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More paper and lighter fluid got the drapes over the windows toburning. Then he struggled with the body of the leopard until he dropped it onthe fire. Its head burned fiercely with lighter fluid; its black nose lost itswet shininess and wrinkled with heat.
Opening the entrance to the passageway made a stronger draft. Thesmoke in the room streamed out through the hole to meet the smoke in thepassageway. Theentrance did not seem big enough to handle all the smoke, which soonfilled the room. He began to cough and, suddenly, as if the coughs had triggeredhim, hehad a long shuddering orgasm the roots of which seemed to be wrappedaround his spine and to be pulling his spine down his back and out through his penis.
Just as the last spurt came, a shriek tore from the smoke in thecenter of the room. He spun around but could see nothing. One of the two hadnot been dead and still was not dead because the shrieks were continuing with fullstrength.
And then, before he could turn again to face the new sound, agrunting andsquealing shot from the wall-entrance. There was a rapid clicking, much louder than the wolves' claws, a tremble of the boards under his feet, andhe was knocked upward to one side. Half-stu
Crawling on his hands and knees along the wall, his head bentnear the, floor to keep from breathing the smoke, he headed for the Frenchwindows. The swine noises had now given way to a deep coughing. After a dozenracks that seemed strong enough to suck in all the smoke in the room during thein-breaths, the hooves clattered again. Childe rounded the corner and slid alongthe wall until he came to the next corner. His hand, groping upward into thesmoke, feltthe lower edges of the French windows. The open ones were about tenfeet away, as he remembered them.
The hooves abruptly stopped. The squealing was even moreferocious, lessquesting and more challenging. Hooves hit the floorboards again. Punctuating thetwo sounds was a loud hissing.
A battle was taking place somewhere in the smoke. Several times, the walls shook as heavy bodies hit them, and the floor seldom ceased totremble. Blows--a great hand hammering into a thick solid body--added codas to thecrackling ofthe fires.
Childe could not have waited to see what was going on even if hehad wished. The smoke would kill him sooner, the fire would kill him later, butnot so much later, if he did not get out. There was no time to crawl on arounduntil he gotto the west door. The windows were the only way out. He climbed outafter unfastening and pushing out the lower edge of the screen, let himselfdown until he clung by his hands, and then dropped. He struck a bush, broke it, felt as if he had broken himself, too, rolled off it, and then stood up. Hisleft leg hurteven more, but he could see no blood.
And then he jetted again--at least, his penis had not been hurtin the fall--and was helpless while two bodies hurtled through the window hehad justleft. The screen, torn off, struck near him. Magda Holyani and Mrs. Grasatchow crushed more bushes and rolled off them onto the ground near thedriveway.
Immediately after, several people ran out of the house onto theporch.
Both the women were bleeding from many wounds and blackened withsmoke. Magda had ended her roll at his feet in time to receive a few dropsof sperm onher forehead. This, he could not help thinking even in his pain, wasan appropriate extreme unction for her. The fat woman had struck asheavily as asack of wet flour and now lay unconscious, a gray bone sticking outof the flesh of one leg and blood ru
Bending Grass, Mrs. Pocyotl, and O'Faithair were on the porch. That left Chornkin, Krautschner, Ngima, Pao, Vivie
The clothes of the three on the porch were ripped, their hair wasdisarrayed, and they were bleeding from wounds. They must havetangled withMagda or Mrs. Grasatchow or Dolores or any combination thereof. Butthey werenot disabled, and they were now looking for him, their mouths moving, their hands pointing at him now and then.
Childe limped, but swiftly, to the Rolls-Royce parked twenty feetaway onthe driveway. Behind came a shout and shoes slapping against theporch steps. The Rolls was unlocked, and the key was in the ignition lock. Hedrove awaywhile Bending Grass and O'Faithair beat on the windows with theirfists and howled like wolves at him. Then they had dropped off and were racingtoward another car, a red Jaguar.
Childe stopped the Rolls, reversed, and pressed the acceleratorto the floor. Going backward, the Rolls bounced O'Faithair off the rightrear fender and then crashed to a halt. Bending Grass had whirled just before itpi
Childe drove forward until he could see the Indian's body, redand mashed from the thighs down, face downward on the pavement. The outlines ofhis bodylooked fuzzy; he seemed to be swelling.
Childe had no time to keep looking. He stopped the Rolls again, backed it upover O'Faithair, who was just begi
Flames and smoke were pouring out of a dozen windows on all threestories of the left wing and out of one window of the central house. Unchecked, the first would destroy the entire building in an hour or two. And there wasnobody tocheck it.
He drove away. Coming around the curve just before entering theroad throughthe woods, he saw part of the yard to one side of the house. The redheaded Vivie
Childe did not know what she would do if she caught them, but hewas sure that they knew and were not standing to fight for good reasons. Healso suspected that Pao and the baroness had not come out of the housebecause of what Dolores had done to them, although it was possible that Magda orMrs. Grasatchow bad killed them. He could not be sure, of course, but hesuspectedthat the two had been in metamorphosis as pig and snake and that theyhad been unmanageable.
The three women disappeared in the trees.
He struck himself on his forehead. Was he really believing allthis metamorphosis nonsense?
He looked back. From this slight rise, he could see Bending Grassand Mrs. Grasatchow. The clothes seemed to have split off the Indian, and helooked black and bulky, like a bear. The fat woman was also dark and there wassomethingnonhuman about the corpse.
At that moment, from behind the house, the biggest black fox hehad ever seen raced out and tore off toward the woods into which the three women had disappeared. It barked three times and then turned its head andseemed to grinat him.
The chill that had transfixed him when he first saw Dolores went through himagain. He remembered something now, something he had read long ago. The shape-shifting fox-people of China. They lost control of theirability to change form if they drank too much wine. And, that first evening, the baronhad been trying to restrain Pao's wine consumption. Why? Because he had notwanted Childe to witness the metamorphosis? Or for some other reason? For someother reason, probably, since the baron could not have been worried about Childeescaping totell what be had seen.