have had a means, mustn't he? He was there when it killed."
"I'll check his pockets," Jack said, when Doctor Tesla gave a doubtful glance at the house, rubbing his gloved hands together. No, Garrett thought, he would not care to rummage through another man's clothes.
"No," Garrett said. "Let me try this, first." She dropped to one knee and laid her revolver on the cobbles by her hand. From the carpetbag, she drew a silk envelope. "Doctor Tesla, do you have a bit of copper? Silver? Anything that might conduct?"
As the Doctor rummaged in his pockets, Sebastien cleared his throat. She glanced up, and saw him glance at the silver and garnet ring upon her finger. "Oh, of course," she said, and pried it loose. Fortunately, her hand as well as the ring has shrunk slightly in the cold; it slid off easily.
She dropped ring and tooth into the envelope and tied the strings. Then she re-arrayed herself in gloves and wand and pistol, closed the carpetbag, stood up, recited a few sharp words in Latin, and tossed the package underhand over the curved chalk line.
Doctor Tesla nodded in understanding, and the others were used to her by now. There was no bang, no flash of light, nothing but the peal of silver on stone.
It rang for a long time, though, and did not die away. Rather, it seemed to be picked up by the steady electrical hum, rising like a church bell somehow struck and unfading.
And as it rose, something bounded to the top of the stones along
the Seine.
In the moonlight, the beast was black as a cat, and big as a bear. It moved with powerful lightness, though, paws flexing on the stones, and Garrett could see, quite plainly, its lean body and the dense moon-frosted coat as fluffy as any mink stole. The tail was longer, thicker than a cat's, lashing sinuously. A vertical slash of white dripped down its chest; its eyes trapped and amplified the light from the laboratory, reflecting back a greenish shine. It had a longer face than a panther, and a shorter face than a wolf, and all its teeth were bared.
"It's not dying," Jack said mildly. Doctor Tesla stepped back, although Garrett was not certain if that was in response to Jack's words, or the ani-
mal's stare.
And Mrs. Smith raised her derringer and gave it both barrels.
The little gun no more than stung it. The thing turned quickly on paws like a big man's mittened fists, its curved nails scratching the stone. Garrett leveled her pistol too, drawing a meticulous bead on the eye. Six shots, and a gun like this had a laughable range. They should have had rifles.
Getting rifles would not have been easy, though, and there had been
no time.
She squeezed the trigger, and saw the bullet strike. High. There was no sense of motion, of the bullet acting upon flesh: a red furrow only appeared in the thing's head above the eye, and there was a spray of fur and blood hanging in the air about it. By that long red line, Garrett knew that the bullet had glanced off the skull.
She fired again, and Jack was firing too. Fanning the hammer, she thought, getting two bullets for every one of hers. Emptying his gun, hoping to slow and distract it while she chose her target with more care.
Brave child. Good boy.
The beast uncoiled into a spring.
It was thirty feet away, across the entire width of the yard. Garrett fired once more while it was in the air, the eye a lost cause, aiming now for the white patch so beautifully visible on its chest and belly and hoping somehow that her bullet would penetrate the muscle and the rib cage, bounce into the gut and tear something vital wide.
She tracked it as it came, one single leap carrying it the entire distance, and realized only as it landed that she had not been the target of its wrath. Jack was on the far side of Mrs. Smith; his sixth shot struck the animal's body as its paws slammed down on his shoulders and he vanished beneath its black-furred shape. He did not scream. The sound he made was the whuff of a man who's had the wind shoved from his lungs.
Mrs. Smith fell too, scrambling or knocked aside. And then someone else was screaming—shouting—Sebastien, so fast now that Garrett did not see him go past until he hurled himself onto the monster's back. His arms locked around its