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.
He had felt this before. He knew what it meant.
He spun on his heels to look out over the bay, but he did not see the bay. Instead he saw a jagged hole in space, only a meter wide. A portal to the Unworld.
But even as he saw it, he knew that this portal came with a heavy price—for Dillon knew Okoya was using the energy he had gleaned from Maddy’s soul to open the portal.
There were no red sands and icy skies beyond this hole; Okoya had chosen his point of entry with much greater precision. Through the hole, Dillon saw a place that had been burned into his memory, revisited a thousand times in his nightmares. A vast throne room of an ancient stone palace, the cathedral roof held up by what few pillars had not fallen.
And there in the center was a throne.
But the throne was facing the wrong way—Dillon could only see the back of the carved stone chair. Hanging over the side was a corner of blue fabric—the royal robe that had become her shroud. And the edge of a white shoe. Her shoe. Deanna’s.
His mind reeling, his eyes shot back to Okoya. Okoya strained to hold the portal. A vein bulged on his forehead, his face turned a virulent shade of crimson.
“Can’t hold it—" he said through gritted teeth.
Dillon made a move to step through the portal, but Okoya grabbed him, his nails digging into Dillon’s shoulder.
“No time—" Okoya spat. “Seconds left.”
Seconds? Even if he pushed his spirit out before him, and revived Deanna from here, she was too far away, even if she ran, she would not make it to the portal in time. This was just another gift from Okoya’s bottomless bag of cruelties. He offered a pained glimpse of Deanna, without enough time to bring her back.
“Not her flesh!” Okoya hissed. “Draw her. Draw her now!”
And Dillon finally understood.
With the portal already collapsing, Dillon pushed forth a single impulse through the breach. He called to her. With every ounce of his soul, he called to her, and his call became an imperative that no spirit could resist. His call bypassed the corporal part of her that lay motionless on the throne, and reached to the far corners of the Unworld, until finding her soul.
As the portal collapsed to a pinhole, he felt her coalescing—moving toward him. And in the last instant before the portal sealed, he felt her—he actually felt her pass through him, like a bullet, in through his chest and out through his spine! But to where?
The portal was gone now, and Dillon searched around him as if expecting to see her there, like a ghost—an apparition before his eyes, but she was nowhere to be found.
“Where is she?” Dillon demanded. “What happened to her?”
Okoya had fallen to his knees, exhausted from his effort, barely able to catch his breath.
“How can you be so luminous, and yet still be so dim?” Okoya took a deep breath, and then another. The crimson left his face. “A discorporate spirit,” Okoya said, “seeks a dispirited body.”
* * *
Deanna ignited into consciousness.
She shot through the void, seeking something to grab on to, a body to join with her spirit, but there was nothing to give her purchase. Finally a vacuum drew her in, at last connecting her spirit with flesh. Now, out of the darkness and into light, only one thought filled her mind. It was a name. Her name— such a powerful thought she had to speak it aloud—but the name she heard was not the name she expected. An instant of fear. Uncertainty. But the instant passed and now the name she spoke—the person she was—no longer seemed foreign, it seemed right, and she forgot altogether why it shouldn’t feel right. She was Maddy Haas. Why on earth would she think she was anyone else?
* * *
Sitting alone on a boulder by the shore, Maddy turned to see Dillon running toward her, but as he neared, he slowed his pace. She could feel his trepidation as if the feeling sprang from inside her, and not him. She felt strangely radiant.
“Deanna?” he said.
“Don’t be stupid, it’s Maddy.”
“M . . . Maddy,” Dillon stuttered. “But. . .”
She slid down the boulder and slowly came towards him, feeling so calm, so in control, as if she had all the time in the world. No . . . more as if the world was in perfect time with me.
“I’m . . . different,” she said. “Have you done something to me again, Dillon?”
“Your soul,” Dillon said. “Okoya devoured your soul.”
She looked at her hands as if that might betray something about her current nature.
“I don’t feel like an empty shell,” she said. “In fact, I feel. . .” She didn’t finish the sentence. She looked up at the sky that radiated the pulses of the Vectors. She was feeling it the way Dillon must have felt it—the way a Shard would feel it, deep within her. She spun to him, filled with intense excitement. “I’m beyond myself,” she said, as Dillon had once said to her. “I don’t know where I end and the rest of the world begins. I feel the sky. I feel the depth of the ocean.”
“What do you remember?”
Maddy tried to put her thoughts together. She closed her eyes. She remembered everything from the life of Maddy Haas. The way she rescued Dillon and captured him again. The work she had done for Tessic. She remembered her childhood, her sister, her parents; but she knew these weren’t the memories Dillon was asking about, so she pushed harder, and suddenly gasped at an unexpected, unconnected thought.
“I remember a snake. It had no eyes. It was wrapped around me.”
“Go on.”
But as quickly as the thought had come to her, it was gone, like a dream she could no longer remember. But it had lingered long enough for her to know. She turned to Dillon in amazement. “I was Deanna Chang.”
Although Dillon laughed with joy, Maddy forced down her own emotion.
“But that doesn’t matter. I’m Maddy Haas now.”
“Yes,” said Dillon. “You are.”
Dillon reached out his right hand toward her. “No Shard takes this hand but you.”
Maddy looked at the hand, hesitating—almost afraid that all this wasn’t real, but in the end she touched him. She held his hand. The syntaxis that flooded both of them was so powerful, so perfect, she almost lost herself in it. His eyes were locked on hers, and hers filled with tears. For Maddy this was an answer to a prayer. All the times they had touched, shared each other’s thoughts, shared each other’s bodies—it paled compared to this.
Some things you can never share, Tessic had told her. You can never be what he needs. You can never be his true companion. Tessic had been right—and yet he had also been wrong.
“I didn’t know,” she said, filled with the joy of being one with Dillon; of being a part of each other; two shards of the same star. “I didn’t know . . .” Yet at the same time she cried in mourning, knowing that the true soul of Maddy Haas had to die to make this possible. She was a tenant in someone else’s mind, in someone else’s body, and in that moment she vowed she would no longer seek the memories of Deanna Chang. Out of respect for Maddy’s sacrifice she would live this life of Maddy Haas and cherish it.
Let the flesh of Deanna Chang be dust.
Let her memories disappear with her.
It was a fair payment for the life she now claimed as her own. She gently let go of Dillon’s hand, their connection flickering away, but only for now.
“Tell me what you feel?” Dillon asked.
“Peace,” she answered. She felt the earth in balance with the sky, life i
n balance with death. Without her, life had been out of balance for so long, hadn’t it? As she reached her spirit out she could feel it touching hundreds of thousands of souls, leaving a calming sense of peace, an indominable sense of trust, and an absolute conquest of fear. Dillon had told her that Deanna’s gift had been faith, but she never understood it until now. How could she? So much of her life—so much of everyone’s lives—was built on fear. It was the guiding principle of survival. To call what she felt now faith was an understatement. It was beyond that. It was a feeling of absolute acceptance and understanding that had no word to describe it. She looked up to the sky to see the waves of force flowing out from the three Vectors who still stood in the gate.
“Those three creatures,” she asked. “What are they, and what are we suppose to do to stop them?”
* * *
Even before the Vectors took their place in the Thiran Gate, Tory put all of her attention into finding Winston. Winston’s sudden burst of energy somewhere on the top of that cliff had taken Tory completely by surprise—because until that moment she hadn’t even felt his presence there at all. Now as she searched for him, she realized how that could be. “Containment,” Dillon had called it. An ability to cloak oneself from detection, and reserve one’s energy until it was needed. It was a skill she would have liked to have learned, but there would be no time for lessons today.
The growth spurt Winston had incited had quickly tapered, fading even before they left Dillon to find him, and although she could now feel Winston’s uncontained presence, it was faint—dangerously faint. Tory had thought she had seen a shadow drop through the corner of her vision, but she wasn’t certain until she climbed an outcrop of rocks, and saw him wedged deep in a crevasse.
“Winston!” She tried to ease her way down into the crevasse, but lost her footing and slid to the narrowest point, where Winston was wedged. His body was mangled in an unnatural serpentine twist, and through his torn shirt, she could see terrible ridges poking from his back like a stegosaurus spine. His eyes were open, but only barely. A weak moan escaped him—the only hint that he was still conscious.
“Hurts . . .” he murmured.
“We’ve got to get you out of here,” but there was no way she could see to do it.
“My Mama . . . " he said. “Damned if I don’t hear my Mama’s singing, you hear her?” He grinned faintly in his delirium.
“Yes, Winston,” she said, doing everything she could to placate him, “I hear her.”
“That witchy woman up there’s got to be even uglier than you.” Then his eyes opened from slits to half mast, and he looked at her. “Hey, swamp thing—you ain’t ugly no more.” He reached up to touch her face, but didn’t have the strength.
Her affection blossomed into tears. “I haven’t been that way for a long time, Winston.” She thought back to the oozing mess she had once been in the days when the strange light from the supernova had filled the sky. Had that been her? “I’m not ugly, and you’re not shrinking.”
“Wish I was,” he answered lazily. “Wish I was back home . . .”
“So do I, Winston. So do I.” Being outcasts in rural Alabama had been horrible, but simple. Did she ever dream back then that she would have the fate of the world in her hands—back in the days when everyone in that same world was her enemy? When her only thought was surviving through the night without being eaten alive by the sores that covered her rancid, unclean body.
She saw Winston’s eyes fluttering—fading, and she spoke to him to keep his thoughts focused, as she tried to shift her position enough to get a grip on him. “I wish we were back there, you with your Mama, and that silly little brother of yours.”
Winston sighed. “Thaddy.”
“Yes. Thaddy. Screaming bloody murder about some bogey-man coming to steal him through his window.”
“Taily-bone,” Winston mumbled, then rattled in a sing-song voice. " ‘Taily-bone Taily-bone all’s I want’s my Taily-bone.’ I used to tell him Taily-bone was coming for him if he didn’t shut his mouth.” Winston let out a wheezy laugh, then grimaced. “Damn fool Thaddy don’t know enough to run from a train.” He grew solemn for a moment, tears filling his half-shut eyes. “They gonna kill him, Tory. They gonna eat Thaddy from the inside out. Taily-bone comin’ for him after all.” He coughed a splatter of blood onto her shirt.
“We’ll stop them, Winston.”
“I’m gonna sleep first,” he said. “You tell me if I dream.”
And he closed his eyes.
“Winston, no.” She tapped his face, and lost her footing, wedging deeper in the crevice.
And then something happened.
A pulse of heat passed through her body. But it wasn’t heat—not exactly—it was something else. Then again, and again. She looked up to see waves of color expanding across the slit of sky above the crevice. Whatever this was, it touched her deep within, scraping against her, like the flint of a lighter flicking, flicking, flicking, to ignite the flame.
And suddenly she did ignite!
She felt her power explode from her in a breathtaking rush, cleansing, purifying. Not just the island, but the ocean beyond, for miles and miles.
A sterile field, she thought. I’m setting up a sterile field. My part in this has already begun!
And if these strange waves of light had affected her so, it must have affected the others as well; she could feel that it did, and Winston, as weak as he was, even in this unconscious state, was pushing out his greening waves of growth. Ragweed above them grew to maturity and broke open, sending loose a mad flurry of airborne seeds, like a child blowing a dandelion, and those seeds took root in the stone, their roots breaking the stone to bits. Something was moving down below. Something was alive in the darkness of the crevasse.
She heard them before she saw them—the awful clicking and scraping, then they rose into the light. Insects. A horde of insects— millions of them—spawning, reproducing like a plague beneath them. She screamed as they bubbled up from the depth of the chasm like living magma, but as the mass of insects grew closer, Tory realized that this was no plague, but their salvation. As the wellspring of insects reached their feet, she grabbed Winston in her arms. He moaned, but didn’t open his eyes. That’s alright, Winston. Keep dreaming.
She closed her eyes, trying to ignore the sensation of them crawling in her clothes, against her skin. They began to rise, carried by this living eruption, until they were lifted out, the insectoid eruption surging over the edge of the crevasse, running down the hillside to the shore.
“Tory? Winston? Jesus—what the hell is this?”
With Winston still in her arms, she stumbled against Michael, and he caught her.
“What happened to him?”
She opened her mouth to explain, but again her breath was taken away—not by the surges of light but by something entirely different. A feeling within as comforting as those waves of light were disturbing. It was the sense of something falling into place—something that they had gone so long without, they had grown accustomed to its absence.
Tory knew at once.
“Deanna?”
Michael pushed his hair back from his face with a shaky hand. Up above, the clouds shredded, not knowing which way to blow. “Son of a bitch, I think you’re right!”
Further down the shoreline, in the midst of all that was going on, Dillon was holding someone’s hand.
“That’s not Deanna! What is he doing?” Michael said.
With Winston’s weight divided between the two of them, they hurried down to the shore toward them. Winston was still as broken as he had been back in the crevice, which meant Dillon still kept containment. Now, when they needed his power more than ever, he still held it back.
When they arrived, Dillon turned to them from Maddy, his eyes glazed in a sort of puppy affection totally inappropriate for this dire moment.
“Dillon, Deanna’s back,” Tory informed him. “I don’t know how, but she’s here somewhere. S
omewhere close—can’t you feel it?”
Dillon only smiled. “She’s right here,” he told them. “Only you’ve got the name wrong.”
Their minds stumbled, trying to grasp what the hell he was talking about.
“Her name’s not Deanna,” he said. “It’s Maddy. Maddy Haas.”
As they grappled with the incongruous suggestion, Winston flinched in pain, and they lost their grip on him. He fell to the ground.
Maddy, who they could now sense was somehow the very essence of Deanna, glanced down at Winston. “What happened to him?”
“The Vectors happened to him.”
Dillon shook his head. “He went looking for trouble and found it.” Dillon took a step closer. “C’mon, Winston. We don’t have time for this.” His eyes flashed like the shutter of a camera, opening for a fraction of an instant, then closing again, releasing a directed quantum of his peculiar radiance. Winston’s broken spine transformed, the jagged bulges receding, the serpentine curve straightening. He opened his eyes to see them all looking down on him.
“Aw crap—did I get buried?” he asked. “What year is it?”
Tory helped him up. “You weren’t even dead.”
He took in his surroundings and deflated. “Damn—you mean I still gotta do this thing?”
The waves were pulsing out from the top of the cliff with greater intensity now. From this angle, Tory could see all three Vectors standing side by side beneath the huge stone arch.
“The scar is weakening,” said a voice behind them. “Can you feel it? In few minutes it will tear wide.” They turned to see Okoya. Tory still could not accept that he was on their side. She stepped aside, keeping distance between herself and him. There had been too many betrayals, so she watched him with distrustful vigilance, waiting for the next one.
Dillon looked down from the Vectors, his eyes following the path of stairs leading down to the sea. “We’ll make our stand there,” he said. “At the base of the stairs.”
There was a round platform there. A stone zodiac. A clock that measured superstition instead of time. Well, thought Tory, what better place for spirits conceived of the Scorpion Star to fight for humanity than a zodiac circle; that hopelessly human attempt to define an inconceivable cosmos—a task almost as impossible as the one they were charged with.
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