And before she even sees the cage, before she sees what's waiting in the cage, Dancy Flammarion is out on the highway again, the air filled with that thunder that isn't thunder, and the Seraph shrieks and slices the storm-damp air with its sword of fire and molten steel.
The scorching light pouring from the angel's purple-blue eyes almost blinds her, and she turns her head away.
In His right hand he held seven stars, and out of His mouth came a sharp double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance-
On the porch behind the Texaco station, Dancy reaches for her knife, the big carving knife she used in Bainbridge, something else salvaged from the cabin in Shrove Wood. But her knife is still tucked safely inside the duffel bag, and her bag's out front with the old man.
And then she sees the cage, big enough to hold at least five panthers, a great confining box of thick steel bars and seam welds and black iron bolts. But the only thing inside is a naked woman huddled in the dirt and filthy hay covering the floor of the cage. Her long auburn hair hangs about her narrow face in knots and matted coils, and her skin is so streaked with shit and mud and grime that Dancy can't be sure if she's black or white or some other color altogether. The woman looks up, her eyes so deep and dark and filled with pain, and when she speaks Dancy thinks that it's surely the most broken and desperate voice she's ever heard from simple human lips.
"Help me," the woman pleads. "You have to help me. He's insane."
Dancy slowly descends the four steps to the weathered square of concrete laid between the porch and the cage and stands only five or six feet back from the bars. "That old man locked you up in there?" she asks, and there are tears streaming from the woman's brown eyes, eyes the same rich brown as chocolate. She nods her head and reaches through the bars for Dancy.
I don't have my knife, she thinks, half-praying to anything that's listening, and Dancy imagines the angel's fiery sword sweeping down to divide her careless soul from her flesh, to burn her so completely that there'll be nothing left to send to Hell.
"He's crazy," the woman says. "He's going to kill me. Whoever you are, you have to help me."
"He said there was a live panther back here," Dancy tells her and looks over her shoulder at the back door of the little store, wondering if the old man is still busy talking to the guy in the pickup truck about the cocksucker who went back for seconds.
"I just told you. He's insane. He'll say anything. Please-"
"He put you in that cage? Why'd he do that? Why didn't he just kill you?"
"You're not listening to me!" the woman hisses and bares her teeth; her voice has changed, has grown as angry and impatient as it was desperate and broken only a few seconds before. "We don't have much time. He'll figure out you're back here and come after you."
Dancy looks at the heavy Yale padlock holding the cage door shut, and then she looks back at the woman. "I don't have the key," she says. "How am I supposed to open that, if I don't have the key?"
The woman's dark eyes glimmer and flash, and Dancy realizes that they're not the same color they were before, the deep and chocolate brown replaced suddenly by amber shot through with gleaming splinters of red. She retreats one step, then another, putting that much more distance between herself and the naked woman in the cage.
"I know who you are, Dancy Flammarion. I know what you did in Bainbridge. I know about the angel." And the woman's voice has changed again, too. This is the voice of an animal that has learned to talk, or a human being who's forgetting. "I know you've been sent here to save me."
"Who told you that?" Dancy asks, and she kicks at a loose bit of concrete, pretending that she isn't afraid. "I was just looking for the panther, that's all."
"We don't have time for this shit," the woman growls and seizes the iron bars in both hands, and now Dancy can see the long black claws where her fingernails used to be. The naked woman, who isn't really a woman at all, slams herself against the bars so hard that the whole cage shakes and the padlock rattles loudly.
"Now open this fucking cage!"
"Don't you talk to me like that," Dancy says; her face feels hot and flushed, and her heart's beating so fast she thinks maybe it means to explode. "I don't care what you are, I don't like to be talked to that way."
The thing in the cage presses its face to the bars, and its thick lips curl back to show Dancy eyeteeth that have grown long and sharp, the teeth of something that hunts for its supper, something that might even send a panther packing. Its amber eyes blaze and spark, and Dancy tries not to imagine the soul burning beneath its skin, inside that skull, a soul so hot it will wither her own if she doesn't look away.
"What? You think you're some kind of holy fucking saint," it snarls and then makes a sound that isn't precisely laughter. "Is that it? You think you're something so goddamn pure that strong language is gonna make your ears bleed?"
"I think maybe it's a good thing, you being in that cage," Dancy replies, almost whispering now.
And the thing locked in the iron cage roars, half the cheated, bottomless fury in the whole world bound up in that roar, and then it slams itself against the bars again. Its bones have begun to twist and pop, rearranging themselves inside its shifting skin. Its hands have become a big cat's paws, sickle talons sheathed in velvet, and its spine buckles and stretches and grows a long tail that ends in a tuft of black fur.
And Dancy turns to run, because she doesn't have her knife, because somehow she wasn't ready for this, no matter what she saw in Bainbridge or Shrove Wood, no matter if maybe those things were more terrible; maybe the angel was wrong about this one. She turns to run, running for the first time, and she'll worry about the angel later, but the old man is right there to stop her. He holds her firmly by the shoulders and grins down at her with his tobacco-stained teeth.
"Where you goin', sport? I thought you wanted to see my panther?"
"Let go of me. I told you I ain't got three dollars."
"Hey, that's right. You did say that. So that makes this sort of like stealin', don't it? That means you owe me somethin'," and he spins her roughly around so she's facing the cage again. The thing inside has changed so much that there's hardly any trace of the cowering, filthy woman left; it paces restlessly, expectantly, from one side of the cage to the other, its burning, ravenous eyes never leaving Dancy for very long. And she can still hear its animal voice inside her head.
You were supposed to save me, it lies. You were supposed to set me free.