Nevada Barr: Track Of The Cat

"The first time it wasn't true."

As if responding to a stage cue, the lion growled, a low threatening cascade of gravelly notes.

Harland turned-not far, maybe half a turn-toward the cat. The barrel of the rifle moved eight inches to the left of Anna's heart and she sprang. It was utterly without thought. Mind at one with muscle, as countless animals had sprung at their prey since there had been a difference between the quick and the dead.

Her hands hit the rifle; both hands, hard, like a gymnast on the uneven parallel bars. Harland's considerable strength went into holding onto the gun and it stayed rigid in his grasp. Rigid enough Anna used it for leverage. Pulling against Roberts, she let her center of gravity sink to her butt and with all of the muscles of thigh and fanny, she drove her knee into Harland's groin.

Harland, protective instincts born of years of painstaking care of "the family jewels," pivoted and her knee struck the inside of his thigh. Pain forced a grunt from him but he did not collapse and Anna knew, with her first rational thought since the lion's tail had moved, that the fight was not over.

Banking on the surprise of sudden reversal, she let all pressure off the rifle, turned her energy with his, and he helped her to shove the gun hard against his chest.

A round fired into the air. The powerful recoil jerked them both off-balance. Stumbling back, Harland tripped over the goods he'd dropped at her first command. Anna felt herself falling with him. Neither dared relinquish their hold on the weapon to break the fall. The rifle butt struck first and another round ripped down the barrel just as Anna's shoulder pounded into the hard earth.

The report was muffled. Flesh and bone had silenced the bullet. Anna didn't know whether it was she or Harland who had been hit.

"Oh no…" she heard him whisper.

There is a God, she thought. And She is on my side. With renewed energy, she pulled herself to her knees, her fingers still locked tight around the weapon.

"Give it up! You're dying!" she screamed, willing him to believe, to die. "You've been hit. You're bleeding to death. Give it up. You'll die."

With a suddenness that caught her off-guard, Harland wrenched the rifle from her grasp. Anna lunged across him, slamming her weight into the arm that held the Sako and heard the rifle skitter downslope into the black ravine.

Harland closed her in a deadly embrace. "I'm not dead yet." The words were harsh and hot in her ear, more air than sound. "But I'm the last lover you'll ever know." His arms began to clamp down, crushing her.

Anna's legs were tangled in his, held tight, but her arms were free. She dragged at his hair, pounded his skull, but the grip never loosened. He'd tucked his face tight into her neck, his throat, his eyes were protected by her flesh. She sank her teeth into his shoulder and felt an answering bite on her neck, an animal bite tearing down through skin toward tendon and vein.

Like a jackal, he was ripping her throat out with his teeth. Terror gripped her, paralyzed her. Unrelentingly he was bending her spine. Soon it must snap. She could not breathe. The soft flesh of her throat was being eaten away.

Like the blind things they were, Anna's hands scrabbled over the stony ground above Harland's head. A long smooth stick came under her fingers. A flare. Hope sparked thought; hope made life possible. Hope blanked the fear and the pain that froze her mind. With every ounce of concentration she had, Anna forced her hands to uncap the flare, strike its tip against the safety cap.

Searing pain in her right wrist and hard pink light burning beyond her closed eyelids let her know she had been successful. Yelling, Anna drove the flare down inside Harland's shirt, pushed the spurting, chemical-driven torch into the back of his neck.

A scream pulled his teeth from her throat. Convulsively, his arms released her and he began clawing at the dragon consuming him from behind.

Crawling free, Anna struggled to her feet. The.357 was lost in the shadows. Snatching up a second flare, she struck it to life. In its hot light, she watched Roberts, mad with pain, ripping at his shirt. The flare fell free, tumbled down-slope.

Crying, Harland sat up. Blood seeped from a hole in his left shoulder. His back, Anna knew, would have a gaping wound where the bullet had exploded from his body. The smell of burnt flesh polluted the night.

The lion was gone.

Silently, her breath coming in gasps, Anna was crying, too. Ready to push it into his eyes, she held the gout of flame from the flare toward Harland. Roberts's face was ragged, wild with more than pain: with unacceptable defeat. Drawing on reserves Anna would marvel at later, he pushed himself upright, stood swaying in the wavering light. Like an angry bull, his head dropped and he glared at her from beneath straight dark brows.

Rage had taken the place of cunning. With a roar, he charged. Anna stepped aside and he stumbled over the lip of the ravine, crashing down the talus slope into the darkness. One final cry broke up through the shadows. Then silence.

Anna hung back. Harland's fall had taken the same path as Paulsen's hunting rifle. Using her flare, she found the.357. The moon had moved scarcely at all since she'd cut the lion free of its lighted collar. Minutes only had passed. Soon Paulsen would be returning with the "client."

Shoving the burning end into the earth, she stubbed out the flare like a gigantic cigarette. Cool white light returned and she saw the trails of black on her hands: blood. It seeped down from her throat, dripped to the ground. Anna chose not to worry about it. Had an artery been severed, she'd be dead by now. Next time she was in town she could get her rabies booster.

Free of the chemical glare of the fire, her eyes began to adjust again to the semi-darkness. The garish ghosts receded from her peripheral vision. Making her breathing as even and soundless as she could, Anna watched and listened. From beyond the lip of the ravine came a pink glow and the insistent hissing of the first flare. Other than that, no sound. Even the skritching and slithering natural to the desert night was hushed.

She ran quickly twenty yards to her right, approached the edge of the ravine from an unexpected-she hoped-direction. Leading with the revolver, she looked down. The inky shadows were given unholy life by the guttering flare. First Anna sought the dark and bright wood and metal of Paulsen's hunting rifle. It had lodged fifteen or twenty feet down, butt wedged between a small rainbow cactus and a rock. Below, perhaps twenty yards, crumpled at the edge of the uncertain light, was Harland Roberts. He did not move.

Crab-like, Anna scuttled down the loose stone of the ravine's side. Partway down she stopped and picked up the hunting rifle. For a moment she watched Roberts. He seemed not even to breathe and it crossed her mind that he'd broken his neck in the fall. Or he was playing possum.

She slung Paulsen's Sako across her back on its strap. Her shoulder was aching. The collarbone, incompletely knit, had cracked again. Once more she started her slow descent. A dozen feet from Harland she stopped. The moonlight didn't penetrate this far and the flare, burning its way out in the arid soil, made little of Harland but a shadow darker than the rest.

"I'm not coming any closer, Harland," Anna said. "Maybe you're dead and maybe you're not. Either way, I win."

The lump never moved. Anna turned and started up the slope. She was past the raided cache when his voice brought her to a halt.

"You can't win, Anna." Though he tried to keep it out of his voice, she could hear the pain. He was shot. He was burned. Maybe he'd broken something in the fall. Still Anna didn't trust his helplessness.

She turned back but went no lower.