Cat's Claw

by Amber Benson

  Help me, a voice said urgently inside my head. It was the same voice I’d heard when I was bodiless. I hadn’t paid much attention to whom the voice might belong to before, but now I listened, waiting for the tell that would confirm my suspicions.

  Please, help me, Callie.

  I knew that voice.

  “Daniel,” I breathed, the word barely a whisper as it slipped from my mouth, but it was enough to snap the connection. Almost instantaneously I found myself back in possession of my body again. I let out a relieved breath, my body shaking as I realized how close I had come to losing control of my soul.

  It didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out was going on. Somehow, Daniel had separated his soul from his body, leaving the corporeal side of him free to slip into the Hall of Death and steal his own Death Record. I could only assume that the weird soul blending we had engaged in months earlier was the reason why our souls were able to call each other out and communicate so intimately.

  It was hard to reconcile this Shade with the Daniel I knew. Still, something within my heart recognized this thing as Daniel, so I was just going to have to listen to what the little voice inside my brain told me to do and trust that everything would work out all right.

  Jarvis heard my exhalation and looked up quizzically. I shook my head, hoping that he would understand my wordless plea for silence. He started to open his mouth, then quickly shut it again, nodding. Without another word, he reached out and took my hand, giving it a firm squeeze.

  I turned my attention back to the fight already in progress, an idea forming in my head as I watched the knights inch closer to their prey. I didn’t know why Daniel was trying to steal his own file, but he had asked for my help—

  Suddenly, all the collected feelings of anger and hurt bubbled to the surface of my heart, and I was so full of rage that I wanted to tell Suri exactly who the Shade was and what he’d been doing upstairs with the Death Records. I could feel the nasty words just itching to leave my mouth, but I swallowed them back as I realized something important: No matter how angry I was with the stupid former Devil’s protégé, no matter how much I detested him right at that moment for making me think he was dead . . . in the end, all I really wanted to do was run over and kiss the crap out of him.

  The realization that I was in love with Daniel hit me like a ton of bricks. I was so not prepared to find my heart beating in double time at the mere thought of putting my lips on his. It was ridiculous, a totally crazy proposition—and it didn’t matter one whit that my heart felt one way while my brain was holding down the opposite opinion. I was just giddy to be within a hundred feet of him—soul or body, either one was fine by me!—saccharine as that was.

  I took a deep breath, strangely relaxed now that I had finally stopped denying the obvious, and began to assess the situation. Daniel’s soul still stood on the table, his way blocked by the armored knights. Suri, her body a tightly coiled mass of muscle and sinew, crouched by the table’s edge like a snake readying itself to pounce. As I watched her, she shoved a hank of thick black hair behind her ear, her face a mask. I had no idea what she planned on doing to subdue Daniel’s soul, but since I now had a vested interest in the outcome, I needed to intervene before she made mincemeat out of him.

  “Stop!” I yelled, my voice firm and controlled. Under normal circumstances, I was a bit of a coward, but knowing that Daniel’s safety was at stake filled me with a sense of purpose, making me feel like one of those preternaturally strong mothers who can lift a full-sized car off her kid when normally it’s all she can do just to carry her shopping bags out of the grocery store by herself. Whether I wanted to or not, I was gonna keep this new persona going long enough to make sure no one I cared about got hurt.

  “Hey, stop it!” I yelled, striding forward so that I was standing just underneath the archway that led into the room. Suri looked up, startled by my presence.

  “I can stop him,” I said confidently.

  Suri just stared at me, eyes narrowed in suspicion. I gave her my most winning smile, but she just continued to stare at me as if I were speaking in another language.

  We stood there, staring at each other like we were in some kind of Mafia standoff, until I heard a clipped voice behind me say:

  “Do you not realize who she is?”

  I felt Jarvis step up beside me, flanking my right side as if he were my bodyguard. I flashed him a quick smile, which he returned before giving Suri such a look of intense concentration that I thought she might melt into a puddle right then and there. He may have been almost a head shorter than me—not that I was a behemoth at five-six—but there was just something about Jarvis that inspired respect, no matter how high you towered over him.

  Suri looked from Jarvis to me, then back again, before shaking her head. She seemed a lot less sure of herself now that I had the faun in my corner. I was digging the odds more and more now that the two-person standoff had magically become a three-person hustle.

  “This,” Jarvis continued, his tone dripping with disdain directed right at Suri, “is Calliope Reaper-Jones.”

  It took a moment for Jarvis’s words to click, but when my name finally rang a few bells in her brain, her face transformed from stormy menace into a beatific grin.

  “Oh my goodness, you’re Death’s Daughter.”

  It was a statement, not a question. Still, I felt that I had to acknowledge her somehow, so I just nodded, strangely embarrassed by the look of reverence she was beaming in my direction.

  “Uhm, yeah. That’s me, I guess.”

  “You saved your father and fought the demon Vritra and found the Cup of Jamshid . . .”

  Suri started to rattle off my various accomplishments in backwards order, which only made me feel more embarrassed than I already was. I had never seen hero worship alive and well in someone’s face before, but there it was, stamped on Suri’s visage for the whole world to see. It was a totally new and weird experience for me, one that I wasn’t completely sure I liked.

  “Yes,” Jarvis said, interrupting Suri as she continued to extol my virtues for the assemblage. “This is the same Calliope Reaper-Jones. Now, quit squawking and order your knights to step aside so that she may deal with the Shade.”

  I wanted to kiss Jarvis for being so amazing.

  “But I can’t allow a civilian to deal with—” she began, but Jarvis held up his Fran Drescher hand.

  “We both know that the one defense this guard is lacking in is”—he gestured to the armored knights, who stood in an unmoving circle around the table where Daniel’s Shade was still standing—“their ability to deal with noncorporeal entities.”

  Suri looked shamefacedly at the ground, then gave a meek nod of acquiescence.

  “This is true, but there was good cause to fire the witch doctors, as you know already . . .”

  Jarvis didn’t let her off the hook so easily.

  “This is something that our President and CEO has commented on in the past, but that you and your retinue were unwilling to deal with in a timely fashion.”

  Suri continued to look down at her feet.

  “But we do have plans to bring in another—”

  Jarvis abruptly cleared his throat, cutting her off.

  “When you released those Senegalese witch doctors from your employ, you should’ve hired someone to fill their place at once,” Jarvis said tersely. You could tell this was a subject that he and my dad had talked about at length, but hadn’t been able to induce Suri and her team to act on yet.

  Suri looked up at Jarvis, chagrined.

  “I swear that we’ll get someone in here immediately.”

  “Until then,” Jarvis said, his tone chiding, “you have a disruptive Shade in the Hall of Death—which is supposed to be one of the most heavily defended places in all of Purgatory, but apparently is not, as you have just proven by this spectacle.”

  Suri nodded, red-faced, as Jarvis continued his gentle, yet firm, dressing-down. I could tell by the way Jarvis was trying
not to smile that this was exactly where he wanted our guide: ashamed and vulnerable; i.e., easily manipulated.

  “I suggest you let Miss Calliope deal with your Shade,” Jarvis said breezily. “As you already know, she is a professional when it comes to things of this nature.”

  Jarvis was quickly becoming my new hero.

  It was funny, but until now, I’d had no idea what a master at the art of deception my dad’s Executive Assistant was. Right before my eyes, he’d twisted our little guide into such an emotional pretzel of embarrassment that she didn’t know whether she was coming or going—and of course, Jarvis was right there, ready to lead her in whichever direction he deemed best.

  Hopefully, it was the direction that would allow me complete and unfettered access to Daniel’s Shade.

  “I don’t know,” Suri said, but Jarvis was having none of it.

  “Then I’m afraid I’ll have to call in the Jackal Brothers. Hopefully, they can instill a little order in the Hall of Death—”

  “No!” Suri yelped, fear in her eyes. “Please, not the Jackal Brothers.”

  She looked so freaked-out that I almost felt sorry for her.

  “But if you can’t take care of your own—”

  Suri blanched, all the blood draining from her creamy, golden skin.

  “We can. We will! I swear it,” she offered, her voice a shrill whine in my ear. Jarvis was unmoved by her outburst.

  “As the Day Manager of the Hall of Death,” Suri said, turning to me, “I beg of you. Please help us contain the Shade.”

  I could tell that it pained her to do what Jarvis wanted, but the threat of the Jackal Brothers taking over her domain was a very real thing to her.

  “Thank you for being reasonable,” Jarvis said pithily, then turned to me, bowing low.

  “Mistress Calliope, the floor is yours.”

  I felt weird telling Suri thank you because it was so obvious that she really didn’t want my help and was being forced to let me take a shot at the Shade, but I gave her a quick smile anyway.

  “I’ll do my best,” I said, hoping that this was compromise enough, then I winked at Jarvis as I stepped past the archway and into the room.

  “Why don’t you guys go back out in the hall,” I said to the knights. “That way no one gets hurt.”

  I waited, but after a few moments it was apparent that none of the dum-dums was gonna do what I said. I looked back at Suri, who sighed.

  “Out here, guys!”

  At Suri’s command, the knights instantly moved out of defensive position, falling into one single-file line that quickly shuffled out of the room, battle-axes and swords clanging as they went. It was like watching a group of high school football players leaving a locker room. As they passed me by, I got a whiff of some of the gnarliest body odor I’d ever encountered, giving me the distinct impression that whatever creature lay hidden beneath that armor did not have a good relationship with its shower.

  Well, that sure got their butts in gear, I thought grumpily as I waited for them to clear the room.

  Once they were gone, I walked up to the edge of the table, my heart hammering like an out-of-control jackhammer. I felt my mind whirl at the prospect of talking to Daniel again. It wasn’t like I was the greatest at talking to men I was attracted to anyway, but add in a case of the heebie-jeebies and you could forget it. On more than one occasion, my brain had decided to shut down, leaving me gawping like an imbecilic cod fish at whatever hunk of manhood I’d been about to chat up.

  I just prayed that was not gonna be the case in this situation.

  I took a deep breath as I came to stand in front of the Shade. I tried to see some kind of resemblance to the Daniel I knew, but there really wasn’t any.

  “Well now, fancy meeting you here,” I said, clasping my hands together behind my back nervously. “Long time, no see.”

  I couldn’t believe that this was how it was going to go down! Was I really just gonna stand there and babble at him like an idiot? Apparently that was exactly what I was going to do.

  “You look well. I mean for a Shade, that is.”

  I offered up that little bon mot like it was the holy grail of repartee. Boy, was I on a roll or what?

  Any more witty dialogue and it’d be a regular Preston Sturges movie around here, I thought miserably.

  Daniel’s Shade stared down at me from its table perch and I wondered if this was what my Shade looked like. Had I run into anyone while I was doing my whole “out of body” floating spectacle through the Hall of Death, was this what they would have seen?

  God, I hoped not. Because Daniel’s Shade was a pretty crazy-looking character.

  I guess the best way to describe a Shade is to compare its composition to the fuzz you see on a television set when the cable has gone out. Only, a Shade is much, much, much more transparent than any TV fuzz. In fact, if you didn’t look directly at it, the Shade kind of blended in with whatever its surroundings were, almost like it wasn’t there at all.

  Its only discernible human feature was its eyes, which were so cold and piercing that they gave you the shivers every time you looked into their depths. The Shade possessed no nose, no mouth, and no ears; so I guess you could barely call its face a face, even. It had arms and legs, but they were so mottled—like the rest of its fuzzlike body—that unless they were in motion, you wouldn’t have known it had any appendages.

  Help me.

  The words startled me and I looked around to make sure that I was really hearing them in my head, not in reality. Satisfied that there was no one else in the room, I said:

  “How?”

  Daniel slipped into radio silence and I tried not to stare too deeply into what passed as his eyes while I waited for his reply.

  We’re connected, you and I.

  I nodded. Madame Papillon had told me this very same thing not even twenty-four hours before.

  I didn’t mean for that to happen, Daniel’s voice said wearily. I’m sorry.

  I shrugged.

  “No worries. It happens,” I offered, even though it was the understatement of the century.

  But maybe we can use it to our advantage.

  “Okay,” I said.

  I loved how Daniel was using the all-powerful pronoun “we.” It’s lovely to be a “we” when the guy you dig is standing right in front of you, all hot-blooded and alive, but quite another thing when he’s nothing but a monstrous outline of himself.

  “What do you propose?” I asked as I looked back over my shoulder and saw Suri and her minions waiting impatiently out in the hallway. It only served to remind me that I was under a deadline, both here in the moment and in the greater scheme of things.

  Let me come inside you.

  I nearly choked on my own saliva.

  “Excuse me?” I squeaked, all the blood in my body quickly pooling to my lower extremities.

  If I slip inside of you, they’ll think you’ve banished me, Daniel’s voice said.

  I could feel the heat in my face—and in between my legs—and I wondered suspiciously if Daniel was choosing those words on purpose just to screw with my head.

  “Let’s not use the words ‘come’ and ‘slip’ and ‘inside’ in the same sentence again, okay?” I said, brushing my hair back off my face with my hand nervously.

  Oh, the voice said, followed by an embarrassed silence.

  “Yeah. Uh-huh,” I replied, sort of pleased to have made him feel as uncomfortable as he’d made me.

  All right, then, he said. Let’s try that again. I will go in you—

  Jesus, this was no better than all the “slipping” and “coming.” I guess there was nothing I could do but give the Shade a tight smile and hope that my legs would continue to hold me up during the sexually charged hot flash I was in the middle of having.

  “Just do whatever you’re gonna do,” I said through gritted teeth.

  Thank you, Callie.

  That was all it took to melt my heart. I just wanted to put my Humpty-Dump
ty Daniel back together, then find a nice private place where I could shatter him into a million pieces over and over again—and I did not mean by pushing him off some stupid wall.

  I looked up at Daniel’s Shade, allowing my brain to enmesh itself in his mesmerizing stare, becoming the humble prey to his seductive snake charmer. I was so entranced by him that I barely even noticed when I felt that now-familiar tug on my soul and a searing pain split my head apart, sending me spiraling toward unconsciousness. I fought the encroaching blackness, not wanting to alarm Jarvis or Suri by passing out, afraid of what would happen if they realized I was no longer in control of the situation.

  Suddenly, the pain lifted and I whimpered, relieved that the horrible experience was finally over—but my relief was short-lived as the feeling of agony slammed back into me, increasing threefold as the pressure overwhelmed my brain and quickly began to subsume my body. I bit my lip and I felt a trickle of hot, salty blood on my tongue. I desperately choked back the sensation of nausea brought on by the taste. The pain consuming me was so exquisite that it nearly drove me out of my head, but then as it finally subsided, I realized that Daniel had done exactly what he had promised he would do:

  He had come inside me.

  fourteen

  When I opened my eyes, Daniel’s Shade was gone and I was alone. I immediately expected to feel some kind of weight inside me, reminding me that another soul was now sharing head space with me, but as I mentally checked my body, I felt no sign of Daniel’s presence at all.

  That’s so weird, I thought to myself. Shouldn’t I be able to feel someone else kicking around inside me?

  The realization that I couldn’t totally freaked me out. It meant that anyone could inhabit part of my body and I might never even know they were there.

  What a totally frightening thought!

  Suddenly, I heard a creaking noise behind me that made my heart drop down into my stomach. I quickly spun around, ready to defend myself from whatever badass was about to attack me, only to find that there wasn’t just one bad guy ready to take aim at me, but a whole battalion of them.