squirmed. Tick. It tried to wrench free of him, and it was strong, but
he was stronger. Tick. It kicked the air with its wickedly clawed
feet. Tick. Tick.
Tick, tick, tick. . .
Rebecca said, “Why isn’t it trying to bite you?”
“I don’t know,” he said breathlessly.
“What’s different about you?”
“I don’t know.”
But he remembered the conversation he’d had with Nick Iervolino in the
patrol car, earlier today, on the way downtown from Carver Hampton’s
shop in Harlem. And he wondered . . .
The lizard-thing had a second mouth, this one in its stomach, complete
with sharp little teeth. The aperture gaped at Jack, opened and closed,
but this second mouth was no more eager to bite him than was the mouth
in the lizard’s head.
“Davey, are you all right?” Jack asked.
“Kill it, Daddy,” the boy said. He sounded terrified but unharmed.
“Please kill it. Please.”
“I only wish I could,” Jack said.
The small monster twisted, flopped, wriggled, did its best to slither
out of Jack’s hands. The feel of it revolted him, but he gripped it
even tighter than before, harder, dug his fingers into the cold oily
flesh.
“Rebecca, what about your hand?”
“Just a nip,” she said.
“Penny?”
“1. . . I’m okay.”
“Then the three of you get out of here. Go to the avenue.”
“What about you?” Rebecca asked.
“I’ll hold onto this thing, give you a head start.” The lizard thrashed.
“Then I’ll throw it as far as I can before I follow you.”
“We can’t leave you alone,” Penny said desperately.
“Only for a minute or two,” Jack said. “I’ll catch up. I can run
faster than the three of you. I’ll catch up easy. Now go on. Get out
of here before another one of these damned things charges out from
somewhere.
Go!”
They ran, the kids ahead of Rebecca, kicking up plumes of snow as they
went.
The lizard-thing hissed at Jack.
He looked into those eyes of fire.
Inside the lizard’s malformed skull, flames writhed, fluttered,
flickered, but never wavered, burned bright and intense, all shades of
white and silver, but somehow it didn’t seem like a hot fire; it looked
cool, instead.
Jack wondered what would happen if he poked a finger through one of
those hollow sockets, into the fire beyond. Would he actually find fire
in there? Or was it an illusion? If there really was fire in the
skull, would he burn himself? Or would he discover that the flames were
as lacking in heat as they appeared to be?
White flames. Sputtering.
Cold flames. Hissing.
The lizard’s two mouths chewed at the night air.
Jack wanted to see more deeply into that strange fire.
He held the creature closer to his face.
He stared into the empty sockets.
Whirling flames.
Leaping flames.
He had the feeling there was something beyond the fire, something
amazing and important, something awesome that he could almost glimpse
between those scintillating, tightly contained pyrotechnics.
He brought the lizard even closer.
Now his face was only inches from its muzzle.
He could feel the light of its eyes washing over him.
It was a bitterly cold light.
Incandescent.
Fascinating.
He peered intently into the skull fire.
The flames almost parted, almost permitted him to see what lay beyond
them.
He squinted, trying harder to see.
He wanted to understand the great mystery.
The mystery beyond the fiery veil.
Wanted, needed, had to understand it.
White flames.
Flames of snow, of ice.
Flames that held a shattering secret.
Flames that beckoned . . .
Beckoned . . .
He almost didn’t hear the car door opening behind him. The “eyes” of
the lizard-thing had seized him and half mesmerized him. His awareness
of the snowswept street around him had grown fuzzy. In a few more
seconds, he would have been lost. But they misjudged; they opened the
car door one moment too soon, and he heard it. He turned, threw the
lizard-thing as far as he could into the stormy darkness.
He didn’t wait to see where it fell, didn’t look to see what was coming
out of the unmarked sedan.
He just ran.
Ahead of him, Rebecca and the kids had reached the avenue. They turned