'Like I said, maybe an hour ago. She left you a note.' Nevins pointed at the sheriffs desk.
Ramsay snatched up the sheet from his calendar pad and read it swiftly. As Holly had done, he glanced at the wall map to check the location of Bear Paw.
'I'm going after her,' he said. 'Will you be all right here, Roy?'
'I can handle it, Gavin,' said Deputy Nevins, sucking in his stomach.
'Good. I'm sure Hoyden and Placerman here will give you all the help they can.'
The attorney general's men nodded their agreement.
'I'll be back as soon as possible.'
Ramsay started out of the office, then hesitated. He looked thoughtfully at Louis Zeno, who was still pale and shaking from what he had found at the cabin. Ramsay himself had been shocked at the inhuman violence done to Abe Craddock. He strode back to his desk and unlocked the bottom drawer. From it he took a square, heavy box and dropped it into a jacket pocket.
'What's that, Sheriff?' Roy asked.
'Bullets,' he said. 'Just in case.' What he did not add was that they were the special bullets given to him by Ken Dowd, the occult-shop owner. Silver bullets.
Malcolm watched in tearful, helpless rage as Kruger fumbled with the snap at the waist of Holly Lang's jeans. His fingers clamped over the heavy steel mesh like the claws of a caged beast.
Kruger paid him no attention. He popped the snap and slid down the zipper, revealing the filmy blue bikini pants Holly wore underneath. The man's breathing grew louder. His eyes glistened.
'Leave her alone,' Malcolm cried. In his voice was a strange new quality. A growl. Even Kruger, in his lust, stopped and turned toward the cage.
'Hey, look at freak-boy! Look at that face! Too bad the doctor ain't here to see this. Maybe you get off on watching, huh, freak-boy? Well you pay attention, then, 'cause I'm gonna give you plenty to watch.'
He returned his concentration to pulling the tight jeans down Holly's legs. She moaned softly, but did not regain consciousness. The bluish bruise from Kruger's fist was already beginning to show on her jaw.
With some difficulty, Kruger pulled the jeans completely off, taking Holly's boots with them and exposing her long, slim legs. He reached up and touched her pubic mound through the blue nylon.
Malcolm snarled. The fires inside burned hotter than ever before. The sinewy, hairy hands that now grew at the ends of his arms gripped the steel mesh and pulled. With a loud rip the material of his pyjamas tore at the shoulders where new muscles bulged and humped. The mesh of the cage bent and started to pull apart where he gripped it.
Kruger, his fingers now hooked under the elastic of Holly's bikini, looked over. His wet, red mouth opened in surprise.
The window high on the wall above them burst inward. A beast, lithe and muscular, dived headfirst through the shattering glass. The beast landed gracefully on all fours, his great shaggy head swivelling to take in the situation. The black lips peeled back in a snarl.
Malcolm froze where he stood. The mesh of the cage before him was ripped wide enough for him to slip through, but he could not move.
Holly moaned again. Her eyelids fluttered. She tried to raise her head.
Kruger let go of her and scrambled to his feet. He stared at the creature now advancing on him.
'Get back! Get back!'
Malcolm, from inside the torn cage, stared at the beast. It rose on hind legs to a full seven feet. The talons, the gleaming teeth, the powerful jaws all were capable of killing a man in seconds. The eyes glowed an unholy green.
But Malcolm felt no fear. There was recognition. A kinship. As the eyes of the creature held his own, the boy sensed the message in his mind: Flee!
When he looked down at his hands they were again smooth, smallish, normal boy's hands. He touched his face. It was his own unmarked, beardless face.
Flee! The message sounded again in his mind. A command. Malcolm squeezed his slim body through the split he had torn in the steel mesh.
'Hey! Where d'you think you're going'?' Kruger, remembering his orders, turned his attention for a moment from the towering beast to the boy.
The beast opened its great jaws and roared. Kruger whirled to face the menace. Malcolm, compelled by the telepathic command, slipped past Kruger and the beast to the open door. There he stopped and looked down at Holly.
Conscious now, she raised herself on an elbow. She shuddered at the sight of the beast, but saw that its full attention was given to Kruger. She looked to Malcolm who hesitated in the doorway. Unable to find her voice, she motioned with a hand for him to run. Malcolm opened his mouth as though he would speak, then turned and vanished through the doorway.
The beast roared again and advanced on Kruger.
The big man, his mouth loose and drooling with fear, backed away. He stumbled, and remembered suddenly the cattle prod hanging by the wires from his belt pack. He seized the leather-wrapped grip and switched the current to its highest level. He thrust the rod out before him like a rapier.
'Awright,' he babbled, 'You want some of this? Come on, I'll give you some. I'll give you all you want.'
He stabbed the metallic tip of the prod at the advancing creature.
The beast swatted at the measly weapon the man brandished and felt the electric shock that coursed all the way up to the hump of shoulder muscle. The shock was no more than a tickle to the beast, but it knew now what had been done to the boy Malcolm. It understood what had driven Malcolm to change as much as he had. The tiny shock was exactly what the beast needed to rekindle the bloodlust that had been so recently satisfied in the cabin outside Pinyon.
Kruger literally did not know what hit him. One moment he was holding the cattle prod, jabbing it at the huge hairy thing that had burst through the window. The next moment his arm, fingers still twitching on the leather grip, was lying on the floor at his feet. He stared dumbly at the empty shoulder socket where arterial blood pumped out in rhythm with his heartbeat.
Sitting now on the floor, Holly sucked in her breath as the beast cleaved Kruger's arm from his shoulder with one swift blow. She squeezed her eyes shut and turned away, unable to watch any more. She heard, however, Kruger's mewling little cries, and the crackle of teeth on bone.
Gavin Ramsay kept the accelerator to the floor all the way from Pinyon to Bear Paw. He did not bother with red lights and siren. There was not enough traffic along the way to make any difference. By the time he hit the brakes at the faint logging trail that led up to Pastory's clinic, the three-year-old Plymouth Fury bought by the taxpayers of La Reina County was sweating and snorting like a used-up racehorse.
He jounced up the grade, swerving against the brush on both sides, finally jamming to a stop when he came suddenly upon the old high-roofed house among the pines. Louis Zeno's orange Datsun was parked at an angle out in front, one door hanging open as though the driver had abandoned it hastily. Tucked neatly under a tree was Holly's little Volkswagen.
A sound came from inside the house that raised the short hairs at the back of Ramsay's neck. A snarling growl that reminded him of nothing so much as the feeding of big, dangerous animals at the zoo.
A door banged at the rear of the house. Ramsay galloped around the side of the building in time to see a figure running swiftly away, darting between the trees.
'Halt!' he called, unholstering his revolver.
The running figure never slowed down, vanishing as Ramsay watched. A shot would be fruitless at that range and with all the trees between him and the target. Anyway, Ramsay never fired his piece without knowing what he was shooting at. Another growl came from inside the house, and he abandoned any thought of giving chase.
He started in through the open back door, then came to a stop. He thumbed the catch and rolled out the cylinder of his revolver, ejecting the copper-jacketed.38 cartridges on to the ground. Sweating with concentration, he dived a hand into his jacket pocket and dug out six of the silver bullets. He slipped them into the cylinder, locked it in place, and ran into the house.
