"If the highway patrol comes by, tell them you stopped to rest for a few minutes. Drive off, and come back here to pick me up in an hour or so."
"Robby," Harper said in a tight voice, "what if something happens to you and you can't get back?"
"Don't worry."
"But how will I know?"
"I'll be back. But, just in case, if I'm not back in two hours-"
"One hour, Robby. The circus isn't that big."
"Ninety minutes. If I'm not here, call the highway patrol or the county sheriff."
"But what are you looking for, Robby? What am I supposed to tell them?"
"Tell them the person or persons responsible for the so-called werewolf killings travels with the circus, as well as the werewolf itself, and that they should come in to get me in a big hurry."
Harper's mouth dropped open, but before she could say anything I got out of the car, quickly closing the door so as to shut off the interior light, and walked across the highway. I hopped over a steel guardrail, navigated a water-filled ditch, and began running, keeping low, toward the circus.
I reached the midway, stayed in the moon shadows next to the huge Ferris wheel for two minutes, watching and listening for guards. There didn't appear to be any, at least not in my immediate vicinity. I made my way past the still rides and shuttered concession stands, angling around toward the penning area at the far side of the Big Top. I was more than a little curious to see what animals, if any, Arlen Zelezian was keeping in his pens or his semis, besides the usual circus menagerie. I was fairly certain Mabel was going to smell me, but I could only hope she wouldn't cause a fuss; it was definitely not the time for a reprise of our earlier reunion scene.
As I moved around the perimeter of the Big Top, I noticed a pale sliver of light spilling out into the night from beneath a loose flap. I could think of no reason why a light should be on in the tent in the middle of the night, and it seemed worthwhile investigating. I got down on my belly, crawled under the canvas flap, and found myself beneath a bank of bleachers. There was a single spotlight turned on in the rigging above, and it was shining directly down into the ring. I moved to the aisle between bleacher sections, eased myself up to where I could peer over the seats and get a clear view of what was happening in the ring. When I did, my heart began to pound in my chest.
Luther, dressed in jeans, brown leather boots, and a gray sweatshirt, was crouched in almost the exact center of the ring. He was facing and talking in low tones that were at once soothing and commanding to a creature that looked like a huge dog or wolf, but which I knew was neither.
For one thing, this animal had extended canines that Nate Button had never mentioned, saber teeth that reminded me somewhat of the kind of wax vampire fangs children wear at Halloween-except there was no doubt in my mind that these teeth were very real and very sharp. There was a cage on wheels, its door open, at the far end of the ring, and from the tension exuded by both man and beast, I suspected the creature had just been set free. The animal was about the size of a large mastiff, with a very broad rib cage, but it had the long, spindly legs and enormous paws of a wolf. Its coat was a rusty, buff color, and it had black stripes running lengthwise down its back. There was a thick ruff around its neck, like a lion's mane. It had a squarish face, a large muzzle marked by gaping, black leather nostrils, and a predator's close-set eyes.
Luther had faced bears and tigers without so much as a stick in his hand, but he now wore a.357 Magnum in a holster strapped around his waist.
I now regretted even more the fact that I didn't have a gun as the animal looked away from Luther-toward me.
The damn thing knew I was there.
Luther, never taking his eyes off the creature in front of him, slowly straightened up. He removed the Magnum from its holster, cocked the weapon. The animal seemed to be familiar with the gun, and perhaps even had some idea of what it could do; it reacted to the loud click of metal on metal by stepping back a pace and baring its fangs. The enormous saber canines glistened with saliva.
"All right," Luther said loudly over his shoulder, still never looking away from the creature in front of him, "bring her in."
The backside of the heavyset man with the potbelly and bulbous nose who had been following Harper and me on the midway suddenly emerged from the tunnel leading to the penning area. The rest of him-clad from head to toe in a heavily padded uniform and wearing a baseball catcher's mask- emerged, and then I could see that he was dragging a heavy, wheeled cage identical to the one already in the ring that had held the first creature. This cage contained a smaller version of the animal standing in the ring-grayer in color, more like a wolf, lacking the heavy ruff, sharply delineated black stripes, and with less pronounced canines. It was a bitch of the species, and she was in heat. Draped over the end of the cage was the soiled khaki safari jacket Nate Button had been wearing.
The huge buff-colored male stiffened at the sight of the bitch, and a tremor ran through its body, but it did not move from its position. The man with the potbelly glanced nervously in the direction of the male, then quickly stepped around behind the cage holding the female.
I felt a hand touch my shoulder, and I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I jumped, but somehow managed to stifle a shout. I wheeled around to find that the hand belonged to Harper, who was standing just behind me.
She leaned very close to me, whispered, "That's a lobox, isn't it? And that's the jacket that professor was wearing."
It was not the time or place for a conversation, whispered or not. I put my finger to my lips and shook my head, then pushed her back and under the bleachers before turning my attention back to the tableau in the dirt ring.
The creature certainly was a lobox, or something very close to it-as close as Arlen Zelezian was likely to get after a decade or more of teasing and leaching past horrors from present genes, breeding wolves and dogs, matching for tiny retrograde genetic factors, bringing this creature back from extinction by mining the shadowy genetic repositories of its closest modern ancestors. Despite my revulsion at what I was certain Zelezian had opted to do with the creature, I could not help but be impressed. The lobox, this beast with a taste for human flesh that had terrorized early man and perhaps contributed to the Neanderthal's extinction, was absolutely magnificent.
The presence of the lobox bitch in estrus continued to have a galvanizing effect on the male; it stood very stiffly, ruff slightly raised, its hide quivering-but it remained where it was. A powerful tribute, I thought, to Luther Zelezian. The trainer, still keeping his eyes fastened on the creature, sidled backward toward the closed cage, ignoring the sudden growling and thrashing of the animal inside it. He took the safari jacket off the top of the cage, dipped a corner of it in the bloody estral fluids at the bottom of the cage, then nodded to the potbellied man, who quickly wheeled the lobox bitch back into the recesses of the tunnel.
"Kill," Luther said in an even tone as he casually tossed the soiled jacket off to his left.
The lobox sprang forward like something shot from a rocket launcher, then leaped high in the air in a stiff-legged manner that reminded me of a fox pouncing. In the brief moments that it arched through the air, I could see long, curved claws-including one at the rear of the footpad-unsheathed, claws that were more like a tiger's than a wolfs or dog's.
The rear, opposable, claw was exactly where Nate Button had said it would be.
And then the creature was at the jacket, using its claws to pin the material to the ground while it tore at it with its long, gleaming fangs. Within moments the jacket had been ripped to shreds-just as its owner, the man whose body odor permeated the fabric, would be if and when this animal was released to track him down. Luther had found a most effective technique for priming the killer beast to track and kill a selected victim by using elemental forces-the pleasure, the promise, of sex, combined with a fear of whatever punishment the animal understood to be represented by the gun, probably the ear-shattering report that would result i
f the Magnum was fired.
I hoped Nate Button was a long way from the area, but I strongly suspected he was not. The fact that Luther had his jacket, and was using it to prime the lobox, had to mean that the scientist was a captive, or was somewhere within the lobox's scent range-which Button had indicated might be as much as ten miles, or even more. It meant Button, despite my discouraging remarks, hadn't given up on his lobox theory. What he had undoubtedly done was to get a map and compare the killing sites with the location of the circus on each date, and then speculated correctly just where a large predator could hide out between killing onslaughts. It was why he had been in the audience earlier in the evening. After the performance he had decided to look around for a "werewolf” and been caught at it. An article of his clothing had been taken from him.
Just as articles of clothing had been taken from Harper and me. The Zelezians, father and son, were taking no chances.
"Back," Luther commanded, and again cocked the hammer of his weapon.
The lobox hesitated, caught between the frenzy whipped up by his natural instincts, the smell of the estral fluids, and Luther's training.
Luther reached around with his left hand to put his index finger in his right ear, aimed the revolver into the dirt, and pulled the trigger. The explosion of the gun reverberated throughout the tent. The animal jumped back, stood for a few moments with its hide quivering, then slowly walked back to the position where it had previously been standing.
"Sit," Luther said evenly.
The animal sat down on its haunches-and once again turned its head to look in our direction. Then it bared its fangs and growled.
Luther, who had started across the ring to retrieve the shreds of Nate Button's safari jacket, suddenly stopped, tensed, looked up in the direction of where we were shrouded in darkness.
The lobox growled again, louder.
It seemed like an excellent time to beat a hasty retreat; but it was, of course, too late.
"Here," Luther commanded. When the lobox's head turned in his direction, he first pointed out in the darkness, then squatted down and slowly drew a line in the dirt with his finger. "Track! Now!"
The lobox rose from its haunches, ambled across the ring, jumped over the six-inch-high wooden apron defining the dirt ring, then loped lazily down the sawdust track, heading directly toward us. It definitely did not bode well, I thought.
"Oh, God," Harper said in a strangled, thoroughly frightened voice as she grabbed my right arm with both her hands and tried to pull me back down the aisle.
"No," I said in as normal a voice as I could manage under the circumstances. I grabbed her wrist, pulled her up beside me. "We can't outrun it. Don't move at all, Harper-unless it comes at me. If it does, then get back out under the tent, run like hell, and climb the first tall thing you come to. Otherwise, stay very still."
"Robby, I'm-"
"Don't move," I repeated, and then stepped out from the darkness between the bleacher sections into the twilight aura at the edge of the pool of light cast by the arc lamp above the ring. I stood in the center of the sawdust track, hands at my sides, and faced the beast coming at me. "All right, Luther," I continued evenly, "you've got me. Call Fido off."
"Actually, Frederickson," Luther said casually, "I'm almost as curious as you are to see what's going to happen." He walked across the ring, put one foot up on the apron, rested his left hand on his hip. The hand with the gun was hanging at his side. "We haven't spent much time at all practicing this particular procedure. It will be interesting to see what the animal does."
The lobox kept coming at me at a steady pace, its mouth open. With its gaping nostrils and saber teeth, its facial expression reminded me of something like a loony grin; I would almost have found it amusing if I hadn't known that this was death's smile.
When the animal was about ten paces away, Luther cocked the gun. "Stay!" he commanded.
The lobox kept coming until it was only five paces away, then abruptly stopped, sat on its haunches, and stared at me with golden eyes with black irises that were bright with intelligence and seemed almost human. Its mouth opened even wider in a kind of yawn, and its pink tongue lolled from its black leather lips. Its huge nostrils quivered slightly, as if it wanted to get a new, improved, sniff of me. Its head was at about a level with mine, and again it struck me how the damn thing almost looked as if it was smiling.
I tensed as I felt, rather than heard, Harper come up behind me, and a moment later I felt her hands on both my shoulders.
I appreciated her courage, her willingness to stand with me in the face of a totally unpredictable creature that could tear us both apart in seconds, but her action wasn't the thing to do; now, if one of us died, the other was certain to die also. Once, just once, I wished she would do something I asked her to. There was no longer any possibility of escape for her-if there ever had been.
Luther stepped over the wooden apron, strolled down the sawdust track toward us. I followed his progress with my peripheral vision, never taking my eyes off the animal squatting on its haunches in front of me; one lunge, and it would have my face in its jaws.
"I'm sorry I can't offer you and Miss Rhys-Whitney a drink this time, Frederickson," Luther continued, a hint of what almost sounded like genuine regret in his voice. "You've created an impossible situation."
"What's the problem, Luther? I don't care what hours you keep, and I've seen trainers work with, uh. . dogs before."
Luther slowly shook his head. He knew, of course, that I knew the creature with the golden eyes, gaping nostrils, and saber teeth was no dog. I'd wanted to at least try to give him an out, but he obviously felt he couldn't afford to take it. "You should have minded your own business, Frederickson. And you should have been more patient. I wasn't entirely truthful with you earlier this evening."
"You don't say?"
"We're almost finished with the circus. It will be up for sale. You could have had it. But then, you haven't been entirely truthful with us either, have you? I can't help but wonder if you were ever truly interested in buying this circus."
"If you're all getting ready to move out, does that mean you think you've killed enough people?" I nodded in the direction of the magnificent, bright-eyed animal in front of me. "How many of these little cuties do you have?"
"A sufficient breeding stock."
"All as well trained as this one?"
Luther shrugged, pursed his lips, ran his free hand over his shaved skull. "I'm not sure 'trained' is an appropriate word to use with this animal. It's controlled."
"By the promise of sex, the cocking sound and report of your gun."
"Yes," Luther said easily.
His response seemed to indicate that he didn't at all mind talking about what he had done and how he had done it, and I thought that was probably a bad omen. Still, I was curious, and I couldn't see how we could get into any deeper trouble than we already had. "Interesting," I said.
"More interesting than you understand, Frederickson. It's not just the sounds of the gun that control the animal. It understands that the gun kills."
"What have you killed with it?"
"Chickens. Killing a chicken with a Magnum makes for a most effective demonstration."
"I'll bet. You're saying that you think it understands death, that it can make a connection between the thing that was blown apart and itself?"
"Yes. It's very intelligent; it's probably the most intelligent creature on the face of the earth today, with the exception of humans-although I'm often led to question just how intelligent, as opposed to instinctual, humans really are."
"Intelligent is one thing, true self-awareness is another. To understand death is to have self-awareness. You think this animal has that?"
Again, Luther shrugged his broad shoulders. "I suspect so. Indeed, I'm quite certain whales and dolphins have a strong sense of self. I suspect all of the large mammals have more self-awareness than we give them credit for. Also language."
"Well, we've se
en the results of your successful training methods, Luther; they've been splattered all over the countryside. Innocent people."
The trainer smiled thinly. "Not so innocent, Frederickson. NRA members, super-macho types to a man, hunters who have slaughtered innocent animals, driving many of them to the edge of extinction, using high-powered weapons. Didn't you notice our discount sign outside the ticket window? I don't care, or have any sympathy, for people who kill other sentient creatures and call it sport. Human beings are the most arrogant and destructive species that has ever lived, and the idiots in the NRA are the worst of the lot. I consider it simple poetic justice that these men who've derived satisfaction from blowing out the lives of deer, elk, bears, or whatever, many using automatic weapons, should have a taste of what it feels like to be stalked and killed by a creature that is, in many ways, their equal as a predator."
"You're crazy, Luther. You're right out of your fucking gourd."
"Perhaps I am," Luther said in a flat voice. "It's certainly true that I don't have a high regard for human life; at least I don't have the regard for the lives of those men that you do. All of those victims, in all likelihood, have butchered dozens of magnificent creatures that had as much right to live on this earth as the hunters, and all so that they could hang a trophy in their den or feel sexual excitement. They're no loss, Frederickson."
"But why?" Harper asked in a voice that quavered with horror. "What's the point of training an animal to do that?"
"Assassination," I said, watching Luther's face-and knowing I was right. "This animal is a pitiless killing machine, virtually impossible to defend against under the right conditions. It's more accurate than a missile, or even a whole flotilla of bombers, and it's presumably cheaper. It can be fired-released-by a handler who's ten miles or more away from the site where a president, king, dictator, senator, or whoever else you want to kill may be living, speaking, or even simply passing by in a motorcade. And all you need to load up this assassination weapon is an object, preferably an article of clothing, that's been permeated by the victim's scent. Then you find out where the intended victim is going to be, just the general area, and you're in business. This thing tracks better than a bloodhound, and its natural instinct is to kill people. It's been trained to kill specific human beings through the manipulation of its sexual urges, fear of loud noises, and the possible knowledge that it can cease to exist. But this thing won't worry about the presence of Secret Service agents or bodyguards; it will just relentlessly go at its target. If it survives and returns, that's fine; if not, only the investment it represents is lost. Even if it should be shot or captured, and even recognized for what it is, there would be no way to determine what individual-or government agency- ordered its use. It's just a great assassin's weapon with brains. Right, Luther?"
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