Scorpion Shards

house and hurried after Dillon, feeling her own worry ex­plode into fear. More than just fear . . . terror. Her own familiar brand of terror.

At the edge of the street, Dillon leaned against a tree, gritting his teeth and clenching his fists. His breath came in short labored gasps. Not yet, he told the hunger that gnawed on the ragged fringe of his soul. It was so powerful now, he knew if he didn’t feed it soon it would turn on him and devour him in an instant. You have to wait! You have to wait until everything’s ready, he told the hunger. Dillon kept telling himself that he was its master, but all beasts turn on their masters if they’re not fed.

By now the sun was low in the sky, casting hazy pat­terns of light through the trees. Patterns of light, patterns of life—sights, sounds, and an impossible puzzle of rela­tionships between the people on this peaceful street.

Not so impossible. Dillon looked from house to house, jumbling all the patterns in his mind, looking for a com­mon thread . . . and at last he found it. He marveled at the power of the solution he had found. It was like a key to open a great Pandora’s box. But it was so big—many times bigger than what he had done the day before. Did he dare do it? The wrecking-hunger answered by twisting his gut and bringing him to his knees.

Deanna ran toward him pale and frightened, and held him to keep him from falling to the pavement.

“Tell me what you need,” she said. “I can help you if I know.”

“You already know,” he answered.

Deanna looked away. Yes, she knew. He said he had come here looking for a place to eat. But deep down Deanna knew that he really meant a place to feed.

The look on Dillon’s face had become so helpless and desperate—so consumed by the hunger, she would have destroyed something herself to save him now.

“Will you let me do it?” asked Dillon. “Will you prom­ise not to hate me?”

“Do it,” said Deanna. “Feed it any way you can.”

Deanna was shaking now; her eyes darting back and forth as if death would come swooping at both of them from the sky. His hunger and her fear were so tightly con­nected, she knew that when the hunger was fed and he was strong once more, she would be strong as well.

Dillon found the strength he needed to get to his feet and stumble off into the road toward the second house on the right, where Jason, Joey’s older brother, had just ar­rived home with his girlfriend.

Deanna watched him go, then turned away as she felt something begin to rise in her own gut—and it wasn’t just fear.

Will you let me do it? he had asked. He had never asked so bluntly before, but the question was there every time. He needed her permission. He needed her approval for every monstrous act he committed, and she always gave it—as if in some way she was in control. As if she was the one setting him loose to create chaos.

There were many things she could make herself deny. She could deny the sounds of disaster they left behind, she could convince herself that, beyond all reason, something good would come from all this destruction. But now she could not deny that it was all happening because of her— because she gave Dillon permission. She bit her hand to hold back her own scream.

Across the street, Dillon approached Jason’s girlfriend, who was waiting for Jason on the porch. By now anything human had drained out of Dillon’s voice, and he spoke in a rough snarl that came deep from his gut. It was the voice of the hunger itself.

“You!” growled Dillon as he approached her.

The girl gasped at the sight of him hobbling closer on his weak legs.

Dillon came right up to her, looked into her eyes, read her soul, and said, “Ask Jason to tell you the truth.”

One of the girl’s wide black pupils suddenly constricted down into a pinpoint in a huge blue eye. “Okay,” she said dreamily, “I’ll ask him.” She turned and headed into the house.

Dillon stumbled across the street, already beginning to feel the tiniest bit better. He found Deanna standing just where he had left her.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Dillon, but she wasn’t budging. Her hands were clenched by her sides in tight, anxious fists.

“Tell me what you did to her.”

“I thought you didn’t want to know,” said Dillon.

“I want to know now!”

Dillon turned on her with a vengeance. “I’m trying to protect you!” he shouted. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? That’s what you’ve always wanted!”

Deanna drew a deep breath and said slowly, forcefully, “Tell me what you did!”

Dillon kicked the ground hard. “I planted a seed, like I did at the farmhouse. I just made a suggestion, that’s all.” Dillon told Deanna what he had said to the girl, and Deanna listened to his words thinking that there must be more . . . but that was all Dillon said. A suggestion? A mere suggestion was going to satisfy the wrecking-hunger? How could that be?

But it wasn’t just any suggestion, was it? It was the right suggestion. Dillon had sized things up and knew the exact words that would set powerful forces in motion that would grind these people up.

“I found the girl’s button,” said Dillon. “Everyone has a button, you just have to find it . . . and then push it.”

Deanna shook her head, her hands trembling so violently she felt her fingers might shake themselves off.

“We have to leave now,” said Dillon. “I don’t want to see it happen.”

“But I do!” insisted Deanna. “If I’m a part of this, then I want to know what we’ve done!”

Dillon tried to pull her away, but she wouldn’t go. They would weather this one out, whether he liked it or not. “All right,” he said, “but just remember, I tried to keep you from seeing.” Since Dillon knew it wasn’t safe where they were standing, he climbed a tree and helped Deanna up. From there, they had a bird’s-eye view of the entire block.

“It’ll start over there,” said Dillon, pointing to Joey’s house. Sure enough, inside the house two people were ar­guing. Jason and his girlfriend—something about the girl’s sister. The argument got louder and louder, until the girl burst out the front door in tears . . . just as Jason and Joey’s mother came home, holding a bag of groceries.

“You’re just like your father!” the girlfriend shouted back at Jason. “Everyone knows the way he sneaks around!”

The mother heard this, and the shock of this news made her drop a bag of groceries. Inside, a furious Jason took out his frustrations on his kid brother. In a moment Joey came running out of the house crying, not seeing the groceries spilled on the front walk. He slipped on a can of peas, went flying, and hit his head on the ground. Hard.

His mother screamed.

Dillon turned to Deanna. “Once it starts, it’s like a boulder rolling down a hill,” he said. “Watch!”

Deanna watched with sick fascination as a delivery boy ruling by on a moped turned his head to see why the woman was screaming and was distracted just long enough to hit a car head-on.

The widowed neighbor man came out to his porch at the sound of the crash, and his neglected dog bolted from the house, ran across the street, freaked at all the noise, and attacked a woman in her garden. The woman’s hus­band, a nervous man, ran inside to get a shotgun to save his wife from the mad dog. But his aim was very bad. And very unlucky.

Then, in a moment, the events began to happen so quickly, the chain of cause and effect was completely lost. One thing led to five things, led to five more things, and in a matter of minutes the twilight was filled with shattering windows, screaming people, and brutal fistfights, until the entire block had disintegrated into a savage frenzy . . . an explosive chain reaction of unlikely, unlucky “coinci­dences” that had all been started by a single,