The ghost knife was still in my pocket. I left it there. Tattoo made me nervous and I needed to keep something in reserve. The marks on his body could mean all sorts of things. Maybe he could breathe fire. Maybe he could shoot tear gas out of his armpits. I wanted him to play his hand before I played mine.
Also, I didn’t want to go for my weapon right away. I hate to show my fear.
I started toward the garage, but he stepped lightly into my way. His smile grew wide and he clucked his tongue. That wasn’t allowed. Hell, if he was going to tsk tsk me, he was going to get the fight he wanted. We moved toward each other.
He was fast. When he threw the first punch, I almost didn’t see it coming and barely got out of the way, staggering back. He looked surprised that I’d avoided his jab but not particularly worried.
I leaned into him, moving my head to the side while throwing a jab of my own. I hit him full on his tattooed nose while his counterpunch went just wide.
Now it was his turn to stagger back. He kept his balance and his smile. “Gut, gut!” he said, as though advising me to try body blows. My left hand stung from the shot I’d landed, but his nose didn’t look damaged at all. Damn. His tattoos seemed to be the same as mine, more or less, and he was completely covered by them—even his face. Probably even his scalp. This guy was better protected than my boss.
He came at me again. I went on the defensive, blocking and weaving. I’m pretty quick—I was a promising baseball player once, and I’ve always had a sharp eye and fast hands.
Tattoo was fast too, but he wasn’t unnaturally fast. He wasn’t superstrong, either. I wondered just how complete his protection was. He threw a low right hand that I let hit my ribs while I extended my left, fingers out, toward his eyes.
He dodged sideways, almost losing his balance in his haste. In that moment, I landed a solid kick to his crotch.
We backed away from each other. My lunge at his eyes had wiped the smile from his face, but the kick had brought it back. It’d had no effect on him.
“Oh, hell no,” I said. “Your johnson, too? That’s just not right.”
His smile turned sour. Whether he spoke my language or not, he understood what I was saying. Suddenly he wasn’t having quite so much fun.
I kept backing away from him, my left hand still aching. I wasn’t focused on the fight the way I needed to be. If my head was in the right place, I wouldn’t feel my hand until after. My adrenaline was trailing away—I’d wasted it in the basement and I needed it now.
He caught up to me, feinted low, and hit me on the side of my jaw.
I managed to roll with it at the last moment, but the world still blinked dark. I felt something cold against the side of my face—mud? It felt solid. I pushed away and crumpled into the mud for real. As I fell, Tattoo’s fist hit the side of the house where my head had been.
I tried to shake my mind clear, but I was still feeling fuzzy. My ass was wet. My hands were muddy and leaching heat, but that soothed the pain in my left.
Tattoo was talking again. Someone who didn’t know about my protective tattoos would have kicked me in the ribs, but he circled behind me. The idea that he might return the favor of a kick to the nuts gave me a much-needed burst of adrenaline.
I rolled onto my hip and held out my forearm. That punch to the face frightened the hell out of me. If he did it again, I might never wake up. His kick struck my wrist. In a desperate grapple, I grabbed his right foot and twisted it with both hands. He yelped in surprise and pain, rolling against the steps Catherine and I had used to enter the house and falling into the mud to avoid a dislocated knee. His other boot scraped painfully across my scalp, but there was no power behind it. He got his arms under him. I didn’t have much time. I jammed his foot behind the other knee, then folded his leg over it.
I remembered that sour-faced housekeeper. The old man had sacrificed her without a second thought, and Tattoo had laughed about it.
I rolled over his ankle and broke it.
He screamed. It was a high, girl-in-a-horror-movie scream, full of fear and unaccustomed to pain.
He reached back for me. I twisted his thumb too far, and he screamed again. I loved that sound. It was like a church choir to me. This bastard was faster than me and he hit harder, but the tattoos that protected him from cutting and impacts didn’t protect against twisting.
And I couldn’t leave him alive. He’d come after me again someday, and I didn’t think I could take him a second time.
He swung with his good arm, stinging my ear. I let the momentum of his swing carry him onto his back, but I stayed close. I shifted my weight onto my feet, grabbed his wrists, and stood, lifting him off the ground with his head hanging down.
The stairs were made of stone. That should do. I waddled over there, pinning him with a bear hug. He struggled, but I could hold him long enough to break his neck.
Something came at me from the top of the stairs and slammed into me. The sudden impact broke Tattoo from my grip, and I wanted to cry out like a terrified child. I smelled a lemon aftershave as I sprawled in the mud.
It was the old man’s assistant, Frail. I flipped him up and off me, letting our momentum roll me clear of Tattoo. He scuttled off, his hands over his head. Tattoo crawled away from me, dragging his crooked ankle behind him.
I heard shouting and footsteps through the open kitchen door. Tattoo’s screams had brought help. My head still hadn’t cleared—all I could think about was guns. I turned and ran around the garage into the woods.
I fled blindly, pushing through a break in the blackberry bramble and dodging through the trees so they wouldn’t have a clear shot. It wasn’t until I tripped at the bottom of a steep slope that I realized they weren’t chasing me.
I leaned against a tree, fighting to catch my breath. Why hadn’t they come after me with their shotguns? I rubbed my aching hands and face. My head began to clear.
And I remembered the floating storm.
Damn. I scanned the woods around me. I didn’t see any floating balls of light, but my visibility was pretty limited. Damn and damn again. I’d planned to steal a car and drive to Catherine’s. We could have gotten off the property in a few minutes.
I looked back up the slope. The cars were still there, of course. I could try to sneak back.
No. They knew I was out here. And even if they weren’t going to chase me, they were probably watching from the windows. It’s what I would have done.
I really wished I’d killed that tattooed bastard.
I jogged along the base of the slope, watching the treetops for any trace of the reddish light I’d seen the floating storm give off. The ground was covered with moss, fallen branches, and a few scattered ferns. I made a lot of noise, but it was better than pushing through brambles. After a few minutes, my head had cleared. There was still no sign of the creature.
Predator, I reminded myself. That old man had summoned a predator out of the Empty Spaces. And the Twenty Palace Society existed to kill people like him.
I had bought into that mission. Not an hour ago, I had wondered if I could bring myself to kill again. Now I had a list.
I thought about the people caught up in this mess: Regina and her staff, the Fellows, the old man and his dangerous little crew, and the well-dressed Chinese gunmen. The society was just another gang after the same prize, and Catherine and I were the only ones here to represent. Maybe that should have bothered me, but it didn’t. I had bought in. I knew what predators could do, and I was ready to do whatever it took to destroy them.
And God! This was what I’d missed since Hammer Bay. I’d thought it had been the excitement and the danger, but it was really this feeling. I had a clear purpose. I had important work. I would do whatever I had to do to stop these people.
But no. That wasn’t true. If I’d done to Ursula what Annalise would have done—if I’d killed her—I wouldn’t have been trapped in the basement and I wouldn’t have fought Tattoo. Hell, the old man wouldn’t have summoned the floating storm. That maid’s death was partly my fault. Annalise was ruthless but she wouldn’t have gotten herself into this situation. It was something to think about.
The wind had picked up, and my wet pants and sleeves were leaching body heat. I wished I’d kept my jacket. I moved forward, scrambling over uneven ground and fallen wood, hoping I was headed toward the long asphalt drive.
I came across a trail of footprints in the mud and stopped. Was someone out here hunting me? I couldn’t see anyone. There were actually three pairs of footprints. Two headed toward the house, and the third went back the other way.
They were mine, Catherine’s, and Catherine’s again. Perfect. At least I was on her trail. I followed the footprints to the long drive and then down the hill.
A thunderclap echoed from somewhere up ahead. Had I failed Catherine already? Had the floating storm killed her? I kept running. I wasn’t going to give up on her until I saw her corpse.
That little thought prompted a quick series of ugly mental images that didn’t do anything but slow me down.
I reached a steep part of the hill and crouched at the base of a tree. The crashed truck lay on the road below. The Acura was close, and I couldn’t see anyone.
I fell once going down the slope. My pants were already as wet as they were going to get. No one shouted or shot at me. A few minutes later, I came to the stand of trees where Catherine’s car was hidden.
It was still there. I approached cautiously. Catherine wasn’t around. Damn. I peered inside. Nothing.
I circled the car, hoping to find a second trail of footprints to follow. Something moved out from behind a tree. I jumped and cursed before I realized it was Catherine.
“Sshh!” she hissed. “There are still men out here, hunting around. I saw you coming but couldn’t tell who you were. So I hid. I sent the license plate photos already, and I’ve been waiting for you. What did you find out?”
“Stuff,” I answered. “But the most important thing is that one of the bidders in that house summoned a predator.”
“What?”
“They stuck a lightning rod through an old woman’s heart and there was this flash of light and … the old man sent it out to kill everyone on the property.”
“Well, let’s get out of here then.”
She unlocked the car and we climbed in. My flannel jacket was lying on the front passenger seat. I put it on, getting mud on the lining; my shoes and pants smeared mud on the car seat. “I’m sorry,” I said.
She clipped her seat belt and turned the key. “You’re wearing wet clothes on a winter night? Not smart. You’d last longer with nothing on.”
I imagined myself lying out in the bramble, shot to death and wearing only smears of mud and underwear. To hell with that. I’d rather freeze.
She backed toward the road, taillights glowing. When all this was over, maybe I’d install a kill switch on her lights so they wouldn’t light up the mountainside.
At the driveway she turned toward the gate and hit the gas.
We came around a twist in the road and saw two men blocking our way. Both were Asian, dressed in dark, expensive suits, and held pistols. Yin must be desperate, if he was having his men search every vehicle leaving the estate.
The taller one had no hat; maybe he didn’t want to muss his high, moussed-up hair. He held out his hand like a traffic cop, expecting the weapons to make us obey.
Catherine gunned the engine and flicked on her headlights. The men scurried aside. The taller one shouted something to the other and fired two quick shots into the grille.
“Shit!” Catherine shouted. “Those bastards shot me!”
They didn’t fire again. It took a moment to realize Catherine hadn’t really been hit, just her car. The engine rattled. We began to slow down. I glanced back and saw that the two gunmen were following us, but they didn’t appear to be in a hurry. “We were lucky,” I said.
“Lucky? I love my car and those bastards killed it.”
“We weren’t going all that fast,” I said. “They could have shot us both in the head. Easily. We’re lucky they still haven’t found the predator.”
We crested the top of a hill and started down. The engine suddenly made a loud grinding noise. The car was dying.
Catherine put the car in neutral so we could drift to the bottom of the hill. “Shit!” she said again. She sounded close to tears. “Those assholes shot at us! Should I have stopped for them and let them search the car?” For the first time, I heard uncertainty in her voice.
“No,” I told her. “After they searched, they would have held on to us, and I don’t think we would have liked it.”
She took a deep breath. “Right. Of course. I knew that.” The Acura reached the bottom of the slope and lost momentum against the next rise. Catherine twisted the wheel so it blocked the road. “I’m sorry. The gunfire has me a little rattled. We run for the gate, don’t we?”
“I think so. Those guys will be coming up behind us, and the old man ordered the floating storm to kill everyone it found between the house and the fence. Although …”
“Although what?”
“He didn’t seem to have complete control over it.”
She sighed again. “Let me get my jump bag.” She grabbed a small, stuffed duffel bag from the floor behind her and got out of the car. Then she began jogging up the road. I followed her but spared a glance behind us. The two gunmen hadn’t made it over the hill yet. We didn’t sprint because we weren’t sure how far we had to go, but we did hustle.
“Ray,” she said. She was not breathing hard, but she didn’t look comfortable. “I’m sorry for what I said. You’ve been a solid guy. You didn’t have to come out here to warn me, but if you hadn’t …”
“Thanks,” I said, feeling a tremendous sense of relief that I couldn’t really explain. It was hard to admit how much I wanted her acceptance, and through her the acceptance of the society as a whole.
And that hadn’t been easy for her to say.
“Too bad you’re a wooden man.”
“Let’s save our breath, okay?” But I knew what she meant. A wooden man didn’t come with a long life expectancy.
The treetops cast long shadows across the road. The woods around me seemed to become more clear. My eyes were adjusting, I thought, but something didn’t seem right. The shadows were too sharp. I grabbed Catherine’s sleeve and pulled her to a stop. She cringed just a little, and I let go of her.
The long, crooked shadows of the trees were slowly moving toward us. I glanced up. Ahead and to the left there was a light in the sky. It was dimmer and smaller than a full moon, but it was growing brighter.
“Lord above,” Catherine said. “It’s coming right toward us.”
I heard hissing, like water drops boiling in a skillet. It was, in fact, coming right toward us.
Catherine bolted for the downhill slope at the edge of the road. The bramble was thick there and the ground uneven. “No!” I shouted. “This way!” I ran back up the road.
I glanced back once to see that she had followed and that she could keep up. The floating storm passed over the trees onto the road. We ran around the Acura and up the hill.
“Where are we going?” Catherine called.
I slowed down to let her get next to me. An old joke popped into my head about running away from a bear, but I didn’t think she’d find it funny. Catherine’s mouth was set in a determined frown, and her forehead was a mass of wrinkles. She already had streaks of sweat down the side of her face.
Ahead of us, the two gunmen had reached the top of the slope. They had already seen the floating storm, of course. The tall one with the elaborate hair was talking very excitedly on his cell. His partner was short and round, with a Moe Howard haircut that made him seem like comic relief. He didn’t have a fearful expression; he looked like he was seeing the awful end he’d always expected.
I risked one glance back at the creature behind me. It was traveling along the road now, but I couldn’t tell if it was gaining or not.
The gunmen glanced at Catherine and me. I could see their indecision.
“Run for your lives!” I screamed at them, letting my face show some of the terror I was feeling. They shrank away from me, understanding the tone of my voice if not the words. Fear is contagious. The men in the basement had proved that.
They turned their attention back to the predator. Haircut pulled his cellphone away from his ear and winced as though it had stung him.
We were fewer than ten yards from them now. I grabbed Catherine’s elbow and shoved her toward a deer path on the side of the road.
It was a steep drop-off. We hopped partway down the hill until I slipped in the mud and fell, body-sledding into the back of Catherine’s legs and knocking her on top of me.
We struck a tree trunk at the bottom of a shallow ravine and tumbled into the mud. I jumped up, pulled Catherine to her feet, and followed her up the slope ahead.
Gunshots. We both stopped at the top of the little slope and looked up at the road.
The two gunmen were holding their ground, standing in two-handed firing stances: shoulders squared, legs spread, one hand supporting the other. The shots went quickly, popopopop—it takes surprisingly little time to empty a handgun.
The floating storm was about fifteen yards off the ground and nearly above them. Moe Howard dropped the magazine out of his pistol and slapped in a new one with well-practiced speed. He started shooting again, and I knew he was hitting his target even though I couldn’t see any effect. Haircut didn’t bother to reload. He began to back away.
Beside me, Catherine said, “Oh, God. No.”
The floating storm was above Moe now. There was a tremendous flash of reddish light and a thunderclap louder than anything I’d ever heard in my life. A blast of air staggered me. Haircut was close enough to be knocked down. When I blinked away the lights in my eyes, I saw him struggling to his feet, still half stunned.
The floating storm moved straight toward Haircut. He didn’t have a chance.
I turned to run and saw Catherine giving me a withering stare of raw hatred. I was startled, but when she took off downhill, I followed.
We ran, aiming mostly northward because it was downhill. Where the ground was rough, we angled toward one side of the path or the other, trying to keep to flat ground. We also kept to the trees, hoping they would force the predator to stay high and out of range. And the ground was clearest where the trees were thickest. Where they were thin, the way was choked by vines and bramble.
It stayed on our tail, never getting too close and never falling far behind. Would a ball of churning gas and electricity toy with its prey? I figured not.
So we ran. The light from the predator cast long shadows ahead of us. Whip-thin tree branches, nearly invisible in the dim electric light, stung my face, neck, and arms. As we topped a ridge and slid down the other side, the light the predator gave off was suddenly blocked. We had to pick our way through the moss-covered branches by touch until the floating storm came close enough to light the way again.
We were never going to survive this way.
We came to a little stream—not deep, but the banks on both sides were pretty near vertical and too far to jump. Catherine bolted to the right, running along the gap until she came to a place where the bank on the far side was more gentle.
She jumped, hitting the ground with a loud whuff. I landed beside her and a little farther up. I grabbed her jacket to help her up the hill, but she shook me off angrily and ran by me. Her breath was coming in labored heaves.
I glanced down at my shadow and realized how short it had become. I sprinted after Catherine, trying to keep close without passing her.
I watched her. It was obvious that she was tired, but she never let up the pace. She ran on willpower, hurdling broken branches and exposed roots. It was barely running—more like hopping through an obstacle course. I didn’t think either of us had the stamina to outrun the predator. I glanced back at it again. If it was becoming tired, I didn’t know how I’d tell. At least we were putting a little more distance between it and us.
Catherine suddenly angled to the right, and I followed. She’d found a footpath that was clear of broken branches, although the moss was still slippery. The wind chilled the sweat on my face. We made better time on the footpath, and the forest grew darker around us.
“The town is down there,” Catherine wheezed. I looked in the direction she pointed. Through the trees, I could see a cluster of faint, distant lights.
We could never run that far. We kept running anyway.
Then we came to the thing I was most afraid of—the ground dropped away in front of us. We had reached the edge of a fifty-foot cliff.
At the bottom was a little pine forest, all laid out in perfect rows. A Christmas-tree farm.
“Shit,” Catherine said. “I can’t run any more. Boy, you said you had a weapon that could kill a predator.”
“I said maybe. And it won’t work on this one. My spell is made of paper, and that thing is made of lightning. My spell would just burn up.”
“Are you sure? You won’t even try?”
Of course I would try—as a last resort. To the left of us, there was a section of cliff that had collapsed, making a very slight slope. A couple of trees grew nearly sideways out of the dirt. “Can you climb down this cliff?”
The electric hum of the predator was growing louder, and the woods were growing brighter. “Not fast enough,” she answered.
“I’ll give you time. Get down to the farm. Find something to kill an electricity monster. I’ll lead it to you.”
She ran to the left. “What if it catches you?”
I almost answered: Then when it comes for you, I won’t be leading it, but the predator was close and it was time to run.
I followed the path along the top of the cliff, lengthening my stride to stretch out my legs. I’d already run a couple hundred yards over rough ground, and I didn’t have a lot of gas left in my tank. The predator fell behind, but at least it was chasing me, not Catherine.
The woods to my right became steeper, sloping higher and higher until it was a wall of ferns and mud above me. If this trail dead-ended, I would be dead-ended, too. I was too damn tired to run uphill.
A couple of the trees ahead looked strange—too regular, and stripped of their branches. As the floating storm lit the woods around me, I realized they were power poles.
I picked up the pace. The power line came up the cliff below at a slant, ran along the trail for a few hundred feet, and then continued uphill to the right at a rocky point. The nearest pole on the trail was just ahead. The cliff drop to the left was still steep but looked manageable if I had a little time to work at it. I stepped around the pole and backed away from it, gasping to catch my breath.
As I’d hoped, the floating storm went for the power line. It moved carefully through the trees, avoiding branches when it could, setting them alight when it couldn’t go around them. It reached the top of the pole and began to draw power slowly, sipping instead of gulping. Blue arcs flashed out of the top of the pole to the predator.
At the edge of the cliff, the muddy ground beneath me shifted. I fell, sliding with the mud down the slope. I had a sudden image of myself lying at the base of the cliff with a broken back while the predator moved toward me.
I managed to grab hold of a cluster of woody brush and stop my slide. I struggled to my knees, but the angle of the slope was too steep for me to hold myself in place, so I let go and stretched out flat. I slid slowly down the hill, finding one foothold after another in tree roots, trunks, and clumps of bushes. There were a couple of sketchy moments, but I survived.
At the bottom of the hill, I scrambled to my feet. The wind was gentle, but it still chilled me. Maybe Catherine was right, but I left my shirt on. I didn’t like throwing away resources.
I crossed under the power line. The predator was still up there at the top of the cliff, still feeding. It had apparently learned that it could trip the breaker by feeding too fast. I didn’t like that. I wanted it to be like a shark—dangerous but basically stupid. The smarter it was, the harder it would be to kill.
It looked like it was growing larger. Would it stop hunting me if it fed enough from the power pole? I didn’t know what to do, so I jumped up and down and swung my arms, trying to keep my muscles warm for the next leg of the chase. All I was sure of was that I was giving Catherine extra time to prepare.
Then I imagined the predator growing large enough to split in two like a dividing cell. That thought scared the hell out of me.
Five quick cuts with the ghost knife on the nearest power pole made it topple—away from me, thank God—and snapped the power line. The blue arcs stopped popping under the predator. Dinner was over.
The floating storm didn’t move for a couple of seconds. It bobbed up and down as if it was trying to puzzle out why the juice had stopped. I picked up a rotten hunk of branch and threw it.
The predator was too far away for me to hit it. The branch landed in the bushes near the base of the electric pole, and a sudden crack of red lightning blasted the ground at that spot. The sound startled and frightened me, and clumps of dirt and burning wood chips showered down over me.
The floating storm started in my direction. I turned and ran like hell toward the tree farm. The chase was back on.