Thanks to the donuts and hamburgers, and his neat scotches, he couldn’t run very fast. And he certainly couldn’t yell for help while he was running: he didn’t have enough breath for both. All he could do was sob between gasps, throwing panicking glances over his shoulder. His pursuers were closing on him. Todd could see the bushes thrashing around immediately behind him; and something else-something smaller and more nimble-was throwing itself from branch to branch overhead, to keep up with its quarry.
“M … Max … Maxine!” He managed to get out, in between gasps.
“I’m over here!” Maxine yelled. “Sawyer! I’m at the cages!”
Todd followed the sound of Maxine’s voice, and located her. She was a considerable distance from the house, and had clambered up on top of one of a series of cages. There she was kneeling, with a gun in her hand. She’d always kept guns around the house, Todd knew, but this was the first occasion he’d seen her using one.
“Keep following my voice,” she yelled to Sawyer. “Look for a tree with bright yellow flowers, like big bells — ”
“I’m looking!” Sawyer sobbed.
From his vantage point on the balcony, Todd felt like a Caesar at the Coliseum, watching the lions and the Christians. He could see the Christians perfectly clearly, and now-as the gap between the pursuer and the pursued closed-he began to glimpse the lions too.
In the bushes no more than a yard or two behind Sawyer was one of dead’s children: a foul hybrid of ghost woman and-of all things-jaguar. The latter must have been a prisoner in Katya’s menagerie, but the marriage of anatomies had turned its sleek perfection into something rougher, uglier and entirely more bizarre. The human element had been female; no doubt of that. The face-when Todd glimpsed it-was two-thirds humanoid. The high cheekbones, the icy stare: it was surely the face of Lana Turner. Then the creature opened its mouth, and the bestial third showed itself: vast teeth, top and bottom, a mottled throat, a black tongue. It let out a very unladylike roar, and pounced on Sawyer, who threw himself out of its path with inches to spare.
“Are you okay?” Maxine yelled.
All that Sawyer could manage was: “No!”
“Are you close to me?” Maxine said.
“I can’t see you,” he cried. The branches over his head were shaking violently.
“Look for the yellow flowers.”
” … yellow … flowers … ”
It would have been easy for Todd to direct Sawyer through this maze, but that would have taken all the fun out of it. Better to keep his silence and let the man find his own way. It was the kind of game he knew Katya would love. He was tempted to wake her, but it would be over in the next few seconds, he guessed. Sawyer was a few yards from the cages, and safety. Having failed to catch its victim on its first pounce, the Lana, as Todd had mentally dubbed the creature, had returned to her stalking. Todd caught glimpses of her mottled back as she slid through the thicket. Her intentions were clear, at least from Todd’s point of view. She was moving to cut Sawyer off from the gallery of cages. Sawyer and Maxine kept a banal exchange going meanwhile, so that Sawyer could find his way to her.
“You’re getting louder.”
“Am I?”
“Sure. You see the yellow flowers, yet?”
“Yeah. I see them.”
“You’re really close.”
“I’m under them — ”
He stopped talking because he heard the low growl of the Lana. Todd could hear the creature too, though he couldn’t see it. He silently willed Sawyer not to make any sudden moves; just stand still, shut up, and maybe the animal would lose interest. Sawyer could stand still without any problem, but could he shut up? No, he could not. Sawyer was a gabber. “Oh God, Maxine. Oh God. It’s close to me.”
“Shush,” Maxine advised.
He stopped talking, but it was too late. The Lana knew exactly where Sawyer was positioned. She launched herself out of the thicket, striking Sawyer so that he fell sideways, through the very patch of yellow flowers which had been his beacon.