Again the three of them took the elevator to the roof, and there was Ferguson sitting in the stairwell looking bleak. Nobody spoke to him, just took the equipment and got Dick checked out. The door to hell opened and closed again and Dick was gone.
The ride down was strained and silent. Once in the apartment Ferguson began silently picking up his things, a book, his wallet and keys which he hadn’t wanted to take to the roof. “That roof was too much for me,” he muttered. “But I’ll make it up to you, I’ll do exactly what I should have done in the first place.” He slipped out, the door clicking behind him. A last glance revealed a face set with fear and determination, the eyes wide and glazed.
“Don’t let him,” Wilson murmured.
“Yeah, don’t let him.”
But neither of them moved. Maybe he was going to die out on the street and maybe he wasn’t. It was his risk, he had chosen it. “We should have stopped him.”
“How? He’s a determined man. Brave, too, even if he couldn’t handle the roof. Signal Dick, let’s get started.” They went to the radio.
“White male about thirty-five exiting building,” said one of two plainclothesmen who were sitting in a car in front of the building. “Nah, it ain’t Neff.” The other plainclothesman hadn’t even opened his eyes. Inside the car it was warm and quiet, the two cops barely moving through the long hours of the shift. Another four hours and they would be relieved. Hell, you could get a worse gig on a night like this. Likely Captain Neff wasn’t going anywhere anyway until tomorrow. Still, he had that fancy camera, he must be planning to do something with it.
The two plainclothesmen didn’t watch Ferguson as he rushed past the front of the building and turned the corner. If they had they would have noticed the furtiveness of his movements, the desperate way his eyes darted around. But they would not have seen what happened when he turned that corner.
They were waiting there under cars. They had placed themselves just inside the alley. This way they could hear both front door and back and at the same time watch the apartment. When they heard familiar footsteps crunching on the snow they were filled with eagerness. The pack was damaged and angry, hungry to kill.
When they came out from under the cars, Ferguson stopped. They could smell fear thickly about him, it would be an easy kill. He spread his hands in the palms-up gesture he had seen in the ancient book. They took their time getting positioned. He looked into their faces. Despite his fear he was fascinated by them—cruel, enigmatic, strangely beautiful. They stepped toward him, stopped again. “I can help you,” he said softly.
Three of them executed the attack while the fourth kept watch. He was dead, his body rolled under a car within five seconds. One jumped into his chest to wind him; another collapsed his legs from behind, and a third tore his throat out the moment he hit the ground.
Their race had long ago forgotten its ancient relationship with man. His hand-signals had meant nothing to them, nothing at all. The four of them literally tore him apart in their fury, ripped at him in a kind of frenzy of rage. They were the mother, the second-mated pair and the female of the third. Old Father had disappeared, they weren’t sure why. Perhaps he was too ashamed or too hurt to take his new place behind the youngest in the pack.
But he was nearby. Older, cannier and more sensitive than the others, he knew better than they how desperate the situation had become. He was determined to right the wrong he had done his pack— even at the cost of his life. Although he was unable to see them, he heard their attack. “They act from fear,” he thought. “They need strength and courage.” And he resolved to help them. He had been aware for some moments of a human presence on the roof of the building and took care to stay close to the wall, out of the line of sight from above.
He went quickly to the front of the building, slid under a car and waited. A few minutes later a pedestrian came along, opened the door to the lobby. He ran in past her.
“Hey!”
“A dog—damn it, Charlie, I let in a dog!”
“I’ll get it—Jesus, it’s
He raced for the stairs and went up. He knew exactly where he was going and why. He trusted to luck that these were the right stairs. The shouts of the humans faded below him. Maybe they would rationalize his presence, maybe not. He recognized the danger of what he was doing and he knew how it would probably end.
But he owed this to the pack he loved.
Dick Neff cursed out loud when he felt the cold and was tugged by the wind. Becky was one hell of a girl to have endured this for two Goddamn hours! He was proud of her, there hadn’t been a single peep of complaint. A person like that humbled you, hell, awed you. She was a total pro, no question about it.
He was heavier than his wife and the wind didn’t force him to slither on his stomach. But he crawled. He crawled slowly and carefully, not liking the way those gusts hit him from behind and made him slide. Thirty stories was a long Goddamn drop. You went over, you’d have time to think about it on the way down. Plenty of time. He hated heights like this. The view from his apartment was beautiful but he hated this. In his nightmares he always fell, and lately he had been falling a lot. His subconscious reached out to him, imparting a strange
He could tell where Becky had been lying by the indentation in the snow. He went to approximately the same place. First the equipment check, then the camera sweep.
Nothing there.
Now the voice check. Wilson came in clear. They punched off with the mike signal and Dick settled in as best he could. He was just making another sweep when he heard a muffled bang behind him. The door? He turned. It stood ten feet away. It was breathing hard, as if it had just run up the stairs.
He jumped to his feet, snapping away with the camera. Then it moved and he hurled the camera at it The machine bounced against its flank and rolled away. It wasn’t attacking, probably because he was so close
