Shuttered Sky

through the hole, thinking he could just stretch it wider, squeeze himself through. Then it snagged his wrist like a rabbit trap. With a sharp sting he pulled his hand back to reveal that his hand was gone! The portal had sliced shut with the unforgiving finality of a guillotine, taking his hand and three inches of his forearm with it.

He yelped in pain, staring at the raw, pulsing stump in disbelief— but the wound closed in an instant, scar tissue bubbling forth, pinching the veins and arteries, closing in the raw flesh, until it looked like he had lost his hand years ago.

“Pity,” Okoya said relishing his own indifference. “That was a nice watch, too.”

“Y . . . Y . . . You son of a bitch!”

Okoya stood from his fence post and approached Dillon, only so he could push him back like a schoolyard bully. “Do you think tearing a hole in your universe is an easy thing to do? It takes more energy than I can dredge forth from the pathetic greens and animal flesh you’ve forced me to eat.”

“What are you saying?”

“I think you know.”

As much as he wanted to deny it, Dillon did know. It had to do with an appetite. An old, ineffable appetite. So this was the wage for partnering with Okoya—this was the ransom: Deanna, in return for more souls to devour.

“I’ve let myself grow weak,” Okoya said, becoming more coy, more feminine. “In order to gain enough strength to punch a hole large enough, and hold it long enough for you to retrieve Deanna’s corpse, I’ll need a nice healthy feeding. A hundred souls, at least.”

“No. No, I won’t let you!”

“You’re a stupid child.”

Dillon gripped his wrist, feeling his whole being thrown out of balance by the absence of his hand. He tried to grab a fencepost, but found there was nothing to grip with, and he stumbled. Okoya ad­vanced on him again. “Compromise is the great constant—in your universe as well as mine. Deanna is worth a million common human souls. You’re getting the better part of the deal; all I’m asking for is a few thousand.”

“You said a hundred.”

“I’m entitled to a profit margin, am I not? After all I’ve done for you? And then there’s fair restitution for the trouble you’ve caused me.”

“I’ll kill you before I let you take a single soul.”

“Then everyone will be devoured, and you’ll die along with the rest of your kind.”

“You’ll die with us!”

“Perhaps not. After you’re dead and the infection takes root, the vectors can afford to take pity on me, and allow me some sort of existence.”

Dillon looked away. Above everything, Okoya was a master of manipulating his options.

“The choice is yours,” Okoya said. “Souls in exchange for sal­vation . . . or the spirit-death of humanity.”

Although the pain in Dillon’s arm was little more than a memory echoing through his nervous system, the pain of this choice lingered. It had been one thing to flood Black Canyon, and kill the soulless shells of the four hundred Okoya had already devoured—but to give this dangerous demon his blessing to devour more innocents? He couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Okoya reveled in Dillon’s anguish. “Decision decisions. Your moral integrity, or the survival of your species.”

Dillon could only stand there, impotent within his own power.

Okoya sauntered away, as always without any hint of conscience.

“Better have Winston see to your hand. I suspect you’ll be wanting it back.”

Dillon strode back toward the hotel room, wondering which would be worse, telling the others, or bearing the burden himself.

Winston’s sphere of influence was now such that the strip of motel rooms was already being forced off its foundation by undergrowth. Dillon didn’t even have to look down to know that his hand had fully regenerated even before he reached the room. He simply used it to open the door.

As he joined the others again in a tightly bound syntaxis, he silently wished for some godsend—a monkeywrench that could plummet from the heavens into Okoya’s plan—for that could be the only way they could scrape back some self-determination within the events un­folding around them. He now knew they were no match for Okoya—either joined, or separate—they never had been. Dillon could see the pattern of their future now. If they did the job Okoya set before them, and defeated the coming “infection,” then Okoya would be the last of his kind. He would then find a way to dominate the Shards, rising to power over them. In the end he would seize control of this world.

If, as Winston was fond of saying, everything was just a reflection of the larger whole, then Dillon had to concede that scripture could wind up being an accurate mirror; for Okoya was most certainly a Prince of Darkness, and, if he had his way, would be the star of Ar­mageddon.

* * *

As with so many things in the Shards’ lives, the monkeywrench Dillon asked for fell heavy and hard. It happened as they left the motel, and pulled on the deserted highway late that night.

Tory was the first to see it.

Dozing in the back seat, peering out of the window, she thought she saw a ghost of a car veering over the double yellow line just ahead of them. She hesitated a moment, and never had the chance to warn the others.

The car sideswiped them hard, threw their back end into a fishtail, and then the Durango flipped. The earth and sky revolved around one another for a long graceful moment, and then the world exploded.

Drew and Winston, who were in the front seats, were killed once, then again, and again with each flip of the car, but thanks to Dillon’s presence behind them, death never lasted long enough to be anything more than flickers in their persistence of vision.

Tory felt herself an observer, out of body, watching the car flip away from her, over and over again, tumbling through the field, send­ing glass and gears and hubcaps spinning free. Then she realized she was an observer, lying in the mud, thrown from the car. The pain only now registered in her body—but it faded almost as quickly as it had come. The Durango came to rest upright, wheels deep in the gouged mud of the field, a mangled ruin—but when she cleared her eyes and looked again, the damage didn’t seem quite as bad. Still lying in the mud, she forced her head around to see that the car that had struck them had never left the road. Several of its passengers were now run­ning out into the field, no doubt to assess the damage, and help them. A woman approached her, and stopped a few feet away.

“So you’re Tory,” the woman said.

Before Tory could ask how this person came to know her name, the woman raised a rifle. “I hope we can be friends.” Then she fired.

As for Dillon, his experience was different. The initial impact jolted another memory into his mind. A grand piano crashing down through a crystalline roof. It had been annihilated by its own weight when it finally hit the floor, leaving behind splintered wood, with its last atonal gasp. It was a moment from his destructive days almost forgotten, but as the car tumbled to rest, he saw that his life had always been echoes of that moment. Unmanageable, disastrous, absurd.

And he laughed.

Even before he saw Maddy shoot Tory; even before Maddy pulled open the car door, and trained the rifle on Dillon, he laughed—because he knew that he was, once again, that erratic instrument plummeting toward its end.

29. Gabriel’s Trumpet

A truck rattled by at dawn, jarring Drew awake. He opened his eyes to find the light hitting them triggered an explosion in his head, translating down to his gut. His stomach constricted, forc­ing him into a dry heave. When the wave of nausea ebbed, he opened his eyes again, forcing himself to bear the migraine pain. He was in the