by Lee Hayton
They were on foot, so it was easy to slope in behind them without drawing attention to myself. The people we passed were far more interested in their own problems than why a small cat might be tagging along behind the group.
When they reached a small park opposite a row of shops, they stopped and took seats on a park bench that really didn’t fit all of them. If it weren’t for the cover of night, the rebels would have stuck out like sore thumbs.
No blood bank in sight, so my guess was off the table. With no weapons on their persons that I could see, I surmised that the rebels were out on a reconnaissance mission. The row of shops held no interest to me, but I hid underneath a straggly bush in the park and watched with them.
When the vampire crew turned up, I guessed that was the rebels’ target. Pete stiffened, and Julian checked his watch.
In response to their interest, I sat up straighter and paid more attention. Still, I missed the attraction that was holding the group fast.
The vampires were on cleaning and painting duty. One of the shops was empty, and the landlord obviously wanted it full.
Vampires were perfect for the task. With no need to breathe—the action was just reflex—they could stand stronger fumes and cleaning agents than any human could cope with. The guard on duty stood outside, leaning against a lamp post as he filled in the time playing with something embedded in his wrist. The occasional glance to check the vampires were still there and accounted for was the extent of his ‘work.’
I tensed again as Julian got up and sauntered across the street. The guard kept a wary eye on him, too, relaxing when the rebel walked into a takeaway shop, three doors down.
I yawned and turned back to the vampires. Since they were the only people moving about and doing anything, they held a dash more interest. One of them pulled down long strips of wallpaper and shoved it into a plastic bag until it bulged.
Pete starting whispering, the words muzzled by the breeze—the few words I could make out not stringing together in any logical fashion. Time. Plastic. Atrium.
When the black figure strolled into the side of my vision, I stiffened in alarm. The man was mostly changed into a cat, but the hump of his body showed that he hadn’t entirely completed the transformation. I used to do that. Back when I was newly turned.
The moonlight must have triggered the change, and the animal didn’t yet have enough control to direct it where it needed to go. A werecat. Just like me.
I forgot all about the rebels as I crawled a few steps along to keep the feline in view. Between the distance, the dim light, and the animal being caught with features from both human and cat, I didn’t stand a chance of recognizing them. Still...
Hope surged through my body with a jolt like an electric current. As the creature passed out of view, I ran to catch up, then slowed again so I wouldn’t scare him. I wanted to call out the name I hoped would be his, but I also didn’t want to draw attention to myself. Not until I knew for sure. The shadows cloaked me while I trailed him at a distance, the lithe body twisting in and out of the debris piled along the side of the road.
It’s not Norman.
The refrain kept singing in my head as I skulked along. My brain tried to believe it while my heart sang its own tune.
At the corner of the next street, the cat turned and cut across an empty section. The sounds of construction were loud in the night but not too loud. The city ordinances restricted the worst of the offenders to the daylight hours.
Floodlights kept the crew working in a state akin to sunlight, only without the bursting into flame and burning bits. The vampire crew worked in tandem, hoisting large blocks into position before welding them into place.
The cat hung to the shadows still, but they’d run out in a few yards. The floodlights were too intense for even a small animal to hide away from their glare. I edged out further to his side, drawing level. My tail began to swish from side to side, calibrating the angle and trajectory if I needed to jump.
Even though I’d been waiting, the speed of the cat’s attack took me by surprise. I leaped but too late. My paws thumped down onto the ground where he’d been a moment before.
Screams and cries came from the center of activities. Although it only took a second for me to realign my target, when I arrived at the scene, mayhem had broken loose. A vampire lay dying in the center of the concrete, howling in pain and shrinking in size.
The rest of his crew pulled away, the chains slipping off the dying creatures diminishing limbs so that they could run free of the burden of his broken body.
Meanwhile, the guard pulled a weapon from his pocket. A stun gun. The werecat had returned, tugging on the convulsing vampire’s hand while a spray of dead blood arced up, black against the moon.
A sizzle. A blue spark. The odor of burned fur hit me before I could frame the scene in my mind. The guard had attacked the werecat who now danced away, the shock still twisting his body.
I changed and leaped on the guard’s back. He lurched forward, knees locking to take my extra weight. I wrapped my legs around his waist and brought my arm up to secure his throat in a choke hold. As I applied pressure, his movements mimicked a bucking bronco.
But even in my human form, my balance is exquisitely refined.
The guard became every man who’d ever wronged me. The fat man who’d taken my kittens away for slaughter, one by one. The average man who stared at me blankly while he sent me out to work off a debt that should never have been incurred. The dead stare of Norman who had the gall to die when I took a chance to save his life.
Hauling against the man’s neck with all my strength, I felt his struggles lessen as the urge to fight me concentrated on getting my arm away from his seizing throat. As the guard’s fingers dug into my arm, I squeezed tighter.
He slumped, and at the last minute, I jumped away, letting him face-plant on the dirty concrete block. The sound when his mouth and nose smashed down was wet and crunchy—like cornflakes and milk.
I turned to see the werecat half-changed and attempting to drag the dead vampire away. It had changed into a cat as it lay dying and its green eyes stared at me, opaque and unwavering.
Chapter Eight
My cover blown, I raced over to help the cat. With me on one end of the corpse and the strange werecat on the other, we managed to drag the dead body into the shadows of the building site.
It wouldn’t be enough, but it was the most I could do for the time being.
“Where are you from?” I asked as I was getting my breath back. Now that the surprise of the attack was over, I had time to run the scene through in my mind again. The guard had turned, armed and ready against the attack. No shock at what he saw, least till I entered the fray, in any case.
The man had acted like this was something he’d planned for. The same way that children of old had practiced for a school shooting, this guard had learned what to do if a werecat attacked.
And here I’d thought I was special.
The cat shook its head, the glow of lights disappearing into its dark eyes and reflecting like spotlights on the back of its retinas. The dead cat strung between us was leaking body fluids out onto the cracked cement. We couldn’t wait here forever. Soon, the smell would be enough to track us.
If there was an us.
“I can help you move the body, but only if you tell me where we’re going.”
I changed into my fully human form and moved to a crack in the wall to peer back where we’d come from. The vamps who’d taken cover when the fight broke out were milling around the guard’s dead body. One of them, showing more initiative, dug through his pockets and produced a key. After he unlocked the chain, setting each vamp free, half of them continued to stand there.
Everywhere you ran in our brave new world was as bad as the last place. A vampire wasn’t safe anywhere, not even in the protection of the people meant to love and care for him most.
“Hey.” The strange werecat had also moved, hefting the dead cat up into his arms
. He turned, not even bothering to acknowledge my cry, and headed off toward the street.
Rude much?
It didn’t take much of an internal argument before I trailed along behind him. When he turned and glared, I slunk back into the shadows and kept my distance while still keeping him well in sight.
If the werecat had intended to avoid attention, then he was a miserable failure. Even a plastic bag wrapped around the dead cat’s body would have been an improvement. Although there weren’t many people out on the streets this late at night, the ones we did pass all showered the werecat with curious looks.
“If you think that I’m going to lead you to my home, then you’re sorely mistaken,” the cat called out after a few more minutes had passed.
Well, at least he was bothering to speak to me. That must count as an improvement.
“I’m happy to follow you anywhere you like,” I called back. “All night, all day. I’ve got nothing better to do.”
At that, he turned. The leaking fluids from the dead cat were dribbling down the front of his shirt, pooling at the waistband of his jeans. He wasn’t much more than a kid, maybe twenty-five but more probably a lower number.
“Then perhaps I’ll just stop here and wait until you get bored.”
“I don’t get bored.” I sat down, cross-legged on the cold sidewalk and met his gaze with equanimity. “So good luck with that.”
“What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you around before.”
I shrugged. “I just got into town. You’re the first werecat I’ve seen in a long time.” Or, since the cat who first turned me, to be more precise.
“I can’t let you follow me home,” the werecat called out. “If I did that, my boss would kill me.”
“I won’t tell, if you don’t.”
The man’s mouth split open in a broad growl. “She’ll know,” he said in a despondent whisper.
“I’m looking for my son,” I said in a hesitant voice. If this had been someone I knew, that information would have stayed close to my chest, but there was an absolute freedom in us being strangers. If this cat walked away and I never saw him again, then it wouldn’t matter what I told him.
“He one of us?”
“Yeah.”
The werecat turned and looked behind him. I recognized the building coming up on our left. I could have sworn this was the area close to where Norman and Asha used to live. I allowed a brief memory to play out, pumping my heart full of the ache of nostalgia, before I cut it off.
“Tell me his name. Perhaps I know him.”
“Fluffy Wallace.”
The resulting guffaw of laughter that followed my admission made the hackles on the back of my neck rise.
“Well, what are you called, then?” I called back to him, the events of the last few days catching up to me and turning my mood sour.
“I’m Jeffrey,” the werecat said. “And I can say for sure that I’ve never heard of your son.”
He shook his head in amusement as he turned and started up the street again. I sat where I was for a minute until he looked back over his shoulder. “Well?” he asked. “You coming or what?”
I jumped up and fell into step beside him.
Within a few minutes more, I was sure that the place he was leading me to was in Norman’s old neighborhood. I recognized the shopfronts, both those still in operation and the ones hiding squatters behind their bright pink neon facades.
“Do you know Asha?” I asked as we turned onto the street where the old apartment had been located.
For the first time, I surprised Jeffrey. His shoulder jerked, and he almost lost grip on the dead cat. “Yeah, I know her. You?”
“I stayed with her a while back.” I drew in a deep breath for courage. “She used to have a vampire staying with her.”
“Sure,” Jeffrey said, looking to see that the road was clear before crossing over. A deal was going down on the corner, but from this distance, I couldn’t be sure if it was drugs, food, sex, or territory being discussed.
“Percival, his name is,” Jeffrey continued, and my hopes sank into the soles of my feet. “He’s an old one, keeps to himself mostly.”
“No, I meant someone else.”
Jeffrey turned and examined my face for a second, before looking back where he was going. “Well, you’ll see soon enough.”
Déjà vu caught me in its web as we approached the front of the decrepit apartment building that I’d once called home. A familiar figure stood in the doorway, neon lights reflecting off flashes of her titanium frame. A wave of memories crashed up through my body, swelling my throat and tightening my chest.
“Well, fancy seeing you here,” she called out, stepping aside to let Jeffrey carry his burden inside. “I wasn’t sure you were ever going to come back.”
“I didn’t know that I’d be welcome.”
The last time that I’d spoken to Asha, we’d flung words at each other like they were weapons. In a physical fight, there was no way I could best her, so I’d had to dig deep and fling the most hurtful phrases to land, wound, and bleed.
“It’s your home too,” she said, stepping aside so that I could pass by and enter the corridor. “Until it falls down, that is. An event that’s more likely with each passing day.”
A figure crept into the hallway, a familiar face peering at me. I shook my head. I’d seen this visage before, and it was usually no trouble to make it go away. One shake of the head, one blink and it would go.
Not this time.
The figure craned its neck forward, peering at me as intently as I stared back. My throat turned into a whistle slide, my heart started to pound in an irregular rhythm.
“Norman?”
The boy ran toward me, familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. The pulse of blood underneath his skin flushed it with the color that had been lacking. His eyes no longer glowed red. The black shadows that had palled the contours of his face were missing.
Norman had turned into a real boy.
When he reached me, his arms circled around my waist and pulled me into a hug that cracked the knobs of my spine. With one last effort, I closed my eyes and willed the hallucination to disappear. A vision that was squeezing me so tightly I couldn’t draw breath.
One last blink.
The vision stayed. Norman was alive.
Chapter Nine
The apartment was overrun with cats.
From every corner of the city, they’d been killed and rescued from the vampire bonds that had once kept them enslaved. Of course, they were still in danger. A roving pack of werecats would gain an eradication order as soon as the empire became aware of them. Judging from the awkwardness of the creature I’d met earlier that night, it was a miracle that they’d stayed under cover so far.
“How many have you turned?” I asked Norman as we sat in the old apartment. Not that it looked anything the same. No place would when it was crawling with felines. We cats may be small, but we make ourselves known. Especially when there are so many of us.
“Each night of the full moon, we try to get at least one or two new members on board,” Norman explained. He couldn’t keep his hands off me, but not in a sexual way. His fingers would twist into my fur, stroke along my back, tickle under my chin. Even though he was the same type of morphing creature now that I was, he still seemed endlessly fascinated with me.
I hoped he didn’t still think of me as a pet.
“And how many times have you done that?” I tried to calculate it myself, but my brain was done in for the evening. Too much excitement had tripped the overload switch. The questions were more, so I could listen to the sound of Norman’s voice than to catch up with what had been happening since I’d been gone.
“We’ve gone through two cycles,” Norman said, “I didn’t know how it worked, so I tried to only do it when the moon was visibly large in the sky. So far, we haven’t lost any, but I didn’t want to push my luck.”
Four days, with double the werecats each day, ov
er two occasions. The smell of smoke might have been drifting in from the city outside, or it might have been the fizzle of my overtired brain.
“By the end of the current cycle, we should be well into the hundreds.”
Shit. No wonder the place smelled like a zoo.
“Is everyone in cat form all the time?” I asked as felines wandered in and out of the room at random.
“For the most part,” Norman said. “We’re rapidly running out of space.”
“I’m surprised that Earnest lets you keep this lot in here at all,” I said, mentioning the landlord. “Or has he moved on and given up on collecting rent for this fleapit?”
“Hey, that’s my pride and joy you’re talking about there,” Earnest said, wandering into the room. He pulled open the fridge, examined the empty shelves, then sauntered out of the door again while scratching his behind.
“Dory is keeping him well-occupied,” Asha said with a snort. “Each time I think the spell must be wearing off, she either comes up with a new one or by now he’s genuinely besotted.”
“I heard that Percival’s still with you too,” I said, recounting the one fact that Jeffrey had told me. “You’ll soon need a bigger building. Don’t the other tenants complain?”
“They’ve moved out,” Norman said, accompanied by a shrug. “For some reason, everyone got the idea that it was time to relocate.”
Asha gave a laugh and shook her head. “Dory’s spells are strange and useless for the most part, but when she hits on a winning formula, they’re a doozy.”
“You can sleep in my bedroom,” Norman offered. “I’ve still got your cat bed in there, somewhere.”
I nodded but felt strange accepting. Although he was still a teenager, being a boy rather than a vampire made the occupancy feel different. Or was that just my natural reluctance to let everything be okay talking?
“I’m turning in,” Asha said, getting to her feet. She ruffled Norman’s hair, a gesture that earned her a growl from low in his throat.