A fiery lash whipped across the churning, yellowed sky, tearing the air the moment I stepped foot on the bare ground. The rain stopped, though, as if it preferred to watch from overhead until we knew what the outcome of this deadly confrontation would be. Lightning chased me up the hill.
“Hurry!” I gasped, but there was no need. Atherton is faster uphill than I am and had already pulled in front. I tried to keep up, but the air on the hillside had been replaced with something yellow and vile that had no oxygen. The vampire was closing in.
I didn’t try to avoid the poison oak that day. I kept an eye out for holes that could break my ankle and brambles too thick to force my way through, but most of my attention was focused on our destination. We were heading for Irv’s property. But not the cabin. The screaming was coming from somewhere to the southeast. Where Irv’s old mine was. I knew—knew with the certainty of one guided by a higher power—that it was Wilkes out there, and that the damned idiot had actually been trying to work Irv’s old shafts.
True hatred, the kind that wells up from the gut and soul, is pure and hot as molten gold. But more singeing even than hate is the fear of losing a loved one. And it can give us the strength to do and face things we never would otherwise. I refused to even consider that one of the cats might die.
Have you ever been in a fistfight? I hadn’t until that day. As a girlie-girl I didn’t spend my school-yard recesses brawling in the playground. I’d never boxed or wrestled. I wasn’t adequately prepared for a physical confrontation. However, I did recall some advice given by a vice cop who came to talk to our gym class in high school on the subject of rape. He said you had to realize that if you decided to fight an attacker you were going to get hurt, and you couldn’t let the sudden pain or shock deter you. I hardened my resolve. I would face what ever Wilkes threw at me.
A part of me wished desperately that Tyler was there. He would know what to do and wouldn’t be afraid.
We broke through the manzanita and I saw Wilkes swing his shovel at Day-O. The world telescoped, like the lens of a camera that zoomed too quickly. For a moment I felt invisible, powerless, a ghost who could watch but not intervene. All I could do was emit a thin, almost silent scream.
Wilkes’s head jerked in my direction. Day-O ducked the swing, but the edge of the shovel caught him on the hip. Wilkes brought the shovel up again, but Dodge and Inky were on his back, claws tearing deeply. Wilkes reached over his shoulder and grabbed Dodge, ripping him off and flinging him against a tree. I heard the man snarl: a sound far uglier, more animalistic and more terrifying than any the cats were making. He seemed no longer human.
My body, acting of its own volition in spite of the obvious danger, kept moving at the cats’ attacker. I had no weapons, not even claws, but I charged at Wilkes, also screaming like an animal and probably looking like one.
Lightning hit the ground in front of me, a battle-axe of light that for a moment was as solid as a wall. I swear I felt it singe my hair as I passed through it, jumping over the sudden crack where it clove the leaf-strewn earth.
Then Wilkes was there, raising his arms to swing. His shovel was aimed at my head.
No, if he had ever been a man, he was no longer. What faced me was some sort of demon, a half-bull whose misshapen head was outthrust, lips curled back from its teeth, murderous eyes completely insane and merciless.
I whirled away as he swiped at me with the shovel. I landed wrong, turning an ankle. I tried to jump away but he caught me from behind and jerked me like a rag doll, or like a terrier trying to snap a rat’s neck. He stank, and his hands were appallingly strong. His nails were stained red—with soil, I assured myself, not cat blood. I watched as the clawed hand on my right arm let go of my flesh and clapped itself over my mouth, trying to stifle my screaming. He crushed my lips against my teeth and I tasted blood. Already hurt, I bit down hard into his hand, not caring what damage I did to my mouth.
Another cat hit him on the back, and then yet another. We both staggered. He didn’t let go, though, just moved his bloodied hand down to my neck. I tucked my chin down before he found my throat, and lashed backward at his shin. My sneakers did little damage, but we were on stony, unstable ground; shale slid under his boot and we both fell down the embankment. I saw cats go flying in all directions and prayed they escaped our crushing weight.
Had he landed on top of me, I wouldn’t be around to tell the tale. The upthrust rocks we ended upon were sharp, and he was heavy enough to break my bones on them. But Wilkes was undermost as we toppled, and his cruel grip slipped from my throat at the moment of impact. More importantly, he dropped his shovel.
I heaved to the side immediately, rolling, twisting—anything to get away before he grabbed me again. Brambles clawed at me as I rolled, but I grasped their thorny lifeline and pulled myself to my feet.
Jillian, run!
I wanted to—believe me—but I wouldn’t, simply couldn’t, leave my cats to face this monster alone. They wouldn’t leave, so neither would I.
I threw myself at the shovel, but didn’t quite make it. Wilkes’s hand closed on the handle. Then Day-O, Dodge and Inky landed on Wilkes again. Then Peaches and Holly and Blaze. I have never seen such ferocity in an animal attack. Lions of the Serengeti couldn’t have matched it.
Lead him this way, Jillian! It was Atherton again. Hurry!
I looked toward his voice and he was perched on some ruined lumber that looked like a fallen scaffold. Not questioning his judgment, I abandoned the struggle for the shovel and scrambled over the rocky outcrop toward Atherton. As I got closer, I could see that what I had mistaken for a miniature gallows was actually the shattered frame of an old windlass. You found these over wells and coyote holes. Both were very dangerous.
I heard Wilkes and smelled him. He was right behind me. No longer trying to pull off the cats, he came on, intent now upon nothing except seeing me dead. Panic bade me hurry, but my limbs seemed unable to do my mind’s bidding. I felt his hand on my bruised shoulder, and its brutal clasp was as agonizing as a branding iron pressed into my flesh. Darkness swam around me.
I fell again in the carpet of stabbing needles, and Wilkes kicked me, a blow to the ribs that would have been worse if I hadn’t already been rolling away from his foot.
Don’t freeze! I told myself. Don’t let pain deter you or you’re dead.
I fetched up against an oak, hard enough to knock my breath away. Wilkes staggered to my head and raised his foot again, prepared this time to stomp down with all his weight. The sole of his waffle-stomper was caked with red earth and pine needles, but it would crush my skull anyway and leave bloody footprints like those on Irv’s floor. Only, this time no one would see them.
Atherton leapt at Wilkes’s face, and I swear that I saw him rip off the man’s eyelids and tear out his eyes. For a moment I saw Wilkes’s gooey sockets, and then they were gone, drowned in a veil of blood and other ichors. His clawing hands reached for Atherton.
I knew in that instant that Atherton and the others would defend me to the end, even if it meant their deaths. I absolutely would not allow that. I had to stop this son of a bitch.
The rest happened very quickly. My painful last roll away from his crashing boot sent me into his legs, and simultaneously Wilkes screamed in rage as he toppled over. He staggered sideways, helped by a feeble kick from me, with an enraged cat still on his skull and five others on his back, shredding his clothing and flesh until bone showed through the bloodied layers. Then he was tottering at the edge of the sinkhole that had once been an old mine and possibly some unlucky miner’s grave. He stepped hard onto the rusted hog wire that covered the opening, and I heard something snap.
I screamed a warning—at the cats, not Wilkes. At the last possible moment, Atherton and the other cats leapt away from Wilkes’s falling body, landed, claws digging for traction on the slippery pine-needle carpet. Then Wilkes was gone. In front of me was only the empty spot where the monster had been.
After a moment ther
e was a thud, a horrid, solid sound that was at once wet and crunchy. There was no more screaming, not from him and not from the panting cats. There was nothing. No moaning. No cursing. No noise of any kind. Even the wind was silenced. Wilkes was dead.
I knew of his death even before I rolled onto my knees and looked over the edge. His body was at the bottom of a coyote hole, one that had possibly killed other men, swallowing them without a trace and leaving only ghosts. Where Wilkes’s soul had gone was anybody’s guess. Not to Heaven; of that I am sure. But Hell-bound or earthbound for his sins, it made no difference. And in that moment I just didn’t care.
I fell over on my side and took several agonized breaths, letting my mind reconnect all the neural junctions that panic had severed. All at once I felt every cut and bruise and sprain.
Jillian, it isn’t safe. Come away from the edge. I barely recognized Atherton’s voice, but I obeyed it instinctively. It was all I could do to regain my knees and crawl a few feet away from the crumbling rim of the shaft. My ribs were a fiery agony and I could hardly endure the pain of drawing mouthfuls of needed air.
Overhead, the indifferent clouds looked down. They shed no tears. They threw no more lightning. Death’s vampire had fed.
I didn’t weep. I hadn’t enough breath, and that bastard Wilkes didn’t deserve it.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul.
—Mark Twain
Eventually my lungs managed to draw air without pain. The world ceased pulsating and color returned to the earth, relieving my monochromatic horror. I sat up slowly. Mind and body were both beginning to function again, albeit under protest.
My first thought was that Murderus-lopithecus was dead—really, truly, actually dead—and though I should report it, I probably couldn’t walk into the sheriff’s office and claim to have just discovered the body while out on a walk. Leaving aside the little matter of the likelihood of someone who is highly allergic to poison oak casually taking a stroll through a noxious bower on a stormy day, or that I probably looked like I had just lost a fight with a wolverine, there was no way to hide the fact that there were claw and teeth marks—mine and the cats’—on Wilkes’s face and body.
My second thought was that I could get rid of the DNA evidence under my own fingernails by scraping the skin out and using some bleach, and perhaps I might even be able to round up the cats and get them clean; but even if I could reach the body, it wasn’t as if I could put all the skin and blood back again. They might not be able to prove Irv’s cats had been the ones to attack Wilkes, but the suspicion would certainly fall on them and the other strays. And society was not kind to animals who took human life—even if the animals were agents of justice.
“Shit.”
I extricated myself from the clumps of musty-smelling mountain misery and limped over to a boulder beside the remains of the broken windlass that had once sat astride the coyote hole, both to think and because I found that my knees were still too weak to carry me much farther. I rubbed at my arms and legs, trying to brush off the sudden cold and fatigue that was creeping up them. But all I did was rub the pain of my scrapes and bruises deeper into the muscles. Around me, the wind whispered nervously and the trees shivered.
A small curl of steam rose up from the shaft, looking like a miniature ghost twisting helplessly in the skittish wind. Warm body, cold hole. This was a natural phenomenon. Still, I felt the tiny hairs at the back of my neck lift as I was reminded of the dust devil that had staggered to my door before dying on the stairs. Some of our natural phenomena were damned unnatural-looking and…well, I didn’t want to be haunted by this vicious man in any way. I inched backward, avoiding the vapor.
Day-O appeared at my feet. His hair was standing on end and I could see blood on his mouth. I bent slowly, running my hands down his body, assuring myself that there were no bones broken; Wilkes had been swinging that shovel with lethal force. Wilkes’s blood smudged my hands. I was repulsed, but relieved that none of the gore was Day-O’s.
“Good kitty. Brave kitty,” I said absently. My voice was calm but my thoughts were beginning to race as I weighed the various options.
Day-O tolerated my touch for a moment and then dashed away. His eyes were wide and frightened, and he seemed confused by what had happened. I figured mine were probably the same. What the hell was I going to do?
My first review of circumstances said that the situation wasn’t good. Being a law-abiding citizen, my instinct was to phone the authorities and report what had happened. But even after a second calculation, I could see that if I went public and told some version of the truth of what had happened—really any version—Tyler would have to arrest me. Certainly he would if the DA decided to prosecute. Not for murder, most likely, but perhaps involuntary manslaughter. If that came to pass and the case went to trial, would twelve honest men and true understand what had happened to Wilkes? Maybe. But the whole he-was-attacked-by-cats thing sounded awfully suspicious when my own obsession regarding Irv’s murder was so much easier to understand. Would they not think I had simply taken it upon myself to get revenge? I had said some slightly incriminating things to Josh. And Tyler. Really, most everyone I had talked to in the last week knew that I suspected Wilkes.
The thought of facing Tyler made me shudder, and conjured up the tears I hadn’t been able to find for Wilkes. I swiped at my face with my sleeve, not wanting that murderer’s blood on my face.
Tyler might well think I was making it all up, or was crazy. It indeed sounded crazy to say that my cats attacked Wilkes, first to avenge Irv and then to save me. He might believe that I had flung Atherton at him myself. He’d likely call it self-defense; after all, Wilkes had had a shovel and I was clearly hurt. But a jury might not agree. After all, it was Wilkes who was dead. And again, either way it would draw attention to the cats. Dogs who attacked people were put down. I couldn’t imagine a stray cat would get any better treatment—not when they got a look at Wilkes’s face. Wounds on his arms could have been inflicted by the cats in self-defense. The rest, though…
“Damn.” I knew then that, more than anything, I wanted to be with Tyler—if not for always then for as long as possible. I was skating on perilously thin ice and didn’t know which way it would break if I stuck the pickax of hard truth into it.
On the other hand, I also knew that lies abrade the soul. They were grit that wore out even the most loving of relationships. Did I want to begin our time together with a huge lie?
No.
And yet, a lie seemed marginally better than falling through the ice and back into the cold place I had been living before Tyler pushed himself into my life. A part of me wanted to tell Tyler the truth, to confess everything and let the chips fall where they may, because without trust, without faith that he would understand, that he would believe me, there was no hope of love ever growing between us. You can’t love what you can’t trust.
But I could too easily picture Tyler before me, standing tall in his uniform, badge gleaming on his chest. One moment he was wearing the uniform and in the next the uniform was wearing him. First he was my lover; then he was The Law. Which Tyler would I be dealing with if I confessed? Would it be the man I had made love with, or the sheriff of Irish Camp who had sworn to uphold the rules and regulation of the land?
It would be Tyler, I decided, my lover who heard me out. I was ninety-nine percent sure that it would be the man and not the office that I dealt with, and he would be appalled and enraged, especially if I went to him now, as a victim, covered in mud and blood and bruises and said that Wilkes had attacked me. Those were good odds. You could take them to Vegas and stand to make a fortune.
But would I have good fortune with this? How well did I really know Tyler? I wasn’t a child, or even an innocent who should be protected from the consequences of her actions. And to ask for Tyler’s complicity in hiding Wilkes’s death, or at least in covering up certain facts, was to shift the burden of my guilt o
nto him. Even if he could absolve my spiritual culpability—and that was unlikely, because I knew precisely what part I had played in this debacle—had I the right to ask? I had known all along that the cats’ frustration was growing as the days passed and we failed to make any progress toward collecting proof that would meet the human standards of guilt. They had seemed driven, almost possessed, indulging in some very unnatural behavior. I had suspected all along that they would kill Wilkes if they could, and I hadn’t stopped them—hadn’t even warned them away. I had even thought about killing Wilkes, myself. In that respect, I was guilty of having a hand in planning Wilkes’s death. In law, that is called premeditation, and I wouldn’t buy my future peace of mind, or even my freedom, at Tyler’s expense. That wasn’t what a loving person would do. Tyler might be willing to shelter me—to lie for me—but I knew it would be at a great psychic cost to himself. I couldn’t ask this of him, and he couldn’t volunteer to do it without first being forced into knowledge about me that he’d rather not have. There were no take-backs in this situation, no stuffing the genie back in the bottle after it got out.
And I was fairly certain that he wouldn’t protect the cats no matter what he did for me. After all, if I didn’t kill Wilkes then someone else had. I think he would feel that someone or something had to be blamed in order to reassure himself that the public was safe. How could he responsibly believe that this had been a onetime aberration and that the cats would never hurt anyone again?
He couldn’t. It was beyond him. It was beyond anyone who didn’t know these animals as I did, to know that they were no threat now that Wilkes was dead and their compulsion toward vengeance was fulfilled.
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