Demeris found himself looking straight into the man’s eyes, and saw something close to madness there, but no fear at all—only eagerness, impatience, frenzied excitement—and he realized that they must be running not from but to the hunt, that they were on their way to witness the crazy slaughter at close range or even to take part in it themselves, that they lived just as did the Spooks for this annual moment of apocalyptic frenzy.
Jill said, “It’ll be berserk here now for two or three days. You ought to be very careful if you go outdoors.”
“Yes. I will.”
“Listen,” she said, putting an edge on her voice to make it cut through the roaring coming from overhead, “I’ve got a proposition for you, now that you know the truth.” She leaned close to him. “Let’s stay together, you and me. Despite our differences. I like you a lot, Nick.”
He peered at her, utterly astounded.
“I really think we can work something out,” she went on. Another horde of winged things shot by just above them, making raspy tearing sounds as they flailed the air, and a new gush of color stained the sky. “Seriously, Nick. We can stay in Spook City if you want to, but I don’t suppose you do. If you don’t I’ll go back across the border with you and live with you in Free Country. In my mind I’ve already crossed over. I don’t want just to study you people from the outside. I want to be one of you.”
“Are you crazy?” Demeris asked.
“No. Not in the least, I swear. Can you believe me? Can you?”
“I’ve got to go inside,” he said. He was trembling. “It isn’t smart to be standing out here while the hunt is going on.”
“What do you say, Nick? Give me an answer.”
“It isn’t possible for us to be together. You know it isn’t.”
“You want to. Some part of you does.”
“Maybe so,” he said, amazed at what he was saying, but unable to deny it despite himself. “Just maybe. One little fraction of me. But it isn’t possible, all the same. I don’t want to live here among the Spooks, and if I take you back with me, some bastard with a sharp nose will sniff you out sooner or later and expose you for what you are, and stand up before the whole community and denounce me for what I am. I’m not going to take that risk. I’m just not, Jill.”
“That’s your absolute decision.”
“My absolute decision, yes.”
Something was coming down the street now, some vast hopping thing with a head the size of a cow and teeth like spears. A dozen or so humans ran along beside it, practically within reach of the creature’s clashing jaws, and a covey of Spooks hovered over it, bombarding it with flashes of light. Demeris took a step or two toward the door of the hotel. Jill did nothing to hold him back.
He turned when he was in the doorway. She was still standing there. The hunters and their prey sped right past her, but she took no notice. She waved to him.
Sure, he thought. He waved back. Goodbye, Jill.
He went inside. There was a clatter on the stairs, people running down, a woman and some men. He recognized them as the ones who had mocked him in the bar when he had first arrived. Two of the men ran past him and out the door, but the woman halted and caught him by the crook of the arm.
“Hey, Abblecricky!”
Demeris stared at her.
She leaned into his face and grinned. She was flushed and wild-looking, like the ones who had been running through the streets. “Come on, man! It’s the hunt! The hunt, man! You’re heading the wrong way. Don’t you want to be there?”
He had no answer for that.
She was tugging at him. “Come on! Live it up! Kill yourself a dragon or two!”
“Ella!” one of the men called after her.
She gave Demeris a wink and ran out the door.
He swayed uncertainly, torn between curiosity about what was going on out there and a profound wish to go upstairs and shut the door behind him. But the street had the stronger pull. He took a step or two after the woman, and then another, and then he was outside again. Jill wasn’t there. The scene in the street was wilder than ever: people running back and forth yelling incoherently, colliding with each other in their frenzy, and overhead streams of winged creatures still swarming, and Spooks like beams of pure light moving among them, and in the distance the sounds of bellowing animals and thunderous explosions and high keening cries of what he took to be Spook pleasure. Far off to the south he saw a winged something the size of a small hill circling desperately in the sky, surrounded by implacable flaring pinpoints of Spook-light, and suddenly halting and plummeting like a falling moon toward the ground. He could smell the smell of charred flesh in the air, with a salty underflavor of what he suspected was the blood of alien beasts.
At a sleepwalker’s dreamy pace Demeris went to the corner and turned left. Abruptly he found himself confronted with a thing so huge and hideous that it was almost funny—a massive long-snouted frog-shaped thing, sloping upward from a squat base, with a moist-looking greenish-black hide pocked with little red craters and a broad, gaping, yellow-rimmed mouth. It had planted itself in the middle of the street with its shoulders practically touching the buildings at either side and was advancing slowly and clumsily toward the intersection.
Demeris drew his knife. What the hell, he thought. He was here at hunt time, he might as well join the fun. The creature was immense but it didn’t have any visible fangs or talons and he figured he could move in at an angle and slash upward through the great baggy throat, and then step back fast before the thing fell on him.
And if it turned out to be more dangerous than it looked, he didn’t give a damn. Not now.
He moved forward, knife already arcing upward.
“Hey!” someone cried behind him. “You out of your mind, fellow?”
Demeris glanced around. The bartender had come out of the hotel and was staring at him.
“That critter’s just a big sack of acid,” he said. “You cut it open, it’ll pour all over you.”
The frog-thing made a sound like a burp, or perhaps a sardonic chuckle. Demeris backed away.
“You want to cut something with that,” the bartender said, “you better know what you’re cutting.”
“Yeah.” Demeris said. “I suppose so.” He put the knife back in its sheath, and headed back across the street, feeling all the craziness of the moment go from him like air ebbing from a balloon. This hunt was no business of his. Let the people who live here get mixed up in it if they liked. But there was no reason why he should. He’d just be buying trouble, and he had never seen any sense in that.
As he reached the hotel entrance he saw Spook-light shimmering in the air at the corner—hunters, hovering above—and then there was a soft sighing sound and a torrent of bluish fluid came rolling out of the side street. It was foaming and hissing as it edged along the gutter.
Demeris shuddered. He went into the building.
***
