Thief Of Souls

asking Michael to change his son’s nature. The man who must have been Drew’s father.

Drew shook his head as he thought about it, and laughed. “Now my parents probably think that I ran off to join the queer circus.”

“Maybe you should go home.”

“No,” said Drew quickly. “How could I leave after seeing what you are—what your friends are? How could I ever go back?”

Michael shuddered to think of Drew as one of the Happy Campers.

“What if I kept a journal for you?” suggested Drew. “A record of all the things that happen from here on in. Anything . . . so I can be a part of this.”

Michael forced himself to look in Drew’s eyes. It wasn’t Drew’s usual coolness there—instead there was a whole squadron of emotions, and his feelings for Mi­chael were still a potent part of the mix.

I can live with this, Michael told himself. If I can part the skies, I can deal with Drew being in love with me, can’t I?

Still Michael felt anxious to get away. He collected Drew’s plate and turned to go—but before he did, he had to ask Drew the question. The one question he wanted to ask from the moment Dillon had brought him hack.

“Drew . . . if you had the choice—would you want to be straight?”

Drew threw Michael an icy look, as if trying to read where the question was coming from. “Yeah, and if I had the choice I’d piss Pepsi, too, but that’s not gonna happen, is it?” Drew held his annoyed gaze a moment more, then just let it go. “Some things you don’t get to choose.” And that was all Drew said about it.

Michael understood Drew’s answer, but he doubted Drew understood why Michael had asked. So Michael didn’t push it. Instead he left Drew alone, with a single thought to consider.

“Actually,” said Michael, “Dillon could make you piss Pepsi.”

***

Dillon had thought the arrival of the others would give him some peace of mind—he had hoped that somehow the suffocating sense of doom would disap­pear—but the pall had not lifted, and now Dillon won­dered if his fixing frenzy was just an exercise in futility.

If Deanna were here, she’d know what to do, and have the strength to do it. If Deanna were here, we might not even be in this mess.

He left dinner early, unable to bear her conspicuous absence. Then he wandered the castle, trying to map it out in his mind, so he wouldn’t feel so consumed by its vastness.

Deanna was lost in a place like this.

And that single thought made it impossible for him to explore, for now he could hear her voice in the eerie echos of La Casa Grande. He could hear her screaming, as she had screamed in the days when her spirit of fear suffocated her. Then he would hear the gentleness of her patient, fearless voice, the way she had been at the end.

As he climbed the stairs toward the kingly suite they had claimed for him, the followers he passed lowered their eyes and stepped aside, as if unworthy of being in his company. At the entrance to his suite, sat an armed guard, who proudly protected Dillon’s door, and beside him sat Carol Jessup. She must have taken the role of his personal maidservant. They launched to their feet the moment they saw him, offering him the most courteous of greetings.

Am I doing any of this right, Deanna? he asked in his thoughts, as if she were somehow with him, instead of a whole universe away. Am I anywhere close to get­ting things under control?

The answer came in the form of two dozen cardboard boxes, piled everywhere as he entered his room.

“We weren’t sure of your size,” Carol apologized, “or the style you wanted . . .”

Dillon need only glimpse the face of a single colorful box to know what was inside every one of them.

Rollerblades.

Pair after pair of Rollerblades.

“You did ask for them, didn’t you?”

Dillon was suddenly glad he hadn’t eaten much, because he could feel dinner on its way back up.

12. The Tools Of A Thief

The Bringer could not raise the dead. Nor could he banish disease, numb pain, or whip winds into weapons of destruction. But he was a formidable spirit with a crushing power of will. The skills he did not possess would be his to wield soon enough, though—and the thought of it brought an irrepressible grin to his face as he moved through the towering halls of the castle.

Those he passed smiled a return greeting, obviously assuming that his was the joyous grin of surrender—the same surrender that painted all of their faces, now that they were in service to the Shards.

Okoya strolled at a calm, deliberate pace through the lavish corridors, running his hands across the tapestries and sculptures—noting the eons of art and civilization born during his three-thousand-year hiatus. But his thoughts were on weightier subjects.

Five Shards!

And each one greater than the Olympian king who had ordered him chained to the mountain! A quintet of diamonds too bright to behold . . .

. . . And too powerful to devour.

These were souls too large to feast upon—and al­though his hunger was great, he hid it from the five. These were spirits to master and control—not spirits to dine on. These Shards could be useful tools for the harvesting of a world . . .

But as with any tool, there were dangers. Spirits of such power needed to be broken and harnessed like horses before the chariot—and if a horse could not be broken, it had to be destroyed, lest it turn on its master.

But so far, things were going exceptionally well. The Bringer had already begun to watch and listen—seek­ ing out weaknesses into which he could insert his will, like a hand into a puppet. Deep enough so that he could either play them or crush them—whichever ultimately suited his needs.

The Bringer stepped out into a calm night, and there, on the steps of the castle’s front gate, sat a man in the uniform of law enforcement. His head was cupped in his hands like a small child. Curious, the Bringer sat beside him.

“My name is Okoya,” said the Bringer. “Spiritual advisor to the stars.”

The man looked straight ahead at the fountain, and poke as if carrying on a conversation with himself. “What am I supposed to tell them? How can I tell them anything?”

“Tell who?”

“I’m with the county sheriff,” he said. “They got word of something suspicious at the castle, so they sent me here to check it out. Then, when I got here, they brought me to that redheaded kid.”

“And he ‘fixed’ something?”

“He just said something,” the deputy told Okoya. “I don’t even remember what he said, but suddenly . . . suddenly . . .”

“Suddenly all that was wrong with your life fell into place.”

The deputy finally looked at Okoya. “Yes! Yes, that’s right!” Tears welled up in his eyes. “How can I turn him in?”

“You won’t,” the Bringer instructed. “You’ll return to your office, report that nothing is wrong, then you’ll quietly collect your family and join us.”

When it was put to him so plainly, like a clear-cut set of orders, it wasn’t a hard decision to make.

“Yes, that is what I’ll do,” he said—as if he had any choice in the matter. The fact was, from the moment Dillon received him, the pattern of this man’s destiny was set. It was a pattern even the Bringer could read.

The officer stood to return to his squad car, but Okoya grabbed him by the arm.