Shuttered Sky

mean? Did they have to complete the task Tessic set before them? They would not be able to— it was too great. They would truly be swallowed if they tried. It had to be something else they needed to do here.

The gates of Birkenau were swung open before them to reveal the ruins beyond. As he stood there beneath the entry arch, Dillon could feel himself pulling together the molecules, the atoms that once made up those who had died here. They were beginning to resonate with the powerful call of his own soul as if his body were an instrument— Gabriel’s trumpet—the horn of the ram blown long and loud, awak­ening the dead.

He clenched his teeth as he and Winston stepped through the gate, twenty yards in, and no one followed. No one would cross that border into that horrible place now. Dillon closed his eyes, feeling the weight of death encroaching upon his soul, and the ground around them be­gan to change; the broken concrete healing, the crumbling bricks of the massive crematoria pulling themselves back into place. This place of horror would rise again. Its gas chambers and ovens would renew be­fore the dead could be brought back—and the thought of restoring Birkenau made him so sick to his stomach that he leaned over gripping his gut. He strained to rein in his power so that he didn’t lose every­thing that he was in this field of death. He felt he would shatter like a vessel in a vacuum, his soul exploding like a supernova once more, leaving only smithereens spreading out across these fields, giving the ti­niest hint of life to these million souls; their bodies never brought back from dust, their spirits held intact only long enough to be faintly aware of their own existence before fading. This time Dillon and Winston would fade with them, both lost in the blackness of Birkenau. If he let his power go. With his eyes still closed he heard a desperate whisper from Winston, who had doubled over on the ground.

“Syntaxis,” he whispered. “Please, Dillon, please. Take my hand. Join with me.” Anything so he didn’t have to face this bitter place alone.

“No,” Dillon said. Even as he lost control of his body, feeling his bladder release, saturating his pants, running down his leg. Even then he refused to touch Winston. For he knew if he did, there would be no containing themselves. They truly would shatter.

“Contain yourself, Winston,” he said. For to give in to the need this place had for their life energy would surely mean death, and their only defense was to hold their power back, within themselves—some­thing they had never been able to do—but before now their lives had not depended on it.

“Syntaxis will kill us—we have to face this place alone,” he told Winston. If they could contain themselves, they’d survive this place—and if they did, it would prime them to face those black creatures that would soon come spilling through the dying void. Dillon had to be­lieve that.

Tessic was right about one thing—this foray into death would make them stronger, but it wasn’t their strength of resurrection that needed to be tempered and reinforced. It was their fortitude in facing the darkness.

They both held on. They held on until they knew they had the strength to hold on as long as they had to. To hold on forever.

Something deep within Dillon changed, and for the first time, Dillon miraculously felt his field pulling back! Finally, after all these years his powers obeyed his will, drawing into his flesh, instead of radiating outward!

Winston curled into the fetal position, and Dillon stood there, arms by his side, fists clenched. He held within him now the wellspring of his luminous soul, and the sensation was different from anything he had ever felt—as if his senses and emotions were charged to a new high, and he could at last sense the boundary between himself and the world. He still felt the horror of this place, but now he was aware of something bright beyond the darkness, something eternal, that fueled in him a compassion for those who died here as immense as his power. But rather than stir them with the depth of his compassion, he would hold it.

When he opened his eyes he saw that the buildings had ceased their renewal. Nothing had renewed to the point of making a differ­ence in the bleakness of the death camp, but the difference was in him. Something wonderful would be taken from this horrible place, and he marveled that the souls he had intended to bestow the gift of life upon had given him a gift instead. They had given him the ability to contain himself, and a knowledge that there was something beyond the dark places.

It took Winston a few moments longer, then the look of pain and fear dissolved from his face as well. He took a few deep breaths and struggled to stand. He, too, had triumphed. Mind over matter. Will over wonder. He, like Dillon, was finally contained.

“Are we there yet?” Winston asked.

Dillon nodded. “I think we are.”

* * *

The air of this place was getting to Tessic as it had every time he made a pilgrimage here to mourn for his people, and for his family that could have been. Today the hope, the fear, the expectation and the desperation roiled in him, churning up unexplored places within his mind. Had he been Michael, he thought, his storm would rage all over Europe.

Tessic waited outside the gate with growing dread. Then, not five minutes after walking in, Dillon and Winston came back, and they brought no one out with them. The look on Dillon’s and Winston’s faces was unreadable and something felt different about them, too. It took a few moments before Tessic knew what it was.

It’s that my hair isn’t growing, Tessic thought. It’s that my bones are once again subject to the slow decay of age. Dillon and Winston have shut down their own powers. Tessic found this more frightening, more dis­tressing than anything he had seen or felt before.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“We’re leaving now,” Dillon told him.

Tessic found himself stammering as he had several days before when his lion first defied the whip.

“You will go in there,” Tessic demanded. “You will wake them.”

“They’re not asleep,” Dillon reminded him. “They’re dead. They’ve been dead a very long time.”

“Why should that matter to you? To you death means nothing!”

Dillon’s calm stood in harsh relief against Tessic’s growing agita­tion. “I won’t invalidate their suffering. Let them rest.”

Tessic grabbed him by the shirt, practically lifting him off the ground. He’s just a boy, Tessic thought. A scrawny child, stupidly naive. “Do you think they want to rest here in this place?” Tessic screamed. “Is there justice in that?”

And then Winston spoke, his voice as calm as Dillon’s. “The ev­idence of injustice is sometimes as important as justice.”

Tessic let Dillon go, pushing him away. “Rhetorical garbage,” he sneered. “You two will be the criminals if you leave this place un­touched. Hitler’s accomplices.” Tessic wanted to hit them, to hurt them, to smash into their brains the importance of this. The necessity of it. How could they question the validity of his cause—of his calling, and of their own place in this glorious undertaking? How could they do this to him?

“I will lock you in your chair,” Tessic yelled, a froth of spittle building in the corner of his mouth. “I will lock you in your chair and force you.”

“No you won’t,” said Dillon with such unexpected empathy in his voice, it derailed Tessic, sending his thoughts flying for cover from his own anger. He stomped the ground like a child, he threw his hands up. He screamed to the colorless sky. Tessic’s entire life had been for this moment. Building up to it only to have the prize torn from him just inches from his grasp.

And then Dillon reached out and put his hand on Tessic’s shoulder, speaking again in that tone of understanding so deep, Dillon’s voice could have been the voice of God himself. “Listen to me, Elon: it was never your responsibility to bring back the lost. You truly were meant to be a maker of weapons; defensive weapons, that would protect. To­day you’ve made your great work in me, and in Winston. We were never meant to be tools for the undoing of this Holocaust,” Dillon told him. “We’re weapons to defend the world against a coming one.” And then he leaned forward and whispered gently to Tessic, like a kiss upon the ear.

“Their weight is off your shoulders.”

Those were the words that healed him. He had always known of Dillon’s power to do this. To find the key to someone with simple, whispered words. But knowing and experiencing it were two different things. Tessic felt his completion come to him like the final number of a combination turning into place. It was as if the shell of his own