Shattered Sky

  “What about it?”

  “Shh. Watch.”

  His hushed tone made her feel like a child watching a butterfly break from its cocoon. So she watched, as crystals formed in the tear droplet, settling into his cuticle. Then he tilted his finger. The drop coursed across to the other side, leaving the tiny crystals of salt behind. Then he brought his finger to her lips. Almost reflexively she took the very tip of his finger in her mouth, tasting her own tear. Sweet. Not the slightest hint of salt. “There,” he said, smiling gently. “I’ve taken the bitterness from your tears.” Now that they were this close, Maddy couldn’t help but see that in spite of the scars, his eyes were unchanged. His was the soul of a star, and indeed, she could see a universe when she gazed inside. A person could get lost in there.

  “Do you know what it’s like for people around you, Dillon? Do you know what it’s like to feel so powerless and insignificant?”

  “No,” he answered. “I wish that I could.”

  She couldn’t turn away from him now, and didn’t know whether this locked gaze was his doing, or her own. All that she knew was that in this single moment, the insignificance he engendered in her was now more a comfort than a threat.

  Time seemed to skip a beat, and she found herself kissing him, not remembering the kiss beginning, and not knowing who had instigated it. If this was another attempt to clarify her thoughts, it did the opposite, fogging her in, leaving her thoughts in a holding pattern, waiting for a place to land.

  Dillon seemed even more flustered than she. Clearly, this had not been part of his plan. Even if this was a moment he could foresee, it was obviously something he was unprepared for. And she found to her unexpected delight, that the great Dillon Cole, in spite of his luminous spirit, was blushing.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was stupid. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” she told him gently. “Feel as stupid as you want.” In spite of all the darkness he had lived through—all the destruction he had willingly, and unwillingly, been a party to, there was still an innocence about him that rose above any guilt. The fact that she could offer him anything made her feel elevated. Ennobled. She brought her hand up, her fingertips tracing the pattern of the pale scars in his reddening face.

  For Dillon, who had experienced a great many things in his life, this was a first. He had to admit he had considered this moment, but in a distant, disconnected way. The rigors of his past travels were more than adequate to suppress any appetites, and Tessic’s chair, well, it was quite a chastity belt to say the least.

  Maddy ran her fingers along the new ridges in his face, and he found it curiously erotic—and now he found his own hands moving to places—touching places he had never been close to before.

  “I have to warn you that I have no idea what I’m doing,” he told her.

  “I think I’d be disappointed if you did.”

  He was awkward as he guided her to an oversized booth, the table scraping on the floor as his shoulders bumped it aside. He chuckled nervously. Then moved his hand through her hair. Although her hair was short, it had a thick, rich texture. With the caress of his fingers, he hair renewed, taking on a smooth, dark sheen.

  Just like Deanna’s.

  But that was a thought he banished to a distant corner.

  Maddy sensed the moment his kisses crossed from respectful to passionate, and it struck her that Dillon did know her. It was the first time since her first time that she let a man be the aggressor—and here, this young man moved from awkwardness to grace in a single breath. With his touch, she could feel herself changed by his spirit of creation, of rejuvenation. He undid the most soiled knots of her life with his body, and with each wave of sensation she could feel those old bonds tear free.

  The sweaty, drunken face of the neighbor man, who had defiled her at thirteen.

  The high school teacher she had chosen to seduce.

  The scores of boys, then men she had conquered, and dismissed, taking from them, so they could never take anything from her. All her patterns, all her painful connections were smoothed by Dillon’s embrace.

  They shared a sanctuary from all their troubles in each other’s arms, then as their tension released, Maddy saw that the dilapidated restaurant around them had been restored to the spotless moment it had been built. And she realized that, within her heart, the place where it truly mattered, she was a virgin once again.

  14. RETURN OF A THIEF

  * * *

  HUNDREDS OF MILES FROM THE CRAWFISH MAW DINER, AT a train station in Atlanta, a small-time pickpocket was having a truly lousy day.

  His moves had always been stealthy, and even when caught in the act, he was usually able to slither away with finesse, dissolving into the rush-hour crowds of the Atlanta train station. Those crowds, despite Atlanta’s southern belle reputation, were every bit as frenetic these days as crowds in any Yankee burg, and the molecular hustle of bodies always provided ample cover for a quick escape.

  The train station was a fine locale for petty larceny. Better than New York, or PA, since there was less competition. He would usually slip past his marks just before they entered their respective trains, relieving them of their wallets and billfolds, and by the time they realized that they had been robbed, their train would already be barreling away from the city.

  But today he had gotten greedy. His mark—a waddling, varicose-legged woman, clearly an old-money patrician, complained to the red-cap loading her luggage onto the train, as if the red-cap cared. And there it was: her Gucci clutch, protruding from an oversized coat pocket. It grabbed his focus and reeled him in. He simply had to have it.

  Unfortunately this woman was no imbecile. She had learned the trick of wrapping her pocket accessories with a rubber band, and as he pulled on the edge of the clutch, it snagged on the pocket lining, instantly alerting the woman to his presence.

  Some of his marks were gaspers, some were screamers. The waddling woman was definitely a screamer. She let loose with an ear-splitting camel call the moment she felt his hand in her pocket. He flinched, and hesitated, which he never normally did, then pushed her away, wrenching the clutch from her pocket.

  He tried to slip into the crowd, but found his reflexes had slipped a beat behind the moment, and rather than cutting through the crowds, he crashed into them, each body becoming an obstacle impeding his progress toward the stairs that led to the platform.

  “Stop him!” the woman screamed with such aristocratic command that he knew it would galvanize the crowd into that mad mob of outraged citizens that was known to beat and dismember poor innocent criminals like himself.

  He kneed a businessman who tried to stop him, and used his crumbling body as a vault onto the steps, taking them three at a time until he was up in the station.

  But the open space provided him with no cover either. Two police officers raced toward him, apparently more interested in apprehending him than they were in the Krispy Kreme donut concession.

  The pickpocket quickly calculated his most likely vector of escape, and took off. Unfortunately the direction he ran took him deeper into the building, rather than toward an exit. He used the woman’s clutch as a countermeasure, hurling it behind him, but the officers ignored it, continuing their pursuit, already pulling out their weapons, probably hoping he had one of his own, so they could plead self-defense when they blew him away.

  No, this was not one of his better days.

  There were two doors in front of him now. One was unmarked, except for a poster plastered across it advertising a local revival of Cats. The other was the ladies’ room.

  The lady or the tiger, he thought. He chose the lady.

  Hurling himself through the restroom door, he pulled from his pocket a wooden doorstop that he kept for occasions such as this, and shoved it beneath the door as it closed, kicking it over and over, until it was wedged in deep. The officers were already on the other side of the door, pounding on it, trying to force their way in, so for good measure the pickp
ocket kicked the doorknob repeatedly until it tore free, and clattered on the ground like a Christmas ornament. He heard the knob fall on the other side of the door as well.

  “Damnit!” he heard from beyond the door. The door bowed inward as the officers threw their weight against it, but it didn’t give.

  There was a strange taste in his mouth—the ferric tang of blood, and he realized that he had bitten his lip while running from the police. Small injury, all considered. The pickpocket sized up his surroundings. He was alone in the restroom, and although there were no other doors, there was a window above the furthest stall. It was a small, clouded-glass pane, its edges caked in the grime of thirty years of union cleaning. It would be a tight squeeze, but he could make it, hopefully before the boys in blue took down the door.

  But as he made his way toward the window there was something in the bathroom mirror that caught his attention. His reflection wasn’t right—but it wasn’t his reflection, it was the mirror itself. Its surface rippled like a pool of mercury, turning his reflection into a shifting fun-house image.

  Then all at once a hand thrust out of the mirror, reaching for him like a cheap gag in a 3-D matinee.

  He was a gasper, not a screamer, so he gasped, throwing himself away from the hand, hitting the tile wall behind him.

  The mirror had not broken, for it was no longer rigid—it was now more membrane than glass. There was a vertical tear in the surface, only about six inches wide, now stretching wide, creating fleshy folds of silver as a second hand pushed itself through, and a groan came from beyond the breach. He could see a mass of dark stringy hair forcing its way through, stretching this hole in the world even wider.

  Now he screamed, instinctively knowing that it was more than his life lying in the balance now, and suddenly the police outside the door became the lesser of two evils. He returned to the door, only to find that he had successfully sealed himself in the room—he couldn’t kick the doorstop free, and even if he could have, the doorknob was too damaged to fit back into place.

  So he raced toward the window, once more passing the creature that was pushing its way through the mirror. Its head was out now, and one shoulder. Long black hair dangled over a tortured face. It made eye contact with him. It was human but its eyes were wild—almost mad, and those mad eyes held his gaze before returning to its task of birthing itself into this world.

  He bolted into the stall, and pounded on the small window until it shattered, then pulled himself up into it, ignoring the cuts across his palms left by the jagged lip of glass. He could hear the thing grunting and groaning behind him. The pickpocket stuck his head out into the dim alley. He reached his hands through, pulled his shoulders through one at a time, praying he could be born into the alley before that thing was born into the restroom.

  He had gotten to his hips and was almost free, when he felt the ghoul grab his ankles, and pull him back inside.

  “No!”

  As he fell, his head struck the pipe that fed the toilet, and although the pain was sharp, he barely noticed it, because his other senses were too overwhelmed to care. The thing grabbing at him was only marginally human. Most of its face was hidden beneath the caul of dark, sodden hair, and its body was covered with mottled, leopard-like bruises. It was naked, and reeked of a fetid, guttery stench, but worst of all was what he saw between its legs. Whatever this creature was, it was neither male, nor female, but both. The pickpocket wailed like a child.

  “Give me your clothes,” it hissed.

  The creature was by no means strong—in fact it was spent from its ordeal coming through the breach. Still the pickpocket could not resist the force behind its deep-set eyes.

  “Give me your clothes,” it repeated, “and I’ll spare your flesh.”

  He didn’t pretend to know what the thing was talking about, but that didn’t matter. If he had to give his own clothes to cover this abomination, it was a small price to pay. He tore his shirt off, sending buttons flying, and pulled off his pants over his shoes, leaving him only in his underwear. Quickly the creature slipped on the clothes, but as the pickpocket tried to scramble away from it, it reached for him again, flipping him around. Grabbing him painfully by his chest hairs, it pulled him face to face with it.

  “Please . . .” he begged. “Please just let me go. . . .”

  “In a moment,” it said, staring at him.

  There was something in the creature’s eyes. A spot of light deep within the pitch of its dilated pupils. The spot of light grew, becoming red, and pushing forward from its eyes and mouth, like tongues stretching for the pickpocket, probing the pores of his face.

  “No . . . please.”

  “Be still,” it said.

  The tongues of light reached through his flesh—he could feel them like surges of electricity—twangs of pain shooting through his joints and organs. Then deep inside himself, in his gut, in his heart, in his mind, he felt something vital disconnect, as if the marrow were being drained from his bones. But it wasn’t marrow; it was something else. He felt himself tugged loose, his soul discorporating from his body. And although he could feel his body was still alive, he also knew that he was no longer in it. Instead he was in the grasp of those red tendrils of light that pulled him into the gaping maw of a creature hiding within the flesh of a hermaphrodite: a creature of living light, and living shadow. In a moment he was so far from his own thoughts that he could not recall his own name, he could not think, for his spirit no longer had access to a brain. All he could do now was feel. Feel himself pulled deeper by the tendrils; feel himself sliding down its gullet, and finally feel the lonely agony of his consciousness dissolving as his soul slowly digested within the belly of the beast.

  THE TWO OFFICERS HURLED their bodies against the door until the door frame finally splintered, and the door crashed in. Regaining their balance, they raised their weapons, half expecting to be fired on. They were not prepared for what they saw. It was odd, even by public restroom standards.

  The perpetrator was there, in a fetal position on the floor, in his underwear, weeping. Above him stood a woman, half dressed. Or was it a man? Whatever it was, it had an unsettling, undead look about it, like an addict one trip shy of the morgue.

  “What the hell is this?” the younger officer asked.

  “I don’t want to know,” said his older partner.

  The perp looked up at them. “It did something to me,” the perp wailed. “It did something.”

  “Whatever it was, you damn well deserved it.”

  They pulled him off the ground, and he offered no resistance. The older officer had seen his share of petty criminals, and few gave in with such ease. It was as if he had been sapped of his will to fight—but it was more than that. The older officer caught sight of the perp’s eyes. There was a discomfiting vacancy there; a desolate void, as if this pickpocket wasn’t a man, but just a shell; a walking, breathing shell of a man, with nothing living inside. Not even hard timers got the death-look that bad.

  “What do we do about the other one?” asked the younger cop.

  The abject, straggle-haired specimen looked at them like a vulture waiting for roadkill.

  “One freak at a time.”

  But the younger cop was playing by the book. “You got a name?” he asked.

  “Okoya,” it said. “My name is Okoya.”

  “We’ll want your statement.”

  “Give it a rest,” said the older cop, wanting more than anything to be free of that restroom. “Let’s read this one his rights, and get him out of here.”

  The doleful pickpocket was still whimpering, “He robbed me . . . he robbed me.”

  But the older officer was wise enough not to consider what might have been stolen, and as they pulled their suspect out of the restroom, he made sure to keep his gaze away from the vacant eyes of the pickpocket, and the charged eyes of the freak.

  MEANWHILE, FAR AWAY, IN the rejuvenated ruins of an old diner, Dillon, dozing with his arm around Maddy, was st
artled awake by a strange sensation somewhere in his head, like an unexpected popping of his ears. But the sensation quickly passed, so he closed his eyes, and thought no more about it.

  15. GAINER

  * * *

  “I’M BEYOND MYSELF NOW.”

  Dillon gripped the steering wheel with both hands as he spoke to Maddy, worried that some unseen force might jerk the wheel out of his hands. Nothing was to be taken for granted anymore. It was his third day free from the oppression of his cage—but that cage had offered him containment. There was nothing to contain him out here on the back roads of the rural south, and Tessic had been right—his will was not powerful enough to do it. “My body is too small a vessel to hold me,” he said.

  “Maybe I should drive,” suggested Maddy.

  Dillon turned his attention to the lush oak forest on either side, arcing over the road around them. “You see how the trees move in the wind? I can feel them move. I can feel the currents of breezes in the forest. There must be a lake nearby, because I can feel rippling on its surface.” He tried to shake the feeling away, but it persisted, tugging at his attention. This was the first time he had taken the wheel of one of their many cars since their escape. He found the simple task of driving kept his focus tethered, but it was still an exhausting battle to keep his concentration narrow in the face of such overstimulation. “I’m beyond myself,” he said again. “I don’t know where I end, and the world begins.”

  “Like a newborn,” Maddy offered.

  “What?”

  “A newborn can’t differentiate itself from the world around it. Maybe you’re a newborn, too. The beginning of something we’ve never seen.”

  “There you go again, calling me a ‘thing.’ I’m human, Maddy. I can bleed. I can die.”