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The beasts played dutifully with a large wooden ball and staged a clumsy
boxing match.
"How about your lions and tigers?" shouted the big scar-faced man in the fur
coat.
"Here they come, mister," Elite replied, beckoning to her daughters to release
the animals.
Ryan was aware of his own conditioned reflex, his right hand gripping the butt
of the blaster, seeing his own reaction mirrored by the audience. The gaudies
screamed and clung to the arms of their pimps or lovers. A pretty little girl
near the front closed her eyes and said, very clearly, "I like the good
animals but not the bad animals."
Rajah belied his age and frailty, giving vent to a deafening roar as he was
goaded down the ramp from his cage by Julie. His head turned from side to
side, along the rows of watching men and women, as if he were in the process
of selecting his lunch.
Balthazar and Rosa came close behind him, though the three big cats ignored
one another.
"How does she train them?" Ryan asked.
Katie answered. "Mostly done when we bought them. Mainly tamed, but you still
don't get careless and ever turn your back on them. Not even old Rajah."
Ryan had seen a number of performing bears, sorry, decrepit, flea-ridden
creatures with collars of rusting iron that had worn septic wounds around
their scrawny throats. Clawless and toothless, they would "dance," while being
jabbed with a spiked prod or flicked with a barbed whip.
Trader had once violently lost his temper with a smiling young teenager in
Kansas who had an animal that was barely alive. Trader had first put a
merciful
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bullet through the head of the wretched bear and then stripped the youth and
had the collar welded around his neck. He used the electric prod to make him
jig and caper, weeping and begging for mercy, until be finally collapsed
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unconscious, feet pulped and bleeding.
Ellie's performance with the tiger and the two lions was nothing like that. It
wasn't really very much like a traditional animal act at all.
The fact that these lethal creatures were free, unchained and not behind bars,
gave a frisson of genuine danger to the proceedings. The knowledge that at any
moment the tiger or either of the lions might break free of Ellie's control
and run bloodily amok throughout the crowd provided an edge of danger that you
could almost taste, salty and hot.
Nell was leaning against one of the wags, her shoulder touching Ryan. She was
plucking at some of the loose strands of satin thread on her knives, vivid
orange, turquoise, crimson and cobalt.
"You should travel with us, Ryan," she said, watching her mother. "You and
J.B.
here. We could all have us some real nice times together."
"All?" Ryan said.
Nell grinned, the pink tip of her tongue darting out between parted lips.
"Sure,"
she breathed. "All of us."
He felt himself becoming aroused at the thought of the nest of tangled limbs,
closing his eye for a moment to try to wipe away the vision.
Ellie was kneeling in the center of the open space, by a rugged pear tree,
while
Rajah levered his front paws, rather slowly and painfully, onto her shoulders
from behind. Balthazar, snarling softly to himself, lay across her lap, while
Rosa, her flanks heaving as she breathed, stood directly in front of the
helpless woman and opened her enormous jaws.
"Everyone real quiet, please!" Julie called.
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The chartering and nervous laughter died away. The only sound in the stillness
was the large scar-faced man striking a match on the sole of his boot to light
a fat black cigar.
Ellie leaned forward, one hand on either side of her face, to hold back the
great flood of raven hair. Ryan wasn't certain, but he thought he detected the
glint of metal in her left hand, as though she were gripping some kind of
small knife.
Just in case.
Rosa's jaws opened wider, the green incurious eyes staring past its mistress,
seeming to focus on the tall figure of the barkeep, who shifted nervously, the
jackbox tinkling softly as he caught it with his foot.
Ryan found himself holding his breath, aware of the horror that would result
if something went wrong.
Ellie leaned farther forward, submissively, until her head was completely
within the framing jaws, the curved, cruel teeth brushing at her face. For a
few heartbeats she held the pose, the group looking like the living embodiment
of some heroic
Victorian piece of commemorative statuary.
When she finally broke away, slapping the big lioness affectionately on the
side of the neck, the crowd broke into a great roar of applause.
The fur-coated buffalo hunter waved his cigar in the air. "Easy. It's a trick.
Mangy fuckers wouldn't even bite a shrimp in half."
"Then your dick'll be safe in her mouth, mister. Come and try it, why don't
you?"
Ryan grinned, guessing that Ellie had honed her wit over the years of touring
with the act and probably knew the likely things a drunk audience might throw
at her, and the best replies to bring most of them onto her side.
The hunter scowled at finding himself the unexpected center of the crowd's
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