On the Fifth Day (8 page)

ing herself absently, and didn't sense the presence of the man until he was standing right beside him. He was dressed in a heavy thermal jacket, gloves, and a knitted hat that covered most of his face.

Thomas instinctively started to move away. The man was too close, too conveniently bundled up against the cold, and suddenly he had an arm against Thomas's back, bracing him against the fence.

Thomas tried to shrug it off, but the guy--he was white, but Thomas could say nothing beyond that--took his left wrist and wrenched it high up his spine, a single swift move

ment that was over before he could flex against it. Thomas as

sumed he would go for his wallet--and given the way things had gone over the last couple of days, he was content to let that go--but he made no such move. Then the guy's knee stabbed upward into Thomas's groin and he doubled up.

"Leave it alone," hissed his attacker, his mouth against Thomas's ear.

For a second the words meant nothing and Thomas, over

come by a wholly unexpected fury, came surging up out of the near-crouch he was in, and struck out with his right fist. He caught the man squarely on the side of his head, blindsiding him. For a second or less, Thomas thought the other man might run. But the punch had only made him angry, and his head snapped back around toward Thomas with a snarl so that the eyes beneath the woolen hat flashed an icy blue, which made Thomas step back, his momentary fury turning 50

A. J. Hartley

quickly into panic. He raised both fists to protect his face from whatever onslaught was about to come, and the error almost killed him.

There was no sudden rain of blows. Instead the attacker stepped in close and grabbed Thomas under his raised arms in a sudden and unsettling bear hug. Then he was lifting and pushing, and Thomas felt his whole weight rise up the fence and wedge briefly against the rail. For a moment he saw those furious eyes and the deserted zoo spread out behind his at

tacker, and then he kicked and the muffled face registered first pain, then a wild determination.

Suddenly Thomas was tipping back, over the metal rail and the chain-link fence. His head and upper body teetered in space, and then he was falling backward, turning. He clawed at the fence as he fell, but his fingers scrabbled at nothing, and then he was rolling heavily in the air, bouncing off the concrete lip and tumbling twenty feet down into the dry moat. His mind moved twice as fast as his hands so that he had time to watch them grasping at nothing, powerless to do anything about it, with time enough to sense the coming im

pact with terror and fury. The sky fell away and he dropped like a stone.

CHAPTER 12

He landed in the thin underbrush at the bottom, crashing onto the frozen, compacted earth and a single fallen tree limb. His left leg took the worst of it, absorbing the whole weight of his body so that it buckled unnaturally beneath him. The breath was driven from him, and as he sprawled on his back the pain flashed through him like heat so that he saw whiteness bright as lightning, and then nothing.

When he opened his eyes it took him a second to remember 51

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

where he was. He didn't know how long he had been lying there. The thin remnant of snow hadn't been thick enough to muffle his fall, let alone cushion it. The ribs on the right side of his back and the base of his spine smoldered, and when he tried to move, his left leg from the knee down sang with an agony so intense that he almost blacked out again.
Keep still. Wait.

He opened his eyes again. No one was around. No sign of his attacker or other visitors who might have glimpsed his fall. There was only sky, the steep rock of the moat walls, and the dead, twisted tree limb that had been blown into the trench months ago where it had lain ever since, waiting for him to land on it.

"Help!" he managed. It was a thin cry and set him cough

ing. He groaned and closed his eyes again, opening them with relief at the sound of movement above.

Somebody saw me fall in,
he thought.
Thank God.
But when he opened his eyes he saw no one at the rail. Then a pebble skipped down the rock wall of the trench and, realiz

ing it had come from the other side, his eyes moved slowly up to the top. The great tawny head of the lioness looked down at him.

Oh God.

The animal leaned out and put one massive paw on the edge, testing her foothold as she strained to get a better view. She was only about twelve feet above him, almost directly above. He could see the splay of her paws, part of the pads beneath.
If she drops on you . . .

She had amber eyes and a great pale muzzle. Her mouth opened, part exercise, part yawn, and Thomas saw that she could probably wrap her jaws around his entire head. Her teeth were great yellow chisels. She flicked one ear, then low

ered her head, her eyes still bright and focused.
Keep still.

For a second Thomas remembered the cocktail of pills he had considered taking not so many days ago, how languidly he had decided not to swill them all down. Now he lay here, 52

A. J. Hartley

badly bruised at the very least, maybe broken, with a fourhundred-pound cat staring at him, and the irony of how badly he wanted to live through the next few moments struck him so forcefully that he actually laughed.

The lion's ears pricked and her neck and shoulders flexed. Thomas stifled the chuckle and kept still. It took him a mo

ment to realize that the dull rumble that he heard, a sound like the distant turning of a large engine, was actually coming from the animal's throat. He tried to ignore the pain, keep ab

solutely still, and once more avoid the temptation to laugh.
Getting eaten by a lion,
he thought,
might be absurd, but
it's not actually funny.

Not if you're the one being eaten, no.

Well, at least you'll make the news.

Not good enough, I'm afraid. I have to get out of here.
Slowly, excruciatingly slowly and with his battered body crying with outrage, Thomas began to roll into a crouch. For a moment this meant taking his eyes off the lion, a terrifying prospect that left him straining with his ears for sounds of the animal's descent. She could be on him in two bounds, he guessed, and would probably not suffer at all from the drop, particularly if she could land on something soft.
Something like you, you mean.

Oh, that's helpful,
he responded to his own inner voice.
Scare yourself stupid.

She might not be able to get back up unassisted, but he doubted lions' minds worked like that, so he just had to hope that the beast felt neither especially threatened by his pres

ence, or hungry. Wincing at the pain, he turned to the far side of the trench and considered the rock wall.

It was definitely climbable, though whether he had the strength to do it was another matter altogether. He couldn't put weight on his left leg for more than a second before the pain became blinding. He checked the lion. She was watching him from the top, her head weaving slowly from side to side, her eyes somehow never leaving him. The truth of the situation hit 53

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

him with the clarity of a lightning bolt. She was gauging the distance to pounce.

Lying where he was, he was no better than meat. She growled and her tail lashed, so that even before the sinews of her forelegs began to stretch, he knew she was coming. Thomas had not doubted that she could get down the rock wall, but the ease with which she did so was still staggering. She leaped down in one easy, almost lazy motion, her massive paws absorbing the impact of her drop so that she barely trou

bled the thin dusting of snow that had escaped the watery sun. She landed ten feet away and paused, her yellow eyes fixed on his, her mouth lolling slightly.

Down here with him she looked bigger than ever. Careful not to take his eyes off hers, Thomas groped behind him for the broken branch he had landed on, fingers splayed wildly as they scoured the icy ground. When he found it, he rose quickly, agonizingly, and took two steps backward the mo

ment he was even close to vertical, shrugging out of his coat as he did so. The lion seemed to be leaning forward, like a man on a slowing bus countering inertia. When it stopped en

tirely, he'd fall forward. For the lion, Thomas knew, the inertia was all in her mind. When she thought the time was right, she'd come.

And if she does, you die. It's that simple.
For a second he thought about brandishing the branch as a weapon, but that would be a futile gesture. If she surged for

ward now he could be armed with a rocket launcher and she'd still kill him. It was all about her decision. She gazed unblinking, and he stared back as his hands fid

dled with the branch and his heavy coat. When he was ready, he took a fractional breath, stood as tall as he could, and roared at the top of his lungs, hoisting his jacket on the branch high above his head like a war standard.

It was a desperate, absurd noise, a great whooping yell like some woad-painted berserker hurling himself at the locked shields of a hundred Roman legionnaries. The moment he ran 54

A. J. Hartley

out of air, he sucked in another breath and repeated the same cry, high and long as loud as he could manage. The great cat faltered, and her eyes flashed up to the top of his ludicrous scarecrow staff where his coat flapped. In a sec

ond or two, Thomas had doubled his height, and the lion was--if not actually scared--surprised, even uncertain. He was bigger, and certainly noisier, than she had expected. Ig

noring the shooting pain in his leg, he flailed his arms and re

hearsed his barbaric yawp one more time.

Thomas could see her body contract, her head withdraw a fraction, her eyes flash around as she considered her options, and the fractional hint that he might yet snatch victory from the jaws of defeat--a phrase which had never seemed so delightfully apposite--filled his shouting with a determined vigor. In seconds she was backing away.

The moment she did, Thomas turned his back on her, reached as high as he could up the molded concrete sides, and launched himself up, fingers scrabbling for handholds in the stone. The cement was pinkish and shaped to look like eroded rock strata. There was just enough purchase for him and not quite enough for the cat. Sparing his left leg as best he could, he dragged his weight up a couple of feet at a time until he could reach the fence.

He knew that he shouldn't have taken his eyes off the lion, but he was too elated. When he did glance back, it was just in time to see her change her mind. She rushed the moat wall and threw herself up at him, snarling and slashing with one im

mense paw. Thomas snatched his leg out of her reach, fought not to lose his grip, and grabbed at the rail above him as the lion fell back to earth. Before she could lunge again, he was clambering over the rail, chuckling again to himself, relief making him slightly hysterical.

He was barely out when he caught sight of a large black woman in uniform moving swiftly in his direction from over by the carousel.

"What the
hell
do you think you're doing?" she roared. 55

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

She was closing fast, her eyes wide and furious, giving off almost as much raw menace as the lioness.

Thomas considered quickly, raised an apologetic hand, and started limping away toward the seal pool and the exit as quickly as he could manage. He looked down into the moat as he beat his retreat, and the lioness stared back, watching im

periously as he stumbled off, his eyes scanning Stockton Drive for a cab.

"Dead?" asked the Seal-breaker.

"No," said the voice on the phone. War's voice. "Shaken up, bruised. He may have to see a doctor, but he'll live."

"Probably as well," said the Seal-breaker. "But scared, yes?"

"Count on it."

"Scared enough?"

War's voice stalled, and the Seal-breaker pounced on the hesitation.

"That's what I thought," he said.

"He'll drop it," said War. "He's a
high school teacher.
He didn't even like his brother. He'll drop it."

"Perhaps," said the Seal-breaker. "But in case he doesn't, I want you close, particularly if he starts sniffing around."

"There's nothing for him to find here."

"I don't mean here," said the Seal-breaker, irritation flick

ering suddenly and then dying away again like dry lightning.

"I'm sending Pestilence back to Naples. Just in case."

"There's no way Knight will go to Italy," said War. "Why would he?"

"I said 'just in case,' " said the Seal-breaker carefully. "For now, watch and wait. Dealing with him here--if it comes to that--is likely to be messy anyway. Who knows," he said with a smile as momentary as his anger had been, "maybe a Euro

pean trip is just what Mr. Knight needs. The world is, after all, a very dangerous place."

CHAPTER 13

It was almost dark by the time Thomas got back to the rectory, and the rain had turned to sleet. Finding no lights on in the house and no sign of life, he inched his way up the stairs to Ed's room and sat on the bed. He was pretty sure he had sprained both knee and ankle in his fall, but he didn't think he had broken anything. He'd be black and blue in the morning but, on the whole, he had been lucky.

Not often you end the day relieved not to have been eaten,
is it?

He grinned to himself.

"Leave it alone," his attacker had said.

His grin faded. There had been no attempt at robbery, no gleeful laughing at a lethal but well-executed prank.
Leave it
alone.
Someone was trying to scare him away from poking into Ed's death.

Well, they'd succeeded in scaring him. Just not enough to stop him.

Mule,
said Kumi's voice in his head.
Ox.
The room was still untidy from the rifling of Parks, the thief who had taken what the beat cop had called the Jesus fish. Could the same man have subsequently tossed him to the lions? He had no way of knowing for sure, but he didn't think so. The thief had seemed impetuous, reckless even, something that his odd weapons seemed to reinforce. The guy at the zoo had been a professional, all his movements economical, and his strength prodigious. The guy had picked him up and thrown him as if he were no more than a child. Men like that carried automatic pistols, not swords.