electronic oscillation, the creature flung itself off the sofa and at Tommy with such 
force and velocity that it almost seemed to fly.
    He scrambled out of its way, reflexively firing - and wasting - one more round from 
the P7.
    The beast hadn’t been attacking, after all. The lunge had been a feint. It dropped to 
the carpet and streaked past Tommy, across the office, around the corner of the desk, and 
out of sight, moving at least as fast as a rat, although running on its hind feet as if 
it were a man.
    Tommy went after it, hoping to comer it and jam the muzzle of the Heckler & Koch 
against its head and squeeze off one-two-three rounds at zero range, smash its brain if, 
indeed, it had a brain, because maybe that would devastate it as a single bullet in the 
guts had failed to do.
    When Tommy followed the mini-kin around the desk, he discovered it at an electrical 
outlet, looking back and up at him. The creature appeared to be grinning through its mask 
of rags as it jammed the steel spring into the receptacle.
    Power surged through bare steel - cracklesnap - and outside in the fuse box, a 
breaker tripped, and all the lights went out except for a shower of gold and blue sparks 
that cascaded over the mini-kin. Those fireworks lasted only an instant, however, and 
then darkness claimed the room.
    
    THREE
    
    Depleted by distance and filtered by trees, the yellowish glow of the streetlamps 
barely touched the windows. Rain shimmered down the glass, glimmering with a few 
dull-brass reflections, but none of that light penetrated to the room.
    Tommy was frozen by shock, effectively blind, unable to see anything in the room and 
trying not to see the fearsome images that his imagination conjured in his mind.
    The only sounds were the rataplan of rain on the roof and the moaning of wind in the 
eaves.
    Undoubtedly the doll-thing was alive. The electricity hadn’t fazed it any more than 
a.40-caliber bullet in the midsection.
    Tommy clutched the P7 as if it possessed magical power and could protect him from all 
the known and unknown terrors of the universe, whether physical or spiritual. In fact, 
the weapon was useless to him in this saturant darkness. He couldn’t stun the mini-kin 
with a well-placed shot if he couldn’t see it.
    He supposed that by now it had dropped the twisted piece of steel spring and had 
turned away from the electrical outlet. It would be facing him in the gloom. Grinning 
through its mummy rags.
    Maybe he should open fire, squeeze off all nine shots remaining in the magazine, 
aiming for the general area where the creature had been when the lights went out. He was 
almost sure to get lucky with one or two rounds out of nine, for God’s sake, even if he 
wasn’t any Chip Nguyen. With the mini-kin stunned and twitching, Tommy could run into the 
second-floor hallway, slam the door between them, leap down the stairs two at a time, and 
get out of the house.
    He didn’t know what the hell he would do after that, where he would go in this 
rain-swept night, to whom he would turn for help. All he knew was that to have any chance 
of survival whatsoever, he had to escape from this place.
    He was loath to squeeze the trigger and empty the gun.
    If he didn’t stun the mini-kin with a blind shot, he would never get to the door. It 
would catch him, climb his leg and his back with centipede-like quickness, bite the nape 
of his neck, slip around to his throat, and burrow-for-chew-at-tear-out his carotid 
artery while he flailed ineffectively - or it would scramble straight over his head, 
intent upon gouging out his eyes.
    He wasn’t just letting his imagination carry him away this time. He could vividly 
sense the thing’s intentions, as though on some level he was in psychic contact with it.
    If the attack came after the pistol magazine was empty, Tommy would panic, stumble, 
crash into furniture, fall. Once he fell, he would never have a chance to get to his feet 
again.
    Better to conserve ammunition.
    He backed up one step, two, but then he halted, overcome by the awful certainty that 
the little beast was not, after all, in front of him where it had been when the lights 
failed, but behind him. It had circled him as he had dithered; now it was creeping closer.
    Spinning around a hundred and eighty degrees, he thrust the pistol toward the 
suspected threat.
    He was facing into a portion of the room that was even blacker than the end with the 
windows. He might as well have been adrift at the farthest empty edge of the universe to 
which the matter and the energy of creation had not yet expanded.
    He held his breath.
    He listened but could not hear the mini-kin.
    Only the rain.
    The rain.
    The rattling rain.
    What scared him most about the intruder was not its monstrous and alien appearance, 
not its fierce hostility, not its physical spryness or speed, not its rodent-like size 
that triggered primal fears, and not even the fundamental mystery of its very existence. 
What sent chills up the hollow of Tommy’s spine and squeezed more cold sweat from him was 
the new realization that the thing was highly intelligent.
    Initially he had assumed that he was dealing with an animal, an unknown and clever 
beast but a beast none-theless. When it thrust the steel spiral into the electrical 
outlet, however, it revealed a complex and frightening nature. To be able to adapt a 
simple sofa spring into an essential tool, to understand the electrical system of the 
house well enough to disable the office circuit, the beast was not only able to think but 
was possessed of sophis-ticated knowledge that no mere animal could acquire.
    The worst thing Tommy could do was trust to his own animal instincts when his 
adversary was stalking him with the aid of cold reason and logical deliberation. 
Sometimes the deer did escape the rifleman by natural wiles, yes, but far more often than 
not, higher intelligence gave the human hunter an advantage that the deer could never 
hope to overcome.
    So he must carefully think through each move before he made it. Otherwise he was 
doomed.
    He might be doomed anyway.
    This was no longer a rat hunt.
    The mini-kin’s strategic imposition of darkness revealed that this was a contest 
between equals. Or at least Tommy hoped it was a contest between equals, because if they 
weren’t equals, then this was a rat hunt after all, and he was the rat.
    By opting for darkness, had the creature merely been trying to minimize Tommy’s size 
advantage and the threat of the gun - or did it gain an advantage of its own from the 
darkness? Perhaps, like a cat, it could see as well - or better - at night as it could in 
daylight.
    Or maybe, in the manner of a bloodhound, it could track him by his scent.