Thief Of Souls

17. Gamblers And Other Sharks

A black glass pyramid roasted in the desert sun.

From a clear sky, clouds began to fold out from a point in space directly above the pyramid. The many people wandering this end of the Las Vegas Strip took quick notice, wondering where the clouds had come from, and how they had grown so quickly. Then a sin­gle bolt of lightning exploded from the sky, striking the very peak of the pyramid, knocking out its elec­tricity.

Inside Luxor’s casino, the brightly lit gambling ta­bles were plunged into darkness, and although the backup generator should have come on, it didn’t. At the card tables, the dealers stopped their hands in mid-deal. At the roulette tables, the croupiers covered the house chips to make sure none were stolen during the blackout.

One particular croupier stood behind his roulette ta­ble in the darkness, yelling, “Nobody panic”—although he was more panicked than the gamblers surrounding him.

Then suddenly, the lights came back on . . . and standing directly before him, staring in his eyes, was a young man with red hair.

The kid was either underage to be in a casino, or a young eighteen, and around him stood four others. Like the redheaded kid, they were all dressed in shimmering gold silk shirts, and spotless white jeans—and had ap­peared out of nowhere while the casino was dark. They all wore the faintest hint of a smile, as they looked directly into the roulette croupier’s eyes, as if they knew something he didn’t. It was unnerving, and he had to look away.

In a moment, the gambling resumed.

“Place your bets!” the croupier called out. He pushed the wheel, giving it a faster spin, and took the small, white ball in his hand. Various gamblers around the table stacked their chips around the velvet betting board. The redheaded teen and his friends only watched, as he released the ball. The ball hugged the rim, fell toward the wheel, skipped a bit, and landed in a green pocket.

Double zero.

Moans were heard around the table. No one had bet it. Few people ever did. The croupier raked in the chips, clearing the board for the next wager.

Still the redheaded kid and his friends only watched, but now the croupier thought he felt a strange aura, like heat at the edge of a fire. And then, there was the breeze—not just the hotel air-conditioning, but a breeze that seemed to pull down cigarette smoke from the high atrium above, and send it swirling in an eddy around the table.

“Place your bets!” he said again. He was sure it was just his imagination.

Bets were placed randomly around the table. Square bets, street bets, columns and lines. The redheaded boy and his friends did not wager. The croupier released the ball, it spun around, then bounced in and out of numbers, and found its pocket.

Single zero.

Moans from around the table. No one had bet it. Few people ever did.

Now that strange aura began to pulsate, as it grew stronger—and it wasn’t just him. He could see some gamblers around the table, as well, beginning to loosen their collars. The croupier raked in the chips, and took a deep breath to try to chase away the strange feeling. “Place your bets!” he said.

And this time, the redheaded boy pulled a five-dollar chip from his pocket. He placed it on number one. When all bets had been placed, the croupier released the ball, it spun around the lip of the roulette wheel, and fell out of orbit, landing in number one. The kid had won.

The croupier raised his eyebrows. “You must be lucky. First time playing?’’

“Yes,” said the redheaded kid. The croupier gave him his winnings, and the boy said, “Let it all ride—this time on number two.”

The swirling breeze around the table was getting denser. The croupier could feel it on the hairs on his forearm. It was more than just that, though, for as he looked on his forearm, he could see the curly hairs there begin to grow thicker, denser, as if they were growing at an unnatural speed. And there was that bald man in the corner. Was it just his imagination, or was that man not quite as bald as he had been just a few minutes ago? What was all this about?

The croupier gave the ball a spin. It orbited four times, and dropped squarely into a pocket.

Number two.

Exclamations of surprise echoed around the table, but not from the boy and his friends. It seemed as though they were expecting to win. The croupier felt the pulsating feeling grow as he gave the boy his win­nings, like a presence that was pushing on him, press­ing on his heart and lungs, until he could feel his heart and breath match the steady rhythm of that strange pulse. . . . And yet, he realized, it wasn’t a bad feeling at all. It felt good in some odd way. He felt good, although he couldn’t say why. This time he returned the young man’s smile when the young man said, “Let it ride on number three.”

By now a small crowd had begun to gather around the table—the kind that always gathers around a win­ning streak. But more people than usual were gravitat­ing toward this unusual sequence of events. The croupier let the ball go, it orbited four times, and dropped.

Number three.

The exclamations of surprise exploded from the on­lookers. In less than five minutes, this boy had raised his pot from five, to five thousand dollars. The pit boss had taken notice, and the hidden camera above their heads had taken notice as well, for security was zeroing in on the table from across the casino floor.

“Let it ride on number four,” the boy said. Five of the other gamblers around the table moved their chips over next to his. The croupier was sweating now, breathing quickly, accepting the rhythm of the pulsat­ing beat. His own excitement was souring, because he knew he wasn’t just witnessing this, whatever it was, he was a part of it. Before security could arrive, he spun the ball and the wheel. Watching intently until it fell . . .

. . . into pocket number four.

A cheer erupted around the table. The black kid turned to the redheaded boy and said, “Very good, Dil­lon. You could buy a house with that.” And the crou­pier laughed, because it felt so good to know his name. Dillon. Security guards pushed their way through the throng, getting between Dillon and the table.

“Sir,” said one of the four guards, “may we see some identification for you and your friends?”

“We don’t have any,” said the blonde girl.

“Then I’m afraid you’ll have to come with us.”

At that, their smiles only grew wider. Dillon looked the man over from head to toe. He sniffed the air around the man as if smelling his cologne, and then he reached up to an old scar that cut diagonally across the guard’s forehead. As soon as Dillon touched the scar, it began to bubble and fold, until it was gone.

“What the . . . ?” But before the guard could say any­thing further, Dillon caught him in his gaze.

“Vietnam?” asked Dillon.

The man nodded dumbly.

“Helicopter or plane?” asked Dillon.

“Helicopter.”

“I can hear the weight of their deaths in your voice,” Dillon said. And then he whispered, “But there was nothing you could do. From now on, you’ll stop blam­ing yourself.”

Then the man—who was the toughest guard in the hotel—released his breath with a gust, almost as strong as the swirling cigarette smoke, as if the world had gone from night to day. Then he smiled like a baby. Neither he nor the other guards made a move to eject Dillon and his friends. Instead, they joined the specta­tors.

“Tory,” Dillon said, loudly enough for everyone to hear, “this place reeks of cigarette smoke. Could you clean it up?”

“My pleasure.” She raised her hand in an overtly dramatic gesture toward the swirling wind that now spun with cocktail napkins and cigarette butts, and in an instant the thick, smoky air was crystal-clear. Dillon turned back to the table, and when the croupier looked down, almost everyone had already placed their bets on number five. Dillon looked at his own immense pile of chips.

“Let it ride on five,” he said simply.

“But . . . there’s a five-thousand limit to this table,” said the croupier, apologizing as best he could.

“That’s all right,” said Dillon. “Five thousand on five, then.” He spun the wheel and let the ball go. When the ball went down, he paid Dillon and everyone else their winnings, without even looking to see where the ball had landed.

The table was shut down less than five minutes later, and so Dillon and his four friends left, the swirling wind, suddenly blowing straight through the doors at the end of the casino, like a carpet of wind to carry them out. They marched out of the hotel with dozens of people following them diagonally across the street, toward the green towers of the MGM Grand, and straight for the blackjack tables.

Four hours later, with a parade of two hundred peo­ple behind them, they marched into the lobby of the Mirage. They had made their way down the strip, having broken the bank in half a dozen hotels. They had taken everything from the Bellagio’s craps tables. They had tapped out the slots at Bally’s. They had emp­tied the vaults of Caesar’s Palace, by way of baccarat.

And finally they pirated Treasure Island in a game called pai-gau, which none of them had ever heard of before.

Now, Dillon and his coconspirators stood in the ho­tel’s lobby, where a giant tank filled with sharks and Caribbean exotics graced the reception area.

Dillon tapped the glass of the giant shark tank three times with a gambling chip.

A few minutes later, as a strange vibration built in the walls around them, they met a representative of the March of Dimes. With the cameras of three local news stations in his face, Dillon held out an extremely heavy sack to the woman’s shaky hands.

“I would like to present the March of Dimes with a three-million-dollar donation, as a personal gift.”

“Who shall I say it’s from?” the woman asked tim­idly.

“You can say it’s from Dillon Cole,” he instructed. “Dillon Cole, and the surviving Shards of the Scorpion Star.”

And then he turned to the cameras. “Tomorrow,” he said, “there’s going to be a disaster. But don’t worry.” And he smiled. “I’ve got everything under control.”

The vibration in the walls then became a high- pitched whine that ended with the crash of glass as the shark tank shattered. Hotel staff dove over the reception desk to escape the falling glass, and when they looked again, the shark tank seemed entirely unharmed. Except for the fact that its glass face was lying in ruins on the floor.

All eyes turned to Dillon for an explanation for this marvel, but he and his friends had disappeared in the confusion.

In a hotel where white tigers disappeared daily on­stage, smoke and mirrors and sleight of hand were nothing new. The manager was ready to laugh at this interesting trick . . . until a small nurse shark poked its nose out of the water-wall, tore the pen from his breast pocket, then swam off with it to the back of the tank.

18. Roll Up For The Mystery Tour

“If the idea was to draw attention to ourselves,” said Lourdes, pleased with the outcome of the day, “I think we did a good job.”

They were twenty miles out of Las Vegas; eleven buses with no posted destination driving southeast on Boulder Highway. The lead bus was a well-appointed coach—a traveling hotel suite, really, done up in oak and leather and filled with all the creature comforts that one could cram into a bus. It was reserved for the five shards.

“Shouldn’t we each have our own buses?” said Tory. “After all this is Las Vegas—it’s not like less is more.”

“If we could arrange for buses, why not planes?” suggested Michael. “Really jazz up the show!”

“When we need planes, we’ll get planes,” said Dil­lon. “Right now buses are more than enough.”

Tory swiveled in her leather chair. “Cleopatra did not ride around in a bus.”

“Oh,” said Winston with a smirk, “is that who you are now?”

“Don’t get snotty—I was only using her for com­parison.”

“And besides, if anyone’s Cleopatra, it’s me,” said Lourdes.

“History says she was as ugly as sin,” said Winston. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Drop dead.”

Just past Boulder City, Dillon instructed the driver to pull off the road, into the desert. There the eleven buses formed a circle, like an old-fashioned wagon train, around a campsite that Okoya, who had gone on ahead, was already in the process of setting up. Dillon was the only Shard who felt the need to go out there. Truth was, the others were famished from their day at the casinos. More than famished—they felt vacant. It was a feeling that gave Tory the urge to rub her arms compulsively, as if trying to shed some invisible layer of grime. The hunger made Winston feel a sense of futility in all he did. It made Michael acutely aware of the absence of love in his heart, and for Lourdes, that hunger reawakened her hopeless longing for Michael. Surely a nice all-you-can-eat buffet could have been fit into their Las Vegas schedule—but the very thought sickened them, for their hunger was not for that sort of food.

Tory peered out of the window, where the busloads of followers poured forth, pitching tents, and setting up camp, in preparation for tomorrow’s main event. “What we do now is crucial,” Dillon had said. “We can’t af­ford to make mistakes.” Of course, no one but the Shards and Okoya knew what the event would be, and as for the Big Show itself, Dillon was in charge of that. They would all be handed their parts when the time came, but for now, they didn’t feel a burning need for dress rehearsals.

As the bus driver left, Okoya stepped in carrying a sack of goodies.

“While you were all working,” said Okoya, “I found some things I thought you might appreciate.”

As he reached into the bag, Tory snuck a peek. “Ooh! Is that a new skin lotion?” She asked, practically growing fangs at the thought. “I’d kill for a good lo­tion!”

“Would you?” Okoya said. He pulled out the con­tainer of lotion, but put it down, out of Tory’s reach. Tory leaned over to get it, but Okoya held her back. “Patience,” was all he said.

He reached into the bag again, and produced a cake, with a deceptive white creme frosting, that gave way to dark chocolate and a glistening cherry filling when he cut it. “For you, Lourdes.”

“Black Forest!” she exclaimed, holding her hands forward like an anxious Oliver Twist. “I love Black Forest.”

Okoya handed her the slice of cake, and she dug her hand into it, without waiting for a fork. Then he reached in and came up with a magazine. “They were selling some . . . uh . . . interesting magazines on the strip,” he said to Winston. “There are some pictures in here that are not to be believed. Have a look, Winston. You might learn something.” He gave Winston a wink and tossed him the magazine.

“Me next,” insisted Tory.

Okoya ignored her, and pulled out a new Walkman for Michael. “Top of the line, and I’ve tuned the radio to a fantastic station I’ve found here—you’re going to love it!”

He handed the device to Michael, and although Mi­chael felt his own Pavlovian urge to slip into a com­fortable beat, he didn’t put the headphones on just yet. Instead he watched. By now Tory was rubbing her hands in front of her like a fly as Okoya reached for the bottle of lotion. Okoya took his time, spilling a drop of the lotion onto his index finger. “It’s fragranced with the essence of ten different kinds of rose, and guaran­teed to make you feel as fresh as the day you were born.” He held it toward Tory, but not close enough for her to smell it.

“You said you would kill for it,” said Okoya. “Did you mean what you said?”

She kept her eyes glued on the viscous pink liquid dripping down his finger. “Definitely.”

Then Okoya reached to a compartment in the bus’s kitchenette, peered inside, and retrieved a crystalline ice bucket. Inside was a silver ice pick. Instead of giv­ing Tory a dollop of lotion, he gave her the ice pick.

“Kill Winston,” he said. “And you can have the whole bottle.”

Tory stood immobile with the pick in her hand, gig­gling at the thought.

“Go on,” prompted Okoya. “You want your lotion, don’t you?”

Tory looked at the sharp end of the ice pick, and found herself turning it toward Winston’s chest. Lourdes filled her mouth with cake and eyed Tory, but made no move to intervene. Winston spread his arms pushing his chest forward.

“C’mon,” he said with a grin. “Right here—right through the heart!”

Perhaps it was because Michael had not yet plugged into his music, or just that he had dredged up a moment of clarity, but whatever the reason, in the midst of everyone else’s laughter, Michael realized that Tory was pulling her hand back, like a gun hammer cocking itself. She was actually going to do it!

Michael dropped his Walkman and lurched forward as Tory began her downward arc. He firmly grasped her wrist, and the pick stopped an inch from Winston’s chest.

“Tory—what are you doing?!”

Tory turned to Michael as if he had done something wholly inappropriate.

“The lotion,” she said simply. “I want the lotion. For my skin.”

“You almost stabbed Winston!”

Unconcerned, Winston vanished behind his maga­zine. “Big deal,” he said. “Dillon would have brought me back.”

“That’s not the point!” Michael turned, hoping to find support from Lourdes, but she was digging her hands into the rest of the cake.

“It would have been interesting to see if he could actually die,” she said matter-of-factly. “For all we know, we’ve become immortal.”

“Immortal?” said Michael incredulously. “What about Deanna? She was one of us, and she died.”

“That was then,” said Lourdes; “this is now.”

“How could you be so flippant about it?” yelled Mi­chael. “How could you be . . .” But even as he thought it, he knew it wasn’t just them. He wasn’t much dif­ferent. How self-absorbed had he been lately? How ma­lignant had his own arrogance become; the thrill of being worshiped, the self-satisfaction his own power now brought him?

“What’s happened to us?” he dared to ask.

“We’ve risen above where we used to be,” said Win­ston. “Our perspective has changed, that’s all.”

Michael had to admit that he was right. Their out­look, their desires and needs, were markedly different than they had been three weeks ago. Their place in the world was so much grander than they ever imagined it to be.

“We used to be limited by fear, and small-mindedness,” Winston said, puffed up by his own sense of wisdom. “Not anymore.”

But as Michael stood there, a splinter of that old limited perspective came back . . . and for a moment, he was not a god—he was just a kid. A kid with more power than he knew how to wield.

Michael knew that in some way, Okoya’s music had bolstered his pride—his hubris. It added to his sense of comfort and confidence. He didn’t need the music—he wanted it. Okoya hadn’t forced him to listen—it was Michael who had seized upon it, keeping himself emo­tionally sated.

But there was an advantage to hunger.

He dropped the Walkman in his hand, knowing that if he didn’t, he’d be swayed by those rich melodies that he, too, might kill for.

“I don’t like what’s happening here,” he said.

Okoya had a radar fix on his eyes. “It was only a game, Michael,” he said, with such control in his voice, Michael felt the urge to nod in agreement in spite of himself. “You get way too emotional,” continued Okoya. “You should be more like Lourdes. She’ll go far.” By now, Lourdes had finished her cake, and was licking the whipped cream from her fingers. She glowed with Okoya’s compliment.

Michael felt the air around him become oppressive and cold. Dewdrops began to form on the ceiling of the bus.

“Hey!” Winston said. “If you have to rain on some­one’s parade, take it the hell away from me, will you?”

“Yes, Michael,” said Okoya. “Perhaps it’s time you left.”

Michael didn’t need another invitation to leave. In spite of his hunger, he stepped over the Walkman, and hurried out the door without further word.

Tory saw him go through the corner of her eye, but her attention was on the ice pick still in her hand.

Is that my hand? she thought. Was that me bringing the pick toward Winston’s chest?

There was a sentence playing over and over and over in her head now; the words Winston had muttered when Michael saved his life. “Big deal. Dillon would have brought me back.” Was she so great a soul that she was beyond the need for conscience? And was her lust for Okoya’s aromatic potions so powerful that it made even death seem unworthy of her attention?

“Dillon would have brought me back.”

Was life so cheap now that murder meant nothing?

She wanted to let these thoughts slap her—perhaps enough to slap her off the alabaster pedestal she had so willingly climbed on—but Okoya approached with a palmful of pink lotion.

“You’ve earned this,” Okoya told her, “for helping me find the weak link.”

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 were too pretty.

Lately Michael’s ears had been so occupied with his Walkman, 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! Shit, 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 his 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.”

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.

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.

“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.”

In the corner a slot machine hit, noisily spitting out coins into a tray that was already overflowing. The cowboy sitting in front of it let out a victory cry. “This baby’s looser than my first wife.”

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.”

The cowboy’s slot machine hit again in the corner. “Yahoooo!” he bellowed. “I’m poppin’ more cherries than a high-school senior!” Then the machine next to his came up a winner as well.

It wasn’t just the slot machines, Radio Joe had noted. The odds on the table games had somehow changed as well; 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 with 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.”

The cowboy came up with three oranges, and secu­rity arrived to shut down all the machines on the lounge level—and probably the entire hotel.

“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 authorized 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.

It was as he turned that 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.

“He’s a loose cannon,” Dillon admitted.

“We may need to take care of him,” said Okoya.

Dillon waved it off. “Yeah, yeah—I’ll take care of everybody.”

“No,” said Okoya. “That’s not what I mean.”

Dillon stood, finding an unexpected seriousness in Okoya’s face that he couldn’t decipher. Then Dillon burst out laughing. “Very good! You had me going there. And I thought you didn’t have a sense of hu­mor!”

Okoya laughed too, dismissing his own grave ex­pression.

“Ruling the world is easy,” said Okoya. “Comedy’s hard.”

They chuckled a few moments more, then Okoya became pensive. Reflective.

“You remind me of someone I once knew in the Greek Isles. He was a lot like you at your age—although not nearly as gifted.”

“The Greek Isles?”

“Just because I come from a reservation, it doesn’t mean I haven’t traveled.”

Dillon took a pointedly invasive look at Okoya, to once again divine the source of his worldliness—but all he found were the simple patterns of a rural life. But that was somehow untrue. It was merely a facade, someone else he was hiding behind.

“Who are you, Okoya?”

The expression on Okoya’s face changed then, be­coming open and unambiguous. “I’m someone who wants to put the world in the palm of your hand.”

Okoya left, and as night fell, Dillon found himself still transfixed by the view, eerily lit by a rising blood moon.

He resolved to remain there till dawn, preparing his mind for the task at hand. Meditating on himself, Dil­lon thought of the network of connections already spreading forth, linking Dillon and the Shards with signs and wonders in millions of people’s minds, as they turned on their evening news. Tomorrow those numbers would flare, as they became witnesses to the impossible—a miraculous wake-up call to the world, too huge to deny.

Forty-five days from now, there would be no doubt­ers. That day would see an end to war, disease, and despair. There would never be another Shiprock Massacre—he would see to that. His binding strength would be a protective sheath around the world.

He looked again to the view before him. Lake Mead stretched to a rocky shore, and before it, the concrete expanse of Hoover Dam arced across a deep ravine, holding in the lake. Dillon smiled.

Tomorrow this troubled, crumbling world would be­lieve in miracles.

19. Blind Run

Drew Camden was no sleuth. Constantly dis­tracted and uncharacteristically clumsy, he was poorly suited to spy on Okoya. However, the carrot Michael had hung in front of him was powerful motivation.

He positioned his bedroll in view of Okoya’s tent, into which the mysterious Indian had retreated after dinner. For hours he listened to irritating songs around the campfires, and heard stories. Storytellers were emerging in this new order, weaving lofty dramas about the Shards that had no basis in fact whatsoever: how the Shards were ancient and ageless; how their sem­blance of youth was only a guise. Drew didn’t bother to contradict them.

Other followers had been assigned the task of re­ceiving new arrivals, who drifted in from the Boulder Highway in a steady osmotic flow. By two in the morn­ing, most everyone but the posted watch had settled down.

The night was much colder than it should have been, and the sky up above was punctuated by a brilliant spray of stars. If Michael and the others were illumi­nated with the fragmented soul of a star, Drew won­dered as he lay there, what did that make him? What did that make everyone else? Tiny, insignificant smith­ereens? He wondered how long until the Shards would find people too small for their attention!

Well, thought Drew, better take my share of favors now, before Michael’s pedestal gets too high.

There was a flap of fabric, and Drew rolled over to see Okoya step from his tent. Drew slipped out of his sleeping bag and followed, taking his video-cam with him. He kept his distance as Okoya strolled among the sleeping campers. There seemed to be no destination; he merely meandered, glancing from face to face of the ones who slept beneath the open air—as if looking for someone.

Finally, Okoya stopped by a clutch of sleeping bags behind a larger tent, out of view from everyone else.

Drew watched as Okoya knelt, then put a hand be­hind a sleeping woman’s neck, and tilted her head slightly back, as if he were about to resuscitate her. Then, the space between Okoya and the woman arced with a wave of soft, crimson light that lit their faces for a few moments, then faded.

The woman rolled over, and pulled her sleeping bag up to her shoulders, never waking up. Okoya moved to the man beside her, repeating the same procedure.

Drew wasn’t sure what he was witnessing—but he did know that he must have hit the jackpot. Whatever this was, it was information for Michael—and that meant Michael had to make good on his promise.

Okoya moved on to a third camper.

All it would take to clinch this would be a video! The light created by Okoya’s strange encounters would create enough of an image to see. Drew quietly raised the video-cam to his eyes, slid his thumb over the red button and pressed it.

The machine beeped twice as it went from standby to record . . . And in the silence, those two tones might as well have been the chimes of Big Ben. The glow died suddenly, and Okoya’s head turned as smoothly as an owl’s, directly to Drew.

Drew suddenly felt like a small rodent caught in Okoya’s owlish gaze, and he bolted. Tripping over campers, barreling into tents, he tried to make it to where the Shards slept.

“Michael,” he called. “Michael, help me!” But he realized that he had lost his sense of direction in the large circle of buses, and didn’t know where he was. Whichever way he turned, Okoya was behind him. There was a narrow space between two buses, and Drew raced for it. Regardless of what had changed in his heart, head, and character, he still had the body of a runner, and flight was now the only defense he had.

He burst through the circle of buses, escaping into the open desert beyond—his legs churning as he fixed on glowing lights just over the jagged hills . . .

Michael, Tory, Lourdes, and Winston slept beneath a large canopy set against their bus. The ground was covered with tapestries torn from the walls of San Sim­eon, and they slept on beds taken from the castle as well.

As the night scraped along, Tory lay awake, plagued by Winston’s words.

“Big deal. Dillon would have brought me back.”

Did that make it acceptable, then, to take his life? Did murder suddenly have no meaning? No conse­quence?

“Big deal.”

She thought back to that first moment she and Win­ston had found Okoya sitting beside them in the coffee shop. That wasn’t a chance meeting, was it? Somehow Okoya had known who they were—and now she real­ized that Okoya was using them . . . but toward what end? She sat up in bed, throwing off the covers, and let the frosty night chill her bones, because comfort was now an enemy. It had kept her complacent for far too long.

Michael slept in another bed a few feet away, wrapped in several dense quilts, yet she could hear his teeth chattering. Tory realized that it was his own cold that filled the night air.

“Michael?”

She went over to him and peeled the covers away from his face. He was awake, and looked awful, as if the life had been drained out of him.

“Michael, what’s wrong? Are you sick?” And then it occurred to her that he couldn’t be sick. None of them could.

“Hungry,” Michael rasped out.

“I’ll get you something to eat.”

But he grabbed her arm before she could leave. “No,” he said. “Not that kind of hunger.”

She met his eyes, and she knew what he meant. Al­though there was a loud part of her mind that was screaming denial, she forced herself to listen to a qui­eter voice within herself, that told her what she had been afraid to hear. “This is about Okoya, isn’t it?”

Michael gritted his teeth to keep them from chatter­ing. “Listen to me Tory: A year ago, when we killed our parasites, we thought we came away unhurt—but we were wrong. Those things left holes in us that we didn’t know how to fill. So we invited Okoya into our lives to fill them for us, plugging up those holes.”

“With what?”

“I don’t know . . . but it’s in the music and perfumes. It’s in the words Winston reads, and the food Lourdes eats.”

He’s delirious, Tory thought. He has to be . . . . But her voice of denial was losing its bite in the face of what Michael said. How many mornings had she woken up to luxuriate in a hot bath scented with oils Okoya had supplied? It would whet her appetite for every indulgence the day had to offer. And when she was hungry, it was no longer food she desired, but the charged aroma of purity Okoya was more than happy to provide. Tory had heard of holy men who never ate, and who were said to draw their sustenance from the air itself. Was this transcendental appetite part of the Shards’ curious physiology? And if so, what had they been dining on?

“You did the right thing when you left the bus this afternoon,” Tory told Michael. “Okoya is... I don’t know what Okoya is—but she’s not our friend. It’s not our friend.”

Michael rolled over in bed then, and Tory caught sight of his face—pale and wan—just as it was a year before when his soul had harbored the blue-flamed beast.

Okoya is like that beast, thought Tory, but different. Not a parasite, but a predator—which was far more dangerous.

She took his hands into hers and tried to warm them but it did no good. “Are you going to be all right?”

“Sing to me, Tory,” he whispered. “Something bright. Something warm.”

And so she slipped beneath the covers with him, holding him to share her warmth, and with her lips to his ear she began to gently sing an old Genesis tune she remembered. “I will follow you, will you follow me . . .’” Michael laughed at her choice of song, for there had been way too much following lately. "‘ . . . all the days and nights that we know will be . . .’ " She sang to him until she could feel the slightest warmth begin to return to his fingers, and the sting of chill begin to leave the night air. Perhaps it lacked the feeding emotional flood of Okoya’s music, but it was something.

“We have to find Dillon and warn him about Okoya,” Tory told him.

Just then came the clattering sound of tent stakes flying and the tearing of nylon.

“Michael! Michael, help me!” yelled a far-off voice.

There was a commotion way across the campsite—the shouts of people suddenly woken as someone crashed over them.

“Oh no!” said Michael. “It’s Drew!”

He heaved himself out of bed, finding the strength to walk. Tory led the way, pulling Michael along with her.

“I told him to watch Okoya—to find out what he was up to.”

They crashed over the debris of overturned tents, un­til they came out of the circle of buses. About twenty yards out, was a red blinking light. They ran toward it, to find Drew’s video camera lying in the sand.

In the distance, two figures sprinted across the desert, one in pursuit of the other.

“We’ll never catch them,” said Michael, but even so, he threw his legs out before him, running as best he could.

“Let me help you,” Tory put her arm around his waist and threw her weight into his stride. Together they forged toward the lights of Hoover Dam.

Okoya’s will was more powerful than anyone’s on Earth—but there were limitations to his stolen human body. Although he drove that body to pursue Drew Camden, Drew was a fast runner, and Okoya could not overtake him—but he did not lose sight of him, either. He pursued Drew past the jagged hills—where Dillon slept alone that night, dreaming of greatness—until he reached the two-lane highway that rode along the ridge of Hoover Dam. Drew was already at the dam, in a panic. Under the bright spotlights, he tried to flag down help, but traffic was sparse this time of night—and what few cars came his way, had no intention of stop­ping for a lunatic waving his arms in the middle of the road.

Okoya ran onto the dam’s paved rim at full speed, as Drew hurried to a metal doorway and pounded on it—but it would not give. However, a guard farther away had seen him, and crossed the road toward Drew. Okoya picked up his speed to intercept.

“What’s all this about?” said the guard, obviously thinking he could get this situation under control.

“He’s trying to kill me!” screamed Drew.

“Hold on, son,” said the guard. “No one’s going to—"

Okoya reached them, and wasted no time. He took the guard out with a single punch to his Adam’s apple. The guard crumpled, and Drew took off again, climbing the waist-high stone guardrail on the canyon side of the dam. Drew balanced himself precariously, as Okoya grabbed for his feet. Then Drew leapt—disappearing over the edge.

It was almost eight hundred feet to the bottom of Black Canyon, and Okoya was sure that Drew had taken his own life, saving Okoya the trouble . . . until Okoya climbed the guardrail, and saw Drew heading down a narrow flight of metal stairs leading to a cat­walk that hugged the dam’s curved face. Okoya re­sumed his pursuit. Down below, Drew reached a rusted metal door in the middle of the massive face of the dam—it was where the catwalk ended. Okoya practi­cally glided down the steps toward him as Drew kicked the door again, and again, until its rusted lock gave way, and the door burst inward into darkness.

Okoya frowned. Luck had no business being with this boy tonight, and Okoya resolved to make Drew’s end doubly cruel because of it. Okoya followed him into the narrow concrete-lined access corridor. Its walls were wet with seepage and there were no lights in the tight, claustrophobic space. The distant vibrations of the power plant down below made it impossible for Okoya to hear Drew’s footsteps. He knew Drew would head toward the power plant, where there would be night workers to hide behind.

Fine, thought Okoya. See how he does in the dark.

Okoya strode forward, confident within the blind­ness . . . . For darkness was not a stumbling block to the Bringer, but a comfort, and a reminder of home.

Michael and Tory arrived at the dam five minutes behind them, and as they reached the road, they saw Drew and Okoya immediately. Their moving figures on the catwalk stood out across the halogen-lit face of the dam. Tory was about to race toward them, but Michael grabbed her hand.

“No,” he said. “This way.” And he thanked God for the fact that his father was a heavy gambler, for he had dragged Michael to Las Vegas countless times as a child, and had visited Hoover Dam more than once. He remembered enough to know that the best way into the dam wasn’t through the dam itself, but through an el­evator shaft in the adjacent Visitors Center, that de­scended 520 feet into the bedrock of the canyon.

They broke out a window of the Visitors Center, climbed through, quickly found an elevator, and began a long drop into the bowels of the Earth.

Drew raced blindly though the black corridors, smashing into walls, his hands out in front of him. He tumbled down a staircase, slipped down some sort of spillway, then plummeted through a shaft that depos­ited him in an unseen, foul-smelling muck. With hands stretched before him, he groped forward until finding a hint of light, which led him to yet another stairway heading down.

Finally, Drew came flying out through an open gate and landed with a metallic clang against a platform that hung above the massive, moaning turbines of the great power plant. He could hear the rush of water, as Lake Mead once again became the Colorado River, surging through the powerful turbines, generating electricity. As he had hoped, there were workers down there—enough to protect him. Even if they didn’t believe a word of his story, at least he would be safe.

He made a move to head down the ladder, when he was grabbed from behind. He turned, and Okoya, not even winded from the chase, gripped Drew by his shirt, lifted him up, and held him out over the platform rail­ing. Drew screamed, trying to draw the attention of anyone down below, but the drone of the generators was just too loud for him to be heard. Now the only thing keeping Drew from falling to his death was Okoya’s angry grip.

“Please!” begged Drew. “I’ll do anything, anything! I won’t tell anyone what I saw. I’ll spy on Michael and the others for you—would you like that? Just please, please don’t hurt me!”

“Your cowardice disgusts me.”

Drew was certain that Okoya would release his grip and let him die a painful, coward’s death. But instead, something else happened.

Red tendrils lashed out from Okoya’s eyes, gripping something deep within Drew . . . tearing it from him . . . and in that moment, Drew Camden ceased to exist.

Michael and Tory arrived just in time to see it hap­pen, and there was nothing they could do.

“Put him down!” screamed Michael. The soulless Drew still squirmed in panic in Okoya’s grip, his legs dangling out over the generator floor fifty feet below.

“Thank goodness you’re here!” said Okoya. “He’s a traitor! He tried to sabotage Dillon’s plan.” He lifted Drew back over the railing, and dropped him on the platform. Drew scrambled away to a safe corner behind Michael and Tory.

“Stop the lies,” Tory said. “We know what you are.”

Okoya then flashed them his superior grin. “Do you?”

“I’ve seen the soulless shells you leave behind,” Mi­chael said, taking a step closer. His legs shook, and his muscles felt as if they’d been flayed, but he forced him­self to stand firm against Okoya.

Okoya dropped all pretenses then. “Your kind dines on flesh,” he said; “mine dines on spirit. Are we all that different?”

“We’re nothing like you,” growled Michael.

“Are you so sure?” Okoya got a radar fix on Mi­chael’s eyes, as he had done so many times before. “You, Tory, and the others have now risen to the top of the food chain . . . just like me.” He looked at Tory. “Feeling hungry, Tory? Feeling dirty? You’ve grown beyond the need for normal food—you know that, don’t you?”

Tory took a shuddering step back.

“And what about you, Michael? There’s no strength left in you at all. I can give you what you hunger for—the food of the gods—if you’re willing to admit to yourself how much you desire it.”

Then Okoya cupped his hands before him, and Mi­chael watched as the pores in Okoya’s arm opened up, spilling forth a red, glowing perspiration that rolled in rivulets down his wrists, and into his cupped hands, becoming a thick, viscous pool of liquid light. Okoya’s high-energy diet.

“It can be anything you want it to be, Michael. A musical feast for your ears, a perfect texture you can feel against your flesh, an aromatic salve, or a banquet fit for a king. Whatever sense you choose to feed.” The pool of light in Okoya’s hand then changed, becoming silver and reflective. “Or perhaps you’d like to feast your eyes on a vision of your own’ future.”

And as Michael gazed into the silver pool, it became a window, and Michael could not look away. Cupped in Okoya’s hands, he saw a shimmering city. Glorious spires beneath crystal-clear skies. A place that did not yet exist . . . but would.

“They will build entire cities to you, Michael. Thousands of gleaming towers lovingly erected to your name.”

There was a magnificent dwelling, open to the sky, because the elements of nature had no hold over this place. In the center of all this, surrounded by an opu­lence that made Hearst Castle seem like costume jew­elry, Michael saw himself, clothed in light, surrounded by thousands—millions—who lived only to satisfy his pleasure, whose greatest joy was to be in his presence, deep within the inner core of his powerful sphere of influence.

“Why not satisfy all your senses at once?” Okoya brought his hands forward, and Michael found himself cupping his own hands to receive the liquid vision.

“Michael, don’t!”

But he could barely hear Tory’s voice anymore. The vision poured from Okoya’s hands into Michael’s, not a bit of it spilling. The image in the surface shimmered, but the vision stayed in focus. He could hear it now: the sounds of worship. Singing voices—Okoya’s music multiplied a thousandfold. He could smell the future—a luscious aroma of all his favorite foods swirled into one. He longed to take this vision inside him. To drink it in, to taste it. To feel it flow through him, infusing him with the strength of his own future. It was every­thing Michael had ever craved. All he had to do was take it in . . .

But as he gazed at it, as he listened, there was some­thing else he heard there, too. It had been there all along in the sights, sounds, smells, and flavors Okoya had put before them—but Michael had not been at­tuned to its frequency until now.

This pool of light was alive.

And it was screaming.

Michael pulled his gaze away from it, forcing him­self to see Drew who still cowered in the corner. Even from here, Michael could tell that Drew’s soul had been taken from him by Okoya. And suddenly Michael knew exactly who he was about to dine upon.

Still, he brought this liquid manna closer to his face. To smell it. To feel it. To taste it.

“I knew I could count on you, Michael,” said Okoya triumphantly.

Although Michael’s mind and body wanted to drink it in, he fought the crushing urge and instead hurled it away.

In the direction of Drew.

“No!” cried Okoya.

The shimmering globule of life-energy struck Drew in the chest, and exploded like mercury into a thousand droplets that coursed around Drew’s body. Drew arched his back and gasped, as his soul returned to him through the pores of his skin, and back to that intangible place in­side.

Okoya’s surprise only lasted for an instant, then his face became blizzard-cold.

“You’ve squandered your last chance for greatness, Michael,” he said. “You and Tory have both outlived your usefulness.”

Suddenly Drew bolted from the corner, heading to­ward the doorway that led back into the inner structure of the dam.

“Drew, no!” Michael leapt after him. And in that moment of confusion, Okoya grabbed Tory, twisted her arm behind her back, then pushed her into the opening as well, slamming the gate. With one hand Okoya held the gate closed, and with the other, ripped an iron rail-post from the concrete wall—partly with his human strength, and partly with the sheer force of his will. Then he jammed the pole through the handles of the gate, securing it so firmly that it didn’t give an inch, Tory and Michael rammed their bodies against the gate, but it was no use—and their screams would never be heard over the turbines—nor would they be seen from this unlit, remote corner of the rafters.

Okoya laughed heartily. “How marvelous!” said Okoya. “I don’t have to kill you now; Dillon will do it for me—and he won’t even know it!”

Okoya strode away, his laughter dissolving into the awful warbling whine of the turbines.

For more than half an hour, the three of them kicked at the gate. Michael hurled a wind at it, but it only sifted like water through a sieve. Finally they realized the only way out was up, into the cold concrete hell of the dam.

“We’ll get out, right?” asked Drew, searching for some hint of reassurance. “I mean, it might take some time, but we’ll get out of here, won’t we?”

Michael and Tory both turned to him. Could it be that he didn’t know?

“What is it?” said Drew. “It better not be bad news. I’m not ready for bad news.”

“We don’t have any time,” Tory said coldly. “In a few hours Dillon’s going to shatter the dam.”

20. Dammed

Lake Mead, the largest man-made lake in the world, stretched for 115 miles behind the half-million-ton concrete plug called Hoover Dam. Although it had never seen the likes of Dillon Cole, the dam was by no means a stranger to the bizarre; from the psychotic be­havior of heat-maddened workers during its construc­tion, to the ninety-four deaths recorded by the time it was complete. Most of those deaths were workers boiled under the heat of the unforgiving sun. But then there was the scaler, who fell into the pit of Black Canyon, only to have his body bickered over by the Nevada and Arizona coroners for hours because, during construction, there was no Colorado River to divide the two states, and no one could agree in which state—besides postmortem—the body lay. There were macabre tales of dying laborers crawling across the un­finished concrete abutments of the dam, just to get to the Arizona side before they died, because death ben­efits in Arizona were far better than in Nevada. And then, of course, there was the eerie fact that the last person to die while building the dam, was the son of the first person to die while building it. But, to the disappointment of tourists everywhere, the horrific tales of hapless workers slipping into the wet concrete, only to be sealed within the walls, were untrue. No one had been entombed in Hoover Dam. Yet.

Dillon, refreshingly chilled from a night com­muning with himself, woke up in time to see the sun­rise. It spilled over the red mountains, shimmering on Lake Mead to his left, and cutting across the pit of Black Canyon to his right.

By seven a.m., Dillon stood at a view spot on the rim of the dam, near a broken window at the Visitors Center. Before him were two identical bronze statues, massive, with stylized human faces, muscular chests, and sharp, pointed wings held straight up, as if poised to puncture Heaven. He looked down at a star chart beneath his feet. Tiny dots of brass stars were imbed­ded in blue concrete, each star perfectly placed to be a precise image of the night sky. But it wasn’t quite per­fect, was it?

Dillon knelt down, and pressed his thumb over a single star, erasing it for a moment from the constel­lation of Scorpius.

Mentarsus-H—a star which was no longer there, but its living soul was here on earth. Or at least five-sixths of it, thought Dillon. And, reflexively, Dillon turned up to the winged statue that looked so much like the Spirit of Destruction that had tricked him into killing Deanna. Her gift had been the conquest of fear, and a trans­forming power of faith. There was no telling how much smoother today’s event would have gone with the strength of Deanna’s faith, and her love.

But he couldn’t let himself dwell on Deanna, either. Events were turning much too quickly now, and he had come here for a reason.

Although the Visitors Center hadn’t officially opened yet, there were already tourists wandering the deck. So far, no one had recognized him, and he hoped no one would.

He strolled around the Visitors Center, and down the road that curved along the rim of the dam. He knelt to the ground, putting his ear to the curb, like someone might put their ear to a railroad track to listen for an approaching train. By now he had gained the attention of a few tourists, who laughed, wondering what might be wrong with him. He didn’t bother to look at them; he just moved on, rubbing his hands along the concrete, until finding a spot on the sidewalk where a tiny weed grew through an insignificant hairline crack. He traced his finger along that crack until stopping at a single point, and then, when no one was looking, he pulled a small stone out of his pocket, and tapped the spot three times . . .

. . . click. . . click . . . click.

Then he stood, stretched, and casually left, heading back across the desert to his circle of followers three miles away.

Behind him, the two noisy lanes of traffic crossing the dam made it impossible for anyone to hear the tiny triplet of sounds that slowly grew louder as it echoed back and forth through the concrete superstructure.

The dam was only forty-five feet wide at its rim, but at its base it extended back beneath the waters of the lake to a width of five hundred feet. Five miles of tun­nel wove through the concrete dam and the bedrock on either side of it. Some tunnels were built for maintenance, others for drainage, and still more seemed to serve no function at all, beyond being havens for rats. There were even some crawlways that didn’t exist on any blueprint—cavities left by unscrupulous foremen hoping to conserve concrete and time when the dam was being built. The result was a lightless, interlocking maze, full of hopeless dead ends and stagnant dead air.

“What time is it?” Michael asked. “I don’t even know if it’s daylight yet.”

Holding hands to keep from losing each other, Mi­chael, Tory, and Drew squeezed forward between the slimy stone walls of the catacomb.

“I don’t know,” said Tory. “I can’t see my watch.”

Drew, who fearfully brought up the rear, said noth­ing. For hours they had poked around in absolute dark­ness, following the squeals of rats that ran over their feet—only to find them disappearing into holes too small for humans to fit. Michael had begun to leave scratch-marks on the wall with his pocketknife. But as they pressed forward, going this way and that, sliding down spillways, and scratching their way up chimney­like shafts, they began to feel their fingertips coming across those same scratch-marks again. They were go­ing in circles.

“I’ll create a storm high above the dam,” Michael suggested, “so they’ll see it from the campsite, and they’ll know we’re here.”

He concentrated on shaping an angry cumulus into a pointing finger far above their heads. Soon they began to hear the rain, but it didn’t quite sound right . . . and then water began to rush past their ankles.

“Michael,” asked Tory, “what did you do?”

“I don’t like this,” complained Drew. “I don’t like this at all.”

The rats around them were swimming now. They could feel them clawing at their pantlegs for purchase.

“Make them stop,” said Drew. “Please make them stop!”

Michael pushed his stormy feelings out one more time. Now the water not only came from below, but from above—raining on them in the narrow corridors, spilling down the walls, and Michael realized exactly what had happened. His power wasn’t strong enough to penetrate the hundred yards of concrete above. His storm had nowhere to go but the narrow passageways around them, pulling moisture from the stone and con­densing into a drowning flood.

“Stop it, Michael!” shouted Tory. “It’s not working!”

Michael shut the storm down, but it was too late. He could hear the rush of water draining from passageways above. “Hold on!” Michael yelled, but there was noth­ing to hold on to. The flash flood surged past them, heading for lower ground, and the current pulled them off their feet. Coughing and sputtering, they were dragged down, deeper still, into the dam, until finally landing in a chamber where the water spilled from a dozen holes above their heads.

The three tried to find each other in the darkness.

“Where are we? What is this place!” cried Drew, as if someone would be able to answer him.

How stupid, thought Michael, to have all the power they had, and yet be unable to escape from a big block of concrete. Between himself and Tory, they could do little more than drown themselves and create tunnels full of disease-free rats.

“Do something!” screamed Drew.

But Michael was out of ideas. “I don’t know what to do!” The water, which only a moment ago was at their knees, was already rising past their waists. In the icy chill, Michael could feel his muscles threatening to cramp.

“I can’t drown in here!” wailed Drew. “I can’t die in a place like this!”

“Shut up!” screamed Tory impatiently.

They lost each other, each trying to find a spot where water wasn’t cascading down over their heads. The wa­ter reached their chins, and Michael felt his feet leave the floor. He kicked to stay afloat, but breathed in a mouthful of water, beginning to gag.

That’s when he heard the clanging of a machine as it roared to life.

In an instant the water level began to drop.

“It’s a pump!” shouted Tory.

Michael felt the floor beneath his feet again. “This room must be some sort of sump,” he said. “A place to catch the seepage from the dam! It probably pumps the water right out into the Colorado River . . . . If we can find the intake, we could get out that way . . .”

“And be dragged through the paddles of the tur­bines,” added Tory. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

They waded toward each other’s voices as the water was pumped out. Michael coughed, dislodging more fluid from his lungs. The water fell beneath their knees, then their ankles. A hissing suck heralded the last of it being drawn out through a grated hole in the floor, leaving the three of them waterlogged and despondent.

“This is your fault, Michael!” accused Drew. “You made me go after Okoya. We’re gonna die because of you!”

Michael could swear he heard Tory’s teeth grinding in anger. “It’s because of Michael that you still have a soul!” she chided, then added, “Dillon should have left you dead. We’d all be better off.”

Michael reached out and found her hand in the dark­ness. “It’s okay, Tory—it’s not him talking.”

“No?” grunted Tory. “Who is it, then?”

Michael considered that. Someone I don’t know. Re­constituted beef.

Thinking back, there were many mistakes Michael had made since setting off in search of Dillon, but there was one that stuck out in his mind. It was the first thing that had made him truly feel like a god. The one willful act that sold him into Okoya’s bondage. The changing of Drew’s nature.

How could Michael blame Drew for being less of a person than he had been, when the change was Mi­chael’s doing? At the time, Michael had convinced himself it had been for Drew’s sake, but that wasn’t entirely true. He had done it for himself; to hurl Drew’s attentions away from him.

Although Michael couldn’t see Drew in the black­ness, he could hear his uneven breathing, and he slid across the grime of the sump floor until he bumped against Drew’s sopping jeans.

“Who’s that? What are you doing?”

“It’s just me, Drew.” He grabbed Drew’s arm.

“No! Stop that! Don’t touch me—just get back over there.” Drew struggled, but Michael held him firm.

“There’s something I have to give you,” said Mi­chael.

“Whatever it is, I don’t want it!”

“Maybe not. But you need it.” Michael pinned Drew into a corner.

“What’s going on over there?” asked Tory. She had no idea that Michael had denatured Drew. For Drew’s sake, he chose not to tell her now.

“Get off me!” screamed Drew. His voice echoed around the chamber. “Leave me alone, you freak!”

Michael put one hand against Drew’s face, and pressed the other heavily against his chest.

“I don’t want you to!” cried Drew. “I don’t want you to!”

“Shhh,” said Michael. The calm in his voice brought a slight warmth to the air around them. “Shhh. It will all be okay.”

In a moment, Drew stopped struggling, and Michael forced a surge of energy out through his palms until it flowed through Drew like a circuit.

“I’m afraid,” whispered Drew.

“That’s okay,” answered Michael.

Michael then reached his thoughts down, until he found Drew’s denatured self, and folded it in upon it­self, collapsing and re-forming it back to the way it had started: strong of character . . . responsible . . . trustwor­thy . . . and undeniably homosexual.

Suddenly Drew was holding Michael, rather than pushing him away, and Michael allowed it because he knew that this was not about sex. It was an embrace between brothers. An embrace between friends. And so he returned it.

Drew let Michael go first, and they both let their minds clear for a moment.

“Would it be appropriate,” asked Michael, “to wel­come you back?”

He heard Drew breathe heavily in the darkness, re­orienting himself to his inner landscape. “It might be.”

“Wild ride these past few weeks, huh?”

“Yeah, a regular spin cycle,” Drew said. “I wouldn’t recommend it for pregnant women, or people with back trouble.”

Michael grinned, and then quickly, before he had the chance to change his mind, he leaned forward and gave Drew a kiss.

It didn’t feel right, it didn’t feel wrong, it just felt strange. But at the moment it also felt necessary. “Hold on to that one,” Michael told him quietly, “because it’s the only one you’re going to get from me.”

“I can deal with that.”

Then from somewhere across the chamber, they heard Tory. “If you two are done fighting, you may want to check this out. I found a vent we could prob­ably squeeze through, if I can get the grate open.”

“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, and 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.

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 changed, 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—in every way that mattered, 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.”

Shouts of disappointment surrounded him.

He could feel the ground beneath his feet rumbling with the shaking of the dam, as it tore itself apart from the inside out. There was not much time for choosing the members of this expedition, but he had to take the time to do it. Putting his hand out, he began to touch their heads.

“You will come. And you . . . and you . . . and you.”

The followers pressed forward, each one hoping to be chosen. He saw Carol Jessup—the woman who had been one of the first to follow him. “Please, Dillon,” she begged. “After all we’ve done to help you, please take us.”

Dillon looked into her eyes, then the eyes of her daughter and husband. “I’m sorry, Carol,” he said. Then he touched her husband’s head. “You will come down with me, but your wife and daughter have to stay.” He could see the sting of betrayal in the woman’s eyes. Her husband hesitated. “I said, leave them and come with me. Now!” The man obeyed, kissing his wife and daughter, who cried at the prospect of being called, but not chosen.

He continued through the mob, looking into their eyes, making his choices that, to them, seemed random and capricious. Out of the thousand, he chose almost four hundred to march with him down the switchback trail into the depths of the canyon.

Tory, Michael, and Drew knew they only had minutes left—if that—for the echoing booms had evolved into the throaty roars of shattering stone, as the dam began to fail.

Dull thuds echoed from above, as the falling pellets of concrete sleet became hail, impacting on their backs.

Tory saw a shadow of a golf ball-sized chunk of concrete drop past her.

Wait a second. . . . A shadow?

“We’re getting closer!” Michael shouted. “Keep moving—there’s light up ahead!”

They scrambled under the hail of falling debris, pull­ing themselves into a corridor no more than two feet wide. In a dim gray-on-gray, they could finally see the cratered walls. The ground was littered with heavy chunks and up ahead they saw spears of light.

“I think this is the way I came in!” shouted Drew over the thundering around them. “Come on!”

They moved more quickly now that they could see, ignoring the rusted iron rebar jutting from the walls, tearing at their clothes. Finally they turned a corner, and saw what was perhaps the most wonderful sight of their lives—an open doorway flooded with light. They picked up their pace, their exhaustion quelled by the adrenaline rush of their salvation.

Drew had not intended what happened next.

He was in the lead, just a pace in front of Michael and Tory, and so was the first to emerge onto the cat­walk that hugged the face of the dam—and then some­thing struck him from above. He cried out in pain as it clipped his shoulder, breaking his left collarbone. Drew saw it only for an instant: the massive bronze form of an angel, its sharp, pointed wings aimed down instead of up, like the arms of a diver. The falling statue tore the catwalk away from the fractured face of the dam, and then plummeted through the power plant four hundred feet below, at the foot of the dam.

The catwalk swung out wildly, like a crane, with Drew still on it. He felt his body slide off, and reflexively he reached up a hand, grabbing on to the rail. With his collarbone broken, his left arm was useless, so all he could do was cling with his right hand to the railing, while his feet dangled above oblivion.

“Drew, hold on!” he heard Michael shout from the doorway in the dam. “Don’t let go!”

Drew’s fear swelled, about to overtake him, and he knew the moment it did, he was gone . . . . So he clenched his teeth, strangled his fear, and began to pump his legs back and forth as if he were on a swing, like a human pendulum.

“Go on, Drew, you can do it!”

He swung, he swung again, and once more. He kicked up a foot; it brushed the edge of the catwalk. “Damn.”

He gave a final push, swung his leg up, and hooked his ankle around it, pulling himself onto the twisted platform.

Then he saw Michael and Tory. The catwalk had swung a full twenty feet away from the dam, and the corridor where they both stood opened onto empty air. They were trapped.

“I won’t leave without you!” Drew shouted.

“Don’t be a moron!” Michael screamed back. “Get the hell out of here!”

“But . . .”

“Just shut up and go!”

“I’m sorry,” he wailed, wishing there were some­thing he could do. “I’m sorry . . .” He took one last look at them before reluctantly scrambling up the cat­walk. With his left arm dangling by his side, he pulled his way along until he reached what was left of the dam’s rim. No one was foolish enough to be up there anymore. The guardrail was gone, and the disintegrat­ing road was full of fissures spreading wider and wider.

Drew leapt over one fissure after another until he reached solid ground, and then threw himself against an outcrop of boulders, clinging to the quaking canyon face for dear life, as the entire dam began to give way behind him.

In those last few moments, Michael and Tory clung to one another as concrete bolides the size of Cadillacs dropped past them, whistling against an updraft that surged up the face of the dam. The mouth of the tunnel fell away.

“Watch out!” Michael pulled Tory back as the door­way crumbled. Then, from behind, a blast of pulverized concrete dust shot past, like steam through a pipe. It shot into the updraft, and was carried away like smoke. Updraft? thought Tory. There were only seconds left now. That’s Michael’s updraft! Tory realized. That wind is his will fighting the dam! But how powerful was it? How powerful could he make it in the seconds they had left? Not strong enough to stop the mountainous concrete chunks, but maybe—

She grabbed him, making him look at her. “What’s the wind, Michael?” she demanded. Mi­chael shook his head, not understanding.

“What does it feel like? In your gut—in your head. How does it feel inside?”

“Fear,” shouted Michael. “Terror . . . .”

“Then be frightened, Michael! Be more frightened than you’ve ever been in your life. And be it now!”

Michael turned to see the dust flowing into the updraft, and finally it clicked.

He grabbed Tory, clutching her with white knuckles, then he screamed a blood-curdling shriek of absolute fear—and instantly the whistling of the updraft raised in pitch as its strength increased.

The floor gave way beneath them as Michael held Tory, screaming his terror into her ear, and she screamed back into his. Neither of them had the gift of flight—but if Michael’s updraft could make them fly as well as that boat on Pacific Coast Highway, perhaps that would be enough. They clung to that thought as they leapt from the dying dam into the wind.

A mile downstream, Dillon and four hundred of his followers watched it happen. Chunk after chunk of con­crete exploded away, until the entire upper face slid like a sand castle, into the powerhouse below. The powerhouse exploded. An instant later, the lower shell of the dam tumbled, leaving nothing but a cloud of dust shooting heavenward. Another explosion from the bur­ied powerhouse, and then silence.

Behind Dillon, the chosen ones grew silent.

Through the dust, they saw what appeared to be a dark, V-shaped wall of still water—but the air was not clear enough to be sure just yet.

But Dillon was sure.

His power had grown beyond all limits, because holding back the waters of Lake Mead took so little effort, it felt like a mere reflex.

A power like that did not belong here.

Behind him, the four hundred squinted to see through the dust cloud, none of them knowing that they were already dead. Dillon had separated his followers precisely. These were the ones who had been visited by Okoya. These were the soulless. The shells of life, with nothing living inside.

They did not belong here, either.

The Shiprock Slayer had begun the task of removing the soulless—Dillon realized that now. And he also re­alized that he was the only one who could complete it. Now he focused all his effort on the wall of water. He knew what he had to do, but it wasn’t easy to fight the order his very presence brought. He hurled his thoughts ahead of him, turning them chaotic and disjointed. He battered the water-wall with his mind, struggling to give entropy a foothold once more, so that this lake would fall out of his control, and spill free.

At last he felt his barrier fall, like the tearing of a membrane. Suddenly, the ground rumbled once more, and through the dust cloud burst a white, churning wave five hundred feet high, surging down the canyon toward them.

As the water approached, Dillon had to remind him­self that he was not killing the people around him. Okoya had already done that. But for the thousands that would die downstream, Dillon had to accept responsi­bility.

For so long Dillon had struggled to find redemp­tion—fixing all those who were broken so that he might forgive himself for the destruction he had once caused. But it had never been for them. He had done it for himself; to finally feel worthy. It was a selfish need, masquerading as selflessness.

No more.

For there was only one way to save the world now, and it meant that Dillon Cole had to die in disgrace and never be redeemed.

Let me be despised by the world, he silently prayed. Let my name be spoken with nothing but hatred. Let this act be so horrible, that it shatters the pattern of destruction I’ve helped to create, and sets the world hack on its proper track. A world where not a single soul worships me.

The wedge of churning foam pounded forward, a quarter mile and closing. Behind Dillon, the dead-alive followers waited for Dillon to stop it.

But instead, Dillon raised up his hands to receive it.

Lourdes did not see it, but she knew something had gone wrong. She knew because of the strange pillar of dust shooting toward the sky like a mushroom cloud. She knew because of the roar of rushing water, and she knew because of Okoya’s scream of fury from some­where within the circle of buses, a hundred yards from where she and Winston lay doubled-over in the sand.

Apparently Okoya had not gotten what he wanted, which meant Dillon had chosen to destroy himself, rather than the world. He had chosen not to be Okoya’s ruling-puppet.

Lourdes sat up. The revulsion she felt as she had stumbled away from camp had resolved into a pain in her gut, and a sense of unreconciled need—a craving for what only Okoya could supply.

Winston sat in the dust, his hand over his eyes, weeping. All his supposed wisdom, and he couldn’t see this coming. Oh, he had grown, all right. He had grown arrogant and self-absorbed—they all had.

“How could this have happened?” cried Winston. “How could we have done this to ourselves?”

Lourdes tried to find some sympathy. She tried to find a feeling to comfort both of them, but all she found inside was the angry pit of her stomach; and so she left Winston, not caring about his tears. Fighting her hun­ger, she strode back toward the circle of buses.

The place was deserted. All had gone to follow Dil­lon. Everyone, that is, except Okoya. Okoya was stretched out against the face of a bus—his arms and legs tied in four different directions with heavy nylon tent cords. He’d pulled and tugged at his bonds, but the job had been well done—he was not getting free. It almost amused Lourdes to see this master of minds rendered impotent by mere nylon ropes.

Lourdes approached, keeping her stride steady, counting each step as she drew closer until she stopped, only a few feet away.

“Always a pleasure to see you, Lourdes,” Okoya said. “Release me, and—"

“And what?” Lourdes took a step closer. “You’ll crown me Queen for a Day?”

Okoya pulled against his bonds one more time. “Ev­erything that was Dillon’s will now be yours.”

“I don’t need you for that,” said Lourdes. “I know what I’m capable of. If I want the world on a silver platter, I’ll put it there myself.”

“Then why are you here?”

“This is why.” Lourdes squeezed her hands into tight fists, and pushed forth a single nerve impulse. Instantly Okoya began to gasp for air as his heart seized in his chest.

“How does it feel to have our powers turned against you?”

“If you kill this body,” gasped Okoya, “it will free me to jump into another. There are hundreds of people on that road; I could be any one of them, and you’ll never know when I’m coming.”

Lourdes squeezed her fists tighter, but knew Okoya was telling the truth. She released the hold on his heart, and the color returned to Okoya’s face as he pulled in deep, wheezing breaths.

“You don’t know how to kill me,” Okoya sneered, “and it’s a waste of your time to try.”

Maybe so, but as long as he was in that body, he could feel every measure of its pain. Lourdes brought her fist back, and smashed it heavily across his jaw, and then again, and then again, making sure every pun­ishing blow had the full force of her anger. But no matter how many times she struck him, it made her feel no better. In the end, Okoya’s face was bruised and swollen, but his evil spirit would not break.

“I gave you what you wanted,” he said through swol­len lips. “You should be grateful.”

She turned and strode off. She did not go back to Winston, nor did she go to see the flood. Instead she headed off in the opposite direction. Okoya had put a hunger in her that could never be satisfied again. She hated Okoya for putting it there, she hated Dillon for having brought them here in the first place, and she hated Michael, for the love he had killed in her.

Her knees felt shaky, her legs weak, but her fury gave her strength to walk away from all of this and not look back.

22. Turbulence

A body-bruising slap of cold, and a tumbling loss of control—Dillon had finally given his will over to the will of the water. He felt himself whipped against boulders in the churning currents and his senses began to leave him. Then, in the midst of the maelstrom, Dil­lon felt a calm numbness begin to surround him like a bubble of peace within the flood, and all Dillon could hear was the heavy beat of his own heart. So this is death, Dillon thought, as he began to feel himself slip out of consciousness.

Meanwhile, on the ridge above, the remaining fol­lowers, spectators, and a half dozen airborne news crews watched as Dillon and “the chosen ones” were taken under by the torrent. At first, the followers on the ridge didn’t know what to make of it, but as the water continued to pass, wails of anguish began to fill the air as they realized that this was not the glorious event they had been promised; and their minds began the long, arduous task of reconciling what they had just witnessed.

Somewhere in that reconciliation, they would come to accept that Dillon Cole had tricked them all; that he was just another false prophet, and in the end brought nothing but death and destruction. For all those who stood on that rim, for all those who saw Black Canyon fill with white water, there would be many sleepless nights, but in the end, the dead would be buried, and the living would return to the lives they had led before being touched by Dillon. . . and in so doing, set the world back on its balance.

This is what Dillon had wanted—and it all would have come to pass, had Dillon’s power not been stronger than even he could comprehend.

The water surged down the canyon at 200 miles per hour. By the time the canyon widened, the wave was crashing toward the hotels at Laughlin—at 175 miles per hour. In Laughlin, those unlucky enough to be stranded there caught sight of the white foam of the water-wall in the distance as it crashed toward them—at 150 miles per hour. Several news helicopters, barely able to keep up with the surge at first, found themselves easily matching the pace of the flood’s leading edge, clocking their speed at 100 miles per hour, just ten miles out of Laughlin.

There was a figure caught in the telephoto crossbars of one cameraman’s lens. He was riding the crest of the flood’s leading edge, lying on his back. By all rights, he should have been churned down into the wa­ter’s killing depths—yet somehow, was not. Instead he was surrounded by an island of calm water amid the chaos. His eyes were closed, so there was no way of telling if he was dead, or merely unconscious.

It was five miles out of Laughlin that the rushing water inexplicably slowed to below the highway speed limit.

Michael’s powers were not hell-bent on self-preservation.

The moment Michael and Tory fell into the powerful updraft, they were dragged skyward, and as Dillon tumbled beneath the waves during the first moments of the flood, Michael and Tory were tumbled up by the wind.

At a height of ten thousand feet, the dust-filled shaft of wind burst apart, spreading out like a mushroom cloud. Michael and Tory continued to cling to one an­other as they rode the shock wave of wind, no longer knowing up from down. Michael knew his skill was not one of precision, but of broad strokes. Storms and cloud sculptures were a far cry from controlled flight. The air was now too thin to fill their lungs, and unforgivingly cold. Michael tried to move his fingers and found that he couldn’t even feel them.

“What happens now?” Tory cried into Michael’s ear.

Michael knew he didn’t have to say it, because she already knew.

“Whatever happens, I won’t let you go.”

And in that instant, as he held Tory’s shivering body, he knew he had finally found in his soul the faintest glimmer of love.

But it was too late to change the course of the wind.

Gripping cold.

Breaking clouds.

A long, frozen fall.

And then nothing.

The sudden sense of Michael and Tory’s death snapped Dillon to consciousness. He opened his eyes, and thought the blinding light that shone on his face was the spirit of God, until a helicopter cut across it, and he realized it was only the sun shining through the breaking clouds. He was alert enough to realize that he was alive, and to know that he was floating in strangely serene water. Yet why did he hear it churning all around him?

A moment more, and it all came back to him— everything until the moment he had lost consciousness.

Now his body no longer felt the battering it had re­ceived from the water. He had already healed himself—although his lungs still felt heavy from the submerged breaths he had drawn.

While still underwater, he must have unknowingly created an oasis of calm around himself like a reflex. That bubble of calm water had lifted him to the surface and carried him along, acting as a buffer between him and the raging torrent.

But there was something more going on here—he could feel it, like a chill that wound up his spine. Only it was longer than his spine—much longer.

The feeling stretched out the length of his body and beyond; shooting hundreds of miles to the south through the soles of his feet, and hundreds of miles to the north through the top of his head. Then he realized that the churning water—still bubbling and brewing, was no longer consuming the landscape before it. The hotel towers of Laughlin stood only a mile or two away, but drew no closer. The entire flood was in fact standing still—treading itself like the waters of a wash­ing machine. Dillon then felt himself moving again, and he once more sensed that cold strand shoot through him like a thousand-mile vein. Then, in a moment, he understood exactly what was happening.

Laughlin would not be washed away today.

Lake Havasu and the London Bridge would be per­fectly safe.

This should be a good thing, thought Dillon, but it was not. It was bad news in its rawest form, as terrible as Michael’s and Tory’s deaths. Dillon released a de­lirious laugh—a cackle of bitter surrender as the flood began a powerful backwash toward higher ground. No matter how hard Dillon had tried to scuttle his “miracle of the waters,” it was going to happen anyway. For his power had grown far beyond his ability to control it— and now, even against his will, Dillon’s influence had fallen upon these waters, caressing them into submis­sion, from Mexico to its tiniest mountain tributaries . . .

. . . And the mighty Colorado River was flowing backward.