Thief of Souls

by Neal Shusterman

  Then Okoya cupped his hands before him, and Michael watched as the pores in Okoya’s arm opened up, spilling forth a red, glowing perspiration that rolled in rivulets down his wrists, and into his cupped hands, becoming a thick, viscous pool of liquid light. Okoya’s high-energy diet.

  “It can be anything you want it to be, Michael. A musical feast for your ears, a perfect texture you can feel against your flesh, an aromatic salve, or a banquet fit for a king. Whatever sense you choose to feed.” The pool of light in Okoya’s hand then changed, becoming silver and reflective. “Or perhaps you’d like to feast your eyes on a vision of your own future.”

  And as Michael gazed into the silver pool, it became a window, and Michael could not look away. Cupped in Okoya’s hands, he saw a shimmering city. Glorious spires beneath crystal-clear skies. A place that did not yet exist . . . but would.

  “They will build entire cities to you, Michael. Thousands of gleaming towers lovingly erected to your name.”

  There was a magnificent dwelling, open to the sky, because the elements of nature had no hold over this place. In the center of all this, surrounded by an opulence that made Hearst Castle seem like costume jewelry, Michael saw himself, clothed in light, surrounded by thousands—millions—who lived only to satisfy his pleasure, whose greatest joy was to be in his presence, deep within the inner core of his powerful sphere of influence.

  “Why not satisfy all your senses at once?” Okoya brought his hands forward, and Michael found himself cupping his own hands to receive the liquid vision.

  “Michael, don’t!”

  But he could barely hear Tory’s voice anymore. The vision poured from Okoya’s hands into Michael’s, not a bit of it spilling. The image in the surface shimmered, but the vision stayed in focus. He could hear it now: the sounds of worship. Singing voices—Okoya’s music multiplied a thousandfold. He could smell the future—a luscious aroma of all his favorite foods swirled into one. He longed to take this vision inside him. To drink it in, to taste it. To feel it flow through him, infusing him with the strength of his own future. It was everything Michael had ever craved. All he had to do was take it in . . . .

  But as he gazed at it, as he listened, there was something else he heard there, too. It had been there all along in the sights, sounds, smells, and flavors Okoya had put before them—but Michael had not been attuned to its frequency until now.

  This pool of light was alive.

  And it was screaming.

  Michael pulled his gaze away from it, forcing himself to see Drew who still cowered in the corner. Even from here, Michael could tell that Drew’s soul had been taken from him by Okoya. And suddenly Michael knew exactly who he was about to dine upon.

  Still, he brought this liquid manna closer to his face. To smell it. To feel it. To taste it.

  “I knew I could count on you, Michael,” said Okoya triumphantly.

  Although Michael’s mind and body wanted to drink it in, he fought the crushing urge and instead hurled it away.

  In the direction of Drew.

  “No!” cried Okoya.

  The shimmering globule of life-energy struck Drew in the chest, and exploded like mercury into a thousand droplets that coursed around Drew’s body. Drew arched his back and gasped, as his soul returned to him through the pores of his skin, and back to that intangible place inside.

  Okoya’s surprise only lasted for an instant, then his face became blizzard-cold.

  “You’ve squandered your last chance for greatness, Michael,” he said. “You and Tory have both outlived your usefulness.”

  Suddenly Drew bolted from the corner, heading toward the doorway that led back into the inner structure of the dam.

  “Drew, no!” Michael leapt after him. And in that moment of confusion, Okoya grabbed Tory, twisted her arm behind her back, then pushed her into the doorway right behind Michael, slamming the gate. With one hand Okoya held the gate closed, and with the other, ripped an iron rail-post from the concrete wall—partly with his human strength, and partly with the sheer force of his will. Then he jammed the pole through the handles of the gate, securing it so firmly that it didn’t give an inch. Tory and Michael rammed their bodies against the gate, but it was no use—and their screams would never be heard over the turbines—nor would they be seen from this unlit, remote corner of the rafters.

  Okoya laughed heartily. “How marvelous!” said Okoya. “I don’t have to kill you now; Dillon will do it for me—and he won’t even know it!”

  Okoya strode away, his laughter dissolving into the awful warbling whine of the turbines.

  For more than half an hour, Michael, Tory, and Drew kicked at the gate. Michael hurled a wind at it, but it only sifted like water through a sieve. Finally they realized the only way out was up, into the cold concrete hell of the dam.

  “We’ll get out, right?” asked Drew, searching for some hint of reassurance. “I mean, it might take some time, but we’ll get out of here, won’t we?”

  Michael and Tory both turned to him. Could it be that he didn’t know?

  “What is it?” said Drew. “It better not be bad news. I’m not ready for bad news.”

  “We don’t have any time,” Tory said coldly. “In a few hours Dillon’s going to shatter the dam.”

  20. DAMMED

  * * *

  LAKE MEAD, THE LARGEST MAN-MADE LAKE IN THE WORLD, stretched for 115 miles behind the half-million-ton concrete plug called Hoover Dam. Although it had never seen the likes of Dillon Cole, the dam was by no means a stranger to the bizarre; from the psychotic behavior of heat-maddened workers during its construction, to the ninety-four deaths recorded by the time it was complete. Most of those deaths were workers boiled under the heat of the unforgiving sun. But then there was the scaler, who fell into the pit of Black Canyon, only to have his body bickered over by the Nevada and Arizona coroners for hours because, during construction, there was no Colorado River to divide the two states, and no one could agree in which state—besides postmortem—the body lay. There were macabre tales of dying laborers crawling across the unfinished concrete abutments of the dam, just to get to the Arizona side before they died, because death benefits in Arizona were far better than in Nevada. And then, of course, there was the eerie fact that the last person to die while building the dam, was the son of the first person to die while building it. But, to the disappointment of tourists everywhere, the horrific tales of hapless workers slipping into the wet concrete, only to be sealed within the walls, were untrue. No one had been entombed in Hoover Dam. Yet.

  DILLON, REFRESHINGLY CHILLED FROM a night communing with himself, woke up in time to see the sunrise. It spilled over the red mountains, shimmering on Lake Mead to his left, and cutting across the pit of Black Canyon to his right.

  By seven a.m., Dillon stood at a view spot on the rim of the dam, near a broken window at the Visitors Center. Before him were two identical bronze statues, massive, with stylized human faces, muscular chests, and sharp, pointed wings held straight up, as if poised to puncture Heaven. He looked down at a star chart beneath his feet. Tiny dots of brass stars were imbedded in blue concrete, each star perfectly placed to be a precise image of the night sky. But it wasn’t quite perfect, was it?

  Dillon knelt down, and pressed his thumb over a single star, erasing it for a moment from the constellation of Scorpius.

  Mentarsus-H—a star which was no longer there, but its living soul was here on earth. Or at least five-sixths of it, thought Dillon. And, reflexively, Dillon turned up to the winged statue that looked so much like the Spirit of Destruction that had tricked him into killing Deanna. Her gift had been the conquest of fear, and a transforming power of faith. There was no telling how much smoother today’s event would have gone with the strength of Deanna’s faith, and her love.

  But he couldn’t let himself dwell on Deanna, either. Events were turning much too quickly now, and he had come here for a reason.

  Although the Visitors Center hadn’t officially opened
yet, there were already tourists wandering the deck. So far, no one had recognized him, and he hoped no one would.

  He strolled around the Visitors Center, and down the road that curved along the rim of the dam. He knelt to the ground, putting his ear to the curb, like someone might put their ear to a railroad track to listen for an approaching train. By now he had gained the attention of a few tourists, who laughed, wondering what might be wrong with him. He didn’t bother to look at them; he just moved on, rubbing his hands along the concrete, until finding a spot on the sidewalk where a tiny weed grew through an insignificant hairline crack. He traced his finger along that crack until stopping at a single point, and then, when no one was looking, he pulled a small stone out of his pocket, and tapped the spot three times . . .

  . . . click . . . click . . . click.

  Then he stood, stretched, and casually left, heading back across the desert to his circle of followers three miles away.

  Behind him, the two noisy lanes of traffic crossing the dam made it impossible for anyone to hear the tiny triplet of sounds that slowly grew louder as it echoed back and forth through the concrete superstructure.

  THE DAM WAS ONLY forty-five feet wide at its rim, but at its base it extended back beneath the waters of the lake to a width of five hundred feet. Five miles of tunnel wove through the concrete dam and the bedrock on either side of it. Some tunnels were built for maintenance, others for drainage, and still more seemed to serve no function at all, beyond being havens for rats. There were even some crawlways that didn’t exist on any blueprint—cavities left by unscrupulous foremen hoping to conserve concrete and time when the dam was being built. The result was a lightness, interlocking maze, full of hopeless dead ends and stagnant dead air.

  “What time is it?” Michael asked. “I don’t even know if it’s daylight yet.”

  Holding hands to keep from losing each other, Michael, Tory, and Drew squeezed forward between the slimy stone walls of the catacomb.

  “I don’t know,” said Tory. “I can’t see my watch.”

  Drew, who fearfully brought up the rear, said nothing. For hours they had poked around in absolute darkness, following the squeals of rats that ran over their feet—only to find them disappearing into holes too small for humans to fit. Michael had begun to leave scratch-marks on the wall with his pocketknife. But as they pressed forward, going this way and that, sliding down spillways, and scratching their way up chimneylike shafts, they began to feel their fingertips coming across those same scratch-marks again. They were going in circles.

  “I’ll create a storm high above the dam,” Michael suggested, “so they’ll see it from the campsite, and they’ll know we’re here.”

  He concentrated on shaping an angry cumulus into a pointing finger far above their heads. Soon they began to hear the rain, but it didn’t quite sound right . . . and then water began to rush past their ankles.

  “Michael,” asked Tory, “what did you do?”

  “I don’t like this,” complained Drew. “I don’t like this at all.”

  The rats around them were swimming now. They could feel them clawing at their pantlegs for purchase.

  “Make them stop,” said Drew. “Please make them stop!”

  Michael pushed his stormy feelings out one more time. Now the water not only came from below, but from above—raining on them in the narrow corridors, spilling down the walls, and Michael realized exactly what had happened. His power wasn’t strong enough to penetrate the hundreds of yards of concrete above. His storm had nowhere to go but the narrow passageways around them, pulling moisture from the stone and condensing into a drowning flood:

  “Stop it, Michael!” shouted Tory. “It’s not working!”

  Michael shut the storm down, but it was too late. He could hear the rush of water draining from passageways above. “Hold on!” Michael yelled, but there was nothing to hold on to. The flash flood surged past them, heading for lower ground, and the current pulled them off their feet. Coughing and sputtering, they were dragged down, deeper still, into the dam, until finally landing in a chamber where the water spilled from a dozen holes above their heads.

  The three tried to find each other in the darkness.

  “Where are we? What is this place!” cried Drew, as if someone would be able to answer him.

  How stupid, thought Michael, to have all the power they had, and yet be unable to escape from a big block of concrete. Between himself and Tory, they could do little more than drown themselves and create tunnels full of disease-free rats.

  “Do something!” screamed Drew.

  But Michael was out of ideas. “I don’t know what to do!” The water, which only a moment ago was at their knees, was already rising past their waists. In the icy chill, Michael could feel his muscles threatening to cramp.

  “I can’t drown in here!” wailed Drew. “I can’t die in a place like this!”

  “Shut up!” screamed Tory impatiently.

  They lost each other, each trying to find a spot where water wasn’t cascading down over their heads. The water reached their chins, and Michael felt his feet leave the floor. He kicked to stay afloat, but breathed in a mouthful of water, beginning to gag.

  That’s when he heard the clanging of a machine as it roared to life.

  In an instant the water level began to drop.

  “It’s a pump!” shouted Tory.

  Michael felt the floor beneath his feet again. “This room must be some sort of sump,” he said. “A place to catch the seepage from the dam! It probably pumps the water right out into the Colorado River . . . . If we can find the intake, we could get out that way . . . .”

  “And be dragged through the paddles of the turbines,” added Tory. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  They waded toward each other’s voices as the water was pumped out. Michael coughed, dislodging more fluid from his lungs. The water fell beneath their knees, then their ankles. A hissing suck heralded the last of it being drawn out through a grated hole in the floor, leaving the three of them waterlogged and despondent.

  “This is your fault, Michael!” accused Drew. “You made me go after Okoya. We’re gonna die because of you!”

  Michael could swear he heard Tory’s teeth grinding in anger. “It’s because of Michael that you still have a soul!” she chided, then added, “Dillon should have left you dead. We’d all be better off.”

  Michael reached out and found her hand in the darkness. “It’s okay, Tory—it’s not him talking.”

  “No?” grunted Tory. “Who is it, then?”

  Michael considered that. Someone I don’t know. Reconstituted beef.

  Thinking back, there were many mistakes Michael had made since setting off in search of Dillon, but there was one that stuck out in his mind. It was the first thing that had made him truly feel like a god. The one willful act that sold him into Okoya’s bondage. The changing of Drew’s nature.

  How could Michael blame Drew for being less of a person than he had been, when the change was Michael’s doing? At the time, Michael had convinced himself it had been for Drew’s sake, but that wasn’t entirely true. He had done it for himself; to hurl Drew’s attentions away from him.

  Although Michael couldn’t see Drew in the blackness, he could hear his uneven breathing, and he slid across the grime of the sump floor until he bumped against Drew’s sopping jeans.

  “Who’s that? What are you doing?”

  “It’s just me, Drew.” He grabbed Drew’s arm.

  “No! Stop that! Don’t touch me—just get back over there.” Drew struggled, but Michael held him firm.

  “There’s something I have to give you,” said Michael.

  “Whatever it is, I don’t want it!”

  “Maybe not. But you need it.” Michael pinned Drew into a corner.

  “What’s going on over there?” asked Tory. She had no idea that Michael had denatured Drew. For Drew’s sake, he chose not to tell her now.

  “Get off me!” screamed Drew. His
voice echoed around the chamber. “Leave me alone, you freak!”

  Michael put one hand against Drew’s face, and pressed the other heavily against his chest.

  “I don’t want you to!” cried Drew. “I don’t want you to!”

  “Shhh,” said Michael. The calm in his voice brought a slight warmth to the air around them. “Shhh. It will all be okay.”

  In a moment, Drew stopped struggling, and Michael forced a surge of energy out through his palms until it flowed through Drew like a circuit.

  “I’m afraid,” whispered Drew.

  “That’s okay,” answered Michael.

  Michael then reached his thoughts down, until he found Drew’s denatured self, and folded it in upon itself, collapsing and re-forming it back to the way it had started: strong of character . . . responsible . . . trustworthy . . . and undeniably homosexual.

  Suddenly Drew was holding Michael, rather than pushing him away, and Michael allowed it because he knew that this was not about sex. It was an embrace between brothers. An embrace between friends. And so he returned it.

  Drew let Michael go first, and they both let their minds clear for a moment.

  “Would it be appropriate,” asked Michael, “to welcome you back?”

  He heard Drew breathe heavily in the darkness, reorienting himself to his inner landscape. “It might be.”

  “Wild ride these past few weeks, huh?”

  “Yeah, a regular spin cycle,” Drew said. “I wouldn’t recommend it for pregnant women, or people with back trouble.”

  Michael grinned, and then quickly, before he had the chance to change his mind, he leaned forward and gave Drew a kiss.

  It didn’t feel right, it didn’t feel wrong, it just felt strange. But at the moment it also felt necessary. “Hold on to that one,” Michael told him quietly, “because it’s the only one you’re going to get from me.”

  “I can deal with that.”

  Then from somewhere across the chamber, they heard Tory. “If you two are done fighting, you may want to check this out. I found a vent we could probably squeeze through, if I can get the grate open.”