Demon Child

too horror-stricken to move, to run and save himself.
        “Let me go!” she shouted.
        “Wait!”
        “No, no, no!”
        He held her more tightly than ever as she tried to kick her way loose of him.
        “It'll kill us!” she shouted.
        Richard didn't seem to care or believe.
        More lightning flashed, bursting across the sky on the bright trail of the previous bolt.
        The dog was almost on top of them. She could see his large, sharp, yellow teeth and the saliva foam which flecked his dark lips and gathered in bubbles in the bristled hair that sprouted around his mouth. If Sarah Maryanna Brucker's curse had been effective, this was indeed the sort of creature she would have liked to see haunt her father's estate.
        When Brutus was only twelve or fifteen feet away, he leaped at Richard, correctly identifying his most difficult victim. As he came on, his claws caught what little light there was, glinted.
        Then a gun fired.
        Brutus seemed to stop in mid-flight as if he had rammed against an invisible brick partition. His face never lost the fierce, bared-fang snarl even as he died. He slammed into the earth, rolled like a sack of pelts without life in them. When he came to rest on his side, he kicked at the air for a full minute, gnashing his teeth at the darkness.
        And he died.
        It had all come as such a surprise to Jenny that she did not comprehend it. For several long seconds, she still prepared herself to be torn apart like a rabbit. Even as the blood rushed out of the killer hound's twisted, open mouth, even as it kicked spasmodically, one last time, and finally lay still, she cringed in expectation of the sharp pain of its teeth and its claws,
        Richard had been carrying a pistol in the right hand pocket of his raincoat and had kept his right hand on it all the while Hobarth had been gloating over the success of his escapades. He had known that the last advantage lay with them, and he had given no clue of his knowledge. Now, he directed the barrel at Hobarth and fired a warning shot over the psychiatrist's head.
        Hobarth panicked. He might still have won if he had kept his wits about him. He could have returned the fire, aiming to do more damage to them than Richard wished to do him. He was ruthless where Richard was not. But the sight of the dead hound seemed to electrify him, as if he never thought Brutus could be taken out by anyone. He had leaped to his feet when the dog struck the earth mortally wounded, and he had dropped both his handgun and Richard's rifle which he had taken from the stables. When the warning shot whistled over his head, he turned, stumbled, and ran toward Tulip, confused for one of the few times in his life.
        “Hobarth!” Richard called.
        But Walter Hobarth, the paragon of reason and logic, the man who so carefully planned his every move and who had not lost a single point in this game to date, this cunningly thorough man could not bear to consider that everything had been lost in one, short moment-just when everything had seemed like an unqualified success. He ran, panicked at the sudden intrusion of the unexpected into his well-planned cosmos.
        Jenny sympathized with him. It was never pleasant to see your world crashing down around you, lying at your feet in useless splinters. She knew. It had happened to her.
        “Hobarth, wait!” Richard called again. He pointed the gun at the doctor, but he could not bring himself to pull the trigger for a direct shot. A warning shot, clearly, would do no good.
        Hobarth's fifth running step was his last. It took him over the rounded edge of a large, limestone sinkhole which he could not have easily seen in the darkness. His scream was cut short by a sickening thud and the rattle of breath in a damaged throat…

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    19
        
        Gingerly, Richard worked his way down the tiered edge of the sinkhole, from ledge to fragmented ledge, until he found a way to the narrow, smooth shelf where Walter Hobarth lay in a black heap. The rain pelted him and made the limestone slippery. He felt chilled to the bone, whether by the rain or by the events of the evening, he could not say.
        Above, Jenny knelt in the mud and the grass by the edge of the pit, staring into the gloom. Richard's flashlight did little to dispel the shadows for its bulb was very weak and the night was exceedingly deep. It served only to