Chloe wondered if she would ever get to college at this rate. How was she going to make up for the time lost in school? Maybe they had a copy of The Scarlet Letter in the library somewhere. Maybe she could home-school herself. Apparently Kim did.
She started to open a door in a nearby hall, thinking it was the kitchenette, but stopped cold when she realized what she was looking at. The room was large and mostly dark, lit by candles and oil lamps. The floor was made up of thick tiles of rough-hewn sandy stone, and in the back was sort of a stage, set higher than the floor. On this stage were two huge statues like the bookends she had seen in the library. The left one was a human with a lioness’s head. On the right sat a giant black Egyptian stone cat, an earring in her right ear and a smile on her kitty lips. Separating the stage from the rest of the room was what could only be described as a moat, a thin rectangle of water stretching the width of the room.
Kim was kneeling at a little altar in front of those statues, her head down. She wore a rough, off-white robe and was murmuring quietly. Except for the three-dimensional perspective, it could have been a painting off an ancient Egyptian wall.
Chloe tried not to make any noise but accidentally scuffed her sneaker against the lintel. Kim’s black cat ears flicked back in response to the noise, although the rest of her didn’t move.
“Sorry,” Chloe whispered.
Kim seemed to finish whatever she was doing and stood up.
“Didn’t mean to disturb you …”
“No problem,” Kim said easily. She slipped out of the robe and hung it on a rack near the door, where similar robes were hung, in different sizes. Under it she wore her usual outfit: jeans, a sweater, no socks or shoes.
“What’s, uh, what’s all that about?” Chloe asked as casually as she could, jerking her thumb at the two statues, afraid of the answer she would get.
“Those are our gods, Bastet and Sekhmet,” Kim said seriously. “Two forms of the same goddess.”
“Does, uh … everybody … ?” She tried to imagine Alyec kneeling in a white robe to ancient, foreign statues and couldn’t.
“Not to the extent that I do.”
Kim’s ears twitched occasionally toward various noises in different rooms.
Chloe had to ask the question. Well, I am a cat, after all, and curiosity hasn’t killed me yet. …
“Uh—I hope you don’t mind me asking, but Sergei said you thought we all used to, uh, look like you, but how did you—?”
“I follow the path of the ancients,” Kim responded, a little primly.
Chloe just raised her eyebrows and shook her head; it meant nothing to her.
“If you were to keep your claws out and your night vision constant for many years, you would look the same,” the other girl responded, running a hand claw over one of her ears. “It takes a lot of concentration and meditation and prayer.”
“O-kay.” Meditation? Prayer? What have I gotten myself into?
Chloe’s parents had never been particularly devout: her mother had been raised Episcopalian and her father Catholic, but they didn’t take her to church on a regular basis. She had never really had to think about religion before, not apart from occasionally joining Amy for Passover or remembering to watch her mouth around Paul’s more religious Baptist relatives. After her father left, Chloe’s mom tried taking her to Anglican churches like she had gone to with her own more religious mother, but this was halfhearted and only lasted until Chloe put her foot down as a dissenting teenager.
Chloe focused back on the present and Kim, the weird girl before her with the cat aspect. What would her Episcopalian mother think now?
“I don’t know if I can. …”
“Many have the same problem,” Kim said soothingly. “They aren’t accustomed to worshiping any god at all. But they are Mai and always choose a path. The way of Bastet is maternal love, the home, and physical, emotional, and spiritual nourishment.” She pointed to the cat.
“Oh, like Olga?” Chloe remembered Sergei telling her. “How she takes care of everyone?”
Kim nodded. “Sekhmet is the side of war, disease, violence, protection.” She pointed to the enthroned statue.
“Oh.” Chloe thought uncomfortably of Sergei. “She’s, uh … evil?”
“Neither goddess is evil,” Kim said patiently. “They just are. Sekhmet is the goddess of our soldiers, the kizekh, and she defends her young fiercely. Like a mother lion protects her cubs.”
“Who else follows her? Besides Sergei and the ‘kizekh,’ I mean?” Chloe laughed uneasily, thinking of Alyec and unable to imagine him following either.
“That is a question you would do well to consider,” Kim suggested. It would have sounded patronizing from anyone else, but with her alien, emotionless green eyes it sounded wise. “Before you make your own choice.”
“Who do you follow?”
“Both. They are two sides of the same coin, a wholeness that is too often forgotten.”
The lights in the room flickered. For just a moment it was as if a wind blew through the room, a zephyr from another, forgotten land. Chloe and Kim stood a few feet apart, and as their shadows seized and danced in the wavering light, Chloe noticed how frail the girl seemed, almost hollow. An orphan, like me. Without even an adopted family. No wonder she threw herself into these ancient rituals and history—it was a way of connecting herself with something, of fitting in with their people, even if it was only their past.
I may be a newcomer, but she’s always been a loner.
“Huh. Hey, can you show me where the kitchen is? I got a little lost.” Kim nodded and padded silently out before her, beckoning her to follow. “And can I ask you another question?”
“By all means.”
“So there are very few of us left, we have these weird catlike characteristics, the Tenth Blade watches our every move. …”
Kim was nodding. She opened a door and Chloe filed after her into the small, linoleum-white room she had been looking for.
“Why don’t the rich ones just pool resources and buy some frickin’ huge tract of land somewhere—like, a hundred acres or whatever—and have everyone just move there and live happily ever after? Just a little independent Mai survivalist community where everyone can show their claws and hunt and use the litter pan or whatever?”
Kim ignored her last comment. “Some say it is our curse,” she answered simply.
Chloe dumped the garbage in the can that was under the sink, then opened the fridge, looking for dessert. “What?”
“Our curse.” In a fluid movement Kim leapt backward up onto the counter next to the sink and sat with her legs dangling down. It was one of the most human things Chloe had seen her do. “Five thousand years ago or so, the stories say that a Mai girl and human boy fell in love in the Upper Kingdom. Egypt,” she added.
There was a lot of meat and cold cuts in the fridge. Good-looking stuff. Also weird pickled stuff, bottles and bottles of beets.
“Neither side was particularly thrilled with this, but it wasn’t unheard of—back then. One night, when the two lovers were supposed to meet, the girl, Neferet, was ambushed by friends of the boy’s family and killed. Possibly raped and tortured,” she added, almost as an afterthought. “In retaliation the Mai called upon their brethren and set out in the night, every night, until the moon was new again and disappeared from the sky, and killed every human within a twenty-mile radius.”
“Is this all true?”
Kim shrugged. “That is what is written. The gods cursed the Mai. Even Bastet and Sekhmet abandoned their own children. Never again would human and Mai be able to love, and the Mai would be driven from their homeland for thousands of years, unable to settle down until the wrong had been righted.”
“And again I ask: Is this true?”
“It doesn’t matter whether or not a thing is true if it is what people believe,” Kim said philosophically. “Every time we seem to find a new home, something happens. Ugarit. Ur. Ashur. All destroyed, and we were fo
rced to move on. The Diaspora from Abkhazia was only one of the latest examples. This particular pride used to have its headquarters in LA. Then our home was destroyed by the earthquake in ’94. These things keep happening, to the point where even the skeptical become disheartened and draw the conclusion that we really aren’t meant to live anywhere permanently until we have overcome our past.”
Chloe was listening, but she also noticed an area of the fridge that was locked off, like a strongbox. She raised an eyebrow at Kim and pointed at it.
“It’s where the adults keep the alcohol,” she answered in the same even tone in which she had been telling the stories.
“I could really do with a beer,” Chloe said wistfully.
“’Beer’ in ancient Egyptian, as well as the old language of the Mai, is henqet,” Kim said, a little pedantically. Then she raised her hand and extended her index finger, pointing her beautiful, thick black claw. She hopped off the counter and bent over to the fridge, inserting her claw into the lock. After fiddling with it for a moment, there was a click and the door swung open.
Inside were a bunch of frosty bottles of Rolling Rock as well as Michelob Ultras, Sam Adamses, and Anchor Steams.
Chloe took two out, offering one to Kim.
“To the Mai,” she said, clinking a bottle.
“To Bastet and Sekhmet,” Kim answered back, flipping the top off neatly with her thumb claw.
As Chloe downed the wheaty bubbles, she decided that she was beginning to really like this freaky girl.
Nine
On Wednesday, Paul was still thinking about what Amy had told him when he’d pulled his wallet out of his locker, ready to go across the street for comic day. Alyec had also been at his locker, down the hall. Paul had felt a wave of embarrassment, almost afraid that the other guy saw him. He had to do something about this.
As casually as he could, he strolled down the hallway toward the exit, past Alyec.
“Hey, Ruskie, you coming?” he called.
“Yeah, hang on.” Alyec tossed his blond hair out of his face as he pulled his head out of the bottom of his locker, then slammed the door and joined Paul. “Did you read this month’s Wizard? I think I might want to try Heroes of the Adamantine Age.”
Paul shrugged. “I really like the writer, but I can’t stand Dave Applebee’s art. It’s so out of proportion. All muscles and tits and calves, like it’s still 1982 or something.”
“It’s nostalgic!”
They walked out of school in silence. Paul had to walk slowly: Chloe’s boyfriend was favoring one leg. Halfway to the store Alyec gave Paul a sideways look.
“Your girlfriend’s a complete psycho,” he said without malice.
“I know.” Paul sighed, relieved that the other boy had brought it up first. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Not your fault. She has a pretty wild imagination, though.”
He should let it go. He knew it. He should follow his own advice. But he had to ask.
“Is Chloe safe? Just tell me that,” he said quietly.
Alyec rolled his eyes. “You too? Are both of you crazy conspiracy freaks or something?”
Paul stopped and ticked off points with his fingers. “Weird stuff has been going on with Chloe since, you know, you and Chloe. She was fighting for her life on Friday, and suddenly you develop a limp at the same time. And you’re her boyfriend, and you don’t seem that concerned that she’s been ’out sick’ for the last three days. In fact, you don’t seem very worried at all. … Which leads me to believe that you know something about what’s going on and that she’s okay.”
Alyec was quiet a long moment.
“You’re smarter than your girlfriend, too,” he finally said.
“Nah,” Paul said, smiling. “She’s the über-PSAT girl. I just think longer than she does.”
Alyec bit his lip—Like a girl, Paul thought—and tapped his hands against his sides in a near-silent drum solo, apparently weighing something carefully in his mind. Paul followed him, patiently waiting for an answer.
“She’s fine,” Alyec said at last. “She’s safe,” he corrected himself, choosing more precise words, “from the man who was trying to kill her—and everything.”
“That’s all I needed to know,” Paul murmured. “Thank you.”
“Hmmph,” Alyec said, a little annoyed at his admission.
“Could you—could you let her know that we miss her? And worry?”
“I think she knows already, but I’ll get word to her. You’re her best friends.” They stopped in front of the comic shop and he frowned pensively, not really looking in the window but perhaps at something more distant. “I think,” he said slowly, “Wonder Woman’s breasts are pointing different directions in this poster—aren’t they?”
Paul desperately hoped that if Chloe was involved in some international conspiracy/drug/gang/corporate espionage/murder thing, Alyec wasn’t a key agent. He was nice enough, but he sure was lacking in the brains department.
Ten
“Hello?”
“Amy? It’s Chloe.”
She sucked in her breath, waiting for Amy to react. There was half a second when there was no noise from the other end.
“Ohmygod, Chloe! Where the hell are you?”
Chloe relaxed. This was the Amy she knew. Pissed as hell, but the same good ol’ Amy.
Chloe was in her new room, sitting on the floor up against the wall by her bed. She figured if anyone caught her, she could just tell the truth: that she was telling her friends she was okay. No one had told her specifically not to call them. And she could always play the stupidsullen-teenager routine if she had to.
Of course, why was she even worrying about that? These people, her people, had accepted her and protected her and taken her in with love and enthusiasm—no questions asked. She was even wearing really comfy yoga pants and a top that had been quietly provided for her—correct fit and all. Why was she suddenly worried about being caught or doing the wrong thing?
Chloe twisted a piece of her dark hair around her finger. It was time to get it cut soon—another thing she’d neglected with all the excitement of the past few weeks.
Unless it turns out I’m a shorthair. She almost laughed at her own joke.
“I’m with some people—they’re protecting me from the people who want to kill me.” Chloe flinched, realizing how stupid that sounded.
“What the hell are you talking about? I thought it was just that one guy! Was that mugger part of this, too? Are these gangs? Are you in a gang, Chloe?” Before Chloe could answer, Amy started shouting, sounding muffled, as if she was holding the phone to her chest. “It’s Chloe! She says she’s all right. I think she’s been kidnapped. No, I’ll tell her.” The barely audible masculine voice that was answering back was definitely Paul. “Just get on the other phone!” Amy snapped.
He’s over at her place. Late, Chloe realized.
There was a click, then Paul was on.
“Hey, Chloe.” Calm as ever. She wondered, not for the first time, if anything ever ruffled his feathers. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, Paul.”
“Cool. We were worried about you, you know.”
“I know.” She smiled but felt a little strange. She was glad that Paul seemed to accept her safety as a matter of fact and that he believed she could handle anything she was in the middle of right now. It was great that someone had that kind of confidence in her. But didn’t he care enough to crack his cool exterior just a little? Shouldn’t he be just a tiny bit more worried?
“Anyway, I have not been kidnapped. And it’s not gangs—“Chloe thought about the Tenth Blade and the Mai. Strip down their history, legends, occult origins, and secret powers and, well, actually … “Okay, it’s sort of like gangs. But it’s also sort of international and stuff. …”
“I knew it!” Amy cried triumphantly. “Alyec’s a spy for the KGB, isn’t he?”
“Learn a little history, will you?” Chloe snapped, finding herse
lf falling back into her old pattern with Amy instead of this being the I’m-okay-I-love-you call it was supposed to be. She took a deep breath. “This has nothing to do with the Cold War—“But then again, it sort of did. “Okay, there’s these two groups—the Mai, who are basically related to me, and the Order of the Tenth Blade, who are sort of all about killing the Mai because …” Think this one out, Chloe.” Because the Mai were sort of a hunter-warrior caste who were … undeservedly reputed to be bloodthirsty and … animalistic. It’s all really old and stuff. The important thing is that Alyec saved my life when that psycho from the Order tried to kill me.” Well, that wasn’t exactly true—he had held Brian at bay while she fought the Rogue, and the truth was that maybe Brian really had been trying to help her. … But if Alyec hadn’t shown her the things he could do as a cat, she would have been slit from nose to navel immediately by the Rogue’s daggers.
“He didn’t,” Amy said, obviously not wanting to believe her.
“He did,” Chloe repeated firmly. “And more than that. These people are going to help me find out who my biological family is. They might have all been killed—“She thought about Kim with a faint gleam of hope, then wondered how she and Amy would get along. Chloe decided not to mention her potential sister just yet. “But they might still be alive. These people are dedicated to finding all of the people from Abkhazia, a country in the old Soviet Union, who were scattered and bringing them over here safely.”
“Sounds like they brought trouble with them,” Amy observed. Chloe opened her mouth to argue, but in a way, her friend was right.
“Come home,” Paul suggested. It was almost a plea. “As soon as you can. I don’t trust these ’people.’”
“Yeah, they probably tapped your line.”
“Amy, this is a cell phone. …”
“Whatever! Don’t be a douche. When are you coming back?”
It was a strange question. Chloe had only been at Firebird with the Mai for a week or so and it already felt like a completely new life. Sure, she missed her mom and Paul and Amy, but the thought of suddenly waking up tomorrow and going to school again was just weird.
Nine Lives of Chloe King Page 22