"Oh, yes," Loren said, grinning and showing his yellow teeth. "Six. One, two, three, four, five, six. Would you like to see their graves? I've kept the graves pretty. I know where they are because I dug them."
Loren remained in a half crouch, the fingers of one hand holding the pistol loosely, the other keeping up its monotonous stroking of the animal. His eyes seemed to become vacant for a moment, as though lost in the memory of the digging of six graves. Then they narrowed. "Where have you been?"
Kirk tried to match his answer to the wants of the man. "I came as soon as I could."
"You did?"
"Yes," Kirk said. "I did."
Loren's right hand stopped its stroking and his fingers tightened about the thin long neck of the animal. "Eddie?" he said.
Kirk saw the animal's left claw whipping out. He ducked suddenly, but the claw ripped along his left arm. He tried to roll sideways, and then he lay, half sprawled, looking at the blood welling up from this new set of ripped ridges in his arm. He shifted his eyes to look at the animal, and he was quite certain that he could detect a small mouth fitting around the under side of the funnel-shaped head. It was only a line, but Kirk thought that there was a grinning look to it.
"You didn't come as soon as you could," Loren said, his voice an angry trembling sound.
"I did, Harry," Kirk said, still remaining in his half sprawl. "I really did."
Loren replaced his hand on the neck of the animal, squeezing.