to hamper his progress.
The drenched cats followed. He did not want them with him, but he knew
from experience that he would not be able to chase them away. They did
not always accompany him, but when they chose to follow in his tracks,
they could not be dissuaded.
After he had gone about a hundred yards, he dropped to his knees again,
held his hands in front of him, and allowed the power to erupt once
more. Shimmering sapphire light swept through the night. Brush shook,
trees stirred, and rocks clattered against one another. In the wake of
the light, clouds of dust flew up, ghostly silver columns that rippled
like wind stirred shrouds, then vanished into the darkness.
A bevy of animals burst from cover, and some raced toward Candy. He
snatched at a rabbit, missed, but seized a squirrel. It tried to bite
him, but he swung it hard by one leg, bashing its head against the muddy
ground, stunning it.
VIOLET WAS with Verbina in the kitchen. They were sitting on the
layered blankets with twenty-three of their twenty cats.
Parts of her mind-and parts of her sister’s-were in theirs and Lamia,
the black cats through which they were accompanying their brother.
Watching Candy seize and destroy his prey, Cinders and Lamia were
excited, and Violet was excited too. Electrified.
The wet January night was deep, illumined only by the brilliant light
from the communities to the west, which was fleeted off the bellies of
the low clouds. In that wildem Candy was the wildest creature of them
all, a fierce and powerful and merciless predator who crept swiftly and
silently through the rugged canyons, taking what he needed and wanted.
He was so strong and limber that he appeared to fill up the canyon, over
rocks and fallen timber, around prickly brush, as if he were not a man
of flesh and blood, but the pled moonshadow of some flying creature
soaring high above the earth.
When Candy seized the squirrel and bashed its head against the ground,
Violet divided the part of her mind that was Lamia and Cinders, and also
entered the squirrel. It stunned by the blow. It struggled feebly and
looked at Candy with unalloyed terror.
Candy’s big, strong hands were on the squirrel, but it seemed to Violet
that they were on her, as well, moving over her bare legs, hips, belly,
and breasts.
Candy snapped its spine against his bent knee.
Violet shuddered. Verbina whimpered and clung to her sister.
The squirrel no longer had any feeling in its extremities. With a low
growl, Candy bit the animal’s throat. He tore at its hide, chewing open
the blood-rich vessels.
Violet felt the hot blood spurting out of the squirrel, Candy’s mouth
fastened hungrily to the wound. It almost seemed as though no surrogate
lay between them, as if his lips were pressed firmly to Violet’s throat
and as if her own blood was flooding into his mouth. She wished that
she could be in Candy’s mind and be on both the giving and receiving end
tasting the blood, but she could only meld with animals.
She no longer had the strength to sit up. She settled back onto the
blankets, only half aware that she was softly chanting a monotonous
litany:
“Yea, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Verbina rolled atop her sister.
Around them the cats tumbled together in a roiling mass of fur and tails
and whiskered faces.
THOMAS TRIED again. For Julie’s sake. He reached out toward the cold,
glowing mind of the Bad Thing. Right away the Bad Thing drew him toward
it. He let his mind unwind like a big ball of string. It pierced the
window, zoomed into the night, made contact.
He sent questions: What are you? Where are you? What do you want? Why
are you going to hurt Julie?
JUST AS CANDY threw aside the dead squirrel and got to his feet, he felt
the hand on his head again. He twitched, turned, and flailed at the
darkness with both fists.
No one was behind him.
With radiant amber eyes, the two cats watched him from about twenty feet
away, dark blots on the pale silt. All the wildlife in the immediate