The first guy to get close tripped over Big Bill and fell to his knee in front of me, so I smashed the pipe against his shoulder, knocking him against the one behind him, then I hit the next one hard on the edge of the wrist, sending his hammer bounding off the wall just as two more came close, keeping their balance better this time, and I smashed elbow and shoulder as fast and as hard as I could, blocking a sharpened hoe with my protected arm, but now the pets were crowding in, stumbling sometimes but not enough for me to keep ahead of every swing, of every hand reaching for me, of every sound they made, because I wasn’t even looking at their faces anymore, I didn’t have time to guess the attack they’d make based on their eyes or body position, they were just a mass of bodies rushing at me, and I laid out with my pipe, swinging everywhere with all my strength against people I’d told Catherine I didn’t want to hurt but here I was, breaking arms and collarbones, and the first time a bat struck the bony point of my hip, the pain frightened and enraged me so much that I smashed the man wielding it right on the side of his head, and then every dark shape seemed to be tinged with red as I slapped away attacks with my forearm and crushed bones with the pipe even though many of them didn’t even have weapons, just hands that reached to pull me down, so I smashed those, too, watching for knives and swings for my head, and I smashed wrists and elbows and collarbones and fragile, fragile skulls as the pets kept coming for me, climbing over the ones I broke, stumbling, slipping in water and blood and tripping over fallen bodies, then I felt a sudden sharp pain in my calf and looked down to see a girl no older than thirteen stabbing a long knife into my leg, and my fury and adrenaline and hatred and rage made it so easy—so easy!—to slam that iron pipe across both her little arms and I know she screamed even though I couldn’t hear it over the noise the other pets were making but God I saw her expression and the whole world should have stopped right at that moment but they kept coming and I kept fighting and I knew right then that it didn’t matter whether I lived through this, in fact better if I didn’t because I was becoming everything that was raw and evil in this world and I didn’t deserve to be in it anymore, so I screamed, finally, letting out all my anger and hatred at predators and peers and most of all myself for what I was doing, because I was not going to stop, not ever, until I had done this damn job, and the ghost knife that fell out of my mouth began to zip around the room with the speed of a sparrow, circling me like a rock on a string, and I just kept hitting and hitting, because I wasn’t tired at all, evil men never tire of doing evil.
Then one of them—Ponytail Sue—finally got the idea to kick the desk I was standing on. It skidded to the side and I overbalanced, falling into the pets. They were crammed together as tightly as kids at the front of a rock concert. I swung at the nearest one, but three or four people caught my arm and the pipe was yanked out of my grip.
They grabbed me, hands everywhere, pulling my clothes, my hair, my skin, scratching me, screaming at me, bearing me to the floor. Two inches of water splashed up my nose and down my throat. With my free left hand, I reached into my pocket and pulled out one of Annalise’s green ribbons, and as I sloshed on the floor, I looked up and saw two kids, neither older than sixteen, lunging for me with knives in their hands and cold, raging murder in their eyes. I slapped the ribbon onto the top of someone’s red rubber boot, and I saw the green firelight shine on them.
I closed my eyes. What happened next was something I could not watch.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
When the sound of the fire and the throbbing of the protective spells on my chest finally died away, I opened my eyes again. The room was full of bones. The water sloshed back and forth, and soot and ash made a greasy film on top.
Some of those bones were small. Very small.
Annalise was still lying on top of the desk, and as I expected, she wasn’t even singed. I kept looking at her, so small and frail-seeming, but so filled with power, because I didn’t want to look at what I’d done.
A shadow moved on the wall. I turned back and saw another person at the door. There were two more behind him and who knows how many I couldn’t see.
My dirty work wasn’t finished. I moved my foot through the murky water until I found my length of pipe, then I pulled it out of a pile of bones. They came at me.
“They” were a skinny boy of about fourteen, a middle-aged woman with the hunched back of a vulture, and an old man with too much belly and too little biceps. They were all holding hatchets. I could see by their expressions that they weren’t going to back down. I didn’t need them to. I had my pipe.
It took less than half a minute for me to put all three on the ground. I left them alive because I could, but they wouldn’t be bothering anyone for a while.
They screamed curses at me. I was the one who wanted to kill their beloved sapphire dog, and they were sure I deserved to die. I didn’t bother to disagree. I felt my ghost knife nearby and called it to me. For once, it didn’t feel good to have it back. I dragged the last three pets outside.
I carried Annalise to her van and laid her in the back. Then I found a tow truck near the edge of the parking lot with a full ashtray and a pile of fast-food wrappers on the floor. I cracked the ignition and backed it into the corner of the church, smashing through the wood frame and breaking partway inside.
Then I cut my way into the building with the ghost knife and made a slit in the truck’s gas tank. I used a book of matches to set a grease-stained brown paper bag alight and let the flames spread. The pews were already engulfed when I ran back to the van.
Someone was going to investigate the deaths in Washaway. Someday. The fire was clumsy, but it would at least explain away the charred bones I’d left behind, as long as no one thought too hard about it.
I had Annalise and I had the van. Leaving town didn’t make sense, but I could certainly hide inside Steve’s house until another peer arrived. How long could that be? I’d failed to kill the sapphire dog more than once, and now it was with Zahn, a sorcerer strong enough to take out my boss. Sure, I’d surprised him once with a sucker punch, but he’d be ready for me next time. It wasn’t as if I had a big bag of tricks.
I had every reason to run. I didn’t even know where Zahn had gone, and I certainly wasn’t going to drive around looking for his Mercedes with more pets on the loose.
But then I realized there was only one way to transport the sapphire dog.
I turned the key in the ignition and pulled into the road.
My calf started to ache. I looked down and saw blood on my pants. I’d been stabbed. I was also wet, jacketless, and a fucking child-killer. I began to shiver and had to pull to the shoulder of the road until the feeling passed.
I turned the heat on and held my fingers in front of the vent. Then I found a first-aid kit behind the seat and taped a wad of gauze over the stab wound. It wasn’t a large cut, certainly not large enough to kill over. I rubbed my hands together to warm them. I’d think about those people tomorrow. Not today. Today I would think about the ones who still needed killing.
I drove past the Breakleys’ home and up the long hill toward the Wilbur estate. The gate was wide open. I drove up the long empty driveway and parked just out of sight of the house.
“Don’t go anywhere, boss.”
I climbed from the van and closed the door as quietly as I could. There was no sound other than the wind through the trees. I jogged uphill toward the house, keeping low.
Beside the house, at the edge of the asphalt parking lot, I found Esteban’s plumbing truck. I went around to the other side and found a half dozen corpses. They were pets, and they had been beaten to death. The nearest one was the pastor—he had a dent in the side of his head about the size of Zahn’s fist.
I couldn’t beat Zahn in a fair fight, and I didn’t see any reason to try. I ran to the corner of the building, squeezed between it and two well-trimmed bushes. The unlit woven Christmas lights snagged at my shirt. I peeked into the nearest window. The room had stacks of fabric and a littl
e sewing machine set where it would catch the sun. No people, though.
I heard broken glass from the backyard. I hoped it was Zahn.
I was only going to get one chance. Jumping out of the bushes wasn’t good enough. I needed to hit him before he knew he was being hit.
I cut the lock on the front door, then rushed into the entrance hall. The house was dark, quiet, and smelled like spoiled pork. I rushed to the nearest door on the left and pushed it open. The stink of rotting flesh washed over me. Stephanie Wilbur lay on the floor, still in her green-and-gold outfit, and it was clear she’d been there awhile. Someone had shot her in the chest and closed the door on her.
I hurried to the windows. There were three of them, each twice as tall as me and arched at the top, but made of individual squares of glass no larger than my hand. They gave me a good view of the open back of the truck. I crouched low and pressed my face against the glass, looking toward the backyard. I couldn’t see far.
I heard them before I saw them. I stepped away from the window and curled my arm against my chest, ghost knife ready. They were talking very loudly, very excitedly. Or one of them was. Zahn spoke German in a low, somewhat bemused voice, while the other voice was loud but halting, as though the speaker was struggling with the language.
Then they came into view. Zahn was carrying the Plexiglas cage from the cottage, and Ursula was carrying a car battery. The sapphire dog lounged on the bottom of the pen, brightly lit by the floodlights at the corners. It was facing away from me. Ursula babbled enthusiastically.
They did not look up at the house and did not suspect I was watching. When they came about even with me, I threw the ghost knife.
There was only one target that made sense. Ursula wasn’t important, and Zahn was too powerful for me to take on. Any fight between us would just set the predator free again and get me killed.
So I aimed straight for the back of the sapphire dog’s neck. This time, the creature was facing away from me and trapped inside Zahn’s cage. This time it couldn’t get away. The ghost knife sliced through the window pane with only a slight tik, and then it was through the Plexi and the predator.
I immediately called it back. It zipped through the sapphire dog’s neck a second time. The creature’s head tipped forward and rolled free in the bottom of the cage.
The ghost knife landed in my hand at the same moment that Zahn reacted. He said: “Ah!” and gaped at the predator.
Both of them looked up at me. Ursula glanced at the predator, threw the car battery onto the wet lawn, and turned back at me, her face wild with hate. Then she took off toward the front of the building.
Zahn dropped the now-dark Plexiglas cage. “Scheiss doch!” he said, his voice seeming to come from everywhere at once. He raised his arm toward me and opened his palm.
Six shining, buzzing objects came at me, wavering like guided missiles and leaving glowing silver contrails behind them.
Time to go.
I ran for the door, hopping over Stephanie’s corpse. The missiles punched through the window glass, and I saw they weren’t missiles at all—they were some sort of worm as long and as thick as my thumb, and the little round opening at the front was ringed with tiny, jagged teeth.
Damn. Annalise was wrong. Zahn had brought predators with him.
I rushed into the main hall just as Ursula burst through the front door. She raised a rock the size of a woman’s shoe above her head and charged at me, screaming. Guess she’d run out of guns.
I ran at her because I refused to run away. Two of the worms punched through the wall on the right, then two more came a moment behind. Three turned toward me, but the farthest one began to arc toward Ursula.
Damn. As they came close to me, I juked to the left. The worms zipped by, and just being near them made my skin feel sticky and hot. Ursula kept running straight at me—either she didn’t notice the predator flying at her, or she didn’t care.
I threw my ghost knife. It zipped across the room with astonishing speed and sliced through the worm as it came within inches of her flank. The worm disappeared and reappeared at the spot where it had punched through the wall. It went after her again, and since she was coming at me, it was flying at both of us.
I reached for my ghost knife again but didn’t watch for it to come into my hand. I had predators on both sides of me and Ursula, too. Not good. And where were the other two worms?
There were stairs at the far side of the room, but I wasn’t going to get to them without a fight. Ursula swung the rock in a vicious downward hammer swing, but she’d telegraphed it from ten feet away. I slipped it, grabbed hold of the collar of her ski jacket, and tugged her off course. She stumbled into the sewing room door, smashing through it and sprawling on the floor.
Right beside Stephanie’s body. And there, sticking out of Stephanie’s corpse, were the tail ends of two shiny worms, wriggling like they were burrowing into an apple. Just as I’d hoped.
I charged into the room and hauled Stephanie’s body off the ground. It felt sluggish and heavy, and the room filled with a nasty wet odor. I forced myself to ignore all that and rushed toward the door, getting between Ursula and Zahn’s predators.
All four worms zipped straight into the dead body, attracted to whatever meat they could find. And while I knew the society didn’t want me to use them against a human enemy like Ursula, I didn’t think they’d mind if I used a corpse as a shield.
Then Stephanie’s head jerked up. She opened her rotted eyes and looked directly at me.
I screamed something unintelligible and shoved her, stumbling, into the main room. I heard Ursula getting to her feet behind me, and I ducked through the door. I didn’t want my enemies on both sides of me.
Stephanie wobbled, barely able to keep her balance, as the worms disappeared under her stained clothes. Ursula had found a pair of scissors somewhere and was cursing at me in her native language, whatever it was, as she stumbled through the door. I backed away from them both, wondering how I would get to the hall, then the kitchen, and finally the back door, because I expected Zahn to step through the open front door at any moment. And I knew I’d be a dead man if he found me here.
A blast of white fire tore through the wall near the front door. The flames looked like they were roaring through an invisible hose four feet thick, and the spell came from the same spot where Zahn had been standing when I hit the sapphire dog. Maybe he wasn’t coming through the front door after all.
The white fire began to sweep slowly across the room like a flashlight beam, incinerating doors, walls, and support posts. I heard, again, the sound of screaming that I’d heard when the pastor’s house had been destroyed, but because I was close to the spell, I could tell that it wasn’t just one scream but dozens, maybe hundreds of voices—as if the fire still held the deaths of all the lives it had taken.
I jumped back, hitting the edge of the stairs, then vaulted up onto them. Ursula threw herself to the floor as the beam of fire reached her, and Stephanie—or the creatures inside her—didn’t have the same control. It seemed to suddenly lose all strength and collapsed to the floor.
The fire churned through the opposite wall, then dipped down through the floor. I retreated upstairs, watching the bottom of the staircase burn to ashes.
Then the fire stopped. The scorched edges of the wooden floor and walls sputtered with pale flames for a moment but quickly went out. A loud crash from the left drew my attention, and I saw the wall buckle.
Ursula stared up at me from the floor. Her face was pale and her eyes wide with shock. Death had come awfully close to her. She turned and scrambled on her hands and knees toward the front door. Stephanie was nowhere in sight. Hopefully, she’d burned to cinders.
I glanced to my right and looked through the hole that blast of fire had bored through the house. There was Zahn, still standing just where I’d left him, Plexi cage on the ground at his side. The cage looked different—rounder—but I didn’t have the time to study it. Zahn smiled, dre
w his arm back, and made a throwing motion. A chunk of the wall disappeared at the edge of the fire-blasted hole, then another, larger piece of the wall between the sewing room and the room I was in popped out of existence.
Whatever it was, it was coming right at me.
I sprinted up the stairs and leaped to the left. The invisible thing he’d thrown passed behind me, erasing the steps and wiping away part of the upstairs floor. And it had grown larger, too. I looked through the hole it left at the open mountainside and wondered just how far it would go before the spell stopped turning something into nothing.
Just ahead was the servants’ stairs leading down to the back door. I ran to the top as another jet of white fire swept through the floor below, destroying the lower flight and wall beyond the way a lazy hand might clear fog off a misty window.
I turned and ran back the other way, leaping over the gap in the floor. The whole building shifted and jolted, and I fell to the threadbare carpet. Somewhere close, lumber cracked and splintered, making noises as loud as gunshots. I needed to get out of this house and out of Zahn’s sights as fast as I could, and the most direct way was through the big arching front windows.
The room with the white sheets over the furniture was just ahead. I lunged upward and threw my shoulder against the door. It didn’t open—it broke into pieces, already cracked from the collapsing jamb above it.
Once through, I fell to the floor, sliding on my knees along the sloping floorboards. The room was collapsing toward a huge hole in the center, and I could see the piles of basement clutter all the way down at the bottom.
The whole house shuddered. A wardrobe tilted away from the wall and slammed to the floor. I struggled to my feet as it slid at me, and I tried to jump up and run along the flat back of it but ended up clumsily stumbling across it instead.
Game of Cages Page 30