but it would have to do.
More arms and legs were pushing through the growing gaps in the wall. The pets who had been smashing against the interior church door had quit, probably to come around the building. They kicked and bashed at the wall and door, then started trying to squirm through. All I could do was wait.
I reached down and pressed Play on Dolan’s portable stereo. It was the old-fashioned kind that played CDs. After a couple of seconds, a Spanish guitar version of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” began to play. Holiday music? It was one more reason to hate the world. I watched the pets breaking in.
The waiting was miserable, and my helplessness and fear made me want to scream. I didn’t. I stayed silent and still, and I funneled everything I had into a furious red rage.
If only I had Zahn in front of me, or Stroud, the man who gave the predator to Regina so many years ago. Whether I was a match for them or not, they were the ones I wanted to face. Because of them, the sapphire dog was here and alive, and maybe it would get free again and do this over and over all around the world. All this death and misery was the reason the society fought and killed. Because of this.
But I couldn’t vent my rage at Zahn or Stroud because I didn’t have them here; I only had the crazed, ruined people of Washaway. I knew the pets weren’t in control of themselves. I knew the sapphire dog was really to blame for the death of Little Mark and so many others. But my anger wasn’t logical, and it was so terribly, terribly strong.
Someone wrenched the bullet-ridden door open, shattering the hinges and opening a space big enough for a person to enter. It was Bushy Bill Stookie, and I was almost grateful to him that the fight would finally start.
He laid his meaty hands on the metal shelving and pushed at it, scraping it across the wet tile floor. Others pushed at him to get by, and by then one of the holes in the wall was large enough for more people to squeeze through.
They were all men in this first wave—all strong and heavy, with baseball bats and rifle butts and iron mallets. They sloshed through the water, climbing over the toppled metal shelves toward me. Someone outside let out a trilling, alien war cry, and everyone took it up. They howled as they came at me.
I kicked the portable stereo off the desk. It landed in the water still pouring out of the overhead pipe and splashed onto the tile floor.
Nine men froze in place, muscles twitching. I made sure to count them carefully, so I wouldn’t forget. A big, brawny woman pushed through the crowd and stepped into the water. She grimaced and jolted up straight. Ten.
Then the room went dark and silent. Everyone collapsed over the metal shelves, and the woman fell backward through the doorway, bowling through the crowd behind her. So much for saving them from the sapphire dog.
The only light I had left was the daylight shining through the door and the damaged walls. The people pushing their way into the room now were little more than backlit silhouettes. At least I wouldn’t have to see their faces.
They were coming with knives, woodworking tools, axe handles, and empty guns. I lifted the iron pipe high and held my left arm low. I didn’t have a shield; the tattoos on my forearm would have to do. I put the ghost knife between my teeth. They let out another war scream—a piercing animalistic keening—and I felt like screaming right back at them, but I kept it inside instead, channeling that raw energy to my arms and eyes.
The first guy to get close tripped over Big Bill and fell to his knee in front of me, so I smashed the pipe against his shoulder, knocking him against the one behind him, then I hit the next one hard on the edge of the wrist, sending his hammer bounding off the wall just as two more came close, keeping their balance better this time, and I smashed elbow and shoulder as fast and as hard as I could, blocking a sharpened hoe with my protected arm, but now the pets were crowding in, stumbling sometimes but not enough for me to keep ahead of every swing, of every hand reaching for me, of every sound they made, because I wasn’t even looking at their faces anymore, I didn’t have time to guess the attack they’d make based on their eyes or body position, they were just a mass of bodies rushing at me, and I laid out with my pipe, swinging everywhere with all my strength against people I’d told Catherine I didn’t want to hurt but here I was, breaking arms and collarbones, and the first time a bat struck the bony point of my hip, the pain frightened and enraged me so much that I smashed the man wielding it right on the side of his head, and then every dark shape seemed to be tinged with red as I slapped away attacks with my forearm and crushed bones with the pipe even though many of them didn’t even have weapons, just hands that reached to pull me down, so I smashed those, too, watching for knives and swings for my head, and I smashed wrists and elbows and collarbones and fragile, fragile skulls as the pets kept coming for me, climbing over the ones I broke, stumbling, slipping in water and blood and tripping over fallen bodies, then I felt a sudden sharp pain in my calf and looked down to see a girl no older than thirteen stabbing a long knife into my leg, and my fury and adrenaline and hatred and rage made it so easy—so easy!—to slam that iron pipe across both her little arms and I know she screamed even though I couldn’t hear it over the noise the other pets were making but
Then one of them—Ponytail Sue—finally got the idea to kick the desk I was standing on. It skidded to the side and I overbalanced, falling into the pets. They were crammed together as tightly as kids at the front of a rock concert. I swung at the nearest one, but three or four people caught my arm and the pipe was yanked out of my grip.
They grabbed me, hands everywhere, pulling my clothes, my hair, my skin, scratching me, screaming at me, bearing me to the floor. Two inches of water splashed up my nose and down my throat. With my free left hand, I reached into my pocket and pulled out one of Annalise’s green ribbons, and as I sloshed on the floor, I looked up and saw two kids, neither older than sixteen, lunging for me with knives in their hands and cold, raging murder in their eyes. I slapped the ribbon onto the top of someone’s red rubber boot, and I saw the green firelight shine on them.
I closed my eyes. What happened next was something I could not watch.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
When the sound of the fire and the throbbing of the protective spells on my chest finally died away, I opened my eyes again. The room was full of bones. The water sloshed back and forth, and soot and ash made a greasy film on top.
Some of those bones were small. Very small.
