Shuttered Sky

“Lourdes?” asked Winston.

Dillon nodded.

“She can’t be that powerful to control so many.”

“She can, if she’s in syntaxis with Michael and Tory.”

Winston shuddered. “Then she’s turned them.”

“If she has, we’ve lost before we’ve started.” But he knew Michael and Tory. They’d die before they were turned. So what was going on here?

“She’s forcing them. That’s why the sky is so rough—that’s the reason for the winds. Michael’s fighting it.”

“And he’s losing.”

Dillon had the pilot turn around before she pulled them from the sky.

They headed back toward the bay, the pilot panicking as he tried to land on the surging waves. And although Dillon had the power to calm and order a strip of ocean for a smooth landing, he did not. He remained contained.

The plane survived the landing, and when they had taxied close enough to shore, Dillon opened the door and hopped out. Dropping chest deep, he waded for shore with Winton close behind. The pilot shouted to them before he closed the door and powered for take off.

“What did he want?” Dillon asked.

“He wanted to know why we didn’t just walk on water.”

On a hill sloping up from the bay, they found a shack ineffectively guarded by two emaciated dogs that barked in perfect counterpoint. The grassy hillside around the shack was strewn with rusted objects. Bent bicycle wheels, washer tubs, a car engine on blocks—so many, in fact, Dillon had to fight his natural urge to glint just the tiniest bit, repairing and restoring them all. The man who lived there was a tinker of sorts, salvaging parts from anything and everything, leaving the rest aesthetically abandoned in the tall grass. Winston bartered his watch for room and board for the night.

With the last rays of the setting sun, the first of Lourdes’s fleet began to enter the bay. Dillon watched them from the tinker’s window with uneasy vigilance. He was exhausted, and as he peered at the boats sailing into the bay, the watchful eye of the full moon gleaming off the water hypnotized him. He fell into a deep, anaesthetic sleep.

35. Gate Of The Rising Moon

The Thiran Gate stood at the head of a cliff, at the apex of the lagoon—a place where the crescent of the island stretched out on either side like a pair of arms engulfing the bay.

The gate was a simple rectangular stone arch, freestanding, thirty feet high, framing the sky. During the day, the gate stood like an empty picture frame, and at night, the gate was lit in dramatic green and red with spotlights strategically placed around the site. It was built thousands of years ago to frame the rising moon—and was originally meant to be just an entrance to a much larger structure—a temple of Apollo—but the temple itself was never built. Legend was that anyone who worked on it died of an unexplained malady; and thus the arch was believed to be cursed. Local tour guides still contended that tourists who stood beneath the arch for lengthy photo opportunities always came down with dysentery in the evening. For those who did dare to stand in the arch, even for a moment, they would never forget the eerie sensation it gave; a sense of disconnection—of muddled thought and disturbed equilibrium. Those who were particularly sensitive would even speak of a vision the place gave them; a knotty, gnarled tree with twisted branches spreading far into the sky, and roots worm­ing deep into the earth.

As the tree image had deep significance to just about every deity that had inhabited the isle over the ages, the place had a long history of religious significance—most recently the Greek Orthodox Church, which had added its own flourish to the sight, if only to dispel any pagan connection. The church had erected a small chapel nearby, and along the thousand steps that led from the gate down to the sea, they had constructed a dozen small shrines, each one dedicated to a different patron saint, of which there was no shortage in Greece. Religious significance had waned in recent years, except around holidays, but the tourist trade kept the offering tin full.

The novice priest who lived behind the chapel substituted for a night watchman, as it was less expensive, and frankly more effective. Local youth were far less likely to vandalize the gate with the prospect of a Man of God casting his eye, and an accusing finger, at them.

On this night, however, the gate’s visitors were of a very different ilk.

At about nine in the evening, the young priest was disturbed by voices coming from the gate. When he went to investigate, he found a woman and a child exploring the structure. Tourists, no doubt. At night the splendor of the gate was to be observed from a distance, but tourists were drawn to its light like moths. He was always amazed by their audacity and tenacity, making pilgrimages to every spot in their Fodor’s guide, regardless of weather or posted hours.

“We’re closed until morning,” he told them. “Please come back at nine.”

The woman and child stared at him with the blank expression of foreigners, so he tried it again in German, and then English. The third apparently worked.

“Please. It’s late. Come back tomorrow.”

“Forgive us our trespasses,” the woman said. Then the boy smiled at him, but it didn’t appear right. It wasn’t the smile of youth, but of wizened, jaded age. Had he not been pondering that grin, he might have heard someone coming up behind him, but as it were, he didn’t hear a thing—only felt the palm cup around his chin from behind, and then the snap of his own neck as a strong arm wrenched his head one hundred and eighty degrees around. His dying thought as he hit the ground was that the woman had something hideously wrong about her face.

They left him lying in the dirt, not caring to bother with his dis­posal. Memo turned to the man who had come out of the darkness to dispatch the priest. “We were worried that you wouldn’t show up,” he said, in Spanish.

“English, please,” the man said. “This host does not speak Span­ish.”

Apparently his new host didn’t speak English very well either, and spoke it with a strong accent that Memo did not recognize, for he too was limited by the memories and experience of his host body.

The woman stepped forward with a slinky gait. “Your new host,” she offered, “is much more attractive than the old man.”

“And yours is still as ugly.”

She whipped her hair around indignantly. Memo felt deep within his host body a pang of human sorrow at the mention of the old man. “Abuelo,” the child mind said. “I have killed Abuelo.” But he handily crushed the emotion. Such feelings were useful in manipulating Lourdes, but had no purpose now.

“I see that you failed,” Memo said to the Temporal Vector.

“Not entirely,” he answered. “I have now—how do you call it—an insurance policy.” He explained how his last few days had unfolded, and Memo listened, weighing what he heard, pondering all the con­tingencies.

“Less than we wanted,” Memo concluded, “but it will do.” Then he looked to the gate. While his human eyes could not see the scar, his inhuman spirit could. The central vein of the scar ran directly through the gate like a jagged bolt of lightning piercing a window. Human eyes couldn’t see it but they had sensed enough of it to build this frame around it. Here is where the Vectors would tear open the hole to their own dying world; a hole so massive that it would allow passage of the entire complement of their species in a matter of seconds. Then, once they were through, they would inhabit the hosts that Lourdes had collected for them.

“You see,” Memo said, looking out over a bay so packed with vessels there was no room to maneuver. “Lourdes did the job.”

Then he turned to the Temporal Vector, noting the muscular phy­sique of his new host-body. “Kill Michael and Tory, but first kill Lourdes,” Memo ordered. “This new host of yours is stronger than the old man, so you will not need our help.”