The creature let him go, for a moment taken aback by his words—which clearly hit far closer to the mark than this creature wanted. Perhaps, thought Radio Joe, my words have earned me respect enough to be spared. Or maybe there was some power in the sands yet.
“Your life force is too old to be worth the effort of devouring,” it told him. “Aged into vinegar. I leave it with you.” And then the thief walked off into the shadows. Radio Joe followed it as far as his open gate, where it had dropped his rifle. He picked the gun up, aimed it at the creature’s back as it left, his fingers aching to pull the trigger . . . but he could not—for he knew that he would be killing whatever was left of the twins as well. Still, he held his aim until it vanished into the night. Then he turned to the flames and cried to his ancestors, knowing that it would take more than a gun, and more than the strength of a hundred generations, to purge the world of this thief of souls.
***
The Bringer was clothed by a woman elsewhere in town, claiming to have been robbed and left that way. Then he set out from the Hualapai nation, first on foot, and then in the bed of a hay truck. By now, he was sure that his new life was an accident—an unexpected side effect of a star-shard’s passage—and he marveled at the power of such a shard, whose very presence could line up enough random events to give the Bringer’s life impetus against three thousand years of death. Order out of chaos! It was a power more awesome than that of the shape-shifting king, so many years ago. It was a power worth harnessing. Perhaps there were no worthy pupils here, but there was plenty to exploit. Plenty of things to use, and a world full of souls to devour.
In the great expanses of Arizona desert, where imprints of life were scarce, sensing the direction of the shards was as easy as listening for cicadas in the dead of night. These shards were separate from one another now, but converging.
Star-shards on Earth once more!
If that were so, he would not make the same mistakes he had made the first time. He would no longer be a Bringer of Wisdom for this dim world, giving his gifts freely to the undeserving. This time he would serve his own voracious appetites.
And as for these new star-shards—he would find them, and he would bend them to his will . . .
. . . and if they would not bend, he would simply destroy them.
PART III - SIMEON SIEGE
5. Three’s A Crowd
Shiprock rose from the desert floor of northwestern New Mexico like a massive sentinel just off of U.S. 666. From a certain angle, the towering sides of the dead volcano appeared to be the wings of a great dragon, folded around something dark and unseen, and more than one local culture saw the end of the world rising one day from its hidden heart. Tory Smythe had come into the shadow of this dark sandstone basolith earlier that day, and now tried to wash away the day in a scalding bath. Yet, no matter how hard she scrubbed, she couldn’t strip away the strange feeling that had plagued her all afternoon.
A feeling that something was wrong in the town of Shiprock.
—wrong with the quiet couple who tended to the little gift shop.
—wrong about the woman who offered her a ride.
—wrong about the cluster of teens pumping gas into their van.
And as the late-afternoon sun cast the shadow of the rock over the town, the feeling got worse, and Tory felt the disquieting sense that her life was about to take a brand-new turn for the worse.
With exhaustion tugging at her limbs, she decided it was just fatigue, and figured that one night’s layover on her journey to Dillon wouldn’t kill her.
The town of Shiprock was no Shangri-la. Hardworking but impoverished people populated the flat-roofed homes that were sun-baked by day, and sandblasted by night, courtesy of the merciless desert winds.
She took a room at the only motel that had a room. Although it wasn’t the cleanest place, she knew every corner would be pretty well sanitized by the time she woke up in the morning. The way her influence had grown, she figured a single night in one place would fry every germ within a hundred yards—not to mention purify the minds of quite a few overnight guests.
As Tory soaked in the tub, she thought back to the woman at the reception desk. She seemed pleasant enough, and yet, there was something vacant about her expression. Something wrong, something wrong, something wrong, something . . .
“I’ll take whatever you have,” Tory had said, spreading out some crumpled bills on the counter. The woman presented her a key on a cracked plastic chain.
“Checkout time is at ten, and there’s a continental breakfast at eight. Aren’t you a bit young to be on your own, miss?”
“Is that a problem?” Tory had dropped an extra ten dollars on the counter, and the woman snatched up the ten-spot like a frog catching a fly. “You get yourself a good night’s sleep, honey.”
Although she was already looking like a parboiled lobster, Tory added more hot water to the tub. It wasn’t just the wrongness now. There was an uncanny feeling of presence. An unsettling sensation, like the powerful magnetic field around a high-voltage transformer. Even in the bath, Tory felt her skin fill with gooseflesh.
She tried to shake off the feeling by watching TV through the open bathroom door. There was a report on the news about dead fish in California, then an update on yesterday’s deadly plane crash. Tory sighed and sunk down until her chin touched the water. More bad news for a beleaguered world—Tory couldn’t stand it. She kicked the door closed, and reached up for a bar of soap . . . but as she did, something caught her eye.
On the counter sat a sorry potted plant. Overwatered and yellow, the little plant was not long for this world. But now as Tory looked at it, she was certain it looked different than it had just five minutes ago. The old, dying leaves had fallen off, and the plant had sprouted new shoots. Tory could swear she could see it growing in tiny spurts.
The exhaustion she felt suddenly seemed unimportant.
“Winston?” she called. “Winston!”
And from the room on the other side of the paper-thin wall came a voice a bit deeper than she remembered, but still familiar.
“Tory?”
***
Winston had always been a champ at guarding his emotions, but he couldn’t contain his excitement at seeing Tory. At last he could talk to someone like himself—someone who understood what it was like to change the world by your very presence, and yet have to hide that light so no one else would know. Someone who understood what a handicap true power could really be. They talked for hours—there was a year of strange tales to tell one another. . . .
“You won’t believe all the things I know,” bragged Winston. “Medicine, law, philosophy, I’m like a walking encyclopedia.”
“You can’t believe how I change people just by being around them,” said Tory. “I’ve turned hardened criminals into model citizens!”
Then, somewhere in their conversation, Winston asked the question that had dominated his thoughts since he had stepped foot into Shiprock. “Did you feel something strange when you got here?” he asked. “Something about the people?”
Tory nodded. “It’s like . . . they look fine on the outside, but on the inside, they’re black-and-white, while the rest of the world is color, you know?”
So it was a sensation they had both felt!— But neither knew what it meant.
At midnight, they ventured out to an all-night coffee shop down the street, sparsely populated by truckers and tired travelers. As they sat at the counter, devouring greasy burgers, a planter just outside the window became clogged with weeds and cactus, and at the table behind them, a grunged-out biker suddenly began cleaning his fingernails with his pocketknife.
“Our powers keep growing,” Winston told Tory. “No telling where it’s going to stop.”
“What if they don’t?” whispered Tory.
Winston, in all his newfound wisdom, had no answer.
Just then, a customer who had been sitting alone in a booth, sauntered to
the counter and slid onto the stool beside them. Their chatter stopped abruptly.
“You can keep on talking, I don’t mind,” said the intruder, who seemed to be about twenty or so. “My name’s Okoya.” Like most people in town, Okoya was Native American, with long, black hair, and dark eyes.
It was those eyes that caught Tory and Winston. They were deeper than a person’s eyes ought to be.
“Do you mind?” said Winston, taking the defensive.
“Can’t I sit here?”
Tory shrugged. “Sit wherever you want.”
The intruder seemed far more comfortable than they were.
“You both seem excited but worried at the same time,” Okoya noted. “I wonder what that could be about?”
Winston shrugged. “What, do you poke your way into everyone else’s business?”
“Only when it’s interesting,” said Okoya, pushing a ketchup-covered, plate of fries to share with them. “The truth is, I’m just passing through town. I was hoping I could travel with some interesting people.”
“I don’t think so,” said Winston uneasily. But Tory touched Winston’s hand, a signal for him to step down from red alert.
“Where are you headed?” asked Tory, beginning to munch on the fries.
Okoya looked out the window, gazing into the dim, dusty street. “Wherever you are.”
Great, thought Winston. The last thing we need is some asshole tagging along on our trip to find Dillon. And yet . . . Winston suddenly felt a pang of loneliness—as if this Okoya person had all at once created a space in their company that needed to be filled. Having a third party to talk to—to take their minds off of things for a short part of the journey might make the trek more interesting. And then again, this Stranger might want nothing more than to rob them, or kill them or both. But considering where they had been, and where they were headed, such a threat seemed minuscule and easily dealt with.
“We’re not leaving until morning,” Winston explained.
Okoya shook his head. “Why not leave now?”
Because we’re exhausted, Winston was about to answer, but suddenly he didn’t feel tired at all.
Tory turned to Winston. “We really don’t have to stay overnight.”
When their meal was done, they left together to gather what little they had from their motel. As they slipped their keys into the night drop, Winston turned to Tory.
“Interesting guy. Do you think he’s Navajo or Hopi?
Okoya stood by the curb, looking west; as if knowing their direction better than they did. Tory stared at Winston as if he were out of his mind.
“What do you mean ‘he’?” said Tory. “Okoya is a girl!”
Winston took a second look. The Indian’s long hair blew with the night wind—but long hair didn’t mean anything these days. Okoya’s voice was a gentle tenor . . . could it have been contralto instead? “Try again!” said Winston. “He’s a guy. You think I can’t tell the difference?”
“Apparently not.” said Tory. And so to prove it, Winston ran up to Okoya, fully prepared to ask the question point-blank: What the hell are you?
But when Okoya turned to him, Winston found that he didn’t have the nerve to ask. “Uh . . . Okoya,” stammered Winston. “That’s a very interesting name.”
Okoya smiled proudly. “It’s Hualapai,” Okoya said. “It means ‘Bringer of Fire.’ "
***
Eight hundred miles to the west, the Newport Beach Festival of Dead Fish had attracted massive media attention, but even as the media crews were arriving at the beach that night, Michael, Lourdes, and Drew were racing toward the marina to Michael’s boat.
It wasn’t all that spectacular a craft compared to the million-dollar yachts that graced the Newport marina, but the price was right.
“I made a suicidal lawyer see the joys of life,” Michael explained to Lourdes. “He was so thrilled that he gave me his boat, turned his house into a bed-and-breakfast, and now he serves poached eggs instead of lawsuits.”
Lourdes was amused, and Drew could only shake his head in utter amazement. “If you can do all that, why work at the Dog Kabob?” Drew asked.
“Because it’s normal,” answered Michael, and normality was something in short supply in Michael’s life.
He powered up the boat and piloted it out of Newport Channel to the open sea. As Michael suspected, a cold ocean current ran down the coastline about a half mile from shore. It was like a river in the middle of the ocean. Waves died as they hit the smooth ribbon of water, only to be reborn on the “river’s” other side—and all the while the mid-ocean stream remained so flat, you could see every detail of the moon reflected in its glassy surface.
“Dillon’s order,” Lourdes commented when she saw it. The ill-fated fish had traveled down this serene thread of water from somewhere up north. They could follow this ocean river straight to Dillon, if it lasted long enough. It was as easy as tracing the ashen trail of a burnt fuse.
“So who’s Dillon?” Drew had asked.
There was the long answer and the short answer, and Michael had no patience for long answers. “He’s the best of us, and the worst of us,” Michael said. Drew, who was generally too cool to admit cluelessness, accepted the answer, and didn’t ask again.
A day later, nightfall found them off the central California coast. They fueled in Morro Bay, and dropped anchor in the shadow of Morro Rock, its massive dome growing out of the ocean like the skull of a giant.
The boat had only one cabin, with a single, triangular bed beneath the bow. It was comfortable for one, livable for two, and impossible for three. Their ears practically touched as they all lay face-up, looking at the low ceiling of the cabin.
“I’ve never slept in a boat,” said Lourdes, to Michael’s right.
“It’s kind of cozy,” said Drew, to his left.
“It’s like a coffin,” said Michael, the only one who seemed bothered by the tight space. To him it felt like trying to sleep in the tip of a pointed shoe.
Outside, a mild wind blew, gently rocking the boat.
Lourdes sighed contentedly, and the sound irritated Michael to no end. There was nothing about this journey that was the least bit blissful, but to listen to Lourdes, you’d think they were all on a pleasure cruise.
“I’m really starting to worry about how unworried you are,” Michael told her.
“What’s to worry about?” she said gently. “You and I can beat anything.” She kissed him on the cheek, and a few minutes later, Michael heard her breathing slip into the relaxed whistle of a deep sleep, leaving Drew and Michael to stare at the beige-carpeted ceiling.
“So,” whispered Drew with a sly smile. “Is she the mystery woman you’ve been saving your moves for?”
“I don’t have any moves,” answered Michael.
“But she is your girlfriend, right?”
Michael had to consider the question. He had never thought of Lourdes as a girlfriend. More like cell mates than soul mates. “I don’t know,” said Michael glancing at her to make sure she was still asleep. “I guess.”
Drew shifted so he could look at Michael. “You must love her a lot.”
“Yeah, sure,” said Michael, wishing he would just shut up about it.
“That’s good,” said Drew. “There are guys I know on the track team that think girls are only good for one thing—and love is only as big as their hard-ons. Which in most cases offers no wind resistance, if you know what I mean.”
Michael laughed in spite of himself. “You have all the answers, don’t you, Drew?” he said. “I wish I had my head together half as well as you do.”
“You must really be screwed up if you think my head’s together.” They laughed a bit longer, and when it got quiet once more, Drew slid out of the cramped space.
“You’ll never sleep while I’m in your face,” said Drew. “I’ll go up and pilot the boat. No sense losing a night of travel time.”
Michael quickly fil
led the space where Drew had been, and was already dozing when he noticed that Drew had not yet left. He was still standing there, watching Michael and Lourdes sleep, like he had nothing better to do.
“Not that it really matters,” Drew said in that offhanded way of his. “But you remember that baseball story I told you? . . . Well, it wasn’t really about baseball.”
Michael yawned. “That’s nice,” he said absently.
Drew lingered a moment longer. Then Michael heard him up on deck as he raised the anchor, and started the engine. In a few moments, Michael was asleep, his back toward Lourdes, and his face to the windowless wall.
***
Tory awoke to an unsteady world, uncertain of where she was or why she was there. It was a large space around her, rectangular and rusty. Light poured in from an open door, and the whole world rattled.
A boxcar. Yes, that was it. They were heading west from New Mexico. It had been past midnight when they had reached the train yard, and found a train bound in their general direction. The white noise of the rolling stock had lulled her to sleep. The boxcar had been filled with the stench of decay and urine when they had hopped on, but now any unpleasant odor was gone, washed away by more than just the wind pouring in through the huge open door.
Curled up beside her, still in the deepest of sleeps was Winston. And a few yards away sat the stranger, Okoya. She was staring at Tory, as if she could have been staring that way throughout the night.
“Sleep well?” Okoya asked.
Tory rolled the kink out of her neck. “Better than I expected.”
“You looked like you needed it.” Okoya grinned, but only slightly. It was unsettling, because Tory couldn’t discern what the grin meant.
“It’s been a long few days.”
“It’s more than just a few days, isn’t it?” Okoya asked. “There’s weight on the two of you far heavier than this journey.”
“Long story.”
Then that grin again. “I imagine it would be.”
Tory looked to her fingers. They were still numb from the cold night. The skin around her cuticles was frayed. She had been picking at them in her sleep again. Her hands, her whole body felt sticky, unpleasant, and unclean; even though she knew the feeling was only in her imagination, it didn’t make her feel any less uncomfortable.
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