Tony Daniel Read Online Free

and we touch noses. I smell blood on her. She’s got a kill, a bachelor male, by the blood spoor on her.
    It’s so warm and wet, Jill . Bomi’s trembling and wound up tight. She’s not the smartest ferret. I love it, love it, and I’m going back to lie in it.
    That’s bad. Bad habit.
    I don’t care. I killed it; it’s mine.
    You do what you want, but it’s your man Bob’s rat.
    No it’s mine.
    He feeds you, Bomi.
    I don’t care.
    Go lay up then.
    I will.
    Without a by-your-leave, Bomi’s gone back to her kill to lay up. I never do that. TB wouldn’t like it, and besides, the killing’s the thing, not the owning. Who wants an old dead rat to lie in when there’s more to bite?
    Bomi told me where she’d be because she’s covering for herself when she doesn’t show and Bob starts asking. Bomi’s a stupid ferret, and I’m glad she doesn’t belong to TB.
    But me—down another hole, deeper, deeper still. It’s half– filled in here. The doe rat thought she was hiding it, but she left the smell of her as sure as a serial number on a bone. I will bite you, mamma.
    Then there’s the dead-end chamber I knew would be. Doe rat’s last hope in all the world. Won’t do her any good. But oh she’s big! She’s tremendous. Maybe the biggest ever for me.
    I am very, very happy.
    Doe rat with the babies crowded behind her. Thirteen of them, I count by the squeaks. Sweet naked squeaks. Less than two weeks old, they are. Puss and meat. But I want mamma now.
    The doe sniffs me and screams like a bone breaking, and she rears big as me. Bigger.
    I will bite you.
    Come and try, little jill.
    I will kill you.
    I ate a sack of money in the City Bank and they chased me and cut me to pieces and just left my tail and—I grew another rat! What will you do to me, jill, that can be so bad? You’d better be afraid of me.
    When I kill your babies, I will do it with one bite for each. I won’t hurt them for long.
    You won’t kill my babies.
    At her.
    At her because there isn’t anything more to say, no more messages to pass back and forth through our grist and scents.
    I go for a nipple and she’s fast out of the way, but not fast enough and I have a nub of her flesh in my mouth. Blood let. I chew on her nipple tip. Blood and mamma’s milk.
    She comes down on me and bites my back; her long incisors cut through my fur, my skin, like hook needles, and come out at another spot. She’s heavy. She gnaws at me, and I can feel her teeth scraping against my backbone. I shake to get her off, and I do, but her teeth rip a gouge out of me.
    Cut pretty bad, but she’s off. I back up thinking that she’s going to try to swarm a copy, and I stretch out the grist and there it is, just like I thought, and I intercept it and I kill the thing before it can get to the mulm and reproduce and grow another rat. One rat this big is enough, enough for always.
    The doe senses that I’ve killed her outrider, and now she’s more desperate.
    This is all there is for you. This is oblivion and ruin and time to stop the scurry.
    This is where you’ll die.
    She strikes at me again, but I dodge and—before she can round on me—I snatch a baby rat. It’s dead before it can squeal. I spit out its mangle of bones and meat.
    But mamma’s not a dumb rat, no, not dumb at all, and does not fly into a rage over this. I know she regards me with all the hate a rat can hate, though. If there were any light, I’d see her eyes glowing rancid yellow.
    Come on, mamma, before I get another baby.
    She goes for a foot, and again I dodge, but she catches me in the chest. She raises up, up.
    The packed dirt of the ceiling, wham, wham, and her incisors are hooked around my breastbone, damn her, and it holds me to her mouth as fast as a barbed arrow point.
    Shake and tear, and I’ve never known such pain, such delicious . . .
    I rake at her eyes with a front claw, dig into her belly with my feet. Dig, dig, and I can feel the skin parting, and the fatty underneath