Thief of Souls (10 page)

The strange force of order that had touched the distant river was now reversing in the twins what never should have
occurred, and all at once, they knew what their innermost wish had always been.

To be one.

There, standing on the rim of the canyon, Lara and Jara—the two halves—merged together into a single being, brought into perfect focus—flesh, mind, and soul.

When it was done, two legs stood where there had been four. Two hands were raised in joy to the heavens, and one mind held the singular human being that had once been sister and brother.

The powerful spirit that had united them, allowed them to linger in their joyous moment of completion. And then that same spirit descended upon them on all sides with such violent ferocity that the twins' soul imploded.

T
HE
B
RINGER STOOD IN
the cold night admiring his new body. It suited him just fine. It was young, it was strong—and like the Bringer itself, this body was neither male nor female, but a perfect synthesis of both.

“Sleep,”
he told the twins, as he felt their soul collapse in upon itself. They had experienced their completion, which was more than most did. And although he spared their soul the indignity of being eaten, he had no remorse at having buried it beneath the heavy weight of his own spirit.

He took the four mountain lions that, for a brief time, had housed his quartered soul, and one by one cast them off the cliff and into the dark mist of the canyon.

This was not an ancient Mediterranean empire. That was a world and many ages away. Having stolen the twins' memories, he knew the year and the ways of the modern world. But what was he doing here? He remembered the circumstances of his death: the drowning of the old human shell he had worn;
the dissolution of his spirit into the sea. Who had coaxed his fragmented spirit back from the waters of death, causing it to congeal once more into a glorious whole? Who in this world had that kind of power? Instinct told him it must have been a star-shard who had done it, akin to the ones he had destroyed so many years ago . . . .

He peeled from himself the strangely tailored clothes the twins had worn. Clothes sewn by their mother, the Bringer recalled from his usurped memories; arm and leg holes cut at absurd angles that no longer fitted the single symmetrical body the twins had fused into. A perfect human body. He discarded them over the canyon rim, then strode toward the lights of the nearby village, already feeling the pangs of a three-thousand-year-old hunger.

R
ADIO
J
OE HAD HEARD
the four shots go off like the monotone chime of the old church bell, ringing a spirit into the earth.

He waited for the twins to return, tempering his own anxiety with the steady hypnotic spill of sands between his fingers, contemplating the ancient patterns on the hardpan of his yard.

When he saw a figure coming toward him out of the darkness, he thought it must have been the twins, but this figure moved in a steady gate. It was naked, and when Radio Joe looked into its face, he thought for a moment he had slipped into some terrible half-sleep, for what he saw was impossible.

The old man felt his aging heart attempt to stop, but he willed it to sustain his life—if only long enough to know the nature of the monster before him.

“Radio Joe,” said the figure, with the slyest of grins, “don't you recognize me? Or should I say, ‘us.' ”

The old man stood in the center of his sand paintings, studying the figure before him. Firm, hairless pectorals that could have been breasts. Hips that were smooth like a woman's, yet thighs as muscular as a man's. Its loins were an abomination, both male and female.

“What have you done with Lara and Jara?”

“They sleep,” it said. “For I may yet need them.”

Radio Joe reached down, grabbed a handful of black powder, and hurled it into the flames. The fire spat forth a bright green flame.

“Giyá Bachál vomga,”
he chanted. “Return to the dark place. I command you to fall from the living world!”

But it only laughed. “Empty words,” it said. “I had thought it was you who had called me back from the dead—but you are no star-shard. You are barely a man anymore.”

The thing that had been Lara and Jara took a step forward, and Radio Joe took a step away, keeping the fire between the thing and himself.

“Who has drawn me back from the waters?” it asked, with a force that could not go unanswered.

“No one has!” said Radio Joe, knowing this more surely than he had known anything in his life. “No one would knowingly call such a creature as you to the living world.”

The creature considered his answer. “You're far wiser than you know,” it said. “Perhaps my life is an accident, then. How fortunate for me!” It looked at its arms, studying the gooseflesh that had risen there. “Clothe me!” it ordered.

“I will not help you with your dark business,” Radio Joe told it, finding one more moment with this creature unbearable. “Either kill me or leave.”

It stalked slowly toward him, stepping over the sands, unbothered by the strong magic of their patterns. It stepped
over the flames, ignoring the heat, until at last it was face-to-face with Radio Joe.

“Do you have any idea who I am?” it asked.

Radio Joe refused to look away, even though he sensed the depth of the danger he was courting. “At first I thought you were the one who caused the crash . . . but now I see I was wrong. You
are
the crash. You are the death of all you touch. You are the darkness that swallows light. You are
Quíkadi Bp; páa Misma Ga Máa
. The Bringer of Shadows. The thief of souls.”

The creature let him go, for a moment taken aback by his words—which clearly hit far closer to the mark than this creature wanted.
Perhaps,
thought Radio Joe,
my words have earned me respect enough to be spared
. Or maybe there was some power in the sands yet.

“Your life force is too old to be worth the effort of devouring,” it told him. “Aged into vinegar. I leave it with you.” And then the thief walked off into the shadows. Radio Joe followed it as far as his open gate, where it had dropped his rifle. He picked the gun up, aimed it at the creature's back as it left, his fingers aching to pull the trigger . . . but he could not—for he knew that he would be killing whatever was left of the twins as well. Still, he held his aim until it vanished into the night. Then he turned to the flames and cried to his ancestors, knowing that it would take more than a gun, and more than the strength of a hundred generations, to purge the world of this thief of souls.

T
HE
B
RINGER WAS CLOTHED
by a woman elsewhere in town, claiming to have been robbed and left that way. Then he set out from the Hualapai nation, first on foot, and then in the bed of a hay truck. By now, he was sure that his new life was an accident—an unexpected side effect, of a star-shard's passage—and
he marveled at the power of such a shard, whose very presence could line up enough random events to give the Bringer's life impetus against three thousand years of death. Order out of chaos! It was a power more awesome than that of the shape-shifting king, so many years ago. It was a power worth harnessing. Perhaps there were no worthy pupils here, but there was plenty to exploit. Plenty of things to
use
, and a world full of souls to devour.

In the great expanses of Arizona desert, where imprints of life were scarce, sensing the direction of the shards was as easy as listening for cicadas in the dead of night. These shards were separate from one another now, but converging.

Star-shards on Earth once more!

If that were so, he would not make the same mistakes he had made the first time. He would no longer be a Bringer of Wisdom for this dim world, giving his gifts freely to the undeserving. This time he would serve his own voracious appetites.

And as for these new star-shards—he would find them, and he would bend them to his will . . .

. . . and if they would not bend, he would simply destroy them.

S
HIPROCK ROSE FROM THE DESERT FLOOR OF NORTHWESTERN
New Mexico like a massive sentinel just off of U.S. 666. From a certain angle, the towering sides of the dead volcano appeared to be the wings of a great dragon, folded around something dark and unseen, and more than one local culture saw the end of the world rising one day from its hidden heart. Tory Smythe had come into the shadow of this dark sandstone basolith earlier that day, and now tried to wash away the day in a scalding bath. Yet, no matter how hard she scrubbed, she couldn't strip away the strange feeling that had plagued her all afternoon.

A feeling that something was wrong in the town of Shiprock.

—wrong with the quiet couple who tended to the little gift shop.

—wrong about the woman who offered her a ride.

—wrong about the cluster of teens pumping gas into their van.

And as the late-afternoon sun cast the shadow of the rock over the town, the feeling got worse, and Tory felt the disquieting sense that her life was about to take a brand-new turn for the worse.

With exhaustion tugging at her limbs, she decided it was just fatigue, and figured that one night's layover on her journey to Dillon wouldn't kill her.

The town of Shiprock was no Shangri-la. Hardworking but impoverished people populated the flat-roofed homes that were sun-baked by day, and sandblasted by night, courtesy of the merciless desert winds.

She took a room at the only motel that had a room. Although it wasn't the cleanest place, she knew every corner would be pretty well sanitized by the time she woke up in the morning. The way her influence had grown, she figured a single night in one place would fry every germ within a hundred yards—not to mention purify the minds of quite a few overnight guests.

As Tory soaked in the tub, she thought back to the woman at the reception desk. She seemed pleasant enough, and yet, there was something vacant about her expression.
Something wrong, something wrong, something wrong, something . . .

“I'll take whatever you have,” Tory had said, spreading out some crumpled bills on the counter. The woman presented her a key on a cracked plastic chain.

“Checkout time is at ten, and there's a continental breakfast at eight. Aren't you a bit young to be on your own, miss?”

“Is that a problem?” Tory had dropped an extra ten dollars on the counter, and the woman snatched up the ten-spot like a frog catching a fly. “You get yourself a good night's sleep, honey.”

Although she was already looking like a parboiled lobster, Tory added more hot water to the tub. It wasn't just the wrongness now. There was an uncanny feeling of presence. An unsettling sensation, like the powerful magnetic field around a high-voltage transformer.

She tried to shake off the feeling by watching TV through the open bathroom door. There was a report on the news about dead fish in California, then an update on yesterday's
deadly plane crash. Tory sighed and sunk down until her chin touched the water. More bad news for a beleaguered world—Tory couldn't stand it. She kicked the door closed, and reached up for a bar of soap . . . but as she did, something caught her eye.

On the counter sat a sorry potted plant. Overwatered and yellow, the little plant was not long for this world. But now as Tory looked at it, she was certain it looked different than it had just five minutes ago. The old, dying leaves had fallen off, and the plant had sprouted new shoots. Tory could swear she could see it growing in tiny spurts.

The exhaustion she felt suddenly seemed unimportant.

“Winston?” she called. “Winston!”

And from the room on the other side of the paper-thin wall came a voice a bit deeper than she remembered, but still familiar.

“Tory?”

W
INSTON HAD ALWAYS BEEN
a champ at guarding his emotions, but he couldn't contain his excitement at seeing Tory. At last he could talk to someone like himself—someone who understood what it was like to change the world by your very presence, and yet have to hide that light so no one else would know. Someone who understood what a handicap true power could really be. They talked for hours—there was a year of strange tales to tell one another . . . .

“You won't believe all the things I know,” bragged Winston. “Medicine, law, philosophy, I'm like a walking encyclopedia.”

“You can't believe how I change people just by being around them,” said Tory. “I've turned hardened criminals into model citizens!”

Then, somewhere in their conversation, Winston asked the question that had dominated his thoughts since he had stepped foot into Shiprock. “Did you feel something strange
when you got here?” he asked. “Something about the people?”

Tory nodded. “It's like . . . they look fine on the outside, but on the inside, they're black-and-white, while the rest of the world is color, you know?”

So it was a sensation they had both felt!—But neither knew what it meant.

At midnight, they ventured out to an all-night coffee shop down the street, sparsely populated by truckers and tired travelers. As they sat at the counter, devouring greasy burgers, a planter just outside the window became clogged with weeds and cactus, and at the table behind them, a grunged-out biker suddenly began cleaning his fingernails with a pocketknife.

“Our powers keep growing,” Winston told Tory. “No telling where it's going to stop.”

“What if they don't?” whispered Tory.

Winston, in all his newfound wisdom, had no answer.

Just then, a customer who had been sitting alone in a booth, sauntered to the counter and slid onto the stool beside them. Their chatter stopped abruptly.

“You can keep on talking. I don't mind,” said the intruder, who seemed to be about twenty or so. “My name's Okoya.” Like most people in town, Okoya was Native American, with long, black hair, and dark eyes. It was those eyes that caught Tory and Winston. They were deeper than a person's eyes ought to be.