Ellen Datlow - Tails of Wonder and Imagination

He said, “I always thought you still loved me a little. Unless this is just a stress reaction.”

She leaned into him, then grabbed and shook him, hard enough that he thought, she’s going to slug me next. She said, “I loved you, you jerk, but I couldn’t keep on loving somebody who was stupid enough to go to jail for what he didn’t do.”

“Ed is your cousin. I couldn’t rat out your cousin. And I never was sure the pot was his, anyway.”

“Idiot!” And she did slap him, not enough to hurt, then turned away, hiding tears. “Ed is a goddamn jerk. He got you in trouble, you shielded him. He’s my blood, but nobody I’d ever choose for family. Kevin, Kevin. I can’t be with a man who spent time in jail and who—who lives with this monster.”

“You like animals.”

She sobered. “I do. I’m not sure what you should do with Jonesy. Maybe we could get rid of her somehow? Not kill her. Find somebody who would take her and keep her safe. Would you do that if I asked?”

“And we’d be like before?” He didn’t say, And you’ll marry me , but he hoped she’d know that’s what he meant.

“We’d at least solve a problem. I have a friend who knows how to sell things on the Internet. Remember those people who tried to sell their kid on e-Bay?”

“They got caught.”

“They were stupid. E-bay’s not the option I had in mind. Listen, Ed isn’t the only shady character we know. Maybe we can find a place for her.”

He was reluctant. “Sara, don’t get her killed.”

He stayed up drinking cola after she left, but fell asleep in his lounge chair and awoke to early light and his cell phone ringtone.

“It’s happened,” said Hartley.

“What?” He thought she was talking about the attack on Rosebud.

“Sara Jones, that’s your girl, right? The cat’s over at her farm.”

“Yeah, but Sara will be okay. Jonesy loves Sara.”

“Judas Priest, boy, that cat is a top predator. Her definition of love is different from yours and mine. Big cats seem okay for years, then go off like a bomb and eviscerate somebody for no reason. For hunger. For a mate. Because a fly bit them on the nose.”

“She loves Sara—”

“Yeah, she loves you, too. And maybe she thinks Sara is a rival in love.”

That sounded crazy. But Kevin pulled his clothes back on and ran to his car.

He beat the police cruisers to the farm.

Jonesy was bashing the front door, roaring her earsplitting roar, not the roar of triumph she’d roared over Rosebud, not the roar of desire she’d yowled in heat. This was rage. And she was destroying the door.

As the first cruiser threw open its door and a cop sprang out with weapon drawn, the door imploded and Jonesy bounded inside.

Why had he thought Sara was safe? For some reason—oh God maybe it was sexual rivalry—Jonesy was after her.

Kevin bolted out of his car and up the porch stairs.

Inside, he smelled the fury of big, enraged cat.

“I’m up here!” Sara screamed.

He pounded up the stairs three at a time.

Sara’s voice came from the upstairs bedroom. Outside that closed door, Jonesy reared on her back feet, head scraping the ceiling. She clawed at the door knob, chewed at the door panels.

One door panel split and fell inward. Jonesy threw herself with renewed rage, and the door splintered.

“Here girl! Bad girl!” Why hadn’t he thought of bringing meat?

No. Meat wouldn’t work.

Sara was screaming, punching at the jammed window.

He raced up and grabbed the cat’s collar, but she turned and knocked him flat.

As he lay gasping from the blow, Jonesy lunged for Sara.

He crawled, dizzy, trying to rise despite the agony in his chest. He just reached the door when Jonesy rolled across the floor, sprang up, and sank her teeth into Sara’s throat.

Sara’s eyes went wide, green as Jonesy’s eyes. Her head snapped back. The cat ripped out her flesh together with a piece of her tee shirt, then howled, head thrown back, whiskered black nose grazing the ceiling light fixture.

Then the cat leapt through the window, splintering the frame.

Kevin crawled over to Sara. Her head was nearly separated from her body, blood gushing everywhere, in her beautiful golden hair, on her torn shirt, the cracked linoleum floor. More blood than he had ever seen.

He buried his face in the hollow between her breasts and sobbed.

Then he rose and looked out the window. Jonesy was loping into the barn.

He felt his way down the stairs, shattered. Sara was so beautiful. And Jonesy, his charge, his responsibility, his pet, had killed her. Pet? Oh, no. Not a pet. No more than an astronaut would call the moon a pet. No more than a composer would call his greatest symphony a pet. No more than a mountain climber would call Everest a pet.

He stumbled out into the light. Five police cruisers ringed the house now, and a paramedic van. One of the paramedics had the rifle from Sara’s truck.

“Cat still in there?” one cop yelled.

“Sara’s upstairs. She’s dead,” Kevin said. He sank to his knees and sobbed.

Hartley appeared. “The cat ran into the barn. I saw it.”

The paramedic raised the rifle, and another cop hauled open the barn door. He had a German shepherd with him on a short leash. Kevin pulled himself erect.

The dog strained forward, then turned to cower behind the cop. The cop broke into a run, at the same time trying to unholster his service revolver.

Jonesy exploded out of the barn. The cop with the dog fell down and Jonesy vaulted over them.

Kevin heard the sound of the rifle being cocked.

Kevin screamed, “No!” He launched himself at the rifleman.

The rifleman stumbled and the shot went wild.

A tawny streak—Jonesy—broke into the woods behind the barn and coursed out of sight.

Hartley screamed, “Why did you do that?”

“Killing the cat won’t make Sara be alive again.”

“You’re in denial! The smilodon will kill again.”

Kevin was silent. Hartley was right. He had no idea why he had pushed the rifleman. He felt his arms being jerked back, cuffs cut his wrists. But the sabertooth, the miracle from another world, was free.

“You were involved with Sara Jones,” Hartley said. “I thought you loved her.”

“I did. Not what matters.”

“This monster kills the woman you love, and you protect it?”

How could he explain?

Jonesy was never found, though attacks on domestic animals and deer increased in the county for a few weeks. Maybe the sabertooth died, maybe she went north, where the woods were thicker and the game larger.

Kevin went to jail. He got most of a college degree in there, gratis the state. He wasn’t street smart, that was obvious, but he had a talent for book learning.

His life had changed forever. He got out of jail, went to university, studied paleontology, but studiously avoided Franklin U and Hartley, though she begged him for his photos of the smilodon.

He never married.

But he had companioned a smilodon, brought back from the deeps of time. It had been like stepping on the moon. He had touched its white, saber-like teeth. And it made him immortal.

It was enough.