encountered a great many garbage bins just like the Burlingames" in its long, starving circuit of Kashwakamak Lake this fall, and it had quickly dismissed the smell of salami, cheese, and olive oil coming from this one. The aroma was tantalizing, but bitter experience had taught the former Prince that the source of it was beyond its reach.
There were other smells, however; the dog got a whiff of them each time the wind lazed the back door open. These smells were fainter than the ones coming from the box, and their source was inside the house, but they were too good to ignore. The dog knew it would probably be driven off by shouting masters who chased and kicked with their strange, hard feet, but the smells were stronger than its fear. One thing might have countered its terrible hunger, but it as yet knew nothing of guns. That would change if it lived until deer-season, but that was still two weeks away and the shouting masters with their hard, hurtful feet were the worst things it could imagine for now.
It slipped through the door when the wind opened it and trotted into the entryway... but not too far. It was ready to beat a hasty retreat the instant danger threatened.
Its ears told it that the inhabitant of this house was a bitchmaster, and she was clearly aware of the dog because she had shouted at it, but what the stray heard in the bitchmaster's raised voice was fear, not anger. After its initial-backward jerk of fright, the dog stood its ground. It waited for some other master to join its cries to those of the bitchmaster or to come running, and when this didn't happen, the dog stretched its neck forward, sniffing at the slightly stale air of the house.
At first it turned to the right, in the direction of the kitchen. It was from this direction that the puffs of scent dispersed by the flapping door had come. The smells were dry but pleasant: peanut butter, Ry-Krisp crackers, raisins, cereal (this latter smell was drifting from a box of Special K in one of the cupboards-a hungry fieldmouse had gnawed a hole in the bottom of the box).
The dog took a step in that direction, then swung its head back the other way to make sure no master was creeping up on it masters most frequently shouted, but they could be sly, too. There was no one in the halfway leading down to the left, but the dog caught a much stronger scent coming from that direction, one that caused its stomach to cramp with terrible longing.
The dog stared down the hall, its eyes sparkling with a mad mixture of fear and desire, its snout wrinkled backward like a rumpled throw-rug, its long upper lip rising and falling in a nervous, spasmodic sneer that revealed its teeth in small white winks. A stream of anxious urine squirted from it and patterned on the floor, marking the front hall-and thus the whole house-as the dog's territory. This sound was too small and too brief for even Jessie's straining ears to catch.
What it smelled was blood. The scent was both strong and wrong. In the end, the dog's extreme hunger tipped the scales; it must eat soon or die. The former Prince began to walk slowly down the hall toward the bedroom. The smell grew stronger as it went. It was blood, all right, but it was the wrong blood. It was the blood of a master. Nevertheless, that smell, one far too rich and compelling to deny, had gotten into its small, desperate brain. The dog kept walking, and as it neared the bedroom door, it began to growl.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jessie heard the click of the dog's nails and understood it was indeed still in the house, and coming this way. She began to scream. She knew this was probably the worst thing a person could do-it went against all the advice she'd ever heard about never showing a potentially dangerous animal that you were afraid-but she couldn't help it. She had too good an idea of what was drawing the stray toward the bedroom.
She pulled her legs up, using the handcuffs to yank herself back against the headboard at the same time. Her eyes never left the door to the hallway as she did this. Now she could hear the dog growling. The sound made her bowels feel loose and hot and liquid.