The Fear In Yesterday's rings

Chapter Eight

Arlen Zelezian apparently hadn't thought much of my story-or, more likely, he had never intended to keep his part of the bargain. Whether or not he'd believed me was impossible to tell, but it was obvious that he was willing to kill us and take his chances.

I regained consciousness only to find myself in a drugged stupor-the result, I suspected, of having animal tranquilizers injected into my right arm, which was sore. I was imprisoned in what looked to be an old-fashioned circus cage, mounted on a flatbed truck. The bars of the cage were covered on all sides by wooden shutters, but faint illumination was provided by a naked light bulb dangling on the end of a frayed cord suspended from the ceiling and presumably running on current off the truck battery. I slept most of the time, managed to occasionally awaken with just enough energy to relieve myself in a galvanized steel pail set up in a corner near a locked trapdoor. I knew that we were traveling, for through my drug-induced dreams I could feel the cage swaying and bumping over potholes, could hear the muffled roar of the truck engine. It seemed we were on our way to the next stop, wherever that might be.

I wondered what they had done to Harper.

I wondered where we were going and what was going to happen when we got there.

I wondered where Garth was.

Finally, I awoke with my head relatively clear, but with a splitting headache and a taste in my mouth like rotten blubber. My cage and my body had been hosed down, and I was lying naked on the rough, splintered wood floor in a corner of the cage, covered with a towel. On the floor over by the trapdoor, neatly folded, were my charcoal suit, blue T-shirt, shorts, socks, and shoes. I found the discovery ominous.

Clean clothes could mean that execution day had arrived.

As if in response to my foreboding, the wooden shutters at the front of the cage suddenly flew open, banging against the sides of the enclosure. Wherever we were, it wasn't with the rest of the circus; with the truck engine turned off, it was completely still. It was night, the darkness pierced by what I presumed were car or truck headlights shining into my prison.

"Get dressed, dwarf," a voice with a heavy East European accent said.

I stepped back a pace, shielded my eyes from the headlights with my hands, and squinted. Now I could see that the voice belonged to the potbellied roustabout with the bulbous, Technicolor nose. With him was another man, gaunt and unshaven, who was dressed in ill-fitting coveralls and a stained Greek seaman's cap. Both men were holding guns.

"Where's the woman?"

The potbellied man raised his pistol and aimed it at my chest. "I told you to get dressed."

I got dressed. The gaunt man in the coveralls and seaman's cap said something to the potbellied gunman in a language I thought might be Polish or Hungarian, then produced a key which he used to open the padlock on the wooden trapdoor at the side of the cage. The potbellied man motioned with his gun, indicating that I should get out. I ducked through the opening, descended to the ground by means of a short wooden ladder, then turned toward the two men. Now, without the headlights shining in my eyes, I could see that the potbellied man had a huge shiner; his right eye was swollen shut, and the whole right side of his face was a dark rainbow of black, purple, violet, and muddy yellow. He motioned with his gun toward the car off to his left, and I started walking.

"I like the looks of your eye," I mumbled to the potbellied man as I passed him. "Too bad whoever did that to you didn't take your head off."

"Shut up, dwarf," the man said, his thick accent making his words just barely intelligible. "That fucking big brother of yours is going to get his guts spilled just a little while after you lose yours. Next stop."

I stopped and stiffened, started to turn, then froze when I felt the bore of a pistol suddenly press hard against the base of my skull. It was the gaunt man in the coveralls; he was good with the gun-and watchful. It wasn't going to do anybody any good for me to get my brains blown out; I knew I was going to have to be patient and pick exactly the right time to make a move on these two men. "You have Garth?"

It was the potbellied man who answered. "Whatever the big fucker's name is, we've got him."

"How do you know he's my brother?"

"Because Mr. Zelezian told me."

"What happened to the woman who was with me?"

"Shut up and get in the fucking car, dwarf, or Janek will put a bullet in your brain."

I continued walking toward the car, at the same time looking around me. Not only had we left the circus, but we appeared to be in the middle of nowhere. As far as I could see in all directions, there was nothing but flatland, with no lights to indicate any houses or a town. Arlen Zelezian's men had chosen a completely isolated spot to let me out of the cage, and I was pretty certain I knew why. I wondered how many miles it was to the nearest tree.

I opened the back door of the car. The interior light came on, and I could see Harper sitting in the back seat, hands folded in her lap. She was wearing the same outfit-jeans, silk blouse, and sneakers-as when I had last seen her. Her face was ashen, the hollows under her eyes dark from sleeplessness, but she looked otherwise unharmed. She saw me, and her maroon eyes went wide.

"Robby! I was so afraid you were. ."

I got into the car, slid across the seat, and wrapped my arms around her. I held her tight, buried my face in her hair. "God, I'm glad to see you," I murmured. "Did they hurt you?"

She shook her head. "They just kept me tied and gagged in the back of somebody's trailer. What are they going to do with us?"

"I don't know," I lied. In fact, I was virtually certain I knew exactly what they planned to do with us.

"They have your brother."

"So I hear. Our friend with the black eye just told me."

"They trapped him. I heard it from the trailer. He confronted them. He seemed to know they had you."

"Yeah. Garth has quite a nose for evil."

"No talking!" the potbellied man snapped as he got into the back seat next to me, pressing me hard against Harper. I felt the bore of his gun dig into my ribs, on a direct line with my heart. The position didn't leave me a lot of room for maneuvering.

The gaunt man called Janek got into the front seat, behind the wheel. He started up the car, an ancient Plymouth, put it into gear, and started forward; apparently, even the area we were in wasn't considered sufficiently isolated. The car's engine sputtered and coughed, and there was a strong smell of exhaust seeping up through the floorboards.

"Are you going to kill us?" Harper asked the potbellied man sitting next to me.

"Shut up, lady. We're just going for a little moonlight drive."

"It would be a terrible waste to kill somebody like me, wouldn't it?" Harper's voice had suddenly grown even huskier than usual, pitched at its most alluring. As she spoke she leaned forward slightly in order to look across me at the potbellied man-in the process giving him a good glimpse of bra and breasts. I could see now that her blouse was unbuttoned, and I felt a shudder of disgust as she reached across me with her right hand and placed her palm on the inside of the man's thigh, just above his knee. "Can't you think of something better to do with me?"

"Don't bother, Harper," I said, trying to keep my disgust and disappointment out of my voice, and failing. "That's not going to do either of us any good. He'll just use you, and you could get hurt."

"Mind your own business, Robby," Harper said curtly. She didn't look at me, although her face was only inches from mine as she leaned across me. "I know what I'm doing; I'm doing what I want to."

Now Harper took the man's hand, brought it across me to her chest, pressed it down inside her bra. The potbellied man began to breathe heavily as he kneaded her breast.

I loathed the sight of what was taking place almost literally under my nose, and if it was a ploy to allow me to make a move on the man, it wasn't working; the potbellied man had transferred the gun to his left hand and was pressing the bore up hard under my chin, right over the carotid artery, forcing my head back. I certainly hoped the weapon didn't have a hair trigger, for I could feel his whole body beginning to tremble with passion. Having my head accidentally blown off by a cretin whose mind was elsewhere seemed a particularly bad joke considering some of the scrapes I'd survived, and I closed my eyes so that I couldn't see the man savoring the same flesh I had been savoring not long before.

Harper moaned softly.

"You're a hot little bitch, aren't you?" the man said in a hoarse, quavering voice. His breath smelled of onions, his body like an old sock.

"I want it," Harper said in her low, husky voice. "I want it now. Let's get out."

The man in the front inclined his head back slightly and said something in Polish or Hungarian, sharply; the man with the gun to my neck replied in Polish or Hungarian, sharply. I didn't need a translator to tell me that the potbellied man wanted Janek to stop the car. An argument ensued, during the course of which my unwelcome seatmate often chose to emphasize a point by jabbing the bore of the gun even harder against my carotid artery. My companion apparently won the debate, because Janek abruptly braked and pulled off to the side of the potholed road. Then he turned around in his seat and aimed his pistol at my head. The potbellied man took his gun away from my throat, shoved it into the waistband of his trousers. He got out, started around the car, stopped in the back to unzip his pants and relieve himself.

Harper cast a quick glance at the man in the front seat, then leaned toward me. For the first time since she'd started playing whatever game she was playing, she looked directly into my eyes.

"Remember what I said about wild things, Robby?" she asked softly.

"You've talked a lot about wild things," I replied tersely, averting my gaze. I was feeling surly. Incredibly, I was also feeling hurt. Of all the things I should be feeling at the moment, I thought, hurt was the most inappropriate. But there it was.

"You tame wild things, Robby. It's your nature. But wild things can take care of themselves. From everything I've read and heard about you, you're likely now to try something impossibly heroic because you think you have to try to save me from being degraded. I've also read that you're deceptively quick and powerful. You might even be able to take this skinny guy with the gun on you."

I glanced back through the rear window. The potbellied man had finished relieving himself and was zipping up his pants. In response to our whispered conversation, the man in the front seat had stiffened and was concentrating even harder on keeping his pistol aimed at the exact center of my forehead; if there had ever been a chance of surprising and disarming him while his companion had his way with Harper, it was gone now.

"Thanks a lot, Harper," I said with a deep sigh, looking up at the car roof. "I can always use that kind of encouragement."

"You're angry with me because you're thinking that I've put this other jerk-off on guard and made it harder for you to put some kind of move on him," Harper whispered urgently as the other gunman came around to her door. "Well, you might have succeeded in taking away his gun, and then again, you might have been killed. Do me a favor, Robby. Let this wild thing take care of herself. For a woman who's known as many men as I have, I'd be most surprised if the fat jerk-off has anything new to show me, unless his whang has polka dots. You may be surprised to see how this works out. So just sit still."

There was no way I was going to try to put a move on anybody; any plans I might have had to take advantage of the potbellied gunman's temporary distraction were canceled now. Not only had Harper put Janek doubly on his guard, but she'd taken the heart out of me. So I sat still, staring off into space, as the fat man jerked the rear door open, grabbed Harper's arm, and started to drag her from the car.

"Easy, big guy, easy," Harper said, abruptly pulling out of the man's grasp and stepping out of the car herself. "I want you as much as you want me, remember? So there's no need for any rough stuff. Now, let's go find us some nice private place. I've got a few tricks I want to show you."

Harper slammed the door shut, then took the man's hand and pulled him away into the night, toward a clump of bushes about seventy-five yards away that stood out in silhouette like an atoll in a sea of darkness against the flat, empty horizon. I sank back in the seat, crossed my arms over my chest, and stared back at the man in the front seat who was aiming his gun at my head.

"Fuck you," I said with a big grin, just to see if he understood any English at all.

He either didn't understand or didn't care. He just kept staring and aiming his gun.

In my disgust and hurt and general all-around disappointment with Harper, another thought was clearing its throat in the back of my mind, trying to get my attention. It finally did. Harper was indeed a wild thing, I thought, but unless I had completely read her wrong, her behavior in the last few minutes was totally out of character. She was sexy, yes, and certainly passionate, but I simply could not understand why she would seduce a man she had to know fully intended to see her dead, no matter what she did.

And how could I possibly be surprised by how it was going to work out?

Suddenly, there came from the darkness in the direction of the bushes a sharp, high-pitched shout that could have been a cry of passion. The gaunt man in the front seat started, momentarily took his eyes off me to look out the window toward the bushes. We waited together and didn't have to wait long. Half a minute later, Harper, flushed and out of breath from running, appeared at the side of the car. She began pounding her fists against Janek's window, apparently heedless of the gun in the man's hand.

"Come with me!" she shouted at Janek, pointing to her chest and making gasping sounds. "Quickly! There's something wrong! I think your friend has had a heart attack! Come on!"

The gunman, obviously torn between the need to attend to whatever emergency had come up and the imperative to guard his charge, kept looking back and forth between Harper's twisted face at the window and me, nervously licking his lips as his pronounced Adam's apple bounced up and down in his throat. Harper hurried things along by finally yanking his door open and grabbing his arm-an action that made me wince and duck down. But the gun didn't go off.

"Come on! Your friend's dying!"

Janek made his decision. He got out of the car, grabbed Harper. He put the gun to her head, then spoke to me rapidly in Polish or Hungarian, pointing first to me, then at the car.

"I think I've got it, Janek," I said drily, emphasizing my words with slow and elaborate sign language. "If I get out of the car, you'll shoot the woman. Bang-bang."

The man nodded enthusiastically as I again leaned back in my seat and crossed my arms over my chest. Then I watched through the window as Harper pulled him off in the direction of the bushes.

Things did not bode any better for Janek than they had for his potbellied colleague, I thought with a grim smile. I knew that I had been a fool.

Two or three minutes; there was another sharp cry, this one louder than the first, and then some enthusiastic but abbreviated cursing in Polish or Hungarian. I waited another minute, then got out of the car and walked slowly toward the black outline of the bushes.

I found Harper behind and slightly to the right of the clump of bushes, squatting down in the grass between the corpses of the two gunmen. In the faint moonlight I could just make out the men's faces, and it was obvious that they had died not only quickly but unpleasantly; the flesh on their necks and the lower parts of their faces was swollen and black. Harper's head was bowed, and she seemed to be fighting for breath. In her right hand she held the small, carved wooden box I had previously seen her take from her purse. She was holding her right wrist with her left hand. I stayed a distance away.

"Harper?" I said quietly.

She looked up at me, and in the moonlight I saw her wry smile. "What's the matter with you, Robby? Don't you understand Polish? Didn't you hear that man tell you you were supposed to wait in the car?"

"Is your little pet and traveling companion back where it belongs?"

Still holding her right wrist, she shifted around and slipped the wooden box into the left front pocket of her jeans. "Yeah," she said thickly. "It was kind of hard to find the little guy the second time; the first time, he just jumped right out of the box onto the guy's neck. Pretty effective-better defense than Mace, huh?"

"No question about it."

She sucked in a deep breath, slowly exhaled. "God, I was so afraid it was dead-I hadn't fed or given it water in a long time. I was able to put it in my pocket when they let me go to the bathroom. I told them I had my period and needed my purse."

I went to her, put my hands under her arms, and gently lifted her to her feet. She had begun to tremble violently, and I held her tight, stroking her long hair, kissing her lips, neck, cheeks, and forehead. "God, Harper, you're a pisser," I whispered hoarsely in her ear. "All that talk about wild things; you wanted to make certain I didn't get hurt trying to rescue you, because you were about to rescue me. You knew they were dead men."

Now she pulled away from me, stared hard into my face. There were tears welling in her maroon eyes, sliding down her cheeks. "You should have heard your voice back there, Robby. You sounded like you hated me."

"I'm so sorry, Harper," I said, pulling her back close to me, kissing away her tears. "I was going for the world-class professional stupid cup. Please forgive me."

After a few moments she sighed heavily, nodded, leaned hard against me. The tears had stopped, but now I noticed that her flesh felt cold and clammy, and I wondered if she was going into shock. I pushed her away, looked into her face. Her eyes seemed slightly out of focus.

"Harper, are you all right? Did either of them hurt you?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. "I'm all right."

I looked around me in the darkness and shuddered as I suddenly felt a stab of fear. I walked quickly over to the dead men, neither of whom had even come close to making it a hundred feet after the krait had bitten them. I searched their bodies until I found their guns, put the weapons in the pockets of my suit jacket, then took Harper's hand and started to lead her back toward the car. She stumbled, and would have fallen if I hadn't caught her.

"Harper?"

"I'm all right."

"Come on. We have to get back to the car. Quickly."

"Robby? Why-?"

"Unless I'm seriously mistaken, we were brought out here to empty city to serve as lobox bait. They probably would have let us out of the car, maybe with a warning to go and sin no more and to count our blessings. We'd have been wandering around out here looking for a house, and then the thing would have been on us. I still have my wallet in my pocket, and your purse is probably somewhere in the car; werewolves don't have much use for credit cards or money, so they didn't want those items to be missing from our corpses. You and I were scheduled to be the werewolfs next victims. Zelezian has used your sweater and my jacket to prime the lobox, and I'm certain it's on its way now, tracking us-or the scent of the car."

"Oh, God, you're right," Harper said, and then she too began looking around.

We walked quickly to the car. I helped Harper into the passenger's seat, then hurried around the rusting Plymouth and got in behind the wheel. I made sure all the doors were locked, turned on the interior light, and checked the weapons I had taken from the gunmen. One was a.45 automatic with a full clip, and the other a snub-nosed Colt Cobra with a full cylinder. I put the safety on the Colt, which I judged would have the least kick, and offered the weapon to Harper, who was turned slightly away from me. "Can you use this, babe?"

Harper turned her head to look at the gun, hesitated, then finally shook her head. "Not right now, Robby," she said in a small voice. "I'm a little shook up, and I'd rather you had both of them. Can we get going?"

"We can, but I don't think we should. If I'm right, and we were brought out here to give that lobox another trial run, it's not going to do us any good to drive away. It will follow the smell of this damn car, and it will keep searching for us, coming at us, no matter where we are. Luther said it was incredibly tenacious, and I believe him. Maybe it's tracking us now, maybe not, but I do know that we'll never have a better chance than this to turn the tables and nail the son-of-a-bitch if it is coming at us. If we go, then there's no telling when and where one or both of us may find the fucking thing leaping out of some shadow to tear our guts out. If it's been primed, then it will keep searching until it finds us, and then we're dead. Now, at least, we know where it is. We're ready for it. I say we solve our lobox problem while we have the opportunity and the advantage. Then I have to give some thought to the problem of getting my brother away from them."

"I say we go back and kill the Zelezians. That will solve the problem."

I blinked, surprised, somewhat taken aback by the purpose and ferocity in her voice. I was at once pleased, because her outrage and obvious willingness to take extreme risks meant that I had an increased number of options. At the same time, her rage made me a bit nervous. I did not want Harper Rhys-Whitney, this woman I certainly lusted after, and feared I loved, to be harmed. I couldn't do anything about the extreme danger she already faced, but I didn't want her anger to put her in any more danger or to provoke her to harsh or hasty action.

"That's certainly a possibility to consider," I said carefully. "But that might not be so easy, and if we failed, we'd be in an even worse situation. Even if we succeeded, we'd still have a lobox on our trail. We don't have a lot of time, and things could get very complicated. If we decide to go to the police, it would help a great deal to have a dead lobox in the trunk of the car as proof of our story. But even then, I'm not sure I'd trust the police or the state troopers to get my brother out of there safely. Along with your safety, Garth has to be my number one priority."

"Damn right," Harper said with the same quiet intensity. "But I still say we just go right back there-wherever 'there' is-and kill the bastards now. Just give me a little time to get myself together, and I'll be able to handle one of those guns. You show me how it works, and I'll kill the bastards myself. I'm a lot madder at them than I am at any lobox."

I reached across the seat and gently stroked her back. "One step at a time, Harper," I said softly. "We-and Garth-can't afford for us to make a mistake. Let's wait to see what's hunting us before we decide how we're going to hunt the Zelezians."

"Okay," Harper said quietly, after a pause. She was silent, breathing rather heavily, for some time, then added, "Where do you suppose we are?"

"I haven't got the slightest idea. I was drugged most of the time. But we can assume that the circus has at least moved on one more stop. I was bouncing all over the cage they had me in for what seemed like hours."

"It was hours-almost eight. There was a clock inside the trailer where they kept me."

"Then they've made just one move?"

"Yes."

"Then, according to that schedule we saw, the circus is out of Kansas and into Nebraska-home sweet home for me. It should be set up near a town called Stonebridge, and we can't have been driven too far from it. That's where we'll find Garth and the Zelezians-when we're ready to call."

I waited for a response, but there was none. Harper's breathing, although still ragged, was more regular than it had been; exhaustion, rage, fear, and tension had finally taken their toll, and she had fallen asleep. I put the.45 and the Colt on the seat beside me, took off my suit jacket, and covered her with it. Then I turned around, got up on my knees, and, resting my chin on the back of the seat, stared back the way the car had come, looking for a dark shape moving on the horizon, a deadly shadow in the moonlight, listening for the sound of scratching or sniffing at the doors.

The clock in the car wasn't working, and I'd lost my wrist-watch, but I estimated that more than two hours had passed when the horizon off to the east began to glow, and the surrounding landscape became dimly visible in the first light of the false dawn. Although I was certain that a lobox, by now, would have easily covered the ten miles or so that comprised its scent range, I had still not seen or heard anything.

Perhaps, I thought, the gunmen had planned to simply shoot us and dump us in a ditch by the side of the road after all.

It was certainly good news that we were alive, but I was disappointed not to find a lobox on our trail. The Zelezians had articles of our clothing; just because a lobox had not been primed and sent to kill us on this night didn't mean that it wouldn't happen in the future, when we would not know the beast was coming, or where it was coming from. Also, I would have dearly loved to have a dead lobox for show-and-tell with the local police or the state troopers; eventually, we were going to have to explain the two corpses with swollen black necks and faces lying in the grass seventy-five yards away.

Already, with the failure of the two gunmen to return to the circus, Arlen and Luther Zelezian had been warned that something was wrong. Perhaps they were, even at that moment, hastily shutting down the whole operation, moving their breeding stock of loboxes. Perhaps preparing to kill Garth.

Shit, I thought as I stared out over the still, silent landscape. In fact, double shit.

"Robby," Harper said wearily, stirring, "I've got to pee." She sounded terrible.

I studied the landscape some more, turning all the way around in my seat. There was still no sound, except for an occasional birdcall, no sign of movement, and yet the muscles in my stomach ached from tension. I said, "Climb over the seat and pee in the back."

"I think I may have to do more than pee."

"Do it in the back."

She laughed weakly. "Robby, I really don't think I know you well enough to exercise my excretory functions in front of you. I hope I never know you that well. How would I maintain my mystique?"

"Harper, this is really no time to worry about your modesty or your mystique. I promise I won't peek or listen. I don't want you to get out of the car."

"You haven't seen or heard anything, have you?"

"No, but that doesn't mean there's nothing out there."

"I have to go, Robby. I'll only be a minute."

"All right," I said, reaching for the key in the ignition, "just hold on a little longer. Let me drive ahead a few hundred yards to the top of the hill up there where I can get a better view."

I turned the key in the ignition. The engine of the old Plymouth ground and whined, but didn't start. I shut off the ignition, gave it a rest for thirty seconds, and tried it again, with the same result. Cursing under my breath, I pumped the accelerator-and knew I'd flooded the engine when I smelled gasoline.

Harper sighed, shifted in her seat. "I'll be all right, Robby. Don't worry. There's nothing out there."

When Harper raised her right arm from her side where she had been cradling it and reached for the door handle, I could see that the flesh of her wrist was a mottled gray, swollen from wrist to elbow to more than the diameter of her hand. I grabbed her left arm, pulled her across the seat to me as I felt my heart begin to pound.

"Harper, you've been bitten! Jesus Christ!"

She apparently didn't have the strength to struggle, for she simply slumped against my shoulder, weakly nodded her head. "It got me when I was trying to get it off the second man's neck. Careless of me."

"I have to get you to a hospital!"

"Too. . late, Robby. I mean, it would have been too late hours ago. There's nothing you, or anybody else, can do for me. There's no specific anti-krait venom in the United States. If the people at the hospital knew what they were doing, the first thing they'd do is put in an emergency call for an airlift of a pint or so of Harper Rhys-Whitney's blood to use as an antitoxin serum. Well, I already have more of Harper Rhys-Whitney's blood than anybody else, so there's no sense in my going to a hospital. I told you I've been bitten dozens of times before, Robby. I have resistance. If I was going to die, you'd have found my corpse over there in the bushes beside the two men. I'm having an allergic reaction to the venom, but it will pass. I'm not going to die, I promise you-but i am going to severely embarrass myself if you don't let me out of this car so I can go to the bathroom."

"Damn it!" I shouted, again trying-and failing-to get the Plymouth's engine to turn over. "I'm taking you to the hospital anyway! Just as soon as I can get this fucking car started!"

Harper shook her head. "Not a good idea, Robby. By the time we find a hospital, the police are likely to have found those two men over by the bushes-and they're liable to find out quickly that they both died of snakebite. Do you want to try to explain to the police how I happened to have been bitten by the same kind of poisonous snake?" She pulled away from me, pressed down the handle on the passenger's door. "Now, I've got to go to the bathroom. Don't leave without me."

"Harper!" I said, once again grabbing her left arm and yanking her back toward me just as she shoved the door open. "I just don't want to take the ch-!"

The juggernaut of fur, fangs, claws, and bunched muscles hurtled through the area in space where Harper's torso had been just before I'd pulled her back, and I heard the distinct click of fangs snapping on empty space just before the lobox crashed into the side of the door, driving it back and springing it off its hinges. The metal's screech mingled with a sound from the lobox I had never heard before, a sound other men may have heard only a brief moment before they died, a kind of high-pitched, almost human-sounding cry that was somewhere between a growl and a roar.

The lobox bounced off the door, its killing scream turning to a yelp of pain, surprise, and frustration. It hit the ground just outside the door and lay there on its side, momentarily stunned, as I desperately grabbed for the nearest gun on the seat, the Colt. I sprawled across the seat, atop Harper, in order to get a better shot at the lobox, aimed the weapon dead center at the animal's head, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened; I had forgotten to deactivate the safety mechanism after Harper had declined the gun.

As I swiped at the safety catch with my left hand, a second, tawny head suddenly appeared in the doorway, its saber fangs only inches from my face. Now, with the animal in a killing rage, the thick ruff around its neck stood on end all around the head with the golden, curiously human eyes, reminding me of a hooded cobra.

Not one but two loboxes had been primed and sent, one for Harper and one for me. With its extended ruff, the head of the lobox in front of me filled the entire doorway, blocking the sun.

The lobox snapped at me just as I managed to draw my head back out of the way. I released the safety catch on the Colt, brought the gun up, and fired. The report of the weapon in the closed space slammed against my eardrums, and I felt a stabbing pain in both ears. The head was gone-but I knew I hadn't hit anything; the beast, apparently recognizing the danger posed by the gun, had, with incredible quickness and agility, ducked and bounded away a split second before I had fired the bullet that would otherwise have gone right into its gaping maw and exited through the back of its skull.

Something thudded hard against the side window on the driver's side, right behind me, shaking the car and cracking the glass. Instantly, I twisted around, raised the Colt, closed my eyes, and fired. Powdered glass sprayed over my face and chest, but there was no spurting blood, no animal howl of pain; once again, the lobox had bounded away just before I had fired. I desperately wiped the debris away from my eyes, sat up, switched the gun to my left hand, and used my right to push Harper off the seat, down into the well beneath the dashboard. Then, in a near panic, I blindly pumped three bullets into the open space on the passenger's side when I thought I caught a flash of movement. But there was nothing there. I swiped more powdered glass away from my face, picked up the automatic, then lay down on my back on the seat, my cheek pressed against a section of the steering wheel, as I aimed the Colt at the empty space just above my head, and the automatic out the open door.

It sounded like a hive of bees was buzzing around inside the car, but I knew that it was just ringing in my ears from the firing of the gun. I could feel blood trickling out of my left ear, but it was impossible to tell whether it came from a shattered eardrum or a nick from a stray piece of glass.

"Cover your ears!" I shouted over the ringing in my own head as I put my hand on Harper's shoulder and shoved her even further down into the cramped space under the dashboard.

I heard a thump, and then the scratching of claws on metal at the rear. I glanced between the seats, saw the head and shoulders of one of the loboxes standing on the trunk of the car. I poked the Colt between the seats, squeezed off a shot. I missed the lobox, which had darted off the car as I'd aimed, but the rear windshield exploded under the impact of the bullets.

The Colt was empty. I shoved it aside, gripped the.45 automatic with both hands, swept it around me in a series of arcs-back and forth, up and down, the empty spaces to my rear, the side, and at the back of the car.

Harper was sobbing hysterically, but there was nothing I could do at the moment to comfort her. Mongo the Magnificent was, I thought, currently being outsmarted by two overachieving animals, ancestors of the wolf. So far, in what was probably less than a minute, the two beasts, using their incredible agility, had managed to get me to shoot out most of the glass in the car, removing that barrier between their fangs and our flesh. And at the same time I was using up bullets.

They couldn't intentionally be suckering me, I thought. Two animals couldn't possibly have the intelligence, or the communications skills, to coordinate an attack like that; they couldn't plan to make me keep wasting ammunition until we were defenseless and they could easily get at us. The damn things couldn't possibly be thinking things out, working together to inexorably close a killing trap.

Or could they?

I remembered Nate Button's photographs of the recently discovered cave paintings at Lascaux, the utter terror radiating from those primitive people's rendering of the hunter-killer beast they had probably worshipped as a god. .

Humans appeared to have a primal fear of wolves, I thought, and now I had a pretty good idea where it had come from.

Wolves hunted in packs, and I recalled that they had been observed to cooperate in complex ways that were astounding to their human observers. If wolves cooperated, why not loboxes? And why should I be surprised if loboxes did it a hell of a lot better? These two had, after all, sneaked up on us, totally undetected, during the night, recognized that Harper and I were in the car, and then waited patiently just outside the car for one of us to make a mistake, open a door. . and let them in.

Not too trashy for an animal, I thought. It seemed that the lobox was, indeed, a pretty smart cookie, a savage merciless killer, a most formidable opponent. I had a sudden image of two or more loboxes escaping from the Zelezians, slipping their psychological leashes, to run off into the wild. Then humanity would have its own very special natural enemy for the first time in tens of thousands of years of unfettered trampling over the flora and fauna of the planet.

The woods would certainly be empty of hunters during deer season, I thought with a grim smile-and every other season. A lot of human behavior would change, for better or worse, at least in North America. And all because of a beast genetically retrieved from the past to serve as an advanced weapon of assassination. If these things ever got loose in the wild, there would be many changes in the way human beings did business.

In the meantime, Harper and I were trapped in the confines of a car with most of its glass shot out and one door hanging open, and I had seven bullets left.

A giant, tawny head with gaping maw, quivering nostrils, and expanded ruff suddenly appeared at the open door. I squeezed off a shot, missed again as the lobox ducked back.

Six bullets.

All together now, children: If you go out in the woods today you're sure of a big surprise. .

Suddenly there was the thump of something heavy landing on the hood of the car, the grating of claws on metal. I twisted around on the seat and aimed the gun at the front windshield, but there was nothing there.

A thump at the rear. I twisted again, glimpsed a tawny shape on the trunk, squeezed off a shot between the seats, hit nothing.

Five bullets left.

Things were not working out at all.

"Harper, I'm going out."

She looked up at me, her maroon eyes swimming with terror. "Robby-?"

"I'm just telling you what I'm going to do so you won't be surprised and maybe try to come after me. I've already wasted too much ammunition. Going out is the only way I can get a clear shot at those damned animals. If we stay in here, we'll die; if one of those things comes sailing in through a window while I'm looking the wrong way, it's all over. I have to go after them."

"No, Robby! Please don't leave me!"

I shoved her back under the dashboard, sucked in a deep breath, then quickly flopped over onto my belly on the seat. I braced my feet against the door on the driver's side, pushed, and slid across the seat on a slippery carpet of powdered glass, out the door. As I fell out of the car, I did a half twist, landed on my left shoulder, rolled forward, and came up on my feet with the automatic in both hands, sweeping the space in front of me. I had five bullets left; since I didn't know how many bullets it would take to bring down a lobox, I couldn't afford to waste any of them. With both of them, I would go for nothing less than a head shot.

A huge head with great black leather nostrils and gleaming saber fangs poked out from behind the rear of the car. I swung my gun in that direction, and the head ducked back.

The head of the second beast poked out from behind the front. I swung my gun that way, and it too ducked back.

The damn things were smarter than a lot of people I knew, and that probably included me.

My little offensive maneuver was indeed proving to be a good defense, but it wasn't good enough. It was too static. Right now it looked like a standoff; they wouldn't come out into the open where I could get a clear shot at them, and I couldn't risk going around to the other side because it would leave Harper, crouched only inches from the jammed-open door, exposed to a quick, deadly sweep of razor-sharp claws.

But I wanted the damn things dead, and I didn't feel like standing around for a couple of hours waiting to see what they would do next.

I couldn't walk around the car, but I could go in another direction-up-and still have a line of fire on the right side of the car. I had stepped back a few paces in order to improve my angle in the event they both came at me at once. Now I ran forward, leaped up on the hood of the car, jumped to the roof.

What I saw was the two loboxes, ruffs now flat to their necks, running flat out, side by side, toward a field of tall grass two hundred yards away. They seemed as fast as greyhounds, for in only the two or three seconds it had taken me to get up on top of the car, they had raced almost half the distance to the grass-and then, only after they had instinctively reacted to the sense that my position above them meant death, and after they had made the decision to run.

Not bad for animals, I thought; but, considering the fact that the two of them had been intent on slashing Harper and me to bloody pieces, I was beginning to take the bad attitudes of these otherworldly creatures just a bit personally.

"You fucks!" I screamed as I went down on one knee, aimed, and squeezed off a shot, sighting between the two of them. Dirt kicked up just to the right of them, and I squeezed off two more shots.

I was rewarded with a piercing howl. The animal to the right stumbled, fell, and rolled over, but was almost immediately on its feet again and running. I debated firing the last two bullets but decided not to.

I was almost convinced the two creatures would somehow know my gun was empty.

I put the automatic in the waistband of my slacks, jumped back down to the hood of the car and to the ground. I walked around to the open door, leaned in, and placed my hand on Harper's neck-even as I stared back at the spot in the landscape where the loboxes had disappeared into the grass.

"It's all right, Harper," I said softly, gently stroking her neck, her hair. "They're gone now. We're safe."

For a few minutes, at least.

She couldn't stop crying. I hated to take my attention off the ground behind the car, but it seemed I had no choice; I needed Harper alert and watchful while I attended to the balky Plymouth. I slid onto the seat, wrapped my arms around her, held her tight. Her black, swollen arm was resting on the seat, only inches from my face, and I groaned inwardly at the sight of it. It looked ready to burst. I kept hugging and kissing her, and finally the sobs subsided. I helped her get up on the seat, and she leaned her head on my chest.

"Robby, are we … are we …?"

"They're gone, Harper. I think I may even have hit one of them.,"

The problem, I thought, was that they probably wouldn't be gone for long, and with only two bullets left in my gun and a car that wouldn't start, I wasn't feeling too secure. There was, of course, always the possibility that they'd hightailed it back to the circus, but somehow I doubted it. They had been trained well and were smart enough to know they had failed at what they were expected to do. As Luther had pointed out, they were tenacious. I was sure they'd be coming back at us, tracking again, waiting for the right moment to pounce. Even now they were undoubtedly resting in the high grass, waiting. .

Harper raised her head, smiled wryly. "I peed in my pants, Robby."

"I won't tell anybody. Most people in that situation would have done a lot more than just pee in their pants."

She giggled nervously, held her hand to her throat in a choking gesture. "I was so frightened, everything else went in the opposite direction. I don't think I'll be able to go to the bathroom for a month." She paused, shuddered. "My God, Robby, if you hadn't grabbed me and pulled me back when you did. ."

"Well, they didn't get you, and you're safe."

"For now," Harper said in a small voice.

"Don't dwell on it, sweetheart. It's the stuff nightmares are made of. Just hang in there, and we'll get through this."

Harper studied me for a few moments, then kissed me, hard. "That's right," she said in a stronger voice. "I was the one who said I wanted to get involved in one of Mongo the Magnificent's bizarre cases, as I recall. You've been through horrible things before, haven't you?"

I smiled, shrugged. "This business ranks pretty high on my horribility scale. I must have bad karma."

She shook her head emphatically. "You have good karma. And I want to see those men dead, Robby. I can't believe they planned to leave us out here to die like. . that. So horribly. I'll kill them myself. I want them to meet my pet."

"Stay cool, my dear. Our first priority has to be concentrating on getting out of range of those things, at least for a few hours, and then I have to figure out a way of getting my brother out of that circus."

"What do we do now?"

"We can't do anything until I get the car started," I said, and got out.

The first thing I did was to step back from the car and again sweep my gaze across the landscape, especially the area where the loboxes had disappeared. There was no sign of them. Next, I put my shoulder to the sprung door and, after a good deal of huffing and puffing, managed to get it shut. Then I walked to the front, opened the hood, climbed up on the fender, and looked down at the engine.

A mechanic I'm definitely not, but even I could tell that the hose hanging down next to the carburetor wasn't in its proper place. I reconnected the hose to the carburetor, then got back behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition again. After some coughing and sputtering, the Plymouth started up. Around us, for as far as I could see in all directions, there was nothing but what appeared to be wheat and corn fields, and, far to the west, what might have been a grain elevator jutting up into the sky. I put the car into gear, made a U-turn across the shoulders of the narrow dirt road, and started driving back the way we had come, leaving behind an old, rotting circus wagon and two corpses. I was more than a little anxious to put as much distance as possible between us and this killing ground.