Thief Of Souls

5. Three’s A Crowd

Shiprock rose from the desert floor of northwestern New Mexico like a massive sentinel just off of U.S. 666. From a certain angle, the towering sides of the dead volcano appeared to be the wings of a great dragon, folded around something dark and un­seen, and more than one local culture saw the end of the world rising one day from its hidden heart. Tory Smythe had come into the shadow of this dark sand­stone basolith earlier that day, and now tried to wash away the day in a scalding bath. Yet, no matter how hard she scrubbed, she couldn’t strip away the strange feeling that had plagued her all afternoon.

A feeling that something was wrong in the town of Shiprock.

—wrong with the quiet couple who tended to the little gift shop.

—wrong about the woman who offered her a ride.

—wrong about the cluster of teens pumping gas into their van.

And as the late-afternoon sun cast the shadow of the rock over the town, the feeling got worse, and Tory felt the disquieting sense that her life was about to take a brand-new turn for the worse.

With exhaustion tugging at her limbs, she decided it was just fatigue, and figured that one night’s layover on her journey to Dillon wouldn’t kill her.

The town of Shiprock was no Shangri-la. Hardwork­ing but impoverished people populated the flat-roofed homes that were sun-baked by day, and sandblasted by night, courtesy of the merciless desert winds.

She took a room at the only motel that had a room. Although it wasn’t the cleanest place, she knew every corner would be pretty well sanitized by the time she woke up in the morning. The way her influence had grown, she figured a single night in one place would fry every germ within a hundred yards—not to mention purify the minds of quite a few overnight guests.

As Tory soaked in the tub, she thought back to the woman at the reception desk. She seemed pleasant enough, and yet, there was something vacant about her expression. Something wrong, something wrong, some­thing wrong, something . . .

“I’ll take whatever you have,” Tory had said, spread­ing out some crumpled bills on the counter. The woman presented her a key on a cracked plastic chain.

“Checkout time is at ten, and there’s a continental breakfast at eight. Aren’t you a bit young to be on your own, miss?”

“Is that a problem?” Tory had dropped an extra ten dollars on the counter, and the woman snatched up the ten-spot like a frog catching a fly. “You get yourself a good night’s sleep, honey.”

Although she was already looking like a parboiled lobster, Tory added more hot water to the tub. It wasn’t just the wrongness now. There was an uncanny feeling of presence. An unsettling sensation, like the powerful magnetic field around a high-voltage transformer. Even in the bath, Tory felt her skin fill with gooseflesh.

She tried to shake off the feeling by watching TV through the open bathroom door. There was a report on the news about dead fish in California, then an update on yesterday’s deadly plane crash. Tory sighed and sunk down until her chin touched the water. More bad news for a beleaguered world—Tory couldn’t stand it. She kicked the door closed, and reached up for a bar of soap . . . but as she did, something caught her eye.

On the counter sat a sorry potted plant. Overwatered and yellow, the little plant was not long for this world. But now as Tory looked at it, she was certain it looked different than it had just five minutes ago. The old, dying leaves had fallen off, and the plant had sprouted new shoots. Tory could swear she could see it growing in tiny spurts.

The exhaustion she felt suddenly seemed unimpor­tant.

“Winston?” she called. “Winston!”

And from the room on the other side of the paper-thin wall came a voice a bit deeper than she remem­bered, but still familiar.

“Tory?”

Winston had always been a champ at guarding his emotions, but he couldn’t contain his excitement at see­ing Tory. At last he could talk to someone like him­self—someone who understood what it was like to change the world by your very presence, and yet have to hide that light so no one else would know. Someone who understood what a handicap true power could re­ally be. They talked for hours—there was a year of strange tales to tell one another. . . .

“You won’t believe all the things I know,” bragged Winston. “Medicine, law, philosophy, I’m like a walk­ing encyclopedia.”

“You can’t believe how I change people just by be­ing around them,” said Tory. “I’ve turned hardened criminals into model citizens!”

Then, somewhere in their conversation, Winston asked the question that had dominated his thoughts since he had stepped foot into Shiprock. “Did you feel something strange when you got here?” he asked. “Something about the people?”

Tory nodded. “It’s like . . . they look fine on the out­side, but on the inside, they’re black-and-white, while the rest of the world is color, you know?”

So it was a sensation they had both felt!— But nei­ther knew what it meant.

At midnight, they ventured out to an all-night coffee shop down the street, sparsely populated by truckers and tired travelers. As they sat at the counter, devouring greasy burgers, a planter just outside the window be­came clogged with weeds and cactus, and at the table behind them, a grunged-out biker suddenly began cleaning his fingernails with his pocketknife.

“Our powers keep growing,” Winston told Tory. “No telling where it’s going to stop.”

“What if they don’t?” whispered Tory.

Winston, in all his newfound wisdom, had no an­swer.

Just then, a customer who had been sitting alone in a booth, sauntered to the counter and slid onto the stool beside them. Their chatter stopped abruptly.

“You can keep on talking, I don’t mind,” said the intruder, who seemed to be about twenty or so. “My name’s Okoya.” Like most people in town, Okoya was Native American, with long, black hair, and dark eyes.

It was those eyes that caught Tory and Winston. They were deeper than a person’s eyes ought to be.

“Do you mind?” said Winston, taking the defensive.

“Can’t I sit here?”

Tory shrugged. “Sit wherever you want.”

The intruder seemed far more comfortable than they were.

“You both seem excited but worried at the same time,” Okoya noted. “I wonder what that could be about?”

Winston shrugged. “What, do you poke your way into everyone else’s business?”

“Only when it’s interesting,” said Okoya, pushing a ketchup-covered, plate of fries to share with them. “The truth is, I’m just passing through town. I was hoping I could travel with some interesting people.”

“I don’t think so,” said Winston uneasily. But Tory touched Winston’s hand, a signal for him to step down from red alert.

“Where are you headed?” asked Tory, beginning to munch on the fries.

Okoya looked out the window, gazing into the dim, dusty street. “Wherever you are.”

Great, thought Winston. The last thing we need is some asshole tagging along on our trip to find Dillon. And yet . . . Winston suddenly felt a pang of loneli­ness—as if this Okoya person had all at once created a space in their company that needed to be filled. Hav­ing a third party to talk to—to take their minds off of things for a short part of the journey might make the trek more interesting. And then again, this Stranger might want nothing more than to rob them, or kill them or both. But considering where they had been, and where they were headed, such a threat seemed minus­cule and easily dealt with.

“We’re not leaving until morning,” Winston ex­plained.

Okoya shook his head. “Why not leave now?”

Because we’re exhausted, Winston was about to an­swer, but suddenly he didn’t feel tired at all.

Tory turned to Winston. “We really don’t have to stay overnight.”

When their meal was done, they left together to gather what little they had from their motel. As they slipped their keys into the night drop, Winston turned to Tory.

“Interesting guy. Do you think he’s Navajo or Hopi?

Okoya stood by the curb, looking west; as if know­ing their direction better than they did. Tory stared at Winston as if he were out of his mind.

“What do you mean ‘he’?” said Tory. “Okoya is a girl!”

Winston took a second look. The Indian’s long hair blew with the night wind—but long hair didn’t mean anything these days. Okoya’s voice was a gentle tenor . . . could it have been contralto instead? “Try again!” said Winston. “He’s a guy. You think I can’t tell the difference?”

“Apparently not.” said Tory. And so to prove it, Winston ran up to Okoya, fully prepared to ask the question point-blank: What the hell are you?

But when Okoya turned to him, Winston found that he didn’t have the nerve to ask. “Uh . . . Okoya,” stam­mered Winston. “That’s a very interesting name.”

Okoya smiled proudly. “It’s Hualapai,” Okoya said. “It means ‘Bringer of Fire.’ "

Eight hundred miles to the west, the Newport Beach Festival of Dead Fish had attracted massive media at­tention, but even as the media crews were arriving at the beach that night, Michael, Lourdes, and Drew were racing toward the marina to Michael’s boat.

It wasn’t all that spectacular a craft compared to the million-dollar yachts that graced the Newport marina, but the price was right.

“I made a suicidal lawyer see the joys of life,” Mi­chael explained to Lourdes. “He was so thrilled that he gave me his boat, turned his house into a bed-and-breakfast, and now he serves poached eggs instead of lawsuits.”

Lourdes was amused, and Drew could only shake his head in utter amazement. “If you can do all that, why work at the Dog Kabob?” Drew asked.

“Because it’s normal,” answered Michael, and nor­mality was something in short supply in Michael’s life.

He powered up the boat and piloted it out of New­port Channel to the open sea. As Michael suspected, a cold ocean current ran down the coastline about a half mile from shore. It was like a river in the middle of the ocean. Waves died as they hit the smooth ribbon of water, only to be reborn on the “river’s” other side—and all the while the mid-ocean stream remained so flat, you could see every detail of the moon reflected in its glassy surface.

“Dillon’s order,” Lourdes commented when she saw it. The ill-fated fish had traveled down this serene thread of water from somewhere up north. They could follow this ocean river straight to Dillon, if it lasted long enough. It was as easy as tracing the ashen trail of a burnt fuse.

“So who’s Dillon?” Drew had asked.

There was the long answer and the short answer, and Michael had no patience for long answers. “He’s the best of us, and the worst of us,” Michael said. Drew, who was generally too cool to admit cluelessness, ac­cepted the answer, and didn’t ask again.

A day later, nightfall found them off the central Cal­ifornia coast. They fueled in Morro Bay, and dropped anchor in the shadow of Morro Rock, its massive dome growing out of the ocean like the skull of a giant.

The boat had only one cabin, with a single, triangular bed beneath the bow. It was comfortable for one, liv­able for two, and impossible for three. Their ears prac­tically touched as they all lay face-up, looking at the low ceiling of the cabin.

“I’ve never slept in a boat,” said Lourdes, to Mi­chael’s right.

“It’s kind of cozy,” said Drew, to his left.

“It’s like a coffin,” said Michael, the only one who seemed bothered by the tight space. To him it felt like trying to sleep in the tip of a pointed shoe.

Outside, a mild wind blew, gently rocking the boat.

Lourdes sighed contentedly, and the sound irritated Michael to no end. There was nothing about this jour­ney that was the least bit blissful, but to listen to Lourdes, you’d think they were all on a pleasure cruise.

“I’m really starting to worry about how unworried you are,” Michael told her.

“What’s to worry about?” she said gently. “You and I can beat anything.” She kissed him on the cheek, and a few minutes later, Michael heard her breathing slip into the relaxed whistle of a deep sleep, leaving Drew and Michael to stare at the beige-carpeted ceiling.

“So,” whispered Drew with a sly smile. “Is she the mystery woman you’ve been saving your moves for?”

“I don’t have any moves,” answered Michael.

“But she is your girlfriend, right?”

Michael had to consider the question. He had never thought of Lourdes as a girlfriend. More like cell mates than soul mates. “I don’t know,” said Michael glancing at her to make sure she was still asleep. “I guess.”

Drew shifted so he could look at Michael. “You must love her a lot.”

“Yeah, sure,” said Michael, wishing he would just shut up about it.

“That’s good,” said Drew. “There are guys I know on the track team that think girls are only good for one thing—and love is only as big as their hard-ons. Which in most cases offers no wind resistance, if you know what I mean.”

Michael laughed in spite of himself. “You have all the answers, don’t you, Drew?” he said. “I wish I had my head together half as well as you do.”

“You must really be screwed up if you think my head’s together.” They laughed a bit longer, and when it got quiet once more, Drew slid out of the cramped space.

“You’ll never sleep while I’m in your face,” said Drew. “I’ll go up and pilot the boat. No sense losing a night of travel time.”

Michael quickly filled the space where Drew had been, and was already dozing when he noticed that Drew had not yet left. He was still standing there, watching Michael and Lourdes sleep, like he had noth­ing better to do.

“Not that it really matters,” Drew said in that off­handed way of his. “But you remember that baseball story I told you? . . . Well, it wasn’t really about base­ball.”

Michael yawned. “That’s nice,” he said absently.

Drew lingered a moment longer. Then Michael heard him up on deck as he raised the anchor, and started the engine. In a few moments, Michael was asleep, his back toward Lourdes, and his face to the windowless wall.

Tory awoke to an unsteady world, uncertain of where she was or why she was there. It was a large space around her, rectangular and rusty. Light poured in from an open door, and the whole world rattled.

A boxcar. Yes, that was it. They were heading west from New Mexico. It had been past midnight when they had reached the train yard, and found a train bound in their general direction. The white noise of the rolling stock had lulled her to sleep. The boxcar had been filled with the stench of decay and urine when they had hopped on, but now any unpleasant odor was gone, washed away by more than just the wind pouring in through the huge open door.

Curled up beside her, still in the deepest of sleeps was Winston. And a few yards away sat the stranger, Okoya. She was staring at Tory, as if she could have been staring that way throughout the night.

“Sleep well?” Okoya asked.

Tory rolled the kink out of her neck. “Better than I expected.”

“You looked like you needed it.” Okoya grinned, but only slightly. It was unsettling, because Tory couldn’t discern what the grin meant.

“It’s been a long few days.”

“It’s more than just a few days, isn’t it?” Okoya asked. “There’s weight on the two of you far heavier than this journey.”

“Long story.”

Then that grin again. “I imagine it would be.”

Tory looked to her fingers. They were still numb from the cold night. The skin around her cuticles was frayed. She had been picking at them in her sleep again. Her hands, her whole body felt sticky, unpleasant, and unclean; even though she knew the feeling was only in her imagination, it didn’t make her feel any less un­comfortable.

“What I wouldn’t give for a nice hot bath,” said Okoya, practically reading her mind.

“Same here.” But Okoya couldn’t know how much Tory longed for that bath, especially now that the thought had been put in her head.

Okoya glanced over at Winston, Who still slept, fine slashes of morning light cutting across his face, from the many cracks in the boxcar panels.

“This Winston,” said Okoya. “He always has a chip on his shoulder, doesn’t he? Always negative.”

Tory shrugged. “All show. He’s a real sweetheart once you get to know him.”

Okoya considered this. “Maybe,” she said. “Still, you could do better.”

The train began a wide turn. Tory felt her whole body shift to the left with inertia. “Better than what? Winston and I are just friends.”

Okoya reached for her pack, then fished for some­thing inside. “Yes, I can see that.” She pulled out a small bottle of cologne. “But friends can often bring you down.”

Tory found herself bristling. “Not my friends.”

“Really? And how about this friend you travel to­ward?”

“Dillon?” Tory looked away. “That’s different.”

Okoya turned the bottle in her fingers. The pale fluid within refracted a crescent of light across the wall. “Are you friends by choice, or by circumstance?”

“Why should that matter?”

“Best not to put your trust in circumstantial friend­ships,” Okoya said. “Because circumstances change.”

“I can trust Winston . . . " But as she said it, she felt her own conviction waver.

Okoya stood and moved toward the open boxcar door. The bright rugged terrain of the Arizona desert sped past, a red dusty blur. Okoya opened the bottle of cologne, and dabbed some on the nape of her neck. The wind caught the scent, and brought it back to Tory, who breathed in the scent deeply. It was an aroma that Tory could not identify. Neither flowery nor musky. It simply smelled . . . clean.

“We’ll be in California soon,” Okoya said.

Tory tried to get another whiff of the cologne, but could not, and found herself angry that the scent seemed to fade so quickly. When Okoya came back from the open door, Tory could not even smell it on her, even when Tory moved closer. She thought to ask Okoya if she could try some herself, but thought better of it. Tory had never been one to wear perfume. Okoya slipped the vial into the dark hole of her pack, and pulled the drawstring tight.

“You said your story was long.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your story. Your reason for this journey. You said it was long, but as far as I can see, we’ve got nothing but time.”

Tory shook her head. “You wouldn’t believe it.”

“Then that will make it all the more enjoyable to hear.” Okoya tossed back her flood of black hair, re­vealing high, square cheekbones. Tory thought for a moment that perhaps Winston was right about the gen­der of their traveling companion. Then Tory laughed, more at herself than anything else. Why would it matter what Okoya was, when they would part ways in just a few short hours, once the novelty of each other’s com­pany wore thin. And did it matter what Tory told this stranger they would never see again?

“Sure I’ll tell you,” said Tory. And maybe confess­ing all of it to this drifter might unburden her own soul. She began with her days as an untouchable in Alabama, when her flesh-sores were so virulent you could tell neither her sex nor the color of her skin. “The Scorpion star went nova the moment each of us were conceived,” she explained, “but it took sixteen years for its light to reach the earth. When we finally saw its light, it made each of us realize our connection to one another.. . that we were luminous in a way we never knew . . . and that same brightness had attracted parasites like a flame attracts insects . . .” Then Tory told of all they had en­dured since the supernova lit up the sky. It was re­markable how easy it was to unload the tale on a patient, receptive ear. And Okoya was nothing if not receptive.

A flier was circulated in Peach Springs, Arizona, and surrounding communities, featuring a picture of the missing conjoined twins. Those who did not know them thought the absurd picture must have been some sort of prank. Those who did know them, did not ex­pect them to turn up alive—least of all their devastated parents, who knew that Lara and Jara never dared to venture far from the safety of home.

Radio Joe cooperated with police, insofar as he told them half the story, ending it upon hearing the distant four shots, and saying no more. There were no footprints to corroborate his story, as the wind had dusted the hardpan clean, but bloodhounds had tracked the twins’ movements as far as the canyon rim, where they recovered their clothes, shredded but bloodless. Snagged at various points down the canyon wall were the bodies of the four cougars, as well as Radio Joe’s rifle, which Joe had hurled into the can­yon, not wanting to be near anything the Quíkadi had touched. It was confiscated as evidence. At the can­yon rim, however, the hounds became feral, howling and frothing at the mouth as if the scent had taken a turn into canine nightmare. They were of no use be­yond that.

The fringe element in town spoke of alien abductions and police complicity, which mired the investigation further.

Through the first night and day, Joe performed his rituals, asking the spirits for guidance. He used to per­form his rituals more out of respect than anything else, for there was a peace in carrying on a tradition, but now it all took on the type of mystical power it had in his childhood. The spirits were very real again. The only question was, how was he to act upon what he knew—what he had seen? He listened for voices in the wind and in the calls of birds. He forced his dreams into lucidity, remembering their images, and a sense of purpose began to take shape. Two days after the plane crash and the twins’ mysterious disappearance, Radio Joe began to visit the neighbors.

“All this fuss over those two,” Mary Wahomigie said to Joe through her screen door. He had approached her under the pretense of looking for work. “TV repairs, air conditioners, any gadget that’s giving you trouble,” Joe had said. “I’ll give you my preferred-customer rate.”

Mary laughed. “I thought I already was a preferred customer, Joe.”

The woman had no need of repairs, and so the con­versation had slipped to the air crash, and then to the missing twins.

“All that fuss,” Mary said. “But maybe what hap­pened to them is for the best. Those two never belonged here to begin with. A miracle they survived as long as they did.”

“So you think they’re dead?”

Mary hesitated for just an instant. Radio Joe imag­ined that if this were a polygraph test, the needle would be pinned in the red. He could almost feel the electric charge of her lie. “Yes, they must be, don’t you think?” she said.

Joe took off his baseball cap, revealing his thin, sweaty hair. He brushed his hand across his forehead, wiping off the sweat.

“Would you like something to drink, Joe? Maybe a piece of berry cobbler?”

She swung open the screen door, and as she did, Joe stole a look into her eyes—the same look he had stolen from each of his neighbors today. Although several had invited him in, he had turned them down. Until now.

“Yes, Mary, I’d appreciate that.”

Mary Wahomigie’s house was both spotless and cluttered. The shelves and walls were polished and dusted, but several lifetimes’ worth of dime-store trin­kets sprouted from every surface like fungus on a stump. No shelf space remained for future memories— perhaps because all of Mary’s memories were behind her. Phil, her husband, had died of a heart attack five years before, and their only daughter lost her battle with breast cancer shortly thereafter.

Mary had had her eye on Joe for a few years now, but Joe had no interest in her. His solitary life had always suited him fine. However, now he turned to whatever charm he had, complimenting her on her sun tea and cobbler.

“I grew the berries myself. Only enough for a couple of cobblers a season, but every bite’s worth a dozen.”

Joe took the last bite, and set down his fork. “I see you still keep Phil’s guns out.”

He was referring, of course, to the glass showcase cluttered with a preponderance of hunting weapons and accessories.

“Never dream of selling them,” Mary said. “He’d roll over in his grave”—which was a curious expres­sion, considering the man had been cremated.

“Ever consider loaning them to a friend?”

“Planning a hunting trip, Joe?”

“Been thinking of it.”

She unlocked the case for him, and he pulled down a shotgun. “Phil’s pride and joy,” she told him. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind it being used again.”

It was a Winchester 1300—a sleek, 12-gauge pump, far superior to his own.

“My shotgun’s evidence now, you know.”

Mary shifted uncomfortably. “So I heard. The twins went to kill those cougars.”

“Did the job, too.”

“Imagine that.”

“The police wonder if I had anything to do with their disappearance.”

Mary came over to him, and put a hand on his shoul­der, as if she had been waiting for an excuse to do so. “I know you didn’t, Joe.”

“No,” admitted Joe. “But I do know more than I tell. . . . Just like you.”

She recoiled for a moment, but he smiled, and she softened, smiling back. “Just what does that mean?” she said coyly.

“You tell me, Mary . . . and then I’ll tell you what I know.”

Mary glanced out of her living-room window, as if they might be under surveillance, then she pulled the shades. “If you know about the cousin,” she said, “then you know it’s for the twins’ own good.”

“The cousin,” said Joe. “Yes, I know about the cousin.”

“Spitting image of them, don’t you think?” Mary sat down on her couch, patting the space next to her. Joe stayed where he was.

“And you helped him?” Joe prompted.

“He was robbed, you know. They took his car, the clothes off his back. He said he was here to take the twins away to a special hospital where they could be taken better care of.”

“You believed him?”

“Why shouldn’t I? Anyway, I gave him some of Phil’s old pants, and a shirt. He was practically busting out of them, but they had to do.

Radio Joe’s eyes wandered back to the gun case. He strode over, and grabbed the rifle that was her dead husband’s pride and joy. He opened a drawer beneath the case, and as he expected, found boxes of shells in various calibers. Phil Wahomigie never kept his am­munition too far away.

“They’re five years old,” Mary said. “You might want to get new ones.”

“They’ll be fine as long as they’re dry.”

“So you saw the cousin, too, didn’t you?” asked Mary. “Now it’s your turn—tell me what you know. Did he go to your place after he left here?”

Joe slipped cartridges into the shotgun. Eight, and it was full. “Actually, he came to my place first.”

Mary looked up at him, confused. “You didn’t help him? Joe, that’s not like you.”

“I offered him nothing and he took nothing from me. Because he was nobody’s cousin. Nobody’s child. It was a Quíkadi.”

She stood up. “What are you talking about?”

There were tears now clouding his eyes, but he quickly flipped them away. Then he pumped the gun, loading the chamber. “It took more from you than your clothes, Mary.”

The woman began to back away. “Joe, you’re scar­ing me. Are you drunk, Joe? Put that rifle down.”

Joe looked at the rifle. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said. He leaned the rifle gently against the sofa. Then he advanced on Mary with his bare hands.

“No! Stop!”

But there was no sense in responding to Mary Wa- homigie now, because she was not there to hear. She had been dead for three days now, her soul devoured, leaving behind an empty shell to mimic life.

Radio Joe grabbed the slight woman, and hurled her to the ground, breaking the coffee table, sending knick- knacks scattering across the faded green carpet. She tried to scream again, but he wedged his boot firmly under her chin, cutting off her cries. “I mourn Mary Wahomigie. She was a good woman,” he said. “Her body deserves the peace of the grave.” He turned his ankle and shifted his weight forward onto her neck. The body of Mary Wahomigie struggled, but that, he knew, was merely a reflex, like the twitching nerves of a fly on the face of a swatter. This body would have contin­ued to twitch and talk and mimic life for years. It could not be allowed. With a grimace, he lurched forward, feeling the crumbling of glottal cartilage, and the final crunch as her neck snapped beneath the weight of his heel.

The body stopped struggling, and came to rest. Then, when he looked in her eyes, he knew he had done the good and proper thing, because they looked no differ­ent now than they had five minutes before. Death was death, even when it walked.

He gently laid Mary on her bed, covered her with one of her handmade quilts, then returned to the living room, taking as many weapons as he could carry.

Although he didn’t know where the Quíkadi had gone, he knew he’d have more luck than the blood­hounds in tracking it, for he knew what he was search­ing for. And if he listened, attuning his soul to the dark, his ears to the silences, and his heart to the void, he would be able to trace its footsteps.

6. House Of The Rising Sun

Sometime before dawn, five buses snaked south down the Pacific Coast Highway, hugging the cliffs of California’s central coast.

By the time the sun made its appearance, the buses were pulling into the large Visitors Center of the area’s most celebrated tourist attraction. The night guard stepped out from his shack to greet the buses. To him the situation was obvious; some overeager tourists must have gotten it into their heads that this was a twenty-four-hour attraction. Not so. The Visitors Center was closed, and the first tours didn’t begin for three more hours. He felt sure he’d be able to convince them all to come back later, and if he couldn’t, the iron security gate would.

He approached the dark-tinted windows of the first bus, and the door opened to admit him.

Turns out he had misdiagnosed the entire situation.

Ten minutes later, the night guard emerged from the lead bus, bewildered and rubbing his chest. Although he had never told his employer, he was, in fact, a dying man . . . but the redheaded kid who led this group had changed that. Now the cancer that had been devouring his right lung was leaving him. He could almost feel the malignant cells collapsing in upon themselves, the genetic mutation corrected—his body fixed from the inside out. He didn’t know what all this meant, but he did know that, even though it broke the rules, he was going to open the gate, and allow these buses to pass.

What was the kid’s name? Darren? Devin?

The buses rolled through, and he closed the gate be­hind them, wishing he could be in there with those people—because he knew that this had been the most important moment of his life.

Dillon! Yes, that was it.

Whoever he was, the guard sensed that Dillon was not coming here as a tourist, and he realized that his own sense of loyalty was no longer with the department of Parks and Recreation. Now he worked for the boy.

He marveled as he watched the buses wind their way inland, amazed by the way they moved in perfect, or­derly formation, spaced precisely one bus-length apart, as they drove east down the lone road, and toward the solitary castle in the distance, which stood silhouetted against the rising sun.

7. Eclipsed

Michael awoke with an overwhelming urge to jump off the back of the boat. That’s how he knew they had gone too far. He climbed out of the cabin to find Lourdes at the controls. They were a few hundred yards from shores and while the flat stream of water still stretched out ahead of them, Michael knew it would only lead them to a place Dillon had been, not the place he was now. The sky, which had been a sunny blue just a moment ago, was already weaving with clouds.

“I took over for Drew at around midnight,” she told him with a smile.

“We’ve passed him, Lourdes,” Michael said. “We passed him sometime during the night.”

“Or he passed us,” Lourdes said calmly.

“Then why are we still headed up the coast?”

“I was waiting for you,” she said. “So we could de­cide together what to do.” She turned off the engine and the boat quickly slowed and began to drift.

“You could have woken me!” he said.

Lourdes smiled again. “Maybe I just wanted to let you sleep.” She gently brushed his hair out of his eyes. “You looked too peaceful to wake up. . . . I knew when you woke up you would be worried. So I let you sleep.”

There was warmth and concern in her words, but Michael couldn’t echo back her warmth. All he could do was stare at her emptily. Lourdes leaned just an inch or two closer.

“No kissing in front of the children,” said Drew. Their shipmate sat in the corner of the deck, as unob­trusive as a barnacle on the hull.

While kissing hadn’t been on Michael’s mind, ap­parently Lourdes had been considering it, because she backed off the moment Drew spoke, leaving Michael to take control of the boat. He brought them around to a southerly heading, while Drew, under the glaring eyes of Lourdes, inhaled Chee-tos.

“Drew,” said Lourdes, “if you keep on eating like that, you’re going to get fat. Believe me, I know.”

Drew shoved another Chee-to in his mouth. “I’m a growing slug,” he said.

Michael had to admit that Drew was playing his third-wheel role to a tee—but the fact was, Drew and Lourdes had more in common than they cared to admit. To Michael, it seemed both of them were far too con­tent for their own good.

“Can’t you just close your eyes, and figure out ex­actly where Dillon is?” asked Drew.

Lourdes laughed at the thought, and shook her head. “Better yet, why don’t we just teleport ourselves there?”

“Yeah,” said Drew. “Why don’t you?”

“Just because we can do some things, that doesn’t mean we can do all things,” Michael told him. “As far as finding Dillon, it’s not like we’ve got navigational computers in our brains. It’s more like playing hot-and-cold. All I know, is that we were getting hotter last night . . . and now we’ve gotten colder.”

Now only about a hundred yards from shore, Mi­chael kept them hugging the coastline as he tried to pick up a sense of Dillon’s position . . . and all the while Lourdes watched him—Michael could practically feel her eyes boring into him. She was waiting for a tender gesture, he knew, and when she didn’t get it, she came to him, and put her arms around him. He knew he should have been flattered by her attentions, but in­stead felt caged. So he shrugged himself out of the grasp of her comforting, protective arms.

“Let’s just think about solving the problem.”

Lourdes gaped at him as if he had hurled mud in her face. Her cheeks flushed with humiliation—but she soon recovered, finding some of her old stoicism to cool her eyes and cheeks. Then she surrendered.

“San Simeon,” she said.

“What?”

“I looked at a map, and there’s not much between here and Morro Bay—just San Simeon. Dillon could be there.”

Michael nodded. “San Simeon it is.” He kicked up the engine, and turned his eyes forward. He could tell Lourdes was waiting for more from him—a hug, a grin . . . anything—and when Michael didn’t deliver, she stormed down to the cabin.

“Who wants to find Dillon Cole anyway?” She pulled the cabin curtain shut behind her. Closest she could come to slamming a door, Michael supposed.

So, if this trip wasn’t about finding Dillon, then what was it about? Michael wondered. But he already knew the answer. It was about the old times. It was about being so alone that they needed each other more than they needed their next breath. But it wasn’t like that anymore for Michael—and although he still needed many things, he wasn’t sure Lourdes was one of them.

None of this was lost on Drew. He remained a silent observer as Michael cold-shouldered Lourdes down into the cabin, all the while crunching Chee-tos as he watched, like popcorn at the movies.

Now Drew spoke up as the last trace of sun fell behind cloud cover. “Hey Michael!” he said. “You’ll screw up my tan—why don’t you do that trick with the sky!”

“Not in the mood,” Michael told him. For months he had mined his own depths, and forced a happy face onto the world around him—but now that they were headed toward Dillon, there wasn’t a single vein of good cheer left to mine.

Drew, on the other hand, seemed as comfortable as could be. The world could end, and Drew would wise­crack his way into oblivion.

Michael was as envious as he was irritated. “Drew, this is serious shit here. I felt Dillon scream—and when Dillon screams, it doesn’t mean he stubbed his toe. Something major is going down, and I don’t know what the hell it is yet.”

“Hey, I have faith in you, man,” said Drew. “You can do no wrong.”

Michael had to smile. Drew’s trust was a powerful thing; something absurdly stable in the madness they were sailing into. But as far as doing no wrong, Drew was sorely mistaken. “You didn’t know me back east,” answered Michael.

“Yeah, yeah, I know—you were a monumental ass­hole,” said Drew.

“No. It was worse than that.” Michael put the engine on idle, and went over to sit beside him. “I had this parasite living inside me. . . . It drove me nuts . . . and kind of twisted everyone around me—"

“—And so you all took a trip to Oz, killed a few of your Flying Monkeys, and then realized there’s no place like home,” said Drew. “Lourdes told me the whole story while you were asleep—but that was like another lifetime. Who you were, and who you are, are two different things. I won’t hold all that other stuff against you.”

Michael glanced at the closed curtain of the cabin. “I just want you to understand why Lourdes and I get so weird at each other. It’s like you said—we were all different people. But Lourdes still wants us to be the same.”

“So, how do you feel about her now?” Drew asked.

“I don’t know,” Michael whispered. “When I try to dig down and pull up feelings about Lourdes, all I get are rocks.” Michael took a deep breath, and the smell of diesel fuel and seaweed cut a stinging path through his lungs. “I don’t think I feel anything anymore.”

“Maybe it’ll come back,” suggested Drew.

“I don’t think so.”

Drew nodded. “Good.”

Michael snapped his eyes to Drew curiously. “That’s good?”

“Well . . . yeah. I mean, how are you two ever going to deal with this Dillon dude if all you can think about is each other? This way you’ll be able to give it all your attention, right?”

Michael had to admit it made sense. “I wish we had you on our first trip,” Michael told him. “It would have been a whole lot saner with you around.”

“I would have gone, if I knew you back then.”

Michael laughed at that. “If you knew me then, you’d probably be first in line to swing a bat at my skull.”

But Drew shook his head. “No matter how screwed- up you were, I would have still been your friend.”

Although he appreciated the sentiment, Michael knew it couldn’t have been true, but still, it was nice of Drew to say so.

Drew put his hand on Michael’s shoulder in a gesture of friendship. “And whatever happens now,” continued Drew, “I’ll still be your running partner.”

In a moment the disk of the sun seemed ready to pierce the dreary sky, and Michael felt a bit embar­rassed that his emotions were as easy to read as sky­writing. He wanted to tell Drew what it meant to have a friend so true—so devoted. But before Michael could offer his thanks, Drew’s face eclipsed the light of the clearing sky like the face of a full moon.

A full moon on a collision course.

Michael realized what was about to happen, and he tried to say something—anything—but suddenly found his lips otherwise occupied.

... It did not feel right . . . .

... It did not feel wrong . . . .

It just felt . . . odd. Like stepping onto an escalator that wasn’t moving.

Michael just sat there, too stunned to respond to Drew’s kiss. It went on for a slow moment, and a mo­ment more, before Michael’s reflexes kicked in like an emergency generator. He grabbed Drew’s shoulders and pushed him away so hard, Drew nearly fell off the boat. Michael should have known what would happen next—but his brain was lagging way behind his gut in reacting to the new spin that the world had taken on. He began to feel long before he had the chance to think, and what he felt was not flowers and sunshine.

Drew must have seen it in his eyes.

“Michael, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean that!”

Michael wiped his lips with the back of his hand, never taking his eyes off of Drew. The air around them began to thin, as hot air shot up through the clouds, and cold air spiraled down around it, picking up speed.

“It was stupid. It was a mistake!” said Drew, his tan cheeks taking on a deep-red embarrassment.

The boat was moving now. Not forward, not back­ward . . . but clockwise. The boat had slowly begun to spin, and the thin air around it gave way to a sudden horizontal wind beneath a sky that had turned a strange shade of green.

Is this what Drew had been moving toward all this time? Not running partners. Not friends—but this?

“Please forget it, Michael,” Drew begged. “I need you to forget it.”

“Shut up!” Michael screamed, beyond hope of con­trol. “You’re not my friend! You’re not anything!”

Lies—everything he and Drew shared as friends was a lie! But worse, it wasn’t just Drew. Somewhere down in a place his own thoughts didn’t reach, Michael knew—but Michael had let it happen.

His confused rage drilled a hot tunnel through the clouds, while a chill funneled down to the very place they stood, and the boat began to tilt as its slow, clock­wise spin picked up speed.

Lourdes stumbled up from the cabin. “What is it? What’s happening?”

But Michael couldn’t speak to her, he could only stare at Drew, not even knowing who he saw anymore when he looked at him.

“Michael, don’t!” shouted Drew. “Please, don’t!”

The boat shuddered and tipped. Water began to slosh over the side, and they were all thrown to the wet deck. Michael, suddenly understanding what was happening around them, tried to take control of the swirling winds, but they were too far gone now, taking on a life of their own . . . and through the seawater that spat into his face, he could see the dark funnel of a full-fledged tornado.

“Grab on to something!” screamed Lourdes, just as the floor fell away beneath them, and the boat was plucked out of the sea. Lourdes locked her strong arm around the steering wheel, Michael grabbed the base of the driver’s seat, and Drew was hurled down into the cabin. The boat was dragged at least thirty feet out of the water. The waterspout spun it around its waist iwice, and then hurled it like a slingshot at the Cali­fornia coast a hundred yards away.

On Pacific Coast Highway, a businessman in a brand-new Lexus sped down the winding coastline road, imagining himself the lead driver in the Grand Prix. So focused was he on hugging the random curves, that he didn’t see the cyclone a hundred yards beyond his tinted side windows. He thought the salt water hitting his windshield was just a sudden downpour. He thought the wind was just the resistance his powerful car created as it sped down the coast. And so he had no warning at all when the cabin cruiser hit the pave­ment in front of him, skidding toward him on the wet asphalt. He stomped on his brake and heard an awful crunch, which became the sound of an inflating air bag.

Battered and bruised from the short but violent flight, neither Michael nor Lourdes dared open their eyes yet. They just listened as car after car screeched to a sudden halt, and the violent, offshore winds finally died.

Michael turned to Lourdes. “Are you okay?”

“I’m alive,” answered Lourdes.

Michael’s wind-reddened eyes began to blink back into clearer focus. The world around him began to take shape again.

The boat rested on the smashed, starboard side of its hull. At this angle, its deck was closer to being a bulk­head than a floor. Before them, motorists stood by their cars, stunned and confused by this anomalous sight be­fore them. It would have been funny if they didn’t hurt so much from the brutal ride.

And then Lourdes asked, “Where’s Drew?”

Michael felt a wave of nausea, chased by a wave of dread. Where was Drew?

He had a vague memory of seeing him fall through the flapping curtain of the cabin, before their boat was flung to shore. Michael quickly climbed up the buckled deck, and flung himself into the cabin.

All was not well down below.

The fiberglass hull had crushed down to half its size, and there was the twisted, gold-plated grille of a luxury car, where the bed should have been. The driver tried to catch his breath . . . while steam spewed from his ruined radiator, into Drew’s half-open eyes. His body had been crushed against the bulkhead, pinned between the remains of the car and the boat. His chest had col­lapsed like the shell of an egg, and the life had been pressed out of him in an instant.

The image kept hitting Michael’s brain and then bouncing right out, his mind refusing to accept it.

“Noooo!” he screamed. It came out more like a squeal—the kind of awful sound Drew himself might have made if he had the chance.

Lourdes began to warble something in incoherent Spanish when she saw him, paling and turning away.

“Lourdes, help me! Help me!” screamed Michael.

Together they wrenched Drew free from the grille of the car. “He’s breathing!” shouted Michael. “He’s . . .” But it wasn’t air bubbling out of his nose; it was blood. And even that flow quickly stopped, making it all too clear that there was no heart pumping. His chest was little more than a concave crater in his torso.

There were other voices now—motorists who had left their cars to inspect the wreckage. They tried to peer in through the gap where the Lexus had shattered the hull.

“We have to get out of here!” Lourdes tried to pull him away, but he violently shrugged her off.

“I can’t just leave him!” Michael knew he was re­sponsible for this. He had brought swift judgment on Drew, and had executed that judgment in a blink of an eye. Thanks to Michael, Drew had been crushed with the same unforgiving brutality of an old-fashioned stoning.

As he held Drew, Michael began to weep, and the heavens answered with a silent rain, lamenting all the things that were lost in the span of ninety seconds.

8. Book Of Wisdom

“You move like one unaccustomed to his own limbs,” Okoya told Winston. “I was wondering why.”

“I thought Tory already gave you the story.” Win­ston brushed the sweat from his brow, and looked around. “We’re not getting anywhere.” The three of them had left the train more than a day ago, and had since given up on hitchhiking, for the rural roads they traveled only zigzagged in pointless directions. They had taken off on foot, certain that Dillon was just a few miles west, across the bushy hills of central Cali­fornia; but it was more than just a few miles. They were met by endless wastelands where tumbleweeds gathered against neglected barbed-wire fences. They hiked for a good part of the night, and yet the morning landscape seemed no different from the scenery they saw at sundown.

They had come across a stream a few hundred yards back, where Tory had insisted on bathing, and so Winston and Okoya went on ahead, scouting out the next hill. Winston was not looking forward to the view, because he was sure of what, it would show them: more hills, and mountains for as far as the eye could see. No Dillon. No anything.

Halfway up the hill, he decided to rest. His legs ached. In truth, they always ached from growing pains as his muscles and tendons fought to match the puce of his bone growth.

“I’d still like to hear your side of the story,” said Okoya.

“I don’t know why I should tell you anything.”

Okoya sat down on a boulder and pulled out a book from his back pocket. A thin, maroon volume, hard­bound, but small, like an address book. “Then don’t.” He flipped it open, and gave it his attention. Winston found his indifference more irritating than his nosiness.

“A year ago I was the size of a six-year-old, and growing backward,” Winston told Okoya. “My touch couId numb you—paralyze you. And Tory—she was a human petri dish, covered with open sores that could probably spread every disease there is. That’s what we were like when we found each other.”

“And then you both destroyed your titans,” prompted Okoya. “Tory told me about it.”

“Whatever you want to call them; yes, we killed them. And now there’s a whole new problem.”

“Problem?”

“Yes. You saw our campsite this morning, didn’t you?”

Okoya laughed, but Winston failed to find the hu­mor. They had gone to bed on an open plain, and awoke in a forest of weeds that had grown so high you couldn’t see the color of the sky. Winston’s bedroll had been snared, and it took both Tory and Okoya to pull him free. What amazed Winston was that Okoya had taken the event in stride—as if he had already come to accept their powers at surface value. If there was one thing about Okoya that Winston liked, it was his refreshing lack of awe.

Winston glanced down at the little book Okoya held. “So, you going to write all this down?”

Okoya shook his head. “It’s not a book for writing, it’s one for reading.”

“Hualapai Wisdom?”

“There’s only one kind of wisdom,” answered Okoya.

“Can’t fit much in a book so thin.”

“You’d be surprised.”

Winston thought Okoya might give him a glance at it, but instead Okoya just slipped it into a back pocket. Winston grabbed his ankle and pulled his foot up be­hind him, in a hurdler’s stretch. The stitching at the tips of his sneakers popped open. Winston sighed, won­dering what size his feet now were.

“How much more do you think you’ll grow?” Okoya asked.

“I’ll be six foot one, according to the doctors, and they’re usually pretty accurate.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

Winston let his foot go, and sat down on a boulder a few feet away, studying Okoya.

“Intellectually, you’ve moved beyond most of the people in your life, haven’t you?” Okoya continued. “Tory must bore you to tears—you’re way out of her league.”

Winston had to laugh at that. “I’ll tell you some­thing, Okoya,” he said. “When I was in sixth grade, I had the word ‘sycophant’ in a spelling bee. Couldn’t spell it worth a damn then. But now I could spell it, define it, give you its etymology, and its usage in classic literature. So you might say I’m a little too smart to be won over by flattery.”

But Okoya only grinned. “Are you telling me you read the dictionary?”

“Only when I can’t sleep.”

“You’re right, Winston. That’s not impressive, it’s just strange.” And then Okoya became serious, taking a long, invasive look at Winston. “A flatterer thrives on telling lies,” Okoya said, “but I observe the truth. So what does that make me?”

Winston thought about the question. Wasn’t truth what he quested in everything he read, in all the things he learned? And was it true that he had outgrown Tory, and perhaps all the other shards as well?”

“Dangerous,” he answered. “It makes you danger­ous.”

“Truth is never dangerous in the right hands,” Okoya said.

They both turned at the sound of skittering pebbles.

Tory, still buttoning her blouse, hurried toward them, her pocket radio in hand.

“You have to hear this,” she said, turning up the volume.

“Bad news?” asked Winston.

“Just listen.”

The radio spat forth a strange news report between bursts of static: BZZZ BZZZ. . . “freak tornado hurled the cabin cruiser” . . . BZZZ BZZZ. . . “multiple inju­ries” . . . BZZZ BZZZ . . . “Pacific Coast Highway” . . . BZZZ BZZZ . . . “closed in both directions.”

Okoya beamed. “I’ll bet your friend Michael did that.”

Winston had to admit, it did have all the signs of a Michael Lipranski weather pattern. But what troubled him in was the fact that Okoya was so quick to figure it out. Now their companion knew everything about them, but they knew nothing about Okoya. If there was any skill Okoya had perfected, it was that of being a mirror, reflecting back at Tory and Winston their own sordid histories, while evading most conversations about himself.

They continued their journey, cresting the rocky hill ahead, to reveal yet more hills before them, as Winston expected . . . but this time, something was different.

“Looks like we’re getting somewhere,” Okoya said.

On the ridge of the next hill stood a high chain-link fence, far more daunting than any of the half­hearted barbed-wire they had climbed through. This fence meant business.

“Great,” said Tory. “What’s next? The Great Wall of China?”

But Winston wasn’t listening to her; his eyes were focused ahead on a distant hilltop covered with dense trees far different than the dry scrub that claimed the land around it. There was a building within those trees as well. A large one.

“I know where Dillon is,” said Winston, trying to catch his breath from the climb.

“In that house over there?” Tory asked.

“House?! Don’t you know what that is?”

“Maybe you should tell us,” said Okoya.

Winston kept his eyes locked on the distant hilltop, letting the shiver have its way with his spine. “That’s Hearst Castle,” he said. “Dillon’s in Hearst Castle.”

9. Sidestroke

Newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst built a shrine to himself in the golden hills of San Simeon, California: a glorious castle rising on a hilltop, ten miles from the Pacific shore.

In this palace, the billionaire wined and dined the stars of the twenties and thirties, as well as European royalty. He filled the place top to bottom with million-dollar trinkets . . . and when he died, he didn’t take it with him. Now the bizarre sprawling expanse of Hearst Castle fed the tourist economy of California’s central coast.

But as of today, it served a completely new purpose. And tourists would not be getting in.

Dillon Cole paced the floor of William Randolf Hearst’s private suite, thinking and reviewing, calcu­lating and obsessing, focusing and refocusing all of his attentions on the events exploding around him.

It had been five days since he had been carried from the Columbia River, in the hands of those he had fixed . . . and yet somehow he felt he had never left the river. He was still caught in its waters, floundering—drowning in a current out of his control. What he wanted—what he needed—was to get in control of the events spinning around him. He did not want to be worshiped by the stifling crowds drawn to him. He did not want them spreading word of his miraculous acts, and gaining converts to a cult dedicated to the service of Dillon Cole. But his power of cohesion was all too strong, and these people had enveloped him like a tidal wave.

Then a simple lesson in survival came to him.

You never swim against a current.

To survive, you forge a diagonal, slicing sideways until you’re clear from danger. So he stopped fighting the needy souls around him, and instead began a slow, sideways crawl.

Once again, he focused his attention on fixing, with a renewed passion. He didn’t resist the followers press­ing in around him. He let them do what they wanted to do, and when they told him they were taking him to a worthier place, he allowed this siege of the castle—for if his current of followers was determined to carry him to higher ground, fighting them would do no good. Sidestroke. He had to keep reminding himself that re­gardless of what they did, his own focus could not be compromised. He had to keep his energies trained on his repair work. Only by diligent repair could he hope to stave off the insidious downward spiral he now sensed everywhere in the world around him. There were times he prayed to have that burden of sight lifted from him; for to be able to feel all those hairline frac­tures spreading in the fabric of civilization, was a prescience no one should have to endure.

This morning like every morning, he scoured the newspapers brought to him by his followers, with hopes of finding the nature of the reckoning to come. Al­though he could sense those fractures in the bulwarks, he still didn’t know their cause. There had to be clues—a series of smaller events that might point out to him the form that the great unraveling would take. Would it be a wound that slowly leaked out the world’s life-blood, or would it be a massive hemorrhage from which there could be no recovery?

If the great unraveling had a face—if it had a form—he knew he could beat it. If it were a creature that flew in on dark wings, like his own spirit of destruction, Dillon would find a way to grapple with it. . . . But this new sense of doom had no form—it was just a feeling that colored everything he saw in a deepening shade of gray. How could he fight a feeling?

He wasn’t quite sure, but at least he knew he wouldn’t have to fight it alone. The others were com­ing. All four of them. He could see their faces in his mind so clearly—he could almost hear their voices. They were close now—he was certain of it. Their help would buffer his own growing sense of futility. With the live of them together again, it would be almost like having Deanna alive again. Almost.

The piles of newspapers were of no help today, and so he dared to take a look at the sports pages—not because he expected to find something earth-shattering there, but because it was something enjoyable, and as he looked through the stats and articles of a hundred teams he had lost track of over the past year, it occurred to him that he could not remember when he had last taken the time for simple human pleasure. He had once been an athletic kid, but he hadn’t as much as put on a pair of Rollerblades since he was thirteen. He used to live on Rollerblades before the world had heaved itself onto his shoulders. Days when his hair was a brighter shade of orange, and his parents were alive to worry about the stupid things he did.

A knock resounded from the heavy wooden doors of his museum gallery of a bedroom, and he snapped the sports pages closed, as if taking some time for himself was a criminal activity. The door creaked open, to ad­mit Carol Jessup—the woman whose daughter Dillon had “fixed.” She carried a tray of food, and although she was at least ten years his senior, she acted as if Dillon were the elder.

“I brought you something to eat,” she said. “We thought you might be hungry.”

A chorus of anguished wails blew in the door from elsewhere in the castle. People bellowing in pain. The high stone walls drained the life out of those screams, turning them into the hollow baying of ghosts.

Carol forced a smile, despite the awful sounds.

“More work for you,” she said. “They’re being brought to the Gothic Study—would you like to see?”

“No!” snapped Dillon. “I’ll see enough of them later.”

The woman put down the tray. “If there’s anything you need—anything at all.. .”

“Yeah,” said Dillon. “How about a pair of Rollerblades, and a retake of the last four years?”

“Excuse me?”

“Never mind,” he told her. “Thanks for the food. You can go now.”

She nodded her head respectfully and quietly turned to leave, then turned back to him. “Oh, one more thing,” she said. “Three youngsters arrived, claiming to be friends of yours.”

Dillon snapped his eyes to the woman so severely, she gasped and took a step back.

“What?! Where are they?” He had sensed they were close, but hadn’t realized how close.

“Well . . . uh . . . we’ve been questioning them,” she stammered. “They do seem suspicious . . .”

Dillon stormed toward the door. “Where are they?”

“We only wanted to protect you.”

“Just tell me where they are!”

“The Assembly Room.”

And since Dillon had no idea where that might be, he had her lead the way, ignoring the mournful moans escaping from deeper in the castle.

The Assembly Room was a great hall festooned with gold statues and exquisite tapestries. Flames filled an immense fireplace, large enough to be the mouth of a cavern, and the moment he entered, the flames wa­vered, and the two figures standing before him seemed to sway, as if suddenly blasted by the power of Dillon’s presence. He recognized them right away, in spite of how different they looked from when he had last seen them: Winston so much taller; Tory’s skin so clean.

He approached them cautiously, as if the creak of every floorboard could be the trigger of a mine.

Winston spoke up first. “I was going to ask how you managed to take over Hearst Castle, but, hell, you’re Dillon Cole,” he said with a sneer. “You can get away with anything.”

Dillon offered him the slightest grin. “Almost any­thing.”

He was met with an uncomfortable silence. They were waiting for an explanation. Why had he called out to them? What were they doing here? Dillon didn’t know where to begin.

“I know this is going to sound strange,” Dillon fi­nally said, “but you can’t imagine how much I’ve missed you.”

They didn’t answer to that; the feeling was clearly not mutual.

“That’s all right,” said Dillon. “After what I’ve put you through, I’m surprised you came looking for me at all.” Then a third guest who Dillon had not noticed before, stepped forward from the dim shadows of the corner. This wasn’t one of the shards. It was a stranger with dark eyes, high cheekbones, and black hair that ran smoothly from his head and down his spine. “Do I know you?”

“You will,” said the dark-eyed stranger.

“Okoya hooked up with us in New Mexico,” said Tory.

He reached out and shook Dillon’s hand, keeping those dark eyes locked on his. The stranger’s grip was firm, but the skin supple. Dillon felt the bite of finger­nails that were a fraction of an inch too long against the back of his hand. “I’ve become a big admirer of yours,” said Okoya.

“I have too many of those.” Dillon turned to the Jessups who guarded the door. “I’d like to be left alone with my friends,” Dillon told them, but the couple was reluctant to go.

“Are you sure that’s wise?” said Mrs. Jessup.

“We don’t know these people,” said her husband.

“They’re not respectful of you.”

“They’re not in awe of you.”

“What if they mean to hurt you?”

“We could never allow that.”

“Just shut up and go,” Dillon told them.

“We’ll be right outside,” Mr. Jessup said. “If there’s anything that you need—anything at all . . .” Then the couple left, swinging the huge wooden doors shut.

“Some group of happy campers you got here,” said Tory.

Dillon chuckled ruefully. “Happy Campers. Yeah, that’s exactly what they are.”

“So if everyone’s so thrilled to be here,” asked Win­ston, “where’s all that moaning coming from? And don’t tell me it’s just the wind.”

Dillon thought about how he might answer that ques­tion. He could try to explain it in a calm, rational way, and sort of ease them into it . . . but decided it was best to let them see it with their own eyes. Then maybe they’d understand how badly Dillon needed their help.

“I’ll take you there,” Dillon said. Winston and Tory didn’t seem too keen on the idea, but they went along. Unfortunately Okoya thought this was an open invita­tion. Dillon had to step into Okoya’s path to stop his momentum.

“I’m sorry, but you can’t come.”

There was a flash of ice in Okoya’s gaze that was quickly replaced by an apologetic smile. “Of course not,” Okoya said. “Actually, I was hoping to explore the castle.”

Dillon nodded, relieved. “If anyone tries to stop you, tell them you have my personal permission.”

“Your name strikes fear into their hearts,” said Okoya with a grin. “I like that about you.”

Dillon laughed, thinking it was a joke. But when he thought about it later, he wasn’t so sure.

10. Death’s Doorstep

The Gothic Study was a step beyond nightmare. The dark arches of its vaulted ceiling gave one the uneasy sense of being trapped in the hull of a cap­sized ship. The walls were lined with aging, dust-coated volumes, and the entire room had become an ad hoc repository of misery: the diseased; the dying; the ones hopelessly broken by life. The floor was filled with almost thirty desperate souls suffering in pain and anguish.

Winston and Tory turned their eyes away, but Dillon did not. He had surrendered his disgust long ago.

“Every day, my ‘Happy Campers’ bring me people to fix,” he told them. “There’s more and more each day.”

There was a man before them with multiple leg frac­tures, who appeared to have been hijacked right from the scene of an accident. “I suppose I’ve made some converts of the local paramedics, and emergency-room doctors. They’ve started to secretly divert patients my way.”

The wounded man looked up at them in weak terror, not even knowing why he was there.

“There’s some people I can help, and others I can’t,” Dillon said. “Because there are some things I just can’t do . . . . That’s why I need you.”

Winston shook his head. “I . . . I can’t do things like that—I can’t.”

“You can, and you know it,” said Dillon. “I’m sure you helped a lot of people back home.”

“By accident,” snapped Winston. “Never on pur­pose!”

“Somehow,” said Dillon, “I thought you would have grown wiser. Wisdom does come along with your gift, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe I’m wise enough to know not to screw with things I don’t understand.”

Tory’s eyes drifted to a man across the room whose hacking, liquid cough spoke of tuberculosis.

Like Winston, she had never actively sought to cure the ills of the world around her—as if she had no right to willfully use her power. But faced with the misery before her, it seemed selfish and cruel to stand there and do nothing. And maybe it would make her feel better about herself. Cleaner.

She made her way across the room to the coughing man, and began gently massaging his fiery throat and inflamed chest. “Am I doing this right?” she called back to Dillon, but Dillon had no answer, because he had no idea. In less than a minute, however, the man was breathing easier, as the disease drained from his lungs.

Dillon led the reluctant Winston across the room. “They keep bringing me people with lost limbs . . . but I have to send them away,” Dillon told him. “I can fix broken bones, but I can’t fix something that’s not even there.”

They stopped before a man with bandages on his knees, and nothing but air where the rest of his legs should have been. His dressings had already been re­moved.

“A human being is not a tree!” Winston shouted.

“You don’t just regenerate a new limb out of thin air. It’s against the laws of nature.”

Dillon took a step closer. “So break the law.”

Winston shuddered out a sickened breath, then knelt down to the legless man, realizing, as Tory had, that his own conscience left him no choice. “Dillon, have I ever told you how much I hate you?”

Dillon nodded. “Maybe we can fix that, too.”

“Please,” begged the man. “Please take me back to the hospital.”

Winston looked at the raw stumps, where swollen flesh was pulled tight by heavy sutures. “What hap­pened to you?”

The man grimaced. “I need morphine!”

“Was it an accident?”

“You kids are crazy! What are you doing here? What are you doing?! I need my medication!”

“Shh.” Winston bit back his own revulsion, and pressed his hands forward. He had seen his share of charismatic evangelists lay hands on the infirmed, pro­nouncing them healed to the cheers of a wide-eyed flock. But this—this would be something very differ­ent. Because not even the most brazen of faith healers claimed the ability to put back that which the good Lord had taken away.

Winston focused his attention on the man’s left stump, where his fingertips gently touched it. It took about a minute to see the flesh begin to swell—the stump to elongate almost imperceptibly. The skin gath­ered by the sutures began to stretch as new growth pushed on them from the inside. The sutures burst, but rather than spilling forth gore, new folds of flesh un­folded from within the wound, slowly inflating with bone and muscle. And Winston suddenly found himself smiling, no longer repulsed, but rather thrilled with himself and this ability he had never dared to tap; con­sumed by the magnitude of his own power.

Ten miles away, crowds of angry tourists packed around the ticket booth at the Hearst Castle Visitors Center, when a weather system bore down on them from the north. In moments, the sky turned gray, and the wind blew bone-cold.

Three teenagers drove up in a stolen car. The two in the front seemed anxious. The one in the back was dead.

“The castle’s closed for repairs,” the parking atten­dant told them. “You can take the garden tour, but you can’t get inside the castle.”

Lourdes looked out of her window to the long lines by the ticket booth. Hours’ worth of lines.

“We have to get inside!” Michael blurted out. “He’s in there!”

The parking attendant looked at him curiously. “Who’s in there?”

Lourdes watched as Michael stammered helplessly. Her beloved Michael never had a head for strategy in light situations. He either stormed too hard, bringing about disaster, or blew an ineffectual wind in the midst of panic. That’s why he needs me—to get him through the hardest times, thought Lourdes. He needs me for that and much, much more. He must realize that by now. She threw a glance to the backseat, and pulled the blanket over an exposed edge of Drew’s body. She didn’t know what had set off Michael’s lethal tantrum, and although Drew’s death was a bitter pill for them to swallow, Lourdes resolved not to dwell on it right now. They couldn’t abandon his body, nor could they bring him home. That meant they would have to bury him themselves—a grim prospect Lourdes was not ready to consider.

“Is there a problem here?” the attendant asked, be­ginning to notice Drew’s lack of animation.

“No problem at all,” said Lourdes. “Pleasant dreams”— and the guard collapsed to the ground with a thud and the skitter of loose gravel.

Lourdes then turned toward the crowds, concentrated, and pushed forth an airborne nerve impulse. It struck all the tourists in the lot, and they fell to the ground like a collection of rag dolls in Hawaiian shirts.

Michael turned to her, flabbergasted. It was the first time he had seen how her powers had grown. Clearly he was impressed. “Lourdes, what did you do?”

“I put them all to sleep.”

“For how long?”

Lourdes shrugged. “It depends on how tired they were.”

They locked the gate behind them to deter new tour­ists, then drove up the winding road to the castle.

From the coastline, Hearst Castle appeared small and insignificant, but the closer one got, the more its audacious majesty came into focus. It had the semblance of a great Spanish cathedral—a four-story Castile, between two bell towers shimmering with blue-and-gold tile.

Tourists flocked the palatial grounds around the cas­tle and guest houses, chattering to one another, and taking snapshots, but the doors to every entrance of La Casa Grande—the great castle itself—were closed to visitors.

A pair of guards were posted on either side of the wrought-iron gates. One of them shifted position, just enough to display the weapon holstered on his waist.

“I’m sorry,” he said, eyeing Michael and Lourdes as they approached. “The castle is closed until further notice.”

“We’re here to see Dillon Cole,” said Michael.

“He’s expecting us,” Lourdes added. “Or at least he should be.”

The guards reacted instantly, looking to one another, not sure what to do.

“Are you one of us?”

“No,” said Winston. “We’re one of him.”

The guards considered the prospect fearfully. “Yes,” they said, swinging the gates open to admit them. “He has been expecting you.”

The interior of the castle was spectacularly overdone, from the Louis XIV armoires, to the Ming dynasty vases. The entire castle mocked itself at every turn with self-conscious opulence. Men and women stood at every threshold, like an unofficial security gauntlet, and Lourdes had the distinct feeling they were passing through layer after layer of protection that surrounded Dillon and his inner sanctum. Until finally, a door opened before them, and they stepped from paradise into Hell.

Michael had hoped to see no more carnage today, but here before his eyes, was a room full of people who weren’t much better off than Drew. Michael had to cover his ears from the awful sounds of anguish around him.

“Madre de Dios!” gasped Lourdes. “What happened here?” Then Michael caught sight of Dillon tending to a woman whose many wounds had left her a bloody mess. Winston and Tory were there, too—both of them as focused as surgeons, as they moved around the room.

Dillon caught sight of them, but didn’t bother to greet them. “Good. You’re here!” he said, as someone closed the door behind them, pushing them off the threshold and into the room.

“Michael!” shouted Dillon. “These people here are way too stressed, and it’s getting in the way. Can you do something about it?”

But Michael could only stand there with his jaw dropped; his own sense of panic infusing the patients like a lightning storm, adding to the chaos.

“I said, can you do something about it?!”

Suddenly, Michael realized he had been here before. It was the “emergency-room dream.” Michael would walk through a door, and find himself a surgeon, in the midst of mortal chaos, with absolutely no medical knowledge. His anxiety continued to skyrocket.

With nothing but dead air from Michael, Dillon turned his attention to Lourdes. “Lourdes, could you do something about their pain?”

“Wh-what should I do?”

Across the room, Winston left one patient, and moved on to another. “C’mon, Lourdes,” Winston said. “If we can do this, so can you!”

The panic in the room continued to build as the patients continued to resonate Michael’s emotional dis­tress. Around them, people began to squirm and scram­ble to their feet, trying to flee.

“Michael, stop it!” shouted Tory. “You’re only mak­ing it worse!” Michael could feel his own state of terror stab into the hearts of those assembled, creating greater and greater panic. Lately, making bad situations worse had become a specialty of Michael’s. He wasn’t about to let his own shortcomings ruin the efforts of the oth­ers, so he spun on his heels, and pushed his way out of the room, slamming the doors closed behind him.

In the hallway, he leaned against the cold marble balustrade, and sunk to the floor, dropping his head into his hands. Back in Newport Beach, his emotions had been in tight control for so long—but now they flew rabid and reckless.

Those emotions had snuffed the life out of Drew, who even now grew colder in the backseat of the stolen car. And what would Michael do about that! Send a body bag to Drew’s parents, with his deepest apolo­gies? Somehow, Michael doubted Hallmark had a sen­timent for “Sorry I killed your son.”

From beyond the closed doors, Michael could hear the cries of pain fade away. What was Lourdes doing? he wondered. Putting them to sleep? Was she regulat­ing strained hearts and administering some sort of psy­chic anesthesia?

At least she could give them respite from their pain, but for Michael there was no such relief.

“Something wrong?”

Michael looked up to see someone leaning against a column a few yards down the hall. Michael pointed to the closed door of Dillon’s little operating room. “Take a look in that madhouse, and ask me again.”

“I was asking about you.”

“Nothing wrong with me a nice long coma couldn’t cure.”

The stranger took a step closer, whistling a tune that seemed familiar, but Michael could not quite place it.

“Want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

Then the stranger sat down beside him. “No one with that much trouble in their eyes can be quiet for long.”

Michael was about to get up and leave, when the stranger began to whistle that tune again. It frustrated Michael that he couldn’t quite place it. He turned and for the first time really saw the stranger’s face. There was something odd about it. His curiosity kept him from leaving.

“No point in talking,” said Michael. “Thanks any­way.”

“Poor Michael,” mocked the stranger. “The other shards won’t let you play.”

Michael bristled. “Who the hell are you, and how do you know my name?”

“Tory and Winston speak of you so often, I feel as if I already know you. Although you seem far less shifty than they made you out to be.”

“Shifty? They said I’m shifty?”

The stranger sat beside him. “Deeply troubled.”

Michael felt a seed of anger, and resentment toward the others begin to take root. And he let it, finding that the resentment felt good. “Yeah, well, they’re the ones who are troubled. Bottomless pits, if you ask me.”

“Perhaps they’re not the friends you think they are.”

Michael studied the stranger, trying to divine what he was getting at, but he only grinned, as if he were the one with Michael’s best interests at heart.

“Maybe, maybe not.”

Michael studied the face a moment longer, until he finally realized what had seemed so strange. “What are you anyway?” Michael asked. “A guy or girl?”

The stranger shrugged. “Which do you prefer?”

Michael had to laugh at that. “Neither,” he said.

“Tell me your troubles. Maybe I can bring you some peace.”

And although Michael hadn’t cared to discuss it, he found himself spilling his guts into the patient ears of this strange new friend.

In the crowded space of the Gothic Study, Dillon, Tory, Lourdes, and Winston worked their curious magic. Dillon set broken bones, and sent the most malignant of tumors into spontaneous remission, while Lourdes doused pain, and steadied the rhythms of failing hearts. Tory set up one sterile field after another, while Winston regenerated organs, limbs, and nerve pathways that had, until now, been irretrievably lost.

The patients began this triage in terror and confusion, but as the numbers of the healed increased, the fear was subjugated by astonishment. Restored patients be­came an awed audience, watching as the four worked their wonders on the rest.

It was over in less than an hour, and when they were done, the room was a joyous gathering of healthy peo­ple.

The doors were swung open wide to let them out.

“But we don’t want to go!” they clamored. “We want to stay here. With you . . . with all of you!” And so the Happy Campers at the door led them away, to find them all a place in Dillon’s perfect order.

Winston, Lourdes, and Tory had expected to find nothing but misery once they found Dillon—and al­though he did show them misery, he had also shown them misery’s end. As the last of the new recruits left the room, Michael stepped in, looking pale and op­pressed, with Okoya lingering in the shadows, just be­yond the door.

Michael opened his mouth to say something, but Lourdes cut him off.

“Michael, it was incredible,” she said, throwing her arms around him. “You missed everything!”

“I knew I affected people, but it was never like that!” said Winston. “The things I was able to do in there . . .”

“It’s because we’re together,” suggested Tory. “To­gether we’re greater than the sum of our parts.”

The others took a moment to consider this, dazzled by the magnitude of the thought. How great were they, really? How much greater could they become?

Dillon, however, remained unimpressed. “This was just one day’s work. There’ll be more tomorrow,” he said, as he straightened out chairs and benches.

“But why?” Tory asked. “Why will there be more? Why are we doing this?”

“Because we can.” offered Lourdes.

“Not because we can,” said Dillon. “But because we have to . . . . There’s so much I need to tell you, I don’t know where to start.”

And then, finally, Michael forced out what he had been trying to say since he had ventured into the room. “I know where to start,” he said. There was a lump in his throat, and the words came out muted. “Okoya and I just brought a friend of mine in from the car . . .”

“Oh no . . . Drew!” gasped Lourdes.

“Before we do anything,” Michael said, “I want to give him a decent burial.”

Dillon regarded Michael curiously. “Burial?”

“Isn’t that what you normally do with dead people?” Michael spat out.

“No,” said Dillon. “Actually, it’s not.”

Running! Sprinting!

A nameless runner charging backward through a blind race.

He could not remember the moment before—all he could do. was feel the motion as he moved across an impossible distance. The space around him stretched like a piece of elastic, until it seemed like . . . a tunnel. He was running backward through a tunnel. The jour­ney lasted only a moment longer, and then he awoke with a single thought in his mind, so powerful that he had to speak aloud. It was who he was. It was his name.

“Drew Camden!” The sound of his own voice woke him, his mind charged and fully alert. He opened his eyes to find himself in the soft light of a strange, oc­tagonal room. The ceiling was inlaid gold, the four-poster bed on which he lay was gold, and soft golden light poured in through windows covered with deli­cately patterned grills.

“Welcome to the Celestial Suite.”

The voice was unfamiliar. Drew sat up, but the speaker had left. Drew only caught a flicker of his red hair as he exited, on his way down the stairs.

But Michael was there, standing and staring.

A pang of regret—a pang of sorrow—came to Drew as he recalled the last time they had seen each other, but he chose not to face that. Not now.

“It’s like I’ve died and gone to heaven,” said Drew, throwing his gaze around the Celestial Suite.

“You may have,” said Michael, “but now you’re here.”

“What happened?”

“I killed you,” Michael said. “And Dillon brought you back.”

There was a pause, as Drew tried to process that bit of information. Finally, Michael said, “Dinner’s at seven. Come on down if you’re hungry.” And he left Drew alone in the eight-sided room, with the faces of more than a dozen statues staring at him, as if waiting to see what he was going to do now.

11. Life In The Key Of D

“Last year, after you all left,” Dillon began, “I found that I could repair as well as I could ruin, and the more I fixed, the better I got.”

The Billiard Room, like most of the rooms in the castle, had a stone yawn of a fireplace, and walls cov­ered in medieval tapestries. Dillon didn’t have much use for the room, but it was less intimidating than the vaulted expanse of the Assembly Room, which was far too imposing a place to speak of imposing things.

“Death isn’t an easy thing to reverse,” Dillon ex­plained, “but I’ve had practice.” He didn’t tell them how much practice it had taken. How, at first, he would have to hold corpses in his arms for hours, until the decay gave way to living flesh once more, and their spirits were coaxed back into being. Those were mem­ories better left unshared.

Michael tried to play a game of pool, but his hands shook so much that he missed the cue ball. “Do you need a license to raise the dead, or is that just for cars and guns?”

Winston stood at the far end of the room. Although he had gotten taller, he was dwarfed by the statues on either side. “So now you’re in the resurrection busi­ness?”

Dillon grimaced, his mind running to find a less loaded euphemism. “Let’s just say I charge people’s batteries.”

The thought brought a collective shiver to the room, which made Dillon angry. “Is it so different from what the rest of you have been doing?” He turned to Mi­chael. “I’ve been hearing about strange weather sys­tems in southern California. Is that where you’ve been, Michael?”

Michael hesitated before hitting the cue ball. “Yeah . . . so?”

Dillon turned to Tory. “The dropping crime rate in Miami keeps making national news. Somehow I don’t think it’s because of good police work,”

Tory looked away. “It’s just something that hap­pens,” she said. “It was never intentional.”

Dillon glanced at Winston and Lourdes, who both looked away, making it clear that they were guilty of some power play as well.

“You’ve all been out there,” said Dillon. “So don’t act like I’m any different from you.”

“What you do is . . . bigger,” Tory said.

Then a voice spoke out from the corner. “Yes—but let’s not be fearful of it. Isn’t that what you’re saying, Dillon?”

It was Okoya. Until now, Okoya had remained a dis­tant observer. In fact, Dillon had forgotten he was there. Okoya was the only one unfazed, reclining com­fortably in a plush lounge chair, as if he were William Randolph Hearst himself. He seemed to carry himself like someone born to royalty: such smooth, elegant composure. Dillon wanted to ask Okoya to leave, but Okoya seemed too much of an ally right now. Instead Dillon turned to the others.

“Okoya’s right. You can’t let it scare you. There’s enough people acting strangely around here—at least we could treat each other as if we were normal.”

Winston strode closer. “Don’t you think there’s a reason for them to act strangely? You bring back the dead, you take over a national landmark to play house, and you let all your followers think you’re God at six­teen—"

“What they think is their problem!” snapped Dillon.

“No, it’s yours,” Winston said.

“I don’t see a problem.”

It was Okoya again. They all turned to him, still reclining in the velvet lounge. His voice was quiet, but commanding. Dillon found himself completely up­staged.

“It’s human nature to find divinity in anything greater than oneself,” Okoya said. “If they see you as gods, what harm does that do? And besides, their de­votion can be used.”

“I don’t like it,” muttered Winston.

“Get used to it,” said Okoya. “I would say that your time of hiding is over.”

Lourdes sauntered closer to Okoya. “You’re pretty accepting of all of this. Aren’t you the least bit sur­prised, or shocked by what you’ve seen here today?”

Okoya pulled himself up from the lounge, to face them eye-to-eye. “Acceptance is the advantage of an open mind.”

“I’m not impressed by your fortune-cookie senti­ments, Okoya,” said Winston.

“All right, then. Maybe I’m so calm about it because I’ve always suspected I’d find myself in the shadow of greatness. And being here with all of you feels like coming home.”

Dillon pushed his way in front of the others. “And exactly where is home?”

“Hualapai Nation,” answered Okoya. “But you al­ready know that.”

“Somehow,” said Dillon, “I suspect you’re a much longer way from there than you’d care to let on.”

“I’ve traveled,” Okoya said. “And you’d be wise not to grill someone who comes to you in good faith. It’s the sign of a weak leader.”

The comment stung Dillon far more than he thought it would—and yet there was something refreshing in it: that after the constant acquiescence Of the Happy Campers, here was a personality that actually chal­lenged him. Dillon caught himself grinning, and Okoya returned it. It served to make the others uneasy.

“You still haven’t told us why you’ve dragged us into this nasty game,” Winston asked him. Dillon broke eye contact with Okoya, and turned back to the others.

“It’s got to be more than just trauma care,” said Tory.

“You’re right,” admitted Dillon, “there is more. I called to you . . . I gathered you back together, because it’s the only way to fix what’s gone wrong.”

Winston took a breath for a loud rebuttal, but his brain must have hooked around what Dillon had said. Winston hesitated for a moment, then spoke in a wor­ried whisper.

“What do you mean—‘gone wrong’?”

The other shards had moved closer now, pressing in around the billiard table. Dillon took a deep breath to calm himself.

“Five days ago, I swam the Columbia River,” he told them, “and from the moment I climbed out, I felt a shift in the patterns around me. . . . Patterns of the pres­ent . . . and the future. Suddenly I felt everyone and everything begin a long spiral toward a very dark place.”

“You never killed your parasite,” Tory reminded Dil­lon. “Maybe that’s what you sensed. Maybe that thing has found a way back into this world, and it’s starting to destroy again:” “No,” Dillon said. “No—if it came back, I’d know it. This is something different. Maybe something worse.”

“What could be worse than that?” asked Lourdes.

“All I know,” said Dillon, “is that the first domino is down. Freak events are going to start piling on top of each other, and then one day, people are going to wake up to find that there is no order anymore.”

“The apocalypse is supposed to have four horsemen,” grumbled Winston. “Not five.”

“We’re not ringing it in, Winston,” said Tory. “I think Dillon has a plan to prevent it. Is that what you’re saying, Dillon?”

“I think there’s a chance, if we’re all together.”

“But we’re not all together,” Winston reminded them.

Dillon looked away. He didn’t need to be reminded of how incomplete they were without Deanna—how incomplete he was.

“It’s the best we can do,” he said.

“So, if I’m seeing this right,” said Michael, “you want us all to bust our asses fixing whatever we can, and whoever we can . . . and that way, we might keep things from tanking?”

“Bail out the Titanic!” said Lourdes.

Dillon grinned. “With a big enough bucket.”

Tory came over to him. “You’ve changed, Dillon,” she said.

“I like to think so.” Then he picked up a cue stick, and stroked the cue ball. It struck the other balls, send­ing the solid colors ricocheting around the table, until they had all found a pocket. The eight ball was the last one to drop.

“Show-off,” mumbled Michael.

Dillon turned to Okoya. If Okoya had an opinion, he wasn’t sharing it. Their exotic guest offered little more than an enigmatic smile. Does he approve, or disap­prove? Dillon wondered. And why do I care? That was the question that troubled him more.

If the world was winding down, it didn’t seem to dampen anyone’s spirit over dinner. Michael noted that the mood in the Refectory was more festive than fore­boding, and he didn’t quite know what to make of it. A legion of Dillon’s Happy Campers did everything short of sponge-bathing them to make them feel com­fortable, and although the attention felt odd at first, Michael found himself becoming accustomed to it re­markably quickly.

They sat together at a table large enough to seat two dozen, and were served a feast fit for kings. Michael had tried to sandwich himself between Dillon and Tory, but somehow Lourdes still managed to squeeze her seat next to his. Michael watched as she ate conspicuously small portions, and loudly denied seconds. It was all for Michael’s sake, of course—to let him know that her obesity, and any hints of gluttony were gone for­ever. As if her new blossomed beauty could tip the scales, and make him fall madly in love with her—which was about as unlikely as him falling in love with the reanimated Drew.

Michael tried to forget about it and listen to the din­ner conversation.

“I hate to admit it,” Winston was saying, “but maybe Dillon’s started something here that should have hap­pened as soon as we converged the first time. I mean, for the last year, all I’ve been doing is ‘dealing’ with things. The tree that uprooted my house, the branches growing through the windows, the neighbors who were afraid to look me in the face; and that’s all I did: deal.”

The door to the kitchen opened, and five dutiful workers brought in the next course, setting it before them on Hearst’s most expensive china.

“After the things we did today,” said Tory, “the things we did together—I can’t go back to living the way I did before. Okoya’s right; our time of hiding is over.”

Michael tried to imagine himself as the world’s Peace Bringer; a great soul sent to calm the skies and raise the spirits of the downtrodden. Certainly he had done some of that back home, but he was only playing, really. He wondered how far his power over the natures could go, if he allowed it. How many minds and emo­tions could he bring into harmony, if he set himself to the task?

“You know,” said Michael, “I could really get off, spending my life tweaking people into tune.”

“And what about you, Dillon?” said Tory. “I mean, look at all the people who died too young, who could change the world if you brought them back: Martin Luther King, JFK, Princess Di . . . Don’t you ever think about that?”

“Yes,” said Dillon, between bites of his steak. “Re­mind me to show you my list.”

Dillon left before dessert, and Michael used Dil­lon’s exit as a chance to escape the table as well. He took a plate of food with him.

Drew wasn’t in the Celestial Suite, and while the helpful hordes around Michael leapt at the opportunity to be of assistance, none of them knew where to find him.

Michael found Drew sitting on a stone bench in the basement, in a sort of self-imposed exile. It was a mournful place of unrestored artifacts—wounded stat­ues, torn tapestries—and Michael wondered if Dillon’s presence in the halls up above would, in time, mend these forlorn relics the way his aura restored most everything else. Still, no amount of restoration would stop the basement from resembling a dungeon.

When Drew saw Michael, he quickly stood up and made himself look busy, studying the objects around him.

“Hearst must have been a maniac,” Drew said ca­sually. “Half the art in the world is in this place.”

Michael reached the bottom of the steps, and handed Drew the plate of food.

“It’s cold,” Drew deadpanned, but Michael sensed his gratitude nonetheless. The food’s aroma chased away the mossy stench of the basement walls, and added the slightest degree of comfort to the situation. Still Michael kept a few feet of distance between them, lodging his hands firmly in his pockets, while Drew sat down to eat.

“So,” said Michael, “how’s life?”

Drew ate hungrily. “Better than death.”

Michael ventured a step closer. “What was it like?” asked Michael. “Being dead, I mean.”

“There was a lot of tofu and new-age music.”

Michael grinned. “You must have gone to Hell.”

Drew pondered his plate for a moment. “Actually, I don’t remember anything at all. It’s as if my mind went through an air lock between here and there. You know what they say: ‘You can’t take it with you.’ I suppose you can’t bring it back, either.”

Michael finally sat beside Drew on the steps, which was about as awkward as anything Michael had ever done. He kept trying to kill the silence with some meaningful words, something truthful that didn’t sound trite, but all that came out were false starts.

“You must hate me in a major way,” Drew finally said.

Michael tried to run a little mental subroutine to see if he could find hatred in there. But that was a feeling as absent as love.

“No,” Michael told him, “I just feel . . . tricked.”

“Yeah. I’m good at that,” said Drew. “I even trick myself sometimes.” Drew took a few moments to com­pose his thoughts, and became uncharacteristically se­rious.

“I never meant the mind-screw.” Drew said. “And if it means anything—I really am your friend. The other feeling . . . well, it slipped in when I wasn’t looking.”

“Yeah—well, as long as it doesn’t slip in while I’m not looking.”

Drew grimaced and chalked his finger in the air. “Point for you. I walked into that one with both feet, didn’t I?”

Drew picked through the remnants of his meal, then put the plate down. Even the gentle clatter of the plate on the bench echoed hollowly off the stone walls. Mi­chael found himself filled with questions that he didn’t want answered, so he just sat there, looking down at the dusty floor.

“Hell, everyone’s got some glitch, right?” Drew said with a smile. “So I figure this is mine.”

“And I always thought you were glitchless.”

Drew chuckled. “Perfection on three legs, right? Big man on campus. The track coach would have a cow if he knew. Shit, he’d have a whole herd!”

“Your parents know?”

“For about a year.”

“Is it bad?”

Drew shrugged. “They kind of treat me like I’m the murderer of their future grandchildren, but most of the time it’s okay . . .” Drew looked up, turning his eyes to a faded tapestry, rather than looking at Michael. “Last week was bad, though,” he said. “My father, who never usually talks about it, starts telling me about some guy he found who could ‘straighten me out.’ You know— like all I need is a good chiropractor. Anyway, I went ballistic, he retaliated, and that’s how I ended up at your house that night.”

Michael swallowed hard, remembering the troubled man who had come to visit him that same day: The man asking Michael to change his son’s nature. The man who must have been Drew’s father.

Drew shook his head as he thought about it, and laughed. “Now my parents probably think that I ran off to join the queer circus.”

“Maybe you should go home.”

“No,” said Drew quickly. “How could I leave after seeing what you are—what your friends are? How could I ever go back?”

Michael shuddered to think of Drew as one of the Happy Campers.

“What if I kept a journal for you?” suggested Drew. “A record of all the things that happen from here on in. Anything . . . so I can be a part of this.”

Michael forced himself to look in Drew’s eyes. It wasn’t Drew’s usual coolness there—instead there was a whole squadron of emotions, and his feelings for Mi­chael were still a potent part of the mix.

I can live with this, Michael told himself. If I can part the skies, I can deal with Drew being in love with me, can’t I?

Still Michael felt anxious to get away. He collected Drew’s plate and turned to go—but before he did, he had to ask Drew the question. The one question he wanted to ask from the moment Dillon had brought him hack.

“Drew . . . if you had the choice—would you want to be straight?”

Drew threw Michael an icy look, as if trying to read where the question was coming from. “Yeah, and if I had the choice I’d piss Pepsi, too, but that’s not gonna happen, is it?” Drew held his annoyed gaze a moment more, then just let it go. “Some things you don’t get to choose.” And that was all Drew said about it.

Michael understood Drew’s answer, but he doubted Drew understood why Michael had asked. So Michael didn’t push it. Instead he left Drew alone, with a single thought to consider.

“Actually,” said Michael, “Dillon could make you piss Pepsi.”

Dillon had thought the arrival of the others would give him some peace of mind—he had hoped that somehow the suffocating sense of doom would disap­pear—but the pall had not lifted, and now Dillon won­dered if his fixing frenzy was just an exercise in futility.

If Deanna were here, she’d know what to do, and have the strength to do it. If Deanna were here, we might not even be in this mess.

He left dinner early, unable to bear her conspicuous absence. Then he wandered the castle, trying to map it out in his mind, so he wouldn’t feel so consumed by its vastness.

Deanna was lost in a place like this.

And that single thought made it impossible for him to explore, for now he could hear her voice in the eerie echos of La Casa Grande. He could hear her screaming, as she had screamed in the days when her spirit of fear suffocated her. Then he would hear the gentleness of her patient, fearless voice, the way she had been at the end.

As he climbed the stairs toward the kingly suite they had claimed for him, the followers he passed lowered their eyes and stepped aside, as if unworthy of being in his company. At the entrance to his suite, sat an armed guard, who proudly protected Dillon’s door, and beside him sat Carol Jessup. She must have taken the role of his personal maidservant. They launched to their feet the moment they saw him, offering him the most courteous of greetings.

Am I doing any of this right, Deanna? he asked in his thoughts, as if she were somehow with him, instead of a whole universe away. Am I anywhere close to get­ting things under control?

The answer came in the form of two dozen cardboard boxes, piled everywhere as he entered his room.

“We weren’t sure of your size,” Carol apologized, “or the style you wanted . . .”

Dillon need only glimpse the face of a single colorful box to know what was inside every one of them.

Rollerblades.

Pair after pair of Rollerblades.

“You did ask for them, didn’t you?”

Dillon was suddenly glad he hadn’t eaten much, because he could feel dinner on its way back up.

12. The Tools Of A Thief

The Bringer could not raise the dead. Nor could he banish disease, numb pain, or whip winds into weapons of destruction. But he was a formidable spirit with a crushing power of will. The skills he did not possess would be his to wield soon enough, though—and the thought of it brought an irrepressible grin to his face as he moved through the towering halls of the castle.

Those he passed smiled a return greeting, obviously assuming that his was the joyous grin of surrender—the same surrender that painted all of their faces, now that they were in service to the Shards.

Okoya strolled at a calm, deliberate pace through the lavish corridors, running his hands across the tapestries and sculptures—noting the eons of art and civilization born during his three-thousand-year hiatus. But his thoughts were on weightier subjects.

Five Shards!

And each one greater than the Olympian king who had ordered him chained to the mountain! A quintet of diamonds too bright to behold . . .

. . . And too powerful to devour.

These were souls too large to feast upon—and al­though his hunger was great, he hid it from the five. These were spirits to master and control—not spirits to dine on. These Shards could be useful tools for the harvesting of a world . . .

But as with any tool, there were dangers. Spirits of such power needed to be broken and harnessed like horses before the chariot—and if a horse could not be broken, it had to be destroyed, lest it turn on its master.

But so far, things were going exceptionally well. The Bringer had already begun to watch and listen—seek­ing out weaknesses into which he could insert his will, like a hand into a puppet. Deep enough so that he could either play them or crush them—whichever ultimately suited his needs.

The Bringer stepped out into a calm night, and there, on the steps of the castle’s front gate, sat a man in the uniform of law enforcement. His head was cupped in his hands like a small child. Curious, the Bringer sat beside him.

“My name is Okoya,” said the Bringer. “Spiritual advisor to the stars.”

The man looked straight ahead at the fountain, and poke as if carrying on a conversation with himself. “What am I supposed to tell them? How can I tell them anything?”

“Tell who?”

“I’m with the county sheriff,” he said. “They got word of something suspicious at the castle, so they sent me here to check it out. Then, when I got here, they brought me to that redheaded kid.”

“And he ‘fixed’ something?”

“He just said something,” the deputy told Okoya. “I don’t even remember what he said, but suddenly . . . suddenly . . .”

“Suddenly all that was wrong with your life fell into place.”

The deputy finally looked at Okoya. “Yes! Yes, that’s right!” Tears welled up in his eyes. “How can I turn him in?”

“You won’t,” the Bringer instructed. “You’ll return to your office, report that nothing is wrong, then you’ll quietly collect your family and join us.”

When it was put to him so plainly, like a clear-cut set of orders, it wasn’t a hard decision to make.

“Yes, that is what I’ll do,” he said—as if he had any choice in the matter. The fact was, from the moment Dillon received him, the pattern of this man’s destiny was set. It was a pattern even the Bringer could read.

The officer stood to return to his squad car, but Okoya grabbed him by the arm.

“Just one more thing.”

The man turned his eyes to Okoya, and Okoya si­lently, secretly, lashed out. Fine tendrils of pink light shot from Okoya’s eyes, dancing across the officer’s face, penetrating the pores of his skin. The tendrils reached way down, and drained out the very thing that made the man human:

His consciousness.

His essence.

His soul.

The Bringer devoured this man’s life force—just as he had done to many residents of Shiprock, New Mex­ico, and a string of others between there and here. Each one small but satisfying, like a plate of hors d’oeuvres.

When it was done, the living shell of the county deputy stumbled for an instant, unable to know or un­derstand what had been torn from him.

“Whoa—must have gotten up too fast,” the man’s shell said, regaining its balance. “Now, what was it you wanted to tell me?”

Okoya let go of his arm. “It wasn’t important.”

The officer nodded a quick farewell, and returned to his squad car, never knowing that, although his body went through the motions, he was as lifeless a vessel as the car he drove.

Okoya watched him go, wondering how many hu­man souls he could devour in a single day without feel­ing too terribly bloated. Forty? Fifty? He’d have to find out.

His smile broadened as he went back into the castle. Yes, things were going very well indeed!

13. Old Man Murder

The Shiprock Chieftains kicked a field goal, putting them eight points ahead of Toadlena, deep into the third quarter. If the streets of Shiprock were quiet on this windy Friday night, it was with good reason: Toadlena and Shiprock Highs had been rivals ever since the game of football came to Navajo land. This had been the Chieftains’ most winning season in years, and the games brought out most of the town.

Radio Joe had arrived during the first quarter, but had little interest in the game. Instead he wandered the bleachers, and loitered around the concession stand, munching on some frybread, biding his time. He watched the evening’s spectators, making brief eye contact with everyone he passed. He made his way through the stands, squeezing through the crowds, tak­ing a seat, then moving, then moving again. By the time the third quarter rolled around, he had worked the crowd well. He knew the faces and the eyes of the spectators—or at least the ones he needed to remember.

He went out to his truck, a rusted old Ford that had seen him through the latter part of his life, then syste­matically he began to fill the many pockets and com­partments of a hunting jacket he had picked up in Flagstaff. The various weapons all fit handily into the jacket—all except the Winchester 1300 he had taken from Mary Wahomigie. That he hid in a trash can closer to the stadium. The band played a familiar fight song, only the drums and brass instruments making it through the baffling of the crowded bleachers. He whistled the tune, trying to clear and purify his mind for the task at hand.

Across the parking lot, a middle-aged man checked unhappily under the hood of his Corolla.

“Engine trouble?” Radio Joe asked as he drew near.

“Fuel pump, I think. Just had the damn thing fixed last month.”

“Mind if I have a look?”

“You a mechanic?” the man asked.

“Electrician,” Radio Joe answered truthfully, “but I’ve fixed an engine or two.” He turned to the engine, but only so he could withdraw the hunting knife from his sleeve pouch.

“What do you think?” the man asked, leaning over Joe’s shoulder.

Radio Joe turned quickly and buried the knife to its hilt between the man’s upper ribs. It slid in silently. Then he twisted it ninety degrees, shredding his aorta and ventricle walls.

The man gasped, and Radio Joe clasped his free hand over his mouth, pushing him back against the side of the car. “Out of respect for your devoured soul, I put this body to rest.” Thick blood, almost black in the dim light, pumped out between Radio Joe’s fingers, but he did not remove the knife. The man groaned, too weak to scream. Radio Joe took his hand from the man’s mouth, then cradled his head, gently helping him to the ground.

“Shh,” he said. “Let it come peacefully.”

The man gurgled out something that sounded like a question, and then went limp. Only then did Radio Joe pull the knife from his heart. He slipped the body into the back seat of the Corolla, then wiped his hands on the parking lot gravel.

At the south end of the stadium, he followed a large woman into the ladies room, and strong-armed his way into her stall. She screamed instantly, alerting any oc­cupants of the stalls around them.

Sloppy, he thought, chiding himself. He had to be quick about this now, but the hunting knife would not do, for she had already begun to fight him, and her arms were longer than his. Instead he slid out the ma­chete he had always used to slash overgrown weeds from his yard. A single hack to the woman’s neck si­lenced her, but set off a geyser of arterial blood that flooded the floor.

“What’s going on in there?” demanded a woman in the next stall.

Again Radio Joe cursed himself, for the element of stealth was the only advantage he had, and now it was gone.

“Oh my God!” The woman beside them screamed as the floor tiles beneath her slowly grouted red.

Radio Joe ran from the restroom, knowing he could not afford to give the body the respect it deserved. Things had exponentiated much too quickly, and he knew his next stop would have to be the trash can where he had stowed the Winchester.

The concession stand was at the north end of the stadium, and was understaffed for the crowd the game had drawn. The line, fifteen deep, was filled with the type of diehard snack addicts who couldn’t have their game without hot dogs, popcorn, and beer. Radio Joe approached with the rifle by his side—but it was so odd and incongruous a thing, no one took serious notice of it until it was too late. He barged his way to the front of the line.

“Hey, what’s up, Grandpa? Wait your turn!” said the teen behind him.

There was a woman behind the counter with over­sized earrings and bleached hair. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“Please stand still,” said Radio Joe. He was so close that when he swung up the barrel of the rifle, it struck her on the chin. He pulled the trigger, and the woman’s expression of shock exploded into a spray of brain and blood that seasoned the popcorn, and splattered into the cotton-candy drum, turning the wispy strands of whipped sugar a deep crimson.

The first scream was his own, his mind recoiling from the grisly act just as powerfully as the rifle kicked. Radio Joe turned and fired into the chest of a brawny man beside him, as the screams began to erupt around him. Then he swung the gun around to a couple who had stopped short their approach to the concession, taking them out in two consecutive shots. In the stands, the band blared the school victory march, as the Chieftains scored another touchdown. The cheers from the crowd blended in with the screams.

People close enough to see what had happened scat­tered from the concession area in a panic, dropping to the ground, crawling into any crevice available. But the panic only erupted in pockets, and those who were out of the concession’s sight line were slow to discover the danger. Joe slipped beneath the stands, where he had noticed a trio of teens drinking beer and listening to music. With his own breath coming out in wheezy cries of grief, Joe pulled out a pistol, and selected two of the three to take out, for those were the two that needed dispatching. The third one stood gawking for a moment at the holes in his dead comrades’ heads, then he ran for cover.

The concession area was clear now, and word was beginning to make it to the stands that something was going on back there. Radio Joe came upon two young lovers hiding behind a Dumpster, terrified.

“Please,” begged the girl. “Please don’t hurt us!” She wore her boyfriend’s class ring on a gold chain around her neck.

“Take that off,” Radio Joe insisted.

Quickly the girl took off the chain, and held it out to him.

“Give it to him,” said Joe, “not me.”

Not understanding why, the girl handed the ring on a chain to her boyfriend.

“Save your ring for a girl who’s alive,” Radio Joe told the boy, “I mourn with you.” Then he raised his shotgun, and fired into the dark bull’s-eye of the girl’s right pupil.

Radio Joe next headed toward the field, where panic had begun to take over. Under the bright lights of the field, his chosen targets were easy to spot as they raced from the stands—he had memorized their faces, and their clothes. His own sobs of anguish now ululated like war cries as he raised the rifle, and picked them off one by one.

In the end, Radio Joe was harder to take down than the Toadlena quarterback.

Parker Chee, third deputy in the quiet, uneventful town of Shiprock, knew he was sitting nostril-deep in shit as thick as quicksand. This was a big deal. The kind of small-town nightmare that drags in the media vultures. When it comes to carnage of this magnitude, they descend with such ferocity, the whole town would be picked apart by morning. Thirty-two dead in a ram­page that appeared to be neither planned, nor random.

There was some method behind the old man’s madness that no one could yet guess.

“Damn shamans,” griped Sheriff Keedah. “They’re psychotic, every last one of them.” There was nothing worse in Chee’s book than a self-loathing Navajo. Keedah never missed an opportunity to berate his own people. Chee longed for the day Keedah was ousted, but in the meantime, Chee did his job, and kept a low profile. While most every other law en­forcement officer in the Navajo nation dealt with the crime scene, Chee was charged with minding the prisoner until he was taken away for the type of big-time arraignment reserved for the truly notorious of­fenders.

Chee found himself drawn to the old man in a sort of morbid curiosity he thought he’d gotten over in his live years on the force. He had seen his share of lu­natics, but this old man didn’t fit the mold. He had a clarity about him that was almost as disturbing as his bloodbath.

This massacre wasn’t the only disturbing thing that had happened this week. There had been a prelude. Chee had sensed a discomfort throughout the week with the citizens he came in contact with. It wasn’t everyone—just certain ones. Danny Yazzie, who he pulled over for speeding again; Addie Nahkai, who had a break-in; and more than a dozen others. Bad vibes—or more accurately, no vibes at all. Talking to them had been like talking to a wall. It’s not that they weren’t listening—it’s that they weren’t there. Chee would have let it go—attribute it to stress, or too little or too much caffeine—except for the fact that many of those people were now dead.

When the names of the dead began to come in, at first it seemed like coincidence, and then just plain creepy, that at least half of the people this crazy old man had singled out for execution had already made Chee’s “absentee” list. And so Chee knew he was in shit up to his high nostril hairs even before he went to visit the old man in his cell.

As Chee approached the holding cell, the old man, who identified himself only as “Radio Joe,” had calmly made the space his own. He had collected a host of dead flies and cockroaches from the corners of the cell and was now crushing them down into a fine black powder between his fingers.

“Congratulations,” said Chee. “You’ve just guaran­teed yourself the cover of this week’s Time.”

No response from the crag-faced old man. He crum­bled a beetle between his thumb and forefinger. Only now, as Chee came closer, did he see what the old man was doing. He was adding the pulverized exoskeleton to a fine-lined sand painting that was slowly expanding from the center of the cell.

“You think that’s gonna save you from the gas chamber?”

“Biye Gak misa dtaoopyū,” the old man said. “I do not fear death.”

In spite of his advanced age, Keedah had roughed up the old man in the interrogation room. Now his face was bruised, lips bloated, yet still he offered no words, no explanation as to why he had brutally massacred more than thirty people.

“If you have something to say, best to say it now,” Chee advised. “Before the feds come to take you away.”

“Let them come,” said the old man, without looking up from his sand painting.

Chee felt his fury rising, and approached the bars. “You killed innocent people, old man. Parents—children. Don’t you feel anything, you bastard?”

The old man was unperturbed. “I killed no one.”

“There were hundreds of witnesses—your prints are all over half a dozen weapons!”

“You cannot kill what is already dead.”

Chee swallowed hard. The shit was lodging deeper in his nostrils but he couldn’t pull himself away. “Ex­actly what’s that supposed to mean?”

“A shotgun leaves behind its spent shell. Worthless. Useless,” said the old man. “So does this Quíkadi. The ghost-devourer. The spirit chupacabra.”

In any other circumstance Chee would have laughed at the suggestion. Chupacabra tales had been all the rage lately: red-eyed creatures that drained the blood of livestock. But what the old man was describing was not that same new-age vampire yarn. It was something completely different.

“You’re telling me you follow this . . . creature?”

“I clean the waste it leaves behind. I lay the dead to rest.”

“You’re crazy, old man.”

And for the first time, the man called Radio Joe looked up at him. He stood, coming forward, and sud­denly Chee realized the bars held no protection for him.

“Am I crazy?” asked Radio Joe. “You would not be here if you did not already know the truth.”

Chee wouldn’t answer to that. Wouldn’t dare think about it. “This thing—what does it look like?”

“It wears the body of a Hualapai,” Radio Joe said. “Twenty years old.”

“Man or woman?”

“Both.”

Chee took a step away, not even realizing he had done it. There had been such a specter in town the week before. They had picked him up on vagrancy, as Sheriff Keedah had zero tolerance for itinerants. When they found no reason to keep him, they let him go, but Chee kept an eye on him until he left town.

“You’ve seen it, then,” said Radio Joe.

“I saw something,” Chee admitted.

“Your sheriff’s soul was taken by it.”

Suddenly the cell key became a weight in Chee’s pocket. He could feel the heavy keychain pressing into the flesh of his leg.

“You killed thirty-two people!” screamed Chee. If he could have killed Radio Joe right there he would have, to spare himself from having to consider what he was about to do.

“Then let them take me away,” said Radio Joe calmly. “But the job will remain undone.”

Chee turned his back, trying to force his legs to take him out to the front office. The phones were ringing off the hook out there. Townsfolk tying up the lines; pressing them for information they simply didn’t have, or couldn’t give out until the next of kin were officially notified.

But the old man was right. Keedah was another “ab­sentee.” He was there in body, but not in spirit—and had been that way ever since his run-in with that genderless transient. Chee knew this to be true, and while Chee’s head told him his job was to confine this mur­derer, his gut told him something else entirely.

“Damn you,” whispered Chee. “Damn you to Hell.”

Then he turned to the cell, and slowly pulled his keychain from his pocket, inserting the cell key into the lock. The old man watched impassively. Chee turned the key in the lock until he heard the mechanism spring open. Then he removed the key, and returned to the front office, without giving the old man another look.

When Chee reached the front office, Keedah was standing there, in the midst of madly ringing phones.

“What the hell, Chee? What, are you on vacation?”

“Had to take a leak.”

“Worst goddamn night on earth, you’d think you could hold it until someone got back.” Then Keedah took a glance over Chee’s shoulder, and the worst night on earth hit a brand-new low.

Radio Joe lunged out of the shadowy doorway, a steak-knife blade flashing in his hand. Keedah reached for his gun, but it was as if he had no reflexes anymore. As if his body were just going through the motions of reaching for his gun, thought Chee. The old Hualapai brought the knife down in a cutting backhand slash, and ripped open Keedah’s neck in a single stroke.

The spray of blood caught Chee in the eyes, blinding him momentarily. “Oh shit!” He heard Keedah collapse to the ground, and when Chee cleared the blood from his eyes, the sheriff was dead, his blood no longer pumping out, but oozing slowly onto the green lino­leum.

Chee wanted to feel revulsion, shock, horror—anything, but he could not. Because Keedah had been dead for days. The old man was right.

Radio Joe put the steak knife back down on Chee’s half-eaten dinner, where he had found it, then knelt down and took Keedah’s gun. Chee didn’t stop him.

“The one you’re looking for—he headed west,” Chee told him. “Hopped a train with two others.”

“Others?”

“That’s all I know.”

Radio Joe nodded. “This town is still lousy with the dead,” he said.

Chee let loose a sigh of surrender. “Leave them to me,” he said. “You find that thing. Stop it any way you can.”

The old Indian slipped out quietly into the cold night.

Then Parker Chee, trying to keep Keedah’s body in his blind spot, unlocked the ammo locker, pulling out two boxes of .22-caliber bullets. He made sure his clip was loaded, then loaded a second. As he headed out to fulfill his new assignment, Chee regretted that the devourer of souls hadn’t taken his soul as well . . . be­cause by dawn it would surely be damned.

14. Simple pleasures

The Department of Parks and Recreation did not come to evict the Shards from Hearst Castle. The National Guard never showed up to drive them out. Any official who came knocking, quickly pledged themselves into the service of the five—and in that new allegiance, those same officials made sure no word of what was really going on ever made it to the outside world. By the sixth day at the castle, it became clear that they could remain there, anonymous and invisible, as long as they wanted. And their numbers continued to build.

“This place is like a black hole,” Winston had com­mented; “things fall in, and they don’t come out.” Which, noted Michael, was also an accurate description of a Roach Motel.

At first Drew kept a notebook of all the wondrous things that occurred within the castle grounds, as well as a record of who had joined their numbers—but after the second day, he gave up the pad and paper in favor of a video camera, to journalize the days.

But if anyone truly rose to the occasion, it was Okoya. With a quick mind and powerful spirit, he instantly became akin to a chief of staff. It was Okoya who kept track of the Happy Campers—organizing what they did, and when they did it—and when new recruits walked bleary-eyed out of the Gothic Study, with new leases on life, it was Okoya who led them away to be assimilated into the Great Repair that Dillon had begun.

“They need to be debriefed,” Okoya had said. “I’d be happy to see to it personally.”

And yet in spite of all of those responsibilities, Okoya made sure he had time to spend with each of the Shards. Plenty of time. As their personal confidant and advisor, Okoya was always there to ease their minds.

“I admire you, Winston,” Okoya said. “You know so many things.”

It was their fourth evening in the castle. Winston sat on his private balcony watching the sunset, and reading yet another of Mr. Hearst’s leather-bound volumes. Okoya had slipped in beside him without Winston no­ticing.

“Yeah, I’m a regular encyclopedia,” he said, shrug­ging off the compliment.

“What are you reading?”

“Machiavelli,” answered Winston. “Personally, I think he’s full of himself.”

Okoya ran a hand through his shiny hair; the wind lifted it, and cast it about his shoulders. “I’ll bet you could write things that would put them all to shame,” Okoya told Winston. “I’ll bet you could inspire millions. You could convince them to do anything—cultivate their minds in any direction you wanted them to grow.”

“Flattery or truth?” Winston quipped.

“I think you know.”

The crimsons and cobalts of the sky were quickly fading to a rich violet, as the sun slipped below the horizon. Too dark to read by. Winston closed his book, and rubbed his eyes. It had been an exhausting day. They were getting better at their little medical triage sessions, but the Happy Campers had brought in almost forty people to repair today, most of them so badly injured it sapped all the Shards’ strength to do the job. Winston knew this was good work he was doing, but like so much of the information crammed into his brain, he failed to see how it fit into the larger picture. Even if they fixed the ills of ten thousand, in a world so large, it would make little difference. How could it stop this “great unraveling” Dillon was so fond of prophesizing? Dillon claimed to have it all worked out, but Winston suspected that, with all his skills of foresight and pat­tern recognition, Dillon was flying this one blind.

“Don’t you think you could change the world with your gift of growth?” asked Okoya, whose face seemed more exotic than usual in the purple hues of the sky.

“Maybe I could, and maybe I couldn’t. Anyway, I can’t see the point.” Winston folded his arms against the chilling night. He thought he’d have to explain him­self further, but Okoya nodded knowingly, and spoke in an intensely hushed voice.

“All the world’s philosophy leaves you with more questions than answers, doesn’t it? And the more his­tory you read, the more you realize that no one truly learns from the past. You see math and science as proof of the many things we’ll never understand; and litera­ture as just a mirror of our own imperfections. You’ve broadened your vision . . . but lost your faith.”

Winston stared at Okoya, not knowing if he should be stunned, frightened, or amused. Okoya had firmly pipped Winston’s frustrations, in away he couldn’t grip them himself. It occurred to Winston that Okoya had never really talked like a rural twenty-year-old. He was an enigma, and somehow that made Okoya thrill­ing to talk to. He wasn’t sure whether there was actual wisdom, or just showmanship in Okoya’s words, but they were comforting nonetheless.

“Peace of mind is closer than you think, Winston.” It was then that Winston noticed the book clutched in Okoya’s hand by his side. The same book he had been reading since they had first joined company.

“Haven’t you finished that yet?”

“Each reading brings something new.” Okoya set the book on the edge of the iron railing before Winston, balancing it perfectly on the tip of a fleur-de-lis. It tee­tered in the breeze, swiveling slightly. Like a compass needle, Winston thought.

“You should give it to Dillon,” Winston suggested. “If there’s anyone who needs a spiritual compass, it’s him.”

“It’s beyond his comprehension,” said Okoya dismissively. “In fact, none of the others would grasp its subtle truths. None of them have the breadth of your perspective. Tell me honestly, Winston; do you really trust any of their decisions?”

Winston found himself uncomfortable with the ques­tion. He always challenged Dillon, but that was his nature. Since their arrival, he had always presumed Dil­lon’s competence; that his perspective, as Okoya had put it, was broader than his own. But was there really any evidence of that?

“Dillon sees things . . .” said Winston.

“Dillon is unstable—and the others are not much better. Keep a close eye on them—never turn your back—and remember that trust is best left with your own wits, no one else’s.” Then Okoya leaned over, and whispered into Winston’s ear. “You are a great being. Don’t let the others take that away from you.”

Okoya left as quickly and quietly as he had arrived, but the book remained, balanced on the spear tip of the iron rail. It seemed almost to float there, as if it had no substance, and the wind could lift it off the ledge, send­ing it spiraling into the sky. Winston sensed the book was not the only thing perched on the edge of a prec­ipice. He, too, was there, and if he leapt, would he fall or fly?

“You are a great being,” Okoya had said. Winston had always been afraid to admit it—but why such fear? If the Almighty saw fit to make him closer to his own image than most anyone else on earth, why should he not accept that? And wasn’t false humility in the face of all he knew himself to be, a kind of arrogance in itself?

If this book indeed contained wisdom that set him a plane apart from the other Shards, why not seize that as well?

If I am great, then let me be great. With a power­ful lunge of will, Winston reached forward and took Okoya’s book into his hands. The volume felt warm and far heavier than it appeared. Winston cracked it open. Its pages were easy to read in the dim red light of dusk, as if it had its own crimson glow.

The book was true to Okoya’s promise, and from the very first page, he was gripped. The words fell to­gether like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle; the ideas put forth were filled with great insight and understanding. Answers to questions Winston never thought to ask— answers so perfect that they were beyond Winston’s ability to process . . . and so the words passed through his mind, and he forgot them instantly. Not a single thought could he remember. All he knew was that, what­ever he had read, it had fed him—satisfied his hunger for meaning in a way nothing else could.

He went to bed that night remembering nothing of what he had read, but feeling his own wisdom; his pro­found growth and enlightenment from his great feast of words. It swelled inside him, bloating his thoughts, and he began to wonder why someone as important as himself had wasted so much time hiding what he was.

Tory stole some time for herself, swimming laps in the chilly Neptune Pool. When she was done, the young woman assigned to her service—a former tour guide for the castle—wrapped her in a velvet robe, even be­fore she had fully stepped out of the water. Tory imag­ined this nameless girl, a cheerleader type, no older than twenty, had followed her back and forth by the side of the pool waiting for Tory to be done, as if Tory was now the central figure in this girl’s life. The girl fumbled with the robe, and its hem sopped in the pool as Tory tried to step out.

“It’s all right,” Tory told her. “I can put on my own robe.” Tory slogged over to a lounge chair, removing the wet robe that was now keeping her more chilly than the air, and laid back to receive the sun. The girl, with nothing to do, stood there, conspicuously inactive, which was even more infuriating.

“Why don’t you take the rest of the morning off?” prompted Tory. The girl quickly left, as if her freedom was an assignment. When she was gone, Tory closed her eyes, and cleared her mind, feeling the warmth of the sun. Tory hoped the sun would bring the hint of a tan to her skin, which sometimes seemed as smooth and pale as the Greco-Roman statues that stood around the Neptune Pool. Sitting there among the marble pil­lars and statuary, Tory could, for a moment, feel herself part of another place and time, somewhere, anywhere, far from Dillon and his mission.

When she opened her eyes again, Okoya was sitting on the lounge beside her. “Mind if I join you in wor­shiping the sun?”

“I’m sure the sun will be kinder to you than it is to me. Skin like mine burns to a crisp in minutes.” But then Tory added, “Of course, what do I have to worry about? With us around, melanomas don’t stand a chance.”

“Perhaps the sun should be worshiping you,” sug­gested Okoya.

There was a clattering of metal, and Tory turned to see the servant girl returning with a silver tea caddy stacked with enough lotions, potions, and oils to fill a small boutique.

“I thought you’d like some skin creams,” she said.

Tory turned to Okoya. “I’m sorry about this,” she said. “I once asked for some body lotion, and they raided the mall.”

“No need to apologize.”

The girl made an awkward gesture, something be­tween a bow and a curtsy, and scampered away.

Tory turned her attention to her cuticles, pulling away the fraying skin. “I’m just not used to being served. It feels . . . unnatural.” And then Tory laughed. “Listen to me—who am I to talk about things being unnatural?”

Okoya grabbed her hands, looking at her fingernails. “You have such beautiful hands. Why do you pick at them so?”

Tory pulled her hands away. “Bad habit. There’s worse, I suppose.” Tory grabbed one of the various lotions on the tray, sniffed it, and began to spread it across her arms.

“It smells nice,” commented Okoya. “In fact, you always smell nice. The others might not notice it, but I do.”

“I could say the same about you. That cologne you always wear—what is it called?”

Okoya shrugged. “The name escapes me.”

“Maybe I could try it some time.”

“If you like.”

Tory smiled. For Tory, Okoya had become closer than any member of her family had ever been. Closer than her boyfriend in Miami, who had gone from putrid to pure before her eyes. Closer even than Winston, with whom she had come so far. Like the others, Tory had given up trying to figure out on which side of the gen­der line Okoya fell. Even now Tory couldn’t tell what was hiding under the loose shorts and colorful T-shirt Okoya wore. But that was all right, because it meant Okoya could be anything and everything. He could be a brother, when that was what Tory needed, or she could be a sister. Today Tory decided she needed a sister.

“Do you bathe a lot?” Okoya asked, in a way that made it clear she already knew the answer.

“You know what they say about cleanliness . . .”

“Yes, but why would you need to?”

Tory sighed. “I don’t know.” Tory figured it was all those years living under a layer of festering flesh, that made it impossible for her to feel entirely clean. The troll might be gone from beneath her bridge, but its memory lived on.

Okoya reached into her pocket, pulling out the small crystalline bottle of cologne that rested there. She pulled the stopper and dabbed a tiny bit of the pale pink fluid on her neck. It vanished as it touched Okoya’s skin. Tory thought Okoya might offer some to her, but she didn’t.

“Strange,” said Okoya, “that the Goddess of Purity can’t feel clean.”

Tory had a good laugh at that one. Goddess of Pu­rity? Well sure, why not! The Neptune Pool seemed a place lofty enough for such a fantasy. She didn’t mind entertaining it for a moment or two.

The wind shifted slightly, and Tory caught the scent of Okoya’s cologne. She breathed it in, feeling it deeply in her lungs and spirit, like a pungent aromatherapy.

“I know in time, you’ll be able to feel . . . purged,” Okoya said. “But then again, perhaps it’s the world that needs purging—perhaps that’s what you’re feeling; the need to burn away the chaff, like a smelting furnace, leaving behind only that which is pure. After all, the world could do with some human purification.”

Tory pushed herself up on her elbows, and turned toward Okoya, but the sun made her squint, and Okoya’s face was painted in dark silhouette. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“I mean that you’ve spent so much time turning your gift of purification inward—but there’s nothing left inside you to cleanse. . . . Still you keep searching—sensing impurity that’s no longer there; subjecting your­self to boxcars and ragged clothes, as if you had to.”

Tory knew there was truth in Okoya’s words, but also knew that it was a dangerous truth.

“If you want to ease your compulsion,” Okoya ad­vised, “then set your cleansing power free. Use it, the way it was meant to be used.”

“I am using it.”

Okoya waved her hand in disgust. “Dillon is squan­dering your talent. Using your insights and taking the credit. Didn’t you tell me that you were the one who made that leap of understanding, and figured out the truth about yourselves? That you were the Shards of the Scorpion Star?” Okoya stood and stretched, her stint at sun worship over. “You have a purity of in­sight,” she told Tory. “Protect it. Don’t let the others taint it.”

And then Okoya left. It was only after she was gone, that Tory noticed the vial of cologne had been left be­hind on the lounge chair.

When Tory turned, she saw the servant girl standing there once again, but this time Tory didn’t send her away with a self-conscious dismissal. Okoya was right. There was no need to be a Cinderella, dressed in rags, cowering in shame. The ball had begun, and it was high time she began dancing. Tory reached out and grabbed the vial of perfume, making it her own.

“I’m tired of swimming in a cold pool,” she told the girl. “I’d like it heated.”

“But . . . the Neptune Pool hasn’t been heated for fifty years,” the girl explained. “We’d have to build a whole new heating system.”

“Then do it,” ordered Tory, as she dabbed the nape of her neck with the stopper. “You have until noon.”

And when Tory swam again later that day, the water temperature of the pool was already rising.

In the first days at the castle, Michael found himself avoiding Lourdes and her smothering affection. He felt like a hapless puppy caught in the grip of an overeager child, and would do anything to squirm away. And then there was Drew, who did not fawn the way Lourdes did, but still, Michael caught those secret glances that were an ever-present reminder of Drew’s attraction lin­gering just beneath the surface.

There is something you can do about it, Michael kept telling himself—for there was more than one way to mend Drew’s broken heart, and end that attraction for­ever. But it gave Michael a shiver just thinking about it.

It was Okoya who helped Michael gain a bead on the situation.

During those first few days at the castle, Okoya shared with Michael ancient Hualapai tales, and Mi­chael shared with Okoya his music. He had even lent Okoya his Walkman, and it seemed Okoya had taken to the powerful rock tunes and jazz fusion with a pas­sion. In a way, it made Michael jealous—as if his music had suddenly abandoned him for another. But for Michael it seemed a fair exchange—for, since the mo­ment Michael arrived, Okoya had been there with a sensitive ear, always willing to listen; always ready to advise.

Today, they sat together in the Assembly Room, Mi­chael sprawled out on one of the many sofas, while Okoya sat at the piano, playing uninspired scales up and down the keyboard.

“You feel things very deeply,” Okoya told Michael; “so deeply that the world around you becomes an echo of what you feel.” Okoya changed keys. “With feelings that powerful, why should it matter that you don’t feel love?”

“Because what I feel more deeply than anything else is the hole where it ought to be.”

“There’re other ways to fill yourself,” said Okoya.

Michael closed his eyes as he leaned back in his chair, trying to wrestle down all those unresolved emo­tions. And then, in a few moments, he realized that Okoya’s music had changed. The monotonous scales had mutated into a grand rhapsody spilling forth from the piano. The music seemed charged with red-hot emotion. It wasn’t classical, it wasn’t Jazz or rock, but a synthesis of all three, and more. The music entered Michael, resonating within him to fill the gaping hol­low.

“Why worry about love?” he heard Okoya say, but his voice sounded faint behind the swell of the music. “Why worry about something so unimportant, when you have the power to level mountains and subdue the spirit of millions? A power like yours could bring everyone in the world into line. That’s what Dillon wants, isn’t it? The world in order? Everything in con­trol? You’re the one to do it. Not Dillon.”

The second Michael opened his eyes, the music stopped—and he was startled to find that Okoya was not at the piano. Michael could feel his heartbeat in the rims of his ears, as if the music had warmed them, and he had the strange, uncanny feeling that Okoya was standing right behind him, cupping his hands around Michael’s ears, as if his hands were a pair of head­phones, feeding him that wonderful music.

Michael turned, to see that Okoya was behind him—but was peering out of the window.

“The weather’s changed for the better,” Okoya said. “Music must truly have charms to soothe the savage beast.”

Michael wouldn’t confirm that it was Okoya’s music that had shifted his mood, because he felt strange say­ing it aloud—as if the music was something he had to keep secret.

But with the music gone, his old frustrations and worries spilled in to fill the vacuum. Okoya seemed to know. “Your troubles will go away, you just need to take some action.”

“What do you think I should do?”

Okoya seemed to know the answer without thinking. “The thing you’ve been afraid to do,” he said.

The thing he was afraid to do . . . Michael knew what that was, but was he willful enough to take such a bold and brash action? “If I’m afraid to do it, then maybe I have a good reason.”

“Close your eyes,” Okoya said gently. “Think about the music I just played for you.” Michael closed his eyes, trying to recall the tune. He couldn’t remember the notes, but he did remember their effect on him.

“How did the music make you feel?”

“Powerful,” answered Michael. “Invincible.”

“But you already are those things. The music can’t make you feel what’s not already there. It can only remind you of what you already know.” Then Okoya leaned close to Michael’s ear. So close that Michael could feel the moistness of his breath on the fine hairs deep in his ear canal. It was sensual, but in a very different way—as if Okoya was calling to something in Michael that was levels above eroticism. It touched not his libido, but his soul.

“You can have the music always, Michael.” Okoya whispered. “You may take it from me whenever you wish.”

Take it? thought Michael. He had always thought of music as something that was given, not taken. But Mi­chael now sensed that Okoya’s music was not a passive thing—and that to listen to it took a supreme force of will. To seize it, to envelope it, and to drag it in through his ears. Yes, Okoya might play it, but its power was not in its playing, but in its taking.

Okoya left, but the power of the music remained with Michael. My music, thought Michael. It’s mine now, because I have taken it. And knowing that gave him the fortitude to seize more than just the music, but the moment, and to take that singular decisive action which he had so feared.

And so that night, while the rest of the Shards slept, Michael climbed the narrow winding steps to the Ce­lestial Suite in the dark, counting each step as he went, like a countdown to ignition.

Drew was asleep. A mosaic of moonlight shining through the patterned window grille painted his face as he lay beneath a down quilt.

“Drew?” Michael ventured forward, and spoke in barely a whisper. “Drew!”

Drew shifted in bed, and opened his eyes. “Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Michael.”

Drew didn’t say anything for a moment; he just stared at Michael, not sure what this visit was all about. Michael sat down on the edge of the bed.

“I came to give you something you want.”

Drew took a moment to think about it, then pulled his knees up beneath the covers. “Don’t play games with me, man. It’s cruel.”

Michael smirked, knowing what Drew must have been thinking. He should have realized how this secret visit might appear to Drew—but that sort of liaison was not what Michael had in mind. There was a wicked power in knowing his own intentions but keeping them secret from Drew for just a moment longer.

“I didn’t come here to be with you, Drew. I came to give you a gift.”

“What kind of gift?”

“It’s a surprise,” said Michael. “Close your eyes.”

“I don’t know if I should trust you . . . . You killed me once before.” But the fact was, Drew did trust Mi­chael. In the end, Drew closed his eyes, and leaned back on the pillow, waiting for this mysterious gift.

Michael had no idea how to accomplish this, for he had never done it before. So he took a deep breath, and pressed his fingers to Drew’s face, in something that resembled the Vulcan Mind Meld.

Perhaps, thought Michael, this won’t be so difficult after all. He summoned up a depth of confidence he had only recently found in himself. Then, with hands pressed firmly against Drew’s forehead, he focused on the deep core of Drew’s nature, forced his way into Drew’s mind—an intrusion far more intimate than any­thing physical—and then Michael began to reroute the many feelings held within.

Somewhere outside, a single cloud began to turn it­self inside out.

That same afternoon, Okoya had advised Lourdes as well. Not with words of comfort, but with a single, unhappy suggestion.

While Michael stole song from Okoya, Lourdes brooded around the Rose Garden. After the day’s gruel­ing session of fixing, Lourdes tried to spend some time with Michael, but found herself performing another painful skate down Michael’s endless cold shoulder. Since the moment she had kissed him in Newport Beach and received nothing in return, she knew capturing his affections would be an uphill battle, but it had always been a battle she was certain she would win. Now she wasn’t so sure.

Okoya eventually joined her in the Rose Garden, and told Lourdes point-blank that Michael’s interests lay elsewhere.

“Watch him,” said Okoya. “Watch him tonight, and you’ll understand what I mean.”

So Lourdes did as she was told. She watched Mi­chael through dinner, she shadowed him throughout the evening—and late at night, when she heard the door of his room creak open, she followed in darkness through the winding corridors, and up the stairs to the Celestial Suite.

She knew very well whose room that was.

Standing at the closed doors, she couldn’t quite make out their whispers, but her imagination painted for her a picture as complete as could be—and never once did it occur to her that she might be wrong, because it made so much sense. In fact, it all made sense now: the strange way Michael and Drew had avoided each other’s looks in the light of day; the quarrel they had on the boat that led to Michael’s tornado; the reason Michael returned none of Lourdes’s affection.

Because his interests lay elsewhere.

For Lourdes, it felt as if a dislocated joint had suddenly, painfully, slipped into place. She stumbled through the cold hallways, and down stone stairwells, until she finally found herself in the kitchen . . . where Okoya sat, having a midnight snack.

Lourdes sat beside Okoya, and told her exactly where Michael was. She began to sob freely as Okoya put an arm around her to comfort her. No matter how bad things had gotten in the past, she had never cried like this.

“Poor Lourdes,” Okoya said. “Poor, poor Lourdes. A will so strong, you could control the movements of armies, but you can’t have Michael . . . and now you know you never will.” Okoya cut a huge wedge of cherry pie, its filling glistening in the kitchen lights, and piled it high with ice cream. Then Okoya pushed the plate in front of Lourdes.

Lourdes wiped her eyes. “I—I can’t,” she said. “I have to watch what I eat. If I don’t . . .”

Okoya handed her a fork. “If you don’t, then what?”

Lourdes thought about it. Then what? Gluttony had nourished the beast that once lived inside Lourdes, packing her flesh with fat. But that beast was gone now, and she could control her own metabolism, indulging herself as much as she wanted. She could eat like there was no tomorrow, and endow the fat onto someone else—anyone else she chose. And why not indulge? She deserved it. She had earned it—and God help any­one who tried to stop her.

Lourdes took a small scoop of pie on her fork, and ate it. Then she took another, and another, and another, shoveling its luscious sweetness into her mouth, just as fast as she could swallow.

“Eat, Lourdes!” said Okoya, with deep understand­ing and sympathy. “Eat . . . . Not because you have to, but because you want to.”

And Lourdes did.

Morning saw a bright day filled with muscular tufts of confident clouds that knew their place in the sky. Drew Camden, however, did not concern himself with the weather. He did not look out of the window. In fact, lifting his head out of the Celestial Suite’s toilet would have been a great victory. His body fought itself, like a patient in the throes of chemotherapy.

Michael’s night visit had been a strange and inex­plicable event. He had done nothing more than press his hands to Drew’s face—yet somehow he had done more than that. Michael had somehow entered Drew’s thoughts and feelings as easily as opening a cupboard . . . and then proceeded to rearrange the shelves.

Suddenly Drew’s whole world had changed. Drew had felt his mind and spirit stretched and folded like taffy, leaving him dizzy and confused.

He felt many new things now. He thought of the girls in school whose affections he always pretended to re­turn—and suddenly he longed to be back there, finding he now had a lusty passion for them. He thought of the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated, and regretted that he had read the articles instead of ogling the pictures. He thought of his cousin Monica’s tits, and wished he could have a nice long talk with them.

But the more these images filled his mind, the more his head began to spin, and his stomach to churn. Per­haps it was because of the other thoughts still with him. Memories of the feelings he used to have. All those secret, unrealized desires he had shared with no one. They were dead now, but their memories remained—and he now found them so repulsive, that he wanted to reach in through his eyes, and pull his brain out so he couldn’t think of them anymore.

But this is a good thing, thought Drew.A great thing. Michael has done for me what no one else could do. He monkeyed around in my head, and when he left, he left me straight. Drew clung on to that thought, as he heaved into the toilet again.

15. Doctor Doom And Nurse Hatchet

Shiprock was the key.

Two weeks into the siege of San Simeon, Dillon ze­roed in on the tragic news reports, and they became the key to deciphering the pattern of destruction. Since he had arrived, he had scoured the media and Internet, but until now his searches had yielded nothing but white noise. And then came the Shiprock Massacre, pulling his attention, narrowing his focus. It was a primer that helped him decode everything else. From that moment on, things began to fall into place, like a puzzle con­structing itself. In almost everything he saw and read, the pattern of destruction had finally begun to emerge.

“What pattern?” Winston asked when Dillon tried to tell the others. “I don’t see any pattern.”

Dillon had called the others to his suite the moment he was certain he could now read the language of the unraveling. So certain was he that he was blindsided by Winston’s skepticism.

“If there were anything to see,” challenged Winston, “then I would see it, too.” Winston stood there, his arms crossed. Michael, Tory, and Lourdes were there as well, and none of them was jumping to Dillon’s aid.

“You won’t see it,” Dillon told them. “Only I can see—you just have to trust me . . .”

Silence from the others—but more than mere silence. It was . . . a lack of connection. Not only with him, but with each other. The angle of their stances—the distance they stood from one another—it all spoke of isolation. Disunity. For the life of him, Dillon couldn’t understand why.

Dillon dragged his fingers through his hair in frus­tration, and for a moment he felt his hair stand at wild angles like a mad scientist, but a single shake of his head brought it back into place. “It’s not like I’m guess­ing about these patterns—I don’t guess!”

Still nothing. Winston stood with folded arms, Mi­chael’s shifting slouch radiated indifference, and Lourdes seemed more interested in the ceiling architecture than in Dillon’s warning, as if this meeting were an unwanted obligation.

Tory seemed to be the only one who was even slightly with him on this. “Maybe if you explain it to us . . . "

Dillon took a deep breath to balance his thoughts. “Explain it . . .” He looked around the clutter of his suite, searching for clues that could translate to their understanding—but how could he verbalize a cognitive sense that they didn’t possess? He began by handing Tory an article—a small one about a candidate in an upcoming election.

“What is it?” asked Lourdes.

Tory skimmed it, and wrinkled her brow. “Some old fart is running for Congress.”

Winston glanced at it over her shoulder. “So?”

“That old fart,” Dillon explained, “just happens to be the president of the Flat Earth Society. Two weeks ago, he didn’t have a chance. Now, all of a sudden it seems like half of Nebraska is voting for him.”

“Have you ever been to Nebraska?” said Winston. “Pretty easy to think the world is flat if Nebraska’s all you see of it.”

Seeing he was getting nowhere, Dillon switched gears, moving to the computer in the corner. He clicked a button, and brief messages scrolled up the screen.

“I downloaded these this morning from an on-line chat room.”

He let them scan the notes for a few moments, then asked. “Do you see?”

“See what?” asked Lourdes.

“The notes! These people aren’t talking to each other, they’re talking at each other.

Michael laughed. “That’s nothing new!”

Dillon tried one more time. He flipped open a mag­azine, and presented it to the others. “Nielsen ratings,” he told them. They all took in the lists of shows and numbers, but it might as well have been written in Ar­abic for all it mattered.

“See, look,” Dillon said, pointing it out as best he could. “Ratings on the most popular shows have dropped off—and the shows no one ever watches are beginning to get followers.”

They kept looking at the ratings, then back to Dillon as if there should be more.

“And that’s the end of the world?” Tory asked du­biously.

“No, but this is.” And Dillon presented them with a picture from the morning sports pages. Crowds at a Nascar race. “This says it all. I mean, look at them. Look at the way this woman is slouching—look at the angle those people are standing—and the directions they’re all looking. It’s as if they’re not there to watch the race—they’re just passing time. It’s like they’re waiting for something else—something bigger—but they don’t even know it yet.”

“I’m sorry, you lost me,” said Tory.

“Okay,” said Dillon, pacing across the rug, and flex­ing his fingers to keep from pulling his hair out. “It’s like a tidal wave. You know—just before there’s a tidal wave, all the water pulls away from the beach, and it gets quiet—as if the shore is waiting for the wave to hit: Well, that’s what’s happening now.”

He picked up the article about the flat-world politi­cian. “People everywhere are slowly losing their sense of reason.” Then he went to the computer screen. “People are forgetting how to communicate.” Then he held up the magazine of Nielsen ratings—“Everyone’s changing their alliances at an abnormal rate”—and fi­nally the picture. “And everyone’s waiting for some­thing to happen.” He took a moment, realizing he had hyperventilated and was feeling faint, then continued, trying to lock on their eyes one at a time.

“These things that would mean nothing to you, mean everything to me. They show me the pattern that no one else can see.” He took a deep breath, and spoke slowly. “Within one month,” he said, “some crucial event is going to occur—something that no one can explain. That event is going to get stuck in people’s minds, and when they can’t reason it away, miscommunication will start to spread. Half-truths, and flat-out lies will spread around the world until no one knows what truth is anymore . . .

. . . and alliances will shift.”

He turned and grabbed a globe off of Hearst’s private desk. “After that, there’s going to be a great gathering. I’ve been studying changes in airline schedules and travel statistics—they all point to it.” He showed them the globe. He had already penned in a thousand flight patterns, leaving nothing but blue pen covering most of the world, darkest over Europe and the Mediterranean.

“It’ll be somewhere on the other side of the world,” he told them. “Millions will go there . . . and die. But it won’t stop there. Death will spread out from that spot, until there’s nothing left. Human, animal, or vegetable. Unless we can change the pattern.”

“Is it nuclear?” asked Tory.

Dillon shook his head. “No, that’s not part of the pattern. It’s something else. Something worse. And so far, all the good we’ve done hasn’t changed a thing!”

Then he clicked on the TV, giving them a final dose to drive his point home. Yet another interview with a Shiprock survivor. There were so many witnesses, the media was having a field day, and would have weeks’ worth of interviews to horrify and tantalize the viewing public.

“Take a look at what happened in Shiprock, and tell me if you need any further proof. A man begins a kill­ing rampage that’s continued by one of the deputies who arrested him.”

“Big deal,” said Michael. “So a couple of lunatics decide to start blowing people away. It happens all the time—how are these psychos different from all the oth­ers?”

Dillon clenched his fists. “I don’t know yet—but this is different. It’s important—I’m just not sure how. You have to trust me!” He waited in silence for their response—hoping their thoughts, and their strength, would bolster his own. He knew they could rise to this challenge. These four had risen to defeat their beasts, they had risen to defeat Dillon in his own dark days. United, they had the power to—

“This is a waste of my time,” said Lourdes. “Where’s lunch? I’m starved.”

“Are we through here?” said Winston, looking at his watch. “I have things to do.”

“I’m going swimming,” announced Tory.

Michael smirked at Dillon, laughing—mocking. “The secrets of the universe in TV ratings and chat rooms? C’mon, do you really expect us to take you seriously?”

But Dillon suspected nothing he could have said would have provoked anything but indifference from them. Dillon’s frustration was a palpable thing now—he could feel it in the air around him, and he had a sudden urge to lash out in anger. He turned away from them, like someone turning to sneeze, hoping to deflect his sudden burst of fury. Then he released it from his mind, full force upon a water glass that sat on his dress­ing table. The glass shattered, into a thousand pieces. The others turned to look at it with only mild interest.

“Cool trick,” said Michael, nodding to the place where the glass had been. “Bet that’ll be a real crowd- pleaser with the Happy Campers.”

When Dillon glanced at the spot where the glass had been, he had to double-take. Yes, he had shattered the glass, but the water was still there, suspended in its cylindrical shape. It was his own power of cohesion that held the water together, refusing to let it spill across the tabletop.

But if he could effortlessly bind these molecules of water, why couldn’t he bind the five of them together toward a single goal?

“Later,” said Winston, and the four of them drifted out.

Dillon stood there in the vacuum of their exit, com­pletely bewildered. What had happened? Why weren’t they listening? Although his encounters with them had been brief before they arrived at the castle, he had thought he knew them. He thought he knew their hearts, their minds, their convictions . . .

And their alliances.

The thought made him shiver. It played in his mind for the rest of the day. It still tinted his thoughts later that afternoon, when he met the Shards again for their daily repair work.

There were more than fifty today. It was a bloody business, as there were more injured than sick. The other Shards did not bring up their little summit meet­ing from earlier that day, and so neither did Dillon. He merely watched them, and listened.

“You’re all so damned slow,” Winston commented to the other Shards as he moved from one amputee to another, as if he were on an assembly line.

“Can’t you hold still?” Tory snapped without a shred of patience, at a woman whose infection she was trying to purge.

Lourdes grumbled about all the places she would rather be, and Michael just sat there, peering out of the window, aloof and apart, letting his sedate mood settle on the wounded behind him.

It wasn’t just that they had gotten good at the work— they had also developed an immeasurable distance from the patients over whom they loomed, as if their lives were now on some exalted plane. If the people lying before them were to die in their arms, and Dillon weren’t there to revive them, Dillon doubted that the four of them would care in the least.

When one quadriplegic had been relieved of a bro­ken neck, he turned to them. “Who in God’s name are you?” he asked, with tears in his eyes.

No answer was given, but Dillon caught Lourdes grinning at the question.

Do they think of themselves as gods now? Dillon wondered. Are we?

The fact that he had to ask was not a good sign.

When the last of the wounded had been led off by Okoya for their “debriefing,” Dillon watched the other Shards dissolve away from one another, each sur­rounded by a clutch of followers that clung to them like lint. They made no attempt to push those followers away. Instead, the Shards seemed to take greater and greater delight as those around them jockeyed for position in their attempts to curry favor.

That night Dillon lurked in dark corners, secretly watching the others. He observed Lourdes in the Re­fectory. She sat with a host of followers who were more than happy to provide her with company as she gorged herself. She was clearly the center of her followers’ attention, in what appeared to Dillon like a distorted burlesque of the Last Supper. But by the look of things, this was by no means a final repast. In fact, it seemed like the first of many in Lourdes’s future.

Dillon found Winston in the Gothic Study, absorbed in a thin volume with no title. He wore a hand-woven robe so ornate he seemed part of the scenery. The door creaked as Dillon entered, earning him only a fraction of Winston’s attention.

“Quiet evening,” commented Dillon.

“Is there something you need?” asked Winston.

“Just making the rounds.”

Winston turned a page. “Close the door on your way out.”

Dillon spied Michael in the Billiard Room, playing pool against a string of followers who made sure that Michael always won. Then, when he tired of the game, he sent someone to fetch his Walkman and went out for a jog. He passed Dillon on his way out of the castle. “Life is good,” Michael said with a wink as he passed, then turned to the Happy Campers in attendance. “Who wants to run with me?” There was no shortage of jog­ging companions. He put on his Walkman, and ran off. Whatever music he listened to, Dillon noted, it must have affected him deeply, because the entire night sky shimmered with waves of color, like his own personal aurora borealis.

As for Tory, she retired early, and Dillon found him­self peering through her keyhole, for a glimpse of what she was up to—and Dillon played the voyeur, as she slipped into a full bathtub, and began to pour a lumi­nous pink bath oil from a crystalline decanter into the waters.

Have I become so suspicious—so distrustful of them—that I have to watch them in secret? He knew the answer was yes. What had brought him to this?

It was here, as Dillon pressed his eye to Tory’s key­hole, that someone stepped out of the shadows. Some­one with a video camera.

“Shame, shame, Dillon—looks like I caught Big Brother spying.”

It was Drew. His voice seemed to quiver as he spoke, and his camera hand trembled, as he peered through the eyepiece.

Dillon tried to hide his own embarrassment at being exposed. “You can’t get a good picture if you don’t hold it steady, Drew.”

Drew shrugged. “Won’t matter—it has a built-in im­age stabilizer,” and then he giggled unexpectedly. It wasn’t so much a nervous giggle as it was . . . inappro­priate—as if Drew wasn’t quite fixed in the situation.

Dillon had seen little of Michael’s friend since his life had been restored. For several days he had with­drawn into the Celestial Suite, as if cocooning himself. Then, when he emerged, there seemed to be something markedly different about him—but since Dillon hadn’t known Drew before, he had no real basis for compar­ison. All he knew was that Drew in recent days ap­peared to be a slippery character, never lingering long in anyone’s line of sight.

Dillon took a step closer, but Drew took a step back. “What’ll you give me?” Drew asked. “What’ll you give me if I keep this video to myself, and don’t tell the others you were spying on them?”

Dillon stopped short. His rapport with the others had frayed to a tether. If they knew he was secretly watch­ing them, it wouldn’t help matters. He hadn’t been ex­pecting to be blackmailed by Drew, though. “I gave you back your life,” he told Drew. “Isn’t that enough?”

“Yeah, but what have you done for me lately?”

Dillon took another step toward Drew, and once again Drew backed up—this time into a shaft of light, where Dillon could get a good look at him.

Drew uncomfortably shifted from one foot to an­other, and back again, as if the ground were constantly sliding beneath his feet like the floor of a funhouse.

Dillon quickly sized Drew up. No, this was not the same person he had fished back from death two weeks before.

“I got an idea,” suggested Drew. “Why don’t I do the spying for you? Sure—the others’ll never suspect me. I’ll catch them all on tape, and in return, you could give me a shitload of ‘servants.’ Yeah! Just like the rest of you have. How does that sound?”

“You’re kidding me, right?” But there was no hint of jest in Drew’s shaky voice.

Drew lowered his voice to a whisper. “I could tell you things,” said Drew. “Things I’ve seen, that I’ll bet you haven’t. Like the way Winston reads—his eyes don’t even move, as if it’s not words he’s getting from the page, but something else. Or how about Michael—those CDs he keeps feeding into his Walkman—I tried to play one, but there was nothing on it . . . at least nothing I could hear. And how about Tory’s oils and perfumes? They have no scent! I could find out more for you . . . for the right price.” He offered a twitching, feculent grin. “Come on—you can trust me . . .”

Trust? Dillon didn’t think so. Of the many unusual things Dillon sensed in Drew’s current life-pattern, in­tegrity didn’t figure highly. In fact, a lack of integrity— in every sense of the word—was what Dillon felt more than anything else. Drew was . . . “out of focus.” Each twitch of his eyes, every tremor of his hands, spoke of incohesion—he seemed to be falling apart from the in­side out, and it wasn’t the type of thing Dillon could fix any more than he could fix the focus of a blurry snapshot.

No, “trustworthiness” was not currently on Drew’s list of attributes. Still, the way Drew buzzed in and out of everyone’s business made him the perfect fly on the wall. The things he claimed to have seen—could they be true, or were they just figments of a mind out of balance? The latter was much easier for Dillon to swal­low.

“Tell you what: you keep a good videologue of everything you see, and maybe I’ll assign you an as­sistant.”

Drew became more shifty, more fidgety. “How about two?”

“Don’t push your luck.”

Drew took another step back, stumbling over his own feet, and when Dillon reached out to steady him, Drew pulled out of his grasp with a violent jolt.

“Don’t touch me, man!” Drew backed away, his posture a gangly knot of misdirected energies. “Just don’t touch me, okay?” And then he turned and ran, vanishing into the darkness.

As far as Dillon was concerned, Drew’s behavior was just further proof that the world was falling apart.

Eighty-four people to fix the next day.

The busy-bee faction of the Happy Campers didn’t bother bringing the wounded into the castle. The vans and trucks that carried them, simply dropped them off in the huge courtyard between the castle and the guest houses. They were all laid out before him, beneath the unshielded sun, like a scene from a brutal war.

Dillon knew he was still sidestroking.

But it was more like treading water, wasn’t it?

He wasn’t getting any closer to shore—he wasn’t anywhere near getting things under control. And all their good work wasn’t mending the fracturing world. Why was that? Each day there were more followers—not just the numbers of the healed, but others who had heard the stories and made the pilgrimage up the road from the Coast Highway. There were always people coming up the road now, all hours of the day and night, longing to be a part of the Big Fix, longing to be part of something larger than themselves.

“It’s human nature to see divinity in anything larger than oneself,” Okoya had said. Did these pilgrims mak­ing the trek to the castle think they were entering a new Jerusalem?

Dillon found himself wondering what his followers did all day while he threw his energies into repair work. Today he found out.

“We’ve tried to organize them for you,” said a woman with a clipboard as she stepped obliviously over the bodies beneath her. She had been there every day. Dillon had come to call her Nurse Hatchet, al­though she tended to speak more like a Realtor showing a house—which was probably her profession before she wound up here. “Broken bones and internal injuries are to the left, lost limbs and such to the right, and those that died during transport are by the fountain. Would you like something to drink?”

“No thank you.” Dillon looked around, hoping Lourdes would show up, to ease the pain all around him. But the others, he was told, were taking their time in coming.

“What about the sick?” asked Dillon. “Tory’s going to need to know where they are.”

“None today,” said Nurse Hatchet. “Only wounded.” She offered him a clean white smile, with teeth straighter than they had been yesterday.

Dillon didn’t return the smile. He wouldn’t force what wasn’t there. “What, have we cured all the sick in local hospitals?”

Nurse Hatchet hesitated. “Well . . . . yes,” she said. “That, too.”

Dillon turned to her, feeling a fresh pit open in his stomach. “What do you mean ‘too’?” He tried to read a pattern in her face, so he could divine what she meant—but found her strangely void of patterns. Strangely empty.

“To tell you the truth,” she said, “we gave up on hospitals days ago. Too much trouble. Besides—you never know what kind of people you’re going to get.”

Dillon stared at her, still not understanding. And so she pointed to a battered man by an overgrown bush. “That particular client is an architect,” she said cheer­ily. “He’ll help us build dormitories when there’s no room left in the castle and guest houses.” Then she pointed to a woman in a makeshift neck brace, who gasped every breath of air. “And she’s a well-known attorney. With her on our side, we can keep the au­thorities away for as long as we want.”

“What are you telling me?” demanded Dillon.

“Don’t you see?” said Nurse Hatchet. “We made them for you to fix!”

Dillon felt the realization begin to surround his spirit, suffocating him with a truth he couldn’t yet face. What this woman was saying was unthinkable.

The woman grinned as if she had just sold a house. “And that’s just for starters. We’ve sent people out to bring you back some special orders. They’ll be showing up with some very important clients for you!”

Dillon felt his balance slipping and fell back against the fountain, almost falling in.

Eighty-four “clients” before him. People who had been in the best of health until the Happy Campers broke them, so that the Shards would have people to heal. Here was the reason why nothing they did made a difference! And what was even worse than the ruined people spread out before him, were the hundreds of followers who saw nothing wrong with it.

Dillon could imagine them stealing away in the night, selecting their victims, and brutalizing them in his name: breaking bones, tearing limbs, even killing them—for to the followers of the Shards, pain and death meant nothing anymore. To them, pain was a rite of passage, and death was merely a prelude to a mir­acle. How could he, of all people, not have seen this coming? That the consequences of healing was to cre­ate a bloody cult of sacrifice and resurrection. A surge was building in him now, rising like bile in his throat.

“Well, look at that!” said Nurse Hatchet, grinning at the fountain as if it were a well-trimmed Christmas tree. Dillon’s hand had inadvertently touched the water, undoing its random, chaotic spray. Reversing its en­tropy. Now the fountain flowed backward.

The woman showed her dimples, “My, you’re just one big barrel of miracles, aren’t you!”

The doors of the castle swung open and the other Shards stepped out, with Okoya close behind.

“Crowded today,” said Okoya, as he looked out over the dead and dying.

“Not a problem,” said Michael, “I’m ready to rock- and-roll.”

Dillon pulled himself together, knowing that he had no choice but to restore the hoards that had been bat­tered for their benefit.

And he told the others nothing, for fear that they wouldn’t care.

Okoya found Dillon to be a maddeningly hard egg to crack—and was already considering all the ways he might destroy this willful, uncompromising star-shard should it become necessary. It would not be hard to turn the other four against Dillon now, for they had chosen their paths. They were already set against one another, and were growing enamored of their new life­styles, feeding off their exalted positions, and off their followers. If they perceived Dillon as a threat to that, they could, and would, destroy him. Or perhaps Dillon could be killed by his own followers. Okoya could find a way to reshape the situation, spinning the hoards of followers into a web that would ensnare Dillon, and tear him limb from limb.

But these were only last resorts. He would only need to be destroyed if he turned on Okoya and tried to unite the others against him. Dillon was a most powerful tool, and could be used in a great many inventive ways. With Dillon beneath his thumb, this well-fattened world could easily pass into Okoya’s hands, for him to dine on, or do with as he pleased.

And so Okoya waited, keeping his eye open for op­portunities . . . until the day the fountain flowed back­ward, and Dillon discovered the deeds of his own minions.

Later that day, while the other four Shards lounged around the castle, occupied with their own concerns, Okoya climbed the steps to Dillon’s chambers, and talked the guard into letting him in, which was fairly easy, as the guard had no soul. Okoya held in his hand a small statuette of a robed figure, carved in pink onyx. Conveniently sized at eight inches, and warm to the touch, the figurine was a perfect gift for the Shard who had everything.

Okoya found Dillon in the bathroom—the shower to be exact—sitting fully clothed beneath the running wa­ter, like a drunk trying to shock himself sober.

Okoya turned off the stream of water that sprayed into Dillon’s face. “If you’re trying to drown yourself, you should try one of the pools. They’re deeper.”

Dillon didn’t move an inch from the corner of the black marble shower. “Thanks for the advice. You can go now.”

“I’m impressed by your melodrama,” Okoya said, “but I have something here that might cheer you up.” Okoya placed the figurine on the narrow edge of the tub, right in front of Dillon. “I found it deep in the basement,” Okoya lied. “Look at the craftsmanship! It might be thousands of years old, and its edges are still smooth.”

Dillon eyed it, studied it, but this statue wasn’t meant for his eyes.

“What an incredible story this piece must have to tell,” Okoya teased. “What delicious patterns of history you’ll be able to uncover just by touching it.” Okoya sat on the edge of the tub, sliding closer.

“Touch it, Dillon,” he intoned. “Feel every pattern, every texture in your fingertips. Your hands have given so much to others. . . . Now it’s time to take something back . . .”

Okoya could tell Dillon was drawn to it, and for a moment thought he might seize it and lose himself in sensory overload, savoring the banquet of texture and pattern Okoya had so carefully layered into the figu­rine’s design.

“Take something for yourself, Dillon. You deserve it. You’ve earned it.”

But instead, Dillon stood, never touching the statue.

“If I need to get off,” he said, “I don’t need that thing to do it.”

Then he grabbed a towel and left the bathroom.

Even in his frustration, Okoya had to smile. No, Dil­lon would not be snared by an object of desire—he was far too clever for that. Dillon’s ability to size up and sidestep a situation made him dangerously elusive, and all the more desirable a trophy. Okoya took the statuette and it disappeared into his pocket.

In the bedroom, Dillon peeled off his sopping clothes, then dressed himself, keeping his back to Okoya. It was more a gesture of disdain than modesty. That’s all right, thought Okoya. This can he done with­out friendship. It will just take a bit more effort.

“Do you know what our Happy Campers are doing?” Dillon asked. “Do you know what they’ve done?”

“I think your followers have been doing you a great service. They’re doing everything necessary to make sure the ones you heal will have the greatest possible impact on the world.” Okoya positioned himself be­tween Dillon and the door. “Didn’t someone once say, ‘The end justifies the means’?”

“No, it doesn’t.” Dillon towel-dried his hair, and stood at the vanity mirror, looking at himself. Looking through himself.

“You have a strange way of thinking, Dillon,” said Okoya. “You say you want to repair a shattering world, but you’re not willing to take hard action. You might as well be treading water.”

Dillon’s eyes suddenly locked on Okoya’s, and Okoya suppressed a smile, realizing he had finally pressed a button.

“What would you do if you were me?” asked Dillon.

Okoya paused for a moment, and took a step closer. “If I were you, I’d stop feeling sorry for myself . . . and I would take control.”

“Control of what?” snapped Dillon.

“Of everything. Control is what you want, isn’t it? Control is what you need. Because the only way you’ll ever be able to protect the world is if it’s entirely under your personal control.”

Dillon sat down, no longer angry, but scared. “That’s crazy,” Dillon said. “I can’t do that.”

“Oh really?” Okoya began to raise his voice ever so slightly. “How many people were following you three weeks ago? None! But now that it’s started, it’s moving faster than you can imagine. There’re more than five hundred of them now—and every one of them is wait­ing for you to use them, but all you do is brush them off.”

“I won’t use people.”

“It’s about time you started.”

Okoya had Dillon’s attention now, for the first time since they had arrived at the castle . . . but Dillon’s eyes had settled on something in the corner.

It was a glass of water. . . only there was no glass. Just water.

Okoya moved over to the dressing table where the water stood, and leaned against the edge of it, making sure he was in Dillon’s line of sight. As he touched the table, it shook slightly. The water vibrated like a col­umn of Jell-O, but still it stayed together, an indivisible whole.

“See how wonder surrounds you,” Okoya poked a finger into the side of the water column, and pulled it out, licking his finger. “You are the glue that holds this, water together, and your power is growing every day.”

Then Okoya lunged forward, driving his logic deep into Dillon’s uncertainty. “If you know patterns so well, look at the pattern around you,” challenged Okoya. “If you took things into your own hands, how long until every person in the world knows your name, and knows what you can do? How long until you be­come the glue that holds the entire world together?”

Dillon was silent as he considered the glassless glass of water. Okoya asked again. “How long?”

“Forty-eight days,” whispered Dillon. “Forty-eight days, twelve hours, and nineteen minutes.”

16. Water Works

Drew Camden likened his condition to the aftermath of the flu. A weakness in the knees; a light­headed, uneasy feeling; a sense of nonspecific malaise that accompanied everything he did. It was amazing to him how much there was to adjust to. It seemed almost every aspect of his life was affected. The way he thought, the way he acted, the way he coped with any and every situation, had been carefully woven to ac­commodate that off-color strand of his sexuality—but now that that thread had been pulled out, the fabric of his life made no sense. Tasks as simple as turning a doorknob took every last ounce of his concentration, and when he was out among people, the world took on a strange dreamlike tilt. Everything seemed violently new, and potentially dangerous, and his interactions with others were . . . well . . . unsettled.

There was a girl, for instance. He didn’t know her name, only that he was deeply attracted to her. He struck up a conversation in the hallway with her—small talk, really, just to get her attention. He was even more surprised than she when he looked down to find his hand deep in his pants, nursing an erection. He felt shock, mortification, and yet found himself laughing uncontrollably, not knowing why. It was just one in a string of unexpected events that had plagued him since Michael had rewired him.

He had asked Michael about all this, and Michael was unconcerned. “It’s just a transition, it’ll take some time for you to adjust.”

Michael was, of course, right. Drew would eventu­ally decipher his new neural pathways and discover the person he now was. He just had to weather through this period of discovery.

Thank goodness for the video camera.

As official video-biographer, and Dillon’s self-appointed spy, Drew could rely on his job to distract him—a job that put a merciful distance between him and the world that he viewed through the lens. He had re­corded quite a few unusual events—definitely video-worthy—and the events only grew stranger day by day.

Today he was busy cataloguing the new backward flow of the fountain, when he caught sight of Okoya following Dillon back to his suite. Drew might have followed, as well, to eavesdrop, and see what conver­sations went on between these two most unusual of people, but it was the activities of the others that af­ternoon that pulled his focus—as it had pulled the focus of so many of the followers.

Lourdes was in the ballroom putting on what amounted to a puppet show . . . but her puppets were human. She had taken a whole group of devout followers, and turned them into a kick-line, shoulders linked and throwing their legs high up into the air, like the Rockettes themselves. They laughed and laughed, as Lourdes manipulated the muscles of their bodies like a row of marionettes. Lourdes laughed, too, and Drew hadn’t been sure whether this show was for the followers’ amusement, or for hers. Ei­ther way, it looked wonderful on videotape.

“Is it difficult to control the actions of so many peo­ple at one time?” Drew asked her.

“Not as long as they’re all doing the same thing,” Lourdes answered, indicating the kick-line. “And it’s easier when they willingly give their bodies over for me to control. Are you getting all this?”

Drew zoomed in and panned the kick-line of follow­ers, whose laughter was fading as exhaustion began to set in.

“How long do you think they can go?” Lourdes asked.

Drew shrugged. “You tell me—you’re the puppet master.”

Lourdes frowned, unamused by the title. “The inter­view’s over.” Drew then found his own feet taking Lourdes’s marching orders, carrying him out of the room against his will.

Drew’s camera next caught Winston in the Rose Garden, a place Winston had initially avoided; but now he seemed to relish the sight of the rosebushes weaving themselves like snakes through the trellises as he sat there, the roses blooming around him in yawnlike bursts. In this festival of roses, Winston held court. It was a cross between a game show and an audience with King Solomon. Some tested his knowledge of minutia, others had specific problems to solve.

“We’re worried about feeding all these people,” said one of Winston’s flock. “What should we do?”

“Dig up the lawn beneath my balcony, and seed it with vegetables,” he told them. “You’ll have a full har­vest by morning.”

Drew used his zoom lens on Winston, because Win­ston had no patience for Drew, and couldn’t be both­ered with something as menial as their videologue. And besides, whenever Drew moved too deeply into Win­ston’s sphere of influence, he could feel his own hair growing, and it wasn’t a pleasant sensation.

Drew followed Winston’s gaze to the sky, where, to Winston’s irritation, Michael was upstaging him with a host of cloud creations. “That’s all he’s good for,” Winston grumbled to his followers.

Drew trekked to a clearing on the far side of the castle, where close to one hundred followers lay on their backs like a Peanuts cartoon, staring up at the clouds. In the center of them, Michael emoted in short, directed bursts. Drew could feel the pulses move through him like Morse code. In this way Michael carved and molded the clouds. He had whipped the high cirrus into a wispy spiderweb. Now he drew to­gether the puff in its center until a spider could be seen lurking there. Then Michael released his breath as if he had been lifting a heavy weight, and the web above began to dissolve into random vapor once more. His crowd applauded and cheered.

It was then that Dillon burst out of the castle with Okoya close behind. Drew quickly spun the video-cam to him, zooming in on Dillon’s intensely determined face. Dillon was searching for someone or something, and his mind seemed to race ahead of him like an en­gine pulling him forward. He stormed past the antifountain, which had become a little shrine all its own, and continued on toward the Neptune Pool. There were, no doubt, great wheels of creation turning in his head, as he devised complex, unknowable schemes.

Drew’s observation was, in fact, correct. Dillon’s mind had kicked into overdrive, and was practically burning a path before him. The thoughts Okoya had planted in his mind just a few moments earlier were germinating at the speed of Winston’s Rose Garden.

You can be the glue that holds together this failing world, Okoya had said, and Dillon knew he was right. He also knew that what he was about to attempt, if it succeeded, would change everything. It would alter the ineffective course of his actions. If he was able to do this, he would no longer be merely treading water.

In the Neptune Pool, however, there were dozens of people treading water, under Tory’s direction, of course. Tory had finally deigned to satisfy all the fol­lowers who kept asking for “cleansing,” which seemed to mean something different for each of them. No mat­ter; she had concocted an impressive little ritual that was a cross between baptism and synchronized swim­ming, with her as high priestess and Esther Williams all rolled into one.

As the joyous mobs bobbed blissfully in the water, Dillon strode across the pool deck, and began to run his hands determinedly across the marble railing, and over the statues that surrounded the pool. His strange actions took everyone’s attention away from Tory, and it annoyed her. The pool was her place, and these were her followers. What was Dillon up to?

Drew shuffled across the wet deck, putting the video camera in Dillon’s face. “Welcome to ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Godlike,’ " he said. “Here we have Dillon Cole, performing some mystic ritual. Tell us, Dillon, just what are you doing?”

Dillon put his hand to a column, rubbing his fingers across it. “Trying to get a feeling,” he said.

“A feeling for what?”

“The pressure point,” was his enigmatic response.

Word had begun shooting through the ranks that Dil­lon was being weird by the pool. In the ad hoc shrines where Michael, Lourdes, and Winston performed their sideshow tricks, people ran past. “Dillon’s doing some­thing,” they shouted breathlessly. “He’s doing some­thing new!”

Soon the audiences had abandoned the other Shards, hurrying down to the pool to see what was up.

Dillon hopped the railing on the western edge of the pool deck. The pool’s west side jutted over the edge of the hilltop, so that guests could have an unobstructed view of the Pacific. Dillon fell eight feet as he jumped over the railing, but kept his balance. He turned, and facing the granite block wall that enclosed the pool, he ran his fingers along the weathered stone, and between the cracks.

Up above, Drew leaned over the railing, looking down on him, camera still rolling. Dillon’s fingers swept back and forth, until he centered in on a single block, and then he dragged his index finger across it in serpentine motions, until stopping on a single spot. He reached down, picked up a stone from the ground, and pounded the spot three times. Clack-clack-clack.

The sound echoed deep within the structure of the pool.

“Pressure point?” asked Drew.

Dillon looked up and called to him. “Get off the pool deck. Tell everyone to get off the pool deck!”

But by now there were so many people crowding the ledge, and the hillside around him, it seemed impossi­ble to get the mobs moving without some sort of struc­tured retreat. Dillon searched the crowd until finding the other Shards, standing impassively twenty yards away, observing him.

“Lourdes,” he said. “You have to move these peo- pie.”

“I don’t take orders,” she grunted. “Ask nicely.”

“Please, Lourdes—and do it quick.”

Lourdes flicked her head, and focused on the crowd. She took a deep breath, bore down, and everyone—everyone—turned and marched away, leaving the area around and above Dillon clear.

“There,” she said. “You owe me.”

When the marching had stopped, the ground still trembled like the pounding of a hundred feet . . . . Stones half-buried in the hillside began to tumble, and from deep within the structure of the pool came a triplet of sounds growing louder as they repeated. Sounds only barely recognizable as the magnified, mutated clack-clack-clack of Dillon’s stone against the granite block.

Dillon stumbled backward, focusing all of his atten­tion forward as the pool echoed its resonant frequency through its dense structure, and back to its pressure point, until the granite blocks began to quiver; until the heavy railing began to crumble; until the entire west face of the pool fractured and collapsed in an avalanche of broken granite and marble dust.

Dillon was engulfed by that thick cloud of dust, and Michael, for one, didn’t have the patience to wait for the dust to settle, so he blew it away.

What remained brought the crowd to a stunned si­lence. Drew had to take his eye from his video-cam to make sure he was indeed seeing what he thought he saw.

Dillon stood there, amid the rubble. The statues and colonnade above him were gone. So was the deep end of the pool.

But the water had not moved.

Like the column of water in his room, the pool water held its shape, as if the face of the pool were still there. People still treaded water—from where Dillon stood, he could see the soles of their feet through the wall of water that stayed in place, touched by Dillon’s ever­growing power of cohesion.

It had worked!

And it hadn’t been any more difficult for Dillon than putting his finger in a dike.

The other Shards came down to get a better view of the feat, but each brought along their own sprig of sour grapes.

“Show-off.”

“That’s called vandalism.”

“Have you lost your entire mind?”

“What’s the matter, Dillon—playing Jesus wasn’t good enough for you? Now you have to play Moses, too?”

Dillon didn’t even hear them. “Pack your things,” he said. “We’re leaving.” He turned to the first Happy Camper he saw. “You! Tell all the others there are to be no more sick or injured brought to us. There are more important things to do now.”

“Yes, Dillon,” the man said, and hurried off.

“You!” he said, pointing to another. “I want every­one ready to go by dawn. I’m making it your personal responsibility.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, and sped off.

“You!” he said to another. “We’ll need buses, cars, vans—"

“Buses have already been chartered, and are on the way,” said a calm, familiar voice. “Enough for every­one.” Dillon turned to see Okoya stepping out from behind a tree.

The other Shards were fit to be tied.

“Will someone tell us what the hell is going on?” demanded Winston. “Why are we leaving, and why wasn’t I consulted?”

“Yeah,” added Tory. “Maybe we like it here.”

“SHUT UP!” shouted Okoya, putting a brutal end to the questioning. “You’ll do as Dillon says.” And then he softened. “Dillon has your best interests at heart . . . . Don’t you, Dillon?”

Dillon took in the sight of the other Shards. Just as before, they were standing in isolation; together yet di­vided. Well, Dillon didn’t know how to change that, but he could still make them work together.

“You want to be followed? You want to be wor­shiped? You want to be loved and adored?” Dillon looked at each of them one by one. “Well, you will be.”

Not by hundreds, but by millions. I’ll make sure of it. All you have to do is work with me, and do what I tell you, when I tell you to do it.”

“Where are we going?” asked Michael.

“Somewhere we can put on a show,” was all Dillon said for now. He waited to see their response. They all looked to each other, distrustful, none of them wanting to be the first to acquiesce. It was Okoya who coaxed them into submission. “If an alliance serves everyone’s interest,” Okoya said, “why not take advantage of it?”

“I thought,” Lourdes said to Dillon, “that you wanted to save the world.”

“We will,” Dillon answered. “Once we take control of it.”

Then Winston, for the first time in quite a few con­frontations, uncrossed his arms. “I think I can live with that.”

It was as they headed back for the castle to prepare the exodus, that Okoya leaned over and whispered into Dillon’s ear. “Well done,” he said. “Everything’s ex­actly where we want it.”

Dillon couldn’t help but wonder what Okoya meant by “we.”