Game Of Cages (2010) (38 page)

Then I cut my way into the building with the ghost knife and made a slit in the truck's gas tank. I used a book of matches to set a grease-stained brown paper bag alight and let the flames spread. The pews were already engulfed when I ran back to the van.

Someone was going to investigate the deaths in Washaway. Someday. The fire was clumsy, but it would at least explain away the charred bones I'd left behind, as long as no one thought too hard about it.

I had Annalise and I had the van. Leaving town didn't make sense, but I could certainly hide inside Steve's house until another peer arrived. How long could that be? I'd failed to kill the sapphire dog more than once, and now it was with Zahn, a sorcerer strong enough to take out my boss. Sure, I'd surprised him once with a sucker punch, but he'd be ready for me next time. It wasn't as if I had a big bag of tricks.

I had every reason to run. I didn't even know where Zahn had gone, and I certainly wasn't going to drive around looking for his Mercedes with more pets on the loose.

But then I realized there was only one way to transport the sapphire dog.

I turned the key in the ignition and pulled into the road.

My calf started to ache. I looked down and saw blood on my pants. I'd been stabbed. I was also wet, jacketless, and a fucking child-killer. I began to shiver and had to pull to the shoulder of the road until the feeling passed.

I turned the heat on and held my fingers in front of the vent. Then I found a first-aid kit behind the seat and taped a wad of gauze over the stab wound. It wasn't a large cut, certainly not large enough to kill over. I rubbed my hands together to warm them. I'd think about those people tomorrow. Not today. Today I would think about the ones who still needed killing.

I drove past the Breakleys' home and up the long hill toward the Wilbur estate. The gate was wide open. I drove up the long empty driveway and parked just out of sight of the house.

"Don't go anywhere, boss."

I climbed from the van and closed the door as quietly as I could. There was no sound other than the wind through the trees. I jogged uphill toward the house, keeping low.

Beside the house, at the edge of the asphalt parking lot, I found Esteban's plumbing truck. I went around to the other side and found a half dozen corpses. They were pets, and they had been beaten to death. The nearest one was the pastor--he had a dent in the side of his head about the size of Zahn's fist.

I couldn't beat Zahn in a fair fight, and I didn't see any reason to try. I ran to the corner of the building, squeezed between it and two well-trimmed bushes. The unlit woven Christmas lights snagged at my shirt. I peeked into the nearest window. The room had stacks of fabric and a little sewing machine set where it would catch the sun. No people, though.

I heard broken glass from the backyard. I hoped it was Zahn.

I was only going to get one chance. Jumping out of the bushes wasn't good enough. I needed to hit him before he knew he was being hit.

I cut the lock on the front door, then rushed into the entrance hall. The house was dark, quiet, and smelled like spoiled pork. I rushed to the nearest door on the left and pushed it open. The stink of rotting flesh washed over me. Stephanie Wilbur lay on the floor, still in her green-and-gold outfit, and it was clear she'd been there awhile. Someone had shot her in the chest and closed the door on her.

I hurried to the windows. There were three of them, each twice as tall as me and arched at the top, but made of individual squares of glass no larger than my hand. They gave me a good view of the open back of the truck. I crouched low and pressed my face against the glass, looking toward the backyard. I couldn't see far.

I heard them before I saw them. I stepped away from the window and curled my arm against my chest, ghost knife ready. They were talking very loudly, very excitedly. Or one of them was. Zahn spoke German in a low, somewhat bemused voice, while the other voice was loud but halting, as though the speaker was struggling with the language.

Then they came into view. Zahn was carrying the Plexiglas cage from the cottage, and Ursula was carrying a car battery. The sapphire dog lounged on the bottom of the pen, brightly lit by the floodlights at the corners. It was facing away from me. Ursula babbled enthusiastically.

They did not look up at the house and did not suspect I was watching. When they came about even with me, I threw the ghost knife.

There was only one target that made sense. Ursula wasn't important, and Zahn was too powerful for me to take on. Any fight between us would just set the predator free again and get me killed.

So I aimed straight for the back of the sapphire dog's neck. This time, the creature was facing away from me and trapped inside Zahn's cage. This time it couldn't get away. The ghost knife sliced through the window pane with only a slight tik, and then it was through the Plexi and the predator.

I immediately called it back. It zipped through the sapphire dog's neck a second time. The creature's head tipped forward and rolled free in the bottom of the cage.

The ghost knife landed in my hand at the same moment that Zahn reacted. He said: "Ah!" and gaped at the predator.

Both of them looked up at me. Ursula glanced at the predator, threw the car battery onto the wet lawn, and turned back at me, her face wild with hate. Then she took off toward the front of the building.

Zahn dropped the now-dark Plexiglas cage. "Scheiss doch!" he said, his voice seeming to come from everywhere at once. He raised his arm toward me and opened his palm.

Six shining, buzzing objects came at me, wavering like guided missiles and leaving glowing silver contrails behind them.

Time to go.

I ran for the door, hopping over Stephanie's corpse. The missiles punched through the window glass, and I saw they weren't missiles at all--they were some sort of worm as long and as thick as my thumb, and the little round opening at the front was ringed with tiny, jagged teeth.

Damn. Annalise was wrong. Zahn had brought predators with him.

I rushed into the main hall just as Ursula burst through the front door. She raised a rock the size of a woman's shoe above her head and charged at me, screaming. Guess she'd run out of guns.

I ran at her because I refused to run away. Two of the worms punched through the wall on the right, then two more came a moment behind. Three turned toward me, but the farthest one began to arc toward Ursula.

Damn. As they came close to me, I juked to the left. The worms zipped by, and just being near them made my skin feel sticky and hot. Ursula kept running straight at me--either she didn't notice the predator flying at her, or she didn't care.

I threw my ghost knife. It zipped across the room with astonishing speed and sliced through the worm as it came within inches of her flank. The worm disappeared and reappeared at the spot where it had punched through the wall. It went after her again, and since she was coming at me, it was flying at both of us.

I reached for my ghost knife again but didn't watch for it to come into my hand. I had predators on both sides of me and Ursula, too. Not good. And where were the other two worms?

There were stairs at the far side of the room, but I wasn't going to get to them without a fight. Ursula swung the rock in a vicious downward hammer swing, but she'd telegraphed it from ten feet away. I slipped it, grabbed hold of the collar of her ski jacket, and tugged her off course. She stumbled into the sewing room door, smashing through it and sprawling on the floor.

Right beside Stephanie's body. And there, sticking out of Stephanie's corpse, were the tail ends of two shiny worms, wriggling like they were burrowing into an apple. Just as I'd hoped.

I charged into the room and hauled Stephanie's body off the ground. It felt sluggish and heavy, and the room filled with a nasty wet odor. I forced myself to ignore all that and rushed toward the door, getting between Ursula and Zahn's predators.

All four worms zipped straight into the dead body, attracted to whatever meat they could find. And while I knew the society didn't want me to use them against a human enemy like Ursula, I didn't think they'd mind if I used a corpse as a shield.

Then Stephanie's head jerked up. She opened her rotted eyes and looked directly at me.

I screamed something unintelligible and shoved her, stumbling, into the main room. I heard Ursula getting to her feet behind me, and I ducked through the door. I didn't want my enemies on both sides of me.

Stephanie wobbled, barely able to keep her balance, as the worms disappeared under her stained clothes. Ursula had found a pair of scissors somewhere and was cursing at me in her native language, whatever it was, as she stumbled through the door. I backed away from them both, wondering how I would get to the hall, then the kitchen, and finally the back door, because I expected Zahn to step through the open front door at any moment. And I knew I'd be a dead man if he found me here.

A blast of white fire tore through the wall near the front door. The flames looked like they were roaring through an invisible hose four feet thick, and the spell came from the same spot where Zahn had been standing when I hit the sapphire dog. Maybe he wasn't coming through the front door after all.

The white fire began to sweep slowly across the room like a flashlight beam, incinerating doors, walls, and support posts. I heard, again, the sound of screaming that I'd heard when the pastor's house had been destroyed, but because I was close to the spell, I could tell that it wasn't just one scream but dozens, maybe hundreds of voices--as if the fire still held the deaths of all the lives it had taken.

I jumped back, hitting the edge of the stairs, then vaulted up onto them. Ursula threw herself to the floor as the beam of fire reached her, and Stephanie--or the creatures inside her--didn't have the same control. It seemed to suddenly lose all strength and collapsed to the floor.

The fire churned through the opposite wall, then dipped down through the floor. I retreated upstairs, watching the bottom of the staircase burn to ashes.

Then the fire stopped. The scorched edges of the wooden floor and walls sputtered with pale flames for a moment but quickly went out. A loud crash from the left drew my attention, and I saw the wall buckle.

Ursula stared up at me from the floor. Her face was pale and her eyes wide with shock. Death had come awfully close to her. She turned and scrambled on her hands and knees toward the front door. Stephanie was nowhere in sight. Hopefully, she'd burned to cinders.

I glanced to my right and looked through the hole that blast of fire had bored through the house. There was Zahn, still standing just where I'd left him, Plexi cage on the ground at his side. The cage looked different--rounder--but I didn't have the time to study it. Zahn smiled, drew his arm back, and made a throwing motion. A chunk of the wall disappeared at the edge of the fire-blasted hole, then another, larger piece of the wall between the sewing room and the room I was in popped out of existence.

Whatever it was, it was coming right at me.

I sprinted up the stairs and leaped to the left. The invisible thing he'd thrown passed behind me, erasing the steps and wiping away part of the upstairs floor. And it had grown larger, too. I looked through the hole it left at the open mountainside and wondered just how far it would go before the spell stopped turning something into nothing.

Just ahead was the servants' stairs leading down to the back door. I ran to the top as another jet of white fire swept through the floor below, destroying the lower flight and wall beyond the way a lazy hand might clear fog off a misty window.

I turned and ran back the other way, leaping over the gap in the floor. The whole building shifted and jolted, and I fell to the threadbare carpet. Somewhere close, lumber cracked and splintered, making noises as loud as gunshots. I needed to get out of this house and out of Zahn's sights as fast as I could, and the most direct way was through the big arching front windows.

The room with the white sheets over the furniture was just ahead. I lunged upward and threw my shoulder against the door. It didn't open--it broke into pieces, already cracked from the collapsing jamb above it.

Once through, I fell to the floor, sliding on my knees along the sloping floorboards. The room was collapsing toward a huge hole in the center, and I could see the piles of basement clutter all the way down at the bottom.

The whole house shuddered. A wardrobe tilted away from the wall and slammed to the floor. I struggled to my feet as it slid at me, and I tried to jump up and run along the flat back of it but ended up clumsily stumbling across it instead.

I sprawled on the floor again as the entire house lurched. Plaster dust fell onto the back of my neck, and I managed to stand. I did not want to die in here. Not like this. Another blast of white fire sliced upward through the floor, cutting the wall with the tall front windows from the rest of the house.

Everything leaned toward the front, and I thought the whole building might fold up right then, pinching me into jelly. There was no way to get out by the front--the gaps were too iffy to jump, and I couldn't trust the floor to hold me even if I made it across. I had to try the back of the house.

The floor dropped beneath me--just a foot--but it was enough to slam me to my knees again. I imagined myself falling backward onto all that clutter below: the overturned chairs, furniture corners, everything. At this height I'd be lucky to only break my back. Goose bumps ran down my back and arms, and I scrambled on my hands and knees toward the door.

Stephanie came toward me.

God, the smell was awful. I struggled to my feet, determined not to die on my knees. She was standing on a cloud of silver smoke a foot or two off the buckled floorboards. Where her eyes should have been, two worms wagged back and forth, their mouths gaping wide enough to show little teeth.

The wall behind her suddenly vanished, and I knew another spell was coming. I lunged at her just as she reached me, but I was faster. Her ankle squished like a bag of jelly when I grabbed it, but I squeezed tight and pulled, tipping her off balance. She fell back as the spell advanced, and I leapt up toward the broken doorway.