Shuttered Sky

care of that thing.”

“Dillon did take care of me,” Okoya said. “He took care of me so well that I had no choice but to come back.”

“You have five seconds to start making sense,” demanded Win­ston.

“It will all make sense soon enough. Trust me.”

“Trust you?” Drew took a step forward, his initial shock trans­muting into rage. “You left four hundred people worse than dead, and left Dillon to clean up after you. He might take the blame for what’s going on in the world, but you’re the one who caused it.”

“Me, responsible for what’s going on in the world?” Okoya mocked. “I’m flattered you think me capable of such large-scale atrocity.

Drew lunged at him, but Winston held him back. “Save it,” he told Drew. “Save your anger until we need it.”

Okoya hopped off the car. Winston could see his body was frail, barely clinging to life.

“Drew has more reason to hate me than you realize, Winston. You could say Drew and I have an intimate history.”

“You have a sick definition of ‘intimate’,” Drew said.

“I tore his soul from him during that unpleasantness at Hoover Dam last year,” Okoya explained.

Winston turned to Drew, shocked by this disclosure, but before he could jump to conclusions, Okoya continued.

“Oh, he got it back, of course. When I tore his soul from him, I didn’t feed on it myself, I tried to serve it to Michael. But instead of devouring it, Michael gave Drew back his soul.”

Winston could feel Drew shudder.

“Rest easy,” Okoya told Drew. “While it was personal for you, it was tactical for me. However, troubling with you now would serve me no purpose.” Then he threw a mischievous gaze in Winston’s direction. “It’s more likely that Winston would chop off your arm, than I would devour your soul.”

Winston had to look away, and it made Okoya laugh. How long had Okoya been shadowing them? How close had he been? “No mat­ter what you choose to do, and not do,” Winston said, “we’ll never see you as anything but evil.”

The smile quickly drained from Okoya’s sallow face. “If so, I am the least of many evils. There are three creatures out there—I’m sure you’ve seen them in your mind’s eye. They prey on souls, but are much more powerful than I ever was. If you send me away, I promise you, this world—this universe—will fall into their hands.”

“Why would you help us?” Winston asked.

Okoya held out his hands, palms up. “I’ve made an enemy of them. I have no choice but to side with you.”

Winston nodded. A matter of necessity. Practicality. For once Okoya’s unfailing self-interest gave them the upper hand, and had turned him into a staunch, if somewhat sinister ally. The question was, did Winston have the stomach to deal with the devil?

“What would you want in return?” Winston asked.

“The right to exist. Nothing more.”

“And devour souls?” asked Drew.

Okoya sighed. “I’ve found I can get by on other forms of subsis­tence in this world, if I must. The modest life-force of animals, plants.” And then a broad smile. “Perhaps I’ll become a vegetarian.”

Drew threw up his hands. “He’s playing us for fools. You know that, don’t you?”

Winston kept his eyes on Okoya. “All I know is that the immune system is failing. Isn’t that right, Okoya.”

Okoya raised his eyebrows. “I’m impressed. Figured that out by yourself, did you?”

“Drew did.”

Okoya threw Drew a smirk. “An insightful soul. But I already knew that.”

While Drew didn’t exactly warm to Okoya, he seemed to step down his defenses a bit. “How do we know you won’t start feeding your old hunger?”

“When I broke through into this world, I had to feed once,” Okoya told them, “just to survive the shock of passage. Since then I’ve abstained. You could say I’ve been testing my new-found virtue.” He grinned, but no matter how mollifying he tried to be, his grins had all the warmth of a crocodile.

Winston dared to step close to him. He looked Okoya over, Win­ston’s nose clogging from the stench. Okoya’s muscles had atrophied, leaving swollen joints, and a belly beginning to distend. Apparently without his feasts of souls, he could not sustain his host body. “You’re starving that body,” Winston told him. “You’ll need to feed it to survive. Our kind of food.”

“I’ve been neglectful in that area,” Okoya admitted.

“What’s the matter,” taunted Drew, “afraid you’ll enjoy our prim­itive tastes?”

“There was no such nourishment where I’ve been. And lately I’ve been too busy tracking Dillon and the two of you to bother serving needs of the flesh.”

“Dillon?!” It was Winston’s magic word. “You know where Dil­lon’s at?”

“That depends,” said Okoya. “Do we have an understanding?”

Winston looked to Drew for support, but Drew wouldn’t meet his eyes. “We’ll see what your help is worth,” Winston answered.

Okoya considered it, and accepted. “Yes, I do know where Dillon is.” He said. “We’ll talk about it on the way to California.”

“He’s in California?”

“No—but there’s something we’ll need before I lead you to Dil­lon.”

We, thought Winston with a wave of discomfort. He talks as if he’s one of us now.

“You really want to do business with this thing?” Drew asked quietly, but not so quietly that Okoya couldn’t hear.

“I can’t see as we have any more choice than he does,” Winston answered.

Okoya took a step closer. “This universe is about to be infected by hundreds of thousands of my kind,” Okoya told them. “But some­times an ounce of the disease can be the cure.”

23. Gravity

Caymanas Park was heralded as the premier horse racing track in the Carribean. Nowhere near as exotic as the flamingo-laden turfs of Florida’s Hialeah, Caymanas was like most everything else in Jamaica: functional, but badly weathered by tropical storms that came one after another.

The track was frequented by locals, made up of native Jamaicans and American retirees, as well as tourists who had had their fill of palm trees and tropical beaches. They would all come to wager on thor­oughbreds whose bodies frothed in the oppressive Jamaican humidity. The racing season at Caymanas never ended—there were races every Wednesday and Saturday, as well as holidays, but without the luxury of night lighting, races always ended at dusk.

By Saturday’s ninth race, the last of the day, the sky was already bruising the colors of sunset. The horses paraded a loop on the home­stretch, studied by a crowd that had gathered on the asphalt apron between the track and the grandstand. The apron filled up as post time closed in, and the horses were led to the gate. For many, part of the thrill of the race was pressing up against the homestretch railing and feeling the thunder of hooves in their own bodies as the horses pow­ered toward the finish line.

Within that crowd was one American girl of Hispanic heritage, whose interest was not in the horses at all. Her interest was in the crowd.

Although no one noticed, by the time the gate crashed open and the race began, everyone standing in the homestretch crowd was breathing in unison, and their hearts followed the same adrenaline-pumped beat. Although everyone shouted different things, exhaling various words of encouragement and dismay at their respective horses,