Нил Шустерман - Shuttered Sky

Dillon saw everything.

He saw Okoya grab her. He saw him hold her close. He saw the tendrils of light vomited up from the pit of Okoya’s being, and he felt her soul pulled from her body and disappear into Okoya. He felt her die, and there was nothing he could do about it. How could he have let this happen? How could he have not seen the Vector lurking inside of Ari back in Poland? Now Ari grabbed Maddy’s empty shell, pulling her away from Okoya.

“Try bargaining now,” he heard Maddy say to Ari, but it wasn’t Maddy speaking, not anymore. It was just her empty shell that spoke; her dead, soulless shell, still mimicking life.

Another Vector was descending the stairs; a boy, but his gaze wasn’t on Dillon, it was fixed on Okoya. There was so much hate in that gaze that Dillon now knew everything Okoya had told them was true. Okoya was hated by his own kind. He truly had sided with the Shards to save himself. But there was no salvation for Okoya. Not now; not ever, for he had devoured Maddy and no pit in hell was deep enough for him now.

With tears of fury blinding him, Dillon grabbed Okoya and hurled him down the steps. He lost his balance, and together they rolled down towards the bay.

“I’ll kill you! You son-of-a bitch! I’ll kill you!” Dillon began pounding Okoya’s head against the stone, not wanting to stop; never wanting to stop.

“The Vectors are the enemy,” Okoya insisted. “I had to do it. The Vectors are the enemy.”

Dillon couldn’t help himself. He so much wanted to be the de­stroyer again and in that moment he longed for the spirit of destruction to return to him, allowing him to feed its hunger, creating waves and waves of destruction as he had done two years ago, so he could share his despair with the world.

It was Maddy’s shell that pushed him off of Okoya, having pulled her hands from the bonds. He looked up to see her. It. Maddy undead.

“Don’t be a fool,” It said. “Get out of here.”

He looked up at it, but didn’t see Maddy’s face—all he could see was the vacancy of her eyes.

“I chose this,” It said. “Now make it mean something.”

Okoya grabbed Dillon’s hand. “They’re coming for you,” Okoya said, and spirited him away down the shoreline, toward Michael and Tory, leaving Maddy’s undead husk behind.

“I’ll kill you!” Dillon told Okoya, but it lacked conviction.

“Later,” Okoya told him.

They ran to the rocks where Michael and Tory were waiting, and scrambled over them, to the next cove.

“What happened back there?” Tory asked, and threw a harsh gaze at Okoya. “What’s he doing here?”

Dillon didn’t want to answer—didn’t want to think about it. Okoya urged them on, and they kept moving down the shore, until they were sure the Vectors no longer pursued.

“Now that the Vectors know I’m here, we have very little time,” Okoya told them. “My presence makes the threat far more serious to them.”

“What about Winston?” Michael asked. “Something happened to him—you felt it, didn’t you? We all must have felt it.”

“It’s possible that the Vectors had him—but I think he’s gotten away.” Okoya pointed to Tory. “You go look for him.”

Tory scowled. “I don’t take orders from you.”

“Go, Tory,” Dillon told her. “Michael, you go, too—there’s no telling where he’ll be.”

Tory opened her mouth, as if to say something, but thought better of it and left. Michael lingered a moment more, taking in Dillon’s distraught expression.

“Don’t choke in sudden death, man,” Michael said, clapping him on the shoulder. “We’re counting on you to hold things together.”

When they had gone, Okoya turned to Dillon. “Once they find Winston, you must all summon up your strength. Time is short, and all five of you must be ready.”

“Four,” Dillon spat at him. “Lourdes won’t help us.”

And Okoya said, “I wasn’t talking about Lourdes.”

Winston crawled out of the ruin of the shattered chapel, forcing his way through the thorny trunks of the weed he had cultivated. The ugly woman screamed her fury behind him, hacking the stalks of the monster weed with the knife that had been meant for his decapitation. Although the pain in Winston’s broken spine was more than enough to tear him from consciousness, he forced himself lucid, for this, he knew, was the most pivotal moment of his life. Dragging himself across the road, his legs and arms barely working, he brought himself to the cliff. There were no stairs at this ledge; it was a sheer drop all the way down to the rocks below, but the woman was running behind him now, swinging the knife angrily at her side as she ran, cutting her own legs in her fury to get to Winston.

It was his mother’s voice that came to him then. He had barely thought of her for weeks, but now she rose to the forefront of his mind and sang to him a gentle song of faith; the gospel that had always comforted her. It used to comfort him as well in his childhood, before he had become this strange and wondrous changeling.

“I hear you,” he whispered. Whatever darkness these Vectors brought with them, whatever portents of despair, he had to have faith. No matter how unlikely, no matter how foolish, he had to believe that something larger than himself, larger than the Vectors, would cradle him and catch him when he fell. With the woman only a few feet away now, he forced his body over the edge and let gravity take over.

Less than a quarter mile from the steps where Maddy’s spirit had died, Dillon waited with Okoya for Michael and Tory to return.

The Vectors had not followed them here. They had completely dispensed with Okoya and the Shards. Dillon could see the boy, and the man who had once been Tessic’s pilot standing in the stone arch at the head of the cliff, staring out over the bay, ignoring him.

“If we’re such a threat to the Vectors, then why haven’t they come after us?”

“Because they ran out of time,” Okoya said. “They can’t pursue you anymore; they must begin working the scar, and that means we’ve won our first battle. You’ve all survived their attempts to destroy you. Now you will get to face them.”

On the ridge, the third Vector took her place beside the other two framed in the arch, and the moment she did something happened. They began to push out waves of energy; pulses of light that danced across the sky filled with color like a shimmering aurora—beautiful, but Dillon understood its dark purpose. The Vectors were working the scar, caressing it, slowly tearing it open.

As the waves of energy passed, Dillon felt them resonate within him. He felt his own powers begin a new surge, rising like adrenaline. An autonomic reaction to the Vector’s pulses. He held containment, but only barely. If he let loose now, he felt his power would cover the entire Mediterranean, and beyond.

“You are enabled,” Okoya said.

It left him breathless, and yet he knew, even with all that power he held inside, he was powerless to bring back Maddy. A devoured soul was gone—irretrievable even to him.

Dillon turned on Okoya sharply, his hands balled into fists. Tears of anger flooded his eyes. “When this is over—if we survive—I will shatter you,” he said. “I will find a way to make you feel the pain she felt when you devoured her.”

He expected Okoya to lash out and vehemently defend his inde­fensible act, but he didn’t. Instead he extended his hand and said, “I have a gift for you, Dillon.”

Dillon felt a slight change in the air pressure around him and his ears popped. The light of dawn changed.