Stepping boldly in through Joe's cat door and leaving a tuft of black fur on the metal rim, Azrael lifted his tail. Joe leaped, enraged, as the tom sprayed Joe's favorite cushions with a stink powerful enough to corrode a steel building. Joe hit him, knocking him away as the beast sprayed Joe's water bowl. They were clawing and raking, the force of Joe's attack soaking them both. Sinking his teeth into Azrael's neck, Joe forced him against a window, clawing and ripping at him. Hanks of black and gray fur flew. Locked together, yowling and screaming, the tomcats thundered against the small windows threatening to break glass, a spinning ball of raking claws and torn and shredded cushions. Below, in the master bedroom, Clyde shouted.

Brought up from a deep sleep, Clyde yelled again and leaped out of bed. "What the hell? Joe, where are you?" He stared toward the ceiling of the study that seemed under siege by a small and violent earthquake. "What the hell's going on!" Racing into the study in his shorts, he climbed atop the desk and peered up through the cat door, where a ruckus like fighting bulls shook the ceiling.

Above him, in the little glass house, whirled a dervish of screams and spinning fur. "Joe! What the hell-" Reaching up inside the tower, he tried to separate the fighters. Grabbing the black tom, he tried to pull him off Joe.

"Get away from him!" Joe yelled. "He'll take your arm off."

The cat's claws raked Clyde. Hot with anger, Clyde jerked the black tom down through the cat door. He wasn't sure whether he had hold of head or tail until teeth sank into his thumb. Swearing, he snatched the cat's neck between tightening fingers. He had him now, one hand gripping the cat's tail, the other hand clutching the beast's thick black neck. Holding the twisting, screaming tom away from his own tender hide, Clyde stood on the desk nearly naked, his arms oozing blood, his black hair tousled from sleep, his bare feet scattering papers and bills like autumn leaves. In his hands, the flailing black monster clawed the air and swore like a stevedore. Clyde hadn't heard such creative invective since his rodeoing days; the beast swore in Spanish as well as English, the Spanish expletives sounding far nastier. Gripping the flailing cat was like holding a whirling radiator fan with knives embedded in the blades-a machine Clyde didn't know how to turn off. He was tempted to keep squeezing until the cat stopped yelling and hopefully stopped breathing. He knew what this cat was, and he didn't like him any better than Joe did. It would be so easy to collapse that vulnerable feline throat.

He couldn't do it. He couldn't kill even this lowlife who, if he were set free, would likely go for Clyde's own throat.

Maybe if Clyde had been convinced that the tomcat was totally evil, he would have done the deed. In Clyde's view, Azrael was an irritation, but he didn't see the cat yet as the pure, deep evil that demanded without question to be eradicated from the known world. That, Joe Grey would later inform him, was a serious flaw in Clyde's judgment.

Easing his grip on Azrael's throat but continuing to clutch tightly the nape of the cat's neck and his tail, holding the screaming, flailing animal away from him to avoid ending up in the emergency ward, Clyde stepped down off the desk.

Standing in the middle of the study, he wondered what to do with the beast. If he tossed the cat across the room, it would spin around and leap at him; he could clearly imagine Azrael tearing at his face and at other tender parts. Above Clyde, Joe Grey crouched peering down through his cat door, his white nose and white paws red with blood, his cheek torn in a long, bleeding gash, his yellow eyes blazing with rage.

But now, as well, alight with deep amusement.

Ignoring Joe's silent laughter, Clyde found himself wanting to reach up for the gray tomcat, hold him close, and wash the blood from his face-a gesture impossible at the moment, and one that at any time would meet with indignant resistance.

Joe looked down at Clyde. Clyde looked up at Joe Grey. In Clyde's hands Azrael fought and flipped and twisted so violently that Clyde felt every jolt.

"Help me out, here, Joe. What do I do with the beast?"

Joe stifled a laugh. "The cat carrier? Or the bathtub filled with water? My suggestion would be to squeeze real hard and put an end to him."

"I can't do it."

Joe's yellow eyes burned with a look that was all wild beast, that said kill, that contained no hint of civility.

"It would be like lynching a killer without due process."

"You think the California legal system would give this lowlife due process?"

Clyde shrugged, engendering a moment of miscalculation in which the black tom raked his hind claws down Clyde's shoulder, bringing new blood spurting, one claw dug deep. Joe stopped smiling and leaped from the tower like a swooping eagle, knocking the tomcat from Clyde's grip. The two cats hit the floor locked in screaming battle, then Joe flipped the tom twice, forcing him into the cold fireplace.

Crouched over Azrael among the ashes, Joe blocked his retreat with a degree of viciousness Clyde had never before seen in his feline pal. Azrael, driven by Joe's frenzied attack, backed against the firewall pressing hard into the bricks-as if wishing the wall would give way and let him through into the dark chimney.

Watching the two tomcats, Clyde stood clutching his arm and applying pressure to the wound. The cats communicated now only in silence, their body language primal. Clyde could read Joe's superiority of the moment as Joe goaded and stalked his quarry. The black tom showed only uncertainty in the twitch of his ears and the drop of his whiskers.

Joe moved from the fireplace just enough so Azrael could step out. His meaningful glance toward the glass doors at the south end of the study was more than clear. As Joe herded the flinching black tom toward the roof deck, Clyde stepped to open the door.

Silently Azrael padded past them onto the deck, as docile as any pet kitty. Silently Joe Grey stood in the doorway beside Clyde watching as Azrael crossed the wide deck over the roof of the carport, leaped into the oak tree, and fled down it to the sidewalk. As Azrael disappeared up the street, Joe Grey turned back inside, never looking to see which route the cat would take. Azrael had left the premises cowed and obedient, and that was all he cared about-for the moment. If, before the black tom was driven from the village, he presented more serious problems, Joe would deal with trouble as trouble arose.

3

It took the rest of the waning night for Clyde to clean and doctor Joe's wounds and tend to his own lacerations. He just hoped the black tomcat didn't have rabies or some exotic tropical disease. When he was finished with the disinfectants and salves, he sported seven oversize adhesive bandages on his hands and arms and shoulder. Joe Grey's injuries hardly showed, hidden beneath his short, dense fur. One could see only a few greasy smears where his silver coat parted, plus the bloody bare patch on his nose that was already beginning to scab over.

Joe's vet would have shaved the torn areas and maybe stitched them. Joe didn't want to see Dr. Firetti, preferring to appear in public as undamaged as possible. He was not through with Azrael, and he had no desire to be observed around the village looking like the walking wounded. He hoped his nose would heal fast.

Watching Clyde set up a ladder and climb from the upstairs deck to the roof, Joe wondered what had brought Azrael back to the village. He knew for a fact that Greeley was still in Central America, as Wilma had had a letter just last week from his wife, who owned the Latin American shop in the village.