“That’s not secure enough,” Catherine said, and I agreed.
I cut and shaved two more stakes from the aluminum fence. I had a twinge of guilt at destroying someone else’s property, but I figured it was minor compared with what had happened to their two horses. I tossed them both to Catherine.
The doorway across the yard was built the same way, with two doors on two hinges each. With my ghost knife, I cut through the hinges on one of them and let it fall across my shoulders. I carried it across the mud, dropped it on its side, and tipped it against the staked door. Catherine drove the two stakes into the mud at its base, bracing it in place.
The thump of the doors slamming together must have startled the horse inside, because the steady bang bang bang of its kicks halted. We stepped back and surveyed our work again. Catherine turned to me. “Better,” she said. She lifted her forearm and tenderly laid her hand against it. Was she injured?
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I had a pitchfork in my hand, and maybe I could have stopped that horse without—”
“Ray, forget that shit. If you think I wanted you to kill that animal, you haven’t been paying attention.”
“No, I know that,” I said. “We would have been safer, though, if I’d been willing to go all out. If I hadn’t held back.”
“I’d rather be good than safe.”
With that, the conversation was over.
I crossed the yard and went into the stable the horse had come from. There was a trough filled with hay and two more dead animals. Both had their skulls crushed.
“A horse wouldn’t …” Catherine’s voice sounded tiny.
“Both of these have white marks, too.”
So, the sapphire dog fed on animals as well as people. Hopefully, no one kept any lions around.
We searched the other stables. We found three more dead horses and a dead woman. She was dressed in dirty coveralls, but she’d applied her makeup with extraordinary care. She’d even plucked her eyebrows and drawn them back on. Her neck was crooked—broken by a horse’s kick, maybe. And she had a white streak over her left ear.
Catherine searched her and produced a driver’s license. She was Lois Conner, just like the name above the entrance. She was forty-nine, and like me, she carried a single credit card. I stood watch in the doorway while Catherine finished. I didn’t have the stomach for another corpse. Instead, I stared at the braced stable door, watching it shudder under the trapped animal’s kicks. They were slowing and growing weaker as it tired.
“She’s been dead for hours,” Catherine said. Apparently, there was nothing else about her that mattered to us.
Beyond the last stable was a bungalow with an OFFICE sign over the door. Behind that was a house that looked like an uneven stack of wooden boxes. The office was locked up and dark. A single light shone in the house.
We searched the office first, just in case. I held my ghost knife ready, but we didn’t find anything.
The front door to the house was standing open. I entered first. We walked through the living room into a quiet little den with a sunken floor. The rooms were nicely furnished but filled with clutter: stacks of papers, pretty seashells, two dozen books all lying open and facedown on counters and coffee tables. Everything looked like it had been set in a random but convenient place and then forgotten.
Catherine got ahead of me and peeked into the hall. A light shone from a room at the far end, illuminating a body lying curled in the corner of the corridor floor. I caught her elbow and pulled her back. I was the one who was a little bit bulletproof. For once, she didn’t cringe at my touch.
I turned the body over. He had long, graying hair like a hippie cowboy. He’d been shot in the chest and had fallen with his face to the wall and died. If he had a white mark, I couldn’t see it.
“It isn’t a very efficient predator, is it?” Catherine asked.
Pratt had said something similar. “What do you mean?”
“Well, its prey drives off or kills other prey. It’s one thing if a cougar catches a sheep and the bleating frightens the rest of the herd, but in this case the sheep sticks around after it’s been eaten, driving away other potential meals. I don’t know why this thing hasn’t gone extinct yet.”
I remembered my idea that the sapphire dog might become Pet Emperor. “Maybe it’s starving. It’s been trapped for a couple of decades. Maybe it’s feeding hard.”
“Sure. Maybe.”
We stood. I led the way around the corner into the lighted room. It was the kitchen. A huge refrigerator was lying on its side, and a little old gray-haired lady was trapped beneath it.
But I didn’t notice that at first, because the little old lady was holding a big damn revolver, and I was looking right down the barrel. She had one eye squinted shut as she squeezed the trigger.
Click. It was empty. I stood in the doorway like a paper target at a pistol range. She let the end of the barrel fall onto the dirty tile floor.
“Damn,” she said. “Wasted too many shots.”
Catherine tried to step around me, but I held her back. I wasn’t convinced it was safe yet. “What did you waste them on?” I asked, hoping she would say “A blue dog.”
“Them,” she said, and coughed blood onto her chin.
There were two more dead bodies by the stove: both young, tall, and slim, with long dark hair and short, upturned noses. Each woman had been shot multiple times. They looked enough alike to be sisters. Was one of them Depressed Guy’s wife? I honestly didn’t want to know.
The old woman reached for a box of ammunition on the floor beneath a kitchen chair, but it was out of reach.
“Would you hand that to me, sonny?”
I stepped into the room, allowing Catherine to follow. “I don’t think so,” I said quietly.
“Well, fuck you then. Get out of my house! You can’t have him.”
Catherine walked around the old woman, taking in the scene without expression. I wished there was a mirror nearby so I could see if I had the same composure. I didn’t think I did.
The old woman looked very slender and frail, and her face was terribly pale. She had a streak across her forehead.
I felt very tired. “We should call an ambulance,” I said.
“Don’t you touch anything, you … burglars. Not even the phone. I forbid it.”
“We will,” Catherine said to me, ignoring the woman on the floor. “After we check the rest of the house.”
I nodded. There was a set of stairs going up. I led the way, stepping over the two young bodies to get to them.
I wondered how long it would take to get used to seeing corpses. Maybe it was callous of me, but I wanted it to be soon. I wanted to stop feeling sickened by the blood and the slack, empty faces. I wanted to not care about the smell. I wanted …
I wanted all sorts of things I wasn’t going to get. I took a deep breath and forced myself to focus on the job. The next old woman might not be holding an empty gun.
The upstairs had the same clutter, but there was no sapphire dog. I stopped in the bathroom to look in the mirror. I couldn’t see any horse shit on me, which seemed like a minor miracle. Then we checked the back bedroom.
The walls were covered with posters of horses, and there were toy horses everywhere. Some people couldn’t get enough, I guessed. Then I heard something scrape against the carpet. It was a tiny sound, but it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I stepped in front of Catherine and held my ghost knife ready.
“Come out!” My voice was harsh and low. I knew it wasn’t the sapphire dog—it had always fled, never hidden. “Come out right now!”
I heard a tiny, frightened gasp, then a little voice said: “I’m sorry!” The voice was choked with tears. “I’m sorry for hiding!” Behind me, Catherine gasped.
A girl slowly crawled from under the far side of the bed. She was about ten, thin as a rail, and she tried to make herself as small as possible. She also wouldn’t look at us, letting her hair cover her tear-streak
ed face. I couldn’t tell if she had a white mark.
“Are you alone?” I asked, but Catherine pushed by me before the kid could answer.
“Oh, honey,” she said, “what happened here?” Catherine went around the bed and took hold of the girl’s hands.
“My granma tried to kill me,” she said. I expected more sobs, but her voice seemed to hollow out and become steady. “That thing licked her and she went crazy.”
“You saw it?” I asked.
“Yeah, it walked right by me. I saw what it did to my mom and gran. Then they turned against me.” The girl’s voice cracked. “They hated me. I don’t know what I did, but they hated me so much.…”
“Oh, honey,” Catherine said, and gathered the girl into her arms. “You didn’t do a single little thing to deserve this. Not a single little thing.”
The girl began to cry. Catherine held her close. I stood in the doorway, weapon in hand, feeling useless.
“We have to take her away from here,” Catherine said.
“No!” the girl shouted. She broke Catherine’s embrace and retreated to the corner. “My granma is still out there, and so is that thing. It’s out there doing that to other people, and I don’t want to leave here I won’t go I won’t do it—”
Catherine pressed her fists against her chest. “It’s okay, honey. It’s okay. You don’t have to do anything scary.”
“We can’t bring her anyway,” I said. “We’re hunting.” I was surprised by the sound of my own voice; it sounded flat and miserable. I don’t rescue people. I kill predators.
The girl was willing to tell us her name, Shannon, but she absolutely refused to leave her room. Catherine promised to call emergency services for her. Shannon slid back under the bed, and we went into the hall.
“Oh my God, Ray,” Catherine whispered. “That little girl … I wasn’t ready for what happened to those horses, but that girl breaks my heart.”
“The sapphire dog didn’t feed on her,” I said, trying to think about something, anything else, “but it did feed on Little Mark. What do you think is the age break where people become food? Puberty?”
“For Christ’s sake, Ray.” Her voice was harsh but still low. “Didn’t you notice—”
I hissed at her to cut her off. It didn’t matter that she was right. At that moment, I couldn’t bear to be told that I wasn’t feeling enough.
My misery and adrenaline turned to anger. “I may not be trained for this, but I’m trying to focus on the job. Maybe you …” I almost said: should take care of your own people and let these people take care of themselves, but it would have been too much. I wasn’t going to turn something she’d told me in confidence into a weapon. I turned away.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that.” Then she patted my hand briefly.
We went down the stairs into the basement. I led the way again, stepping around stacks of newspapers and old board games, trays full of glass candleholders, and other crap.
I switched on the light. The Conners kept their basement relatively clear, compared with the rest of the house. There was a leather saddle up on a stand and leather-working tools laid out on a workbench.
I remembered the rumble of thunder I’d heard outside. I hadn’t heard a second one. The thunderclouds might have passed, or maybe I’d heard a rock slide and didn’t recognize the sound. Still, something felt off about it.
My iron gate twinged. I knew that feeling, and I could feel where it was coming from. I turned toward the basement window behind me.
The sapphire dog was there, peering through the window at us from outside the house. It was lying on its stomach, its bright eyes almost pressing against the glass. Its star-shaped pupils seemed to be glowing.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Behind me, I heard Catherine say: “My God, it’s beautiful.”
I could feel those waves of emotion hitting me, but I was ready this time. Palming my ghost knife, I lifted my hands toward my face. Once my arm was curled, I would throw it as hard as I could right between that thing’s eyes. If that didn’t kill it, I’d fetch that revolver and box of ammo from the kitchen.
From behind me on the left, I heard the distinctive sound of a round being chambered.
I ducked down and to the right just as a gunshot boomed beside my head. I dropped to one knee, spun, and swept my ghost knife upward.
I missed the gun in Catherine’s hand but hit her wrist. She gasped and her hand opened. The weapon clattered to the floor. I lunged for the pistol but I didn’t need to rush. She didn’t do anything but clutch her wrist and say: “I’m sorry.” I could barely hear her above the ringing in my left ear.
It was a small stainless steel Smith & Wesson with a plastic handle. Where had she gotten it? I looked back at the window. The sapphire dog was staring at me.
I’d already thrown my ghost knife at it once, when it was much closer to me, and it had vanished. Now that I’d lost the chance to surprise it, I tried something else. I lifted the S&W and emptied the clip into it.
I saw the bullet holes in the glass, so I knew some of my shots had hit their mark. The sapphire dog didn’t react at all. It didn’t recoil or flinch, and no bullet holes appeared on it. It was like shooting a hallucination.
The old woman in the kitchen above thumped her gun against the floor. I glanced up, then back at the window. The predator was gone.
Catherine stared at me sheepishly. She apologized again. The ghost knife had worked on her, even though she’d been under the sapphire dog’s influence.
“Where did you get this?” I asked, holding up the gun. I tried not to shout.
She handed me a spare magazine. “I took it off Lois Conner,” she said, and in that adrenaline-fueled moment I had no idea who she was talking about. It didn’t matter. The sapphire dog was gone, and I had to go after it.
“Go to the car,” I said. She was already nodding obediently. “Drive to the fairgrounds and wait for me. Stay away from people, okay? If you can’t avoid someone, don’t do what they ask you to do. Just do what I told you.”
“I will,” she said. Her eyes were wide and blank. “What if I see the sapphire dog?”
“You can try to run it down with the car, if you think you can hit it.” I ran for the steps, then stopped. She was still staring at me with a passive, helpless expression. “On second thought, don’t try to run it down. Don’t do anything. Just hide. Hurry.”
I ran upstairs. In the drawer by the back door, I found a flashlight. I took the phone off the hook and dialed 911. I felt a stabbing headache so strong that I could barely understand the operator who answered. Could it have been a delayed reaction to the gunshot? I said what I needed to say and hung up. My headache eased up almost immediately, and I put it out of my mind.
I ran outside. When I reached the bullet-ridden window my ghost knife was in my hand, but I didn’t have a target. The sapphire dog was gone.
The soup-can footprints were right where I expected, running along the edge of the house into the woods. I followed the trail.
Catherine came out of the house and lightly jogged toward the car. I guess that was the best version of hurry I could expect after the ghost knife had done its work on her.
She didn’t have a white mark, like Penny, but neither had Ursula. So why had my spell worked on Catherine but not Ursula? Maybe the predator had used its influence on her many times over the years. Maybe, after all that time, she had lost her ability to feel anything else, just like the people with the mark.
But this wasn’t the time to speculate. The footprints led to a horse trail. I peered into the woods, trying to see if the sapphire dog was hiding in the shadows, but I couldn’t see anything. Was it behind a bush or tree, waiting to feed on me when I got close? The thought of that bone-white tongue touching my face made me shiver. Maybe my iron gate would protect me, but I didn’t want to bet my life on it.
I turned on the flashlight. Lois Conner’s reloaded gun was in my pocket, and my ghost knif
e was in my right hand. The tracks led straight down the center of the trail—almost as if it was avoiding the greenery. I started after it.
Of course, it wasn’t native to this planet. Maybe it was afraid of the underbrush and the more mundane predators that it might run into there.
Which made me immediately think of Catherine. I couldn’t help but wonder who she might run into. What if she met the bartender again, and he invited her back to his place? Had the ghost knife taken away her ability to say no?
Damn. Maybe I should have asked her to come with me, but after I saw the look on her face, I didn’t want her anywhere near the sapphire dog. Catherine was smart and tough when she was herself, but the ghost knife turned people into victims.
The wind rustled the tree branches. I froze in place. Could the sapphire dog climb trees? It didn’t have hands or claws, but underestimating it could get me killed.
I had to put Catherine out of my mind for now. If I’d made a mistake in sending her out on her own, it was too late to fix it. I had to focus on the job at hand.
Where the hell was Pratt, anyway?
The flashlight beam could reach about ten feet—a respectable distance but not enough to show me the tops of the trees. I crouched beside a tree trunk and played the light along the path. The weird round footprints continued for as far as the beam could shine.
Of course, I’d seen the sapphire dog’s tracks lead in multiple directions—it might have left this trail for me to follow while crouching in the shadows to ambush me. I kept moving forward, putting all my thought, all my attention, into my sight and hearing. I examined every shadow, every rustle. My shoes had soaked through from the mud, and I spared a single, stupid moment envying the Fellows and their hiking boots.
Then I pushed that thought away. I crept forward, thinking about the sapphire dog, its glowing eyes, and its long, floppy ears. I didn’t know how fast it could move or how far it could travel without rest. I just kept going, determined to destroy it or be destroyed.
It didn’t ambush me, but I didn’t catch up to it, either. It was fleeing and I was being careful. I was never going to catch up to it this way. I increased my pace, my feet squishing loudly in the mud.
Game of Cages Page 19