Megan. You’re in no position to be so rude. Get off your high horse for once.”
She didn’t dare take another step, still didn’t have the shot she needed. Blood sang in her ears as shrill as tinnitus.
“You want to take a shot, Megan? Go ahead and take a shot.”
He thought the pistol wasn’t loaded. If she took a shot and missed, he would blind Woody.
“Do you feel lucky, Megan?”
“No.”
“Do you still think you’re better than me?”
“I never said I was better than you.”
“But you thought it. Don’t lie to me. I smell your lies. Be truthful with me, or the dummy pays.”
“All right. Yes. I thought I was better than you.”
“But now. Now I’ve been in your cozy house all afternoon, all evening, doing what I please, and you were clueless. Do you still think you’re better than me, smarter than me?”
“No.”
“Say it.”
“I don’t think I’m better than you. Or smarter.”
“I hope that’s true. For the dummy’s sake, I hope that’s true, Megan. I hope you’ve learned and you’re chastened. I feel his eyes moving under the lids, like when a dreamer dreams and there’s rapid eye movement. So there are three things I want you to do, Megan. Are you with me?”
“Yes. I’m with you.”
“First, I want you to put down the gun. Second, I want you to take off what you’re wearing. Third, I want you to lie down on the bed and spread those long lovely legs for me.”
“Here?”
“Of course here. Are you worried about corrupting a minor?” That juvenile snicker again. “The dummy won’t even understand what we’re doing. He’ll lie here sucking his thumb while we make a better baby than him, a baby for the new world becoming.”
“Don’t hurt him.”
“Don’t make me hurt him, Jason’s little freak. You understand how much I would like to hurt him, Megan?”
“I think so, yes.”
“For you, just for you, I’m not hurting the little dummy. We’re making a bargain here. You’re not as smart as you think you are. You don’t know what you think you know.”
By that he probably meant that she didn’t know he had taken the ammunition out of her pistol. He was taunting her. He wanted her to pull the trigger, experience the shock of its failure to fire.
“Where do you want me to put down the gun?”
“On the bed. Be very, very careful, Megan. If you try anything, you’ll be surprised how badly it works out for you and him. You try anything, and it doesn’t work out, I’ll take his eyes, and that will be on you, his blindness on you forever.”
The moment had come. The boy was his shield, even though he didn’t believe he needed a shield. He had an animal cunning. She wasn’t going to get a clearer shot than the one the next minute might offer.
As she approached him, she didn’t lower the pistol, hoping he would tempt her by rising up just a little, putting slightly more space between his head and Woody.
Fear of what might happen abruptly became an abhorrence of allowing it to happen, and in an instant her tremors stopped, her aim steadied, the front sight fixed on his face, and as she reached the bed, she squeezed off a shot.
Maybe he smelled her deception. He juked as she was about to fire, and the bullet tore his left ear. He howled like an animal, didn’t blind the boy, but instead, as fast as a skink, inhumanly fast, he swept Woody off the bed, into his arms, using him as a shield. She didn’t dare another shot. The bathroom door stood just three steps away, and Shacket was through it, slamming it behind him—Sweet Jesus, so crazy fast—so supernaturally fast she knew in an instant he hadn’t been warning her just that her pistol might be empty when he had said You don’t know what you think you know. Something else must be going on with him, something beyond easy comprehension.
She tried the door, it was locked, he was going to blind Woody, she fired two rounds into the latch, shouldered the door, crashed through into a tumult of wind rattling the medicine cabinet door, flapping the towels on the rack.
Woody on the floor, in the corner by the shower, his beautiful eyes wider than they’d ever been, staring at something far beyond this room.
To her right, the lower sash of the tall double-hung window open, Shacket going through, no alarm wailing because no porch roof beyond. A fleeting glimpse of