Thief of Souls (32 page)

“What does it
feel
like? In your gut—in your head. How does it feel
inside
?”

“Fear,” shouted Michael. “Terror . . .”

“Then be frightened, Michael! Be more frightened than you've ever been in your life. And be it
now
!”

Michael turned to see the dust flowing into the updraft, and finally it clicked.

He grabbed Tory, clutching her with white knuckles, then he screamed a blood-curdling shriek of absolute fear—and instantly the whistling of the updraft raised in pitch as its strength increased.

The floor gave way beneath them as Michael held Tory,
screaming his terror into her ear, and she screamed back into his. Neither of them had the gift of flight—but if Michael's updraft could make them fly as well as that boat on Pacific Coast Highway, perhaps that would be enough. They clung to that thought as they leapt from the dying dam into the wind.

A
MILE DOWNSTREAM
, D
ILLON
and four hundred of his followers watched it happen. Chunk after chunk of concrete exploded away, until the entire upper face slid like a sand castle, into the powerhouse below. The powerhouse exploded. An instant later, the lower shell of the dam tumbled, leaving nothing but a cloud of dust shooting heavenward. Another explosion from the buried powerhouse, and then silence.

Behind Dillon, the chosen ones grew silent.

Through the dust, they saw what appeared to be a dark, V-shaped wall of still water—but the air was not clear enough to be sure just yet.

But Dillon was sure.

His power had grown beyond all limits, because holding back the waters of Lake Mead took so little effort, it felt like a mere reflex.

A power like that did not belong here.

Behind him, the four hundred squinted to see through the dust cloud, none of them knowing that they were already dead. Dillon had separated his followers precisely. These were the ones who had been visited by Okoya. These were the soulless. The shells of life, with nothing living inside.

They did not belong here, either.

The Shiprock Slayer had begun the task of removing the soulless—Dillon realized that now. And he also realized that he was the only one who could complete it. Now he focused all his effort on the wall of water. He knew what he had to do, but
it wasn't easy to fight the order his very presence brought. He hurled his thoughts ahead of him, turning them chaotic and disjointed. He battered the water-wall with his mind, struggling to give entropy a foothold once more, so that this lake would fall out of his control, and spill free.

At last he felt his barrier fall, like the tearing of a membrane. Suddenly, the ground rumbled once more, and through the dust cloud burst a white, churning wave five hundred feet high, surging down the canyon toward them.

As the water approached, Dillon had to remind himself that he was not killing the people around him. Okoya had already done that. But for the thousands that would die downstream, Dillon had to accept responsibility.

For so long Dillon had struggled to find redemption—fixing all those who were broken so that he might forgive himself for the destruction he had once caused. But it had never been for them. He had done it for himself; to finally feel worthy. It was a selfish need, masquerading as selflessness.

No more.

For there was only one way to save the world now, and it meant that Dillon Cole had to die in disgrace and never be redeemed.

Let me be despised by the world,
he silently prayed.
Let my name be spoken with nothing but hatred. Let this act be so horrible, that it shatters the pattern of destruction I've helped to create, and sets the world back on its proper track. A world where not a single soul worships me.

The wedge of churning foam pounded forward, a quarter mile and closing. Behind Dillon, the dead-alive followers waited for Dillon to stop it.

But instead, Dillon raised up his hands to receive it.

L
OURDES DID NOT SEE
it, but she knew something had gone wrong. She knew because of the strange pillar of dust shooting toward the sky like a mushroom cloud. She knew because of the roar of rushing water, and she knew because of Okoya's scream of fury from somewhere within the circle of buses, a hundred yards from where she and Winston lay doubled-over in the sand.

Apparently Okoya had not gotten what he wanted, which meant Dillon had chosen to destroy himself, rather than the world. He had chosen not to be Okoya's ruling-puppet.

Lourdes sat up. The revulsion she felt as she had stumbled away from camp had resolved into a pain in her gut, and a sense of unreconciled need—a craving for what only Okoya could supply.

Winston sat in the dust, his hands over his eyes, weeping. All his supposed wisdom, and he couldn't see this coming. Oh, he had grown, all right. He had grown arrogant and self-absorbed—they all had.

“How could this have happened?” cried Winston. “How could we have done this to ourselves?”

Lourdes tried to find some sympathy. She tried to find a feeling to comfort both of them, but all she found inside was the angry pit of her stomach; and so she left Winston, not caring about his tears. Fighting her hunger, she strode back toward the circle of buses.

The place was deserted. All had gone to follow Dillon. Everyone, that is, except Okoya. Okoya was stretched out against the face of a bus—his arms and legs tied in four different directions with heavy nylon tent cords. He'd pulled and tugged at his bonds, but the job had been well done—he was not getting free. It almost amused Lourdes to see this master of minds rendered impotent by mere nylon ropes.

Lourdes approached, keeping her stride steady, counting each step as she drew closer until she stopped, only a few feet away.

“Always a pleasure to see you, Lourdes,” Okoya said. “Release me, and—”

“And what?” Lourdes took a step closer. “You'll crown me Queen for a Day?”

Okoya pulled against his bonds one more time. “Everything that was Dillon's will now be yours.”

“I don't need you for that,” said Lourdes. “I know what I'm capable of. If I want the world on a silver platter, I'll put it there myself.”

“Then why are you here?”

“This is why.” Lourdes squeezed her hands into tight fists, and pushed forth a single nerve impulse. Instantly Okoya began to gasp for air as his heart seized in his chest.

“How does it feel to have our powers turned against you?”

“If you kill this body,” gasped Okoya, “it will free me to jump into another. There are hundreds of people on that road; I could be any one of them, and you'll never know when I'm coming.”

Lourdes squeezed her fists tighter, but knew Okoya was telling the truth. She released the hold on his heart, and the color returned to Okoya's face as he pulled in deep, wheezing breaths.

“You don't know how to kill me,” Okoya sneered, “and it's a waste of your time to try.”

Maybe so, but as long as he was in that body, he could feel every measure of its pain. Lourdes brought her fist back, and smashed it heavily across his jaw, and then again, and then again, making sure every punishing blow had the full force of her anger. But no matter how many times she struck him, it
made her feel no better. In the end, Okoya's face was bruised and swollen, but his evil spirit would not break.

“I gave you what you wanted,” he said through swollen lips. “You should be grateful.”

She turned and strode off. She did not go back to Winston, nor did she go to see the flood. Instead she headed off in the opposite direction. Okoya had put a hunger in her that could never be satisfied again. She hated Okoya for putting it there, she hated Dillon for having brought them here in the first place, and she hated Michael, for the love he had killed in her.

Her knees felt shaky, her legs weak, but her fury gave her strength to walk away from all of this and not look back.

A
BODY-BRUISING SLAP OF COLD, AND A TUMBLING LOSS OF
control—Dillon had finally given his will over to the will of the water. He felt himself whipped against boulders in the churning currents and his senses began to leave him. Then, in the midst of the maelstrom, Dillon felt a calm numbness begin to surround him like a bubble of peace within the flood, and all Dillon could hear was the heavy beat of his own heart.
So this is death,
Dillon thought, as he began to feel himself slip out of consciousness.

M
EANWHILE, ON THE RIDGE
above, the remaining followers, spectators, and a half dozen airborne news crews watched as Dillon and “the chosen ones” were taken under by the torrent. At first, the followers on the ridge didn't know what to make of it, but as the water continued to pass, wails of anguish began to fill the air as they realized that this was not the glorious event they had been promised; and their minds began the long, arduous task of reconciling what they had just witnessed.

Somewhere in that reconciliation, they would come to accept that Dillon Cole had tricked them all; that he was just another false prophet, and in the end brought nothing but death and destruction. For all those who stood on that rim, for all those who saw Black Canyon fill with white water, there would be many sleepless nights, but in the end, the dead would be buried, and the living would return to the lives they
had led before being touched by Dillon . . . and in so doing, set the world back on its balance.

This is what Dillon had wanted—and it all would have come to pass, had Dillon's power not been stronger than even he could comprehend.

The water surged down the canyon at 200 miles per hour. By the time the canyon widened, the wave was crashing toward the hotels at Laughlin—at 175 miles per hour. In Laughlin, those unlucky enough to be stranded there caught sight of the white foam of the water-wall in the distance as it crashed toward them—at 150 miles per hour. Several new helicopters, barely able to keep up with the surge at first, found themselves easily matching the pace of the flood's leading edge, clocking their speed at 100 miles per hour, just ten miles out of Laughlin.

There was a figure caught in the telephoto crossbars of one cameraman's lens. He was riding the crest of the flood's leading edge, lying on his back. By all rights, he should have been churned down into the water's killing depths—yet somehow, was not. Instead he was surrounded by an island of calm water amid the chaos. His eyes were closed, so there was no way of telling if he was dead, or merely unconscious.

It was five miles out of Laughlin that the rushing water inexplicably slowed to below the highway speed limit.

M
ICHAEL'S POWERS WERE NOT
hell-bent on self-preservation.

The moment Michael and Tory fell into the powerful updraft, they were dragged skyward, and as Dillon tumbled beneath the waves during the first moments of the flood, Michael and Tory were tumbled up by the wind.

At a height of ten thousand feet, the dust-filled shaft of wind burst apart, spreading out like a mushroom cloud. Michael and Tory continued to cling to one another as they
rode the shock wave of wind, no longer knowing up from down. Michael knew his skill was not one of precision, but of broad strokes. Storms and cloud sculptures were a far cry from controlled flight. The air was now too thin to fill their lungs, and unforgivingly cold. Michael tried to move his fingers and found that he couldn't even feel them.

“What happens now?” Tory cried into Michael's ear.

Michael knew he didn't have to say it, because she already knew.

“Whatever happens, I won't let you go.”

And in that instant, as he held Tory's shivering body, he knew he had finally found in his soul the faintest glimmer of love.

But it was too late to change the course of the wind.

G
RIPPING COLD.

Breaking clouds.

A long, frozen fall.

And then nothing.

The sudden sense of Michael and Tory's death snapped Dillon to consciousness. He opened his eyes, and thought the blinding light that shone on his face was the spirit of God, until a helicopter cut across it, and he realized it was only the sun shining through the breaking clouds. He was alert enough to realize that he was alive, and to know that he was floating in strangely serene water. Yet why did he hear it churning all around him?

A moment more, and it all came back to him—everything until the moment he had lost consciousness. Now his body no longer felt the battering it had received from the water. He had already healed himself—although his lungs still felt heavy from the submerged breaths he had drawn.

While still underwater, he must have unknowingly created an oasis of calm around himself like a reflex. That bubble of calm water had lifted him to the surface and carried him along, acting as a buffer between him and the raging torrent.

But there was something more going on here—he could feel it, like a chill that wound up his spine. Only it was longer than his spine—much longer.

The feeling stretched out the length of his body and beyond; shooting hundreds of miles to the south through the soles of his feet, and hundreds of miles to the north through the top of his head. Then he realized that the churning water—still bubbling and brewing, was no longer consuming the landscape before it. The hotel towers of Laughlin stood only a mile or two away, but drew no closer. The entire flood was in fact standing still—treading itself like the waters of a washing machine. Dillon then felt himself moving again, and he once more sensed that cold strand shoot through him like a thousand-mile vein. Then, in a moment, he understood exactly what was happening.

Laughlin would not be washed away today.

Lake Havasu and the London Bridge would be perfectly safe.

This should be a good thing,
thought Dillon, but it was not. It was bad news in its rawest form, as terrible as Michael's and Tory's deaths. Dillon released a delirious laugh—a cackle of bitter surrender as the flood began a powerful backwash toward higher ground. No matter how hard Dillon had tried to scuttle his “miracle of the waters,” it was going to happen anyway. For his power had grown far beyond his ability to control it—and now, even against his will, Dillon's influence had fallen upon these waters, caressing them into submission, from Mexico to its tiniest mountain tributaries . . . .