Scorpion Shards

chamber had been full when Winston had pulled the trigger.

But he could right that mistake, couldn’t he? The first three chambers were full. He could rid himself of the pain—the horrible guilt.

Suddenly the creature standing before him didn’t seem to matter. All that mattered was ending the pain, so he turned the gun around and touched the cold barrel against the bridge of his own nose.

And then, in front of him, he saw the creature flex its fingers and take a deep breath, waiting to be fed.

To be fed.

Dillon gritted his teeth and with all his might kept his finger from pressing that trigger. Destroying himself would be feeding the creature. It suddenly became clear to Dillon that the only way to deny this creature satisfac­ tion was to bear the pain. And so Dillon did. He accepted the responsibility for all the people’s lives he had de­ stroyed. He accepted the blame for the death and for the insanity. He felt the awful weight on his shoulders . . . and that weight, pressing like a thousand stones, almost killed him right there.

But it didn’t.

And instead he was left with just enough strength to turn the gun around again and pull the trigger.

The bullet caught the creature in the shoulder. It wailed in pain and surprise, then grabbed Dillon and hurled him across the room.

Dillon came crashing down on the throne, shattering what was left of its former occupant. Bone fragments splintered into the air and a cloud of dust rose from where Dillon sat.

The creature, bleeding a viscous, dark blood, leapt to­wards him, and Dillon fired again.

The second blast caught the creature in the stomach.

It doubled over in pain.

Dillon rose from the throne and the creature backed away toward an open veranda, pulling itself along, limp­ ing, leaving a path of its slippery blood.

Dillon stalked after it. Then, at the threshold of the bal­cony, it turned its eyes to him once more.

Finish it, the beast said, taunting. Shoot now!

Something inside Dillon told him to look at the pat­terns—to check the series of outcomes that firing that bul­let could create. But he didn’t listen; instead he just lev­eled the gun and let his anger fly uncontrolled with the firing of the final bullet.

The beast moved its head at the last moment, the bullet barely grazed its ear, and when the beast stepped away Dillon realized how fully and completely he had been tricked . . . and how much heavier the weight on his soul had suddenly become.

Behind the creature, on the veranda, Deanna was coiled in a death grip with her serpent of fear, when sud­ denly her arms went limp from the bullet that had grazed the ear of Dillon’s beast. . . and then hit her in the chest.

“No!!!!!!!!” Dillon ran to her.

The serpent squealed, uncoiled and retreated to the corner, quivering, and Dillon caught Deanna’s collapsing body.

The dark spirit laughed a healthy, hearty laugh. It flexed its muscles and absorbed this act of destruction. It fed on Deanna’s dying breaths.

Deanna gasped for breath in Dillon’s arms.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” But his words felt impotent and useless. She tried to speak but couldn’t. He felt the wound in her chest, which was pouring blood, and saw the life slipping from her eyes.

Deanna gazed at him weakly. “I’m not afraid,” she said. “I’m not afraid . . . .”

Dillon could see the pattern of death. He could see her mind imploding—feel death beginning to break down her body. He felt her disappearing down that long tunnel.

And then he realized he could stop it.

He concentrated on her wound. He concentrated all his attention. His talent was not only to see patterns but to change them. Could he close the pattern of a wound the way he could instantly solve a Rubik’s Cube? Could he reverse the patterns of chaos and death the same way he could create them?

He put his hand on Deanna’s wound, which had stopped pumping blood. He felt the wound ever so slowly beginning to close—

—But then he felt the pattern of her mind collapsing, so he focused on that, keeping her mind from giving in to death—

—But then he felt the pattern of her cells begin to slowly decay, so he turned his attention on keeping her flesh from giving over to the silence of death—

—But her wound had begun to bleed again . . . so he turned his attention to that.

A screaming, tear-filled rage overcame Dillon. This was a task he could not accomplish, no matter how pow­erful his talent. He did not yet have the skill to prevent Deanna’s death. In the end all he could do was hold her in his trembling arms and watch her great light disappear into eternity.

Standing just a few feet away, Dillon’s creature fed on Deanna’s death and completed its metamorphosis. Its outer skin broke away to reveal a lattice of veins and fine bones that pulled away from its body spreading wide, casting a shadow of a pair of wings, blacker than black, over Dillon and Deanna.

The creature still bled—wounded, but still alive.

Suffer the weight, Dillon, it said to him again. And every mo­ment you suffer is a moment I grow strong.

Then it turned from him and leapt off the balcony, soaring high on its great black wings and leaving a veil of darkness that trailed behind it, followed by Deanna’s ser­pent, which slithered down the rocky slope.

Dillon leaned over Deanna’s body and cried, but his tears did no good, and when he had no more tears, he lifted her up and brought her to the throne. He brushed off the dust and fragments of ancient bone, and he gently set her down, wrapping her in the moldering royal robe . . . and as he held the robe, he could see its pattern com­ ing back together in his hands. It was a simple pattern, just a weave of fabric. In a few moments what had been tattered, disintegrating cloth became a rich royal-blue robe of silk.

Order out of chaos.

How could he have been so blind as to let his talent be used to destroy when it could have been used to create?

He held the cloth a moment longer until all its frag­ments had woven together in his hand and it was as bright and clean as the day it was made. Then he finished wrap­ping it around Deanna’s limp body and closed her unsee­ing eyes.

He kissed her cold cheek. “I’ll come back for you, Deanna,” he promised. “I’ll bring you back.”

Was it possible? Was life out of death something he could ever manage? Could his talent ever be honed to weave back a tapestry of life the way it rewove a tapestry of silk?

He kissed Deanna again and let her go. She seemed to recline regally in the throne, like a queen in repose.

“I love you,” he whispered.

He turned and stepped out on the veranda once more, the sorrow almost overtaking him so that he had to hold onto the stone to keep from doubling over. Down below, he could see the others trying to climb back to their world. While way in the distance the winged Spirit of Destruc­tion soared into the icy sky, and the serpentine Spirit of Fear followed in its shadow, like thunder after lightning.

***

In the heat of the red desert, they didn’t discuss how they had defeated their foes—instead they focused all their attention on the task at hand. There was a hole fif­teen feet off the ground, and it was quickly healing itself closed. They pushed a rusted car beneath the hole, then piled everything from stones to airplane seats to rusted bi­cycles—anything they could find to get themselves high enough. Then, when their mound was done, Winston laid his hands on a vine, which grew around the mass of loose objects, locking them together in a living mesh.

They only stopped in their task once: the moment they felt one of them die. Then they all took a deep breath and continued stacking, not daring to talk about it.

They had already begun to climb toward the hole when they saw Dillon coming toward them.