by Lee Hayton
When I woke, hours had passed. The moon had entirely disappeared for the night, tucking itself safely away from the intense beams of the day. I got out of bed, my toes curling back from the cold stone of the floor. Where were slippers when I needed them?
I padded across to the window as quickly as possible, curling into a ball as I leaped into a chair. From there, I could see out to the forest on one side, though the vast brick fence obscured my vision closer to.
I’d heard something, but my tired mind wouldn’t tell me what it was. As I stared out into the dark night sky, my head tilted to the side, my ears trying to pick out the noise.
There. A laugh. Asha’s laugh. She was out there in the dark somewhere enjoying herself—a state she wasn’t often in. After a few moments, I could pick out other sounds. Percival and Dory were out there with her, all of them having a good old time.
I slipped out of the front door and wended my way along the overgrown path, squeezing through the gap between the wrought iron gate and the brick wall. Asha’s laugh drifted to me on the evening breeze again. When I looked off to the horizon, I grew concerned. The sun would be on its way shortly, and Percival was still out there.
For all that I’d wished it for myself, I hoped that they hadn’t changed the old vampire into a human. Even if the intention was to then turn him back, it seemed insulting at his age.
When I closed in on the trio, I learned better what an insult was. To my eyes, at least. Dory and Percival were both naked. With the wine wearing off again, they looked to be about the same age.
It was too late to clap a hand over my eyes—that vision would be emblazoned on my memory forever.
As the trio kept giggling, Asha backed up. In her hand was a mobile phone, fixed on the elderly couple, with a cord stretched back to her belly. Onboarding the recording straight to her hard drive. Nice one.
When she was far enough away to make a chase plausible, Asha shouted go, then clicked the button on the phone. She ran after Percival and Dory, weaving as they ran from side to side as though desperately trying to escape. Then Dory’s hands lit up, bright green, and she waved over both her and Percival. The two of them turned into bats that continued upward into the sky.
Asha came to a halt, holding the mobile phone with both hands while it tracked their passage.
“What the…?” she said in an aghast tone, for whomever the final viewer would be.
After a minute, she clicked the button again to stop the recording. After two, she called out, “Times up. Get back down here!”
A second later, the bats reappeared, flapping. The change happened while the pair were still a few yards from the ground. Both landed heavily, Dory now alternating her giggling with a moan as she tried to take a step on an injured ankle. Whatever injuries Percival suffered were soon healing themselves, and he went to Dory’s aid.
“Did you get it?” Dory asked.
“Yep.” Asha patted her chest. “It’s all backed up in here. Hopefully, this time next week, we’ll have a bunch of rumors circulating while you’re nice and safe in our apartment.”
“Eh?” Percival stopped walking forward, leaving Dory to limp on by herself. “What do you mean?”
Asha tilted her head to the side, her smile dropping away. “You’ll stay with us, won’t you?” she asked with a frown. “There’s plenty of room, and it’ll keep you out of the public eye until all the talk of a bounty dies away.”
Percival shook his head, taking a step back and folding his arms across his chest. He raised his chin up, a tilt of defiance. “I’m not going anywhere with you lot. I’m staying in the parsonage where I belong. That’s my home.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Although the coming dawn drove their argument indoors, it didn’t lessen the conflict.
“You can’t stay here. It’s the first place they’re going to look when they come to check out the story.” Asha glared at Percival in case her baby-doll voice didn’t carry the weight of her protest well enough. “I’m not going to the bother of lying to my employer if someone else is just going to pick you off.”
“So, it does come down to the money, does it?” Percival stomped out of the room, returning a few moments later with an old chest in his arms. “I told you that I’d pay whatever they were going to give you. It’ll be worth it just to get your shrill voice out of my house!”
“Come on,” I said, earning a glare from Percival that felt strong enough to melt the eyeballs right out of my head. “You know that she’s right. If you stay here, you might as well walk into the nearest government office with your hands up.”
“I’d rather be caught as a slave than slink around with you lot, always hiding.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” I reached over and poked my finger in his chest. “You think that sheltering in this old dump makes your life uncomfortable? Try living chained with silver to someone who won’t stop telling you his sob story. Or a vampire with bad sinuses. Or to one with a different take on everything you’ve ever thought in your life.”
I turned and walked away from him, fuming. “You don’t have the slightest idea of how bad life can become until you’ve spent a few decades down in the slave pits with no true hope that you’ll ever get out.”
“I’ll manage, thank you, sonny. I think I’ve got a better handle on things at my age than you’ll ever have.”
“But you don’t.” My voice raised up so high that birds took off from the rooftop, squawking. “This isn’t reality.” I swept my arm across the room. “You complain that no one comes to visit you and thank you for your hospitality. Think that’s what the world is like outside? Think again.”
“There’s no need—”
“There is a need,” I cut him off and strode back over to jab my finger into Percival’s face. “You don’t understand what the world’s like now. This place is a bubble caught in a different time. If you don’t come with us now, then you’ll spend the next hundred—or thousand—years wishing you’d just stepped out into the sunlight and died.”
I thought of Jimmy and winced back against the memory. “We’re not leaving you here,” I said with finality. “As soon as you creep back into your coffin, we’ll slam the lid shut and drag you outside.”
“I’m old enough to make my own decisions!”
“Holy hell, both of you shut up!” Dory stepped forward from the corner, a hand pushing her fringe roughly back from her face. “If you’re going to yell at each other all day, then I’d rather return home to my cottage. I might have been trapped in there, but at least it was bloody quiet!”
“Drunk a little bit too much of my wine, have you?” Percival’s face turned into a gigantic sneer.
“If you don’t all start behaving yourselves,” Asha said, pointing her finger at Percival, Dory, and me, “then none of you are coming home with me. You can stay here until they catch you, and good riddance!”
All of the arguing was making me feel sleepy again. “How about we all try to get back to the city? It’s no use arguing down to the wire when half of us might end up back in the government’s hands by the end of day.”
Percival flung up his hands. “Like that’s an inducement to come with you.”
“You’re coming, all right.” I put my foot down, stamping in a literal demonstration of my words. “How much noise you make as you do it, is up to you.”
“So, that’s it? I’m just not allowed to make decisions about my own life now?” Percival’s complaint sounded so much like me that I couldn’t help but laugh.
The ride back to the city was a joy. To me, at least. The ability to sit in the front passenger seat with daylight spilling across me was a revelation. I celebrated by alternating between napping and dozing most of the way.
Percival would be having a shitty time in the suitcase, of that I was sure. However, once we got him in there, taking as much care as possible, he was good about it. No screaming, no yelling. Not even the occasional thump. If it hadn’t been for the weight as we moved it
, I might have started to suspect he’d found a way out.
As we approached the checkpoint, I transformed from my human self into a cat. Curled on the front seat, I could no longer see the guards on sentry duty, rifles at the ready. Just as well. My panic would have done nobody any good.
Dory ducked down in the back seat and held her breath as the guards stopped the car and walked forward to check. I caught mine, too, in sympathy, giving up long before the guard waved Asha onward.
We were only just clear of the edge of the checkpoint guardhouse when Dory breathed in and popped back into visibility. For my part, I justified that my smaller size meant a far more modest lung capacity. Still, I was glad that I didn’t have to put her spell to the test.
From there, it was only another ninety-minute drive before we pulled the old delivery van up in front of our apartment block. Between the exhausted vehicle and the tired building, it was a fight for which looked set to collapse first. As I hauled Percival out of the back seat, thin wisps of steam or smoke started to rise from under the hood.
“Welcome to your new home,” I said as I unzipped the case. The curtains were already drawn tightly shut against the lowering afternoon sun.
Percival emerged looking as rumpled as when he’d stepped in. His glance was inscrutable as he took a long look around at his new surrounds. “Are there only the two bedrooms?”
“I’ll sleep on the couch,” I said, pushing him in the direction of my room. “You can take my old bedroom. Have a poke about in there and get yourself comfortable.”
Dory popped her head into Asha’s room and then screwed up her nose. “If you’ve got the couch and Asha and Percival have the rooms, what exactly am I meant to do for a bed?”
“How about we get settled first, have something to eat, and then sort all that out later?” Asha put her hands on her hips, her lower lip jutting forward. “I’m sure we can scrape by okay for at least a couple of days.”
Dory sniffed and shook her head. Not that her opinion really mattered. It is what it is, as the old phrase said.
A knock came on the door, and the whole room stiffened in response. While we stared at each other, wide-eyed, the tapping began again.
With a quick flap of her hand—hide—Asha crossed over to the door and put her eye up to the peephole. When her shoulders relaxed, I moved in support behind her. It occurred to me as I did so that it just lent weight to my cowardice. Don’t need help? Here I am!
Now that I was aging again, I needed to set aside some serious time to do some deep diving self-examination.
“Hi, Earnest.” Asha unlocked the door and pulled it open a few inches, leaving it on the latch. “I thought our rent was paid up for the next few months.”
“Sure,” he said, pressing against the door and frowning as the chain stopped it opening any further. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
Asha stared at him without speaking until he got her answer.
“Fine, then. I just came up here to say that it’s okay if you have a few mates around to stay overnight or the weekend, right, but you can’t have them living here without it costing extra.”
“I don’t remember anything on our rental agreement mentioning we had a limit on how many could stay in here.”
That set Earnest off in fits of laughter. Asha went to slam the door in his face, but his fingers were holding onto the jamb. No matter what else, he had the power to evict us without cause. Breaking his fingers might result in a momentary pleasure, but it wouldn’t turn out well in the end.
Thank goodness, caution won.
“What’s this about?” Dory asked, walking closer to the door. “Is my staying here causing a problem?”
She’d switched into a robe of Asha’s while we were distracted at the doorway. Something I guessed by the cyborg’s frown wasn’t a situation she welcomed. I didn’t enjoy the sight, either, though that had more to do with the wrinkled skin poking through the slits where the robe didn’t quite meet. The view I’d witnessed earlier flashed up in my mind and a mouthful of bile rushed up the back of my throat.
“Who’s this?” Earnest asked, his face perking up. “I must say, lady, I’m sure that you’ve never caused a problem in your life.”
Dory giggled like a coquette, drawing in her shoulders to amplify her cleavage and holding one hand over her mouth. “It’s nice of you to say so. I can assure you, I won’t impose on my friend’s hospitality for too long. Why there’s hardly enough room for me to even sleep!”
I stared from the wrinkled horror of Dory to Earnest and back again. What on earth was going on?
Asha looked as nonplussed as I felt, stepping back and flicking the chain while Dory pushed past her to stand closest to the door.
“Oh, but you must let me help you out there.” Earnest pushed the door ajar and leaned his shoulder against the side. “I’ve got a few apartments that I keep back from renting. For emergencies.”
Dory hooked one ankle behind the other and swung her shoulders from side to side. “I couldn’t take one of those off your hands, sir. I don’t count as an emergency, I’m sure.”
“If a pretty lady like yourself were to spend a night in discomfort under my roof? That’s what counts as an emergency in my book. You follow me down here for a few seconds, and I’ll get you set up in your own apartment, right as rain.”
“Just a moment,” Dory said, giving him a wink as she closed the door. As soon as it shut, she ran to the bedroom and picked up her discarded dress from the floor. After a moment spent rooting through the pockets, she pulled out a lump of sugar and popped it in her mouth, keeping another in her hand.
As she scurried past me to open the door again, I raised my eyebrows.
“It takes a lot of sugar for a sweet-talking spell,” she said, the angles of the lump clearly visible inside her cheek. “Let’s hope I’ve got enough!”
“Oh, sure,” Percival said as I closed the door. “She gets her own apartment.”
I glanced across at Asha, and we simultaneously began to laugh.
Chapter Twenty-Three
After a few days in my new guise, I discovered that my mind was sharpest in the crepuscular hours, at twilight and just before dawn. The sun was still a wonder to me, but its effects were mostly enjoyed while I was dozing.
It was hard work being a cat, even if I didn’t often take that shape.
When I went out at night, I changed. It seemed safer to take on that appearance while the streets crawled with their usual charming level of low-life scum. Apart from the occasional rock-toss from a street kid gang, the people who frequented the streets at those hours kept pretty much to themselves.
I told myself I was just getting used to the change, that I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. That deceit stopped working for me the night I saw a familiar looking ginger cat.
Sure that Miss Tiddles was almost under my nose, I stuck to the deepest shadows. With my pupils as wide as saucers, I tracked the cats every move.
The slow chase lasted for hours. I could never gain enough ground to cross the gap and make myself known without spooking her into running away. The city was strange to me—I wasn’t used to going out at all—and even weirder in my new, more compact shape.
No use knowing that Henderson Street led onto Philips Avenue when I was wending my way through sewer tunnels that cut past three streets without a single road sign in sight. Whenever the cat popped back up to standard city level, the landmarks had changed so dramatically that the map in my head grew jumbled. By the time I was ready to call it a night, my sense of direction was pretty much dead.
Then I got lucky. A slip had cut-off the end of a pipe, and the cat was forced to turn and backtrack out of the tunnel. There I stood, sitting on my haunches, ready to stage a surprise welcome to my old friend.
The cat hissed when it saw me, arching its back up and puffing out its fur. Claws extended to full length, and its eyes appeared to be made from green fire. The scars on its face told of many a fight
, fought and won.
Instead of a greeting, I turned tail and got the hell out of there, changing into my human shape as soon as I could duck down an alley offering enough shelter to do it. My hands were shaking as I walked around, trying to find a sign that I could place and use it to find a path home.
How could you think that matted old cat was Miss Tiddles? You’re seeing things!
Either that or my heart wanted something so much it was willing to conjure it out of the visions feeding into my head.
After another hour of walking, I stopped and sat on a park bench, exhausted by the length of my detour. I would gladly have lain down and spent the night out in the open, except that some city planning asshole had fashioned the chair with wrought-iron armrests to make lying down an impossibility.
While sitting there waiting, I heard the clink of silver on tarseal and tears began to flow freely down my face. This was the first time I’d heard them while being free of the threat of their call. I no longer had to worry that some guard would stop, puzzled by the paleness of my face.
Not only had the cancer claimed victory over my life again, without Miss Tiddles’ gift of nine lives, I would have surely died that night out in the field. My dream of changing vampires back into humans en masse would never work. So many had turned to spare their lives, we would just sentence them to whatever terrible fate they’d escaped the first time.
Poor Jimmy. If he’d been by my side back at the parsonage, his torn flesh would have dripped his lifeblood out onto the table. I didn’t know what particular ailment Percival had escaped, but he certainly didn’t express any desire to be dumped back into the midst of it again.
Despite myself, I grew curious and followed along in the shadows, guided by the sounds of the clinking metal. When the small chain gang stopped, it was by a building site, the featureless walls stretching high above me.
I don’t understand why they bother. The cities are full of abandoned sites just the same as this one. It would be so much easier just to move back into those instead. Who on earth was it that decided this suburb, this city, this country, and poured all their construction money into that?