Shuttered Sky

to be thousands? How would she move them to the Aegean sea? When connected to Tory and Michael she could pull an army of three hundred thousand and more, but she could not make them fly. Ultimately, they were all bound by the limitations of terres­trial mechanics.

“If we use sailboats. . .” Carlos suggested.

“I can’t direct the wind,” she replied.

And in fact, Cerilla’s hair was a wispy mess from the capricious winds blowing up from the Ionian Sea. “He can direct the wind,” Cerilla said pointing down to the aft cabins of the fishing boat. There was so much animosity in her voice, it could have doused the sun.

“Michael won’t do it.”

“You’ll make him do it,” insisted Carlos.

“I can’t make him do anything,” she had to admit to them, and to herself. Then she added, “And if you kill him for not obeying you, you’ll cut the number of your army in half.”

The two older Vectors turned away from her, casting their frus­trations over the side.

Memo approached her. “We will get them there if they have to swim.” Unlike the others, there was no vitriol in his words. It was simply a statement of intention, but intention or not, no human being could cross the five hundred miles from Italy to the Island of Thira. Such an attempt would only make her death count multiply again. But she didn’t tell him this.

“I’ll work on it,” she said. She left the boat and paced the dock, returning all her focus to the fractionated control it took to move her masses into fueling for the next leg of the trip across the strait to Corfu and the western shores of Greece.

The gas was already running out, as she knew it would, but those under her control had their wills so completely supplanted by her own, that they continued to pump from empty tanks in a bizarre collective compulsive consciousness. It was getting dark when she returned to her fishing boat. The Vectors were nowhere to be found and that was just as well with her.

Every inch of the boat, from top to bottom, smelled of sea salt, diesel and fish, but the rancid odor that used to permeate the corners had vanished the moment Tory had arrived. This would all be sparkling new if Dillon were here, she thought. It was the first time she could ever remember thinking of Dillon in anything but the most negative terms.

Then, as she stepped onto the boat, she heard Carlos scream. It was a horrid sound that went on and on, then ended with sudden silence. Lourdes went down below into the narrow, dimly lit hallway of the worn fishing boat.

Carlos wasn’t in his cabin, only Memo was there sitting by himself. Blood had splattered on the walls, and lay in pools on the floor. When he saw her, he ran into her arms and cried.

“Abuelo is dead,” he cried. “Abuelo is dead.”

Lourdes caught sight of Cerilla, who peered at her ferally from a dark corner.

“Abuelo is dead,” wailed the boy-thing. She pulled him away to see that his hands had left red prints on her blouse. The boy’s palms were covered in the old man’s blood. As for Carlos, his body was nowhere to be seen, but there was a small open porthole. Lourdes shivered. “You killed him! You killed the host.”

“He was weak,” Memo said, wiping away the tears, as the Leading Vector forced control over the host- child’s emotions. “Abuelo was too weak to hold the Temporal Vector.”

“So you killed the old man, and found a better host?”

But the Vector refused to answer; instead, he shielded again behind the child’s distress, allowing the host- body to bawl. It was an effective tactic, because Lourdes comforted him in spite of herself. This is not a child, she tried to convince herself. This is a monster that murders without hesitation or remorse. But then, how did that differ from herself now?

“Where is he?” Lourdes asked. “The . . . Temporal Vector?”

“He seeks his new host on the shore,” Cerilla answered. “He’ll return once he’s found the best one.”

“Tell him not to hurry back.”

She left them to their blood bath, lingered at her own cabin door momentarily, then passed it by and went into Michael’s—who was kept on the opposite end of the boat from Tory. He knelt in the center of the room, but then, all he could do was kneel; his hands were handcuffed above his head to a hook in the ceiling. The ceiling was too low for him to stand, but the chain of the cuffs did not allow him the comfort of sitting, so he was forced to find this compromising position in between. The Vectors had done this to him.

No, thought Lourdes, I was the one who bound him at their request.

“Where are we now?” he asked weakly.

“Southern Italy,” she told him. “A small town called Gallipoli.”

“Gallipoli,” said Michael. “There was a massacre there in World War I. The British kept sending waves of soldiers into enemy gunfire. Another low point in human history.”

“Now you’re starting to sound like Winston,” Lourdes said. “A walking encyclopedia. Or should I say kneeling.”

“Nope,” said Michael. “Can’t accuse me of knowing anything. I just saw it in a movie once.” And then he hesitated. “So is history repeating itself today?”

She didn’t answer him. She didn’t know. “I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry things turned out this way.”

“But not for anything you’ve done?”

Lourdes shook her head. “I swore to myself I’d never live to regret the things I do.”

Michael offered her an ironic smile. “You probably won’t.” Then his expression became serious. “You never answered my question.”

Lourdes turned from his gaze. “Which one?” although she knew precisely which one he meant.

“Why do you accept their bleak view of the universe? That every­thing’s pointless; that everything’s hostile?”

“What happened, Michael?” she snapped. “Did you die and find God? You were never one to believe in anything.”

“I believe in keeping my options open.” Then with uncharacter­istic patience, he waited to hear what Lourdes had to say. For a long bloated moment Lourdes said nothing. The sense of the boat rocking on the water, and the sound of it shouldering against the dock, filled the gap between them until Lourdes could no longer stand the silence.

“I’ve seen the Vectors pose as angels,” she said. “I’ve felt that glow of glory they put off before swooping in for the kill, dozens of times.” Lourdes felt her cheeks redden from anger as she thought about it. “I’ve seen them take people into their arms, making them believe they were raptured to heaven, and then suck their souls right out of the marrow of their bones.”

She realized she did hate these creatures for being what they were, but she hated human beings more, for believing these monsters were something divine. Lourdes thought to her childhood. All those years under her parents’ wing—church every Sunday, Midnight Mass at Christmas and Easter. She had once felt the residue of holiness. She had believed in miracles back then, and knew in her heart that the blood and body of Christ fed her when she took communion. But now these shadowy creatures made her believe it was a lie.

Then Michael said: “If everything they do is built on lies . . . how do you know they’re not lying to you now?”

The very suggestion took the wind out of her. It unlocked a door that had always been right in front of her, but hiding in her blind spot. “What?”

“They’ve told you that faith is a sham—that it’s a tool they’ve invented with their visitations for thousands of years. But how do you know it’s not just another lure—something to lure you into their serv­ice?”

Lourdes found she couldn’t answer. Could it be true? They were false light. Deception was their art by their own admission.

“And even if what they say is true,” Michael went on. “Even if every ‘divine intervention’ in the history of the human race has been them trying to consume our souls . . . How do you know that they are all there is? How do you know there’s not something out there greater than them? Something beyond them