Thief Of Souls

She wanted to let these thoughts slap her—perhaps enough to slap her off the alabaster pedestal she had so willingly climbed on—but Okoya approached with a palmful of pink lotion.

“You’ve earned this,” Okoya told her, “for helping me find the weak link.”

The ice pick dropped from her fingers, she leaned forward, and Okoya stroked the smooth fluid across her cheeks like war paint. The scent hit her, and instantly any thoughts of what was right, what was wrong, what was clean and what was foul, were snuffed in the sweet flood of a million rose petals.

***

Michael fought off the dewpoint, determined not to telegraph his emotions to the world. His emptiness had returned in full force, growing unbearable by sunset. A hunger, deep in the channels of his ears. Is it possible, Michael began to wonder, to be nourished through one’s senses, rather than through one’s stomach ?

Michael took sustenance that evening from the campsites of the followers. It was the first time in days he had eaten real food, but even so, it was unsatisfy­ing—vapid, and flavorless in some fundamental way. It was as Michael wandered from campsite to campsite that Drew came to him with a request.

“See, there’s this girl,” Drew said. Michael imme­diately knew where this was headed, and he had no desire to go there.

“Drew, I’m tired. Talk to me tomorrow.”

“Can’t wait. No, no—can’t wait,” he said, his words coming out in anxious staccato beats.

Michael picked up the pace, and Drew followed, pushing people out of his way to keep up.

“The thing is, she doesn’t like me,” said Drew. This was no surprise to Michael. Drew had not quite mas­ tered the finer points of conversing with girls he was attracted to. In fact, many of those ill-fated conversa­tions ended abruptly with Drew executing one of sev­eral bodily functions, none of which were too pretty.

Lately Michael’s ears had been so occupied with his Walkman, and the adulation of his followers, he really hadn’t cared to hear about Drew’s misadventures. But now, with his mind clearer, Michael found it all terribly uncomfortable—even more uncomfortable than Drew’s former crush on him.

“All I want you to do,” pleaded Drew, “is make her fall in love with me.”

Michael tried to shut this down now. “No,” he said. “Period. The end.” Michael wove faster through the campsites, thinking he could board one of the buses and lock himself in the lavatory—anything for some time alone.

But Drew continued to pester him like a mosquito. It wasn’t like him; Drew Camden had never been a pest or a nuisance. It made Michael even more determined not to give in.

“Come on, Michael, you’d do it for any of the other followers—why won’t you do it for me?”

“Because,” said Michael, “you’re my friend—you’re not one of them.”

And then Drew pulled out his trump card.

“You made me like this! Shit, the least you could do is help me out here!”

Finally Michael stopped and turned to him. The light of several campsites played on Drew’s face, creating strange, unfamiliar shadows—but it wasn’t just the light. It was the way Drew looked—the way he acted. His character had dropped several octaves, and it oc­curred to Michael that he did not know this reinvented person before him. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to.

“What if I give you my running suit? The one you like,” Drew offered, probably not even considering the fact that it was back home, hundreds of miles and one lifetime away. “Will you do it then? Huh?”

Reconstituted beef. Perhaps it was just his hunger, but that was the thought that came to Michael’s mind. It was at some fast-food dive. They called it a steak sandwich—and although it looked like steak, and smelled like steak, the thing was mushy and flavorless. The small print said it was “reconstituted beef”; ap­parently ground up and, through some mystical pro­cess, pressed back into little steaklike rectangles, losing everything worth keeping in the process. Michael couldn’t help but feel that Drew was now a living loaf of reconstituted beef.

The thought was too much for him, and suddenly Michael wanted to do anything to get the new and im­ proved Drew out of sight and out of mind. “Fine, I’ll do it. Where is she?”

Drew grinned like a kid in a candy shop. “This way,” and he trotted off, leading Michael toward his current love interest.

Drew barged into the girl’s tent and pulled her out, against her protests. “Angela, I’d like you to meet Mi­ chael Lipranski. See, Angela, didn’t I promise you a personal introduction?”

Angela, at the sight of Michael, began to wring her fingers self-consciously. “Hi,” said Angela timidly. “I volunteered to be one of your personal helpers, but there was a waiting list.”

Drew hovered a few feet away, shifting his weight from one leg to another. “Come on, Michael, do it. Do it quick!”

It would be easy enough; all he had to do was plant the feeling so intensely in her the moment she looked at Drew, that it would shade everything she ever felt. She would love Drew unconditionally for the rest of her life, or until Michael decided to change it. But as he looked into this girl’s eyes, Michael had a sudden sense of foreboding —a dark flashback to something he had once seen, once felt, but couldn’t place. He had seen those eyes before, but on a different girl. Suddenly a chill wind blew a rain of sand across them, stinging their faces, as Michael realized where he had seen that look before.

It was the same expression, the same blank eyes he had seen on a girl a year ago, when he had witnessed his parasite seize the girl with his violating blue flames and devour her. Maybe no one else could see it—but Michael knew exactly what was wrong.

This girl had no soul.

“Aw, come on, Michael,” said Drew. “What’s taking so long?”

Michael grabbed Drew and pulled him away.

“Hey! Don’t touch me,” whined Drew, trying to wriggle free from Michael’s grip.

“This isn’t the girl you want, Drew. Trust me, it’s not.”

“Huh?”

Michael turned from Drew, and randomly began grabbing followers around him, looking for signs of life inside—and in half the people he encountered, he found the same soulless void.

How was this possible? At first, he thought it might be Dillon—that his spirit of destruction had returned, and had now developed a taste for something more than devastation. . . . But no. That was a spirit impossible to miss. If that thing were back in this world, bells and whistles would be ringing in all the Shards’ ears. It was not Dillon . . . but if not him, then who?

Michael had a feeling he knew.

“You promised, Michael!” complained Drew, stomp­ing up a dust cloud. “You said you’d do it! You lied!”

“Drew—there’s something I want you to do.”

Drew looked at him warily. “What?”

“Tonight—I want you to stay up. I want you to keep an eye on Okoya. Follow him and tell me everything he does.”

“And then you’ll fix me up with a girl?”

“Whatever you want, Drew. I promise. But first, Okoya.”

Drew thought about it and accepted. “Deal. Hell, I don’t sleep much anyway.”

***

In a few brief hours, the miracle of the waters had become the number one attraction in a town known for its spectacle. There was no keeping the crowds out of the Mirage lobby, and as for management, their hands were filled with other problems. The casino, which con­sistently raked in a healthy percent of all cash wagered, suddenly wasn’t the cash cow it used to be. In fact, the house was losing.

The lounge atop the Stratosphere tower offered Ra­dio Joe a bird’s-eye view of the Strip, and the mobs pressing in around the Mirage a mile away.

“My wife says she wants to have his baby,” slurred the slovenly man sitting on the barstool next to Joe. “I told her if the kid really is God, he sure as hell wouldn’t want to screw her. That tore it. She ran off and joined them out there in the desert, saying Hail Marys, or Hare Krishnas, or whatever the hell they do.” He downed his scotch, and demanded another.

Radio Joe kept his cap pulled down low on his face so as not to be recognized, for his face was still on every