Shuttered Sky

Now that he understood what Dillon was after, he didn’t even have to think know the answer. “I feel her pressed against me, my right arm wrapped around her.”

Tory stepped forward, and folded into his grasp, then she looked at her own right arm, and at Dillon, then smiled. “Have I ever told you, Dillon, that I’ve often had a strange urge to spread my fingers across your chest?”

“Do it.”

She reached forward, her hand connecting with Dillon’s chest at arm’s length.

“Winston?” Dillon asked.

“I . . . I don’t connect directly with Michael,” he said.

Michael laughed. “That’s nothing new.”

Winston took a step closer, examining the tableau in which the three of them now stood, trying to find his place within it. “I think I connect to Dillon . . . Tory . . . and to Deanna.”

“I connect to Dillon, and Tory,” Michael offered.

“I connect to Dillon, Michael, Winston and Lourdes,” Tory said.

“And,” said Dillon, “I connect to everyone.”

Winston approached Dillon’s right hand, but Dillon pulled it back, curling his fingers away from him.

“That’s not for you.”

Winston nodded. He came up behind Dillon, knelt, put a hand around his leg, then with his other hand stretched out toward Tory. Michael shifted to allow them contact, and Winston’s hand landed on her hip.

The moment he completed the circuit, a memory exploded within them, crisp, clear, and timeless.

Thought before words.

Consciousness before flesh.

A memory of eternity.

This was what Dillon had been seeking! If they had felt connection before, now it was perfect. Their heartbeats, their breaths came not in unison, but in succession; a living arpeggio. Their power was magni­fied now, their own unique harmonics resonating in tune so that the walls themselves bowed inward as space visibly curved around them, stretched by the same gravity that had impelled them to one another. Their intensity was surely lethal. If anyone came too close now, they would suffer death a thousand times and yet be unable to die.

They could have stayed like that forever. They would have—for in this joined state only Dillon had the power to dissolve the pattern. It was the bareness of his empty right hand that did it. He was perfectly connected to the others, yet still disconnected from the one whose bond with his own was the strongest. Deanna. Her absence was a wound, and this great linking meant nothing without Deanna, so he broke contact, pushing the others away.

For a moment they looked at him in a hurt anger that quickly faded as their individuality asserted itself once more. Still, they lingered within a few feet of one another, not wanting to let it go. They stood silent—words seemed to have little point in the wake of this com­munion. Finally Michael spoke.

“Wow,” he said. “If we could bottle that, we’d be richer than Tessic.”

* * *

Okoya was facing east, appearing to stare through a berm that obscured the view. As Dillon approached, Okoya’s stalwart resolve infuriated Dillon, but then anything would infuriate Dillon now.

The alignment between him and the others had filled him with contentment, but had left him in a state of spiritual withdrawal once they had separated. He wanted more, feeling less complete now than before they had touched.

As Dillon approached, Okoya turned to him, looking him up and down. “I see you’ve achieved syntaxis,” he said. “Good for you.” The tone in Okoya’s voice was both congratulatory and disgusted at once; a sentiment as ambivalent as his gender.

“Syntaxis—is that what you call it?”

Okoya returned his gaze east. “Your alignment with one another will give you the strength you need to defeat the Vectors. Without that syntaxis you won’t stand a chance.”

Annoyed by the way Okoya looked off, Dillon moved into his line of vision. “It’s time to bring back Deanna.”

That got Okoya’s attention. He pulled his focus back from the unseen vanishing point, and trained his owlish eyes on Dillon, studying him, not responding.

“We’ve got Tory,” Dillon said. “We’ll soon be on our way to tackling Lourdes. Now’s the time. Open a portal. I’ll go and bring her back.”

“Do you assume that’s a simple matter? Opening a portal?”

“Isn’t it?” Dillon had seen Okoya rend a hole in space before. Twice, Dillon had crossed through himself, into the desolate buffer-zone that existed between the walls of worlds. The first time Deanna had died there. The second time Dillon was too busy trying to defeat Okoya to bring Deanna back. And each time the portal to the Unworld closed, Dillon could feel the infinite distance fall between him and Deanna. Once that doorway was gone, she was further from him than the furthest star in the universe. But having Okoya here, as much as he despised and distrusted the creature, put Deanna within tantalizing reach.

“Not now,” Okoya told him dismissively. “Another time.” He tried to return his gaze to the hidden horizon, but Dillon grabbed him tightly by the shoulders.

“I want a reason!” he demanded.

Okoya shook him off. “Your syntaxis is a beacon for the vectors. They will know Tory has been gathered back.”

“All the more reason to bring back Deanna!”

“All the more reason not to! They know you’re not capable of tearing a hole to the Unworld. If they sense Deanna’s presence here, they will know I’m helping you, and will alter their strategy. Bring back Deanna, and we lose the element of surprise.”

But Dillon knew Okoya well enough to know the deeper reason. “Once she’s back, we have no more need of you. And you’ll have no control over us.”

Okoya regarded him with enough hatred to fill an abyss. It was the same deep hatred Dillon sensed in Okoya back on the diving plat­form, when Dillon refused to have any part in his plans. Now Dillon wondered if that was the better decision. Tory was right. There was no proof that anything he said was true—and as long as he held the key to Deanna’s prison, he held Dillon hostage as well. He thought back to his incarceration at the Hesperia plant. He would much rather be held captive in his own body than to have his soul shackled by Okoya.

“Do it now!” Dillon demanded.

Okoya smiled. “You ache for her, don’t you. For both her, and Lourdes, but especially for her.”

Dillon didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to—it was obvious. It was the syntaxis—it had made Deanna’s absence unbearable to him. So close to completion, their spirits yearned for the consummation that could only come when they were all together. The craving was over­powering. He felt he would do anything to sate it. Anything.

“You knew this would happen!” Dillon shouted. Okoya must have known the longing would become maddening. Then Dillon realized that this had been Okoya’s strategy all along. The more unbearable it became, the higher Okoya’s ransom could be.

Dillon would not allow it. He would not allow this wretched router of souls to hold them hostage one moment longer. “Open the portal, or I’ll kill you with my bare hands and find a way to make it stick.”

And to Dillon’s surprise, Okoya said, “Very well.”

Okoya sighed, then closed his eyes, concentrating. Dillon felt adrenaline begin to flood his capillaries, turning his fingertips warm.

It began as it always began; a twinkle in the air like an ember, then a sucking of wind, as atmospheres tried futilely to settle the differential. But there was no change in the light, as there always had been before—because this portal was less of a doorway, and more like a peephole. Okoya had opened a hole only four inches wide, and when Dillon peered through it, it was like looking through a telescope.

Even in diminished tunnel vision, the Unworld was there, ever unchanged. He could see the crumbling palace carved into the granite of the mountain many miles away. The place where Deanna lay—the place Dillon was forced to leave her two years ago, alone and unreach­able. Until now.

The sight of the mountain through the small hole was enough to cloud Dillon’s judgment. He thrust his hand