.”

But it was clear from her tone of voice that she al­ready had.

Two hours later, the town of Burton was swarming with police and state troopers, and Dillon knew they were looking for him. He had slipped away from the Jessups’ at dawn, already sensing the world closing in around him. As always, they had decided to drive along the back roads. Carter sat silently in the passenger seat, impassive and unconcerned as Dillon managed to evade one police checkpoint after another, until he finally slammed the brakes on his Land Rover, and slammed his fists on the steering wheel.

“What’sa matter?” asked Carter.

Dillon shook his head to clear his thoughts. There was no way out of town—every road was crawling with troopers. The news of his feats must be more widely known than he had suspected, to mobilize so many troopers to ferret him out. Bringing back the dead must have been an offense as serious as mass murder in the eyes of the law.

A hundred yards ahead, the officers at the Harrison Street checkpoint took notice of Dillon’s car stopped suspiciously a hundred feet away from them.

Carter yawned and brushed some morning crust from the corner of his eye. “We’ll get away from them,” said Carter. “You can get out of anything.”

But it wasn’t that simple. Dillon silently cursed his luck. His talent for seeing patterns in the world around him was as acute as ever, but when it came to his own life, he was blind. He knew someone would eventually give away his secret, but he had thought he would have more time. And it probably wasn’t just the Jessups who had blown the whistle; other families must have come forward, too. He could imagine the most hardened of police investigators turned into blubbering morons when they saw the resurrected dead with their own eyes. No, they couldn’t catch him, or he’d never be able to complete his repair work. He had to get away.

“We’re smarter than them!” said Carter. “They’ll never catch us!”

Dillon took a good look at the boy. Dillon couldn’t remember ever being that innocent. That trusting.

“We’re going to run, aren’t we?” Carter’s eyes were bright and eager. “Aren’t we? You won’t let them break us up—we’re a team, right?”

Dillon knew what he had to do. Carter deserved more than an apprenticeship to a freak—Dillon owed him at least the chance at a normal life. And so, as the troopers approached, Dillon made no move to escape. Instead he quickly whipped up a new plan. A brilliant, brutal plan that would leave everyone better off.

Well, almost everyone.

The troopers dragged Carter, kicking and scream­ing into one police car, and took Dillon off in another. Dillon offered no resistance. The two cars drove off, away from Burton, toward a saner part of the world where, presumably, Dillon would be “held for ques­tioning.”

The two state troopers in the front seat smelled of morning breath doused with black coffee. The older one, who drove the car, his graying hair cut in a tightly cropped butch, kept glaring at Dillon in the rearview mirror. His name tag read WELLER, Dillon had noted. The stripes on his sleeve made him a sergeant.

“You’ve got the folks around here in one mighty uproar, son,” he said. “We don’t need any more uproars around here—the virus was enough trouble to last a lifetime.”

“What are you charging me with?”

Weller laughed smugly. “Does it matter? You’re ob­viously a runaway, and we’re well within the law to bring you into ‘protective custody.’ "

Dillon broke eye contact and gazed out the window.

“Are you listening to me, son?” said Sergeant Wel­ler.

Dillon still didn’t answer him, but he did turn to catch Weller’s eyes once more as Weller watched him in the rearview mirror. Dillon studied Weller—the way he moved, the cadence and inflections of his voice. Dil­lon noticed the way the man held his shoulders, and judged the way he aggressively changed lanes. To any­one else, it wouldn’t have meant a thing, but to Dillon, the tale couldn’t have been clearer if it were painted on the man’s forehead. I can see patterns, he had told Carol Jessup. That’s all. And the patterns of Sergeant Weller—each action, every word—betrayed to Dillon who this man had been, who he was, and who he was destined to be. It was not a pretty picture.

“Don’t you talk, son?” Weller asked. “Or are you one of them idiot savants?”

Weller chuckled at his own words. Dillon paid par­ticular attention to the methodical but nervous way Weller rubbed the fingers of his right hand, then clasped the hand into a fist. To Dillon, this man’s life was easier to read than a street sign.

“Your wife wishes you would stop smoking,” Dillon told him. “She wishes you would stop drinking, too.”

Catching Dillon’s intrusive gaze in the rearview mir­ror, Weller’s cold demeanor took a turn toward winter. “Watch yourself, son,” he said. “You make up stories about people, you may find people making up stories about you.”

For the first time, the trooper riding shotgun turned around. His name tag read LARABY. He was younger than Weller and to Dillon didn’t seem nearly as un­pleasant. He did, however, seem troubled. “People are saying you bring back the dead,” Officer Laraby said. “You got anything to say about that?”

“It’s all a bunch of voodoo talk,” Weller sneered. “Mass hysteria—these people all think they got over ‘the virus,’ but I say some of their marbles are still lost in the drain pipe.”

Officer Laraby turned to him. “So how do you ex­plain all those people who turned up alive?”

Weller brushed a weathered hand over his butch and threw a warning glance at his young partner. “It’s all hearsay. That’s how a hoax works—hearsay held to­gether by spit and tissue paper, isn’t that right, son?”

Dillon smiled, all the while thinking how much he hated the way this man called him “son.” “I suppose so.”

The grin made Weller more irritable. “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you? What did you do—take money from folks who didn’t know any better, then bring back people who weren’t even dead? That’s the way you worked it, wasn’t it, son?”

Dillon let the grin slip from his face. “You hit your wife one more time, and she’s gonna leave you, you know?”

Panic flashed in Weller’s eyes. His jaw twitched un­comfortably. Laraby watched the two of them, his head going back and forth like it was a game of Ping-Pong, to see who would speak next.

Weller hid his uneasiness behind an outburst of laughter. “Oh, you’re good,” he told Dillon. “You put on one heck of a show—but the truth is you don’t know a thing about me.”

Dillon found himself grinning again—the way he did in the days when the wrecking hunger had consumed him. “I know what I know,” he said.

Dillon sensed the younger cop’s growing discomfort, his confusion and uncertainty. Dillon also noticed the particular shade of the rings beneath Laraby’s eyes, the faint smell of mild perfumed soap, and a handful of bitten fingernails. Dillon, his skill at deciphering pat­terns as acute as ever, understood Laraby’s situation completely.

“Sorry your baby’s sick,” Dillon told Officer Laraby.

The man went pale. Dillon noted the exact way his chest seemed to cave in.

“Heart problem?” asked Dillon. “Or is it his lungs?”

“Heart,” Laraby said in a weak sort of wonder.

“Don’t talk to him!” Weller ordered Laraby. “It’s tricks, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” said Laraby, unconvinced. “Yeah, I guess . . . "

In front of them, the car that carried Carter had pulled out far ahead of them. If Dillon’s plan was to work, he knew he would have to strike now, with lethal precision. He leaned forward, and whispered into Ser­geant Weller’s sun-reddened ear, hitting him with a quiet blast of personal devastation in the form of a sim­ple comment.

“Sergeant Weller,” he whispered, “no matter what everyone says . . . it was your fault. Your fault, and no one else’s.”

A subtle hammer to glass. Dillon could feel the man’s mind shatter, even before there were any out­ward signs. Weller gripped the steering wheel tighter, his knuckles turning as white as the cloud-covered sky. Dillon could hear the man’s teeth gnash like the grind­stone of a mill, and then, with a sudden jolt, Weller jerked the wheel.

The car lurched off the road and careened down a steep wooded slope. Pine branches whapped at the windshield, and a single trunk loomed before them. Then came the crunch of metal, and the sudden PFFFLAP! of the air bags deploying in the front seat, while in the backseat, Dillon’s seatbelt dug into his gut and shoulder. The car caromed off the tree, skidded sideways another ten yards, until smashing into another tree hard enough to shatter the right-side windows be­fore coming to rest.

Dillon was stunned and bruised but he didn’t take time to check his own damage. He climbed through the broken window, falling into the thick, cold mud of the woods, and for once the deep, earthy smell was a wel­come relief. He stood, and quickly pulled open the pas­senger door of the ruined car. Officer Laraby was pinned between the seat and the firm billow of the air bag. The bag had knocked the wind out of him, and his gasps filled the air like the blasts of a car alarm. Dillon pulled him out of the car, and he fell to the ground.

Meanwhile, Sergeant Weller didn’t seem to care about any of it. He just sobbed and sobbed. Dillon didn’t dare catch his gaze now, for Dillon knew how his eyes would look. One pupil would be wide, the other shrunken to a pinpoint. They always looked like that when Dillon drove them insane.

“Wh-what’s going on?” asked Laraby, still dazed from the crash.

“It’s my fault,” sobbed Weller, deep in a state of madness that went miles beyond mere guilt. “It’s my fault my fault my fault my fault...”

Laraby turned to Dillon, just beginning to recover his senses. “What’s his fault?”

“I don’t know,” said Dillon. “But it doesn’t matter now.” And he really didn’t know—all Dillon knew was that every pore of that man’s body breathed out guilt that he was trying to hide. Very old guilt, and very potent. All Dillon had to do was tweak it to shatter his mind.

Up above, the other car, which had doubled back, had pulled to the side of the road. Doors opened and closed.

“Listen to me,” Dillon told Laraby. “The boy in the other car—he says his name is Carter, but it’s really Delbert. Delbert Morgan. You and your wife are going to take him in as a foster child. You’re going to vol­unteer to do it.”

The officer squirmed. “But—"

“You will take him in, and take care of him until his father comes for him someday”—and then Dillon added—“or else.”

“Or else what?”

The answer came as another incoherent wail from the insane cop, still in the driver’s seat pounding his fist mindlessly against his air bag. It was evidence of the destruction Dillon was still capable of when he chose to destroy—his ability to create chaos still every bit as powerful as his ability to create order.

Dillon could hear shouts on the hillside above them now, and people hurrying toward them. He tried to run, but Laraby, still on the ground, grabbed Dillon’s shirt as if he were sinking into quicksand.

“Can you save my son?” asked the officer. “Can you fix his heart?”

The look in Laraby’s eyes—a clashing combination between hope and terror—was something Dillon had seen before. In recent months, people would cling to him, asking him to fix things he hadn’t broken in the first place. People begging him to change the patterns of their destinies.

“If you do,” bribed Laraby, “I’ll take care of that Carter kid. I swear I will.”

Time was short, and Dillon needed to know that Car­ter would be cared for. Dillon nodded. “Agreed. I’ll come back someday and fix your son—"

“Not someday. Now!” demanded Laraby. “They say he’s gonna die, so you gotta do it now!”

“It doesn’t matter if he dies,” Dillon told him. “I’ll come back later, and fix him anyway.”

The cop had no response to that. The very idea tied his tongue.

Dillon broke free, sliding the rest of the way down the wooded slope until he could see the Columbia River through the trees far up ahead. He could hear the of­ficers from the other car on his tail, but the image filling his mind was that of Laraby’s face; the desperation as he had gripped on to Dillon’s shirttail; those eyes star­ing at him in fearful, hopeful awe as if Dillon held both salvation and damnation in his fingertips.

And then there was Weller.

Dillon had shattered the man. He had sworn he would never shatter anyone ever again. Dillon had been so certain that his destructiveness was in the past. But I had no choice, he reasoned. I had to escape.

Dillon told himself that he would come back and fix the man someday, although he knew it would be a long time before he could surface in Burton again.

He continued down the slope, bouncing off trees like a pinball, stumbling through the mud and peat.

It was foolish of Dillon to think the people of Burton could keep quiet. It was human nature to whisper the things that no one should hear, and it was only a matter of time until all of those whispers grew loud enough to bring out a swarm of badges from a dozen govern­ment agencies. And despite what Weller had said— they did believe in what he could do. Otherwise they wouldn’t have sent out a posse of state troopers to find him.

Now they’d be on the lookout for him everywhere “the virus” had hit. Foolish, because it was their med­dling that would prevent him from fixing the mess.

The dense wood suddenly ended, and he stumbled over a gnarled root, to the muddy edge of the river.

“Down here—this way!” his pursuers shouted.

Dillon leapt from the bank into the raging torrents of the river, swollen by a storm upstream. The cold hit him instantly, sucking the heat from his limbs. His muscles seized into tight knots, but he stretched his arms and legs out so he wouldn’t cramp. He was quickly spirited downstream, pulled away from those chasing him. The opposite bank seemed much more distant than it had from shore, but he willed his arms to move. Yes, his limbs had grown strong from his work. Even in the cold waters, he could force his arms to stroke and legs to kick, long after many would have drowned, until he finally collapsed on the far shore.

His mind hazy, and his body leaden from the cold, he tried to catch his bearings as he knelt on all fours, coughing up lungfuls of river water. He tried to stand, but moved too quickly, and a wave of dizziness brought him back to the ground. He rolled over onto his back, forcing deep breaths, trying to will a steady flow of oxygenated blood back to his head.

He never heard them approaching. He didn’t know they were there until their silhouettes eclipsed the light of the gray sky.

“He’s all right,” said a voice just above him. A fe­male voice.

Dillon gasped through his chattering teeth. The voice was familiar, and in his confusion, he felt sure he knew who it was.

“Tory?” he said. There were others around him now. “Winston? Lourdes? Michael?” He had hardly known the other four shards, and yet for months they had oc­cupied most of his thoughts. Only now did he realize how much he needed them—to talk to, to be with. He thought he saw their faces before him, and it filled him with comfort and gratitude.

He sat up, and as his blurred vision cleared, his heart sank like a boulder in the furious river.

“No,” said the voice. “It’s me, Carol Jessup.”

There were more gathering around him now. He was mistaken—these were not his friends, they were all res­idents of the town. He knew them all—the Kendalls, the McMillans, the Schwartzes. He had spent time with’ each of them, restoring the life of a loved one. He had entered each of their lives, and returned them back to order.

“We’re glad the police didn’t take you away from us,” said Carol.

Dillon began to feel his gut slowly churn and he knew it wasn’t just the cold.

“Don’t worry,” said her husband, taking his hand. “We’ll protect you.”

“We’ll take care of you,” said one of the others, rub­bing Dillon’s sleeve.

“We won’t let them hurt you,” said another, reaching out and touching Dillon’s hair.

This is wrong, Dillon thought. This is terribly, hor­ribly wrong.

“We’ll follow you,” said another voice. “And we’ll help you do your wondrous works.”

“We’ll tend to your needs,” proclaimed another.

“We’ll be your servants.”

“Because we’ve seen your glory.”

“We’ve been blessed.”

“And you’ll bless us again.”

“And again.”

More hands. Dozens of hands, reaching out, touching his skin, his hair, his clothes. He felt himself raised from the ground, and as he looked into the clouded sky, he realized why this all felt so wrong.

His unique talent for making connections showed him a new pattern emerging in the world around him now. There were always a million possible roads, and a million possible futures, but now, every road focused toward one end: a murky darkness of chaos and ruin.

A year ago, during his own dark time, Dillon had sought to trigger the ultimate act of destruction. A quiet whisper that would precipitate a massive chain reac­tion, eventually shattering every relationship, every connection, every mind until the entire world became like the maddened mobs in Burton. Dillon had thought he’d failed to achieve that final act . . . but now he wasn’t so sure. What if his “great collapse” had simply taken a different course? The swarming patterns of des­tiny he saw when he looked at these people around him seemed to scream back the same answer.

The destruction never ended.

It just hid, dormant until now—and all the fixing he had done would soon be overshadowed by a new threat.

Some bleak chain of events spreading forth from this moment, that not even he could foresee.

He wailed again in the pain of this revelation, but the crowd ignored all his protests, as they carried him off in the cradle of their happy, needy hands.

In the random rush of water, a pocket of stillness formed where the Columbia River had caressed Dillon Cole’s body. With Dillon’s passing, the entire river slowed . . . and a tiny portion of the river ceased its swirling, defied entropy and came to order, touched by Dillon’s unique gift. It became an oasis of focused calm, beneath the surface of the raging river.

The calm pocket carried within it the simplest of bac­teria, born from rotting leaves and dead salmon farther upstream. Only, now those bacteria didn’t swarm and divide haphazardly. Instead, the single-celled organ­isms drew toward one another, aligning and dividing in unison; positioning themselves in a choreographed mitotic dance—a perfect pattern, as if the millions of bacteria were all of a single mind.

Farther downstream, where the river spilled into the Pacific, plankton fed on the aligned bacteria, and in turn tiny shrimplike krill devoured the plankton. Far­ther from shore, a school of fish, ten thousand strong, gobbled up the krill with ease and swam south, their tight formation suddenly becoming more perfect, and more orderly than it was possible for a school of fish to be, as it headed south, toward shark-infested waters.

2. Wake-Up Calls

At nine a.m. Eastern Standard Time, Winston Pell bolted awake from a chilling dream to the sound of breaking glass. He knew the sound well by now—it came as regularly as clockwork. If it wasn’t his win­dow, it was Thaddy’s, or his mother’s, or the window in the living room.

Thaddy, who should have known better, came scur­rying into Winston’s room. “Stone! Stone! It happened again!” He yowled as his feet came down on the broken glass.

“Thaddy, your brain’s gotta be off in orbit.”

Thaddy hopped onto Winston’s bed. “Ow, ow, ow,” he whined, but let Winston look at his bleeding feet. Thaddy trusted his big brother’s judgment, now that his big brother had grown taller than him again.

“You’ll live,” said Winston.

“How’m I gonna walk?” Thaddy asked angrily. He frowned as if it was Winston’s fault. Winston sighed. Maybe it was. He patted Thaddy’s soles with a balled-up corner of the sheet. He wished he could heal Thaddy’s feet, but his own repertoire of gifts didn’t include Magical Suture.

Their mother walked in, turned on the light, and shook her head. First at the broken window, and then at Thaddy’s feet:

“We’re gonna make the glass-man rich,” she said, then carefully stepped over the glass toward Thaddy, examining his feet. “I just hope it won’t need stitches.”

The suggestion made Thaddy groan. She took Thaddy off to the bathroom for Bactine and butterflies.

Winston stepped into his slippers and gingerly crossed the floor toward the broken window.

A heavy branch had punched through the window like an elbow. Winston noticed that the tip of the elbow-shaped limb held new growth that hadn’t been there yesterday. The tree would have to be cut down to save the house. Just like the tree which had rooted up the septic tank, and the one which had lifted the home off its foundation.

The fact was, ever since Winston had come home from his mysterious journey west, he wasn’t the only thing growing like a weed. He stood five foot eight now, and while his predicted height was expected to top out at six foot one, the plants and trees around their home had no such limit. These days, his mother’s gar­den coughed up blueberries the size of tomatoes, to­matoes the size of cantaloupes, and cantaloupes the size of pumpkins. The grass had to be mowed on a daily basis, and you couldn’t see the house for the trees.

“Some green thumb you brought home with you,” his mother had said when they first began to notice how profound Winston’s effect was. “Guess we’re gonna get lifted to the clouds by a beanstalk one day.”

As he contemplated the tree invading his bedroom window, a feeling came to Winston’s limbs, like a fu­gitive breeze.

A cold river. A wail of agony. A cry for help.

What had he been dreaming about? It was coming back to him now, and the memory made the tight curls of his short-cropped hair feel as if they were curling tighter.

He was dreaming about Dillon Cole. Something was wrong in the dream; Dillon needed help. There were hands all around him. The hands meant to comfort, but did not. One thing more . . . Winston knew this was not a dream. Dillon had cried out, and Winston had heard it—it was not his imagination. It had to be a pretty nasty bit of business going on, if Winston could feel it this far away.

He’s in trouble, thought Winston. Well, good. He deserves it. I won’t go help him. Winston had seen the damage Dillon had done. Buildings destroyed, peo­ple turned mad. When they had parted ways, Dillon claimed to be repentant—claimed that it was all be­cause of the dark parasite that had leeched onto his soul. But how much of it was the beast, and how much was Dillon? Winston found it hard to have any sym­pathy for him.

In the bathroom, his mother bandaged Thaddy’s feet. Winston watched her, marveling. She had been out of her wheelchair for almost a year now. Winston’s touch, which had once been the cause of her paralysis and all forms of stunted growth, was now responsible for mak­ing her get up and walk. His curse under the tyranny of his parasite had turned into a blessing once that thing was dead: a gift of growth in every sense of the word.

“Heard you thrashin’ in your covers even before the window broke,” his mother said, finishing up on Thaddy. “Must have been some fright you were having.”

I won’t go help Dillon, Winston told himself.

“Just a dream,” he told her.

“Guess that’s what you get for sleeping in.” His mother never probed for details. Winston had never spoken of his experiences out west to her, and she had the wisdom not to ask.

They ate breakfast quietly, Winston’s mind full of heavy, distracting thoughts. He knew his mom could read the troubled look on his face.

“You know, I’ve been thinking of putting the house up for sale,” Mom said. “Too much bad blood between us and the neighborhood, anyway.”

Winston shook his head sadly. Folks around town, hadn’t known what to make of him before, and now they surely didn’t. But that was okay. Winston had grown to understand them a bit better now. Their fears. Their superstitions.

“Momma,” he said, before he knew the words were coming from his mouth. “Momma, I gotta leave.”

His mother took a deep breath. It had become her habit to take Winston’s pronouncements in stride.

“I suppose it was only a matter of time till you out­grew this place,” she said. “Although I didn’t think it would be so soon.”

“Stone ain’t outgrown it,” chimed in Thaddy. “His feet don’t hang off the end of the bed or nothing.”

Winston chuckled. “That’s not what she means, Thaddy.”

In the year since coming back home, Winston had found himself driven to think. To learn. He had pulled down all of his father’s dusty books—the ones his fa­ther had treasured—and he read them all. “Education is a black man’s greatest ally against injustice,” his fa­ther had been fond of saying. He kept a fine library that was left to his wife and sons when he died. Books of science and art, great literature and world history. Volumes on philosophy. Great thinkers, with grand thoughts. Winston downed all he could at home, at school, at the library. He hadn’t come up with any grand answers to the mysteries of life yet, but now at least he felt he knew some of the questions. He had grown to know how much he didn’t know.

But that wasn’t why he had to leave.

I won’t head west. He struggled to convince himself. I refuse to help Dillon Cole. But there was a gravity pulling on him now. He knew he could resist it, but didn’t know if he should.

Thaddy just looked down, his thoughts buried in his cinnamon toast. Winston’s mother took a long look at Winston, with a certain wonder in her eyes. He let her have her moment. To be honest, he felt kind of teary- eyed himself.

“I know you’ll do great things for this weary world,” she said. “I’ve got faith in that.”

A few hours later, he kept her faith cloaked around him as he boarded the bus alone toward all points west, and Dillon Cole.

Three hundred miles away, the yolks of a dozen eggs oozed through their smashed shells, blending with the milk, Gatorade, and maple syrup that spilled forth from their ruptured containers. Everything in Tory Smythe’s arms had fallen to the ground in the wake of her sudden vision, and now the polished white floor of the spotless convenience store was a disaster of running colors and wildly clashing aromas.

Max, Tory’s boyfriend, surveyed the mess. “That’s not good,” he said lamely. “I told you we should have taken a basket.”

The clerk ran out from behind the counter, his face stricken, as if someone had unexpectedly died in the aisle. “Look at this!” he shrieked. “How could you be so clumsy, you stupid, stupid girl!”

He ran to the back room to get a mop. Tory was pale, unsteady. She gripped the handle of the glass re­frigerator case to keep her balance.

“Are you okay?” Max asked.

She was shivering from the cold, although it wasn’t cold.

She was recoiling from the touch of their hands, but no one was touching her.

She was screaming, but it wasn’t her voice she heard—it was—

“Dillon!”

Her boyfriend eyed her uncomfortably. The clerk re­turned with the mop, bucket, and about a gallon of Lysol. “Stupid, stupid girl,” he said again, in case Tory hadn’t heard him the first time.

Tory grabbed Max’s hand, hoping his steady fingers would keep hers from shaking. “Let’s go.”

“But... the shopping list,” he said, “Your mom can’t make breakfast without—"

“Just forget about the damned list!”

Max gasped, and ripped his hand from hers. “Tory!” he said. “What’s wrong with you?”

Tory sighed. “I’m sorry,” she told him. She grabbed his hand again, and he reluctantly clasped his fingers around hers.

Behind them the clerk had mopped up much of the mess, yet continued mopping at the same, maniacal pace, as if the spill were acid that would eat through the linoleum. Tory knew he would mop and mop until nothing was left to mar the purity of his clean white floor. It reminded Tory of the way she bathed. Com­pulsively scrubbing to pull away dirt she knew wasn’t there, but still felt all around her. These days, her skin was cover-girl smooth, instead of oozing with open, infected sores as it had been a year ago. Now her hair had a fine blonde sheen, instead of being a matted greasy mess. She had been cleansed beyond any shadow of doubt, but sometimes she could still feel the filth, like a ghost, and the only way to get rid of it was to wash and scrub. The way this ridiculous man scrubbed at his clean floor.

Tory couldn’t watch, so she left, pulling Max along with her.

The Sunday-morning streets of the neighborhood were full of people walking hand in hand. Children played games, the elderly sat on benches feeding ex­ceptionally healthy pigeons. A Cuban couple smiled at a group of African-American teens on the corner, and they waved back. A Korean man walked a little Anglo girl across the street.

“It’s a nice morning,” Max said.

“Yes,” said Tory. “Nice.” The fact was, every morn­ing was “nice” in her neighborhood. The streets were clean, the alleys were free of grunge, and anyone who didn’t pick up after their dog was reported by the Neighborhood Watch—which everyone belonged to. The neighborhood was safe, spotless, and uncorrupted. Strange, because this part of town was called “the Mi­ami Miasma” and was the worst neighborhood of the notorious Floridian metropolis.

“What happened back there?” asked Max.

What happened? thought Tory. I think I got a wake- up call from an old friend. But all she said was, “I guess I slipped on the floor wax.”

A policeman strolled past them, grinning. But when he took a look at Tory’s feet, his expression changed to one of suspicion.

“Hmpf,” he said, eyeing Tory warily as she passed.

“Maybe you ought to roll down your socks,” whis­pered Max, “so people won’t see how dirty they are.”

Tory glanced down to see a few stray spots of egg yolk splattered on her socks and Nikes. Normal people, she knew, wouldn’t care about how clean her socks were, but the people who now resided within her ex­tended aura were not exactly normal. They were . . . clean.

“I don’t care if people see,” she muttered.

Max bristled. “Whatever.”

They turned down an alley that had once been full of fetid cardboard and rags—a place where the desti­tute took shelter. But there were no homeless here any­more. No one was exactly sure what happened to them, and apparently no one in the neighborhood cared.

Tory stopped walking, overcome by a wave of cold nausea that dragged her back to her vision of Dillon. She leaned against the brick of the alley, and Max looked at her with concern, trying to make sense of her odd behavior. He gently touched the smooth skin of her face. “You’re cold,” he remarked. “Tory, are you sure you’re okay?”

Tory closed her eyes and thought back to the day she arrived here, in November—almost a year ago—in search of her mother, who had vanished from her life years before. Back then, this part of town had been the armpit of civilization, aspiring to even less attractive regions of the anatomy. There was no discrimination in the Miami Miasma. The dregs from all nationalities were drawn here equally.

She had found her mother in a welfare hotel, desti­tute and wheezing with bronchitis. Tory had nursed her back to health remarkably quickly. And, amazingly, the woman began to find in herself the qualities of a good mother. Before long, Tory noticed other things chang­ing around her as well. Actions and attitudes of the neighbors began to slowly shift. The evidence of it sur­rounded her even now as she walked with Max. A group of small children ran through the street picking up litter as if it was the best game to play. From across the street came the caustic hiss of a shop owner sand­blasting decades of soot from his building. Strolling all around them were sparkling-clean men and women oozing an almost Victorian refinement. The whole neighborhood had become a strange mix of accidental übermenschen—an anomalous set of people suddenly rising above the random violence and lewd behavior that had once been a part of their lives, repulsed and mortified by the sights and smells of urban decay. Turns out, the Miami Miasma cleaned up real good; now, not even the garbage smelled.

It was still hard for Tory to understand and accept that she was the cause of all this. Not by anything she did, but by her mere presence. It was an aura that pen­etrated the streets around her like radiation, cleansing it, body and soul.

Of course, just a few blocks away, the wretchedness still lived on in the places where her light did not reach.

“Tory, are you sick? Do you have a fever or some­thing?” asked Max. “Maybe you’re getting the flu.” It obviously hadn’t occurred to him that no one in this part of Miami had come down with the flu this year.

“Max,” Tory dared to ask, “do you remember what you were like before?”

Max blinked at her in total innocence. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, when I first met you?”

Max’s shoulders twisted in a shiver. “I was awful. Let’s not talk about it.”

The fact was, he had been worse than awful. He was a gang-banger with neither conscience nor remorse for any of the brutal things he did. He bragged about his gun, and longed for the day it would take a life. Tory had despised him. The way he and his cohorts would hang out on the corner, shouting rude, lusty comments at her as she passed had made Tory hate leaving the small apartment she and her mother shared. She had feared that one day the verbal assaults might turn phys­ical when those thugs were too drunk or aroused to care.

But then Max began to change. The gun went away first. Then his attitude. He became caring, and good, without even noticing the change in himself. His gang slowly turned as innocuous as a team of eagle scouts, and their street-corner greetings became a caress rather than an assault.

There was a time several months ago, when Max’s hair was still long, and his spirit still untamed, that Tory loved him deeply. That’s when the newfound goodness of his heart was tempered by mischievous unpredictability.

But the changes continued. He cut his hair short and neat. His fun-loving grin became the blank smile of total innocence. And every single word he thought to utter was pure and wholesome. Tory had sanitized him.

Tory realized she was crying. She wondered if Dil­lon, wherever he was, could feel her cry, the way she had felt him scream. She thought of the other shards, who were suddenly at the forefront of her mind, and for the first time in many months, began to feel herself being pulled toward them, as she had been pulled that first time, when the light of the supernova had filled the night sky, filling them all with the overwhelming need to find each other. But this time it was Dillon’s call beckoning her to come west.

Max regarded her tears with deep concern. He was so clean it made her feel dirty. It made her feel like slipping into a scalding bath.

“Tory, I’m worried about you,” he said.

Tory looked deep into the eyes of this handsome, wholesome boy. There was no question he was better off than before—after all, it was far worse to be un­conscionably bad, than to be pathetically good. Still it saddened her.

Tory leaned toward him, wanting to kiss him, but he leaned away, shocked and embarrassed.

“Tory, no! We’re in public!”

“Please,” begged Tory. “Just this once.”

“Oh, all right.” Max leaned forward and endured the public kiss. There was tenderness in the kiss, but noth­ing more. No passion or urgency. No hint of mystery. No spice of unknown intentions. His thoughts were as pure as the smell of his breath and taste of his kiss— flavorless as distilled water.

“Good-bye, Max,” she said sadly, then strode away from him without looking back, heading west toward Dillon Cole, and to escape the effects of her own scour­ing presence.

3. Coast To Coast

That same morning, toward the eastern end of Long Island, Lourdes Hidalgo concentrated on the five girls around her as the volleyball arced over the net toward them. None of these girls were on the vol­leyball team, and yet, over the past month, they had become a curiosity in their phys-ed class, and had gained the attention of the volleyball coach—enough of his attention, that he helped schedule today’s chal­lenge match against the real volleyball team of Hamp­ton Bays High. No spectators were officially invited, but word of mouth had brought at least two dozen.

The ball cleared the net, and Andrea, the girl to Lourdes’s right got under it, passed it to Lourdes, who was the setter of their unofficial team. Lourdes passed it to Patrice in the front row, who spiked it to win yet another point. Cheers from the sidelines. The coach shook his head. “Incredible!”

Meanwhile the real volleyball team scowled in dis­belief. “Who are you rooting for anyway?” shouted the team’s Amazonian captain.

Coach Kline scowled right back at her. “If you’re a team, then play like one.”

Lourdes smiled. Now she and her friends controlled the court like a team that had trained together for years. They functioned with the precision of a Swiss watch, as if they were all being controlled by a single will.

The truth is, they were.

As setter, Lourdes was the leader of the squad, but rather than merely positioning the ball for the net play­ers to spike, Lourdes set the players themselves. She gripped each of them with her will, subtly pulling their strings and manipulating the movements of their bod­ies. She could adjust their metabolisms in microsec­onds, causing adrenaline to flow, and muscles to contract faster, with added energy, as if they were all part of a single being, with Lourdes at the center. It was a gift Lourdes was learning to brandish well.

She forced them to work as a perfect team, and as volleyball was ninety percent teamwork, no one could beat Lourdes’s machine.

Her team served, and the real volleyball players fought valiantly, returning the ball over the net in a powerful spike—but Lourdes was ready. She raised Pa­trice’s hands to save the ball, then got under it herself for the second tap. Next, she willed Andrea into posi­tion to slice it over for the final point. It couldn’t have been easier if all twelve hands, and all twelve feet, were hers.

The ball was still in the air when Lourdes got the mind-blast from Dillon Cole. Her head swam, her vi­sion faded, as if she had stood up too quickly. He was calling for her—for all of them. He was being smoth­ered by a crowd. . . . She felt faint, but only for a mo­ment. When her vision cleared, the team on the other side of the net was suffering the agony of their humil­iating defeat.

“That’s match,” said Coach Kline.

As the players cleared the court on both sides, the coach pulled Lourdes aside. She reigned in her frazzled thoughts and emotions, refusing to be befuddled in this moment of victory.

“I have to admit, Lourdes,” he said, with deep ad­miration, “you’ve really come into your own this year. You’ve come a long, long way.”

Lourdes had heard that a lot, but she never tired of being reminded. She had gone from being a 350-pound outcast, to one of the most admired girls in school, at half the weight. True, her figure wasn’t exactly that of a model—the large bones of her frame wouldn’t allow for that—but she was as slim as she needed to be. She felt comfortable in her clothes; her many chins had melted away; and when she looked in the mirror, she liked what she saw, from the front, and from the side. Ralphy Sherman told people that she had undergone a high-risk experimental liposuction technique at a Swed­ish clinic—and since no other explanation surfaced, people actually believed him. In any case, “fat” was not the word that came to people’s minds when they saw Lourdes Hidalgo these days. “Impressive,” maybe even “powerful,” but not “fat.”

“You’ve surprised me, Lourdes,” said the coach. “I never thought you’d turn out to be so . . . athletic.”

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” answered Lourdes. By now, even the defeated players began to gather around her. Such was her new gravity—it no longer attracted stray paper and lint as it had in the days when she was hideously fat. Now people were drawn to her instead. She was wildly popular, and everyone wanted to finagle their way into her circle of friends.

Well, almost everyone.

“Good for you, Lourdes,” said Cathy Burns, her in­sincerity painted on like lacquer. She had always been one of “the beautiful people,” and had watched the game from the sidelines with several of her debutante friends. “Hope you’ve enjoyed your fifteen minutes of fame,” she said, with a cutting snideness in her voice that had taken years to cultivate.

“I’m still in my first minute,” said Lourdes, not al­lowing the girl a moment of satisfaction. “Happy diet­ing.”

Cathy frowned and strode off with a flick of her hair, adjusting a belt on jeans that were growing too tight. Cathy and her friends were the few hold-out hatemongers, whose attitude of disdain was strong enough to resist Lourdes’s magnetic personality. They were social butterflies and beauty queens who longed for the good old days when tormenting Lourdes was a school pas­time. Well, their reign wouldn’t last for long, because those girls had already found themselves gaining a pound a week, as Lourdes slowed down their meta­bolisms to a crawl. Soon they would know the social joys of obesity. For Lourdes, revenge wouldn’t be sweet; it would be fat.

In the aftermath of the volleyball game, her thoughts went back to Dillon, and the certainty that he—and maybe all of them—were in trouble once more. And yet the more she thought about it, the more she was excited by it—for she realized the opportunities it sud­denly opened.

It was a chance to see Michael again.

Just thinking of him filled her with potent anticipa­tion.

Michael had told her she was beautiful, even when her body was wrapped in dense rolls of flab. And when she had grown too large to move, he refused to leave her side, even when it would have meant his own death. But things had changed once they returned home—as if being in Hampton Bays brought back to Michael the old pain of his life there. Soon after, Michael and his father moved to the West Coast.

Perhaps Michael wanted to escape his old life, but Lourdes wasn’t interested in escape. She wanted to conquer, to become the victor of Hampton Bays High, instead of the victim—to be the one that everyone looked up to; the center of attention and admiration.

Certainly, as she reveled in the victory of today’s game, all eyes were on her; but it wasn’t enough, be­cause Michael wasn’t there to share it with her, and she found herself longing for him more and more. Now Dillon was calling them all together again, and Lourdes was more than happy to go, if it meant Michael would be there, too.

“I’d like to start you and the other girls on a training program,” the coach told Lourdes. “I think you’d be great additions to the team.” Although Lourdes knew he meant “replacements” rather than “additions.” It was a tempting offer, as it was one more step in that con­quest she so desired. But there were other considera­tions now.

“I can’t do it now,” she told him. “I’m going away for a while.”

“Not for long, I hope. You’re not leaving Hampton Bays High, are you?”

“No,” answered Lourdes. “Just a short trip.”

“To finish her treatment,” she heard Ralphy Sher­man whisper to a friend.

She chose to let it go at that. Let them wonder, she thought.

The next day, she had her parents buy her an airline ticket west.

“I have to visit Michael,” she told them. The mention of his name always filled her parents with an appre­hensive awe. They knew that somehow that strange boy, Michael Lipranski, had played a major part in the miraculous transformation of their daughter. Her father was dead set against letting her go, yet he found him­self lifting the phone and making the reservations, as if his hands were not under his own control.

Her brother and sisters were devastated by the thought of her leaving.

“You can’t leave!” her brother and sisters cried, for so much of themselves revolved around Lourdes now. She had slipped deep into the center of all of their lives. Lourdes was going to help Lita choose a college, and Gerardo buy a car, and Monica pick which boys to go out with. Although they were all older than her, they now looked up to her as if she were the eldest in the family.

“This is a good thing,” Lourdes told them. “I’ll be back. You’ll see.”

The next morning, with little more than Michael’s street address, Lourdes said good-bye to her family at the gate, and boarded a jet. As the plane lifted off from JFK, Lourdes filled her mind not with thoughts of find­ing Dillon, but with images of Michael.

Michael Lipranski was not obsessed by images of Lourdes. He had far too many thoughts and feelings to maintain these days, without sorting through his feelings for the girl who had shared his misery.

He stood at dawn in a flurry of snow, on a beach in southern California, which hadn’t seen snow during his lifetime, until this week. As he stood at the edge of the pounding surf, Michael slipped on his Walkman’s ear-phones, and listened to the rhythms and riffs of Insurrection, one of his favorite bands. The music helped him to dig deep within himself and find the bright, warm emotions that had been chased away by his night­mares. He thought of peaceful days stretched out on the beach. He thought of cycling down Pacific Coast Highway, and feeling the warm, ocean-scented breeze on his face. Then he turned his eyes upward, and as his spirits began to lift, they punched a hole in the dense cover of clouds.

A pinpoint of blue appeared, and as the clouds peeled back, the hole widened. The last of the snow wafted down through the air, and a chill breeze blew, but it rapidly turned warm.

Michael brushed a lock of dark hair out of his eyes, and looked toward the horizon. He didn’t have to push back the cold that far—only about five miles, for that was as far as his mood reached. He pushed forth strong, sun-filled thoughts, and struggled to roll back the cold layer of clouds pressing in on him.

Those clouds had first rolled in on the morning of his dream about Dillon. That was three days ago—and even though Michael did his best to ignore it, each night the dream would replay itself over and over, with greater urgency, bringing a morning snowfall that he had to chase away.

Well, what am I supposed to do about Dillon ?

Michael knew there was an answer, but he chose to roll that away with the clouds as well, keeping it far from his thoughts.

Soon the retreating clouds were forced back to the edge of Michael’s reach, leaving a narrow rim like a smoke ring, ten miles wide, in the middle of clear skies. He could already feel his new mood begin to infuse not only the skies, but the people in the neighborhood around him. His gift was one of emotional resonance—a resonance so strong it seized the very skies around him, putting them in his control, forcing them to mimic the weather patterns of his own powerful emotions. It was a force so strong, it affected the nature of anyone he came in contact with, filling them with joy, or con­sternation—whatever was in Michael’s heart at the time.

The sun climbed out from behind Saddleback Moun­tain, and Michael turned to let its rays warm his face.

“What’s with you?”

Startled by the voice, Michael stumbled, nearly fall­ing into the high-tide surf. He ripped the headphones from his ears, and turned to see the face of his friend and running partner, Drew Camden. Had Drew seen him change the weather? How would Michael explain it if he had? “How long have you been there?” Michael asked.

“Long enough to see you staring at the sky like a psycho,” said Drew casually. He didn’t seem concerned or confused; he just stretched his arms and legs, pre­paring for their morning run. Good, thought Michael. He didn’t make the connection. Michael glanced at his watch. It was already seven o’clock. He always lost track of time whenever he futzed with the sky.

“So what’s the deal with this weather?” said Drew, zipping open his running jacket. “It was freezing when I left my house. How did it get so warm?”

“It’s called the sun, Einstein,” said Michael.

Drew began jogging in place. “So, are we running or not?” he asked. “Let’s go; it’s time to get some color into that pasty face of yours.” Which was easy for Drew to say. Years running track had left Drew well tanned, and the sun had worked his hair enough to leave it various shades of bronze. It was a look Michael would have wanted to duplicate, but his own hair never lightened, and his pale skin just burned. Drew loved to rub it in. “C’mon, get moving,” he said. “Just because you look embalmed doesn’t mean you have to act like a corpse.”

Drew took off across the sand, toward the paved path that ran the two miles between Newport and Balboa Piers. Michael followed, filling his lungs with the fresh air, and his mind with the pleasant sights and sounds of the morning.

It was good to have a friend like Drew, who arrived like clockwork to drag him out to run. It was good to have any friends at all. The parasite that had laid waste to his soul since sixth grade, had left him friendless for four years. It had twisted people around him, turning them into bubbling cauldrons of their own most base natures. Girls lost themselves in a lust for him so pow­erful he had to fight them off, and guys became angry and aggressive, wanting little more than to beat the crap out of him.

But now his life had filled with others who actually thought he was worth having around. Even his father liked him. Both Drew and Michael were juniors on the track team, and although Michael had no real aspira­tions in track, he didn’t mind the comradery.

The beachside path was already becoming crowded now that the weather had changed. Rollerbladers in skintight Lycra wove around men and women propel­ling their babies in jogging-strollers. Bicycles sped past joggers and power-walkers.

This was where Michael wanted to be—not beating the bushes looking for Dillon again. He had seen enough of Dillon in the short time he knew him, and there were the constant reminders to boot: like news reports on the cleanup in Boise, and expert opinions on the mysterious “virus” that had driven people insane in the Pacific Northwest. No, Michael had no desire to think of his soul mate Dillon Cole—or for that matter, any of his other soul mates. Life was good without the Scorpion Shards. Life was a walk on the beach.

“I’m feeling prime today,” Drew said, picking up the pace as they neared Balboa Pier, and Michael kept up with him. This is a good day, thought Michael. And he was determined to keep it that way.

Michael did a pretty good job of holding up the sky that day, through the rigors of school. Afterward, at the mall, he worked his part-time job with a smile and a pleasant air that brought joy to everyone who came to the Dog Kabob.

It was around five that he began to give in to the crushing weight. The skies beyond the atrium windows were beginning to clog with clouds. Michael still felt pretty good, if somewhat tired—but his resistance was low, and he wasn’t expecting a “customer.” At least not one like this man.

“It never rains in southern California,” the man whispered to him over the counter of the Dog Kabob. Michael nodded in understanding. This was one of his real customers.

Michael wasn’t sure how it all got started. Perhaps it had been that suicidal housewife he had hugged in the supermarket once, completely reversing her depres­sive nature—or maybe word got out when he shook the hand of the guy who smacked his kids around, per­manently melting his angry temperament into a cool, even disposition. Or maybe it was his father, who kept bringing Michael into his sales office, knowing that Mi­chael could, with a single grin, woo people into feeling it was a pleasure to buy anything. In any case, a few months after moving to California, troubled people be­gan to secretly seek Michael out, and ask for favors.

“How can I help you?” Michael asked the man at the Dog Kabob counter.

“It’s not me,” the man said. He looked around to make sure no one else was nearby, then he leaned in closer. “It’s my son who needs your help.”

The man looked to be fairly well off. A tailored suit, Armani tie. Michael wondered how much he’d be will­ing to pay for Michael’s services. Sometimes his cus­tomers paid very well. Well enough for Michael and his father to buy the beach house, and the sports car, and all the other trappings that made Newport Beach what it is. His father, having glimpsed Michael’s spe­cial talent, decided not to ask too many questions when money seemed to appear in the bank account. Besides, Michael had tweaked his father’s nature, turning the man into an incurable optimist, so how could he be anything but thrilled?

Usually people would show up at the Dog Kabob with melancholy tales of disappointment, depression, or despair. Some requests were heartbreaking; others were merely self-indulgent. “Make me feel better,” was al­ways the bottom line, and Michael delivered. By now he was single-handedly putting the local shrinks out of business.

“Go on, I’m listening,” said Michael.

“My son’s a good kid,” the man whispered. “He does well in school—a shoe-in for the Ivy League . . .”

“So what’s the problem?” Michael asked, a bit im­patiently.

“He’s got a problem with the girls.”

Michael felt his own toes start to get cold. A wind began to buffet the windows of the food court.

“What kind of problem?”

“Well, you see—it’s like this...” The man stam­mered, and gestured with his hands, fumbling to spit out what he was trying to say. “My son . . . he doesn’t entirely appreciate them—girls, that is. He doesn’t . . . he doesn’t have the requisite feelings for them, so to speak,” whispered the man desperately. “In fact his feelings are decidedly . . . off. Do you see what I’m saying?”

Michael cut him off curtly. “I’m sorry, sir, all we sell here are lemonade and hot dogs.”

The man reeled, confused. “But . . . but I was told—"

“You were told wrong.” Michael handed him a corn dog. “Take it. It’s on the house. May I help the next in line, please?”

The man, corn dog in hand, gazed at Michael de­spondently, then turned to leave. But even after he was gone, Michael couldn’t relax.

There had been others like this man. Too many. Peo­ple who came in wanting to change their own natures, or the nature of someone they loved.

Michael knew it was in his power to do it, but a cold front always seemed to blow in whenever he consid­ered it. Switching winds and easing depression was one thing—but altering a person’s sexual desire? His thoughts would instantly fill with the memory of the libidinous parasite that had violated his soul. The thing was a succubus, thriving on his member, driving him mad with desire for every woman around him, and fill­ing those girls and women with the same desire.

But it had been dead for a year—and since it was gone, he no longer remembered how that felt. There was no one who aroused him anymore; his sense of passion—his sense of love—was stripped from him en­tirely, leaving him emotionally castrated. Yes, it might have been in his power to alter a person’s nature—but how dare he change the shape of someone else’s desire, when he felt no desire of his own?

It was easy to ignore when the world was a sunny day, and no one asked him questions . . . but a wind was blowing now, and stormclouds flowed in from all directions.

He was drenched by a relentless downpour on his way home, and when he got there, Drew was sprawled on the sofa, freeloading leftover Chinese food.

“What are you doing here?”

“Political asylum,” said Drew. “My parents go bal­listic at least once a month, and today they took it out on me. So I launched a major counteroffensive.”

“You had a blowout?”

“We’re talking megatons. I doubt we’ll be able to resume diplomatic relations anytime soon.” Drew held out the leftovers to Michael. “Kung pao?”

Michael shook his head and deposited himself like a bag of laundry on the plush leather sofa.

“C’mon, Michael,” Drew taunted. “Hot and sizzling, fresh out of the microwave—I know it’s your favorite.”

Michael ignored him, trying to sink into the sofa as far as he could go. He wanted to disappear—not think, not feel—and he didn’t care if his mood brought in a season of monsoons.

Drew finished off the last few chunks of kung pao chicken, as he watched Michael.

“Tough day at the Dog?” he asked.

“Not in the mood,” Michael answered.

Drew picked up the remote, muting the annoying blasts of laughter from the sitcom he was watching, and Michael closed his eyes, listening to the rain on the skylight.

“You know, you oughta quit the Dog,” suggested Drew, “and spend some time out, you know? I hear Wendy Holt’s got it bad for you. Hey, if you ask her out, I’ll ask her friend, what’s-her-name. Sound like a plan?”

“No.” Michael closed his eyes tighter and tried to sink farther into the sofa. The rain was sliced by a crosswind, and its tattered edges pummeled the win­dow.

“C’mon, what’s wrong with you anyway? You’re starting to make me feel depressed.”

Michael still had nothing to say.

“Hey, talk or I walk,” said Drew, "’Cause I’m not hanging unless I know why you’re pissed.”

Michael turned to Drew. Although he never had had a brother, he suspected Drew was what a brother might be like on a good day. Michael wasn’t gifted with words, but he didn’t want his silent storming to send Drew packing.

“My brain got a little fried before I moved here,” Michael began. “And now I don’t . . . feel things the way I’m supposed to. Certain things I can feel so in­tensely, you can’t imagine, but the things I want to feel—the things I need to feel—I get nothing but dead air.”

Drew shook his head sadly. “Drugs’ll do that to you, man. Saute your brain, and leave you impotent to boot.”

Michael dug his fingertips into the arm of the sofa, pushed himself to his feet. “I can’t talk to you. You have no clue what I mean.”

Michael propelled himself gut the back door, into the downpour, but Drew followed, and although Michael tried to run, Drew was faster. They were both drenched by the time Drew caught up with him and grabbed his arm, angrily forcing him to turn around.

“I don’t know what bolt you busted in your head,” shouted Drew, “but whatever it is, it’s not worth getting struck by lightning.”

Michael laughed ruefully. “Trust me, I won’t,” he said, and then added, “You might, though.”

“Yeah, well, screw you too.”

“Listen, you don’t know enough about me to help me with this.”

“I know enough,” said Drew. “I know about base­ball. Y’ever play baseball?”

“Huh?” It was a non sequitur so far out of. . . well, left field, that it caught Michael off guard. “What are your lips flapping about?”

“You heard me,” said Drew. “Baseball. Did you ever play?”

The rain suddenly stopped, leaving the wet beach in a low-pressure silence.

“Once in a while.”

“Yeah, well, my grandfather played baseball,” con­tinued Drew. “So did my father: Now my brother plays in college, my sister’s captain of her goddamn T-ball league, and for all I know, my mother was a slow-pitch softball star. So all my life, baseball oozes out of my parents’ ears like friggin’ earwax, but the thing is, I don’t feel the game. Sure, I played Little League. I’ve sat and watched it on TV. We’ve got season tickets at Edison Field for God’s sake! But I still don’t feel what my family feels. No matter how much I want to, no matter how much I kick my ass to enjoy it, all I can feel is bored. When my friends talk baseball, I pretend like I care, all the time smelling my own bullshit.”

Drew stared Michael in the eye, determined to ham­mer his point home.

Michael shook his head. “Drew, that’s really pa­thetic.”

“All I’m saying is that you don’t have a monopoly on feeling disconnected.”

Michael looked down. The rain had left pockmarks on the sand like the face of the moon.

“So how about you?” asked Drew. “What’s your pa­thetic story?”

Michael considered it, and realized that letting Drew in on the Big Picture was something he had to do; something he needed to do, because he couldn’t bear being alone with it anymore.

“Maybe it’s better if I just show you,” answered Mi­chael.

Michael turned his eyes to the thick clouds that hid the evening stars, and prepared for a demonstration.

There were no good feelings left in him just then, so instead he let the faces’ of the shards fill his mind. One by one he opened his memory to the terrible beasts they had harbored, turning each of them into untouchables in their own way. He imagined himself as he had been then: lascivious and lecherous; consumed by lust. As he thought about it, fear filled him and became an icy wind. Up above, the clouds began to boil, and in an instant the wind shredded them apart, dividing the clouds north and south. They peeled back like a curtain until they were gone, and all that was left were the stars, the moon, and the cold.

When it was done, Michael turned to Drew. Even in the dim moonlight, he could see Drew’s eyes wide with disbelief.

“Sorry. I guess I should have prepared you for it.”

But Drew wasn’t looking at him. Drew was looking past him, to the sea, where the pounding waves had suddenly taken on a new, furious sound. “Michael,” he said pointing toward the ocean, “MICHAEL!” he screamed.

Michael spun to see a gaping mouth bearing down on him, teeth sharp as daggers, as if some new beast were leaping up from the depths to devour him.

Lourdes saw it more clearly. Drenched from the downpour but undeterred, she had spent over an hour searching for Michael’s home in Newport Beach. The streets were confusingly arranged, and although people were happy to give directions, Lourdes found herself wandering up and down one blind alley after another.

Finally she had resorted to walking along the beach, for she knew from the single letter Michael had sent her that he had a beachfront home. She put her trust in her own ability to feel his presence.

In the aftermath of the storm, the moon made an appearance, and the waves gleamed its blue light. Lourdes imagined she saw shapes in the foam, like huge sleek serpents. But there was nothing imaginary about it. The shapes hurled themselves from the water, skidding on the sands. Huge things with shiny black eyes. Lourdes backed away from the edge of the surf, then screamed as a shark lunged at her from the surf, mouth open, gills flaring. It hit her like a car skidding to a stop, and she fell over its slick body, a dorsal fin digging into her side. Suddenly there was another, and another. She scrambled to her feet, and ran from the beached sharks as their jaws gnashed futilely at the sand. Only when she got far enough away from shore and her own screaming stopped, did she hear two other voices screaming: two boys far off, running from the writhing frenzy of beached beasts. She had heard enough of Michael’s screams before, to recognize them now, and she ran across the beach toward him.

Michael and Drew dragged themselves away from the waterline and watched the sharks die.

“Did you do this, too?” Drew asked weakly.

“No!” said Michael. “I couldn’t have!”

They stood up to look at the shoreline. “Tiger sharks,” said Drew. “I think this one’s a great white.”

But it wasn’t only sharks. There were swordfish, and marlins, deep-sea groupers . . .

“Man,” said Drew. “It’s like mass aquacide.” ,

And he was right—it was as if a conglomerate of great fish had chosen to end their lives in a single cha­otic lunge. But it isn’t chaotic at all, is it? thought Michael. The way they’re lined up, it’s almost orderly.

Orderly?. . .

“Michael!” It took a moment for him to recognize her voice. It no longer seemed wrapped in cotton, the way it had sounded when she was fat. “Michael, it’s me.”

She ran to him and pulled him close in her strong arms, planting a kiss on his cold lips.

“Lourdes?”

“Who’s she?” asked Drew.

People were starting to flood onto the beach. In the moonlight, they had spotted the freakish beaching from their homes.

“I knew you wouldn’t have left yet!” said Lourdes. “I knew you wouldn’t leave without me!”

“Huh? What?” Michael had yet to get over the sight of the sharks, and the sudden appearance of Lourdes. She might as well have been speaking Swahili.

Michael turned his attention back to the death scene by the shore. It was all beginning to fall into place for him. The way these creatures had beached themselves wasn’t haphazard, it was meticulous. They were lined up and spaced in precise intervals. In a perfect pattern. There was only one shard who could bring such order out of chaos.

“Dillon!” he shouted. “Dillon did this!”

“Who?” asked Drew.

“He called out for help the other day. You heard it, didn’t you?” said Lourdes. “Something’s gone wrong.”

Michael nodded. He couldn’t deny it anymore. He couldn’t pretend it didn’t matter. Yes, he had heard Dillon’s scream. It had echoed through his sleep for three days now. Running from Dillon’s call was no longer an option, and now he realized it never had been. The five of them were too tightly bound to ever escape one another.

“How will we find him?” wondered Michael.

“The same way we did before,” answered Lourdes. She gently took his hand, and started leading him away. “We’ll find him together.”

But Drew grabbed Michael’s other arm firmly. “What is this? You part the sky, and you think you can just leave?”

Lourdes turned to him. “Whoever you are, this doesn’t concern you!”

“Like hell it doesn’t. I’m coming with you!”

“You can’t,” snapped Lourdes. Then Drew went pale, and fell to his knees, gripping his chest.

“Who says he can’t?” asked Michael. “Let go of him!”

Lourdes turned to Michael, embarrassed. Clearly it had been a knee-jerk reaction to take hold of his heart with her mind. She let the blood return to Drew’s head, before he could faint out cold. Drew stayed down on his knees, as he caught his breath.

“Sorry,” said Lourdes.

“Lourdes, meet Drew. Drew, meet Lourdes,” said Michael, hoping to get them to shake hands, which they didn’t.

Drew stood up, still trying to shake off his dizziness. “Michael . . . who are you? What are you?”

“Well, it’s like this,” said Michael. “Our souls are the shattered fragments of the star Mentarsus-H, which went supernova, at the moment each of us was con­ceived. That makes us pretty damn impressive, if you haven’t already guessed.”

Drew stared at him completely baffled.

“It’ll make more sense in the morning,” Lourdes told him.

“No it won’t,” Drew answered. But he went with them anyway.

Life slipped from the sea creatures that had cast themselves on the shore, their last breaths gurgling out through their gills in unison, just as the birds came. Dozens upon dozens of them. Not nearly as many as there were sea creatures on the shore, but enough to pick hundreds of holes in the softer parts of the car­casses. The birds drifted in randomly, over a period of hours, yet left as a single flock at dawn, well fed for a long, long flight.

They took to the air, flying in a single perfect wedge; cutting through the sky and heading east. It was a liv­ing vector, propelling itself on five hundred wings flapping up and down in perfect order.

Above the coastal ranges, over the dry hot sands of the California desert, the birds traveled without rest. They were long beyond their endurance by the time they crossed into Arizona airspace, but something be­yond mere muscle pushed them forward.

A faint awareness propelled them now. Faint, but growing, like a mind sliding out of sleep. As the flock followed the path of the Colorado River, the angle of their wedge narrowed from thirty degrees, to twenty, to ten, until they were a slim arrow of movement across the sky. Moving directly toward a bird much larger than themselves.

The thing before them roared dangerous and loud, but still the flock willed itself forward . . . until it was devoured by the spinning mouth of a jet engine.

The 767, outbound from Phoenix, was filled with thrill-seekers, on their way to win and lose fortunes in the smoke-filled casinos of Las Vegas—but they had not bet on this particular thrill. Although the plane’s en­gines often inhaled stray birds that got in their way, the plane wasn’t designed to withstand an entire flock ramming down the throat of a single engine.

The right engine, fouled by the remains of the birds, blew out with such force that the wing caught fire. In­side the cabin, there were a few brief minutes of panic as the plane slipped out of the pilot’s control and plum­meted into the jagged depths of the Grand Canyon.

There were no survivors.

Not from the passenger list, that is.

However, of those passengers, several of them had packed their pets into the cargo hold—in fact, more than the usual number—and the jet harbored more than the usual number of rats, as if the confluence of coincidence had now evolved a structure beyond mere randomness. With the cabin burning above, and their travel kennels shattered by the impact, several dogs and cats followed the rats—sixteen animals in all-bursting out through the shredded ruin of the cargo hold, each filled with a new life force gleaned from the Osterized birds. Rather than scattering, they traveled from the crash in a tight and orderly pack, their minds filled with a limited but powerful awareness that their journey was not yet complete. And so they pushed deeper into the canyon, where hungry predators searched for a night’s meal.

4. Fusion

In a rusted mobile home with no wheels, Lara and Jara watched smoke rise in the southern sky, and waited for their parents to return.

Hours after it had crashed, the downed jet still blazed in the canyon.

Not many exciting things occurred in Hualapai land, and it seemed sad to both Lara and Jara that it was only disasters that brought excitement. Most of the village had headed off into the canyon toward it. Surely the media would want to talk to witnesses. Only a few actually saw the plane soar past on its way down, as it was way past midnight, but plenty were willing to tell every last detail of the crash.

Jara and Lara would have none of that. They had no heart for wallowing in the misery of the dead—and they did not want to face the media. They were of one mind when it came to that. And so, while their parents had gone off with the others to view the spectacle and search for survivors, Lara and Jara stayed put in their trailer, as was their way, and they started a new game of chess. They were always starting new games—the problem was finishing them. It was that way with so many things in the twenty years they had lived, that their lives felt little more than a collection of unfinished business.

Still, they started a new game, always hoping for some miracle of completion.

Tonight their concentration was finally broken by the melodic chants of the Shaman next door. He was, by trade, an electrician, but every once in a while, when some earth-shattering event stirred up the town, he would wrap himself in the old skins, and old traditions. Then he would spend hours filling his yard with sand paintings, and singing the chants that few remembered. When Radio Joe began his chants, and cast sulfur into the flames, Lara and Jara would almost believe that somewhere within the heart of the poverty that gripped the town, there truly was magic. The town scoffed at him in the light of day. But when someone was deathly ill, it was always Radio Joe they wanted spilling sands on their floor, and evoking the ancients in the secret dark of night.

At times like this, when the distant sky burned, and Radio Joe called on the spirits, Lara and Jara began to feel that eerie sense of magic, thick as the smoke on the wind.

“He’s louder than usual,” said Jara.

Lara turned to look out of the window where they could see Radio Joe, sitting before the small fire on his lawn. He shook the ceremonial spices to the left and right; he wailed and invoked; he danced and stomped around the flames, and it did seem as if the flames grew higher as he tended them with his ritual.

“The crash must have really spooked him.”

The fact was, it was hard not to be spooked by it. The plane had come roaring right over their heads, be­fore it disappeared over the canyon’s edge. And al­though Jara and Lara rarely left the confines of their home, tonight the brother and sister strode out to speak to Radio Joe, leaving behind the strange, twisted foot­prints that can only be made by conjoined twins.

It was rarer than rare. Impossible, if you believed the experts. Siamese twins born male and female. In every other way they were identical. The survival of conjoined twins usually depended on their level of con­junction. Jara and Lara were severe thoracopagus. They had four legs, but the two central ones were withered and useless. The bones of their hips were fused, and they shared a liver, a pancreas, and a confused intes­tinal tract. Both their hearts were separate and strong, free from defects; but since their bloodstreams were connected, the two hearts often fought one another, like two drums beating out disparate rhythms.

Hospitals had offered to separate them for free years ago, but their parents both feared the dangers of the operation, and despised charity, so they refused those early offers. Then, as the twins grew, all those excited surgeons found other projects, and so Lara and Jara ultimately fell into the canyon of the forgotten. In times past, conjoined twins were killed at birth. Western medicine used to call them “monsters” before the ad­vent of modern compassion. In spite of it Jara and Lara always tried to see beyond their hardship. Sometimes it was a blessing, to be able to be so close. To almost know the other’s thoughts. To share more than most others on earth. But there were only three people who could look at them and not see freaks. Their mother, their father, and Radio Joe.

“The spirits spoke to me tonight,” Radio Joe told them, as they warmed themselves around his fire. Lara and Jara grinned at one another.

“Was it AM or FM?” asked Jara. The old man often told tall tales to local children, of spirits that spoke to him through the radios and TVs he repaired.

“No. This time for real.” He closed his eyes and offered an open-palmed chant to the flames.

“What did they sound like?”

“They came in the voice of the mountain lion,” he told them. And even as he said it, they heard the gut­tural roar of the great cat somewhere close by.

The twins pulled themselves up quickly, but Radio Joe didn’t stir. He opened his eyes, and turned slowly to look up at them. The fire painted a stroke of madness in his ancient eyes. “They called for you,” he said. “You did not quest after your spirit. So your spirit has quested after you.”

In truth few of the teenagers in town went on vision quests anymore. Radio Joe never missed an opportunity to rebuke them for it.

The roar came again. It sounded strange—different from roars they heard before. It sounded more powerful than other lions. There was a lion that had attacked a woman a few weeks before; surely this was the same one. With most of the neighborhood gone, the twins knew they would have to take care of it. How surprised the others would be when they discovered that the freakish pair had dispatched the troublesome cougar.

“Are you going to shoot it?” asked Radio Joe.

“Once it’s had a taste of human blood it won’t stop,” said Jara. “It has to be destroyed. I know it’s not what you believe but—"

“Use my rifle,” Radio Joe said. “It’s in the shed.”

Tonight the world seemed to end at the rim of the canyon. As the twins stood there, gazing out across the great expanse, they could still see an orange glow far below, on the canyon floor. Smoke from the smoldering wreckage had blown to the canyon wall, filling the space beneath the cliff with a haze lit pale blue by the gibbous moon.

They had followed the strange roars of the mountain lion to this spot—and although they could catch hints of its gamy scent, the smell of smoke masked it as they neared the rim.

They looked down into the pit of the canyon.

“Do you think it went back down?” asked Lara. And the answer came as a single earth-shaking roar behind them.

It awakened in them a searing terror, and they real­ized at this awful, vulnerable moment that they feared death far more than they had imagined.

They turned in a ballet-smooth motion to see not one, but four mountain lions stalking toward them, out of the shadows of the Arizona night. Their mouths were covered with the fur and blood of their latest kills.

Jara raised his rifle but did not know which creature he should aim at. “Don’t move,” Jara said.

There was something about these beasts that was not right. It was the way they walked—their paws stepping in perfect unison as if they were all reflections of the same beast. And it was common knowledge that moun­tain lions did not hunt in packs.

The quartet of beasts opened their mouths to roar, and only now did the twins understand why the sound had been so strange. It had been the sound of all four of them roaring at once.

Backed against the half-mile drop to the canyon floor, Lara and Jara knew their lives were about to end one way or another. But the lions stopped ten feet away and held their position. Dark eyes fixed on the twins. Perhaps they were confused by the sight of Siamese twins, or perhaps it was something else. Out of no­where, a voice spoke to them.

“I understand now.”

The twins heard the voice, but it was as if the voice had originated deep within their own minds.

“I understand.” This time the thought had come from the direction of the great cats. Although Lara didn’t pretend to understand all the mysticism of the old ways, she felt sure this was a vision—the kind Ra­dio Joe often spoke of. The kind of vision that opened the door to one’s destiny.

Jara, on the other hand, wasn’t so convinced. He held the rifle on one of the creatures, unwilling to let his guard down.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Completion,” said the four voices. “Mine and yours.”

“We don’t believe in animal spirits,” said Jara.

“I don’t think that’s what they are.” Lara raised her hand and pushed down the barrel of Jara’s gun.

“What are you?” demanded Jara.

“I am nothing, " said the voices. “I am nothing with­out you. Because you are the point of focus. You are the one.”

Although the twins did not yet understand the full implication, the truth of it rang deep within them. The suggestion of them being at the focus of anything was a powerfully charged notion. They had lived so much of their lives in hidden anonymity, that it was more than just their curiosity that was piqued. It was a call to their souls.

“What do you mean?” the two asked in unison.

But they didn’t need to ask, because they implicitly knew. Jara and Lara were the point of focus. That meant that these creatures had not arrived here by ran­dom means. They were directed here by an ordered series of events. Then an image flooded the twins’ minds, and they instantly saw how these creatures came to be.

The bacteria aligned.

A powerful force injected perfect order into the river’s current, and the bacteria aligned!

The same order flowed its way up the food chain until the alignment of those billion bacteria had dis­tilled down into the alignment of these four dangerous predators.

“And you . . . " said the four voices again. “You are the point of focus.”

If it were true, thought the twins, then it was some­thing more than fate, and more than destiny. It meant that the unknowable forces of nature had not spat the twins out as freaks, but as vessels for something greater than themselves.

“I can give you what you need. What you long for,” said the voice. “I can give you completion.”

As they heard those words, they finally knew what it would mean to be the point of focus. They had lived lives of incompletion—from their own bodies, to the games of chess they never finished. They were like a tune, straining on the penultimate note, waiting for resolution. They were incompletion, and nothing was more desirable than to finally be complete.

“What do we have to do?” the twins said simulta­neously.

“You already know,” came the answer.

Yes, they did know.

Jara raised his gun at the beasts . . . and released four deadly blasts.

The cats did not flinch, or shy away. Instead they each received the bullet through the brain, and col­lapsed to the dust, one after another. The twins realized what was about to happen next even before it began, and the knowledge made it even more joyous. The mo­ment the creatures were dead, and their spirits were released, Lara and Jara could feel the four dissolve to­gether, funneling into them. Now the twins could truly hear each other’s thoughts, feel each other’s beings. The four incomplete spirits that had inhabited the cou­gars, meshed together, weaving into a single great spirit that wound itself around the twins like a cocoon.

The strange force of order that had touched the dis­tant river was now reversing in the twins what never should have occurred, and all at once, they knew what their innermost wish had always been.

To be one.

There, standing on the rim of the canyon, Lara and Jara—the two halves—merged together into a single being, brought into perfect focus—flesh, mind, and soul.

When it was done, two legs stood where there had been four. Two hands were raised in joy to the heavens, and one mind held the singular human being that had once been sister and brother.

The powerful spirit that had united them, allowed them to linger in their joyous moment of completion. And then that same spirit descended upon them on all sides with such violent ferocity that the twins’ soul im­ploded.

The Bringer stood in the cold night admiring his new body. It suited him just fine. It was young, it was strong—and like the Bringer itself, this body was nei­ther male nor female, but a perfect synthesis of both.

“Sleep,” he told the twins, as he felt their soul col­lapse in upon itself. They had experienced their com­pletion, which was more than most did. And although he spared their soul the indignity of being eaten, he had no remorse at having buried it beneath the heavy weight of his own spirit.

He took the four mountain lions that, for a brief time, had housed his quartered soul, and one by one cast them off the cliff and into the dark mist of the canyon.

This was not an ancient Mediterranean empire. That was a world and many ages away. Having stolen the twins’ memories, he knew the year and the ways of the modern world. But what was he doing here? He re­membered the circumstances of his death: the drowning of the old human shell he had worn; the dissolution of his spirit into the sea. Who had coaxed his fragmented spirit back from the waters of death, causing it to con­geal once more into a glorious whole? Who in this world had that kind of power? Instinct told him it must have been a star-shard who had done it, akin to the ones he had destroyed so many years ago. . . .

He peeled from himself the strangely tailored clothes the twins had worn. Clothes sewn by their mother, the Bringer recalled from his usurped memories; arm and leg holes cut at absurd angles that no longer fitted the single symmetrical body the twins had fused into. A perfect human body. He discarded them over the can­yon rim, then strode toward the lights of the nearby village, already feeling the pangs of a three-thousand-year-old hunger.

Radio Joe had heard the four shots go off like the monotone chime of the old church bell, ringing a spirit into the earth.

He waited for the twins to return, tempering his own anxiety with the steady hypnotic spill of sands between his fingers, contemplating the ancient patterns on the hardpan of his yard.

When he saw a figure coming toward him out of the darkness, he thought it must have been the twins, but this figure moved in a steady gate. It was naked, and when Radio Joe looked into its face, he thought for a moment he had slipped into some terrible half-sleep, for what he saw was impossible.

The old man felt his aging heart attempt to stop, but he willed it to sustain his life—if only long enough to know the nature of the monster before him.

“Radio Joe,” said the figure, with the slyest of grins, “don’t you recognize me? Or should I say, ‘us.’ "

The old man stood in the center of his sand paint­ings, studying the figure before him. Firm, hairless pec­torals that could have been breasts. Hips that were smooth like a woman’s, yet thighs as muscular as a man’s. And a dark wedge of venereal abomination, with two distinct organs, one wedged loosely within the folds of the other.

“What have you done with Lara and Jara?”

“They sleep,” it said. “For I may yet need them.”

Radio Joe reached down, grabbed a handful of black powder, and hurled it into the flames. The fire spat forth a bright green flame.

“Giyá Bachál vomga,” he chanted. “Return to the dark place. I command you to fall from the living world!”

But it only laughed. “Empty words,” it said. “I had thought it was you who had called me back from the dead—but you are no star-shard. You are barely a man anymore.”

The thing that had been Lara and Jara took a step forward, and Radio Joe took a step away, keeping the fire between the thing and himself.

“Who has drawn me back from the waters?” it asked, with a force that could not go unanswered.

“No one has!” said Radio Joe, knowing this more surely than he had known anything in his life. “No one would knowingly call such a creature as you to the living world.”

The creature considered his answer. “You’re far wiser than you know,” it said. “Perhaps my life is an accident, then. How fortunate for me!” It looked at its arms, studying the gooseflesh that had risen there. “Clothe me!” it ordered.

“I will not help you with your dark business,” Radio Joe told it, finding one more moment with this creature unbearable. “Either kill me or leave.”

It stalked slowly toward him, stepping over the sands, unbothered by the strong magic of their patterns. It stepped over the flames, ignoring the heat, until at last it was face-to-face with Radio Joe.

“Do you have any idea who I am?” it asked.

Radio Joe refused to look away, even though he sensed the depth of the danger he was courting. “At first I thought you were the one who caused the crash . . . but now I see I was wrong. You are the crash. You are the death of all you touch. You are the darkness that swallows light. You are Quíkadi Bp; páa Misma Ga Máa. The Bringer of Shadows. The thief of souls.”

The creature let him go, for a moment taken aback by his words—which clearly hit far closer to the mark than this creature wanted. Perhaps, thought Radio Joe, my words have earned me respect enough to be spared. Or maybe there was some power in the sands yet.

“Your life force is too old to be worth the effort of devouring,” it told him. “Aged into vinegar. I leave it with you.” And then the thief walked off into the shad­ows. Radio Joe followed it as far as his open gate, where it had dropped his rifle. He picked the gun up, aimed it at the creature’s back as it left, his fingers aching to pull the trigger . . . but he could not—for he knew that he would be killing whatever was left of the twins as well. Still, he held his aim until it vanished into the night. Then he turned to the flames and cried to his ancestors, knowing that it would take more than a gun, and more than the strength of a hundred gen­erations, to purge the world of this thief of souls.

The Bringer was clothed by a woman elsewhere in town, claiming to have been robbed and left that way. Then he set out from the Hualapai nation, first on foot, and then in the bed of a hay truck. By now, he was sure that his new life was an accident—an unexpected side effect of a star-shard’s passage—and he marveled at the power of such a shard, whose very presence could line up enough random events to give the Bringer’s life impetus against three thousand years of death. Order out of chaos! It was a power more awe­some than that of the shape-shifting king, so many years ago. It was a power worth harnessing. Perhaps there were no worthy pupils here, but there was plenty to exploit. Plenty of things to use, and a world full of souls to devour.

In the great expanses of Arizona desert, where im­prints of life were scarce, sensing the direction of the shards was as easy as listening for cicadas in the dead of night. These shards were separate from one another now, but converging.

Star-shards on Earth once more!

If that were so, he would not make the same mistakes he had made the first time. He would no longer be a Bringer of Wisdom for this dim world, giving his gifts freely to the undeserving. This time he would serve his own voracious appetites.

And as for these new star-shards—he would find them, and he would bend them to his will . . .

. . . and if they would not bend, he would simply destroy them.