Game of Cages

by Harry Connolly

  The woman died before Zahn finished healing, so he started eating the meat.

  “I don’t understand,” Pastor Dolan said, his voice flat and toneless. “Why didn’t you die?”

  “Of course you don’t understand,” the old man said between bites. “This world is full of things you and your food do not understand. Chief among them is me. You can’t kill me with those guns, but they do hurt. If you hurt me again, I will leave you here to starve.”

  “I don’t want to be captured again,” Dolan said. I didn’t want to look at him. I didn’t want to see the expression on his face. I also didn’t want to turn my back on Zahn.

  “The people who held you captive before didn’t understand what you are. They would have fed you if they knew how, but they didn’t. I know more about you, and I can guarantee that you—and your new selves—will never starve again.”

  New selves? That didn’t sound good.

  “I don’t want to be captured again. I nearly starved to death the last time.” Pastor Dolan’s singsong voice sounded a little closer to me.

  “You have been captured already,” Zahn said. “You and your food.”

  “I know this. I tried to escape many times.”

  “If you come away with me, I will see that you are fed. I don’t want to destroy you, like this one does.” He pointed at me. “I want to grow in power with you. Or you can starve here. The choice is yours.”

  “I don’t really have a choice,” Pastor Dolan said. “Isn’t that right?”

  The sapphire dog poked its head though the hole in the cinder block. Zahn looked at it and smiled. “It is right,” he said as he tore a long muscle out of the runner’s thigh. “You have belonged to me all along.” He stuffed the meat into his mouth, opening his jaws unnaturally wide to make it fit.

  The sapphire dog stepped through the opening in the wall and curled up on the floor. Four of the uninjured townspeople moved in front of it, blocking my view. Damn. I was probably too far to use my ghost knife anyway.

  Then Zahn turned his bloody face to me. He smiled in a way I didn’t like. “And now for you.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Without Hondo, the man holding me couldn’t keep me on the floor. He was strong, but I thrashed desperately. I knocked him down and moved away from the old man.

  Unfortunately, the sapphire dog’s pets had clustered in front of the exit, blocking it with their bodies. If I ran that way, they could simply grab me and hold me for Zahn.

  So I moved away from him in a direct line. I only managed a few steps before three or four others took hold of me. I struggled but couldn’t break free. My legs were kicked out from under me, and I fell to my knees again.

  Someone stepped on my calf, pinning it to the stone floor. The pain in my kneecap was intense. I tried to glance back to see who it was, but I didn’t have that much freedom of motion.

  Zahn stood, took a linen napkin from his pocket, and delicately wiped the blood off his face. He began to resemble the little old man I’d seen on the Wilburs’ back lawn.

  “Damn,” I said, trying to keep tremors of fear out of my voice. “You carry a napkin around? I guess cannibals never know when they’ll need to freshen up.”

  “That word holds no revulsion for me. I have done many, many things that you would consider a horror, but to me they are the price of power and extended life. I do not even think of this”—he held up the bloody cloth—“as distasteful anymore, unless they soil themselves in fear.

  “But you find many things to be a horror, yes?” He began walking toward me. I tried to move my pinned leg, but I didn’t have the leverage. “I enjoy killing your people, Mr. Twenty Palace Society. I enjoy seeing your numbers dwindle. You were so close to winning, not so many decades ago, yes? Or maybe you don’t know that. You were very close to making yourselves kings of the world.”

  He stopped in place and held his arms out as though a crowd was cheering for him. “But there were always some, like me, who refused to play by your rules. Individualists. Rebels. And how many palaces do you have left now? Eleven? Ten? Six, perhaps? And you have no more dreamers, yes? Soon your kind will be gone from the world, and free men will be free.”

  He started toward me again, taking his time. I didn’t like seeing him so confident and relaxed. I wanted to shake him up. “Free to bring predators here to feed on other people …” Maybe he no longer thought of himself as human, but I pressed on. “And feeding on them yourself, too. The world would be better off without you.”

  Zahn smiled. He should have packed some floss along with his linen napkin. “What would the world be without magic?”

  Then, finally, he stepped on the slot I’d cut in the floor.

  I said: “What would this town be without magic?” I closed my eyes and called my ghost knife.

  It cut through Zahn’s foot and flew into my open hand. The old man gasped as a jet of black steam shot out of the top of his black leather shoe. I ducked low, letting it blast over me.

  The people holding me cried out in shock and pain as the steam struck them, and I broke free. I kicked the leg of whoever was standing on me, knocking him into a pile, then dropped to the floor and rolled away from the scalding blast. With a twist of my wrist, I slid the ghost knife through the handcuff chain.

  I scrambled to my feet as Zahn fell to one knee. He clasped his hands over the energy blasting out of his foot. I charged at him, grabbed him by his scrawny neck, and scraped the ghost knife down his spine.

  Another, larger blast of black steam roared out of him. I gripped my spell in my teeth, grabbed Zahn’s leather belt, and lifted his tiny, withered body off the ground.

  I held him in front of me and ran at the human shield around the sapphire dog. The steam made the pets fall back, covering their faces and shrieking. They didn’t break and run, but they did fall.

  I spun Zahn behind me, dropping him to the floor in case more pets came at me from behind. He caught hold of the lapel of my jacket as I let him go, and I wasted precious seconds slipping out of it. Then the sapphire dog was right in front of me. I grabbed the ghost knife out of my teeth.

  The predator split into three and vanished.

  I wanted to roar in frustration, but I didn’t have the time. The pets were all around me. I dropped to the floor next to Steve’s legs. My hand fell on a gun lying against the wall, and I grabbed it, then scrambled through the hole the sapphire dog had made.

  I heard shouting and commotion behind me. A hand grabbed at my pant leg, but I fought free. The second hole to the outside was just a couple of feet away. I scrambled through.

  Then I was outside. I ran, holding the found gun by the barrel.

  I heard two quick gunshots, but I had no idea if the shooter was aiming at me. I ran through the tents to make myself a more difficult target. I felt faster without my jacket, but that wasn’t going to last. I was cold, wet, and hungry. The only real weapon I had was my ghost knife, which was useless against the pets. If the old man summoned another floating storm, I was dead.

  I stole a cinnamon bun out of a booth and, still running, took a bite. It was sweet and sticky and exactly the fuel I needed.

  There was movement ahead. A teenage boy stepped out from behind a plastic tent. He raised an old revolver, but I was too fast for him. I hit him hard and ripped the gun out of his hand as he fell.

  I passed the last of the stalls and hit open ground. There were no more pets in front of me, but there were plenty behind. I could hear them yelling instructions to one another. I would have guessed that, with the predator in their heads, they wouldn’t need to talk to one another, but that wasn’t the way it worked, apparently.

  I had five options: the two feeder roads across the open field; the parking-lot exit; the horse trail that connected the fairgrounds with the stables; and finally the pastor’s church and ruined house. The feeder roads and parking lot pretty much guaranteed I’d be shot. The horse trail was the safest in the short term, but the locals knew the landscape
and would run me to ground eventually.

  The last choice had something the others didn’t—Annalise. Even if she couldn’t help me—and I hoped she was still alive and dangerous, even if only barely—I couldn’t leave her behind. Besides, I hoped she would have something I needed.

  So I ran toward the rubble of the pastor’s house, swerving erratically in case someone took another shot.

  At the edge of the field, I scrambled up the small hill bordering the church property. A bullet smacked into the dirt beside me, and goose bumps ran down my back.

  When I made it to the top of the hill, I looked back. The people of Washaway, teen to senior citizen, ran toward me in a straggling mob, weaving between the stalls. A few carried guns, but most had other weapons.

  I turned back toward the church. Waterproof Cowboy and his crew lay scattered across the grass. All of their guns were slag, and all of their heads were missing.

  I ran toward the rubble of the pastor’s collapsed house. I remembered the way parts of the building seemed to vanish and hoped Annalise hadn’t vanished with it.

  There. Annalise lay motionless beneath a pile of scorched wood. I stuffed both guns into the back of my waistband and hauled her out by the wrist. She was even smaller than Zahn, but the wood was heavy and the nails snagged on her clothes. It took three tries to heave her into my arms. She wasn’t missing any limbs and I couldn’t see any blood, but she looked like just another corpse.

  Damn. Annalise couldn’t help. The pets were nearly at the bottom of the hill.

  The back door to the church was only a few yards away. I ran for it, cradling Annalise in my arms. “Wakey, boss.” I lifted her onto my shoulder. “Now would be a good time to wake up.”

  The fastest of the pets had reached the bottom of the hill. I had the ghost knife in hand, ready to cut through the lock, but the door swung inward when I turned the knob. Thank God for country churches.

  I rushed into the food bank and set Annalise on the floor, then I slammed the door and flipped the dead bolt lever to lock it.

  The room was dark. I switched on the light. Hands jiggled the knob and fists pounded at the main door behind us. I put my shoulder against one of the metal shelves and tipped it against the door, pinning it shut.

  I ran back across the room into the church. There was a dead bolt on the main door and I threw it closed, but the bright, beautiful stained-glass windows in here weren’t going to keep anyone out.

  I rushed back into the food bank and locked the door. After I wedged a high-backed wooden chair under the doorknob, I knelt by Annalise.

  A gunshot blasted through the back door. I tipped over another shelf and wedged it against the upper part of the doorway.

  Bullets pinged around me. The tilted shelf had spilled seven or eight fifty-pound bags of flour onto the floor, and I sprawled behind them. I kicked the pastor’s desk against the wall to make room. Bags of dirt would have protected me better, but this was the best I could do.

  I grabbed Annalise and dragged her across the floor toward my meager shelter. I had missed my chance to kill the sapphire dog, but I wasn’t ready to give up. Unfortunately, I wasn’t going to get at the predator until I’d gotten through its pets first. The two guns jabbing into my hip bones might have helped me with that, but I didn’t want to start gunning down innocent people who couldn’t control themselves because I couldn’t do my fucking job. I didn’t care what the sapphire dog had done to them, I didn’t want to fight them.

  What I wanted was the white ribbon Annalise had used to make that man outside the Sunset fall unconscious.

  I searched through her jacket, remembering Penny and Little Mark lying dead on the floor of a tiny jail cell, and Pippa falling onto her back. Maybe if I killed the sapphire dog, the pets really could go back to being themselves again. Maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t fall over dead. But I had to be quick, because I didn’t know how much time the pets had left, and bullets were still coming through the door.

  Annalise looked uninjured, but she was completely still. I couldn’t even tell if she was breathing or not. It was as if Zahn had switched her off.

  The white ribbon wasn’t there. I searched again. She only had two ribbons left. Both were green. I knew what they could do, and it was most definitely lethal.

  I spit out a string of curses. The sounds of breaking glass came from the church, then a series of gunshots blew through the door. I knew they would be in the room in a minute or two, and I knew what that would mean.

  I stuffed the green ribbons into my pocket. I wouldn’t use them—I knew I wouldn’t—but I wanted to have them just in case.

  The gunshots stopped and the kicking began. The mob was trying to bash their way in—even the dead-bolted door that led into the church rattled under the assault. They were coming from all sides. I scrambled to my feet and shoved over the last of the shelves, tipping it against the interior church door just as it began to swing open. I ducked back under cover.

  I took the guns out of the back of my pants, then laid Annalise on top of the bags of flour. Her tattoos made her bulletproof; the same spells that had protected her from Merpati’s gunmen would protect her from the pets’ guns—and they’d protect me, too, if I stayed low enough. That was as much barricade as I was likely to get.

  I aimed the old revolver at the door. Damn. Was I really going to do this?

  Do what you have to do, Catherine had said. Whatever it takes. I remembered little Shannon Conner looking up at me, pleading with me to kill the sapphire dog and give her grandmother back to her.

  When was I going to stop holding back?

  I squeezed off four shots. A return volley immediately blasted through the door and wall. The bullets poured through like hail, a terrifying mix of rifle and handgun and shotgun blasts.

  My skin prickled as I lay flat. I’d never heard such a deafening wall of gunfire, and I thought the incredible, oppressive sound of it alone might kill me.

  The volley ended quickly. My ears were ringing, but I could still hear the clicking of empty weapons.

  Morning sunlight shone through the holes in the walls like a rack of spears, illuminating the floating plaster dust. I lifted both guns and squeezed the triggers until they were empty.

  A second volley came through, but the gunfire was thinner and more scattered. A ricochet tugged at the heel of my shoe, but it didn’t touch me. Finally, the shots petered out and all I could hear was the clicking of empty guns.

  The pets began to smash through the walls with rifle butts, expanding the openings. I lifted Annalise onto the desk, taking care not to kick the cord of the portable stereo. The ceiling was unfinished, and I could see water pipes and BX cable running between the rafters. I jumped onto the desk and stood over her. With my ghost knife, I cut a two-and-a-half-foot length out of the water pipe. Water gushed freely onto the tile floor as I hefted it. It was heavy, but it would have to do.

  More arms and legs were pushing through the growing gaps in the wall. The pets who had been smashing against the interior church door had quit, probably to come around the building. They kicked and bashed at the wall and door, then started trying to squirm through. All I could do was wait.

  I reached down and pressed Play on Dolan’s portable stereo. It was the old-fashioned kind that played CDs. After a couple of seconds, a Spanish guitar version of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” began to play. Holiday music? It was one more reason to hate the world. I watched the pets breaking in.

  The waiting was miserable, and my helplessness and fear made me want to scream. I didn’t. I stayed silent and still, and I funneled everything I had into a furious red rage.

  If only I had Zahn in front of me, or Stroud, the man who gave the predator to Regina so many years ago. Whether I was a match for them or not, they were the ones I wanted to face. Because of them, the sapphire dog was here and alive, and maybe it would get free again and do this over and over all around the world. All this death and misery was the reason the society fought a
nd killed. Because of this. This.

  But I couldn’t vent my rage at Zahn or Stroud because I didn’t have them here; I only had the crazed, ruined people of Washaway. I knew the pets weren’t in control of themselves. I knew the sapphire dog was really to blame for the death of Little Mark and so many others. But my anger wasn’t logical, and it was so terribly, terribly strong.

  Someone wrenched the bullet-ridden door open, shattering the hinges and opening a space big enough for a person to enter. It was Bushy Bill Stookie, and I was almost grateful to him that the fight would finally start.

  He laid his meaty hands on the metal shelving and pushed at it, scraping it across the wet tile floor. Others pushed at him to get by, and by then one of the holes in the wall was large enough for more people to squeeze through.

  They were all men in this first wave—all strong and heavy, with baseball bats and rifle butts and iron mallets. They sloshed through the water, climbing over the toppled metal shelves toward me. Someone outside let out a trilling, alien war cry, and everyone took it up. They howled as they came at me.

  I kicked the portable stereo off the desk. It landed in the water still pouring out of the overhead pipe and splashed onto the tile floor.

  Nine men froze in place, muscles twitching. I made sure to count them carefully, so I wouldn’t forget. A big, brawny woman pushed through the crowd and stepped into the water. She grimaced and jolted up straight. Ten.

  Then the room went dark and silent. Everyone collapsed over the metal shelves, and the woman fell backward through the doorway, bowling through the crowd behind her. So much for saving them from the sapphire dog.

  The only light I had left was the daylight shining through the door and the damaged walls. The people pushing their way into the room now were little more than backlit silhouettes. At least I wouldn’t have to see their faces.

  They were coming with knives, woodworking tools, axe handles, and empty guns. I lifted the iron pipe high and held my left arm low. I didn’t have a shield; the tattoos on my forearm would have to do. I put the ghost knife between my teeth. They let out another war scream—a piercing animalistic keening—and I felt like screaming right back at them, but I kept it inside instead, channeling that raw energy to my arms and eyes.