The Child Thief

PETER LISTENED TO the rain trickling down the gutters as Nathan
paced in and out of the stairwell doorway.
It seemed a long time before they heard anything, then a loud shout
echoed down the stairwell.
Nathan started for the stairs.
“You don’t want to do that,” Peter said, coming out of the shadows.
The boy jumped back. “Who are you?”
“A friend.”

---

Nathan squinted at him, then another shout came from above, followed
by several angry voices.
The boy forgot about Peter and dashed up the stairs. He made it only
one flight up before a scream came from outside, a long, horrified shriek,
then a sickening thud in the courtyard. Nathan froze.
Peter grimaced, knowing what that thud meant. He could see by the
boy’s face that he did too.
“Tony?”
The boy leaped down the entire bottom flight of stairs and shot out of
the stairwell. Peter followed slowly behind.
THE BOY LAY sprawled upon the sidewalk, one leg bent awkwardly
behind him, his eyes wide, blinking, lips moving but no words coming out.
His head lolled over and Peter saw that the back of his skull was crushed
inward, his hair wet with blood.
“TONY!” Nathan screamed, and ran to his brother.
Peter glanced up the face of the building. There, looking down from the
sixth-floor balcony, was a man and four older teens. The man pointed at
Nathan, said something, and all four of the teens sprinted to the stairwell.
“We need to go,” Peter said.
The boy ignored him. “Tony. Tony, man. Ah fuck, no. Tony.”
Several people stuck their heads out their doors, glanced over the
balcony, then went quickly back in.
Peter heard the teenagers’ feet drumming down the stairwell. They’d be
down in another moment. Peter placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Hey,
they’re coming. We need to go.”
Nathan looked up at Peter, his lips trembling. “They killed him!” A sob
tore loose from the back of his throat. “They killed my brother!”
“They’re coming for you now. We need to leave.”
The boy looked up to the balcony, saw the man, heard the boys shouting
in the stairwell. Peter watched the fear leave the boy’s eyes, replaced with
hatred. The boy jabbed his hand into his brother’s coat pocket and pulled
out a knife. He popped open the blade and stood up.
“You want to kill them?” Peter asked.
The boy didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. His eyes said it all.
Peter grinned. “Good. Let’s kill them.”

---

Peter darted back beneath the overhang, ducking behind the open
stairwell door. He slipped his long knife from his jacket and pressed his
back to the wall.
All four teens rushed from the stairwell out into the yard, saw Nathan,
and stopped. They looked at the small knife trembling in his hand and
began to laugh.
One of them, a short, muscular kid with long sideburns, stepped
forward. “You already dead, motherfucker. You just too stupid to know it.”
He pulled a gun from his jacket and leveled it sideways at Nathan. “Well,
what’cha waiting for, badass. Let’s see what—”
A blur shot past the teens, a flash of steel, and both the gun and the
short, muscular kid’s hand flew through the air, bouncing onto the grass.
All the boys’ eyes went wide. But none wider than the muscular kid’s,
as blood began to spurt from his severed wrist. He held his stump away
from him as though afraid of it, and began to scream.
The kid next to him made a play for something under his jacket, but
Peter didn’t give him time to pull it out. Peter had learned that when guns
were involved, there was no room for games. You moved fast, stayed a step
ahead. In a blink, Peter shoved his knife into the boy’s neck and yanked it
back out again.
The boy fell to his knees, clutching his throat, and began making a
horrible, gurgling sound. Peter’s eyes lit up and he let out a laugh like a
demented demon. When he did, the two remaining teens took off at a dead
run.
“LET’S GO!” Peter called, shouting to be heard over the screams of the
kid with the chopped-off hand. “We really need to go.”
Nathan looked at him as if he didn’t know whether to be thankful or
afraid.
Shots came from up above them; dirt sprung up around Peter. The man
was shooting at them from the balcony. That got the boy moving; the two of
them ducked beneath the overhang. Nathan spotted the gun, the one the
muscular boy had dropped. He snatched it up out of the grass.
They heard shouts coming from the building across the courtyard,
where the teens had fled. More boys were coming.
“I know where we can go,” Peter said and took off.
The boy followed.

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