Catspell

by Colleen Shannon

  Luke let his team slow to a trot, briefly closing his eyes as he tried to concentrate on Arielle, but though the image of her lovely face grew large in his mind, he couldn’t sense where she was or what she observed. When she slept, or had been innocent of his powers, he’d been able to inveigle himself into her thoughts. But now it was as if she were alerted to both his psychic ability, and likely Seth’s, and was resisting them. A development that actually gave him an advantage because Seth’s mental powers had always been greater.

  While Luke knew her newfound strength made his task harder, it also pleased him, for she was becoming a fitting consort of Mihos before his very eyes. Her resistence whetted his appetites and made him more determined to dominate her and bend her to his will. Then, together, they would rule the night and eventually the day when he had her sequestered back on his mother’s lands on the banks of the Nile. And, most importantly, his rival would be dead--after they combined their powers to defeat him…

  But first he had to find her now, when she was alone and unguarded. It was finally time to complete the seduction he’d tried to finish the other night in the woods had it not been for Seth’s infernal interference. He slowed the pace still further, trying to peer inside the carriages, but it seemed hopeless, for he could make out only the barest glimpse of a lady’s wide hat, or a man’s beard. He pulled the carriage to the side, watching the stream of traffic, hoping for something alien to the feline world but very relevant to the hustle and bustle of London’s ton: luck.

  From the opposite direction, Seth also rode slowly up the main post road, eyeing Hansom cabs with the same result. Short of rudely pulling aside each curtain, he didn’t know how to find her. It was certain she was blocking him, for he’d caught the image of a book and then the Bath springs, steaming until he could visualize nothing. through the haze.

  He crossed his arms on the upper curve of his English saddle, contemplating the stream of carriages as he reappraised recent events. He would try some of Miss Shelly Holmes’ logical tactics, which by all accounts seemed to be amazingly successful in deciphering puzzles others shook their heads at.

  One, he knew Arielle was quite upset, both with her father and with him, when he left her after the visit with her old nanny. He’d considered reassuring her that he’d left the old woman a considerable sum to insure better care for Miss Fein, but he needed Arielle to be drawn powerfully to him if she were to channel her powers to help him defeat Luke. On an instinctive level, she had to move as he moved, believe as he believed, and that type of bond came not from trust built through good deeds but from sheer animal attraction. Besides, he feared she’d find him, with her own growing feline prowess, weak. And he could afford no weaknesses, for Luke would exploit them all.

  Two, he also knew Arielle’s primary goal in life was to find out why her mother killed herself and what Isis was trying to communicate to her daughter from the afterlife. So far, fragmented visions were Arielle’s only link to her mother, but Madam Aurora had opened a powerful channel none of the rest of them could match.

  Three, when Arielle was troubled, she always fingered her amulet, or stared at her mother’s picture. And four, the other time to his knowledge Arielle had ventured on an unescorted mission, she had gone to the medium.

  Turning his black Arabian sharply, Seth cantered the animal the opposite direction up the road, toward Madame Aurora’s flat.

  Arielle rapped the door knocker again, harder. This time, shuffling footsteps approached. It opened a crack and a bleary eye peered out. The eye widened and the door opened slightly. “Miss Blaylock…this is a surprise.”

  “I apologize for troubling you so late, but I wonder if I might retain your services tonight? With a sizeable bonus for the unconventional hour.”

  “I seldom do seances in my own domicile,” the woman said dismissively, looking about to shove the door closed in Arielle’s face.

  With a strength and agility that surprised even Arielle, she shoved the portal open, forcing the woman back into her tiny hallway. In the brightly lit vestibule, the medium looked old, most unexotic, and afraid. She wore an old dressing gown, and without the turban, her hair looked thin and streaked with gray. With no paint on her face, she was sallow, her face lined with too many years of unshed tears. Yet this woman of obvious questionable character but powerful psychic ability was Arielle’s only true link with her mother.

  Forcing a calm she did not feel, tamping down on the strange urge to toy with her just so she could enjoy the fear in the woman’s face, Arielle held out her grandmother’s pearl necklace. “More than adequate recompense for your trouble, I believe.”

  “I could promise you nothing. I did my best at the seance, and the vales are much harder to lift when I have no channel to the loved one by sitting in their chair, or using their things….” She trailed off as Arielle removed the amulet from her garter belt and let it dangle, glinting in the light with golden promise.

  “There are powerful opposing forces trying to stop your mother from communicating with you,” the medium insisted, refusing to take the amulet.

  “I know that. The question is–from where are these forces coming?”

  The woman shrugged.

  “Please.” Arielle stuck the pearl necklace and several pound notes in the woman’s pocket. “I will give you more when I get my next allowance.”

  The medium’s resolve was weakening as she fingered the pearls and bills in her pocket. “I can promise you nothing,” she repeated grimly.

  “Of course. But I suspect the psychic force shielding my mother’s influence was sitting at that table with us, forcing her to speak in riddles. And…I was not ready. Now, alone with you, I have a much better chance of hearing her because I am more than ready to listen.”

  The medium looked between the golden amulet and Arielle’s pleading expression.

  “Something is happening to me I do not understand.” Arielle pressed her advantage. “My mother experienced the same things, but my father has deliberately kept all memory of her from me. I…don’t remember anything of the seance.”

  She hesitated, but somehow putting the true reason for this visit into words made her feel better. “And I no longer trust either my father or Seth enough to believe all they tell me. I must see my mother for myself, speak to her myself. I do not care what it costs.”

  When the medium sighed heavily, still hesitating, Arielle managed a last, “You’re my only hope. Please.”

  Searching Arielle’s gaze, the woman nodded begrudgingly. She escorted Arielle into a small adjacent salon that had a round table with chairs around it. She lit a brace of candles and set it in the middle of the table, turning down the gas sconces lining the walls until the room was dim. They both sat at the table. The woman held out her hand for Arielle’s. Arielle clasped it, wondering if her own was as cold and clammy as the medium’s felt. “You’re afraid?”

  “You know nothing of the murders all over the city?”

  “Of course, but how are they related to us?”

  The medium looked incredulous. “One, possibly more, great cats are stalking the streets of London. From events at the seance, I believe that cat wants you for his consort, and the strange dreams you’re having, the feelings you do not comprehend, are preparing you for that transformation. Anyone who gets in that being’s way is in peril. If I help you, I’m in peril. If you have any sense, you will be afraid, too.”

  Arielle sank back against her chair in shock at the plain speaking.

  “Do you still want me to do this? There was evil in that room, as well as good, and they both want you.”

  Arielle nodded. “I know. But I have to try. I cannot fight what I do not understand, nor define evil from good without my mother’s help.”

  The medium sighed reluctant agreement. Grabbing a turban on an adjacent commode, she stuck it on her head, shoving the thin wisps of graying hair under it. She looked silly in the ornate jeweled headpiece combined with a worn old dressing gown, but this t
ime when she took Arielle’s hand, her own did not tremble. Her eyes had begun to sparkle with that anticipation she’d exhibited at the seance. Some of the wrinkles seemed smoothed away as if, with this sense of purpose for which she was born, she underwent the same rejuvenation she sometimes obtained for others.

  Clasping the amulet in her free hand, she began a strange humming, deep in her chest, her eyes closed, expression beatific. The candle flames on the table began swaying with her, side to side in perfect tempo. Arielle blinked at this sure evidence that the medium had a strange energy that interacted with everything around her. It was almost as if the woman could not only feel the heat of the candles even halfway across the large table, she could control it.

  Did she summon the spirit world as easily? Arielle truly remembered little of the seance, so, while her heart pounded a frantic tattoo of hope, she couldn’t repress a bit of skepticism at the same time. What was her money really buying her? Even as she told herself that was her father speaking, the tablecloth began swaying, too, also in tempo to the back and forth movements of the medium’s body.

  The gas sconces joined in the dance. “Isisss…” hissed the woman. The candle flames all leaped in unison, also hissing, making Arielle jump. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but the center jewel in her turban, cheap paste that it was, began to glow an eerie green. A thin beam of light pierced the darkness beyond the candleglow.

  And then, as if called forth, two dim specks of green appeared at the table’s edge. Eyes. Staring at her. Arielle reached out, her heart jumping as she felt as if a tender touch stroked back her hair. She felt the presence before she saw more than the twin specks of glowing green. “Mother.” The specks danced back out of reach.

  The medium suddenly went totally still with a great shudder. The wall sconces shuddered too, and then they were calm and steady, as were the ones on the table.

  Arielle longed to leap up and approach what she now knew was the spirit of her mother, but she felt Madame Aurora’s eerie stillness and stayed put. Whatever this connection was, it was tenuous. She could only draw a deep, shaky breath and force herself to wait.

  As if in reward for her patience, the specks grew larger, brighter, and a shadow began growing on the wall next to Arielle. The shadow of a cat, a shape Arielle had known and loved all her life, for it was the same shape on the amulet clutched tightly in the medium’s hand. The shadow grew deeper, more defined, and slowly began resolving itself into a colored image.

  Bast appeared before Arielle, ancient Egyptian goddess of hearth and home, protectress of women and children. The black cat sat regally erect on her haunches, head high, ears pricked, a glowing carnelian necklace around her neck as she stared at Arielle with wise green eyes. Unable to help herself, Arielle reached out to what she knew was the living embodiment of all that made her mother good and vital.

  “Mother…” Arielle whispered, almost afraid to breathe.

  The brightly colored image faded as Arielle’s hand appeared in its luminous circle of light. Arielle jerked back, and the image grew bright again, so alive it fairly made the air shimmer. Accepting the unspoken boundary her mother set between the living and the dead, Arielle sank back and reached out with her heart instead, ceding all rational thought. For a timeless moment, she let her mother feel all the anguishes and losses of a lonely childhood, the pain of her accident that left her lame, and lastly, her current state of fear and confusion.

  The cat inclined its head. Finally, Arielle heard her mother’s voice, soft and lilting but speaking flawless English. “Daughter…” came the reply. “I have missed you. I am glad you honor your mother with this summons.”

  “I miss you, too. Every day of my life.” Tears misted Arielle’s eyes.

  “I know why you have come, and you are wise. You fear them, do you not?”

  Arielle took a deep, relieved breath that she didn’t have to explain. “Yes. I sense somehow Seth and Luke battle for my very soul. Help me understand. Why do they want me?”

  “You are the daughter of Isis, both in name and in spirit. In our culture, Isis is goddess of wisdom and is the only being with power to resurrect life from death. Did you not study the book I left for you?”

  “My father hid your things from me.”

  Bast gave a bleak little yowl. “Rupert,” mourned a decidedly human voice with the remembrance of a human’s pain. “Could you not have given our daughter this one gift from me?”

  Arielle realized that the book must be with the costume her father had kept from her. “I’ll find it, Mother. And read it, cover to cover. But will it prepare me?”

  “Only you can answer that, my daughter, by the choices you make.” The glowing green eyes grew so intense that Arielle felt them to her spine and beyond. “I see the change upon you, even earlier than it came upon me. But what will you do with that power?”

  Arielle was puzzled at first, but then she followed Bast’s stare to her hands. All ten fingers sprouted cat’s claws, and when she turned her hands over, she saw pads forming on her palms. Arielle clenched her hands so hard that the claws pierced her flesh. The white hot darts of pain made her gasp, and she was so horrified by this thing living within her that she felt a visceral reaction of revulsion. As they both watched, the claws receded and the pads faded, leaving her fully human again.

  “You see,” Bast-Mother said matter-of-factly. “You have the power to control your fate. But do you have the will?”

  “Tell me what to do…” She trailed off, for Bast was shaking her head before Arielle finished.

  “Every ka must be balanced by the choices it makes, Arielle, in this world and the next. I have given you all the tools for guidance that I could. It is up to you to learn to use them.” The image began to fade.

  “No, please, I must know…Why did you kill yourself? Because you were so terribly unhappy with Father?”

  The image stabilized as Bast’s eyes grew bright, as if she suppressed tears. “I could not bear my…becoming. My unhappiness with him made the lure of the night stronger, but it was not because of him.”

  Arielle understood, and a great sense of relief took her that at least her father was not directly responsible for her mother’s suicide. “But cats are not inherently evil. Look at you now…you embody everything that is good.”

  “In this form, perhaps. There are others I took that…” If a cat could shudder, Bast shuddered. “The lure of the hunt is strongest of all in our kind, and the more we practice it, the stronger the urge to kill. Such was my fate, and my mother’s fate, and Cleopatra’s before her. That power has always been the source of the allure of the women in our blood line. It is said only we descend directly from Isis and Osiris, giving us great influence over men. But the price we pay is costly indeed if we cede to the allure of the kill. We lose our humanity and our kas.”

  Arielle was confused. “Allure? Of what?”

  Bast sounded sad. “Immortality. Did you not know that if you embrace the cat’s ways and unite with Mihos you will live forever? But to live the forever half life, you will become a thing of evil.”

  “How can I do such things? I’m just a girl, not even a woman grown.”

  “Yet…”

  The bright image was fading again. “Be stronger than I was. Be guided by good, not evil, and you will live the long, happy life I could not. That is my wish for you. And that will be my rest, when you choose the right path. I have faith in your goodness, my daughter.”

  “No, wait!” Arielle reached out, forgetting the boundary, and the image dissipated into a shadow. Arielle cried, “Tell me, please, which of them is good, and which is evil?”

  “That depends upon you….you…you.”

  Arielle shut her eyes, listening again with her heart, and thought she heard, “Study the Book, my daughter. It can save you. They are good words. Learn these words, for you shall have need of them.”

  One last time, Bast was bright before her again, her cat face intense with passion. She recited, “No e
vil thing of any shape or kind shall spring up against me, and no baleful object, and no harmful thing, and no disastrous thing shall happen unto me. I open the door in heaven. I rule my throne. I open the way for the births which take place on this day. I am the child who traverseth the road of Yesterday. I am To-day for untold nations and peoples. I am she who protecteth you for millions of years. Whether ye be denizens of heaven, or of the earth, or of the South, or of the North, or of the East, or of the West, the fear of me is in your bodies. I am she whose being hath been wrought in his eye. I shall die a peaceful death and walk the afterlife not the half life.” Bast looked at her commandingly. “Say it with me: I am the child who traverseth the road of Yesterday. I shall die a peaceful death and walk the afterlife, not the half life.”

  Haltingly, Arielle said the words, once, twice, with Bast’s urging. And then the lovely cat goddess purred, almost a smile forming upon the slanted face. The green eyes seemed to twinkle their blessing. She faded, into shadow, into a bare outline, and finally into smoke. Then even the smoke had evanesced into nothingness.

  The candles flickered brightly, dancing again like normal flames. Madame Aurora blinked. The eerie glow from her jewel died to the dull glint of paste. With a shuddering breath, she stirred, looking exhausted. She rubbed her eyes once, twice, then focused on Arielle’s tear streaked face. She caught her shoulder. “I did not promise you would like what you heard.”

  She held out the amulet. Arielle took it. They both stared down at the woman’s palm. A perfect imprint of Bast remained, hieroglyphics and all, burned into her flesh by the power of the vision she’d been the willing conduit for.

  “It doesn’t sting,” Madame Aurora said. “It will fade by tomorrow.”

  Arielle insisted on putting some salve on it before she left. Then, drained, she tied the amulet back onto her garter and shrugged into her cloak.

  Madame Aurora was watching her with worry. “You have a carriage?”