Cat Tales Issue #3

by Steve Vernon

Here, Kitty Kitty

  Copyright © 2016 by Annie Reed

  Published by Thunder Valley Press

  Cover and Layout copyright © 2016 Thunder Valley Press

  Cover art copyright © Can Stock Photo Inc. / BluezAce

  Previously published in Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds (WMG, 2013)

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Mischief never expected to encounter a shadow creature.

  Especially not on the night her wings fell off and she became a real cat.

  She just wants to find a home where she belongs. Instead, Mischief runs into the biggest shadow creature she’s ever seen. A creature that can transform itself under the light of the full moon into something solid and dangerous and hungry.

  Mischief comes from a long line of feline fey. Proud hunters who protect the world from shadow creatures who stalk the unwary. But Mischief’s no longer fey—she’s just a cat.

  One very determined cat.

  “One of the best writers I’ve come across in years.” —Kristine Kathryn Rusch, author of THE RETRIEVAL ARTIST series

  The Night Mischief Became A Real Cat

  The first edge of a full moon slipped from beneath a cloud, illuminating a promising looking yard, when Mischief caught a faint scent that made the new fur along the ridge of her spine stand on edge.

  The scent of something that wasn’t quite canine and wasn’t quite fey.

  Something dangerous.

  She sat back on her haunches on the hood of a parked car and sniffed the night air, her whiskers and her ears twitching forward.

  Her glorious new ears. Fully functional, as the saying went. She could swivel them to hear the most amazing sounds in any direction.

  And whiskers. Why had she never imagined how awesome whiskers must be? They caught the most wonderful sensations in their delicate lengths and transmitted them down her spine until her tail shivered with delight.

  But her ears and her whiskers couldn’t tell her everything.

  They couldn’t help her identify the scent.

  The tip of her tail flicked in annoyance.

  Another new sensation, to have an actual tail that spoke as eloquently as her voice. Her wings had never done that.

  The metallic odor of the car and the pungent reek of the puddle of dirty oil underneath it were interfering with her efforts to resolve the scent into something she could identify. She wasn’t used to the smells in the city.

  When she’d been a fairy, she’d made her home among green growing things. She was used to the smell of rich, loamy earth and tall, pungent pines. The fresh, wet smell of damp rocks along a babbling brook. And the glorious scent of wildflowers.

  She’d miss the wildflowers most of all, but it was a small price to pay for finally becoming a real cat.

  She leapt down off the car, landing easily on all four feet on the sidewalk.

  A new odor, the unpleasant musty stench of decay, came from a hole in the curb. Mischief knew all about the scent of death and decay. She skirted the hole and made her way over a short wire fence into the yard.

  This yard had a lush, green carpet of grass edged by a border of petunias and violas and flowering shrubs. The plants were well cared for, and the flowers reminded her of the home she’d left behind when she’d begun her search for a new home. The flowers didn’t smell quite as sweet as her old forest home, but she’d take it.

  If the human who lived in the house at the back of the yard would have her.

  Mischief caught movement in the grass—a snake, perhaps, or a bug or a small rodent. Her whiskers twitched as she scented the air. Nothing smelled like rodent. Just that odd mixture of fey and canine.

  Overhead a bat winged its way across the face of the full moon.

  Mischief’s ears flattened against her skull and a low growl began deep in her throat before she could stifle the sound.

  Other fey creatures came out to play when the moon was full. She’d been so enamored with her new self that she’d forgotten.

  Then there were the fey creatures who hid themselves in the soft shadows of the night. They were always around, lurking in the dark. But when the moon turned its full face on the world, the shadows grew hard edged and more difficult to hide in, and the shadow dwellers grew bold and angry.

  And hungry.

  Mischief’s mother had told her all about the shadow dwellers. Mischief’s mother had been a shadow hunter, one of the feline fey who protected the world from shadow creatures who transformed themselves into spiders or scorpions or the nasty many-legged things that crept about under rocks and beneath bushes.

  Mischief had never been a shadow hunter, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t fight the shadow creature that was lurking in this yard. The human who lived in the house at the back of this yard didn’t know the trouble she was in. Mischief did.

  Her people always said that when a feline fey’s wings fell off, it was because someone—some human someone—needed the protection of a special cat. Mischief’s wings had fallen off in front of this house, a place she’d never been to before but a place she’d been drawn to. Whoever lived in the house needed Mischief, even if she didn’t know it yet.

  Mischief had razor-sharp claws and strong, pointy teeth. She had her newfound senses and agility. All of that made her far more deadly that a single feline fey.

  But she was more vulnerable now that when she’d been a feline fey. She was as mortal as any kitten-born cat.

  She could die.

  And the hungry shadow creature lurking in this yard would know that.

  Chessa hung up the phone with a bang and flopped back in her comfy chair.

  “Good thing that wasn’t your cell phone.”

  She heard her mother’s voice as clearly as if the woman was standing in her living room instead of living half a continent away in Philadelphia.

  Whenever Chessa did something that her mother would have frowned on, her subconscious served up the appropriate “comment” complete with her mother’s voice and disapproving tone.

  “Lovely,” Chessa muttered, twirling a piece of her hair with her left hand.

  She only did that when she was annoyed. Or bored. Or nervous about something.

  That used to bother her mother, too.

  It wasn’t bad enough the loser of a blind date the girls at work had set up for her had cancelled at the last minute. Something about forgetting it was a full moon, and what did that have to do with anything? Not like the guy was a werewolf or anything as stupid as that. She’d have to go to work tomorrow and tell all the girls that she—Chessa, the perpetually single—had been stood up once again.

  And now the imaginary mother who lived in her head was berating her telephone manners.

  “Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Chessa,” she said out loud to the empty room. “And stop twirling your hair.”

  The guy was probably a jerk, anyway.

  Who needed him?

  She certainly didn’t. She had a good job that paid the rent on this house with enough left over for groceries and new clothes every month (so long as they weren’t designer clothes, and she only bought something small like a new purse or a blouse on sale). She could even afford basic cable and a subscription to a streaming movie service.

  Sure, she got a little lonely every now and then—what single girl (or guy) didn’t?—but she definitely had a good life.

  Even if she was at home alone on a Thursday night when she’d expected to be going to a late show to watch a new movie on the very first night it hit the theater. When was the last time she’d actually done that?

  She leaned back in her comfy chair—an old recliner that she’d picked up at a second-hand furniture store—and stared out the skylight in her living ro
om at the full moon. At least the jerk had gotten that part of his excuse right.

  Even though it was only nine o’clock, the moon hung bright overhead. A harvest moon in the nighttime sky. Beautiful.

  The skylight had been a big part of the reason she’d decided to rent this house. She’d expected to be able to see the stars at night without ever leaving her living room. But between the streetlights on the corner and the ambient light from the city, she could only see the brightest stars even with all the lights off in her house.

  Maybe that was a metaphor for life. Only the brightest stars could be seen in a city, and Chessa certainly wasn’t the brightest star. Nothing interesting ever seemed to happen to her, and nobody ever seemed to think she was special.

  “Attitude check,” she said again to the empty house.

  At least that phrase hadn’t been her mom’s. She thought it might have come from a movie, but she couldn’t remember which one.

  Speaking of movies…

  She reached for the television remote and punched the On button. If she couldn’t watch a movie at the theater, nothing was stopping her from finding something to watch at home.

  The television blared to life in the middle of a car chase filled with explosions and gunfire.

  Chessa yelped and thumbed down the volume. Lord knows her neighbors weren’t the quietest people, but she didn’t want anyone calling the cops on her to complain about the noise.

  Only now that she thought about it, the neighborhood was pretty quiet.

  No metal music from the house across the street. No screaming, yelling, or colorful swearing from the teenage kids who lived next door. No slamming doors or barking dogs, and even the guy who owned the beater car with the bad muffler hadn’t gone out for a drive tonight.

  That was really odd. Was something going on outside that she didn’t know about?

  She muted the television and got up from her comfy chair. The living room had a big picture window that looked out over the street. She usually kept her blinds mostly closed so that no one passing by could see inside her house. She switched off the only light in the living room—a beautiful floor lamp from half a century ago that she’d found in a flea market—and padded over to the window.

  Feeling more than a little foolish, she leaned close to the window to peer through the blinds.

  A glint of flashing light gave her a start until she realized the action scene on the television was reflecting off the window glass.

  “Get a grip,” she muttered to herself.

  Nothing odd was going on. It was just her imagination. So what if the neighborhood was quiet on a Thursday night? The kids were probably all doing their homework, new school year and all, and their parents were probably just worn out.

  She was about to turn away from the window when a shadow caught her eye.

  Her whole front yard was edged in shadows. The full moon made the grass and the shrubs and the flowers glint with a silvery sheen, with deep, dark shadows underneath.

  Only one shadow was out of place.

  This shadow looked like it was crouching in the far corner of her front yard next to the chain link fence that separated her yard from her neighbor’s. Her grass needed a good mowing—she planned to do that this weekend—but neither the grass nor the fence would have created this particular shadow. Neither would the few branches of her neighbor’s apple tree that hung over the fence into her yard.

  Trying to get a good look at this particular shadow was like looking at a charcoal smudge on the face of reality.

  The hair on the back of Chessa’s neck stood on end, and the skin on her forearms broke out in gooseflesh.

  Something was seriously wrong here. Either her eyes and her brain had decided to stop communicating with any degree of reliability, or she was seeing something that shouldn’t exist.

  She didn’t want to see something that shouldn’t exist.

  She wanted to close the blinds, back away from her window, and go back to watching whatever nameless action movie was on the television. But she was afraid if she did, if she quit watching the shadow, it wouldn’t stay outside in her yard but somehow get inside her house and come after her.

  She tried to laugh at just how off-the-wall crazy that idea sounded, like something out of a bad horror movie.

  Well, life wasn’t a bad horror movie. There was nothing weird out in her yard. It was just another Thursday night in the neighborhood, and she’d been stood up for a blind date. Her brain was serving up the weird shit as a way to distract herself from feeling all alone in the world.

  Yeah, that was it.

  She heaved a sigh of relief and started to back away from the window.

  That’s when she saw the shadow move.

  Mischief hid from the shadow creature beneath a flowering shrub near the front of the yard.

  The trick to being a good hunter, her mother had often said, was to use the prey’s nature and its surroundings against it. Cultivate patience. Know when to remain as still as stone and when to speed through the air like the wind.

  Mischief didn’t have wings anymore, but she could feel the ripple of strong muscles in her legs and along her spine as she crept low to the ground. She had to trust her new cat body to let her run with the same burst of speed she would have had in the air.

  Her ears swiveled to track each and every small noise. Not that the shadow creature would make any noise until it had settled on its prey, but the rest of the neighborhood animals—the crickets and frogs and even the neighborhood dogs—would continue to make their own noises until the shadow creature began its attack.

  Would the human in the house go still as well?

  Her mother would have said yes. All creatures go still when danger was near.

  The unnatural quiet would let Mischief know when to start her own attack.

  The shadow creature’s scent was strongest near the far corner of the yard. Mischief concentrated on the corner until she could see the sharp edges of the creature against the wire fence.

  Even with her keen cat’s eyesight, the wrongness of its shadow hurt Mischief’s brain. It looked like a hole in the world that shouldn’t be there, and she wanted to look away.

  That must be how this particular creature hid itself. It didn’t take the shape of a spider or a scorpion like the shadow creatures her mother had hunted. Its natural shape was so unnatural that no one wanted to look at it. If no one looked at it, no one would see it, and it could live undetected until it was time to hunt.

  The shadow creature wasn’t moving. It was just lurking there, so Mischief froze and prepared to wait to see what it would do. Even as wrong as the creature was, it was a living thing. Mischief wasn’t hungry, and it wasn’t food. There was no reason to kill it.

  Yet.

  The shrub she hid underneath was covered in fragrant yellow flowers. Tiny flower faeries, their wings still and nearly translucent, hid the bush’s dark green leaves. Mischief could feel their fear.

  She wanted to tell the flower faeries she would protect them, but her first duty was to the human living inside the house.

  Mischief’s ears flicked against a sudden burst of sound from inside the house. Harsh sounds. Artificial sounds that were muted almost as suddenly as they’d blared out into the night.

  The shadow creature twitched, its harsh edges flowing in a way that made the fur along Mischief’s spine rise, made her tail tense, and her throat issue a low growl. Her ears flattened against her skull, and her lips drew back from her teeth as she hissed.

  The crickets stopped chirping as the neighborhood grew unnaturally quiet.

  The quality of light in the yard changed. A flicker of warm yellow against the silvery light of the moon.

  Mischief risked a quick glance toward the front of the house.

  A human woman stood at the window. Mischief could see her shadow on the slats that covered the window, and two of the slats were bent out of shape.

  The human was peering out into the night.


  Mischief wanted to tell her not to look outside.

  Shadow creatures had short tempers, her mother had told her. And they couldn’t abide by any creature watching them transform.

  Like this shadow creature was transforming.

  Its edges took on stark, hard, definitive lines. It grew legs. A long snout filled with sharp teeth and fangs. A tail that flicked out puffs of shadow in the night sky, and long ears on the top of its head that pointed at the large window at the front of the house.

  It took on substance. Thickness. Weight.

  It was becoming a real creature, not just a shadow of something else.

  It kept growing until it was bigger than any shadow creature Mischief had ever seen. It was easily the size of a human only shaped like a wolf that could eat the world in one bite.

  It could definitely eat Mischief in one bite if she wasn’t careful.

  The shadow in Chessa’s yard turned into a wolf.

  Never mind that such things weren’t remotely possible. She’d watched it happen, and it had nothing to do with a reflection from the television in her living room window. The TV was currently playing a commercial for a window cleaning product guaranteed to do such wonderful job birds would bounce off your newly cleaned window trying to fly through it.

  Irony, your name is insanity.

  Because seeing something like a living shadow turn into a wolf in your front yard by the light of a full moon through your spick-and-span living room window had to be the textbook definition of insane, right?

  In her yard, the shadow wolf started stalking toward the front of her house.

  Chessa yelped and backed away from the window.

  Okay, sure, she was going insane. Things like that didn’t happen. They weren’t real. Check. She was good with all that.

  But what if things like that really did happen?

  What exactly could she do to protect herself from a deadly, sentient (she was giving it the benefit of the doubt) shadow?

  “Lock the damn doors!”

  That piece of advice wasn’t in her mother’s voice. In fact, she wasn’t sure whose voice that was since she was pretty sure she’d never ever spoken any words ever in such a high-pitched screech.