Нил Шустерман: Thief Of Souls

The man went pale. Dillon noted the exact way his chest seemed to cave in.

“Heart problem?” asked Dillon. “Or is it his lungs?”

“Heart,” Laraby said in a weak sort of wonder.

“Don’t talk to him!” Weller ordered Laraby. “It’s tricks, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” said Laraby, unconvinced. “Yeah, I guess . . . "

In front of them, the car that carried Carter had pulled out far ahead of them. If Dillon’s plan was to work, he knew he would have to strike now, with lethal precision. He leaned forward, and whispered into Ser­geant Weller’s sun-reddened ear, hitting him with a quiet blast of personal devastation in the form of a sim­ple comment.

“Sergeant Weller,” he whispered, “no matter what everyone says . . . it was your fault. Your fault, and no one else’s.”

A subtle hammer to glass. Dillon could feel the man’s mind shatter, even before there were any out­ward signs. Weller gripped the steering wheel tighter, his knuckles turning as white as the cloud-covered sky. Dillon could hear the man’s teeth gnash like the grind­stone of a mill, and then, with a sudden jolt, Weller jerked the wheel.

The car lurched off the road and careened down a steep wooded slope. Pine branches whapped at the windshield, and a single trunk loomed before them. Then came the crunch of metal, and the sudden PFFFLAP! of the air bags deploying in the front seat, while in the backseat, Dillon’s seatbelt dug into his gut and shoulder. The car caromed off the tree, skidded sideways another ten yards, until smashing into another tree hard enough to shatter the right-side windows be­fore coming to rest.

Dillon was stunned and bruised but he didn’t take time to check his own damage. He climbed through the broken window, falling into the thick, cold mud of the woods, and for once the deep, earthy smell was a wel­come relief. He stood, and quickly pulled open the pas­senger door of the ruined car. Officer Laraby was pinned between the seat and the firm billow of the air bag. The bag had knocked the wind out of him, and his gasps filled the air like the blasts of a car alarm. Dillon pulled him out of the car, and he fell to the ground.

Meanwhile, Sergeant Weller didn’t seem to care about any of it. He just sobbed and sobbed. Dillon didn’t dare catch his gaze now, for Dillon knew how his eyes would look. One pupil would be wide, the other shrunken to a pinpoint. They always looked like that when Dillon drove them insane.

“Wh-what’s going on?” asked Laraby, still dazed from the crash.

“It’s my fault,” sobbed Weller, deep in a state of madness that went miles beyond mere guilt. “It’s my fault my fault my fault my fault...”

Laraby turned to Dillon, just beginning to recover his senses. “What’s his fault?”

“I don’t know,” said Dillon. “But it doesn’t matter now.” And he really didn’t know—all Dillon knew was that every pore of that man’s body breathed out guilt that he was trying to hide. Very old guilt, and very potent. All Dillon had to do was tweak it to shatter his mind.

Up above, the other car, which had doubled back, had pulled to the side of the road. Doors opened and closed.

“Listen to me,” Dillon told Laraby. “The boy in the other car—he says his name is Carter, but it’s really Delbert. Delbert Morgan. You and your wife are going to take him in as a foster child. You’re going to vol­unteer to do it.”

The officer squirmed. “But—"

“You will take him in, and take care of him until his father comes for him someday”—and then Dillon added—“or else.”

“Or else what?”

The answer came as another incoherent wail from the insane cop, still in the driver’s seat pounding his fist mindlessly against his air bag. It was evidence of the destruction Dillon was still capable of when he chose to destroy—his ability to create chaos still every bit as powerful as his ability to create order.

Dillon could hear shouts on the hillside above them now, and people hurrying toward them. He tried to run, but Laraby, still on the ground, grabbed Dillon’s shirt as if he were sinking into quicksand.

“Can you save my son?” asked the officer. “Can you fix his heart?”

The look in Laraby’s eyes—a clashing combination between hope and terror—was something Dillon had seen before. In recent months, people would cling to him, asking him to fix things he hadn’t broken in the first place. People begging him to change the patterns of their destinies.

“If you do,” bribed Laraby, “I’ll take care of that Carter kid. I swear I will.”

Time was short, and Dillon needed to know that Car­ter would be cared for. Dillon nodded. “Agreed. I’ll come back someday and fix your son—"

“Not someday. Now!” demanded Laraby. “They say he’s gonna die, so you gotta do it now!”

“It doesn’t matter if he dies,” Dillon told him. “I’ll come back later, and fix him anyway.”

The cop had no response to that. The very idea tied his tongue.

Dillon broke free, sliding the rest of the way down the wooded slope until he could see the Columbia River through the trees far up ahead. He could hear the of­ficers from the other car on his tail, but the image filling his mind was that of Laraby’s face; the desperation as he had gripped on to Dillon’s shirttail; those eyes star­ing at him in fearful, hopeful awe as if Dillon held both salvation and damnation in his fingertips.

And then there was Weller.

Dillon had shattered the man. He had sworn he would never shatter anyone ever again. Dillon had been so certain that his destructiveness was in the past. But I had no choice, he reasoned. I had to escape.

Dillon told himself that he would come back and fix the man someday, although he knew it would be a long time before he could surface in Burton again.

He continued down the slope, bouncing off trees like a pinball, stumbling through the mud and peat.

It was foolish of Dillon to think the people of Burton could keep quiet. It was human nature to whisper the things that no one should hear, and it was only a matter of time until all of those whispers grew loud enough to bring out a swarm of badges from a dozen govern­ment agencies. And despite what Weller had said— they did believe in what he could do. Otherwise they wouldn’t have sent out a posse of state troopers to find him.

Now they’d be on the lookout for him everywhere “the virus” had hit. Foolish, because it was their med­dling that would prevent him from fixing the mess.

The dense wood suddenly ended, and he stumbled over a gnarled root, to the muddy edge of the river.

“Down here—this way!” his pursuers shouted.

Dillon leapt from the bank into the raging torrents of the river, swollen by a storm upstream. The cold hit him instantly, sucking the heat from his limbs. His muscles seized into tight knots, but he stretched his arms and legs out so he wouldn’t cramp. He was quickly spirited downstream, pulled away from those chasing him. The opposite bank seemed much more distant than it had from shore, but he willed his arms to move. Yes, his limbs had grown strong from his work. Even in the cold waters, he could force his arms to stroke and legs to kick, long after many would have drowned, until he finally collapsed on the far shore.

His mind hazy, and his body leaden from the cold, he tried to catch his bearings as he knelt on all fours, coughing up lungfuls of river water. He tried to stand, but moved too quickly, and a wave of dizziness brought him back to the ground. He rolled over onto his back, forcing deep breaths, trying to will a steady flow of oxygenated blood back to his head.