Thief of Souls (31 page)

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.

P
EOPLE 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.

D
EEP 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.”

D
ILLON
C
OLE 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. 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.

T
ORY
, M
ICHAEL, AND
D
REW
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 was 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 for dear life, as the entire dam began to give way behind him.

I
N 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.