Dead Harvest

  I shook my head. 'Kate, you don't understand. There is no getting to stay anything. See, the folks who end up like me, there's always a reason. Maybe in life they stripped someone of the life that was rightfully theirs – by murder or betrayal or whatever – and it ate them up inside. Maybe they made themselves a bargain, and took what wasn't theirs to take. Problem is, there's always a price. See, fate's sort of a zero-sum game: you take what isn't yours to take, and it's gotta come from somewhere else. Which means, you make yourself a bargain, and you're stealing someone else's luck, someone else's fate.'

  'So which were you? Did you strike yourself a deal? Or were your actions to blame?'

  I laughed – a cold, humorless laugh. 'A bit of both, I suppose. Truth to tell, it ain't the act that's important – it's the guilt. The remorse. The way it eats you up inside. That's the one thing most Collectors have in common – at least, at first.'

  'What do you mean, at first?'

  I paused a moment, unsure as to how to continue. Eventually, though, the words came. 'This job – this curse – it feeds on that remorse, forcing you to relive the choices that delivered you to this fate every time you snuff out a life. Every time you tear free a soul, you see every joy, every disappointment, everything that brought that person to where you yourself once were. Every time, some small part of you relives that moment of collection, again and again, in perfect, agonizing detail. With every soul you take, you're reminded of how beautiful life once was, and how you let it slip away. Every time you steal a victim's breath, you remember that first fateful choice you made that brought you to that point, only now, you have no defenses to fall back on. Not ignorance, nor arrogance – no justifications or excuses. It's just you and your actions, stripped bare, and eventually, it's just too much to take.'

  'So what happens then?' she asked. 'What happens when a Collector reaches the breaking point?'

  'They go mad. They begin to enjoy the work. They delight in their role. They bury their humanity so deep, they can't even hear its screams. And eventually, their soul just withers and dies. You wanna know what's worse than being damned? Allowing your soul to be snuffed out, just erased from the record books like it never was. There's no greater punishment in existence, and no greater crime, than being party to your own eradication. It's as if you're admitting that all you've touched, all you've done, everything you've seen, is for nothing. To choose oblivion is to turn your back on God. There is no greater betrayal. And once you do that, all that's left of you is a monster.'

  'Is that what happened to Bishop?'

  'I guess so. I don't know. If the stories they tell of him are true, he was plenty corrupted in life. In his case, his appointment as Collector may have been more compliment than punishment. Perhaps his patron demon was amused by him, and chose to take him as a pet. But either way, whatever little of him was human when he died is long gone now, warped by centuries of possession and subjugation.'

  'But Sam, you're not like that! If anybody can find a way around it, it's you.'

  'Kate, it doesn't work like that. Whether it takes a dozen years or a thousand, this job isn't going anywhere, and not a Collector in existence has ever avoided their fate. All I'm doing every time I hitch a ride with a corpse is forestalling the inevitable. There's simply nothing I can do to stop it.'

  She replied, 'I refuse to believe that.'

  'Do you? You saw what I did to Pinch back there. Do you think a decent person could have done that?'

  'You said yourself– that wasn't Pinch.'

  'And you said yourself that I was a monster for doing what I'd done. That I was no better than the rest of them.'

  'Sam, I was upset. I didn't understand –'

  'There's nothing to understand, Kate. No excuses to make. I did what had to be done. But what had to be done was just another mile down the road to where I'm going. That's the bitch about fate – there's just no getting around it.'

  Sirens echoed in the distance. Sounded like half the cops on Staten Island were converging on the hospital. 'C'mon,' I said to Kate, 'it's time to go.'

  She helped me to my feet. My foot, really, since I was keeping my weight on my good leg, for fear of toppling to the pavement all over again. Gingerly, I shifted some weight onto my injured leg. My vision swam, but I didn't black out, and I managed to stay up. I took a step, and then another, one steadying hand never leaving the roof of the Taurus beside me.

  Kate watched this process with concern, and when I'd gotten as far as the Taurus' roof would take me, she slid in under my armpit and put an arm around my waist. 'All right,' she said, 'if you can't hop yourself another ride, let's see if we can't patch up this one, OK?'

  I nodded, once, my jaw clenched tight against the pain of walking. Sirens approaching, we fled arm in arm across the parking lot.

23.

The house was a shabby old duplex, white with blue trim. A length of narrow pipe, painted white, jutted from the concrete of the lowest porch-step and led upward to the covered porch above. The porch itself was chipped and weathered and littered with cigarette butts and empty beer cans. Two doors, side by side, allowed entry to the house, and they were flanked by two mailboxes, each numbered by hand in black marker. One screen door sat crooked across its frame, its top hinge torn free of the jamb. It swayed lazily in the early morning breeze, creaking all the while.

  Just above the rooftop hung a sky of navy blue, streaked with the dusky hues of an overripe peach – the beginnings of a beautiful sunrise. Truth be told, I barely noticed. I was mostly focused on the house – well, that and staying conscious – while the knife wound in my leg seemed content to spend its time bleeding through the towel I'd wrapped around it, throbbing like a son of a bitch all the while.

  We were sitting on the darkened stoop of a pawnshop across the street, its barred windows chock-full of guitars, electronics, and the sundry other crap people'd seen fit to part with for a little quick cash. No gold, though, I noticed – just a patch of black velvet where I supposed it ought to go. I guess they kept that stuff in back. Made sense. Any neighborhood with a pawnshop probably ain't the kind of place you want to leave your jewelry unattended.