Thief of Souls (35 page)

All I have to do is refuse to let them in.
 . . . But instead Dillon bared his own spirit, and gave them permission to crawl deep inside.

O
KOYA DID NOT SEE
Dillon returning toward the portal, for he had approached from a different direction. There seemed to be something strange about the boy; there was a look in his eyes—a look that spoke of both insatiable hunger and deep-seated fear. Okoya knew what this meant; it was Dillon's hunger to rule the world, and his fear of Okoya—the very two things that gave Okoya complete control over the young star-shard. He only hoped the one called Deanna could be as handily yoked as Dillon.

“Where is she?” said Okoya. “Didn't you bring her?”

“She'll be here soon.” Dillon made no move to step through the breach. He stood just inside the Unworld, as if waiting for an invitation to come in. Which in fact he was.

“May I . . .
come in
?” Dillon asked, slowly but precisely.

“You've taken much too long,” Okoya said impatiently. “It's a simple resurrection. I don't like my time wasted.”

“Yes,” said Dillon, “but may I come in?”

“I hope you don't plan on being this irritating in the future,” said Okoya. “Yes!” he said. “By all means,
please
come in!”

“Thank you.” Dillon leapt through the breach at Okoya, and his momentum took Okoya to the ground. That's when he saw the truth behind Dillon's strange expression. Okoya tried to resist, but was too late, because he could already feel a new, unfamiliar hunger burrowing into his gut, and a cold sense of terror constricting his mind.

A
S FOR
D
ILLON, HE
couldn't expel these creatures fast enough.

He had trekked across the red sands, back to the breach, feeling those things within him leeching on his soul, filling him with that old familiar hunger for destruction, and fear so intense it made every footstep an ordeal. Not even in his darkest of nightmares had he seen himself willfully bringing these creatures back to Earth, but he knew they wouldn't remain on Earth for long . . . because just on the other side of the portal was something that suited them more than a human star-shard. Perhaps Dillon was a great soul, but Okoya was also a great soul . . . . And Okoya was a soul who could travel!

As the two parasites gripped on to Okoya, Dillon heaved them out of himself with all the force he could muster, and in his mind's eye, he saw it happen . . . .

. . . And he saw, for the first time, Okoya's true form. It was a creature of light and unlight—both luminous and deadly dark at the same time, as if its own living light was forever feeding the living darkness of its shadow. It had no form beyond the pseudopod tentacles it used to devour life—but
now those tentacles flung wildly, as the Spirit of Destruction tore it open with its talons and crawled inside, followed by the Spirit of Fear.

“I've decided this world
is
worth preserving!” Dillon shouted at Okoya. “But you're
not
!” Dillon pushed himself away, and his image of the parasites and the tentacled creature of light faded. Now all he saw was Okoya, lying in the dust, convulsing and writhing in agony, tearing at his own tangling hair.

“Help me!” screamed Okoya. “Help me, Dillon, help me!” And the Bringer gouged at his own face, knowing—perhaps for the first time in its life—the feeling of terror. Okoya struggled to get to his feet, then fell again, trying to cast out the creatures he had invited into his soul—but not even his will was great enough to cast them out. They had burrowed too deep. They were home.

He no longer saw Dillon, for Dillon no longer mattered to him. All that mattered was escaping the parasites' choking grip. Okoya turned, and leapt through the hole, but he didn't stop there—for just beyond the portal into the Unworld, Okoya punched a second portal—and for the first time, the Unworld resembled to Dillon what he already knew it to be—just a space between the walls of worlds—a buffer zone to protect one world from another.

Okoya leaped into the Unworld, took a single stride in that space between, then hurled himself through the second breach, into the world he had come from.

Dillon caught sight of that other world for an instant—a universe full of living light and living shadow. But the moment Okoya crossed back into his own world, both portals sliced shut with the speed and finality of guillotine blades.

Once the echo of Okoya's final screams had receded to
the far recesses of the canyon, Dillon sat down, and allowed himself several deep breaths of relief. He had unleashed one evil on another, and now the creatures of fear and destruction were the problem of Okoya and his world. Maybe Dillon couldn't destroy Okoya—but at least he could give him what he deserved.

In the quietude of the canyon, Dillon shed a tear for those who had lost their lives to Okoya, for Michael and Tory, whose end could not have been pleasant, and for Deanna.

“I'm sorry, Deanna,” he said aloud. But this was not the time or the place for Deanna to live again. He didn't know if that time would ever come; he only knew that he had made the right choice.

Dillon took a moment to glance up at High Pebble, precariously perched on its finger of rock, threatening to plunge at any moment, as it had for thousands of years. But the boulder wasn't falling today.
As for tomorrow,
he thought,
well, who can say?

Around him, the dust began to gather into sand, and the sand began to gather into pebbles, stroked into cohesion by Dillon's presence. He knew he had to move on.

It would have been a long trek out of the canyon, but on his way he came across a wild horse that seemed more than happy to bear him up the narrow rocky path.

P
HOENIX
, A
RIZONA
. A
GRAVEYARD
. B
Y NO MEANS THE OLD-FASHIONED
type where stones loomed large and foreboding, but the modern kind. The kind of place with master-planned aisles, and small, shin-high markers on an endless, rolling lawn. Two gravestones side by side marked final resting places of Davis Roland Cole and Judith Martha Cole. Beloved Father and Mother.

Dillon knelt, and put two sprigs of flowers in the small holders on the stones.

“I wish I could tell you all the things that have happened since you've been gone,” Dillon told them. “You have every reason to be ashamed of me . . . but maybe now . . . maybe now you can be proud of me, too.”

Nearby, Winston kept a respectful distance. Then, once Dillon had stopped talking, he ventured closer.

“I never liked graveyards,” Winston said. “They do everything to make 'em user-friendly, but no graveyard's ever gonna be a friend of mine.”

Still on his knees, Dillon adjusted the flowers, which he knew was unnecessary, because whatever he did, they were in a perfect, orderly pattern.

“Any feelings about where Lourdes might be?” Dillon asked.

Winston put his hands in his pockets and shook his head. “Only that she's somewhere far away.”

It was not good news, because now they needed to be together even more than before. They could not let what
Okoya had done to them keep them divided. Dillon stood, but kept his eyes fixed on his parents' gravestones.

“So,” said Winston with a shrug, “are you going to do it?”

Dillon looked down at the two gravestones. His own parents had been the first two casualties of the Spirit of Destruction—their brains had been scrambled so badly just by being near Dillon, that they simply couldn't hold on to life. It had been an untimely and unjust way to die—and if anyone deserved to be brought back, they did.

He turned to gaze at the endless fields of the departed. There was a funeral in the distance to his right, and to his left, an old woman shed tears for her husband. But they were good tears. They were natural tears.

“No,” said Dillon. “No, I'm not going to.” And he didn't just mean his parents; he meant everyone—from the ones whose lives had ended when he had crossed the Pacific Northwest, to the ones whose deaths had had nothing to do with him at all. No, he would not bring any of them back.

“Death has got to
mean
something, Winston.” Dillon wiped the tears from his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Even if it's awful, and even if it's unfair, it's got to mean something. I know that's screwed, but somehow it's also right.”

He expected Winston to disagree somehow—he never had found approval in anything that Dillon did. But this time Winston surprised him.

“I've done some terrible things, too,” said Winston. “I suppose I could make myself feel better by making a hundred people walk again, but then I'd never know if making them walk was the right thing to do, or if I was just doing it for myself. Best to get our own heads on straight first.”

So Winston did understand. It was comforting for once, to be on the same wavelength with him.

“One problem, though,” Winston added. “You made a promise back at the castle, that we'd never be hurt as long as we followed you. Tory and Michael were part of that promise.”

Winston was right. Dillon had made a promise, and it left him in an irreconcilable dilemma. For as much as he wanted to live by his conviction that he would never abuse the power of resurrection again, he also knew that he would break his own rule for Tory and Michael, if he got the chance.

He wished Winston could offer him some pearls of wisdom, but he had none.

Dillon closed his eyes. It was hard enough to seek out the living, but finding the dead? He wasn't even sure if they died in the rubble of the dam, or somewhere else. “We'll look for them,” Dillon said. “And if we ever find their bodies, we'll decide what to do then.”

From here on in, Dillon knew, his decisions would only get harder. In the days since Okoya's departure, tens of thousands had flown in from around the world to bathe in the healing waters of the Colorado and Columbia Rivers, and to witness Dillon's miracle of the Backwash. People whispered his name, from the humblest to the most elite of circles, as their alliances realigned toward him. Okoya was right about one thing: It was too late to stop it. How long until everyone in the world knew his name? Twenty-four days and counting, whether he liked it or not.

“Come on, we'd better get out of here,” said Winston. “This isn't a good place to stand for too long, if you know what I mean.”

Dillon looked around, and knew exactly what Winston meant. Thanks to Dillon, all the dead flowers gracing the neighboring stones had become fresh again—and thanks to Winston, they were all growing new buds. Even more worrisome was
Dillon's sense that the rows of the dead were ever so slowly being coaxed back toward life by his own healing presence. It was everywhere around them—growth and rejuvenation, old life and new. It was a wonderful thing, and yet terrible all at once, for this world was not ready for their brand of talents, and they were not ready to wield them.

“Come on, Dillon. Can't let grass grow beneath our feet,” said Winston with a wry smile, because in fact it was.

Dillon had to smile as well. He couldn't read all the patterns ahead; there were too many variables now, too many gaping unknowns. But then he could never predict the future, could he? He could only see the directions that chance and design were
supposed
to take, as they moved toward an unseen future. But things change; and no pattern can ever be cast in stone. It frightened him to know that even with his remarkable vision, so much in the world was out of his control and unknowable. It was that fear of the unknown that bound him to what he was; never a god, and always human. There was comfort in that, and as they left the dead behind, Dillon took strength in the knowledge that so many things were still unknown.

ALSO BY NEAL SHUSTERMAN

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