The Ridge

by Michael Koryta

  “You will soon perish,” Vesey said. “There’s no doubt. I’m familiar with the ills of men, sir, and your condition is not one that shall heal itself.”

  Vesey rocked back on his heels, still smiling, his lips a deeper shade of blue than his face, his eyes coal black and starkly contrasting with the ethereal glow.

  “Your afflictions can be healed, though you may not believe it at this moment. I am possessed of a certain level of help that may be offered, and I am prepared to offer it. Should you so desire. Help of such a nature does not come without cost. I’m bound by balance, you see. If you wish to be healed, you shall be bound by balance as well. My kind is unable to restore life. Only able to balance it. Are you in understanding of this situation?”

  Kimble tried to move his hand, but his arm was not responsive. He was aware that the fluid leaking along the side of his face was too warm to be the river water. Blood, and the source seemed to be his ear.

  “The choice is yours,” Silas Vesey said.

  Kimble flicked his eyes from that terrible pale blue face to his own ribs, watched his blood drip from shards of bone to be swept away in black water.

  “Your time is fading. I’ll have to hear an answer soon. I cannot extend your time without that answer.”

  When Kimble parted his lips, he could hardly make a sound, but the whispered word seemed to be enough.

  Yes.

  Vesey came closer, sliding through the water without disrupting it by so much as a ripple.

  “I understand you are accepting the offer as presented,” he said. “You wish to be healed, and you will be called upon to uphold your required portion of the bargain. This is correct?”

  Yes.

  Vesey’s smile widened, the deep blue lips curling up, black teeth beneath, and then he nodded, leaned forward, and lowered the torch toward Kimble’s face. Kimble watched the sapphire sparks descend and expected that excruciating pain would follow, but it did not.

  Instead, blackness flapped toward him like a visible wind, and then all was gone.

  47

  THE LEOPARD WAS SITTING WITH his haunches on the ground and his forepaws inside the shelter, regarding Audrey through primal eyes.

  “I’m just visiting, honey,” she whispered. “Don’t be mad. Please, do not be mad.”

  There was a rustle in the straw, and his spotted face vanished from the moonlight but the yellow eyes advanced. He was coming toward her. Audrey let out a low, strangled sob.

  He’s your favorite, she told herself, you touch him, you let him touch you, and if he ever wanted to hurt you he could have a million times by now.

  But there’d been a fence between them. Always.

  Jafar came on through the dark, and then she could see his eyes looming just before hers, could smell his snow-dampened fur. The leopard made a soft but deep growl, almost like a purr, and then he reached for her face with his. His mouth was open, and his breath smelled of meat and blood. Every one of her muscles went warm and liquid, and for a moment fainting seemed a very real possibility.

  He thumped her shoulder with his head, and she bit back a scream. He made a displeased sound, thumped her a second time, and she whispered, “Okay, baby. Okay.”

  She reached out with a trembling hand and touched his muzzle. There was snow melting on his fur and held in crystals on the long whiskers. If he decided to strike, from this distance, and with her unable to move…

  The leopard extended his muzzle as she caressed it, then nudged the side of her face. She could feel the smooth fur on her cheek, the bristling whiskers against her neck. His head was enormous. Her fingers slid lightly down the span of his massive jaws, and she thought of all the times she’d seen them close around a piece of bloody meat, the tremendous power as his teeth snapped and shredded flesh that was far tougher than her own.

  “Good boy. You’re my baby, aren’t you? I love you, buddy. I love you.”

  He licked her neck, then along her jaw. His tongue was warm and rough and beyond it were canine teeth as long as her index finger. One bite was all it would take. One bite.

  He made the low growl again.

  That’s a friendly sound, Audrey. He is happy to see you. He is happy.

  “Thank you, honey. Oh, thank you.” She felt able to breathe for the first time since he’d entered, and when he nudged her again, rubbing the top of his head against her shoulder, she got her hand high enough to scratch behind his ears. That was as brave as she had ever allowed herself to be before, from behind the fence. Now, the two of them alone in the dark, the big cat was just as content.

  I’m okay. I am okay. He will not hurt me, and Dustin will not find me, and as long as I stay in here I am okay.

  That was when the flashlight beam passed close by, illuminating the inside of the leopard’s enclosure.

  “Audrey, get the fuck out here,” said a voice that had once belonged to a young man she had kidded about his resemblance to the boy in the Harry Potter movies, a man who once seemed as harmless as anyone she’d ever met but who now spoke from a place of unyielding blackness. He told her to get out with such confidence that she was sure he knew where she was, almost felt an impulse to respond. Then he continued talking, and she realized from the sound that he’d turned away, was speaking in another direction, still seeking.

  “You don’t understand this place. You don’t understand how special it is. What I can be here. What you can be. Kimble, even. He doesn’t have to die. That’s up to him. I doubt he will make the right choice. What he cannot be allowed to do, though, is burn that bridge.”

  He paused, searching for her in the night, and then continued.

  “You’re thinking about Wes. You’re blaming me. Well, Wes didn’t have to die, either, Audrey. I watched it happen. The cats are what kept him away, and if he’d been able to get there, then Wes might be with us now. It was going to be up to him, but the cats prevented that chance. Don’t worry—I won’t let that happen to you. I’ll bring you to him. When you see the torch yourself, you will understand. When he touches you with that flame, you will understand.”

  Silence. She had stopped moving, but her hand still rested on Jafar’s ears, the fur beginning to bristle, the leopard unappreciative of Dustin’s tone.

  “Where did you go, you stupid bitch?” Dustin called, impatience returning. “You wouldn’t have gone into the cages. You’re not brave enough for that, no, you’re still scared of them, your own damn cats. Or did you get brave tonight?”

  He was passing through the fences close to her, and he began dragging the handle of the flashlight across them, metal on metal, a loud rattling sound. Jafar heard it and growled in Audrey’s face. Peeled his lips back and even in the dark they were so close that she could see those teeth, the ones that tore through meat so easily.

  “Calm down, honey,” she whispered, barely audible. “Calm down.”

  Dustin banged against another fence, this one closer, and the leopard growled again. The next fence he hit belonged to the leopard’s enclosure. He was at the gate.

  “Were you brave enough to go in with your favorite?” he said, voice lower and musing, as if he found the idea plausible. She was glad she’d fastened the lock.

  But the snow, she realized, my tracks are in the snow, he will see those.

  She’d been crawling, though. Not leaving footprints. Just a messy trail through the very same snow that Jafar had trampled over himself.

  The flashlight beam caught the corner of the cat’s shelter. Dustin was trying to angle it so that he could see inside. The light caught the back half of the cat, illuminating the long tail and spotted hindquarters, but not finding Audrey. She’d gone far enough back that it could not reach her.

  Dustin banged on the fence again, and Jafar let out the loudest and angriest growl yet. Audrey lifted her hand to her mouth and bit down on the side of it.

  “Where are you, Jafar? Come out here. Come out and see me.”

  The shelter was too narrow to allow the cat to turn ar
ound, but he was angry about the noise, and Audrey could sense that he wanted out. When he moved toward her, she felt a rush of fear, his massive paws and their deadly claws brushing over her thighs. He was pressed against her for a moment, the length of him sliding by, and then he slunk around the corner and emerged through the other end of the little house, outside again, snarling.

  “Hiding out?” Dustin said. “Scared, big boy?”

  There was another rattle against the fence, but this one was different from the others. Not done just to make noise. He was, Audrey realized with rising panic, working with the lock. Opening the gate.

  Coming in, she thought wildly. How does he know I’m here? How does he know?

  Then Dustin spoke again, and she realized that he was not coming in at all. He had a very different idea, one that reduced her temporary terror but replaced it swiftly with another one.

  “Come on out,” Dustin said. “I’ll tell you something—they don’t like you down at that fire. They don’t like any of you. So step on out, Jafar, and get the hell away from our ridge.”

  Our ridge.

  “You need to go,” Dustin said, “and the lighthouse needs to go. Then things will be back to the way he prefers them.”

  Audrey heard the sound of the gate being pushed open, and then the flashlight moved away and Dustin was at another gate, another lock.

  He was opening them all. He was releasing the cats.

  48

  THEY BANGED OFF THE PAVED county road and onto the gravel of Blade Ridge so hard and fast that the back end of the truck jitterbugged to the left, and Roy reached out and put a hand on Shipley’s arm.

  “Slow down, damn it. You forget what happened to you out here before?”

  “All right.”

  Shipley let off the accelerator and they slowed to what, after the pace of their wild ride, seemed like a tractor’s crawl. Roy stared ahead, thinking of blue torches dancing through the woods, thinking of his parents out here on a wintry night just like this. He wondered how soon they realized they’d missed the turn. Early, he suspected. His father would have realized it early. And he would have continued on down the road because he was looking for a safe place to turn his beloved small-block V-8 Chevy around. Or because he’d been following the blue light, enraptured, as so many seemed to be.

  “If we don’t see Kimble’s car,” Roy asked, “do we still go in? Do we try to talk to Audrey Clark?”

  “I want her away from that kid,” Shipley said, and then he pounded the brake all the way to the floor, the truck sliding to a stop in the snow and the gravel, and said, “Holy shit.”

  There was a lion standing in the road. Majestic and with a full mane, his enormous head swung toward them, studying them, eyes aglitter in the headlight beams.

  “They’re out,” Shipley whispered. “Why are they out?”

  Roy had no answer. It couldn’t be good, though.

  A shadow moved ahead and to the left, and they both turned toward it. Visible for an instant, then receding, was the orange-and-black-striped side of a tiger.

  “Mr. Darmus,” Shipley said, “you want to tell me what in the hell we’re supposed to do about this?”

  “Call for help,” Roy said. “It’s too late to be worried about protecting Kimble. Maybe too late to worry about Audrey Clark. We’re going to need a lot of people out here.”

  “Yeah,” Shipley said softly, foot still on the brake, his eyes still locked onto those of the lion, which had not turned away. The animal lifted its head and roared then, a sustained bellow that made the steel and fiberglass shell around them seem suddenly insubstantial.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Roy said. “I’m afraid it’s too late for them. It’s not for us.”

  Before Shipley could agree or disagree, a figure appeared at the far end of the road, walking out of the trees near Wyatt’s lighthouse, down toward the gates of the preserve. For a moment, Roy thought of Vesey, and wondered where his torch was.

  Then he recognized him, almost simultaneously with Shipley.

  It was Kevin Kimble.

  He’d remained in the water for a few moments, until he was certain that what he was most aware of was the cold and not the pain. There was no pain. The ghost was gone and the blue light was gone but he knew that they were not really departed, that they remained very close.

  At the top of the ridge, it occurred to him that he had not been aware that he had started to climb. Had not been aware of leaving the water. His body was whole and healed; he felt stronger, in fact, than he had in many years, stronger than he had since the day his back was pierced by a nine-millimeter bullet.

  It’s true, he thought numbly, it is all true, every word I have been told about this place is true.

  He was bothered by the way he had been compelled to move, the way he had emerged from the rocks and climbed to the top without decision or conscious thought, a man on the move with destination and motivation unknown.

  He needs you gone, Kimble realized. It’s just as Jacqueline said—his evil is bound to the ridge. He doesn’t want to hold you here, not until you’ve done your work. You have to carry his torch for him into the places where he cannot go.

  And the torch was in him now. It would travel with him for all of his days.

  That was just fine. Kimble would not feel the weight of the burden long. He had promised balance, he had promised to take a life, and he intended to very soon.

  He’d returned to kill Dustin Hall.

  There was a shotgun in his cruiser, and his cruiser remained at the lighthouse. He walked through the trees, staying well to the north of the road, away from the preserve, reminding himself to walk in the path that was illuminated by the invisible beams from the lighthouse, reminding himself that if he recalled the lessons of the dead, he could see this night through to dawn. Down below, he could see a flashlight beam and hear Hall shouting, and he thought of Audrey Clark and knew that he had to hurry. He was able to hurry now; running was not a problem for Kimble, not now, not after that single whispered word of consent.

  You’ll make the right decision? Jacqueline had asked.

  Yes, he had. It would be the right decision, because he would kill Hall, his debt immediately satisfied, and then he would retreat from this place for many years—the courts would see to that—and when it was all done, when his days were passed, he would of course have to return here. Bound to the fire. He knew that and it saddened him but he could not think of it now, because there was work to be done, because he had to focus on running up that slippery, snow-covered slope and toward the beacon that Wyatt French had built so many years ago.

  The rest of his days were not a concern, it was the rest of this night that mattered. He would use evil against itself, and in that was some level of victory, the most Kimble could yet be granted. If he was damned to that fire, so be it. Because he would be damned with her, and that felt right, that felt a long time coming. He could still remember the feel of her lips, he could still remember her blood, so hot, cascading over his hand as he worked the blade into her, seeking the heart. They’d damned one another, indeed. He’d returned her here, to the one place to which she could not be returned, and then he’d killed her. Now he would never leave.

  Bound by balance.

  He reached the cruiser, pulled open the door, and found the shotgun clipped in its customary position. Removed it and swung the door shut and turned back to where the flashlight beam was passing through the trees below.

  Debts to be settled.

  He ran down the driveway, which was too steep for running in the ice and the snow and the dark, but he did not stumble, he did not fall. When he reached the base of the hill he paused, isolating the position of the flashlight and knowing that he had to go quietly now.

  Then, suddenly, the flashlight was gone. For an instant Kimble was puzzled, and then he, too, heard the engine and saw the headlights.

  Someone was coming.

  When the vehicle came to a stop, Kimble stepped
out of the trees and began to move toward it, his finger resting on the shotgun’s trigger, and what he saw painted against the headlights brought him to an abrupt halt.

  The lions were loose.

  Audrey heard the engine and then Dustin fell silent and his flashlight was extinguished. When he spoke again, his voice was low and soft.

  “Visitors. I should probably greet them, don’t you think, Lily, old girl? Wouldn’t do to be impolite.”

  He’d been talking to the cats consistently as he tried to urge them from their cages. He seemed to have given up on his pursuit of Audrey or the idea that she could even hear his voice; his attention had gone instead to the cats and their release. She knew from his words of approval and their sounds that a few of them had accepted the coaxing and ventured into the night. Now she heard his footsteps crunch through the snow and understood that he was moving toward the road.

  She could stay here, secure in her dark hole, hiding and waiting, but whoever had come down the road did not know what those approaching footsteps carried with them. There was a tranquilizer rifle in the trailer, and while you had to be close to use it, it would be better to try than to stay here cowering in the darkness and let him destroy whatever help had arrived, let him take more blood for the ridge.

  Audrey had facilitated enough blood for the ridge.

  She waited until his footsteps were inaudible, and then she slipped out of the shelter, bits of straw hanging in her hair, and peered into the night. Across from her, in the silent snow, Lily, the blind white tiger, sat on her haunches, staring at nothing.

  Only Audrey knew better than to think that. The cat’s other senses more than compensated for the lack of vision; so long as Lily was watching the road, that meant Dustin was in that direction.

  The trailer was not far off. She could make it. He would be occupied with the car, which appeared to be stopped in the middle of the road, and even if he heard her or saw her, he would have to make a decision. Whatever choice he made, someone would have a chance to adjust to it. She needed to force him toward that moment of decision.