But as he gazed at it, as he listened, there was something else he heard there, too. It had been there all along in the sights, sounds, smells, and flavors Okoya had put before them—but Michael had not been attuned to its frequency until now.
This pool of light was alive.
And it was screaming.
Michael pulled his gaze away from it, forcing himself to see Drew who still cowered in the corner. Even from here, Michael could tell that Drew’s soul had been taken from him by Okoya. And suddenly Michael knew exactly who he was about to dine upon.
Still, he brought this liquid manna closer to his face. To smell it. To feel it. To taste it.
“I knew I could count on you, Michael,” said Okoya triumphantly.
Although Michael’s mind and body wanted to drink it in, he fought the crushing urge and instead hurled it away.
In the direction of Drew.
“No!” cried Okoya.
The shimmering globule of life-energy struck Drew in the chest, and exploded like mercury into a thousand droplets that coursed around Drew’s body. Drew arched his back and gasped, as his soul returned to him through the pores of his skin, and back to that intangible place inside.
Okoya’s surprise only lasted for an instant, then his face became blizzard-cold.
“You’ve squandered your last chance for greatness, Michael,” he said. “You and Tory have both outlived your usefulness.”
Suddenly Drew bolted from the corner, heading toward the doorway that led back into the inner structure of the dam.
“Drew, no!” Michael leapt after him. And in that moment of confusion, Okoya grabbed Tory, twisted her arm behind her back, then pushed her into the opening as well, slamming the gate. With one hand Okoya held the gate closed, and with the other, ripped an iron rail-post from the concrete wall—partly with his human strength, and partly with the sheer force of his will. Then he jammed the pole through the handles of the gate, securing it so firmly that it didn’t give an inch, Tory and Michael rammed their bodies against the gate, but it was no use—and their screams would never be heard over the turbines—nor would they be seen from this unlit, remote corner of the rafters.
Okoya laughed heartily. “How marvelous!” said Okoya. “I don’t have to kill you now; Dillon will do it for me—and he won’t even know it!”
Okoya strode away, his laughter dissolving into the awful warbling whine of the turbines.
For more than half an hour, the three of them kicked at the gate. Michael hurled a wind at it, but it only sifted like water through a sieve. Finally they realized the only way out was up, into the cold concrete hell of the dam.
“We’ll get out, right?” asked Drew, searching for some hint of reassurance. “I mean, it might take some time, but we’ll get out of here, won’t we?”
Michael and Tory both turned to him. Could it be that he didn’t know?
“What is it?” said Drew. “It better not be bad news. I’m not ready for bad news.”
“We don’t have any time,” Tory said coldly. “In a few hours Dillon’s going to shatter the dam.”
20. Dammed
Lake Mead, the largest man-made lake in the world, stretched for 115 miles behind the half-million-ton concrete plug called Hoover Dam. Although it had never seen the likes of Dillon Cole, the dam was by no means a stranger to the bizarre; from the psychotic behavior of heat-maddened workers during its construction, to the ninety-four deaths recorded by the time it was complete. Most of those deaths were workers boiled under the heat of the unforgiving sun. But then there was the scaler, who fell into the pit of Black Canyon, only to have his body bickered over by the Nevada and Arizona coroners for hours because, during construction, there was no Colorado River to divide the two states, and no one could agree in which state—besides postmortem—the body lay. There were macabre tales of dying laborers crawling across the unfinished concrete abutments of the dam, just to get to the Arizona side before they died, because death benefits in Arizona were far better than in Nevada. And then, of course, there was the eerie fact that the last person to die while building the dam, was the son of the first person to die while building it. But, to the disappointment of tourists everywhere, the horrific tales of hapless workers slipping into the wet concrete, only to be sealed within the walls, were untrue. No one had been entombed in Hoover Dam. Yet.
Dillon, refreshingly chilled from a night communing with himself, woke up in time to see the sunrise. It spilled over the red mountains, shimmering on Lake Mead to his left, and cutting across the pit of Black Canyon to his right.
By seven a.m., Dillon stood at a view spot on the rim of the dam, near a broken window at the Visitors Center. Before him were two identical bronze statues, massive, with stylized human faces, muscular chests, and sharp, pointed wings held straight up, as if poised to puncture Heaven. He looked down at a star chart beneath his feet. Tiny dots of brass stars were imbedded in blue concrete, each star perfectly placed to be a precise image of the night sky. But it wasn’t quite perfect, was it?
Dillon knelt down, and pressed his thumb over a single star, erasing it for a moment from the constellation of Scorpius.
Mentarsus-H—a star which was no longer there, but its living soul was here on earth. Or at least five-sixths of it, thought Dillon. And, reflexively, Dillon turned up to the winged statue that looked so much like the Spirit of Destruction that had tricked him into killing Deanna. Her gift had been the conquest of fear, and a transforming power of faith. There was no telling how much smoother today’s event would have gone with the strength of Deanna’s faith, and her love.
But he couldn’t let himself dwell on Deanna, either. Events were turning much too quickly now, and he had come here for a reason.
Although the Visitors Center hadn’t officially opened yet, there were already tourists wandering the deck. So far, no one had recognized him, and he hoped no one would.
He strolled around the Visitors Center, and down the road that curved along the rim of the dam. He knelt to the ground, putting his ear to the curb, like someone might put their ear to a railroad track to listen for an approaching train. By now he had gained the attention of a few tourists, who laughed, wondering what might be wrong with him. He didn’t bother to look at them; he just moved on, rubbing his hands along the concrete, until finding a spot on the sidewalk where a tiny weed grew through an insignificant hairline crack. He traced his finger along that crack until stopping at a single point, and then, when no one was looking, he pulled a small stone out of his pocket, and tapped the spot three times . . .
. . . click. . . click . . . click.
Then he stood, stretched, and casually left, heading back across the desert to his circle of followers three miles away.
Behind him, the two noisy lanes of traffic crossing the dam made it impossible for anyone to hear the tiny triplet of sounds that slowly grew louder as it echoed back and forth through the concrete superstructure.
The dam was only forty-five feet wide at its rim, but at its base it extended back beneath the waters of the lake to a width of five hundred feet. Five miles of tunnel wove through the concrete dam and the bedrock on either side of it. Some tunnels were built for maintenance, others for drainage, and still more seemed to serve no function at all, beyond being havens for rats. There were even some crawlways that didn’t exist on any blueprint—cavities left by unscrupulous foremen hoping to conserve concrete and time when the dam was being built. The result was a lightless, interlocking maze, full of hopeless dead ends and stagnant dead air.