"Where downstairs? In the house?" I say, because there are more important things to worry about right now than Carmen, than being set up for quadruple homicide.
"I should really be getting down there. They need me."
"To cut someone up?"
"Oh sweetie, I'm just the magic battery to make the ritual even more potent. Or didn't you notice that your shavi shavi is brighter whenever I'm around?" is brighter whenever I'm around?"
"The invisible demon."
"Team effort," he agrees. "Amira's obfuscation is painfully obvious without me. Although we like to do the carving together. But we're wasting time. There are children to be sacrificed, getaways to make. Come on, kwerekwere kwerekwere," the Maltese says, brandishing the knife. "You look like you've seen a dogfight or two."
Mark lunges for Benoit at the same time as the snarling Mutt goes for the Mongoose. Yipping hysterically, the Dog rolls the Mongoose onto his back, biting at his belly, his face. Blood smears across its muzzle. The Mongoose writhes and kicks, teeth bared in pain, but he doesn't make a sound.
Another knife appears in Mark's left hand from a hidden sheath and, as Benoit smashes him across the ribcage with his baton, Mark manages to slice at his face, the blade glancing off his jaw and up his cheek.
"Carmen," I shake her. "Is there a gun in the house?"
But she shakes her head violently from side to side like she's having a seizure. "No-no-no-no-no-no."
I let go, and she pulls up her knees, clutching her Rabbit to her chest like a kid with a stuffed animal, and takes a sip from her drink, glaring at me as if I'm intending to take it away.
Sloth is making agitated little squeaks.
"I'm working on it!" I snap.
The Mongoose pulls up his back legs and kicks the Dog, contorting like a koeksister koeksister to scramble on top of it. They tumble over each other, but the Mongoose has the advantage. He's used to killing snakes and this is just a ratty little Dog. He has the Mutt pinned by the throat and squealing. to scramble on top of it. They tumble over each other, but the Mongoose has the advantage. He's used to killing snakes and this is just a ratty little Dog. He has the Mutt pinned by the throat and squealing.
The humans are more evenly matched. Benoit and Mark are circling each other warily. Benoit jabs the baton into Mark's sternum with all his weight, keeping him out of reach. Mark staggers back, as if winded, but it's a ploy. As Benoit moves towards him, he ducks under the baton, stabs him in the side, and darts out of reach again. And then I smash one of the lacy ironwork chairs over the back of his skull.
It does less damage than I'd hoped. I was hoping for out cold, but instead he stumbles, drops one of his knives to clutch at the back of his head and turns on me, furious.
"You little cunt. I'll come back to you." But when he turns back, it's straight into the baton that slams into the side of his head hard enough to knock him off his feet.
Carmen gives a little shriek of delight. "I can feel it coming in the air. Tonight," she says, matter-of-factly.
Mark starts to get up and Benoit hits him across the back of his knees. He collapses across the end of the lounger. I spring forward, push my knee into his back and yell at Benoit. He breaks out cable ties, standard issue with Sentinel rather than handcuffs, and we work together to bind the Maltese's wrists and ankles and then cable-tie both to the heavy ironwork table. The Dog snarls and snaps at my fingers, but Benoit pins it down with the baton on its neck and I close a cable tie over its muzzle and chain it by the collar to one of the chairs.
"The water," Carmen sings, pointing at the pool. "Water, water. And not enough to drink."
A shadow swells up from the bottom of the pool, eclipsing the wan rays of the pool light. Something sickly white and huge with scales explodes from beneath the surface, snaps its jaws shut on Benoit and slides back into the water before he can draw breath to yell. Like a fucking dinosaur. I'm still blinking from the icy shock of water that burst up with it and Benoit is gone, like he never was, the choppy waves the only sign that something happened.
"Pop goes the weasel!" Carmen says, clapping her hands in delight.
I don't think about it. I jump in after him. The water is cold enough to knock the breath out of me. I hear the Mongoose scream and splash in after me. But Mongooses can't dive. I fight my way through a dense skin of slimy rotting leaves, Sloth clutching my neck in terror. I hope he knows how to hold his breath. I dive into the pallid gloom lit up by the underwater light. There's a hole at the bottom of the deep end, a tunnel wide enough to steer a truck through. I swim into it, following the curve down into pitch darkness, like swimming into the heart of the Undertow. The pressure in my ear gear-shifts from a dull ache to a screaming drill bit in my head, but then the tunnel curves up again, like the U-bend of a sink, into water that's brutally cold and black. I can hear distorted music through the water and a slapping sound. Lungs burning, I kick up to the surface and break through into the cool air of an underwater cavern.
There is music pumping. An innocuously sweet pop ballad. One of iJusi's.
Baby it's a drive-by, drive-by...
The slapping is the sound of the blast as the monster breaches, twists in the air and flops back into the water, Benoit hanging limply in its jaws. Not a dinosaur. An albino crocodile, six metres long. It's rolling to drown its prey.
I start to swim for the thing, but Sloth tugs at my arms, to hold me back. He's right. There's nothing I can do until it stops its death roll. I tread water in the darkness and try to slow my heart and take in what's going on, try not to focus on the monster's thrashing.
The cavern is maybe twenty metres across. Natural rock with man-made features: the speakers pumping out iJusi, the bare neon bulb mounted on a set of stairs so steep it's basically a ladder, rising from a cement outcropping that juts into the water like a pier. The smell of damp and rot is overwhelming. Old vase-water.
Drive-by love
Huron, bare-chested, his belly hanging over his shorts, with a gun holster strapped under his arm, is standing on the landing with the twins who are naked, handcuffed together and swaying slightly. Their faces are empty. The Marabou is spreading a plastic sheet over an old-fashioned wooden butcher's block.
There is a cage at her feet big enough to hold a medium-sized dog. There's something else not a dog inside the cage. A hunch of mammal with brown fur. A flutter of feathers.
It's not even love at first sight, it's love at a glance
Huron shouts over the water at the Crocodile, "That better not be Carmen!" He laughs, but adds to the Marabou, "Go see what's going on."
"I'm sure Mark has everything under control," she says.
"Then where the hell is he? And who is that that?" he says, pointing to the water. For an awful moment, I think he's pointing at me, but he's indicating Benoit in the monster's mouth.
"Whoever it is, he's not a problem anymore," the Marabou shrugs.
"Hurry up, you overgrown fucking gecko!" Huron shouts. "We need to get this show on the road."
Saw you in the back of a taxi, passing me by
Sloth makes little panicky gasps in my ear. "It's okay, buddy, they can't see us." I hope. Sloth gives a little sob.
Tried to raise my hand, tried to catch your eye
I retreat into the darkness, to the wall, find a low rock to cling to. Sloth clambers onto it, shivering.
"We should start on the animals," the Marabou says. "There might be other intruders."
"Don't we need booster boy?"
"The twins will be enough. The doubling effect"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're the expert here, baby. I'll dowhatever you say," Huron says. "Let's get this party started."
"Indeed," she says and opens the cage to pull out a rabbit-eared creature with a long piggy snout. Patrick Serfontein's Aardvark. Still alive. She picks up a machete from the butcher's block.
But you looked straight past, didn't see me
The Crocodile slows its thrashing. It rises from the water and shakes its head violently as if testing the resistance of the body in its mouth. Benoit's right arm flops grotesquely from his body. He's not moving. The Crocodile smacks its jaw against the water and then sinks under, dragging Benoit with it.
Baby it's a drive-by, drive-by, drive-by love