Нил Шустерман - Scorpion Shards

This colony of disease—this ugliness —had once found a place in Tory, but she had no room for such ugliness anymore. Now as she gripped the queen of the swarm, she pumped all of her anger into her clenched fist and drove out her own revulsion, replacing it with determination. This thing had turned Tory’s own unique power against her . . . but now the creature was on the outside, and it had no defense against Tory’s cleansing touch.

The filthy thing writhed in her grasp, the disease drain­ing from it, its flesh fading from sickly gray, to jelly-clear. Its swarm fell to the ground one by one, pattering like a fall of rain, until the queen was alone and unprotected. Without her guardians and without her filth, Tory knew this creature in her fist was nothing . . . So she hurled the thing to the ground and crushed it beneath the heel of her shoe, the way she would crush any bug that became a nui­sance.

Michael chased the blue-burning beast of many hands toward the shore of the violent sea, where black water lapped like oil upon the vermillion sands.

As he dove on the beast, bringing it down, he felt him­self overwhelmed by a tempest of emotions so powerful he thought it would tear him apart. Fear raked across sor­row, slashed by anger, scalded by desire, and each emo­tion was so extreme, Michael felt the turbulence alone would destroy him. He flipped the creature around to face him—but it had no face; only eyes. Turquoise, hypnotic eyes, and many burning hands, each stronger than his own.

Then the creature did grow a face around those deep, deep eyes. It was the face of a beautiful girl; somehow a mixture of all the girls he had known and wanted—and its many hands no longer clawed him but caressed him. Those soft hands tingled across his chest and his legs. His arms slipped from around the creature’s neck to its shoul­ders. He felt hands on his head pulling him closer into a powerful embrace, and all his battling emotions were flooded by something more powerful than all the rest. It was the old familiar feeling; the brutal passion that ruled his days and nights.

The beautiful creature pulled Michael into a fiery kiss.

You can’t imagine the pleasure I could give you, he felt it say. All the Joys you could imagine . . . If only you stop resisting . . . if only you feed me . . .

Michael could feel the intensity of its passion mingling with his own.

Take me back, he felt the creature say. Invite me back in.

Michael could feel it trying to slide beneath his skin and dissolve into his blood.

Invite you in? thought Michael. Is that how it had hap­pened in the first place? Did it have to be invited in?

He thought of the girl in Baltimore, and then the one in Omaha. This thing had now become so powerful that it could steal a soul with a kiss. Was he going to invite this thing to rule him?

Michael knew he could not let it happen, so he turned everything off—and was amazed to find that he had the power to do it. He shut down his fear, he closed off his anger, he doused his lust. He made himself feel cold, calm and unaffected by the grip of this sensual creature that clung to him.

The air around them began to chill and fill with flurries of snow, but there was no icy wind of fear.

The creature wailed, its hands becoming claws again, digging into him, its face melting away into those burning blue eyes. It thrashed as if each snowflake were made of acid, and the snow kept falling heavier by the moment.

Only now did Michael realize that he was killing it—but he didn’t allow himself to feel excitement.

Cold. Calm. Unaffected.

Michael pulled away, standing above it, feeling the snow grow stronger; feeling himself feel nothing for this creature.

For all the spirits we destroyed, for all the girls whose souls we invaded together, I leave you cold. I will not be your accomplice. I will not be your slave. My body will not be your vessel. And I will walk away feeling nothing for you.

The snow was like a mountain of sand around the wail­ing creature now. With a hundred flaming blue hands it tried to free itself, but could not. Michael watched as it sunk into the snow and drowned. The snow itself glowed a bright blue for a few moments as the creature dissolved into it, but then the hot, black waters of the un-world sea crashed upon the glowing mound, melting it. In a mo­ment, nothing was left but a thin blue foam that was pulled by the undertow toward the distant churning wa­ters, where an ocean poured endlessly from a hole in the sky.

Lourdes struggled with her immense, slow-moving beast, but as strong as her muscles had gotten beneath all that fat, this beast was far stronger. It was like an octopus; a great boneless jet-black thing with tentacles as thick as her thighs and a singular, hateful eye.

But the worst was its mouth—a great toothless maw that stretched itself open wide as the tentacles pushed Lourdes toward it. She tried to dig her feet into the sand, but it was no use. It pulled her in and swallowed her whole with a mighty roar.

Lourdes took a last gasp of breath before the mouth closed around her, forcing her into a wet, airless darkness. She pushed her elbows against it, she scraped its gullet with her fingernails, she felt her heart pounding, using up the last of the oxygen in her lungs . . . but she also heard the beast’s heart beating. She was inside it now, rather than it being inside of her . . . and it dawned on Lourdes that this made all the difference. She fought to stay con­scious and concentrated on the sound of the creature’s bloated heart, until she saw it in her mind . . . Then in the same way she had made Carter and the squirrel sleep, she forced her will into the nervous system of this beast.

And she shut down its heart.

The creature began to thrash as its heart seized into a heavy knot. It violently spat Lourdes out onto the sand, and Lourdes, wet and slimy, but very much alive, gasped for breath, feeling her head spin. She kept the creature under her control, clenching her fists, imagining its heart clenched as tightly, until finally the thing quivered and fell to the ground, its life slipping away with the steamy breath from its swollen mouth. Lourdes watched the hatred in its awful eye vanish into the indifference of death.

Winston chased his beast into the looming shadow of a steamer ship that listed dangerously in the sand, its rusted hull wedged between two boulders.

Winston’s creature was small—even smaller than he was, and it surprised him. It loped on all fours, with stubby legs and long arms. Winston could have caught it easily, if his ankle hadn’t been twisted in the fall, but now he had to limp after it, grimacing with every step.

In the shadow of the listing steamer, Winston got close enough to grab the beast’s furry leg; to Winston’s surprise, the creature did not resist. It turned to Winston and gazed into his eyes.

This was not the creature Winston imagined. Its eyes were large and friendly; its fur was soft; its face seemed innocent. . . inquisitive, and it resembled a cross between a monkey and a bear cub.

As Winston looked at it, he felt a sudden urge to hold it close to him, so he did. It wrapped its furry arms and legs around him.

It felt good. Comfortable. Safe. He felt as if he could take this soft thing beneath his arm, curl up and fall asleep.

The soft creature did not slide beneath his arm, how­ever. It slid around him, clung to his back, and held him tightly around the neck.

Winston felt its open mouth by his ear. He smelled its breath; it was clean, like a baby’s breath.

I can make everything like it was, it whispered to him. Just like it was before your father died. I can make it all go back, and you can feel the way you used to feel all those years ago.