Thief of Souls

The ice pick dropped from her fingers, she leaned forward, and Okoya stroked the smooth fluid across her cheeks like war paint. The scent hit her, and instantly any thoughts of what was right, what was wrong, what was clean and what was foul, were snuffed in the sweet flood of a million rose petals.

  MICHAEL FOUGHT OFF THE dewpoint, determined not to telegraph his emotions to the world. His emptiness had returned in full force, growing unbearable by sunset. A hunger, deep in the channels of his ears. Is it possible, Michael began to wonder, to be nourished through one’s senses, rather than through one’s stomach?

  Michael took sustenance that evening from the campsites of the followers. It was the first time in days he had eaten real food, but even so, it was unsatisfying—vapid, and flavorless in some fundamental way. It was as Michael wandered from campsite to campsite that Drew came to him with a request.

  “See, there’s this girl,” Drew said. Michael immediately knew where this was headed, and he had no desire to go there.

  “Drew, I’m tired. Talk to me tomorrow.”

  “Can’t wait. No, no—can’t wait,” he said, his words coming out in anxious staccato beats.

  Michael picked up the pace, and Drew followed, pushing people out of his way to keep up.

  “The thing is, she doesn’t like me,” said Drew. This was no surprise to Michael. Drew had not quite mastered the finer points of conversing with girls he was attracted to. In fact, many of those ill-fated conversations ended abruptly with Drew executing one of several bodily functions, none of which was too pretty.

  Lately Michael’s ears had been so occupied with music, and the adulation of his followers, he really hadn’t cared to hear about Drew’s misadventures. But now, with his mind clearer, Michael found it all terribly uncomfortable—even more uncomfortable than Drew’s former crush on him.

  “All I want you to do,” pleaded Drew, “is make her fall in love with me.”

  Michael tried to shut this down now. “No,” he said. “Period. The end.” Michael wove faster through the campsites, thinking he could board one of the buses and lock himself in the lavatory—anything for some time alone.

  But Drew continued to pester him like a mosquito. It wasn’t like him; Drew Camden had never been a pest or a nuisance. It made Michael even more determined not to give in.

  “Come on, Michael, you’d do it for any of the other followers—why won’t you do it for me?”

  “Because,” said Michael, “you’re my friend—you’re not one of them.”

  And then Drew pulled out his trump card.

  “You made me like this! The least you could do is help me out here!”

  Finally Michael stopped and turned to him. The light of several campsites played on Drew’s face, creating strange, unfamiliar shadows—but it wasn’t just the light. It was the way Drew looked—the way he acted. His character had dropped several octaves, and it occurred to Michael that he did not know this reinvented person before him. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to.

  “What if I give you my running suit? The one you like,” Drew offered, probably not even considering the fact that it was back home, hundreds of miles and one lifetime away. “Will you do it then? Huh?”

  Reconstituted beef. Perhaps it was just his hunger, but that was the thought that came to Michael’s mind. It was at some fast-food dive. They called it a steak sandwich—and although it looked like steak, and smelled like steak, the thing was mushy and flavorless. The small print said it was “reconstituted beef”; apparently ground up and, through some mystical process, pressed back into little steaklike rectangles, losing everything worth keeping in the process. Michael couldn’t help but feel that Drew was now a living loaf of reconstituted beef.

  The thought was too much for him, and suddenly Michael wanted to do anything to get the “new and improved” Drew out of sight and out of mind. “Fine, I’ll do it. Where is she?”

  Drew grinned like a kid in a candy shop. “This way,” and he trotted off, leading Michael toward his current love interest.

  Drew barged into the girl’s tent and pulled her out, against her protests. “Angela, I’d like you to meet Michael Lipranski. See, Angela, didn’t I promise you a personal introduction?”

  Angela, at the sight of Michael, began to wring her fingers self-consciously. “Hi,” said Angela timidly. “I volunteered to be one of your personal helpers, but there was a waiting list.”

  Drew hovered a few feet away, shifting his weight from one leg to another. “Come on, Michael, do it. Do it quick!”

  It would be easy enough; all he had to do was plant the feeling so intensely in her the moment she looked at Drew, that it would shade everything she ever felt. She would love Drew unconditionally for the rest of her life, or until Michael decided to change it. But as he looked into this girl’s eyes, Michael had a sudden sense of foreboding—a dark flashback to something he had once seen, once felt, but couldn’t place. He had seen those eyes before, but on a different girl. Suddenly a chill wind blew a rain of sand across them, stinging their faces, as Michael realized where he had seen that look before.

  It was the same expression, the same blank eyes he had seen on a girl a year ago, when he had witnessed his parasite seize the girl with its violating blue flames and devour her. Maybe no one else could see it—but Michael knew exactly what was wrong.

  This girl had no soul.

  “Aw, come on, Michael,” said Drew. “What’s taking so long?”

  Michael grabbed Drew and pulled him away.

  “Hey! Don’t touch me,” whined Drew, trying to wriggle free from Michael’s grip.

  “This isn’t the girl you want, Drew. Trust me, it’s not.”

  “Huh?”

  Michael turned from Drew, and randomly began grabbing followers around him, looking for signs of life inside—and in half the people he encountered, he found the same soulless void.

  How was this possible? At first, he thought it might be Dillon—that his spirit of destruction had returned, and had now developed a taste for something more than devastation . . . . But no. That was a spirit impossible to miss. If that thing were back in this world, bells and whistles would be ringing in all the Shards’ ears. It was not Dillon . . . but if not him, then who?

  Michael had a feeling he knew.

  “You promised, Michael!” complained Drew, stomping up a dust cloud. “You said you’d do it! You lied!”

  “Drew—there’s something I want you to do.”

  Drew looked at him warily. “What?”

  “Tonight—I want you to stay up. I want you to keep an eye on Okoya. Follow him and tell me everything he does.”

  “And then you’ll fix me up with a girl?”

  “Whatever you want, Drew. I promise. But first, Okoya.”

  Drew thought about it and accepted. “Deal. Hell, I don’t sleep much anyway.”

  THE LOUNGE ATOP THE Stratosphere tower offered Radio Joe a bird’s-eye view of the Strip, and the mobs pressing in around the Mirage a mile away.

  In a few brief hours, the miracle of the waters had become the number one attraction in a town known for its spectacle. There was no keeping the crowds out of the Mirage lobby, and as for management, their hands were filled with other problems. The casino, which consistently raked in a healthy percent of all cash wagered, suddenly wasn’t the cash cow it used to be. In fact, the house was losing.

  “My wife says she wants to have his baby,” slurred the slovenly man sitting on the barstool next to Joe. “I told her if the kid really is God, he sure as hell wouldn’t want to screw her. That tore it. She ran off and joined them out there in the desert, saying Hail Marys, or Hare Krishnas, or whatever the hell they do.” He downed his scotch, and demanded another.

  Radio Joe kept his cap pulled down low on his face so as not to be recognized, for his face was still on every magazine. He didn’t think it mattered much here, however. The liquor was flowing in rivers today, and few in his line of vision could see straight. “You say this boy had red hair
and fair skin?” Joe asked.

  “Yeah. Couldn’t be any older than eighteen. Name was Daryl, or Dalton—something like that.”

  The bartender poured the slovenly man another scotch. “I hear the MGM just shut its casino down,” he said.

  “No kidding! Them too?”

  That makes three, thought Joe. How many more would go? How many casinos had this boy visited? Radio Joe had been searching for days for a sign of the Quíkadi, but instead had found this redheaded teen. He knew there had to be a connection, but didn’t know what it was yet.

  “I’ve lived here all my life,” the bartender told them, “and I ain’t ever seen nothing like this. It’s like the kid put a fix in every casino he passed. Even the slot machines keep hitting jackpots.”

  Radio Joe had noted that the odds on the table games had somehow changed. The random order of dice thrown and cards turned was now less random than before. These events had divided Las Vegas into three factions: those who swarmed the Mirage; those who swarmed the casinos; and those who watched from a numb, plastered distance.

  “Have one on me,” said the slovenly gambler, then he called out to the bartender. “One for the chief, here.”

  Radio Joe graciously accepted, but didn’t drink it. He needed his wits about him.

  “When I was a kid,” said the drunk, “I once thought I saw the Virgin Mary in a pancake—but my damn brother ate it.” He took a swig of his scotch. “My dad died of a heart attack the next week. Totally unrelated, of course, but you never stop wondering.”

  An announcement came over the loudspeakers that the casino way down on the ground floor was now closed until further notice. Radio Joe was not surprised.

  “Some people think it’s the Second Coming,” the bartender said, breaking the cardinal law of barkeeping and pouring a drink for himself. “Other folks say it’s the end of the world.”

  The slovenly man clinked glasses with him. “Yeah. Too bad nobody’s taking bets.”

  IT WAS SUNSET WHEN Radio Joe pushed his way through the anxious crowds around the Mirage, determined to see for himself the sight that had arrested the attention of the city. The rumor was that federal agents were about to close the whole place down, until they could either discover or fabricate a rational explanation for the wall of water. But Radio Joe suspected that no amount of government intervention could close this Pandora’s box.

  He shouldered his way through, creating his own right-of-way, against the disapproval of those around him, until he was finally in the lobby. Police in riot gear fought a losing battle to peacefully disperse the crowd, but they were outnumbered, and their strategies were all geared toward angry mobs, not joyous ones. With so many children present in the arms of their parents, no one dared authorize the use of tear gas or lethal force, and so Radio Joe watched as the line of police gave way. The eager hundreds funneled forward, leaping over the reception desk, toward the shark tank. Radio Joe became just one among many pressing their palms forward into the wall of water, wanting not just to see the miracle, but to feel it as well.

  As he reached his hand forward, Joe’s fingers went from air into cool salt water, without any hint of a barrier between. A bright yellow fish swam between his fingers. Tiny bubbles dislodged from the hair on his wrists and floated up, out of sight.

  Around him the wide-eyed throng was being dragged away one at a time by police officers, but still more kept coming. Radio Joe wondered if these people understood what they were witnessing. That this place, this moment in time, marked the end of the Age of Reason. A new time was coming, and Joe feared what this new age might be. He now knew that the devouring spirit he had pursued was just one of many players in a dark and bewildering pageant. There would be hundreds of souls by now that the Quíkadi had devoured, and there was no hope of Radio Joe ever cleansing the world of its waste, much less fighting it. Who knew what other mystic acts had taken root in the world as well?

  He pulled his hand out of the water-wall, knowing there was only one thing for him to do now. He would leave here, go to the place where life began, and wait there for it to end.

  As he turned, a woman in the crowd made eye contact. He read her quizzical look, and although he shielded his face, he wasn’t quick enough.

  “Shiprock!” she said under her breath.

  He turned and ran, but was met by the crowd pressing in, pushing their way toward the water-wall.

  “The Shiprock Slayer!” screamed the woman. “It’s the Shiprock Slayer!”

  More eyes turned to Radio Joe. He heard more voices now, seconding the accusation. One of the riot policemen turned his way.

  He knew if he was to escape, he would have to use the crowd to his advantage, and so he dropped down on all fours, serpentining an unpredictable path through the forest of legs.

  “That way!” he heard a voice shout. “He’s over there!”

  But the farther away he got, the less interested the crowd was in his identity. The only thought in their mind was getting to the water-wall before the whole lobby was shut down. He battered his way through them, and out of the lobby. Once outside, the crowd wasn’t quite as dense, and he could move more quickly, but so could the ones pursuing him. To his left and right were more crowds, more police, and up ahead was a railing that guarded an oasis of palms and ferns. In the center of the Oasis stood a mock volcano that erupted with precise regularity on the hour, twenty-four hours a day. Once a highlight of the Strip, it was now just part of the scenery. The five o’clock eruption had already begun, gas jets spreading fire over waterfalls and into the dark lagoon. Tongues of flame licked out, covering the surface of the water.

  “Stop him!”

  He felt a hand grab for his collar, and miss. There was only one route for him now, and no time to linger on the decision. He climbed the railing and leapt into the flaming lagoon, leaving his destiny to the fires of the volcano.

  DILLON NEEDED SOME TIME alone that afternoon—some time to prepare.

  The other Shards had spent much of their hour-long ride from Las Vegas riding the high of the glorious day. Dillon had to admit, he got caught up in it, too.

  He had watched the news on the bus’s TV screen and had enjoyed the sight of his own face. Locally, their little show had supplanted the Shiprock Massacres as the leading news stories. If the bloodbath in Shiprock was a sign of the coming chaos, then Dillon was already stealing focus and seizing control. He relished the expert attempts to explain his windowless wall of water, which, like the pool at Hearst Castle, would remain until someone chose to drain the water out. It made Dillon feel big—so much larger than life, he felt he might burst out of his own skin and swell until he stood taller than the mountains.

  “Keep your eye on the big picture,” he had told the others. “We’re not doing this for ourselves”—but it was something he had to keep reminding himself. Elevating himself into broader public view was just a means to an end. Still, he couldn’t deny the glorious feeling it gave him.

  Once their campsite was established, Dillon wasted no further time in idle talk. He had left the circle of buses, and headed toward a craggy ridge a mile away.

  He made his way up the rocks that reddened in the late-afternoon sun. Winston had said he was playing Jesus and Moses wrapped together, and it did feel as if he were climbing the face of Sinai as he scaled the jagged rocks.

  Dillon was slowly becoming used to such comparisons, feeling more at home in the company of prophets and saviors—and he dared to wonder, when this was all over, where his name would fall in the records of the divinely touched.

  These were heady thoughts. Thoughts he had caged, ever since he had found his powers—but now, on the eve of his ascension into the limelight, he needed to ponder them, for his confidence needed to grow large enough to blanket the world.

  He reached the top of the bluff, and stared down at the magnificent man-made wonder that lay on the other side, still swarmed by tourists. Even from a distance, its concrete expanse was breathtaking.

>   Okoya arrived some time later. Dillon didn’t hear him until he spoke.

  “To think it was built by mere human hands,” Okoya said, when he saw the view. “It rivals the Pyramids, and the Colossus of Rhodes.”

  “Take a good look,” said Dillon. “It’s your last chance.”

  Just a few short days ago, Dillon had felt threatened by Okoya’s presence; mistrustful and suspicious. But such feelings felt small and distant as he stood on the hilltop. Nothing could threaten him now.

  “What will it be like after tomorrow?” Dillon wondered aloud.

  Okoya sat beside him. “Once, the world was flat and sat at the center of the universe,” Okoya said. “But people learned otherwise, and they adjusted. We are on that precipice of change again. Tomorrow the world will be a very different place.”

  “People will have no choice but to accept us.”

  Okoya agreed. “You are too powerful to deny, and too dangerous to challenge.”

  Dillon tried to imagine the days ahead. Would they usher in an era of peace? Would they find themselves in the company of kings and world leaders? He could barely imagine himself meeting world leaders, much less instructing them on global affairs. And yet that would be the task set before him.

  The thought was too immense to grasp, so he laughed at it. “I wonder how they’ll feel to have the world in the hands of a pack of sixteen-year-olds.”

  “You won’t always be sixteen,” said Okoya. “And it doesn’t surprise me that you’ll be rising to the throne of humanity. What surprises me is that it’s taken you so long.”

  “Did you know,” said Dillon, “that I can find no pattern when I look in the eyes of some of the followers?”

  “Really? That’s odd.”

  “No,” said Dillon, thinking he understood why. “It makes sense if you think about it . . . . Now that they’ve dedicated their lives to the cause, they have no pattern but the one I give them.”

  “Blank slates,” suggested Okoya.

  “Yes—waiting for me to write on.”

  “What could be better?”

  Okoya stood and kicked a rock down the hillside. It tumbled, kicking up dust on the way down. “I’m worried about Michael,” Okoya said.