Game Of Cages (2010) (35 page)

"What's the plan?" Catherine gave me a steady look.

I pulled the ghost knife from my pocket, then stuffed it down the front of my pants. I had an absurd moment when I worried it might slice off something I wanted to keep, but of course it didn't. It didn't cut through the bottom of my pocket, after all. "I'm going to get myself captured. I'll make a big enough distraction that you should be able to get to the parking lot and steal a car. Can you steal a car?"

"Yes, but Annalise--"

"Annalise told you to do what I say. The best way to get through all these people is to let them bring me to the sapphire dog. If I can kill it without hurting them, maybe they'll get better." I tried to say it with conviction, but I didn't have any. I'd never had much luck curing the victims of a predator. I didn't expect it to work, and I didn't expect to get out of there alive. But there was no need to say that aloud. "But you're an investigator. You got us where we need to be." I was tempted to say You don't have to die, too. "You have kids."

"A lot of these people here have kids. Somebody needs to stand up for them. Somebody has to be ready to pay the price, Ray, and I'd rather be good than safe."

It seemed the definition of good was more fluid than I thought. "I'm not doing this to save your life," I said. "Well, not only to save your life. Washaway is full of these bastards. Someone ought to report this--" I stopped talking for a moment as a sudden migraine overtook me. Catherine winced, too. Don't think that thought. Instead, I said: "I might be the one who makes it, not you."

Catherine sighed. "If we both survive, I'll buy you a beer. If you survive and I ..." She took a deep breath. "I have two daughters, Ray. If something happens to me, I want you to stay away from them. You and the whole society. There's nothing you can tell them about me that they don't already know. Okay?"

"Absolutely. Here." I offered her Ursula's gun. "They'd take this off me anyway."

She took it. "Ray, I'm going to say this quickly and get out of here. You're a decent guy, but you'd better do what you have to do. You're sending me away, so I'm relying on you. Whatever it takes. Okay?" I wasn't sure if she was telling me to kill or be killed, and I don't think she knew, either. She turned and scrambled into the woods.

I took a candy out of the crate beside me. It was delicious. Then I stepped out from under the table and vaulted into the open.

I sprinted through the stalls, dodging between the tents and hopping over cables. Someone shouted, "Hey!" and I turned at a right angle and ducked under a sign that said SNOWMAN CONTEST HERE!, then ran around a tarp covered with melting, machine-made snow into the open field. I heard shouts behind me and, because I wasn't really trying to get away, glanced back.

Men, women, and children raced across the field after me. They were slow, even the teenagers, and for a few moments I worried that they wouldn't be able to catch me. Then I saw a pickup bounce across the field in my direction. It was the guards who had replaced Waterproof.

I ran faster, knowing I would only reach the safety of the trees if the truck bottomed out or wrecked.

For a moment I thought they might try to run me down. I prepared to veer off to the side, but the driver slammed on the brakes a dozen yards away and the men in the back aimed their weapons at me. I stopped and raised my hands. "Don't move!" one of them shouted.

"What are you guys doing?" I shouted back, letting my voice crack with fear. Staring down the barrels of their guns, I didn't have to put much effort into acting. "I just want to leave!" I hate to be afraid, but they'd be suspicious if I didn't show some fear, and I hated them for it.

The driver climbed from the truck. Three dozen people were running toward me.

As I expected, they were complete amateurs--they stepped into the gunmen's line of fire and generally milled around me. When they patted me down, they missed the ghost knife.

One boy of about fourteen, sweat running from under his knit cap, took up a position behind me, knife in hand. I told them I would go peacefully, but they didn't care. They made me walk with them toward the field house and continued milling as we trudged through the mud. The smallest of them, a handful of kids that barely came up to my armpits, had enough energy to run wide, looping circles around me. A couple of them had guns, but most had knives, hammers, shovels, and other household tools.

I wanted to look over at the pastor's house, but I didn't. If Zahn was watching, and I suspected he was, I didn't want to give anything away.

Hondo was right beside me, a smear of auto grease on his forehead, and once I'd seen one familiar face, I saw more: one of the stilt walkers, Sue the paramedic, Justy Pivens. None had a white mark that I could see, but they all had the single-minded glare of the sapphire dog's pets.

One of the men walking beside me was a tall guy with a jaw like a train cowcatcher and sullen eyes. He stumbled slightly, then turned toward me, his left eye closing in a slow-motion wink. He said: "Buh buh guh glerr," then his mouth and left arm sagged and he fell onto the grass.

I lunged at him and turned him over. His hat fell off and a thick strand of drool hung from his lip. He was dying right in front of me--dying of a stroke just like Penny and Little Mark in their cells--and there was nothing I could do about it except watch.

I rubbed at the stubble of hair on the top of his head. It only took a moment to find a patch of white skin beneath his hair. The sapphire dog had learned to hide its mark.

The pets moved closer to me, and I held up my hands again. Seven or eight of them fell on me, pressing me down onto the wet grass. They bent my arms behind my back. I cursed at them and tried to struggle free, so they leaned on my arms until I thought my shoulder would pop. I stopped struggling and let them cuff me and pull me upright. Damn. The only way I could get to my ghost knife now would be to call it through my own body. No one tried to help Sullen Eyes.

Across the field, I saw a gray Volvo creep out of the parking lot. No one else seemed to notice. Go, Catherine, go.

They shoved me along. As we came near the field house, I saw Preston among the folks still standing guard. He was still holding his double-barreled shotgun, but he didn't seem interested in scaring me anymore.

Behind Preston I saw Pippa Wolfowitz and Graciela. I looked for Graciela's toddler with her tiny earrings, but I didn't see her nearby. Pippa was still wearing the same Santa cap and bulldog expression she'd worn outside Big Penny's house, but underneath her jacket she wore pajamas. She looked up at the sky as though she wanted to study the clouds, then fell over backward and was still. No one moved to help her.

Damn. They were dying all around me.

Pastor Dolan pushed through the crowd. "Where are the two women who were with you?"

The stone-cold way he looked at me gave me a chill, so I smirked at him. "They escaped while you dipshits were chasing me."

He wasn't insulted. Maybe he didn't know how to be insulted anymore. "You'll tell us more soon enough."

"Yeah, sure I will," I said. "Take me to your pet."

Everyone stopped and turned toward me. They looked to be a half second from stomping the life out of me. I felt a sudden nervous tingle on the back of my neck.

"He isn't a pet," the pastor said in a low voice. "Do you hear me? Don't use that word again."

"Sure, sure. But next time you threaten someone, stand on a box first."

He didn't react, just turned away. Hondo grabbed my right arm, and a man I didn't recognize grabbed my left. This was it. I wished my hands were free so I could grab my ghost knife. The entrance to the field house was just ten yards away.

A green light lit the sky on the right. Everyone turned toward it, and I stepped back to get a clear view through the tops of the festival tents.

Green fire had blasted a hole in the roof of the pastor's house. There was a loud boom, then a series of sharp cracks. It sounded almost like fireworks.

A nest of blue lights came through the wall. The whole house appeared to buckle, a piece of roof blasted upward, and we heard the explosion a second or two later.

There was another sudden flare of green flame. "Go, boss," I said under my breath. "Kick his ass."

A section of the downstairs wall suddenly blinked out of existence. The building sagged in on itself. There was a high-pitched sound almost like a scream. The walls shuddered and a column of white flame tore through the entire roof.

Burning wood rained down on the nearby lawn. I had a sick feeling in my gut. I'd never seen Annalise use white fire; maybe it was a spell she kept in reserve.

The walls twisted and collapsed into rubble. I stood in the crowd, watching the pieces of broken shingle and siding burn in the mud. I looked for a figure moving amid the wreckage, a glimpse of a dark coat, but I couldn't see anything.

Boss, please still be alive.

The pastor turned toward Waterproof. "Get together a dozen men and check that out." He glanced back at his house, his expression showing as much concern as he'd show for a toppled Porta Potti. "Actually, bring twenty. With guns. Kill anyone you find over there. We don't want to take any chances with his safety."

Waterproof took about a third of the crowd with him, maybe two dozen people, but these guys weren't operating under military discipline. They marched across the open field in a mob with their mismatched weapons.

I was hustled toward the open door. People stepped over Pippa's body as if she was a rotted log. "I'm cooperating," I snapped. "You don't have to hold my hand. I'm cooperating!"

They didn't let go. My stomach knotted up as I thought about being dragged in front of a predator with my arms pinned. Damn, did I feel stupid.

We went inside, passing a halogen floodlight set on a stand in the back corner. This was the same white room where I'd eaten the church lunch. The tables, chairs, and steam trays had been removed, and the room was flooded with light. I counted four halogens, each set into a corner and each shining onto a pedestal near the far wall. I nearly tripped over the fat black power cables that ran along the base of three of the walls.

And there on the pedestal was the sapphire dog, sitting on a big satin pillow like pampered royalty. Its tail wavered, sometimes weaving slowly and sometimes snapping from one position to the next too quickly for the eye to see.

Its back looked different than I remembered. The last time I'd seen it, it had been smooth like a snake, but now I saw a row of polyps.

It turned its weird, rotating eyes toward me.

My God.

I shut my eyes, trying to think. The floodlights didn't make sense. Regina and Yin had used lights to trap the thing, but the people it fed on--its pets--had never done that. At first they'd tried to get it out of town, then they'd kept it safe. But they'd never kept it prisoner. So maybe it wasn't a prisoner right now.

I felt a sudden rush of affection for it. It was trying to control me again. I shut my eyes and focused on the pain in my iron gate, but I couldn't keep them closed. I had to look.

"I love you!" I shouted, fear and hatred giving power to my voice. I lunged forward, breaking the grip Hondo and his buddy had on me, then pretending to fall onto the stone floor. I took most of the impact on my shoulder and a little on my forehead. The pain was sharp, but it reminded me why I was there.

Was I in range of the sapphire dog's tongue? The space where its mouth would be was still smooth and unmarked; it wasn't opening its "jaw." I had moved my my cuffed hands behind my knees when Hondo and his buddy caught my arms again.

There was a gunshot outside. Then more shots followed in a sudden rush, including the harsh pecking sound of automatic fire. It faded away, then surged again as people reloaded. I closed my eyes and refused to think about who they might be shooting.

There was a quick double honk of a car horn from outside. After a few seconds, I heard Steve's high, strained voice. "What the heavens is going on here? Who are those men shooting at?" He was trying to push into the room with his gun drawn. No one seemed afraid of it. He started calling people by name.

Of course. No one here had a visible white mark. Steve didn't know everyone had been turned into pets.

I heard him shout, then his gun went off. He cried out "Kerry!" in horror and was shoved into the room, unarmed. "What are you people doing?" He looked terrible, pale and drooping, with dark pouches under his eyes. He obviously hadn't even gotten the meager sleep I had. He scanned the room, then gasped when he noticed the sapphire dog. "Oh," he said quietly. "The lights. Good work, everyone."

They stared at him. I passed the cuffs under my feet, then rolled to my knees. I pulled the ghost knife out of the front of my pants and palmed it as best I could.

As soon as my hand touched the spell, the sapphire dog turned toward me. I had its full attention.

"I love you!" I shouted and lunged forward.

The sapphire dog jumped off the pedestal immediately. It knew.

Hondo and the other man pounced on me. I didn't even have time to throw the spell before they pinned me.

I cut a slot in the concrete and dropped the ghost knife into it. The pets would need a jackhammer to get it now.

The sapphire dog hurried toward the wall on its awkward, crumpled-leg gait. Steve had just come in through the door on that side, and he shuffled to intercept it. Neither were quick, but Steve managed to step into its path. He crouched low and held out his arms as though about to catch a running child.

None of the pets tried to stop him, and I knew something was wrong. I remembered the way the sapphire dog found us at the stables, and the way the pastor had immediately run from me when he had no way to know I was planning to kill it, and the way Hondo and his buddy had just pounced on me before they had any way of seeing my ghost knife--the sapphire dog was in their heads.

Not in the heads of the people it had controlled at a distance, like Regina and Ursula, but the heads of people it had fed on and marked.