Blood of the Pride

by Sheryl Nantus

  I put my fingers on my temples and rubbed hard. This was not how I envisioned an evening with a handsome, available man in my bedroom was supposed to go, even in my kinkiest dreams. “I have to get dressed. There’s some place we have to go right now.”

  “Good. I think a drive will do us both good.” He stood up and tucked the fur into the front pocket of his jeans. “I’ll bag it when I get downstairs. I’m sure you have a Ziploc around somewhere.” Before I could respond he had vanished down the stairs into a whole different area of trouble.

  I got to my feet and walked over to the window, feeling the cool night air rush in. Looking outside showed no ladder, just the slim drainpipe running from my roof down to the ground. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that’s how he’d climbed up. In full Change he would have only taken a few seconds to scurry up the thirty feet or so to my bedroom window.

  My eyes caught a few more stray hairs fluttering in the light wind, sticking out of various nooks and crannies on the pipe itself and the bricks. I could have collected them to prove my point that they matched the single strand that I had plucked from the crime scene but I didn’t bother. His scent was the same and that was good enough for me.

  Now I had to deal not only with a curious reporter but also with an angry Board who was going to be thrilled at having a human on the farm.

  A clean T-shirt and jeans replaced the tracksuit and I tossed the still-damp clothing onto the freshly made bed. While I tied up my running shoes, I wondered what sort of reception I was going to receive at the farm. The first time I’d been there it was at the Board’s request. This time I was barging in to look at top-secret records and dragging a tabloid reporter with me. This was not going to go over well but I’d be damned if I would let Bran out of my sight at this point. He already knew much more than he should and I didn’t want the Board deciding to call a hunt on him just because he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And it might just temper Jess’s reaction to have a witness along. Either way he’d be in danger, but at least if I took him along it’d be on my terms and I might be able to keep him alive.

  Bran stood at the bottom of the stairs, tapping his foot. He wasn’t going to leave me alone for a second.

  I made my way down the steps, wincing as a misstep jarred my shoulder and sent shooting pains across my back and down my spine. This was going to be a great drive. I gritted my teeth and kept walking, aware of Bran scrutinizing my every move.

  “So, ready to go? And where are we going?” Bran offered me his arm, beaming as if he were the proverbial cat who swallowed the canary. I took it and wondered why I suddenly felt more avian than feline.

  I picked up the house keys off my desk as we headed for the front door. Jazz meowed, weaving her way between our legs and beaming her approval of my company.

  “You stay here and keep watch.” I wagged a finger at her, ignoring Bran’s wide grin. “In other words, keep out of trouble and don’t claw the couch.” The white cat hopped onto the chair then onto my desk before sprawling across a stack of folders and splaying them over the edge, onto the floor.

  “Oh, she’s a bright one,” Brandon murmured when I sighed.

  “She chose me. Keep that in mind.” I held back from berating my little sister. She was just doing it for attention. Couldn’t blame her, to be fair. In the last few hours I had brought in so many new scents and dangers that if she had disappeared out the window to go back to the streets for a week I wouldn’t have been surprised. I was pleased the fuzzaloid was still here.

  The deadbolt slid home although it wasn’t as reassuring as it had been in the past. I made a mental note to not only get a new lock but also to consider adding a few more, including the windows.

  The front yard was bare except for the dying grass I couldn’t keep alive for love or money. Bran followed me while I made a sharp turn down the small alleyway to what passed for a parking lot for my car.

  Parkdale was full of these small alleys, leftover relics of the days of horse and buggy where you could just squeeze through the lane and pop out someplace else, avoiding the main streets. Some were paved, some covered with cobblestones and all were guaranteed to make you claustrophobic. All were usually inhabited by hookers plying their trade with their latest client or crack-heads getting high. I couldn’t tell you the number of times I stepped over used needles or worse, a stack of used condoms.

  Bran wrinkled his nose as we approached the Jeep. “Sure it’s safe to leave your car out here?”

  I turned the car alarm off and unlocked the doors with the remote. “I pay one of the local homeless fellows to watch it. He’s usually over there but I expect he’s hitting up the dumpsters right now after the bars close down. Lots of good pickings if you’re not fussy.”

  “And you trust him?” He slid into the passenger seat as I fiddled with my seat belt.

  “Why not?” I replied as we inched along the alley. Bran flinched while we skimmed the walls. “I think of it as supporting my local businessman.”

  We stopped at the same rest area I had visited just yesterday, my mind still spinning with the speed of the events of the past twenty-four hours, not to mention a good hit of painkillers.

  Bran jumped out of the car with a wide smile on his face. “Coffee and donuts are on me. Unless you want some sort of healthy breakfast food.”

  I shook my head, turning the engine off and undoing my seat belt. My shoulders were aching and I needed a good hour or three in a hot tub. I glanced over at Bran’s hands and flashed back to that one abbreviated shoulder rub and wondered how a sequel would feel.

  “Good. I really don’t think I’m ready for the fresh fruit and cottage cheese plate.” He got out of the car and opened my door, extending a hand.

  I shrugged it off and gritted my teeth, ordering my aching body to move as normally as possible.

  The Tim Horton’s was filled almost to capacity, the morning commuters rushing to their daily jobs. I envied their enthusiasm and their stamina. I would have gone postal after doing that commute for more than a week. A trio of businessmen swarmed the counter just ahead of us, multitasking by screaming into their Bluetooth headsets and tapping on their Blackberries while ordering some semblance of a breakfast with the largest coffees the franchise sold. Black, of course. Nothing diluted that coffee strength and quality for them.

  Hanover tapped his foot as the three customers began to discuss or rather fight over the actual cost of the coffees and how they would distribute the change fairly with whoever would receive the receipt, probably to put on their business account. Finally they left, allowing us to get to the counter before Bran blew a fuse.

  A few minutes later we sat at one of the few empty tables in the rest stop chewing on yet more donut holes and sipping coffee. Bran frowned as he rotated a chocolate-glazed globe between his fingers.

  “Ever wonder exactly how many calories are in one of these?”

  “I don’t. Too depressing,” I mumbled between a mouthful of coffee and cinnamon. “And don’t tell me you’re watching your figure.”

  He preened himself, sliding one of his arms out of the jacket to flex his biceps in a mock muscleman pose. “What, you think I got this by eating junk food?”

  Taking the bait, I reached across the table to pinch the steel muscle with two fingers. “Ooh. I’m impressed.” Dang it, it felt like iron. I pressed my lips together. “My, you’re just one tough reporter, you are. Too bad you’re wasting time working for that rag.”

  His face fell as he pulled away, tucking his bare arm back into the jacket. “The Inquisitor’s not a rag.”

  “It’s sure not anything I’d take seriously. How did you end up working for them?”

  “You’ve done your research on me. You tell me.” He sipped the coffee with one eye on the businessmen who were now dissecting the bill, item by item.

  “I don’t know. You graduated with good marks and did all the right things, worked up a good portfolio of interviews and non-fiction article
s at small magazines. Award-winning stuff if I remember correctly. Then suddenly you end up on the staff list at the Inquisitor.”

  He dipped a plastic stir stick into his paper cup and began to stir the already murky liquid. “Yep. That was me, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and eager to get out there and win the Governor General’s Literary Award with some hot exposé.” Bran nodded, his full attention now on the coffee. “I thought I was pretty hot shit, to be honest. I was going to save the world with some great writing.”

  The businessmen were now engrossed in their PDAs, each in their own little world tapping out text messages and changing the course of history while sipping good coffee.

  “My parents tweaked some noses, got me a freelance assignment with one of the big Toronto papers.” He took a mouthful of cooling coffee and swished it around his mouth before swallowing. “I decided to go native. I ended up hanging out down in Toronto with a group of homeless kids, getting their stories and tracking their progress for an entire year.”

  I didn’t say anything. Beside us the trio began to pack up their Blackberries and Bluetooth gear. They finished their coffees and left a mess on the table despite being only a few feet from a garbage disposal can.

  “It was a horrible way to live.” He let out a sigh. “Every few weeks I would scamper back to my nice clean condo and get showered and eat a decent meal and then go back to the kids who had probably just washed their hair in the washrooms at the Eaton Centre. They knew I was a reporter but they didn’t care. I was the only one listening to them. Not judging, not offering advice, not telling them what I thought, just listening. No cameras, no laptops, nothing but my journals.”

  I picked up another chocolate donut hole. The three men sauntered out into the parking lot and piled into a huge SUV. They bustled out of the rest stop at high speed, headed toward their next great acquisition.

  “Two of the kids overdosed one night while I was at home, dining on steak. The cops found them in an alleyway with the needles still stuck in their arms. Bad dope. There was a lot of that bad shit on the streets for a few months back then. Lots of deaths.” He put one end of the stir stick in his mouth. The black plastic stick bobbed up and down between his lips. “A girl and a boy. They thought they loved each other. She was going to be an artist, used to draw on the sidewalks with that cheap chalk you can buy at the toy stores, a buck for a bucket. They used to pass up on meals to get her chalk.”

  I nodded again. I knew better than to speak.

  “He played guitar. Not great, but he had some talent. Used to busk on the streets every night to get money for the love of his life to get chalk. And heroin, of course.”

  I stayed silent.

  “The rest of the group broke up after that. Did I mention she was six months pregnant?” Bran bit down on the stir stick. “They disappeared and I went to write my story. Turned it in.”

  “And they didn’t print it.”

  Bran looked at me sideways with a sad smile on his face. “They printed it. Oh, Lord, they printed it. And suddenly every television station, every movie producer was banging on my door to get my side of the story.”

  I almost coughed up one of the chocolate bites. I remembered seeing some news articles about it, some special reports babbling about a journalist who’d gotten the best story about street life in years. It hadn’t registered with me because I’d been elbows-deep in a child custody battle and more worried about the guy fleeing the country than staying current with the news. I’d seen the articles but never realized how important they had been in creating the man sitting across from me.

  “But it wasn’t about the kids, it was all about me and my experiences. They didn’t really want the story about the kids and what put them there, the social and family problems that pushed them onto the streets and finally to the comfort of a dirty needle. About the agencies that were underfunded and understaffed and how the kids fell through the cracks.” Bran shook his head. “It was all about the glamour, all about the reporter and not the story. It became all about me, the rich kid who slept on the streets with the poor kids.” He looked at me. “I walked away from it all, turned down all the movie offers and the requests for more stories, more gossip. I already had enough money, I didn’t need more. I went back to the streets and tried to find the rest of the group, give them what I could to get them out.”

  “And?”

  “I couldn’t find anyone.” He turned and looked out in the parking lot. The cars were growing sparse, the morning rush just beginning to abate. “They were all gone. I don’t know if they went back to their homes to got some help at a rehab clinic or to another city or just died somewhere in a back alley. I don’t know.”

  “I’m sure they’re fine.” The words tumbled out of my mouth in a rush. “They’re tough, they’d have been fine.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” The well-marked stir stick flipped into the empty cup. “But I knew I wasn’t going to be able to work like that anymore, doing the serious stuff, putting my heart out there in public. So I decided to do the silly stories, the fun stories, the ones that wouldn’t hurt anyone and wouldn’t do anything other than supply cotton candy for the mind. Nothing deep, nothing important.”

  “Except now there’s a dead woman.” I picked up the second-to-last cinnamon nugget and stared at it. “And suddenly you’re not dealing with fun silly cases.” My voice took on a more serious tone. “What the hell did you think that picture was?”

  “I thought it was a joke.” Bran’s elbows hit the table as he held his head in his hands. “I mean, it’s a dead woman, sure, but we changed it around enough to get away with it and we sure didn’t think it was real.” His head shot up, one hand landing on my wrist and pinning it to the table. “It’s real, isn’t it? That wasn’t any faked photograph. She was a real cat woman.”

  At first I tried to pull away then decided to leave my hand there. “Now you’re a reporter again. A real one.”

  “Maybe I’ve always been.” He gave a mournful smile. “Either way I’m going to get the whole story.”

  “This time it’s not going to be about you.” I glanced toward the highway. “Time to hit the road.”

  The traffic had let up a little, allowing us to find a sweet spot in the right-hand lane and putter along at just above the speed limit for most of the way up.

  “You’re not going to tell me anything, right?” Bran said to the car window.

  “Client confidentiality,” I mumbled.

  “How about I tell you instead?”

  The tires caught the edge of the shoulder, bumping us along for a few seconds until I yanked the steering wheel to center us in our lane.

  “Ah. Hit home, eh?” Bran leaned back and tucked his hands behind his head. “See, I don’t think that was some furry mask on that woman. And I don’t think that you were attacked a few hours ago by some psycho wearing a cat outfit.” He dug in one pocket of his leather coat and pulled out the small plastic bag filled with fur. “I’m willing to bet that if I had this analyzed and matched up with the hair you found at the crime scene they’d not only be the same but of some weird half-human, half-cat hybrid.” He rubbed his hands over the plastic. “I’m just not sure where you fit into all this.”

  I smiled back, hoping my bluff skill was at full force. “Sorry, not even close. And I’m still sore from that tumble down the stairs, so that’s why we just got a bumpy ride.” My eyes drilled into the concrete ahead of us. “I think you’ve been working way too long for that tabloid rag. Next you’ll be telling me that there’s alien hybrids looking to take over the world and talking via those tin foil hats.” The ache behind my eyes started again.

  “Hey, I’m just connecting the dots.” Bran looked out at the countryside while we spun around the exit ramp.

  “Right. File that right next to your Reptilian Overlords story.” I ignored the scowl and concentrated on the drive. The throbbing began to lessen behind one eye as I willed my blood pressure to drop and began to mentally compose my pitch to t
he Board. I glanced beside me a few minutes later to see Bran stretched out as much as he could in the passenger seat, his long legs awkwardly curled up in the small space while he snored fitfully, or at least pretended he did. I didn’t trust him one whit, which is why when we pulled onto the dirt road I made sure to hit every pothole and bump to make sure he was awake.

  There weren’t many cars in the parking lot at the farm. Bran dusted off his jeans as he got out of the car and shaded his eyes from the bright sun.

  “Nice place.” He beamed at Ruth, who was standing on the porch waiting to receive us. “Hello!”

  “Hi there!” She trotted down the steps and extended her hand, not showing a hint of shock. “I’m Ruth. Always glad to meet a friend of Rebecca’s.”

  “Really?” He wasn’t overly sarcastic, but I already wanted to thump him in the ribs. “Well, she hasn’t said a word about you or this place. So what relationship are you to her?” I could see the mental notebook flip open, blank pages waiting to be filled with personal information.

  “Why, one of her aunts, of course! I’ve just cut up a wonderful apple pie. Let me get you a piece with a good cup of coffee.” The elderly woman slipped away from his questions as easily as if she were trying to dodge the old mangy mutt two farms over while raiding the cornfields. Probably did so quite a few times, when she was in her prime. She took hold of Bran’s arm and led him into the kitchen, babbling something about putting some meat on his bones and how handsome he could be if he just put on a few pounds, ignoring his slight protestations of not wanting to leave me alone.

  I took the stairs to the top floor two at a time, wincing as my legs protested the exercise. Jess and Dennis sat in the Board chairs. The third remained empty.

  “Where’s Davis?” The wheezing noise from my lungs was embarrassing. “I thought I was to present my findings to the entire Board.”

  “What do you have?” Dennis’s voice was low and soft. A small line of sweat formed on his forehead. This didn’t look good.