The woman produced a stubby dagger that would make the job slow and sloppy.
As he watched her approach, Winston wanted the pain to end, and if death was the only way to end it he would accept that—but he would not let himself die at their hands. And so, as the woman approached with the blade, Winston reached out and gathered his power, narrowing it and focusing it on a single greening crack between the floor tiles.
MADDY HAAS, BEATEN AND bruised but still full of fight, struggled against Ari all the way to the Thiran Gate—her struggles were enough to pull her legs free from the ropes but not her hands.
It was maddening to not know why she was taken or what this was all about—only to know that she was some key variable in whatever equation these creatures were working. The first thing she saw as he brought her to the gate was the stunning mass of boats in the bay, and the crowds on the shore that kept their distance. She felt a strange force in the air pressing on her, trying to usurp her will, force her to be still. Perhaps she might have caved into it had she not felt so amped up, and had the source of that power not been so distant. Below, three people crested the rocks of the next cove. Even in the dim dawn, she recognized them right away. It was Dillon, Michael, and Tory.
Ari ripped the tape off her mouth. “Call to him,” he demanded, but Maddy would not help him in any way, and so in the end, it was Ari who called out.
“Dillon!”
Dillon looked up, then stopped dead in his tracks. She could only imagine what he felt when he saw her there.
“We saved her soul for breakfast,” Ari yelled. “Shall I eat it now?”
She struggled, but his grip only grew tighter. Did he say soul?
“She’s not a part of this!” Dillon screamed. “Let her go!”
“You come to me now. You come to me and I leave her soul where it is. We make good trade. We trade you, for her soul.”
Dillon hesitated, but only for a moment. He bounded toward the base of the stairs. Tory grabbed for him, but he shook her off, and pushed Michael out of his way.
“That’s right, you come to me now.”
“No, Dillon!” Maddy shouted. Dillon was filled with rage, and it blinded him. He would lose this fight. Ari would kill him.
Ari then put his lips against her ear. “You the lucky one,” he said, planting a kiss on her neck. “He dies, you keep your soul. For an hour at least. Not bad.”
She would not accept this. All her life was not going to come down to her being a bargaining chip. She would not be the reason that Dillon failed—she could not allow it!
All at once an explosion of glass and stone shook the Earth. Maddy caught a glimpse of it. The small chapel behind them had buckled outward and its stained glass windows had exploded from the pressure of a green mass which had swelled from within. Spiny limbs and mustard-yellow flowers still spread from the ruined structure like the tentacles of an octopus. It drew Ari’s attention and he loosened his grip. Not much, but it was all Maddy needed. She jerked herself free, swung her tied arms like a broadsword, and knocked him down against the stone of the arch. When he tried to get up, she kicked him in the chin, shattering his jaw, and took off down the steps.
“Maddy!” Dillon had reached the base of the stairs more than a hundred yards below, and began racing up—but not fast enough, because Ari was already rising to his feet behind her, beginning his pursuit.
She picked up the pace, but with her hands still tied she couldn’t balance herself and went tumbling down the stairs hitting the steps as she passed the altars of the patron saints. When she got control of her fall and wrestled herself back to her feet, there was someone standing beside her. Not Dillon; not Ari; someone else. Someone who grabbed her and pulled her close to him. It was a face she had seen once before and had never wanted to see again. Long black hair; a face both masculine and feminine at once. Okoya.
“No!” Dillon screamed from below. “Stay the hell away from her.”
But Okoya ignored him. Holding her tightly he looked into her eyes. “It is your choice,” Okoya said to her.
She didn’t know what he meant until she looked up the hill to see Ari bounding down toward her. Dillon was much farther away and there was no question that Ari would reach her first. What then? Dillon would sacrifice himself to save her soul. His own virtue would destroy him.
And then it all fell into place. There was something she could do. She could remove herself as a variable and stack the equation in Dillon’s favor again.
“You could save him,” Okoya said. “It is your choice.”
He was right. With Okoya’s help, she had the power to turn everything, and what an awesome power it was!
Would you give your life for your country? Bussard had once asked her. Would you give your soul?
For her country, perhaps not—not anymore. But for Dillon? For the world? There was only one answer; without pause.
“Do it!” she ordered Okoya, pressing herself into his embrace. “Do it now.”
There was no time for second thoughts. She steeled herself as a red light shot from Okoya’s eyes and nostrils. She didn’t wait for him to find her soul, she opened up her soul for him, practically hurling her essence out of her body and into those hungry, groping tendrils. She felt her spirit leaving her flesh and for the briefest of instants felt Ari pulling her body away from Okoya, but it was too late, for she was free from her body—and there was joy, immense joy in the knowledge that she had bested him! That she had won! But in an instant her thoughts and memories were tugged from her as her soul discorporated and disconnected from her mind. She was a spirit without a name, without memory and she was moving down a dark path. She was being swallowed. And although there should have been terror as Okoya devoured her, she had none, because there was one thought she was able to take with her, that silenced all fear. It was an unvanquishable sense of victory. She held on to that victory as long as she could, content in that singular knowledge until her soul met eternity and perished.
DILLON SAW EVERYTHING.
He saw Okoya grab her. He saw him hold her close. He saw the tendrils of light vomited up from the pit of Okoya’s being, and he felt her soul pulled from her body and disappear into Okoya. He felt her die, and there was nothing he could do about it. How could he have let this happen? How could he have not seen the vector lurking inside of Ari back in Poland? Now Ari grabbed Maddy’s empty shell, pulling her away from Okoya.
“Try bargaining now,” he heard Maddy say to Ari, but it wasn’t Maddy speaking, not anymore. It was just her empty shell that spoke; her dead, soulless shell, still mimicking life.
Another vector was descending the stairs; a boy, but his gaze wasn’t on Dillon, it was fixed on Okoya. There was so much hate in that gaze that Dillon now knew everything Okoya had told them was true. Okoya was hated by his own kind. He truly had sided with the shards to save himself. But there was no salvation for Okoya. Not now; not ever, for he had devoured Maddy and no pit in hell was deep enough for him now.
With tears of fury blinding him, Dillon grabbed Okoya and hurled him down the steps. He lost his balance, and together they rolled down toward the bay.
“I’ll kill you! You son of a bitch! I’ll kill you!” Dillon began pounding Okoya’s head against the stone, not wanting to stop; never wanting to stop.
Dillon couldn’t help himself. He so much wanted to be the destroyer again and in that moment he longed for the spirit of destruction to return to him, allowing him to feed its hunger, creating waves and waves of destruction as he had done two years ago, so he could share his despair with the world.
It was Maddy’s shell that pushed him off of Okoya, having pulled her hands from the bonds. He looked up to see her. It. Maddy undead.
“Don’t be a fool,” It said. “Get out of here.”
He looked up at it, but didn’t see Maddy’s face—all he could see was the vacancy of her eyes.
“I chose this,” It said. “Now make it mean something.”
Okoya gra
bbed Dillon’s hand. “They’re coming for you,” Okoya said, and spirited him away down the shoreline, toward Michael and Tory, leaving Maddy’s undead husk behind.
“I’ll kill you!” Dillon told Okoya, but it lacked conviction.
“Later,” Okoya told him.
They ran to the rocks where Michael and Tory were waiting, and scrambled over them, to the next cove.
“What happened back there?” Tory asked, and threw a harsh gaze at Okoya. “What’s he doing here?”
Dillon didn’t want to answer—didn’t want to think about it. Okoya urged them on, and they kept moving down the shore, until they were sure the vectors no longer pursued.
“Now that the vectors know I’m here, we have very little time,” Okoya told them. “My presence makes the threat far more serious to them.”
“What about Winston?” Michael asked. “Something happened to him—you felt it, didn’t you? We all must have felt it.”
“It’s possible that the vectors had him—but I think he’s gotten away.” Okoya pointed to Tory. “You go look for him.”
Tory scowled. “I don’t take orders from you.”
“Go, Tory,” Dillon told her. “Michael, you go, too—there’s no telling where he’ll be.”
Tory opened her mouth, as if to say something, but thought better of it and left. Michael lingered a moment more, taking in Dillon’s distraught expression.
“Don’t choke in sudden death, man,” Michael said, clapping him on the shoulder. “We’re counting on you to hold things together.”
When they had gone, Okoya turned to Dillon. “Once they find Winston, you must all summon up your strength. Time is short, and all five of you must be ready.”
“Four,” Dillon spat at him. “Lourdes won’t help us.”
And Okoya said, “I wasn’t talking about Lourdes.”
WINSTON CRAWLED OUT OF the ruin of the shattered chapel, forcing his way through the thorny trunks of the weed he had cultivated. The ugly woman screamed her fury behind him, hacking the stalks of the monster weed with the knife that had been meant for his decapitation. Although the pain in Winston’s broken spine was more than enough to tear him from consciousness, he forced himself lucid, for this, he knew, would be the most pivotal moment of his life. Dragging himself across the road, his legs and arms barely working, he brought himself to the cliff. There were no stairs at this ledge; it was a sheer drop all the way down to the rocks below, but the woman was running behind him now, swinging the knife angrily at her side as she ran, cutting her own legs in her fury to get to Winston.
It was his mother’s voice that came to him then. He had barely thought of her for weeks, but now she rose to the forefront of his mind and sang to him a gentle song of faith; the gospel that had always comforted her. It used to comfort him as well in his childhood, before he had become this strange and wondrous changeling.
“I hear you,” he whispered. Whatever darkness these vectors brought with them, whatever portents of despair, he had to have faith. No matter how unlikely, no matter how foolish, he had to believe that something larger than himself, larger than the vectors, would cradle him and catch him when he fell. With the woman only a few feet away now, he forced his body over the edge and let gravity take over.
37. SCAR AND SPIRIT
* * *
LESS THAN A QUARTER MILE FROM THE STEPS WHERE MADDY’S spirit had died, Dillon waited with Okoya for Michael and Tory to return.
The vectors had not followed them here. They had completely dispensed with Okoya and the shards. Dillon could see the boy, and the man who had once been Tessic’s pilot, standing in the stone arch at the head of the cliff, staring out over the bay, ignoring him.
“If we’re such a threat to the vectors, then why haven’t they come after us?”
“Because they ran out of time,” Okoya said. “They can’t pursue you anymore; they must begin working the scar, and that means we’ve won our first battle. You’ve all survived their attempts to destroy you. Now you will get to face them.”
On the ridge, the third vector took her place beside the other two framed in the arch, and the moment she did something happened. They began to push out waves of energy; pulses of light that danced across the sky filled with color like a shimmering aurora—beautiful, but Dillon understood its dark purpose. The vectors were working the scar, caressing it, slowly tearing it open.
As the waves of energy passed, Dillon felt them resonate within him. He felt his own powers begin a new surge, rising like adrenaline. An automatic reaction to the vector’s pulses. He held containment, but only barely. If he let loose now, he felt his power would cover the entire Mediterranean, and beyond.
“You are enabled,” Okoya said.
It left him breathless, and yet he knew, even with all that power he held inside, he was powerless to bring back Maddy. A devoured soul was gone—irretrievable even to him.
Dillon turned on Okoya sharply, his hands balled into fists. Tears of anger flooded his eyes. “When this is over—if we survive—I will shatter you,” he said. “I will find a way to make you feel the pain she felt when you devoured her.”
He expected Okoya to lash out and vehemently defend his indefensible act, but he didn’t. Instead he extended his hand and said, “I have a gift for you, Dillon.”
Dillon felt a slight change in air pressure around him and his ears popped. The light of dawn changed.
He had felt this before. He knew what it meant.
He spun on his heels to look out over the bay, but he did not see the bay. Instead he saw a jagged hole in space, only a meter wide. A portal to the Unworld.
But even as he saw it, he knew this portal came with a heavy price—for Dillon knew Okoya was using the energy he had gleaned from Maddy’s soul to open the portal.
There were no red sands and icy skies beyond this hole; Okoya had chosen his point of entry with much greater precision. Through the hole, Dillon saw a place that had been burned into his memory, revisited a thousand times in his nightmares. A vast throne room of an ancient stone palace, the cathedral roof held up by what few pillars had not fallen.
And there in the center was a throne.
But the throne was facing the wrong way—Dillon could only see the back of the carved stone chair. Hanging over the side was a corner of blue fabric—the royal robe that had become her shroud. And the edge of a white shoe. Her shoe. Deanna’s.
His mind reeling, his eyes shot back to Okoya. Okoya strained to hold the portal. A vein bulged on his forehead, his face turned a virulent shade of crimson.
“Can’t hold it—” he said through gritted teeth.
Dillon made a move to step through the portal, but Okoya grabbed him, his nails digging into Dillon’s shoulder.
“No time—” Okoya spat. “Seconds left.”
Seconds? Even if he pushed his spirit out before him, and revived Deanna from here, she was too far away, even if she ran, she would not make it to the portal in time. This was just another gift from Okoya’s bottomless bag of cruelties. He offered a pained glimpse of Deanna, without enough time to bring her back.
“Not her flesh!” Okoya hissed. “Draw her. Draw her now!”
And Dillon finally understood.
With the portal collapsing, Dillon pushed forth a single impulse through the breach. He called to her. With every ounce of his soul, he called to her, and his call became an imperative that no spirit could resist. His call bypassed the corporal part of her that lay motionless on the throne, and reached to the far corners of the Unworld, until finding her soul.
As the portal collapsed to a pinhole, he felt her coalescing—moving toward him. And in the last instant before the portal sealed, he felt her—he actually felt her pass through him, like a bullet, in through his chest and out through his spine! But to where?
The portal was gone now, and Dillon searched around him as if expecting to see her there, like a ghost—an apparition before his eyes, but she was nowhere to be found.
&
nbsp; “Where is she?” Dillon demanded. “What happened to her?”
Okoya had fallen to his knees, exhausted from his effort, barely able to catch his breath.
“How can you be so luminous, and yet still be so dim?” Okoya took a deep breath, and then another. The crimson left his face. “A discorporate spirit,” Okoya said, “seeks a dispirited body.”
DEANNA IGNITED INTO CONSCIOUSNESS.
She shot through the void, seeking something to grab on to, a body to join with her spirit, but there was nothing to give her purchase. Finally a vacuum drew her in, at last connecting her spirit with flesh. Now, out of the darkness and into light, only one thought filled her mind. It was a name. Her name—such a powerful thought she had to speak it aloud—but the name she heard was not the name she expected. An instant of fear. Uncertainty. But the instant passed and now the name she spoke—the person she was—no longer seemed foreign, it seemed right, and she forgot altogether why it shouldn’t feel right. She was Maddy Haas. Why on earth would she think she was anyone else?
SITTING ALONE ON A boulder by the shore, Maddy turned to see Dillon running toward her, but as he neared, he slowed his pace. She could feel his trepidation as if the feelings sprang from inside her, and not him. She felt strangely radiant.
“Deanna?” he said.
“Don’t be stupid, it’s Maddy.”
“M-Maddy,” Dillon stuttered. “But . . .”
She slid down the boulder and slowly came toward him, feeling so calm, so in control, as if she had all the time in the world. No . . . more as if the world was in perfect time with me.
“I’m . . . different,” she said. “Have you done something to me again, Dillon?”
“Your soul,” Dillon said. “Okoya devoured your soul.”
She looked at her hands as if that might betray something about her current nature.