The Hunter; The Chase; The Kill

by L. J. Smith

  “I’ll try,” Jenny said. As the old woman turned away, Jenny just caught the murmured words, “But I wonder what the cost will be.”

  Before they left, Aba let them raid the kitchen. They took cottage cheese and cold chicken breasts; cereal and microwave brownies and grapes and pippin apples.

  On the way back they stopped by Audrey’s house and picked up Audrey’s car.

  Michael’s living room was beginning to look like the aftermath of a very long party, Jenny thought as they walked into the apartment. The furniture had been pushed to the extreme edges of the room to make room for the mattresses and sleeping bags on the floor. The plaid couch was a nest of rumpled blankets. Empty Coke cans were scattered everywhere, and most flat surfaces were crowded with books or clothes or stacks of dirty dishes.

  “Okay,” Dee said, coming in from the kitchen with Michael. “Now what about that base?” She sat down on a footstool with a bowl of cottage cheese and chopped apple.

  “We don’t have enough information,” Jenny said. “He hasn’t told me enough.” Every time she said he, Tom walled up. There was no help for it, just as there was no help for the shining thing on her finger. It caught every glint of the spring sunlight coming in Michael’s front window, and she swore she could feel the words on the inside of the band.

  “I’ve been trying to think,” she said, “about abandoned buildings or things—places around here he might hold them. But that doesn’t seem right.”

  “In mysteries,” Michael said thoughtfully, “things are always hidden in the least likely place. Or the most obvious place—because you always think that’s the least likely. I guess it couldn’t be the paper house.”

  “It was trashed,” Jenny said. “I don’t think it would hold anything. Besides, how could we get in on our own? It was Julian who brought us in last time.” She knew, somehow, that Julian’s base wasn’t in the paper house. And she knew something else: Julian wouldn’t find the Game amusing unless there was a chance of them finding the base. He would put it somewhere they could get to—if they were smart enough to figure out where to look.

  “I guess the More Games store is too obvious,” Michael murmured.

  “Too obvious and gone,” said Jenny. “It’s just a mural now. No, Julian would put it somewhere clever.”

  “What is it, Tom?” Dee said. “You have an idea?”

  Tom was wearing the look he wore mostly these days—one of abstraction. Just now he also seemed disturbed. He got up and walked toward the kitchen, fingers in his back pockets.

  “If you think you know something . . .” Dee said.

  “No. Nothing.” Tom shook his head and sat back down.

  “Okay, let’s go back to the beginning,” Michael said.

  But it didn’t help. They talked uselessly through the morning and most of the afternoon, until an elderly woman came and rang the doorbell, demanding that Michael move Audrey’s car because it was in her parking space.

  Dee went down with him. Tom paced the hallway slowly while Jenny sat on the couch staring aimlessly out the window. They were stuck, no closer to figuring out where the base was than they had been two days ago.

  And she was tired. She let her eyelids shut, seeing the golden afternoon sunlight on her closed lids. Then suddenly the light went dark.

  Jenny’s eyes flew open. Although it had been a bright, cloudless day, there was some sort of mist coating the window. Preventing her from seeing out. Jenny stared at it, pulse quickening, then she drew in her breath and leaned closer.

  It wasn’t mist—that would have been strange enough. But it was something stranger than that. It was ice.

  Touched by the Frost King, Jenny’s mother used to say back in Pennsylvania when the windows iced up like that. Jenny hadn’t seen it since she was five years old. In those days she’d loved to trace things in the frost with the warmth of her finger. . . .

  Something was appearing on the window as if traced by an unseen finger. A letter.

  L.

  Jenny couldn’t breathe. Her mouth opened to call for Tom, but no sound came out.

  I. T. T .L. E. . . .

  Little. The letters appeared slowly as if a fingertip were tracing them on the icy window.

  M. I. S. S. M. U. F. F. E. T. S. A. T. . . .

  Jenny watched, scalp crawling. She couldn’t seem to make herself move. It was too strange, to be sitting here in daylight and seeing something that simply couldn’t happen.

  O. N. A. T. U. F. F. E. T. E. A. T. I. N. G. H. E. R. . . .

  It’s me, Jenny thought, gripped by an irrational certainty. This time it’s me he’s after. I’m Miss Muffet.

  C. U. R. D. S. A. N. D. W. H. E. Y. A. L. O. N. G. . . .

  Still unable to move, Jenny’s eyes shifted upward. A spider. She was afraid of spiders, and crickets, and all crawly, jumpy things. She expected to see a thread descending from the ceiling, but there was nothing.

  C. A. M. E. A. S. P. I. D. E. R. A. N. D. S. A. T. D. O. W. N. B. E. S. I. D. E. H. E. R. . . .

  The Spider. The Spider, Jenny thought. Audrey’s car.

  “Tom,” she whispered. And then suddenly she was moving, tearing her eyes from the letters that were still appearing. “Tom, come here. Tom! ”

  As she ran she almost fell over the footstool where Dee had been sitting earlier. Eating cottage cheese, small curd. Curds and whey.

  CHAPTER 13

  Stupid old lady,” Michael said as Dee pulled the Spider out of the carport. “She doesn’t even use this space, but will she let anybody else park here? God forbid. Now we have to go all the way down to the garage—take a left up there and go around the trash cans.”

  “I didn’t even know this place had a garage,” Dee said.

  “Dad and I never use it,” Michael said as Dee pulled into a dark entrance and headed down a ramp. “The carports are a lot more convenient.”

  “Yeah, but right now it’s probably a good idea to have Audrey’s car down here. In fact, we might want to put all the cars here—if somebody notices them outside your apartment, it’s a dead giveaway that we’re all here. We should have thought of that before.”

  “I guess,” Michael said without enthusiasm. “I dunno—when I was a kid I always hated this place. I had the idea there ought to be a dragon at the bottom of it.”

  Dee grinned. “It’s just a garage, Mikey.” But he was right, she thought. There was something unpleasant about the garage. It was dingy and badly lit, and she could see how a kid with an active imagination might think of dragons.

  Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. It’s broad daylight—but it wasn’t. They had turned the corner to the lower level of the garage, and it was as dark as twilight down here with the flickering bluish fluorescents on the ceiling. A strange and unnatural twilight.

  Even as she thought it, the lights around them flickered wildly and went out.

  It was like being plunged into the tunnel on a roller coaster. Dee suddenly felt that everything was happening too fast—while at the same time it was all happening in slow motion, frame by frame.

  Her eyes weren’t dark-adapted yet—in that first instant she could see nothing. But she heard the growl from the back of the car clearly.

  It was a thick, clotted, animal sound. A large sound—the timbre alone let you know that only something big could have produced it. So low and dragging that it sounded like a soundtrack in slow motion. It sounded like a hallucination.

  “What—” Michael was tearing at his seat belt, turning to look. Dee saw the whites of his eyes. Then, as she twisted her head over her shoulder, she got a glimpse of what was in the back of the car.

  Pale eyes and white teeth in gaping jaws. Dee’s vision was adapting. She saw a hulking shape materializing in that incredibly small space—as if it were coming through a door in the area between the cabin and the trunk. Coming and coming like a genie emerging from a bottle.

  It isn’t all the way out yet, Dee realized.

  There was no time to thin
k about anything. “Get out!” she shouted. Michael was frozen, clutching the seat and gasping. Dee reached across him, fingers clenching on the Spider’s door handle. She flung the door open and shoved him, braking automatically at the same instant.

  Michael went tumbling and thudding out. Dee felt a rush of air on her cheek—warm as the blast from under a microwave, and wet. A feral, musky odor made her nostrils flare.

  The snarl was directly in her ear.

  Move, girl!

  She hit the accelerator. The snarl fell back, and she heard the scrabbling of claws just behind her. In one motion Dee opened her own door and vaulted out.

  To-jin-ho was the art of falling on hard surfaces. Dee took this fall rolling and was on her feet in time to see the Spider cruise into the block wall of the garage.

  Some distant part of her mind watched the impact with a sort of joyful awe. Now there was a crash, she thought, and flashed a barbaric smile at nothing.

  Then she saw movement. Something was emerging from the Spider. She heard a rising snarl.

  Dee spun on her heel and ran.

  She could see the light of the stairwell in front of her. If she could make it there—

  She felt her Nikes rebound from the concrete, felt her arms swinging, her lungs pumping. Her teeth drew back again in a grin. In that moment Dee Eliade was filled with a joy in living so intense she felt she could fly.

  “C’mon, you freakin’ fleabag!” she shouted over her shoulder and heard herself laugh wildly. “Come and get me!”

  She’d never fought a four-legged opponent before, but she was sure going to give it a try. She’d see how a wolf reacted to a roundhouse kick.

  She reached the stairwell and spun, still laughing. The blood was singing in her veins, every breath she took was sweet. Her muscles were electric with vibrant energy. She felt balanced and dynamic and ready for anything.

  Then she heard the creak of a door behind her—and an endless, savage hiss.

  Michael was picking himself up as Jenny and Tom turned the corner, staring into the depths of the dim garage. He was clutching at one ankle.

  “Dee—?” Jenny gasped. Echoes of a metallic crash were still reverberating in her mind.

  Michael waved toward the back of the garage. Jenny saw it then—a large, dim shape against the wall. The Spider.

  The lights flickered and went on, and she saw color.

  The Spider’s front end was crumpled. There was no sign of Dee.

  “Come on!” Tom was already running toward the car. Then he looked left and shouted, “The stairway!”

  The door there was swinging shut. Jenny heard it clang, felt her chest heave as they ran. Tom reached it and seized the handle with both hands, wrenching at it.

  The door swung open, slamming against the wall. A single fluorescent panel flickered high above in the stairwell, and Jenny could hear echoes of her own panting breath in the little room. But nothing moved except shadows.

  Dee’s paper doll was on the floor, in a lightly scorched circle on the concrete.

  “He’s going to get us all.”

  Jenny tightened the Ace bandage around Michael’s ankle.

  “If Dee couldn’t get away from them, what kind of chance do we have?”

  Jenny fixed the little metal clips in the bandage and sat back.

  “The clues aren’t fair,” Michael said. He was still breathing hard, and his eyes were too wide, showing white around the dark irises. “You said you and Tom ran straight down there once you got this one—which means you didn’t have time. He’s not going to give any of us enough time. And we’re never going to find the base.”

  Jenny closed the plastic first aid kit. The paper doll was lying on the coffee table beside it. On its back, which wasn’t characteristic of Dee at all. The black crayon eyes stared up at the ceiling with a crafty look.

  They had pushed Audrey’s car to the very back of the garage, where they hoped no one would find it. Jenny supposed they were lucky no one had come to investigate the crash—but did it really matter anymore? Did anything really matter?

  “Am I just talking to myself here? Isn’t anybody going to say something?”

  Jenny looked at Michael, then at Tom, who was pacing the hall, not looking at them. She turned back to Michael, and her eyes met his. Their gazes locked a moment, then he sank back on the couch, his anger fading.

  “What is there to say?” Jenny said.

  They spent the evening in silence; Tom pacing and Michael and Jenny sitting. Staring at a blank TV screen.

  It was all going to come crashing down soon—their carefully built structure of deception. Jenny had called her aunt Lily to say that Zach was upset and was spending the night with Tom. She’d called Dee’s mother and told her Dee was staying with her. Neither mother had been happy. It was only a matter of time before one of them called Tom’s house or Jenny’s house and everything came out.

  And Michael was right. They weren’t going to find the base—not on the information they had now. They needed more.

  She was actually glad that night when Julian showed up in her dreams.

  It had taken her a long time to get to sleep—she’d lain for hours staring at the empty couch where Dee should have been. The last clear thing she remembered was deciding she was never going to sleep at all that night—and then she must have shut her eyes. When she opened them, she knew she hadn’t really opened them at all. She was dreaming again.

  She was standing in a white room. Julian was standing in front of a table, with the oddest thing stretched out in front of him. It was a sort of model, with houses and trees and roads and street lights. Like a railway model, only without the train, Jenny thought. But it was the most elaborate model she’d ever seen; the miniature trees and bushes were exquisitely made, and the little houses had various windows alight.

  Not just a model, Jenny realized. It’s Vista Grande—it’s my neighborhood. There’s my house.

  Julian was holding a small figure of a wolf above one of the streets. He set it down carefully, looked up at Jenny, and smiled.

  Jenny didn’t smile back. Although she was dreaming, her head was clear—and she had a purpose in mind. She was going to get all the information she could from him.

  “Is that how you tell them what to do? The wolf and the snake?”

  “Possibly.” He added, just as seriously as she had asked her question, “What’s black inside, white outside, and hot?”

  Jenny, mouth opened to speak again, shut it and gave him the kind of look Audrey frequently gave Michael. “What?” she said tightly.

  “A wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

  “Is that what you are?”

  “Me? No, I’m a wolf in wolf’s clothing.” He looked up at her, and light flashed in his wild, exotic sapphire eyes.

  I don’t know how I ever mistook him for a human, Jenny thought. Julian was from an older and wilder race. One that had fascinated and terrified humans from the beginning.

  I will not be distracted, she told herself. Not this time. I will remember what I want from him.

  “What do you think of the new Game?”

  “It isn’t fair,” Jenny said promptly. “Isn’t sporting,” she added, remembering what Julian thought of the idea of fairness. “It’s not a game at all if we don’t have a chance to find your base.”

  “And you think you don’t have a chance?”

  “Not without some kind of information.”

  Julian threw back his head and laughed, his hair shining like white jade. “You want a hint?” He looked at her with those veiled, liquid-blue eyes.

  “Yes,” Jenny said flatly. “And you’d give it to me if you wanted it to be any kind of real contest. But you probably don’t.”

  He clicked his tongue at her. “You really think I’m an ogre, don’t you? But I’m not so bad. You know, if I wanted, I could manipulate the Game so I couldn’t lose. For instance . . .” He lifted the wolf and held it judiciously over another street. Jenny recognized
the pale gray wood-frame house and the tiny towheaded figure in front of it.

  “Cam!” She looked at Julian. “You wouldn’t! You said—”

  His long lashes drooped. “I said I’d keep this Game to the original players—and I will. I’m just telling you what I could do. So you see I’m not so bad after all.”

  “Gordie Wilson wasn’t a player.”

  “He put his nose in where he wasn’t wanted.”

  “And what about P.C. and Slug?”

  Julian’s smile was chilling. “Oh, they were players, all right. They played their own game—and they lost.”

  So now I know, Jenny thought. I suppose I’ll have to tell Angela—if I live to do it.

  She was staring down at the tiny towheaded figure of Cam when something else occurred to her. She looked up.

  “Was it you who made those kids play lambs and monsters?” she asked. “All that violence—were you influencing them?”

  “Me?” He gave his black velvet laugh again. “Oh, Jenny—they don’t need me. Children are that way naturally. Children’s games are that way. Haven’t you noticed?”

  Jenny had, but she said nothing. She turned away.

  “War and hunting and chasing—that’s all there is. That’s life, Jenny—no one can escape it.”

  He was standing behind her now.

  “And why should we? There’s excitement in the chase, Jenny. It gets the blood going. It sends chills through the body. . . .”

  Jenny stepped away. Her blood was going. His voice, strange and haunting as the melody she’d heard on the hotel balcony at the prom, sent a shiver of awareness through her.

  Cat-quiet, he followed her. I will not turn around, she thought. I will not.

  “Love and death are everything, Jenny. Danger is the best part of the game. I thought you knew that.”

  Part of her did. The wild part that he had changed. The part of her, Jenny thought suddenly, that would always belong to him.

  “And I thought you were going to give me a hint,” she said.