The Ridge (39 page)

Then the door opened again, and she saw the beam of the powerful flashlight, and she knew that the chase was hardly done.

To her right was one of the largest enclosures, home to three male lions. It was wide open and exposed space. To her left…

She saw Jafar’s golden eyes, the leopard pacing, unsettled, and then she saw the shadowed shape of his house. He’d emerged from it, straw stuck to his paws, to see what the chaos was about, and the shelter was empty now. Empty and dark and within reach.

“Audrey!” Dustin’s voice was a shout, furious, and she took one look at the flashlight beam—it was pointed the wrong way, he was expecting she’d moved toward the road when he had gone inside—and then she knew that she was out of options.

She crawled to the gate and worked the combination lock. She had two numbers in when the beam swung her way, and she dropped and pressed flat, knowing that it would find her. Jafar came to the fence, curious, and the beam passed over him instead and moved on. She lay in the snow and watched the path of the light and realized that Dustin was looking everywhere but in the cages.

Because Audrey wouldn’t go in the cages. She never had before, and he knew that. Everyone at the preserve did. It was the unspoken but shared understanding they all had as to why she could never manage the place on her own: she didn’t trust the cats.

She lifted her head, looked at Jafar’s eyes, and whispered, “Let me in, please. I love you, buddy. Now don’t hurt me.”

The cat gave a low growl and flattened his ears.

Tension,
she told herself,
he senses your tension and doesn’t like it. That’s all, Audrey. That’s all.

The flashlight beam passed close again, and she could wait no longer. When it was gone and she was in darkness, she lifted her hand and finished the combination. She did not need to fear the noise of the chain rattling; the lions behind her were roaring at full volume, and when that was happening, you could do about anything short of shooting off a cannon and not be heard. She pulled the gate open and crawled inside, and Jafar came trotting
up with three loping bounds, then stopped with his back arched and tail stiff.

She almost tried to open the gate and run again, thinking that Dustin was surely going to be no worse a fate than this, but then memory whispered at her.

Playing,
she thought, watching his stance, the way he was exposing his side, inviting her to chase.
He’s trying to play with you.

Audrey pulled the gate shut and clicked the lock back in place and then crawled for the animal’s house. The cat stalked alongside her, and she felt the tears sliding down her cheeks. She was shaking now and would not look at him, could not, as if to meet his eyes would be to engage him in hostility.

The opening to his house was tight and narrow. She crawled in, cold straw bristling against her palms, and behind her the leopard gave a growl.

It was his territory, and she was invading it.

“Please,” she whispered. “Please, please, please.”

He did not strike at her as she entered. She banged her head on the plywood ceiling and then ducked lower and crawled on through the straw, crawled until she reached the bend in the wall that indicated it was making the L-turn, and then she could see the opening on the other side. There, farthest away from either end and impossible to spot unless you were inside the enclosure, she stopped moving. Her breath was coming in sobs now, and she tried to quiet them. It was a good hiding place, as long as she was quiet. A good hiding place, as long as the cat allowed it to be.

Out in the preserve, Dustin was still shouting her name, but that was good. That meant Dustin didn’t know where she was.

She heard another growl, turned back to her left, and saw a pair of golden eyes at the entrance to the shelter.

Jafar.

He knew where she was.

J
ACQUELINE HADN’T BEEN WRONG
in her recollection—the only thing Kimble registered about the fall was that it was far too fast.

Then he registered the pain, and all else was gone.

He struck the surface of the frigid water awkwardly and plunged deeply into it, but not deep enough. An upright, jagged stone caught him in the ribs and drove the breath from his lungs, and then another drilled into his shoulder and the side of his neck, radiant pain spreading through him as he scrambled wildly at the frigid blackness, sure now that he was dying and that it would be just as he’d always feared death would be: dark and alone.

When he broke the surface a wide, flat rock caught his body and held it, and for a moment there was nothing but the agony and the cold water and the night. Then there came a light, thin and blue and cold, and the world spread out from the light, and once more he could see.

Silas Vesey was coming for him.

He held the blue torch high, and though he waded through the water to reach Kimble, it did not appear to part for him or drag against him. He was of it, and it was of him, so no conflict existed. He just drifted on through the dark water until he was at Kimble’s side. He wore dark trousers and an ancient, faded work shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and in the flickering blue light of the torch his face was lit clearly. He had dark hair and a sharply cut, sweeping mustache, and his eyes were sunken but powerful, penetrating. The flesh of his face seemed to drink in the blue light and spread it through his skin like a cobalt sunburn.

He knelt in the water beside Kimble and rested the butt of his torch on the flat rock just inches beneath the surface, and then he gazed at Kimble and smiled. When he spoke, his voice was clear but hollow and with an odd hint of echo, like something rising up from the bottom of the deepest well.

“You’re badly hurt, sir,” he said. Not a sympathetic observation but a delighted one. He passed the torch over Kimble’s body, and Kimble turned his eyes down and saw his own ribs, blue-white and dripping blood, the ends sheared roughly, like something cut with a dull saw. He found he could not move his head or neck, only his eyes.

“Grievous,” the man said, this devil who had once called himself Vesey.

Kimble didn’t speak. He was looking past Vesey, to where a blue bonfire burned, and saw familiar faces all around. Empty faces, haunted eyes. They watched him with sorrowful resignation, and he saw Wyatt French and then Jacqueline.

He wanted to cry out for her, but she was staring right at him, and there was nothing in the gaze. Just an infinite emptiness.

Silas Vesey moved, blocking Kimble’s view, his shadow spreading over the rocks, blue light enshrouding him.

“You will soon perish,” Vesey said. “There’s no doubt. I’m familiar with the ills of men, sir, and your condition is not one that shall heal itself.”

Vesey rocked back on his heels, still smiling, his lips a deeper shade of blue than his face, his eyes coal black and starkly contrasting with the ethereal glow.

“Your afflictions can be healed, though you may not believe it at this moment. I am possessed of a certain level of help that may be offered, and I am prepared to offer it. Should you so desire. Help of such a nature does not come without cost. I’m bound by balance, you see. If you wish to be healed, you shall be bound by balance as well. My kind is unable to restore life. Only able to balance it. Are you in understanding of this situation?”

Kimble tried to move his hand, but his arm was not responsive. He was aware that the fluid leaking along the side of his face was too warm to be the river water. Blood, and the source seemed to be his ear.

“The choice is yours,” Silas Vesey said.

Kimble flicked his eyes from that terrible pale blue face to his own ribs, watched his blood drip from shards of bone to be swept away in black water.

“Your time is fading. I’ll have to hear an answer soon. I cannot extend your time without that answer.”

When Kimble parted his lips, he could hardly make a sound, but the whispered word seemed to be enough.

Yes.

Vesey came closer, sliding through the water without disrupting it by so much as a ripple.

“I understand you are accepting the offer as presented,” he said. “You wish to be healed, and you will be called upon to uphold your required portion of the bargain. This is correct?”

Yes.

Vesey’s smile widened, the deep blue lips curling up, black teeth beneath, and then he nodded, leaned forward, and lowered the torch toward Kimble’s face. Kimble watched the sapphire sparks descend and expected that excruciating pain would follow, but it did not.

Instead, blackness flapped toward him like a visible wind, and then all was gone.

T
HE LEOPARD WAS SITTING WITH
his haunches on the ground and his forepaws inside the shelter, regarding Audrey through primal eyes.

“I’m just visiting, honey,” she whispered. “Don’t be mad. Please, do not be mad.”

There was a rustle in the straw, and his spotted face vanished from the moonlight but the yellow eyes advanced. He was coming toward her. Audrey let out a low, strangled sob.

He’s your favorite,
she told herself,
you touch him, you let him touch you, and if he ever wanted to hurt you he could have a million times by now.

But there’d been a fence between them. Always.

Jafar came on through the dark, and then she could see his eyes looming just before hers, could smell his snow-dampened fur. The leopard made a soft but deep growl, almost like a purr, and then he reached for her face with his. His mouth was open, and his breath smelled of meat and blood. Every one of her muscles went warm and liquid, and for a moment fainting seemed a very real possibility.

He thumped her shoulder with his head, and she bit back a scream. He made a displeased sound, thumped her a second time, and she whispered, “Okay, baby. Okay.”

She reached out with a trembling hand and touched his muzzle. There was snow melting on his fur and held in crystals on the long whiskers. If he decided to strike, from this distance, and with her unable to move…

The leopard extended his muzzle as she caressed it, then nudged the side of her face. She could feel the smooth fur on her cheek, the bristling whiskers against her neck. His head was enormous. Her fingers slid lightly down the span of his massive jaws, and she thought of all the times she’d seen them close around a piece of bloody meat, the tremendous power as his teeth snapped and shredded flesh that was far tougher than her own.

“Good boy. You’re my baby, aren’t you? I love you, buddy. I love you.”

He licked her neck, then along her jaw. His tongue was warm and rough and beyond it were canine teeth as long as her index finger. One bite was all it would take. One bite.

He made the low growl again.

That’s a friendly sound, Audrey. He is happy to see you. He is happy.

“Thank you, honey. Oh, thank you.” She felt able to breathe for the first time since he’d entered, and when he nudged her again, rubbing the top of his head against her shoulder, she got her hand high enough to scratch behind his ears. That was as brave as she had ever allowed herself to be before, from behind the fence. Now, the two of them alone in the dark, the big cat was just as content.

I’m okay. I am okay. He will not hurt me, and Dustin will not find me, and as long as I stay in here I am okay.

That was when the flashlight beam passed close by, illuminating the inside of the leopard’s enclosure.

“Audrey, get the fuck out here,” said a voice that had once belonged to a young man she had kidded about his resemblance to the boy in the Harry Potter movies, a man who once seemed as harmless as anyone she’d ever met but who now spoke from a place of unyielding blackness. He told her to get out with such confidence that she was sure he knew where she was, almost felt an impulse to respond. Then he continued talking, and she realized from the sound that he’d turned away, was speaking in another direction, still seeking.

“You don’t understand this place. You don’t understand how special it is. What I can be here. What
you
can be. Kimble, even. He doesn’t have to die. That’s up to him. I doubt he will make the right choice. What he cannot be allowed to do, though, is burn that bridge.”

He paused, searching for her in the night, and then continued.

“You’re thinking about Wes. You’re blaming me. Well, Wes didn’t have to die, either, Audrey. I watched it happen. The cats are what kept him away, and if he’d been able to get there, then Wes might be with us now. It was going to be up to him, but the cats prevented that chance. Don’t worry—I won’t let that happen to you. I’ll bring you to him. When you see the torch yourself, you will understand. When he touches you with that flame, you will understand.”

Silence. She had stopped moving, but her hand still rested on Jafar’s ears, the fur beginning to bristle, the leopard unappreciative of Dustin’s tone.

“Where did you go, you stupid bitch?” Dustin called, impatience returning. “You wouldn’t have gone into the cages. You’re not brave enough for that, no, you’re still scared of them, your own damn cats. Or did you get brave tonight?”