a love beyond anything that he, Reuben, could imagine. He prayed for this to be so. He wondered if, somehow, the whole forest was not praying for this, and it seemed to him then that all the biological world was alive with prayer, with reaching, with hope. What if the drive to survive was a form of faith, a form of prayer?
He felt no pity for the cats circling restively below in the darkness. He had thought of pity, yes, but he did not feel it; he seemed deeply part of a world where such an emotion made little or no sense. After all, what would the cats have thought of pity? The cats would have torn him apart if they could. The mother would have feasted on him at any opportunity. The mother had brought the long happy life of Galton,s cherished dog to a violent close. How easy a prey to her Reuben must have seemed.
The horror was that he was worse than anything known in the realm of the cat, wasn,t he? Even the bear could not have outfought him, he figured. But then he would have to see about that, wouldn,t he, and the thrill of the possibility made him laugh.
How wrong people were about the werewolf, imagining him to devolve into a mindless frenzy. The werewolf was not a wolf, no, nor a man, but an obscene combination of the two, exponentially more powerful than either one.
But right now, it did not matter. The language of thought was ... just the language of thought. Who could trust language? Words like "monster," "horror," "obscene." The words he,d written so recently to Billie, what were these words but weightless tissuelike membranes too weak to support the essence of any fragrant or pulsing thing.
Big cat, dead cat, cat who killed the warm and loving thing that was Galton,s dog. Dead. I loved every second of it!
He was half dreaming. He lapped at the great gash in the cat,s stomach, and sucked up the blood as if it were syrup. "Good-bye, sister cat," he whispered, nuzzling its grinning mouth, running his tongue along its dead teeth. "Good-bye, sister cat; you fought well."
And then he let go of her, his trophy, and she went down, down, down through the net of branches and fell to the soft hungry earth amongst her brood.
His mind wandered. If only he could bring Laura with him up into this shining realm, enfolding her safely in his arms. He dreamed that she was with him, safe against him, dozing as he dozed - as the wet breeze stirred the wilderness around them, and a universe of tiny creatures lisped and fluttered, lulling him to half sleep.
What of the distant voices that he could not hear? Was anyone calling to him from the cities to the north or the south? Was anyone running from danger, screaming for his help? A sense of his ever-growing power filled him with a dark pride; how many nights could he ignore the voices? How many nights could he flee "the most dangerous game"?
But he was hearing something now!
Something had pierced the leafy portals of this sanctuary.
Somebody was in danger, terrible danger - and he knew this voice! "Reuben!" came the ragged scream. "Reuben!" It was Laura calling for him. " - I am warning you," she was sobbing, "don,t you come a step closer!" Laughter - low vicious laughter, and the voice of another: "Oh, come now, little woman, are you going to kill me with that ax?"
Chapter Twenty-One
HE SPED through the forest on all fours, darting in and out of the trees, hitting speeds he,d never achieved before.
" - My dear, you,re making this all too easy for me. You don,t know how it distresses me to shed innocent blood."
" - Get away from me. Get away from me!"
It wasn,t the scent of evil that guided him because there was no discernible scent. What was a voice so menacing without a scent?
In two leaps he crossed the broad stone terrace and pitched his weight against the door, tearing the locks out of the wood.
He landed on the floorboards, and slammed the door behind him without looking back.
Laura, trembling, terrified, stood to the left of the huge stone fireplace, clutching the long wooden handle of the ax as she held it up with both hands.
"He,s come here to kill you, Reuben!" she said, her voice thick.
Across from her, to the right, stood a small slender and composed figure, a