by Anna Leonard
But they did. They were the keepers of the secret wisdom, the knowing of old. The ancient secrets he needed. Their blood would bring Her, and She would bring the way home.
Fantasy and myth, but there was truth at the bottom of it, he knew. “They don’t know, but you do, yes, you do. You remembered, you did.”
Three years before. Something came to him in the night, a sudden click in the brain that set him on this path. The first time he had faltered. But now, now all he needed was to find the right key, the right combination and he would be free of this wrong existence. No longer powerless and drab but allowed to claim what was his, what had always been meant to be his.
Whatever that was.
The doubt touched his mind briefly, and he shook it off. It had been within grasp once, before She failed him, denied him. Ruined it all. Not this time. The beasts were the way. The beasts knew the answer. The thought soothed him, calmed him enough that he could continue.
He finished his chores and made sure all the cages were locked, then closed the basement’s door behind him, letting the silence enrobe him. Silence was so much better. He hated the sound the beasts made; it caused his skin to crawl. He would have torn their tongues out if something hadn’t warned him against it.
Use them, yes. They were part of the key. But do not harm them. Never harm them. That would undo it all.
He climbed the stairs, the solid tap of his boots against the concrete forcing him to focus, to put the basement into a compartment and close the door, to replace the mask that he wore, so others would not know him until it was time.
A passing memory—red slipped against black cloth, harsh panting and white claws—confused him for a moment, but he shook it off. The past was failure. The future was still to come. The future was in his control.
He opened the door, and felt dawn’s cool air on his face. It was moist with rain-to-come, and he lifted his face to better enjoy it.
“Hey. You!”
A guy with an apron, a broom in hand, staring at him. Why? His mask. He needed to replace his mask, pretend to be one of them again. But the panic hit him, and he couldn’t remember how.
“You sick or something? Get out of there!”
The exit from the basement led to an alley next to the man’s store. The ground was disgusting, filthy. Cold. The damp suddenly seeped into his bones, and he shivered. He was always cold.
Not daring to say anything to the man, he brushed past him, hunched into his jacket, walking away. His mask came back to him too late, and he lifted his face to stare back at the man, willing him to remember this face, not the other.
Someday soon he would find his way home. Then he could show his true face, his gods-given face, and they would know what he was, and the power he wielded. Then they would treat him with respect. With fear.
Chapter 5
Lily shoved her face into the pillow, her shoulders hunching up to her ears, as though trying to make herself into a small, unattractive target. The sheets tangled around her while she dreamed, creating an almost mummy-like wrapping around her. Darkness. Pain. Loss. A sense of failure as endless as the night sky curving over her. She wept, despair settling over her, seeping into her bones, her very being.
Then, out of the darkness, a faint sound. A hint. A suggestion. For the first time, a lifeline.
Mrrauu?
Her head lifted, deep in the dream. This was different. This was new. Yes, yes. I hear you.
Mrrauu! Like a beacon easing her out of despair, bringing her away from the pitiless sky. Mrrauu! Commanding, imperious, the call demanded attention be paid, and paid now!
Her shoulders relaxed, her entire body softening, easing into the mattress as the dream took her over, bringing her out of nightmare into something more pleasant….
A shadow danced impatiently ahead of her, green eyes glinting in the lamplight. Her laughter spilled out over the doorsill, the sound bright as moonlight over the still-warm sand. “I am yours to command, my beautiful. Only allow me to dress myself first, before you drag me into the night.”
Mrrauu! Now! The moon is dark and it is time to dance, silly two-legged one! But she laughed as well, a rumbling purr and a small pink tongue.
A moment of peace, a moment only, and then a shift as often happens in dreams: the moonlight turned cold, the voices harsh and cruel. Lily moaned in her sleep, pulling her legs up to her chest as though to protect herself. Familiar territory, this: an old familiar dream, but not a friend, no.
The warm sands underfoot became unyielding: cold, root-strewn and treacherous. Soft linen became coarse cotton, scraping against wind-chafed and broken skin. The weight of metal draped around her wrists and waist, and only the comfort of a small soft body was the same.
Then the cat’s cry elongated, filled with fear and outrage as that comfort was pulled from her grasp, and hard hands grabbed and pulled, shoving her forward into darkness. The flare of fire in front of them brought no comfort, but sparked a scream from feline and human throat at the same time, as though they were one and the same….
Lily sat upright, her throat scraped raw as though she had strep, her eyes streaming and her sinuses dry as though all the moisture had been sucked out of her body. The horrific images wrapped around her, making her shake and shiver despite the warmth of the room.
“My lady! My lady, forgive me!”
The sounds that came from her mouth were gibberish, and yet Lily felt that they were actual words, if she were only able to understand them. And with the sounds, the memories faded, not disappearing, but retreating enough that she was able to remember who she was, where she was. That it was not her flesh aflame, not her neck snapped, not her skin flayed from her body while she yet lived….
Lily shoved the sweat-soaked sheets off her body and hugged her pillow to her, waiting while her heartbeat slowed to a more normal pattern. The usual cool comfort of her bedroom seemed unfamiliar, alien somehow, and that was almost more disturbing than the nightmare itself.
Lily had suffered from nightmares since puberty, dreams that left her sweat covered and crying. Even on nights when she did not dream, she slept fitfully, aware that one could strike at any time. Sleeping aids only made it worse, forcing her to sleep without the ability to wake up when a nightmare came.
In self-defense, she had studied not only the science of dreams but the subject of her own, as much as she could remember. Cats crying in fear, nighttime assaults, and flashes of rage and death. Over the years, she had come up with a theory: that she was dreaming about the witch trials, here in New England, and similar events in Scotland, England, France and Spain. Anywhere the fear of women and cats had grown into such murderous depths. She had read about them, at some point, maybe when she was in school. It was a reasonable theory, and all tied into her problem with cats somehow, or grew out of it, or something.
Knowing that should have made her able to get rid of the nightmares, or make them easier to deal with.
It didn’t.
Lily let the sweat dry on her skin, and let the details slide ever further from her grasp. The truth was that she didn’t want to remember. It was awful, whatever it was. But there had been something new in this dream, something…she didn’t remember details, but there was a vague sense of it being…nice.
“Not fair,” she told the ceiling. “I’d like to remember the good things, at least.”
Her therapist had told her once that it was the sign of an organized mind, to be able to separate nighttime fancies from waking reality. If that was true, Lily wasn’t sure how disorganized people managed it, dragging the memory of such things with them throughout the day.
Thankfully, she seemed to have been born with an organized mind. True to form, by the time she was in the shower, rinsing out her hair, the images had faded almost entirely, and when she walked into the bank, greeting the other tellers and setting up her cash drawer, the only thing left was exhaustion, carefully hidden under coffee and a decent breakfast.
Her job was rout
ine but not unpleasant, and she enjoyed the small interactions with the bank’s customers. The day passed normally: the branch was the only one downtown, so they got a lot of foot traffic, especially between eleven and two when most people came in during their lunch break.
A tall, angular, gray-haired woman with a face cut from granite came up to Lily’s counter. “Hello, Mrs. J.”
The quintessential little-old-lady librarian, Mrs. Jablonsky came in on the second and sixteenth of each month to deposit her paycheck. According to town gossip, she had been a volunteer when the library first opened its doors in 1928, and had never left the job. When she died, they said, she would still be behind the desk, sorting returns and shushing kids who giggled too loudly in the computer room.
Kids were terrified of her. Lily thought she was fabulous.
“Hello, my dear. I can’t believe that you’re still here.”
It was their own private joke. Mrs. J. knew what they said about her, and had more than once scolded Lily about following in her path, staying too long doing one thing over and over again, especially once they made her head teller.
“Don’t you dare talk Lily into leaving!” Leanna cried from the next window. Lea was new, still in training, and still nervous enough about making a mistake that she wanted Lily to double-check every transaction she made.
“That’s not going to happen,” Mark said from the third open window. “She actually secretly runs the bank, it’s just nobody’s told the branch manager yet.”
Lily shook her head, and finished Mrs. J.’s transaction, wishing her a nice day and going on to the person next in line. Mark was right, partially: she wasn’t going anywhere. There was comfort in knowing what she would be doing each shift, every shift, and a comfort too in the combination of chatter and distance that her teller’s window gave her. But she did wonder, occasionally, if there wasn’t anything else besides working and volunteering at the shelter and having the occasional date that never seemed to go anywhere.
When things slowed down, she made sure that everyone else was set, then closed out her drawer and went into the backroom. She had intended to work on the shift schedule for the next week, but the moment she sat down her mind went blank, and she couldn’t focus on the schedule sheet in front of her.
It had been twenty-four days since Aggie came and got her, brought her to look at an empty room of cages, and the bodies of murdered cats. Two days since the kittens had been killed, and if that bastard had done it before, he would do it again. Agent Patrick thought so, too. Somewhere out there, someone was raising cats for the sole purpose of killing them. Young male spotted cats. Three different instances, seven cats each. Or were there? Seven each time? Lily frowned, her pencil tapping the schedule form. It was an important point, but she didn’t know why. She hadn’t asked Agent Patrick that, during their dinner. Once he had finished asking her his questions, the evening had veered away from the case, covering more casual topics, as though…
As though they had been on a date. Which it hadn’t been. Because she wasn’t interested in dating an FBI agent. Especially an FBI agent who was only in town for a short time. Right? Right, Lily?
Worrying about the fact that she had no interest in dating a guy who hadn’t asked her out was a better place to be than fretting over a cat killer. But not by much. She made an incoherent growl of frustration, and squeezed her eyes closed, trying to banish both thoughts and settle her brain on what she was supposed to be doing.
A penny dropped in front of her, ringing on the polished wooden desk and rolling onto the paper she was supposed to be filling out.
“I’d offer more for them, but I can’t imagine you’ve got anything really tempting going on in there, the exciting life you lead.”
“Very funny.” She handed the penny to Mark, who added it back to his cash box.
“Actually, you looked way too intense for someone just trying to figure out who has to take the Saturday-morning shift. Come on, spill.”
Mark was twenty-two, hyper, and about as able to keep a secret as a Hollywood talk-show host when the cameras were rolling. Even if she had been looking for a confessor, he would not have been it.
“Not a chance,” she told him sweetly.
He pouted. “Bah, you’re no fun.”
“I’m your supervisor. I’m not supposed to be fun. Go away.”
He laughed, and obeyed. Lily watched him go into the break room, and then heard the sounds of the mini-fridge opening and shutting, then the clatter of Tupperware and the ding of the microwave turning on. The smell of spicy rice and meat drifted back to her, and her stomach rumbled; she had leftover veal piccata for her own lunch, but she hadn’t been hungry until that moment.
Shaking her head at how fickle the body was, she turned her attention back to the schedule sheet. Mark wanted off on Friday. Carole was on vacation. She had promised to take the Saturday-morning shift at the shelter; they were having another adoption drive, and it could get a little crazy if they had a good turnout…Trying to make everyone happy was impossible, but there was always a way to make everyone feel as if they had been listened to, even if they didn’t get exactly what they wanted. You just had to work a little at it.
With a little willpower and a lot of determined rein-pulling when her mind wandered, the rest of the shift went easily enough. Once the week’s schedule was finalized, Lea’s cash-out supervised and everyone’s numbers tallied out, it was time to go home. Suddenly, her exhaustion came back with a vengeance.
Lily said good-night to her coworkers and walked into the dusk to her car, humming a tune that had been playing over the radio in the backroom, when a cat ran across her path and went under the cars parked nearest to her.
A shudder ran down her spine, involuntarily. She wasn’t superstitious, and she wasn’t afraid, but something about the sight of the cat, its tail held high, triggered an old reflex. And if it was a spotted tabby…The shudder was back, brought on this time by the thought of what a stray cat might face if the cat killer found him.
Better check, she thought. You really won’t sleep tonight if you think you left a cat out here at risk.
“Hey there.” She bent down to see if she could get a better look at the cat; see if it was a stray, or someone’s pet gone for an evening walk. “Hey, sweetie, come on out here.”
The cat mrrowed once, a narrow, plaintive sound, and a strange sense of disorientation hit Lily. The call was familiar, as familiar as her own breathing, and yet somehow the sound itself sounded…wrong.
Do cats have accents? she wondered, a little giddy. Is this little one a transplant from somewhere else?
As soon as she thought that, the familiar parking lot fading out, replaced by something not familiar at all, and yet clear in every single detail….
The ceiling was far overhead, the walls open to the sun and wind, both soft today, thanks be to Ra. This would be difficult enough, without having to battle the elements as well as her heart.
“Bast’s daughter.” The shadow moved, scattering attendants like petals in his wake. “What news do you bring us, Priestess?”
The voice was deep and commanding, accustomed to both obedience and answers. She made a graceful obeisance as she drew forward. Her priestess rank might give her leeway within the palace’s walls, but respect must always be given where due, and antagonizing this man would not serve her purpose.
“You must do this for me,” her lover had said as they lay together on linen sheets, watching dawn slip over the hills before them. “This one thing, and we shall reap the benefits forever. Together.”
A ping alerted Lily to the fact that she needed to get gas. She made note of it as she backed her little Toyota out of her parking space, and then stopped the car, suddenly confused.
Hadn’t she just been looking for a stray? She was certain she had bent to look for the cat…but no, she was in her car, everything in its place, and there was no cat yowling a protest, locked in the carrier she always had in her trunk, in case she n
eeded to bring someone to the shelter. The carrier that was still in her trunk, untouched.
Lily looked at the clock display on her dashboard: 6:42.
It had been six-thirty when she left the bank. She had lost twelve minutes.
“You need a vacation, Lily Malkin,” she told herself. “Or more fresh air, if you’re going to start losing time like that.” She rested her head against the steering wheel, hitting it once, lightly, and then put the car in motion again. It was just exhaustion, probably, and the fact that her brain was still, inevitably, worrying about the scene she had been exposed to the day before. She had seen the cat, and…
And what? What had happened to the cat?
She waited at a red light and tried to remember. There was nothing, a total blank spot, and then…“Come on, kitten. Come on. I don’t have any sardines with me this time, I’m sorry. But I’ll get you some later. You know that you can trust me….”
You can trust me.
Then the noise came. Not a noise, a sound. A cat’s meow, echoing from under the car she was crouched next to. An ordinary meow, not frightened or scared or particularly hungry. Almost like a welcome-home meow, a familiar greeting. And a request. From a cat she had never seen before.
But there the memory ended, leaving her with a sense of frustration and concern and a growing need to do something.
First the cat in the shower, and now this. Either she was heading for a nervous breakdown, complete with aural and visual hallucinations, or…
She couldn’t think of an “or” that made any sense.
The light changed, and the car behind her honked impatiently. “All right, all right, I’m going,” she told the guy, resisting the urge to flip him off. “And I’ll call Aggie when I get home, if he hasn’t left a message. Obviously, I’m not going to be able to relax until that guy’s caught.”