Creatures

Chapter Thirty-Three

The moon came out full and bright. There is a full moon for four nights every twenty-eight days. Thirteen full moons each year. In our family, we always knew the phase of the moon, like some people always seem to know the weather forecast. I could feel the burn of the moonlight on my skin. It made me feel kind of hot and itchy, despite the bitterly cold night air.

Beth didn’t feel any of this warmth. She continued to complain about the loss of the blanket right up until when Danny and Thomas came out of one of those small square doors and ran out into the crusty snow drifts. They spotted us almost immediately and Danny gave a single, loud bark.

Beth was in position behind me, closer to the door. She ran down the nearest slope toward me. When she got to the bottom, I gritted my teeth as she leapt across the flat section. It really was an amazing leap. She had told me she could do it, but I hadn’t really expected her to make a seven foot jump like that while sliding down a roof on bad footing. But she did, and landed easily on the far side.

Seeing Beth so close got the dogs excited, and they came on barking.

We turned and scrambled away, up a roof peak. We got to the top and turned to look back. There was a sort of valley between them and us now with the flat bottom that Beth had leapt over. Danny and Thomas didn’t hesitate. They rushed down the slope to the bottom. It was only at the last second that Danny hesitated. Maybe he saw the grin on my face. I couldn’t help but grin down at them while I watched.

The trap worked perfectly on Thomas, he went right into the blanket that we had stretched over an opening in the roof and dusted with snow. The ground seemed to swallow him up. He gave one of those “ Yipe-Yipe-Yipe,” cries that young dogs do when surprised or hurt. He fell two floors, wrapped in a frosty blanket, and crashed down into an atrium below us.

Danny had a bit more time to try to avoid the trap. He slid down the roof on his butt, not able to stop himself. What he managed to do was leap at the last moment across the hole to our side. He scrabbled for a grip on the slippery roof, something dogs aren’t well built for. That’s when I came down the roof to meet him.

He snarled at me, giving me a mouth full of fangs. I snarled back, and to my surprise and his, my mouth was full of fangs too. I thought for a second my vision had blurred, but in a moment I realized it was the long white whiskers that had sprouted out of my face, which now grew into a snout. Just as Danny got his footing on our side of the roof, I reached him, and I gave him a hard shove with my forepaws.

He toppled backward off the roof and down into the atrium. The two growling figures scrambled amongst the bushes that had broken their fall.

“Are they hurt?” asked Beth, coming up behind me to peer down at them.

The two of them circled below us like dogs at the bottom of a tree. Danny limped noticeably. They looked up at me and growled something unpleasant to each other.

I kicked a load of snow down into their faces and gave a whoop of laughter. “They’re fine.”

Beth gave me a concerned look. I know she wasn’t quite sure what to make of this rodent version of Connor.

“Come on,” I said, reaching out a paw to her. She looked at it for just a second. Reluctance showed in her eyes. But then she took my paw and I pulled her up the roof slope. My claws could dig into the snow and climb the roof faster than I ever could have as a human.

“You did a great job making that trap, Connor,” she said, “That was very clever.”

“You did a great job as the bait. That was an amazing leap you made.”

“But what are we going to do now?” asked Beth. “They’ll just come back, with reinforcements.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s time to use that rope Waldheim gave us.”

Beth sucked in her breath and looked over the side. “It’s so far down, Connor.”

“Trust me.”

We made our way across the roof to the edge. It was the back of the mansion, closest to the woods. If we made it into the trees we could sneak back at any point during the night to win the race in the morning. Vater had not said we couldn’t leave the mansion, he had indicated very few rules, and so I wasn’t going to play by any assumed ones. I realized now that he had probably wanted it that way.

We heard a tiny door slam somewhere.

“Someone’s on the roof with us,” hissed Beth.

“It’s time to get out of here, they are closing in,” I said quietly.

We came up to a statue we’d seen before, a scary-looking snow-crusted thing that looked like a wild beast wrought in iron.

“I thought that thing was on the other side of the roof last time,” said Beth, not liking the look of it.

“Maybe it’s a different one, I said, and proceeded to tie the rope to its base.

I tossed the long length of it over the side. “You first, I’ll hold it,” I told her.

She looked at me and rope doubtfully.

There was another door slamming sound, and some thumping sounds somewhere over the peaks. I heard someone give a whoop, as if they had slipped on the treacherous snow-covered shingles.

“Go!” I hissed.

Beth went over the side. Again I was surprised by how light she was. She looked at me one last time with those super cute eyes of hers. “Don’t let go,” she said, and she was gone.

Before she had gone down ten feet, the statue moved behind me. A huge rough hand with claws like black iron landed on my shoulder. The claws closed and dug into my flesh. I was lifted, gasping, into the night air.