Relics by Shaun Hutson Page A

thumb slowly along the blade of the dagger, then flipped it into the air, allowing the blade and hilt to spin round before catching it safely. He handed it back to Dexter and headed for the door.
    ‘I’ll see myself out,’ he said, and Dexter heard his footsteps echoing away down the corridor. He held the dagger before him, then turned and looked up at the mottled sky, where silvery clouds formed a transparent shroud over the moon.
    He thought about Ferguson. Arrogant bastard!
    He thought about Laura and Gary in the other room, and the others.
    His followers.
    He smiled crookedly. So what if they only came along for the drugs. They served their purpose. Or at any rate they would. Soon.
    Henry Dexter closed and locked the wall safe. Then, replacing the dagger, he wandered off to join his two young companions in the next room.
    He could already feel the erection throbbing inside his trousers.

 
     
     
     
Fourteen
     
    The cellar was large, running beneath the entire house.
    As Ferguson descended the stone steps to the lower level a musty odour of urine and straw rose to meet him. The room was empty but for what looked like a set of wall bars in one corner and, against the far wall, two steel cages. The stone floor was a strange rust-red colour. Ferguson paused by the two enclosures and smiled.
    Chained inside each one was a dog.
    The first was jet black, its coat thick and lustrous, but unable to disguise its powerful, brutish build. The animal was a pit bull terrier. As Ferguson knelt close to the cage it strained against its chain and began barking at him, but it was the animal in the next cage that now claimed his attention.
    It was the same breed as its neighbour but much larger, more striking and more fearsome in appearance. The dog was an albino. Its thin coat was brilliant white, in stark contrast to the bloodied pink of its piercing eyes. The offspring of Ferguson’s incestuous mating of its sister pup and its own father, the creature was almost insane and that madness showed in the way it launched itself at the man who had come to feed it. But Ferguson merely smiled and looked deep into those watery pink eyes, transfixed by them, still amazed at the ferocity of this particular dog. He went to a small portable fridge in one corner of the room and pulled out two metal trays, both full of raw meat.
    ‘Those bloody dogs eat better than we do.’
    He allowed himself only a perfunctory glance in the direction of the voice. Swaying uncertainly at the top of the stairs was his wife, Carol. At twenty-eight, she was four years younger than her husband, but already her face was heavily fined. What make-up she wore was clumsily applied, particularly to her lips. Heavy-breasted and a little too large around the hips, she wore a skirt that was shiny through too much wear and too tight to fasten without strain at the waist.
    She watched silently as her husband laid the meat trays in front of the cages. The two dogs, aroused by the smell of food, began barking loudly.
    Ferguson took a lump of the dripping raw flesh and tossed it into the albino’s cage. The animal snapped it up and chewed hungrily, some of the dark juice dripping from its jaws.
    Carol began a faltering journey to the cellar floor, putting out a hand to steady herself.
    ‘What do you want?’ Ferguson asked. ‘Run out of booze, have you?’
    She stood quietly for a moment, watching the ravenous beasts as her husband continued to feed them scraps of meat. The fetid stench of excrement and straw that filled the cellar made her cough.
    ‘It stinks down here,’ she mumbled, stepping closer to the cages, her eyes fixed on the dogs.
    ‘Nobody asked you to come down here,’ he hissed. ‘Go on, piss off back to your bottle.’
    ‘You bastard,’ she said and tried to hit him, but Ferguson was too quick for her. He spun round and lashed out, catching her across the face with the back of his hand. The impact of the blow sent her sprawling and, as she scrambled