Shuttered Sky

visions. He heard Maddy climb the ladder, and in a moment could hear her breathing behind him.

“I’ve seen a place like this, in my dreams” he said, hands still held out, eyes still closed. “There are three people. They’re important. They’re dangerous. I see them standing side by side on the edge and the pool below them is full of flowers. I can almost smell them.”

Then a voice behind him spoke, but it wasn’t Maddy.

“If you intend to dive, I must warn you there’s no lifeguard on duty.”

Dillon knew the voice instantly, and that moment between hearing the voice, and turning to see his face was a moment as awful as it had been waiting for the flood waters of Lake Mead to sweep him under with the soulless four hundred. If there truly was an embodiment of evil in the universe it stood behind him now. He turned to see the leering, sexless face of Okoya, the manipulator of Gods, thief of souls, and would-be destroyer of worlds.

“Hello, Dillon.”

Dillon gaped, paralyzed by fear.

“You’re speechless!” said Okoya. “I knew you would be.”

This was what Dillon had sensed in this place. He wondered how long Okoya had stalked him before getting this close. Dillon mustered his courage as quickly as he could and studied him from across the platform. Okoya was not the sleek, muscular specimen he had been before. His muscles had atrophied, and his rich Native American skin had taken on a muddy, ashen pallor. His long, luxuriant hair with the raven shine, so feminine the way if flowed over his shoulders was now a straggly snarl. Okoya was a wraith; broken, beaten, but still alive.

“If you’ve come here looking for revenge,” Dillon said, “you’ve made a mistake. I’m much stronger than I was a year ago, when I first defeated you.”

Okoya’s face clenched in a venomous expression of hatred. “Yes. I never got to thank you for that last trick you pulled.”

Dillon recalled that final look of horror and desperation on Okoya’s face, the moment Dillon had unleashed the two beasts on him. The parasite of destruction, and the parasite of fear. “So, did you take care of my pets?” Dillon asked. Those ravenous beasts had leached onto Okoya, as Dillon knew they would—and Okoya, racked with an urge to destroy, and an insurmountable fear brought on by the parasites, had leapt out of this universe, and back into his own, taking the two beasts with him. It had been the perfect plan. But if it was so perfect, why was Okoya back?

“Your ‘pets,’ ' said Okoya, controlling the rancor in his voice, “lingered within me only until they found better quarry.”

“Better than you?” mocked Dillon.

Okoya didn’t answer; instead he turned to see Maddy as she climbed up to the platform.

“Dillon what’s going on? Who is this?”

“My old ‘spiritual advisor,’ ' said Dillon. “Back to devour more souls.” He had told her everything about Okoya, and for the first time since he had known her, Maddy was truly terrified. “I thought you said he was dead.”

“I said he was worse than dead.”

Okoya looked Maddy over, sizing her up. “Well, Dillon, I see you’ve found yourself a bitch. Good for you!”

Apparently Maddy’s terror was short lived. She advanced on him.

“Maddy, no!”

She high-kicked Okoya in the chin, and to Dillon’s surprise he went down. In an instant she had her foot wedged tightly against his Adam’s apple, pressing him down against the concrete platform. Okoya made no effort to fight back. Instead he laughed, and rasped with a larynx half closed. “And she’s a personal assassin as well. You really have done well for yourself!”

In response Maddy turned her ankle closing off more of his wind. “Give me the word Dillon, and I’ll snap his neck right now.”

“Yes,” Okoya said. “Give the word. And once this body dies, it will free me to inhabit another.” Although he couldn’t move his head, his eyes turned up to Maddy. “In fact, she’d make a tasty host for me.”

Dillon almost involuntarily found his foot swinging at full force, connecting with Okoya’s ribs. Okoya groaned, and Maddy turned to Dillon, surprised by his uncharacteristic brutality. But a creature as vile as this one didn’t deserve the smallest measure of sympathy or dignity.

“I’m not your enemy!” Okoya gasped. “I thought you would have realized that by now!”

Dillon regarded him there on the ground. Okoya seemed so weak now. But that didn’t mean anything. He was a master of deception.

“Let him up,” Dillon told Maddy, then watched with caution as Okoya slowly rolled over, pushed himself up on all fours, and labored to his feet.

“I came here to make a deal with you.”

“Not a chance.”

“Then you’ll never know the things I can tell you,” Okoya said. “And that tragic end to this world you keep prophesying will come to pass just as you expected, and you’ll have no idea how to stop it.”

Dillon hesitated. Okoya was a liar through and through, serving no one’s needs but his own. Dillon had to be careful.

“What kind of deal?”

Okoya took a step closer. “I can tell you what’s coming, and what you need to know to stop it. I can even tell you where to find Winston. You won’t find him without me—you’re not even in the right time zone!”

“In return for what?”

Okoya smiled. “Your blessing,” he said. “Permission to live freely in this world under your protection.”

Dillon began to fume, thinking back to the hundreds of souls Okoya had consumed, leaving behind walking, breathing bodies of flesh with nothing living inside. Death that mimicked life—the very negation of life itself. How could he even think of making such a deal with this thing?

“How many souls have you gorged on since you’ve been back?”

“My doings here are insignificant!” he shouted. “Whether it’s one, or a hundred, it means nothing.”

Wrong answer. It meant quite a lot to Dillon. He lunged forward and grabbed Okoya by the shirt with both fists. “If you stay here among humans, I swear I will chain you up in a place where no one will ever find you, and you’ll never be free to walk the Earth.”

“I was told that once before. But mountains crumble, and shackles break.”

Dillon gripped him tighter. “Not the shackles I’ll give you.”

* * *

Maddy watched, knowing better than to get caught in the battle zone between them, wishing she could help Dillon, but knowing she could not. Incapacitating Okoya was one thing, but truly battling him? From what Dillon had told her of Okoya, only another Star Shard could help Dillon now, and that was something she could never be.

A siren drew nearer and Maddy turned to see a police cruiser pull­ing up by the gas pumps where the cashier pointed the officer right toward them, as they stood there in clear view on the high platform. The woman had recognized Maddy after all.

“Dillon, they’ve found us.”

Okoya took that as a cue, and suddenly burst free from Dillon, took two bounds to the end of the platform, and launched himself off in a clumsy gainer to the distant scream of the cashier.

A sickening thud, and they looked over the edge. Okoya lay flat on his back on the concrete pool bottom, skull crushed, blood running down toward the drain now clogged with bright green leaves.

Maddy grabbed Dillon, pulling him toward the ladder. A second squad car pulled into the gas station. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

They climbed down the de-rusted ladder, leaping the last few feet to a patio where the cracks had healed, crushing out the weeds growing between them. But these weren’t the only things that had repaired themselves in the short time Dillon was there. Something was moving in the shell of the pool. It was Okoya, who ran to the shallow end of the pool, and climbed out.

Dillon almost bolted after him, but Maddy stopped him. “No. There’ll be another time.” Together they raced off into the woods before the police got there, and just kept on running.