Thief of Souls

  “Can I help?” asked Drew. He confidently slid past Michael, toward the sound of Tory’s voice.

  With hands held out before him, Michael crossed the chamber, to work the gate with Drew and Tory, and soon all three of them were way too focused to hear the faint triplet of sounds slowly building as it echoed back and forth in the concrete around them.

  WITH THE DAM SET ON AUTODESTRUCT, DILLON HURRIED back to the campsite. As he neared it, he could see rows of police and state troopers lining the road a few hundred yards away. They kept a safe distance, as did the news helicopters circling above—for they had already learned that anyone who went in, came out a devout follower, or did not come out at all. Dillon knew that the best law enforcement could do, was to hold back the influx of curiosity-seekers . . . but that would soon be impossible, because, by the time this day was over, they would be seeking more than just their curiosity—they would be seeking the face of God. But what they would find would be a divinity of five. Dillon could sense the eyes of the nation aligning in a single direction, focusing on this spot in the desert where Dillon’s extraordinary event was already beginning to unfold.

  When he approached the circle of buses, he heard cheers from within. The followers had gathered around Okoya, who stood atop a boulder. Dillon couldn’t hear what Okoya said, but whatever it was, it stirred up the followers. And although their excitement charged the dry desert air, Dillon found himself troubled—not because of their enthusiasm, but because it was focused on Okoya, and not him. Dillon had to fight his way through the dense crowd, until they saw who it was and began to part for him. It seemed to Dillon that there were twice as many people here today as there were yesterday.

  Okoya stepped down from his high spot. “Is it done?”

  Dillon nodded. “The road is jammed with cars. We’re going to have to walk—and we don’t have much time.”

  “I’ll get them going,” Okoya turned to leave, but Dillon grabbed him.

  “I wanted to make an announcement: to prepare everyone for what’s about to happen—what they’re going to see.”

  “I’ve done that already,” said Okoya.

  Dillon felt a wave of anger rise in him. “Who gave you permission to do that? It should be me announcing the descent into Black Canyon.”

  “You were supposed to be back at dawn,” Okoya said impatiently. “You’ve already wasted enough time; don’t waste any more.” Okoya pulled out of Dillon’s grasp, and went to gather the crowd.

  As Dillon headed for the canopy where the other Shards had slept, he began to wonder why Okoya was the one to step forward. The way each of the Shards had been jockeying for position, Dillon would have assumed any one of them would leap at the chance to usurp some measure of power.

  But Michael and Tory were nowhere to be found, while Winston and Lourdes appeared far too content at the center of their own petty universes to be bothered with actually doing anything. He found the two of them sitting beneath the canopy. Lourdes was lost in a deep emotional involvement with breakfast, while Winston faced away from her, practically vanishing behind the morning paper. Sitting on velvet chairs, on sandy tapestries pilfered from Hearst Castle, they were a surreal disconnect, like a Magritte painting; both comically and tragically absurd.

  “Where are Michael and Tory?” Dillon asked.

  Lourdes squeezed the juice from her grapefruit into her mouth before answering, “I haven’t seen them all morning.”

  “They took off,” said Winston. “Okoya seems to think they left with their own little splinter group.”

  “What?”

  “People do get tired of taking orders,” Winston said, barely veiling his own threat of desertion.

  “You should try some of Okoya’s hash browns,” said Lourdes.

  Dillon’s head was swimming now, his mind fighting to grasp how things could have slipped so far. How could Tory and Michael abandon them?

  The rich aroma of steaming, butter-fried potatoes played in his nostrils, as he looked at the bowl of hash browns, it hit him that they smelled a bit too good, hitting his olfactory with such intensity, Dillon found his own hunger becoming acute. Indeed, it seemed all of their appetites had elevated beyond the commonplace, to things far more enticing. Dillon leaned closer, picking up the bowl in his hands, focusing his thoughts on the potatoes before him. Although they looked like hash browns, its pattern was like something else entirely. In fact, to Dillon, those little shoestrings seemed to be squirming and writhing—weaving in and out of one another . . . Like worms, he thought—but with a life-pattern far more complex. A life-pattern that was . . . that was . . .

  The moment he realized what he was looking at, Dillon yelped as if his hands had been seared, and he hurled the bowl away. It shattered on a boulder, splattering red liquid light that dripped to the ground, disappearing into the sand.

  Winston put down his newspaper.

  Whatever the spell had been, it was now broken, for now Lourdes’s fork didn’t hold hash browns. Instead the tines dripped with vermillion light. It oozed from the corners of her mouth like blood. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and watched as it soaked into her skin, vanishing. She looked to Winston, and then to Dillon, already beginning to turn a pale shade of green. “If that wasn’t hash browns,” she asked, “exactly what have I been eating?”

  “Not just you,” said Dillon, turning to Winston. Winston looked down at the newspaper that had seemed so innocuous a moment ago. There were no words on the page—no pictures, just rows of random letters and symbols that his brain had translated into meaning. Even now he was still drawing something from the page as he gazed at it—a faint stream of red light passing from the page to his eyes, like a long draft of a cold drink. Finally Winston shuddered, breaking free—and the moment he did, the paper itself began to dissolve away, bubbling into that same liquid light.

  Okoya arrived a moment too late to preserve his illusions. “What a waste,” he said. “I worked hard to prepare these things for you.”

  “Okoya,” said Winston, with a fearful quiver Dillon had never heard in Winston’s voice before, “what have we been . . . consuming?”

  “The souls of your followers, of course,” Okoya answered serenely.

  Dillon stared at Okoya, but he wasn’t seeing him. Instead Dillon saw patterns of thought and action rearranging themselves in his own head. Everything Dillon had done, from the moment he had been dragged from the Columbia River three weeks before, until now, had been based on the single, unwavering belief that his efforts would hold together a world that was about to fall apart. What he had planned today was founded on that belief. He had been certain that holding back the waters of Lake Mead would propel him into the spotlight—a position of power that would allow him to seize enough control to keep the world from slipping into chaos.

  But this event was not my idea, was it? Dillon realized. Wasn’t it Okoya who suggested that I could be the glue that bonded the world? But if Okoya’s only interest in the human spirit was its nutritional value, why would he support Dillon’s efforts? How could preserving humanity serve Okoya’s agenda? The answer was that it wouldn’t.

  “I don’t feel so good,” said Lourdes, stumbling off her chair to the ground, to join Winston who was already on his knees, clutching at his eyes, as if he would gouge them out.

  A group of Happy Campers stumbled up. Seeing Winston and Lourdes in agony on the ground, one of them asked, “Is everything okay?” The man gripped his own stomach in pain. In fact, quite a few of the Happy Campers around them were doubling over, caught in Lourdes’s sphere of influence.

  And then Dillon finally made one more connection. “Shiprock,” he said. Winston looked up at him from the ground. “It’s where you and Tory met Okoya, isn’t it?”

  “It was two weeks before anything happened there . . . .”

  But Dillon now suspected that wasn’t true; that a massacre had occurred long before any blood was actually spilled.

  “Nothing has change
d, Dillon,” Okoya said slowly. “You will still have the world at your fingertips, believe me.”

  But was that what Dillon wanted? he wondered. It was a thrilling thought, to reign with supernatural power . . . but such a thing would mean a complete shift in the fundamental structure of the world. Power would no longer be divided among equals around the globe, because now there was a vast inequality, unlike anything the modern world had known. Five elite beings. They would not just be playing gods, they would be gods . . .

  . . . and because of it, the very structure of civilization would crumble.

  “It’s too late to do anything but move forward,” Okoya demanded. “There’s nothing more to think about.”

  Dillon thought to the globe he had so painstakingly sketched patterns across. “There will be an event,” he had told the others, “something so inexplicable, that the world cannot look away.” In turn, that event would ignite an even larger, more devastating event—like a detonator’s charge ignites a warhead.

  Until now Dillon could see almost every pattern around him, except his own. But now his own was finally revealed—through Okoya—and the house of cards he had built all his efforts on collapsed, revealing the bleak pattern it masked.

  Holding back the waters was not a way to ward off that igniting event—it was the igniting event.

  And Dillon was the detonator.

  “I don’t know what you are,” Dillon told Okoya, “but I won’t let you use us anymore.”

  If Okoya was concerned, he didn’t show it. “You’ll do what needs to be done, Dillon. Because a few miles away, there’s a dam that’s about to crumble by your hand. It’s too late to stop that now. The way I see it, you only have two choices—allow the dam to burst, and kill hundreds of thousands of people downriver . . . or you can hold back the waters and save all those lives.” Okoya cracked his superior smile. “I know you’ll do the right thing.”

  Dillon knew he was snared in Okoya’s trap, but he was not about to let Okoya claim victory. There were moans all around them now, and Dillon turned around to see almost all the followers doubling over in pain, their bodies reflexively mimicking Lourdes as she lay on the ground, every ounce of her body reviling her cannibalistic feasts.

  Dillon knelt to Winston, whose eyes were filled with a grief and revulsion that skewered his spirit more painfully than any blade.

  “What do we do, Dillon?” Winston begged. “What do we do now?”

  “You have to get Lourdes out of here,” he said, glancing back at the crumbling followers.

  “I can’t,” said Winston shaking his head, barely able to move himself. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

  “But you will,” Dillon demanded. And somehow, the force of his will was enough to get Winston to his feet. He helped Lourdes up, and the two of them stumbled away, into the desert.

  In a few moments, the followers’ groans began to lessen, and they began to lift themselves off the ground as Lourdes moved out of range.

  Dillon looked at Okoya once more, hardening his resolve. Suddenly this spirit-predator didn’t seem quite so sure of himself.

  Okoya bolted past Dillon. There was a sound in the air like a sonic boom, followed by a rush of wind, and the light around them changed. In an instant the reason for the sound and light was clear, for, ten yards away, a hole had been punctured in space, and beyond it, was a plain of crimson sand.

  Okoya had punched a hole out of this universe, into the Unworld—and he was racing toward the hole.

  Dillon dove for Okoya, grabbing his legs and bringing him down.

  “Help me!” Dillon called, and instantly there were a dozen followers with him, wrestling Okoya to the ground, just a few feet from the gaping hole in the world. Okoya fought to escape, but in spite of his ability to rape souls and manipulate situations, he was a slave to the physical limitations of the body he wore, as easily restrained as any human.

  “You have no power beyond what you steal, do you?” Dillon said. “You’ve turned us against one another, you’ve used our powers toward your own ends. It stops here.”

  Okoya struggled against his captors, but it was useless. With Okoya subdued, Dillon’s attention turned to that hole in the world. There were followers around him, gaping in wonder, accepting it as yet another mystery of the strange, youthful gods who guided them. But Dillon’s awe was of an entirely different nature . . . because through that hole in the world was a distant mountain. And there was a palace carved into the stone of that mountain. Dillon knew that somewhere in that palace, resting on the dusty remains of a dead king, sat Deanna’s body—only a few miles away . . . through that hole.

  Then Dillon realized that Okoya was watching him from beneath the tackle of assailants . . . and smiling. So Dillon tore his attention away from the mountain palace.

  “Make sure he can’t get away,” said Dillon.

  “How?” someone asked.

  “I don’t know. Chain him to a boulder, for all I care.” And then Dillon strode off to gather his band of a thousand followers for the march to Black Canyon.

  He looked back only once, to see the hole in the world close with a twinkling of light, locking Deanna a universe away once more.

  21. BLACK CANYON

  * * *

  PEOPLE DIDN’T KNOW WHY IT WAS HAPPENING, BUT EVERYONE certainly knew what was happening. As cracks in the face of the dam divided and multiplied, engineers abandoned the power plant, terrified as they rode up the violently shaking elevators to solid ground. Tourists had long since run off, any boats left on Lake Mead were rapidly powering to shore, and from high above the dam, a swarm of news helicopters added to the mayhem.

  A hundred miles downriver, alarms blared in the casinos of Laughlin, but all the roads to higher ground were so jammed that no one was moving, unless they were moving on foot. Even farther downstream, in Lake Havasu, the new home of the famous London Bridge, there was no relief from the panic. All around the lake, people packed what little memories they could, abandoning the rest, barely able to believe that the world’s greatest dam was only minutes from giving way. It seemed London Bridge would be falling down after all.

  DEEP IN THE BOWELS of the dam, Drew Camden kept his panic controlled, constantly telling himself that there would be light around the next bend—that they were one junction away from an escape. They would make it out of here, and somehow, he would get back to his new old life.

  Boom boom boom . . . Boom boom boom . . .

  The triple beat echoed around them like a dark waltz, growing louder by the minute. Tiny pebbles of concrete fell like sleet in the dark.

  “How much time do we have?” Drew asked.

  “I don’t know,” answered Tory. “This thing isn’t exactly the wall of the Neptune Pool. It could be a minute, it could be an hour—there’s no way to tell.”

  Michael stopped suddenly. The others bumped into him in the dark.

  “What is it, Michael? Did you find something?” Tory asked.

  “I think . . .” said Michael. “I just think it’s time we got ourselves ready . . . .” He took a deep breath and let it out. “Ready to die, I mean.”

  “Been there, done that!” said Drew, quickly cutting him off. “No burning need to do it again.” Then he heard Michael fiddling with something, and reached out to see what it was. Michael was leafing through his wallet.

  “Um, I don’t think we’re gonna buy our way out of here, Michael,” said Drew.

  “Do you two have any ID?” Michael asked.

  The shaking around them grew stronger, and the significance of the question hit home. They would need identification, if they didn’t make it out—so that whoever found them would know where to send their bodies.

  The percussive waltz grew louder, filling with discord and sibilance.

  “Maybe . . .” said Tory, with a quiver in her voice. “Maybe it’s best if we don’t. I wouldn’t want my mother to know I ended up like this.”

  “No,” said Michael. “They have to send
us home—or else Dillon won’t know how to find us.”

  It was something Drew hadn’t considered: Dillon bringing them back. With all that he had seen, Drew didn’t even know what death was anymore. Was it an end? Was it a beginning? Or was it just an inconvenience?

  “My name’s engraved on my bracelet,” said Tory.

  “Put it in a pocket,” suggested Michael. “A zippered one, if you have it.”

  “I don’t have anything,” said Drew, and Michael handed him something laminated.

  “It’s my library card. It’ll be good enough to get you home.”

  Drew slipped the card into his pocket. “Yeah, but I’m not gonna need it, ’cause we’re getting out of here. C’mon, let’s move out!”

  “The Cowardly Lion finds courage,” Tory said.

  “Things change,” Drew answered. “I’ll tell you all about it sometime.”

  DILLON COLE ALWAYS HAD a plan, but as he marched with his thousand followers, he had nothing—no plan; nor a single idea of what he should do.

  Shiprock.

  The thought of that massacre still nagged uncomfortably in his mind. The details of it—the missing old man, and the deputy who had continued where he had left off—such a horrible thing . . . and yet Dillon knew there was a message in it for him, like a flare in the desert that was meant for his eyes only. Something so important. Dillon had seen the massacre as the beginning of the end, but if Okoya had thrown his perspective so far askew all this time, perhaps Dillon was seeing it all wrong. In a world turning upside down, perhaps a massacre is not what it seems. He followed the path of that thought to its logical end, and finally saw the light of the flare.

  As Dillon reached the rim of Black Canyon, the thousand followers spread out, craning their necks to see the incredible depth of the gorge, and the majesty of Hoover Dam rising almost a mile away.

  There was a switchback trail that led down into the canyon—but before leading them down, he turned, shouting to the crowd, “Some of you will come down with me. The rest will stay up here.”