“Soon,” the pilot said. “Soon Thira. Down wet.”
“He means we’ll land in the water,” Winston offered.
“I figured that one out, thanks.”
The woman looked at them and smiled awkwardly, like a hostess with nothing to offer her guests, while up above them, the sky boiled.
As they approached the crescent-shaped island, Dillon could see that the center of this violent sky wasn’t over the island—it was a few miles beyond it, to the south.
“Tell him to take us around the island to its south side,” Dillon said. Winston translated, and the pilot turned to the right.
Beneath them now was the massive bay, almost closed into a circle by the curve of the land. Then without warning the plane took a violent, bolt-wrenching jolt. Anything loose in the cabin hit the ceiling, the woman cried out in Greek, and the plane dropped a few hundred feet before the pilot wrestled the plane under control.
“Air bad; boom boom,” the pilot said. His best translation of turbulence. But that batch of turbulence had nothing to do with air conditions. Dillon had felt it even before the plane did. He felt it within him, not around him.
“Winston?”
“I felt it, too.”
They will tear open an old scar, Okoya had said. Could this have been a vein of the scar they had passed through? A malformed thread of space that wove like a snake in and around Thira?
“Tell him to take us wide around the island,” Dillon said, not wanting to experience another tendril of the ancient scar.
As they rounded the island, the ocean in the distance glowed white. At first it appeared to be a particularly violent patch of whitecaps, until they got close enough to see definition within the many specks filling this corner of the Aegean. These weren’t waves, they were boats! Thousands of them, large and small, forging a wedge across the rough sea.
Forging a vector.
Dillon’s teeth clenched at the thought.
This wedge of ships seemed endless. It stretched to the horizon. The pilot looked nervously to Winston and Dillon for an explanation.
“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 the shore, Dillon opened the door and hopped out. Dropping chest deep, he waded for shore with Winston close behind. The pilot shouted to them before he closed the door and powered for takeoff.
“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, that 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 settling 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, anesthetic 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 the child stared at him with the blank expressions of foreigners, so he tried it again in German, and then in 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 was, 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.”
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.”
The temporal vector pulled the lips of his host into a sinister smile and said, “This I will enjoy.”
LOURDES SET UP CAMP on the shore of the bay, at one of the few places where the cliffs receded far enough to allow for a rocky beach.
The clearing she created for herself was a perfect circle, and at its edge a ring of people stood at rigid attention, shoulder to shoulder. Pressed against them from behind was another row, and another, and another; twenty concentric rings that provided Lourdes with a dense protective layer of human flesh. Things had come full circle for Lourdes—once again she was surrounded by flesh, only now the flesh was no longer beneath her skin. They stood there, her private army, jaws locked, bodies and wills under siege. She did not see or acknowledge their faces. She didn’t care. To her these were no longer people and they hadn’t been for quite some time. They were cattle. Meat to herd and manipulate.
In the center of these protective layers, Lourdes had built a fire, and now stared across it at Michael and Tory, who lay unconscious, still bound by handcuffs. This journey—this gathering of meat—had exhausted the two of them more than Lourdes, for they had resisted every mile across the sea. But even against their wills, their power had added to her own, sweeping across Crete, pulling together the army she had promised the vectors. Such power she had wielded! Such intensity! She had thought that having such power would fill her in some fundamental way, but like the food she ate, it only left her with a deeper void, craving more and more.
So she stared at Michael and Tory, hating them for fulfilling each other. Lourdes might have been thrust into this world as a broken fragment of a star, intricately intertwined with them, but she was not part of them anymore. She was part of no one. She looked around at the circle of standing bodies. This is my universe, she thought. A circle of flesh, with me at the center. There is nothing outside the circle.
But the vectors lie.
Michael had reminded her of that. It’s what they were; lies transmuted into spirit. But still, their words had cut Lourdes too deeply to heal. Out there was emptiness, held together by threads of hatred and hostility. The universe at large. She could feel that emptiness in her bones like a hollow where her marrow should be. Hopelessness. Futility.
There came a shifting of bodies to her right, and she turned to see someone pushing through her meat-barrier. A man forced his way into the clearing; then her infantry closed the gap, shoulder to shoulder once more.
Lourdes stood to face him. No one should have been able to get through.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Do you not recognize me?”
She looked him over. He was tall, with closely trimmed, dark hair. A moustache. Early thirties, fairly attractive, and well built. His accent was markedly Mediterranean—maybe even Arabic, she wasn’t sure. No, she had never seen him before, nevertheless she knew who he was. It was there in his eyes.
“The Old Man.”
“I’m much better dressed now.” He held up his arms and showed off the muscular curves of the new human body he wore. “You like?”
“I’ve done what you and the others wanted. Now leave me alone.”
He took a step closer. “I was wrong about you, Lourdes. Memo was the smart one.” Lourdes noticed that he wore a coat, even though the dead air was a sultry, salty balm. He glanced at Michael and Tory who lay inert beyond the fire. “It was wise to use these two as you did—adding their power to yours. Your cleverness surprises us.”
“Enough to regret the way you beat me?”
He took another step closer. “A vector moves forward always,” he told her. “No grudges, no regrets.” And then he reached his hand forward to her. “Come. We celebrate your success.” With his other hand he casually reached into the shadows of his coat.
What happened next came in a single fluid motion, like a step from a ballet. Something dark and shiny slid out of his coat, gripped in his right hand. Eight other hands reached from behind, taking him down to the ground. A bullet pierced the eye of one of Lourdes’s minions, and although he fell limp, there was another behind to wrench the gun from the vector’s hand. In an instant the vector was under a tackle of Lourdes’s puppets, and with a single thought she had them rip off his coat, revealing a second gun and a knife. Further exploration revealed another knife strapped to his leg. Lourdes stood over him while he struggled beneath the hands and bodies of her minions. “Is this how we celebrate my success?”
“You misunderstand!” he shouted. “Please! It was for them!” He pointed across the fire to Michael and Tory, still unconscious on the dark pebbles of the beach. “I come to kill them—not you!”
“Come on, say it like you mean it.” By now all of his weapons had been stripped from him, along with his jacket and shirt. Each weapon was trained on him now by her minions, poised at his head, his chest, his throat. “I suppose if I kill you, you’ll just slip into another host.”
“Believe me. Your friends are the enemy—not you.” He let out a pained little laugh. “What purpose is killing you for? None. No, we let you live, and you keep to help us.”
Keep helping them? Would they have her do that? Was that the true definition of hell?
“You rule all people.” The handsome vector tempted. “Control them. We want this from you.”
“The Queen of Cattle.”
He looked up at her quizzically. “I do not know this expression.”
“Never mind.” She took a step back, and loosened the hands that held him. He pulled free, but his weapons were gone, passed back through the crowd. He made no move to attack her, but she knew better than to turn her back.
“Your two friends—they must die—you know this. Let me do it now.”
“I’ll kill them,” she said. “They deserve to be put out of their misery by one of their own kind.”
He considered this and finally nodded acceptance. Then he looked her over, showing some amount of admiration. “This host has desire for you,” he said, puffing out his chest. “Now we celebrate. Just you and me. This I will enjoy.”
“Get out of here.�
�� With a wave of her hand her crowd advanced, engulfing him, pushing him back, layer by layer, tighter together so that he could not squeeze between them again. Once she was sure he had been pushed completely out, she went around the fire to Michael. Dear, sweet Michael, who had once told her he loved her. Who had stroked her cheek, and looked into her eyes when no one else would as she lay on a stone floor, too fat to move. It was that lie that had destroyed her, even before the vectors snared her on their line.
She knew what she had to do.
She found a smooth stone about the size of a skull, so heavy she needed two hands to lift it. Then she knelt beside Michael, and raised the stone above his head.
I’ll do this quickly.
Michael’s eyes fluttered open then closed.
Quickly before I change my mind.
And she brought the heavy stone down with all the force in her soul.
36. SUDDEN DEATH
* * *
IT WAS DEEP INTO THE NIGHT WHEN DILLON AWOKE. THE tinker was nowhere to be found, and as Dillon looked out over the bay, he could see the moon had transversed the entire sky. There were voices—many voices coming from the shore below. He tried to see through the window what the commotion was about, but saw only the dim shapes of the tinker’s mechanical graveyard.
Winston had fallen asleep as well, having crawled up onto the floor displacing the dogs from their mat—which was a better spot than Dillon’s, which was nothing but a wobbly chair and a window sill for his head. It was a far cry from Hearst Castle or the plush trappings of Elon Tessic. So now they were lying with dogs. Dillon couldn’t decide whether there was something wrong with this, or if such humility was a good thing; something to dilute their own innate arrogance that had always gotten them into such trouble. He woke Winston, and they left.
Outside, the sound of voices was a dense, white noise of people murmuring their excitement and confusion.
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