by Stephen Laws
Pasco stopped, staring hard at Tully now, as if seeing him for the first time.
“The devil. She changed into the devil, and she just tore Crip to pieces.”
Tully made a sound of disgust, pulled himself around again—yelling at the agony in his leg—and aimed the gun at the two figures kneeling on the carpet.
“What are you doing?” Pasco asked in alarm.
“What the hell do you think? Probably what we should have done when we first got here.”
Pasco quickly stood between them.
“No! Don’t you see? It’ll happen again.”
“Pasco—I swear to God, you get out of the way or I’m going to put one in your drug-wrecked head.”
“No, no, no! You don’t get it. You shot her. Her outside. And she turned—into that thing. You shoot these two—her and the kid—and they’re gonna turn. I swear, Tully. They’ll turn, and they’ll rip us up like Crip.” “What about him?” Tully lowered the gun in disgust, the effort of holding it off balance causing strain and burning agony in his leg. He gestured back to where Drew lay. “You see him turning into anything?”
“Don’t you get it? He’s a man! That cunt out there—she was a woman. Female, man! So are these. You put a bullet in them and they’ll turn.”
“Bloody hell! All right Pasco . . . I won’t shoot them. I won’t use a bullet in case they turn.”
Pasco began to nod vigorously.
“So why don’t we do it a different way?” Tully continued. “Why don’t you kill them with a knife, or with your hands? Like Crip could do.”
“Yeah . . .” Pasco said, the good sense of what Tully was saying registering immediately. “Yeah, that’ll do it.”
“So do it, then.”
“God no.” Cath had found her voice again, breath returned. “Please God no, not my daughter.”
“But you made me a promise, Tully.”
“What?”
“You said I could fuck her first.”
“Just so long as they both end up dead.”
“No!” Cath struggled to rise, Rynne still clinging to her. Pasco was laughing now, as if all his problems had been solved. He strode quickly across the room, still nodding vigorously—seized Cath by the hair and dragged her to the foot of the stairs. Rynne detached from her mother and flew at him. He backhanded her, and Rynne somersaulted backwards to the carpet. Cath gouged and kicked out, tried to get her heel between his legs. Pasco punched her hard, dazing her again—and began dragging her roughly up the stairs step by step, as if he were hauling a heavy sack.
Rynne struggled to her feet and came back at him.
Tully watched her, thought about the gun—but decided to leave it all to Pasco as fresh waves of burning hell washed through his mutilated leg.
Pasco swatted Rynne back down the stairs, hauling Cath onward and upward.
“Let’s do bedroom things in the bedroom, sweetheart.”
He laughed as Rynne came back up the stairs again after them.
FORTY FOUR
The She Cat finished taking what it needed, dragged the remains behind the fence and into a gully. It would not gorge tonight. For if it gorged, it would instinctively want to sleep, and the call of its mate and cub was in its blood and too strong to be ignored. It returned to the other side of the fence and the high grass whipping in the wind, watched to see if there was any movement from the female Two-Legs slumped there. When there was none, it stood boldly astride the body, smelled the cooling blood and licked the face with its coarse tongue. It considered dragging this dead one into the gully to join the remains of the other, then looked back through the darkness to the place of stones. The Round- Leg Beast was silent, its eyes still piercing the darkness. But there was no Two-Legs near or inside, and the She Cat knew this meant the Beast was dead again, and its sun-glare vision was sightless.
It bounded away from the dead female Two-Legs toward the stone lair, paused briefly by the Beast so that it could urinate once more on its side, then moved swiftly on through the night. The Big Cat circled the stone lair again, then paused at the storm doors. It called, but there was no answer. Angrily, it circled again—and came to rest at the foot of the high wall and the high opening. It was still open.
The She Cat backed off, wind ruffling its black fur.
It looked up again. There was movement. Curtains billowed out in the wind. But there was no living threat there. The Big Cat judged the distance again. Still not enough, it knew instinctively what a fall from the height of that opening ledge would do to it.
It backed off even more, looked back once to where the dead Two-Legs lay in the darkness and coughed out its disgust and anger. Two-Legs’ meat was not good meat.
Then it centred, hunkered down with muscles rippling on its shoulders and back, its ears flat back on its head—and charged at the wall.
FORTY FIVE
Pasco was enjoying every moment now that Tully had found a way to make sense of things. The night colours in his head had changed again, would change even more for the better once he got this bitch into the bedroom and he could combine the loving and the hurting. Some part of him felt that he should be irritated by the whining little bastard who kept trying to make him let go of her mother—but hell, this was good fun; swatting her away with his free hand while he dragged the bitch by the hair with the other.
They reached the top of the stairs, and Pasco began to sing as he dragged her to the bedroom door. It was a song he had just made up from the waves of night colour inside him. No tune, no lyrics. But deeply fulfilling. The little bastard was clinging to his arm now, biting and trying to pull him down. But this was somehow part of the song too, as was the moment when he swung out his arm and smashed her against the wall. The way that she fell away from his arm was beautiful—like she was an essential part of the song that was also not a song.
The Nothing No-Nurse lady was struggling again, coming out of her daze as Pasco dragged her to the bedroom door. She’d told a lie when she said she knew something about medicine—and that was a bad thing, deserving of punishment.
“Going to give you a taste of my medicine,” Pasco grinned as he opened the bedroom door.
And then screamed—when he saw the devil at the window.
The She Cat scrabbled at the windowsill; front claws finding purchase in splintering wood, hind claws raking the outside wall as it hauled itself into the room. Its great black head snapped up at the sound of Pasco’s scream—jaws widening, eyes gleaming in the darkness as it hissed its rage right back at him.
Pasco let go of Cath, seized the door handle with both hands and slammed it shut—just as the Big Cat slid completely from the window frame and into the room. No sooner had he done so than the door panel crashed under an impact from the other side. Pasco shrieked, leaping back; now standing frozen at the sounds of hell emanating from the other side—a roaring and spitting animal sound of wild hatred. The door shuddered and crashed again as the thing on the other side launched an attack on it. Pasco flew forward, slamming both hands against the door as if he could keep the thing inside the room.
“Tully! It’s the devil! Help me, Tully! The devil’s getting in!”
Cath grabbed Rynne’s hand. Together they staggered and stumbled back to the stairs as Pasco continued to scream at the sounds of ferocity from the other side of the door.
“Tully! It’s trying to get into my head!”
Cath struggled to keep a focus in this blur where shock and terror had fractured reality irrevocably.
The Big Cat is dead in the cellar, not alive in the bedroom, not trying to break in, and Faye is dead (oh God) and Drew is dead (oh God) and every time we try to escape from this hell we’re brought back to hell and this must be it, this must be the Circles of Hell, we’re in the Circles of Hell and . . .
Cath shook herself violently, Rynne clinging tight, and looked down to see—
On the sofa below, Tully was fumbling in his sodden pockets for something, twisting his head and yellin
g: “Pasco! What the hell are you doing?” If they kept close to the wall, might he not see them until they’d reached the bottom of the stairs? Cath started down, both arms around Rynne, could now see what it was that Tully was pulling out of his pockets. They were bullets, and he was struggling to reload the gun.
Pasco was screaming horribly, as if competing with the frenzied animal sounds from behind the door, and now Cath could also see that Tully was reacting in fear because he too must be hearing those impossible Big Cat sounds and must know that there was more going on here than the confusion and drug-addled storm in Pasco’s head. Tully tried to twist around on the sofa again as Cath and Rynne continued their slow descent.
Cath looked to the front door.
If they could reach the bottom of the stairs without Tully seeing them, might they make it across the room?
Thunder crashed overhead, shaking the walls, and Cath saw again in her mind’s eye the thunderclap and flash of lightning that had filled the living room earlier. Once more, she saw the bullet exploding Faye’s shoulder as she ran for that door with Rynne. And this must surely be the Circles of Hell, because now it was all going to happen again. This time, she would be running with Rynne—and this time she would be the one to be shot, and then Rynne and then—
Stop it!
They had reached the bottom of the stairs.
Pasco was no longer screaming.
But the ferocious assault on the door continued, as if the storm had come alive and wanted to devour them all.
Tully was turning the other way now, craning his head away from them and looking to the top of the stairs where they had once been.
“Pasco! Where are you?”
Cath kept her back flattened to the wall as she moved with Rynne, feeling the girl’s trembling, and praying that Tully would keep his head turned away.
But this was hell, after all.
Tully twisted back—and saw them.
“No,” Cath said. “You don’t have to.”
“Oh yes,” replied Tully through gritted teeth. “I do.”
Cath frantically looked toward the front door again—saw Faye reeling as the bullet slammed into her—then back to Tully.
He was raising the gun.
And Cath knew that when they ran, it would be in the dragging slow run of nightmare, giving Tully all the time he needed to sight on their backs before they reached that door. She could feel no strength in her limbs as she watched that gun barrel slowly come up.
Upstairs, the sounds of animal fury were unabated.
But now Cath could hear the sounds of splintering wood.
“Please don’t shoot my little girl,” she heard herself say hopelessly.
Tully grinned as the gun centred on them.
Cath pulled Rynne even closer, pushed her face close to her breast—and squeezed her eyes shut.
She flinched at the crash of noise.
But this was not the crash of a gunshot, and now there were cries of rage and pain. Cath opened her eyes again.
Drew was on the other side of the sofa, as he heaved it over with his shoulder. The sofa flipped, Tully sprawling beneath as it came down across his back.
“Drew! Please God, don’t let this be hell! Don’t let this be . . .”
Tully began to scream in agony beneath the sofa, the upper part of his body still free and with the gun still in his hand.
“This way!” Drew yelled, and Cath saw the bloody stain covering half his face; the carved and bleeding furrow across his scalp like a hair parting made by a butcher.
Face agonised, Tully was swinging the gun around and looking for them as suddenly, without conscious effort and with strength renewed, Cath ran with Rynne—not toward the front door and its clear sight line for Tully—but to where Drew was even now frantically beckoning as he pulled away from the sofa.
The cellar door in the kitchen.
“Run!” yelled Drew again.
Tully fired twice, one of the bullets ricocheting with a scream around the living room.
Stooping low, Cath shoved Rynne on ahead through the cellar doorway, felt Drew’s arm around her waist and fought the hysterical urge to weep uncontrollably as he in turn pushed her through the doorway. She looked back as Drew followed, slamming the door shut behind them—just in time to see Pasco stumbling down the stairs like a drunk.
Cath heard Tully yell: “Get those bastards! Get them!”
Then Pasco: “The Devil! The Devil’s coming. . .”
“Get them!”
Cath groped for Rynne in the pitch darkness, grabbed her arm and started blind down the stairs.
“The storm doors!” Drew hissed, leaning his full weight against the door. “Get out through the storm doors! I’ll hold this one—there’s no damned lock on it!” And then Drew cried out as the door crashed inwards and he sprawled down the stone stairs. Pasco stood silhouetted in the doorframe, swayed for a second and then started down after them.
“Go!” Drew yelled, and lunged up to seize Pasco around the legs. Pasco began yelling again, a torrent of obscenities and distorted biblical quotes, pummelling and clubbing Drew’s back with both fists locked together. Drew clung tight under the onslaught. Cath dragged Rynne across the cellar, shoved her quickly under a workbench and then—rising again—seized the first thing she could lay her hands on from that workbench. As Pasco lost his balance and both men fell entangled and thrashing to the bottom of the stairs, Cath ran at them—the thing in her hand rattling as she swung it. When it connected with Pasco’s back and he grunted in pain, she realised what she’d grabbed. It was a length of heavy-duty chain, spare links for the cage hoist. Pasco yelled, tried to pull back from Drew—who still hung on to him—as Cath yanked the chain back for a second swing. But Pasco stamped hard on Drew, breaking his grip, and backhanded Cath at the same time as the chain rattled around the forearm he threw up to protect his head. The blow knocked Cath to her knees. She raked in the darkness for him, wanting her fingernails to find his eyes—heard a grunt of pain from Drew as Pasco kicked out again—and felt the chain whip around her neck as Pasco seized it and used it against her. Sitting astride her and still jabbering like a maniac, Pasco tightened the chain with one fist and began tearing at her clothes with the other hand.
Rynne flew at him, remembering how her mother had grabbed his hair.
Bellowing, Pasco grabbed her with his free hand as she landed on his shoulders and tugged her hard, the impetus flinging the child away to collide with the bars of the cage at the foot of the stairs. Cath raked her fingernails down Pasco’s face. He bellowed again and used both hands to tighten the chain around her throat. Stunned, Rynne sat up with her back to the bars of the cage; saw Drew struggling to rise, heard the sounds of her mother being strangled.
And felt something rough and moist on her hand.
Rynne looked down to where her hand was braced behind her on the floor next to the cage.
A cat was licking her hand through the bars.
A beautiful, black cat with a flash of white on its brow.
In that moment, Rynne saw the cat in the schoolyard—the one that had scratched Bianca because the grownups were being so mean about her mother. She had been wrong to call it a bad cat. It was a good cat. She saw the Ferocitor, leaping over the fence to kill one of the Bad Men for what they’d done to Faye. She saw Drew, the Big Cat man, who wanted to be friends. And when she looked back at the cage, she saw the bolt in its hasp, keeping the cage door closed. Rynne looked down at the cub again—just as the huge black head of another Ferocitor emerged from the darkness in the cage above it; pushing up to the bars, fixing her with its gleaming opal eyes and with what seemed, to Rynne, to be a plea.
Lights were sparking behind Cath’s eyes.
Pasco’s enraged face was only an inch above hers, spittle dripping as he continued to mouth obscenities while he twisted the chain tight. Her hands fell away from his lacerated face. He let go with one hand and began fumbling at his trouser zip.
Something screeched near the foot of the stairs.
Pasco looked up.
Rynne was standing now, stepping aside as the cage door swung wide open to judder on its hinge.
Pasco looked stupidly at the bars of the cage door, did not know what this was or what it meant.
“Are you frightened of the devil?” Rynne said, remembering what had happened upstairs.
And Pasco screamed when the face behind the bedroom door emerged from the darkness of that cage, yellow fangs bared and opal eyes gleaming. That face reacted to the scream, as it had been secretly reacting throughout the night to the sounds of violence and fury and hate from the Two-Legs in this stone lair since its capture and awakening. All its pent-up fury and rage was released now—and the only thing it could see in the cellar was the screaming and fearful face of a hated Two-Legs. A face that smelled of fresh blood.
The Big Cat flew at Pasco, the impact snatching him from Cath’s body and back across the cellar. Pasco shrieked as the cat furiously shook his body from side to side, jaws clamped on his shoulder but seeking his throat. Pasco kicked out with both legs and the jaws came away with cloth and flesh between the fangs. Blood sprayed the air, the smell and taste enraging the Big Cat to more ferocious assault. The jaws snapped back, closing on the hand that Pasco threw up to ward it off; first shearing away his fingers, the second savage bite severing his hand at the wrist. Still shrieking, he twisted around on his front to face Rynne—a terrified plea in his eyes—as the Big Cat came down on his back and buried its jaws in the back of his neck.
Cath was struggling to rise, discarding the chain, as Rynne ran to her and pulled her back to the foot of the stairs. They both crouched there fearfully as Pasco’s scream was abruptly choked off.
The Big Cat’s jaws had closed, shearing through the back of his neck until the fangs met in his windpipe. Pasco’s arms and legs spasmed as blood sprayed around him. Gnawing, the Big Cat planted a foreclaw across his face from behind, worked its claws into the right side of his head from chin to ear—and then peeled Pasco’s face off in one swift movement, discarding the bloody mask snagged in its claws before returning to work on his body from behind.
