James Patterson - The Gift

“Will you look at that?” he asks almost wistfully. “Do you see how the sky and the mountains there seem to be joined? Almost seem to be one? ”

We gaze out across the city, the foggy street and building lights twinkling through the gloom. The clouds on the horizon are a sinister purple that does kind of merge with the snowless mountains beyond the valley.

“Do you have any idea how much work it took to make this perfect evening?”

I start shaking again. It’s as if he’s a cat playing with mice. He just said he wasn’t going to kill us, but is he about to anyway? In any case he’s definitely going to put some serious hurt on us.

“I bet you’re wondering what I mean by that,” he goes on. “A terrific high-pressure zone had been screaming down across the northern plains and would have brought torrential downpours tonight. Possibly even hailstorms.”

We look at him blankly.

“So I stopped it.”

Now I get it, and what he’s done is pretty mind-blowing actually.

He raises his arms to point at a cloud on the horizon, and with the most casual of gestures, he steers it in over the city. Now he’s making a spinning gesture with his other hand, and the cloud rotates. And now he’s guiding in another massive cloud, and another, and another… Soon there’s an enormous swirling, lightning-streaked vortex circling over the entire city.

As it churns and intensifies, the winds start rattling the windows. My ears pop as the pressure in the room drains. Does he plan to have us sucked up into the black core of the vortex? Is that tonight’s plan? The rain is crashing down in iron-colored curtains. The building is groaning on its foundation. Is he going to vacuum the entire city off the face of the Earth?

But then he snaps his fingers, and the storm moves in reverse. The spiral turns backward and de-intensifies, and then the clouds retreat to their original stations in the sky.

“Now, you try, Wisteria,” he says.

Wisty

“WHAT?” I’M CAUGHT off guard-completely flabbergasted. Then it gets even weirder. Suddenly it’s as if I’m at my piano lessons again, and he’s Mr. John Masterson, my sweet-as-pie teacher, encouraging me to believe in myself. Say what?

“You have more than enough power to do it. Just tell the energy what it should do, and let it out. You saw what I did. Give your power that same image, and let it go. I have every confidence in you and your wonderful Gift.”

He’s out of his mind. Turning people into animals is, I admit, pretty cool, but it’s, like, finite. Graspable. I can’t wrap my mind around the sky, the wind, clouds, hurricanes-that’s big-time.

“I can’t do that,” I whisper.

“ Now, Wisteria,” he says, a tone of threat creeping into his recently soothing voice.

I close my eyes and try to remember exactly how the clouds raced in over the city, how they joined together and began to swirl like an upside-down, ink-filled toilet flushing in the sky, the lights of the city twinkling below and almost disappearing as the rain whipped down. I let the tune of Mrs. Highsmith’s song work as a soundtrack as I imagine it all playing before me… Can I actually do this? More important, do I want to? How can I live, and be the same person, with so much power?

And then I feel my heart flip inside me. My whole being flips.

“Idiot!” he screams.

I open my eyes. The clouds are exactly where they were. The only thing that’s changed is that the city has gone entirely dark; even the lights in the room are out. We’re bathed in evening shadow.

“You put out the lights, Wisty. All the lights,” whispers Whit.

Wisty

THE ONE IS PAST polite whispering. “You turned off the city’s electricity!” he screams. “Reactivate it immediately! ”

I try, but I don’t know how I did it in the first place, much less how to reverse it. Hum Mrs. Highsmith’s song backward? I can’t. I’m panicked.

“You chaotic child! ” he says. “You really don’t have a shred of control, do you? Now The One Who Manages The Power Grid and his incompetent minions will be spending hours attempting to repair what you so blithely have done!”

I’m madly trying to think of a poem about light dawning. There must be one! Why is my mind like a slushie when I’m around The One?

He pauses as some deeply unpleasant thought settles into his mind.

“Do you have any idea how much power it takes to do what you’ve just done? Or the applications to which such an ability might be put? Do you?”

He grabs my head in his long-fingered hands. It’s no longer a warm touch. His skin is so cold it stings. He’s hurting me now. A lot.

“Time for a pop quiz, my dear Wistful,” he says ominously. “Do you remember anything, anything at all, from your Biology 101 class? How about physics? Chemistry?” His hands are pressing harder into my temples.

“I… must’ve… skipped… those,” I manage to eke out through my clenched teeth. This is pain like I’ve never experienced before.

“Ah. I should have expected as much from a truant. What a shame that you know so little, ” he spits out, “about your Gifts. About how the functioning of the human mind, and thus the body, is controlled by electrical impulses. Electricity, in a sense.”

The One’s coldness extends invisible tentacles inside me. Ice is growing down my spine. “And I… should care… because…?”

“You. Foolish. Child! ” he screams, shaking my head now, practically crushing my skull. “You have no respect for what you’ve been given!”

I try to flame up but realize I can’t. He’s entirely draining the magic from me. All the warmth is slipping from my body. Like I’m dying. He’s actually killing me right now, isn’t he?

My legs buckle, and a whimper squeaks out of me. Whit snaps out of his trance and swings around in alarm to help, but The One lets me drop and fends him off with an elbow. The One’s mere touch sends Whit sprawling back on the floor and slamming up against the far wall as if he is a rag doll.

“All that power inside you,” The One Who Is The One says, his eyes once again flashing pure evil, “to control the mind. Everyone’s minds. The entire world at your fingertips.”

Suddenly the cold stops, and he backs away with a rueful smile.

“I frankly don’t know whether to be im pressed or de pressed.”

Whit

I’VE BEEN HIT PRETTY HARD during a few N.O. attacks, but right now I feel like I’ve been ploughed into by a speeding truck. Wisty’s on the floor looking spent, but then she hauls herself up. She’s okay, thank God, but apparently still too dumbfounded by The One’s completely absurd claims to say anything.

This is my chance. My one chance to find out what Celia was talking about. I just wish I’d had time to figure out how to broach the subject first with His Oneness.

“Um, excuse me?” I use the wall to help steady my body as I peel myself off the floor. “I have a question. Excuse me?”

Wisty and The One both stare at me as if I’ve just risen from the grave.