Shattered Sky (61 page)

He took in his surroundings and deflated. “Damn—you mean I still gotta do this thing?

The waves were pulsing out from the top of the cliff with greater intensity now. From this angle, Tory could see all three vectors standing side by side beneath the huge stone arch.

“The scar is weakening,” said a voice behind them. “Can you feel it? In a few minutes it will tear wide.” They turned to see Okoya. Tory still could not accept that he was on their side. She stepped aside, keeping distance between herself and him. There had been too many betrayals, so she watched him with distrustful vigilance, waiting for the next one.

Dillon looked down from the vectors, his eyes following the path of stairs leading down to the sea. “We'll make our stand there,” he said. “At the base of the stairs.”

There was a round platform there. A stone zodiac. A clock that measured superstition instead of time. Well, thought Tory, what better place for spirits conceived of the Scorpion Star to fight for humanity than a zodiac circle; that hopelessly human attempt to define an inconceivable cosmos—a task almost as impossible as the one they were charged with.

Yet now that they were in the presence of the long lost Spirit of Faith, this task before them no longer felt so impossible.

As the pulses from the vectors continued to intensify, the shards gathered on the zodiac circle with Okoya, the unlikely coach, standing off to the side.

“What now, Okoya?” Dillon asked.

“At any second the sky will tear open and when it does,
you'll have to stop the vectors from drawing the others through.”

“Oh, is that all?” said Michael.

“You have a power that is beyond even my understanding,” Okoya told them. “I can't guide you in its use.”

“How the hell are we supposed to know what to do?” shouted Winston.

But Maddy put up her hand. “We'll know,” she said, with such certainty it calmed everyone's fears.

M
EANWHILE, STANDING AT THE
Thiran gate, the vectors continued to emit their waves of sibilant, spatial discord. Space itself began warping, twisting, stretching the knotty scar until it could no longer hold. It tore apart with such force that the sky shattered.

T
HE FORCE OF THE FRACTURING SKY SENT A POWERFUL
earthquake rumbling across the island. It splintered the Thiran gate. The top of the rectangular arch fell, instantly crunching and killing the host bodies of the three vectors, and those deaths freed the vectors to fly to the edges of the hole and call to their kind. They were more than mere guiding beacons; they were impellers, pulling their dark species from the dying void of their universe along the axes of length, depth and time toward this new place of plenty. Now above the island was a gaping hole to the Unworld and a second hole beyond that; like smashed double panes of glass. Through the first hole were the red sands and ice sky of the Unworld. And through the second hole was darkness so absolute it dimmed the light of the rising sun.

To the masses that crowded the bay, which now rolled with a violently shaking earth, it appeared as if heaven itself had rended and they opened their minds and hearts, ready to receive whatever glory was about to be bestowed on them.

A
T THE BASE OF
the stairs, the five shards were barely able to stand. The granite zodiac circle beneath their feet cracked and heaved. Dillon stepped to the center. His whole life, all of their lives, had been meant for this moment. He looked to Maddy. “No fear,” he said, and reached out his right hand. She took it and instantly the others were there as well. Michael took his left hand, Tory wrapped in Michael's arm; and pressed against
Dillon's chest. Winston moved in, finding his place, and a syntaxis of five exploded within them.

Dillon let loose everything, detonating his own containment. He felt his soul, his power stretching beyond the island to the shores of the mainland, to the coast of Africa, to the heights of heavens and the depths of the earth. He could feel life being pulled from death everywhere. The island greened, and the bay filled with kelp from Winston's powerful surge of growth. The clouds burned away to the edge of the horizon. All was scoured by Tory's purifying presence, and Deanna's peace, which now resided in Maddy, flooded every heart more powerfully than the shattering sky. They could feel all these things raging out of control but all these wonders still did not overwhelm the darkness of the breach, and all their efforts had no effect on the vectors.

“It's not working!” Dillon shouted. “We've done something wrong!”

Dillon could feel the full contingent of creatures—thousands upon thousands of dark spirits moving toward the breach from their world of living shadows—an infection that would poison this world, this universe, for all time to come.
What have we done wrong? Okoya, somebody, help us! What have we done wrong?

L
OURDES HAD MOVED TO
the nearest cove, her controlled crowd now standing behind her. She had promised Dillon she'd have the best seat in the house, and now she watched in an ambivalence that was turning into a deep dread as the sky tore apart and the darkness beyond made itself known.

She had felt Deanna's return only moments before. There was no mistaking it. So connected were they still that a birth registered within the core of her soul just as a death would.
Lourdes could feel Deanna's conquest of fear whittling away at the stone of her own heart. It was almost enough to move Lourdes, but not quite. So she stood there and watched as the sky split open, revealing a demonic womb, hell crowning in the breach, ready to push through. And now the only thought she could find within her was this:

I have brought this about.

Not the vectors. Not Okoya. Me.

Because of her, Dillon was failing. They all were failing. Their mighty powers stretched beyond the horizons, but had no effect on the vectors and the darkness. She was responsible for the failure of the shards, and that was a weight she could not bear.

You were always the weakest of us.

Dillon had planted that thought into her, and she could not tear it free. The words echoed within her, fracturing her resolve. She was the weak link. This was not happening because she chose the vectors, but because she was not strong enough to resist them—and in this moment when she should have shared the triumph with the vectors, she could feel nothing but defeat, loss, and her own sense of inadequacy. With a single thought, Dillon had stolen her victory.

I hate him
, she said to herself.
I hate them all for making me responsible. I hate them for needing me. I hate myself for needing them. For loving them still.

She raced toward them across the pebbles of the beach. The earth shook and boulders fell from the mountainside. The stairs leading to the gate crumbled, but she avoided the falling stones until finally reaching the five of them, frozen in that perfect connection. She knew her place there. She felt it without having to be told. The vectors would kill her for her betrayal, but what would that matter now? They would kill
her anyway. She pressed her way between them, cupped her hand gently around Dillon's neck, pressed up against Deanna, and reached out to put her hand on Tory's shoulder.

The moment she closed that final circuit, the world she knew, the life that she knew ended with an explosion of light and sound as her spirit fused with theirs, and she added to their powers the one thing they were lacking: absolute and perfect control.

T
HE WORLD HEAVED AGAINST
the flow of entropy and eternity for a single sparkling moment, feeling the touch of the fused shards of the Scorpion Star like an embrace:

In Africa, a brown, barren plain grew green and fertile.

In India, the last vestige of smallpox bacteria quietly extinguished from the bloodstream of a carrier who had never known what he was on the verge of passing on to his friends and family.

In the halls of Oxford, a random number generator that for years had spat out chains of randomness, now put forth a growing series of sequential numbers in bold defiance of reason.

In a South American convalescent hospital, a paraplegic man stood from his wheelchair without even realizing he had done it, and crossed the room to turn down the heat.

In a fresh grave in Arlington, Virginia, Lt. Vincent Gerritson became aware. Not aware enough to know or understand his final disposition, but enough to acknowledge that he existed—enough to lend the force of his spirit to the wind of life flowing through him.

In Southern California, where the sun had just set, Drew Camden had a sudden jolt of connection as he sat in his bedroom. A satori filled with joy, and hope. As he looked out of
his window to the clear, dark sky, a vine slithered across the pane like a garter snake, sprouting leaves, budding with red trumpets. It took his breath away, because in that instant he knew. Without a doubt he knew that the shards, whose lives had, for a short time, been so intertwined with his own, had finally received their destiny.

And in Poland, Elon Tessic, sequestered in his
dacha
, felt a blast of such enormous hope and light that he knew it could only be the finger of God.

D
ILLON WAS AT THE
center.

The moment Lourdes touched him, he could feel himself the core of something infinitely powerful and intense. He—they—were no longer shards; his own power of completion had reversed the entropy let loose in the death of the Scorpion Star, and their souls forged into a single great soul, with six minds. He was no longer just Dillon—he was the sum of all of them—and he could hear their thoughts as clearly as his own.

As their spirits ignited, it burned away their bodies, incinerating the shore, the island, and miles of the Mediterranean, penetrating deep into the earth's mantle and beyond the ionosphere. They were as a star igniting on the surface of the earth, and yet even as he felt it all burn away, Dillon held the patterns in a mind now so powerful and vast, it could remember every molecule, every cell, every soul caught within the fusion flame. He held the memory of every pattern with the ease he could remember a name, a face, a feeling.

In that glorious moment, the soft swirl of clouds dissolved around the globe, leaving the earth a naked, unblinking eye in the cradle of the heavens, and a wave of spirit swept out across the globe, encompassing it, penetrating the dust and revitalizing the spark of every soul that had ever lived. Dillon held
the history and essence of life together in this instant of resurrection, linking every spirit drawing on their energy, making them one with himself. It only lasted for an instant—but that instant had the essence of eternity.

A moment of enlightenment and ascension.

A moment of unmitigated faith;

of singular will;

of untarnished purity;

of unclouded joy;

pulled together and fused into a single force of life.

This was their weapon against the vectors; not six beacons, but a single spirit at the center of billions of points of light all focused on a wound in the flesh of space!

Dillon wanted to relish this grand expansion of their spirit—but—

“—The vectors.”

“Yes, the vectors.”

“I see them.”

“I sense them.”

“At the breach.”

Lourdes thought,
“Move toward them.”
And their spirit impelled toward the breach at her command. As they moved, they now experienced the world no longer with senses of the flesh, but with a vision of sprit; a mind's eye that saw in all directions at once, altering their perceptions of everything around them. The space they moved through was not a sky—not an atmosphere, but a thick, gelatinous plasma; a living plasma that mere fleshly senses could not perceive. Now that plasma was violated by the breach, and at the edge of the breach they saw the true form of the vectors; not angels, nor beings of light, but beings of living darkness cloaked as light. Soullessness swallowing souls.

They approached the temporal vector, immobile now like an animal caught in their light.

“I feel its fear,”
Maddy said. This creature had been encapsulated in flesh long enough to gain a rudimentary arsenal of human emotions. Terror, fury, and hatred enough to level a city. They enveloped the creature, cutting it off from the others.

Now it was up to Dillon.

He knew that his power of creation and life was only half of what he needed to do. Each of their lights cast a shadow and Dillon's shadow was destruction. With that in mind, Dillon pushed forth a single thought into the vector's tumultuous, furious mind:

Cease to exist.

It was the most horrible, most devastating act of destruction he had ever wished upon a living thing. The creature screamed, fighting the power of Dillon's terminal directive, straining against his will, but it had used too much of its power tearing open the hole. Michael injected it with fear; it panicked, and its spirit finally succumbed to Dillon's will. The temporal vector shattered, breaking into smaller and smaller fragments of anti-life until its consciousness was gone and its fragments imploded into nothingness.

The shards moved on to the lateral vector—the one who had abided within the woman. They surrounded it. Imploded it. Their light swallowed it.

“Like antibodies.”

“An immune system.”

“Surrounding.”

“Isolating.”

“Devouring it the way it meant to devour us.”

As their spirit crossed the breach to the leading vector, they
caught a glimpse of the infection. Thousands of dark entities spilled into the Unworld, crossing the outer breach from their own dying universe, all ready to cross the chasm to the inner breach. The leading vector was calling to them, reeling them in. This had to be stopped—but this last, most powerful vector tried to elude them. There was nowhere it could run from their light; it was caught in their gravity, spiraling toward them until it reached the center of their spirit. It was the strongest, this creature that had hidden within a child. It lashed out now, probing its tendrils into their weakest points, trying to tear them apart, break them into pieces once again—and Dillon thought it might succeed, that their spirit would detonate from the pressure, separating into shards once more. If that happened, it would be over. The vectors would triumph and the shards' deaths would light the path for these infecting entities. The infection would take root and spread from this point to the rest of the earth and beyond. Dillon felt weak with the thought, and that weakness gave the leading vector the upper hand. He felt himself losing concentration, losing this battle of wills . . . but then Dillon felt Maddy in his heart.