by Mason Sabre
She didn’t drive straight out to West Valley. First, she wanted to go to her tree. She knew it was okay, because she was okay, but she just had to see. She needed the strength from it.
Pulling the car to a stop just near it, she parked so that the back of her car was hidden, and shook her head at herself and her paranoia. The tree was blossoming, which meant it was fertile, which meant if anyone knew about it, they would be hording themselves around looking for that divine blessing for their own fertility. But this was her tree. The tree to a nymph was the very life blood of her being. As long as this tree lived, so did she. It didn’t make her immortal. Not really, but close enough. It came with power, though. Nymphs were the masters of allure and seduction. Water Nymphs were the worst. A man could drown before he even realised he was screwed, all because of that. It was like a drug, to anyone.
Going to the trunk of her car, Louise pulled out a bag of meat. It hadn't defrosted yet, she kept hunks of meats in her freezer especially for her cats, but it would do—if they gave it the time. She unwrapped it and tossed it onto the ground and stepped back. They wouldn’t come out and eat while she was so close, but they weren’t afraid of her.
She had ten grimalkins. No. Nine, she corrected herself and ground her jaw at the annoyance of that. Whoever she was meeting later, she was sure as hell it was one of them who had gutted her cat. They were damn lucky, though. It was hard to catch one grimalkin by itself.
The first grimalkin came out of the shadows from behind her tree. It slunk its way over, its eyes on her, its mouth open, tail held high.
“Eat,” she said, like it could understand her. But it only walked to the meat and then sat, its bright green eyes on her. Another cat came, and then another and another, until she spotted the biggest one of them. They would wait for him to eat before they would join in. She counted them as they came. Nine. Good. “Don’t you worry,” she said to the big one. “I’ll get whoever did this.”
Turning, Louise went to go back to her car, but the biggest grimalkin growled at her, the hint of a hiss to his sound. It made her stop. They wouldn’t attack her. They weren’t stupid. They’d not get rid of the very person who fed them.
“What?” she asked.
The cat who had come to the meat first, trotted over to her, and she had to step out of his way to let him pass. Grimalkins were bigger than house cats. More like size of a cub, but they were strong. Their grey-blue striped fur made them seem cute and friendly–a deception to any fool who would dare to try and stroke them. The cat went to her car and rose on his hind legs, his paws swiping the side of her door, claws out, leaving a scratch. “Hey,” she shot. “Stop that.”
It meowed deeply in reply at her, its nose up, twitching. It meowed again. The kind of meow that was somewhere between pain and a warning.
“What? What do you want?”
Another grimalkin came, brushing its spikey fur along her leg as it joined the first. Both of them leaning up, meowing.
“You want the man?” Then it hit her. Oh, she was such an idiot. Grimalkins ate dead meat. Not like shifters, no. They needed dead. “You’ll eat him?” Excitement burned in her chest suddenly—excitement and a little guilt at what she was about to do.
She hadn't realised that the cats had surrounded her now. All nine of them, with the biggest one centre, like he was asking her. She met his eyes, not backing away. Weakness was their foreplay. “You want the man out of my car?”
Daring to move, she walked to the back. The grimalkins parted, as if they knew what she was going to do. She opened the door. “Wait,” she said. “Let me get him out for you.”
Grabbing the rope around his ankles, she pulled him down, hauling him out, but she didn’t get him all the way. One of the cats leapt into her car and stood on his chest, its fur sticking up in a line down his back.
“Oh no. Not in here, you don’t. You wait.”
The cat hissed at her. Razor teeth bared, the green of its eyes deepening.
“You wait,” she repeated more forcefully, hardening her voice and hoping to hell that they couldn’t sense inside the nerves she was feeling.
Unfastening the rope around the man’s ankles, Louise pulled back the sheet so that the grimalkin could see the man’s bare feet. It was the big cat who came first, and she stepped out of his way, giving him the centre stage to what he would do. He sniffed at the feet, walking around them, the other grimalkins all behind him, except the one on the chest. The big one meowed, long and hard, before opening his jaw and sinking teeth into the skin around the man’s ankle. Locking his jaw on him, he pulled, backwards, yanking the man further out.
Louise stepped back from them, watching them. Her heart thumping wildly in her chest at the sight. Four of the cats grabbed the man. Two of them slid under the blanket and she watched with horror and relief as they moved, like lumps under skin. Blood soaked out through the material in different spots. More grimalkin went inside, until the blanket was nothing but a rippling bloodied caterpillar on the ground.
She retched. Her stomach churning.
Shit.
They ate him.
Chapter 6
Louise walked past the restaurant twice. She’d never been to this restaurant before, even though it was only a couple of blocks away from where she worked. It was the kind of restaurant where, in the afternoon, suburbanite mothers came to sit and have lunch, chatting for hours about their pretend lives and their pretend happiness—a bid to try to one-up each other on the fantasies they were living out.
Louise was neither a mother, nor a suburbanite. She didn’t eat in those places, and had no intention to. Marcy, on the other hand, came here many times, especially when the man from head office wanted to come and offer a new style of lingerie.
The third time Louise walked past the restaurant; she didn't stop and turn back. Instead, she walked all the way along the high-street and stopped at the kerb. Her heart hammered in her chest, and perhaps for a moment, she imagined herself running from there and heading home.
It wasn't that she was afraid … wait, no, she was afraid. She was afraid with just cause, too. She was about to meet whoever had broken into her home, whoever it was that had put her in her bed, naked. This was the person who had killed one of her grimalkins, no easy feat. But maybe, the most important thing she had to remember was that, whoever this was, they had killed a man. They had slashed his throat—a man who had been very much alive in the pictures, clearly moments before his death.
With a sigh, mostly at herself and the whole situation, she turned and faced the oncoming herd of shoppers who were going about their evening business like there wasn’t a murderer somewhere in the midst of them, or that she hadn't let her cats eat a murdered man today to save her own skin; she wasn't one of them.
She was someone with a secret. Chewing nervously on her lower lip, she set off again, her eyes on the restaurant, and this time she was determined to go in.
Whoever this was, he wasn't going to make her afraid like this; not him, or anyone else. She’d promised herself a long time ago that she would never fear anyone, again.
She walked through the throng of people—an outsider. It felt like there was a sign above her head, flashing why she was there. Taking in a breath, she reached the door and peered at her reflection in the long glass, surprising herself at just how normal she seemed. It was a shock, like she should have been marred with the guilt of what she had done.
Angling her jaw, she pulled her shoulders back, just the way her mother told her a million times during her childhood. Throwing on a veil of confidence, she was determined to show this asshole that she would not be intimidated.
When she opened the door, and stepped into the air-conditioned restaurant, a blast of cool air ruffled her hair. The place was busy, filled with the clatter of cutlery and plates amidst the murmur of constant conversations.
She let the door close behind her, encasing her in place, with him, whoever he was. She wasn't sure who she was looking for, or
what. She doubted very much that he was holding a sign card for her, screaming, murderer here. Table six.
Slowly, she scanned across the crowd of patrons. Each table was filled with different kinds of people, couples, lovers, business people. She imagined them all talking their importance to each other.
None of them gave her any attention or an expression that said she was expected. Maybe he wasn’t here? But then, in the corner of the room, a man waved, the old-fashioned way, with a handkerchief in his hand. He had chosen the seat nearest to the serving door. The seat no one wanted because the servers were back and forth, as well as the patrons using the bathroom. But it was near the fire exit, thankfully, and Louise realised, he was just as afraid as she was—he had positioned them near to an exit—he had an escape.
He stood, holding his hand out toward her. Louise frowned at this like she wasn’t exactly sure what she was supposed to do. Did she take his hand? She wondered how to shake the hand of somebody who killed somebody else the night before? She raised a furrowed brow, her eyes meeting his and shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said, as if she needed to apologise for not wanting to touch him.
“Sit.” He motioned to the chair opposite. “No need to apologise, Louise.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, at the use of her name, but then she realised that if he knew her address, it was plausible he would know what she was called.
“Would you like a drink?” he asked.
“I can get one,” she replied, not wanting anything from him other than an explanation and the negatives.
He angled his head and nodded toward a waitress who was just walking past. She smiled at him and came over as if she knew him. Maybe this was the usual place of business after he had committed murder and dumped the body in somebody else’s bed.
“What can I get for you?” the waitress asked, eyeing up Louise with a pad and pen ready to take her order.
“I’ll just have a Coke,” said Louise. “No ice.” She would have chosen a beer or maybe something a little stronger, but given that she was working later, and that she was currently sitting with a killer, she thought it best to have all her faculties about her.
“What is it that you want? She asked, getting straight to the point, when the waitress was out of earshot. She didn’t see that there was any point to sitting there and passing around idle chitchat between them.
The man leaned back in his chair, arm across the top of the chair next to him. He crossed his legs at the knee and smiled a sort of soft quirk at the corner of his lips as he watched her. He was her age almost, perhaps a couple of years older. He was the kind of man who appeared to have been born into money. The suit certainly suggested so, with the way it was tailored to fit in all the right places. He didn’t seem like a man who would have killed somebody.
“Straight to the point. I like that,” he said.
He looked like he was going to say something else, but then he stopped, his eyes caught something behind her, and Louise turned. The waitress was coming with a tray and her drink. They waited until the waitress had set the glass down in front of Louise; both staring at her, watching her. The waitress ignored Louise and smiled at the man, almost as if she was winking at him. If only she knew.
“My name is Marcus,” he said, when they were alone again. “I know what you must be thinking, but I’m not a bad man. It’s just business.”
“And what business is it that would have you leave a …” She narrowed her gaze at him as she thought of the right word. She couldn’t suddenly just say, left the body in my bed, in the middle of a restaurant.
“Political business” he said.
“And what political business would that be?” she asked. “More importantly, what does it have to do with me?”
He smirked at her. “I was trying to get your attention. You’ll have to forgive me if I am a little eccentric in my ideas. I like to get people’s attention from the get go.”
“Couldn’t you have just written to me? Picked up the phone and asked me whatever it is that you want?”
“I wanted you to understand how serious I am.”
She shook her head. “Like I said before, what is it that you want?”
The man leaned forward and picked up the glass he was drinking from. He was drinking ale; it seemed odd to Louise. She imagined he was more of a whiskey drinker rather than someone who would choose the bog-standard drink of the poor man.
“I have a business proposition for you, Louise.” He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out another envelope. An envelope that was similar to the one she had received that morning. He didn’t pass it to her, instead, he opened it, showing her the contents. Inside it—negatives.
“A little old-fashioned, aren’t you? What happened to using your smartphone?”
“The use of a smartphone wouldn’t give you this piece of insurance.”
She stared at them, not reaching for them. She was sure he wouldn’t hand them to her. He wasn’t stupid. “Just because you have the negatives, doesn’t mean I have this as insurance. What is to say you haven’t made copies?”
“You just have to trust me, won’t you?”
“Trust you. I don’t even know you.”
“I give you my word, Louise. Do as I ask, and I will give you these negatives.” He gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “These negatives and those pictures of poor Peter are the only evidence of the gift I gave to you.”
It was Louise’s turn to sit back now as she picked up her Coke, sipping it for a momentary delay to watch Marcus and weigh up her options. On the outside, Marcus seemed like he was somebody to probably tell the truth—a man of honour. But he had killed a man. “I will ask you again, what is it that you want?”
Marcus closed the envelope and put it back into his jacket. “You know who Gemma Davies is, right?”
Louise frowned. “If you mean Gemma, shifter, and Society Council heir, and tiger, then yes; I know her.”
“Then you will also know she is without a mate.”
Louise cocked her head to the side. “What does that have to do with me?”
“It is said, or rather, it is in the rules of the Society itself, that if the heir is unmated, new potentials may apply. It is also stated that if the heir were to procreate, the other party would gain equal heir status within the pack.”
“You are pack?”
“No. I am not even Society.”
“Stray?” Marcus didn’t look like he was the kind of man who was a stray. Strays were not members of the Society, but Others who lived around Society lines. Most of them died due to no healthcare, fights, and territorial arguments. To become a stray was to receive a death sentence. But then Marcus didn’t bear any of the markings of a normal stray. He didn’t have the scars.
“I am still not sure why you need me. Why go to such dramatics to get my attention?”
“Ah, you see Louise, you are the key.” He leaned in closer, the curve of his lips deepening into a smile, his eyes shifting in colour, speckles of yellow flicking into the brown.
“You’re tiger,” she said
Marcus smiled and nodded. “Very observant.” He inhaled slowly. “Do you look at Society and wonder, why it is that they wield the power and money?”
“I am not a stray,” she said. “I pay my Society taxes.”
“Yes,” he said. “But should you have to pay for the right to live? Why is it that they can set down rules and laws, and we have to pay taxes?”
“Nobody makes you pay those taxes.”
“No, but without them a stray’s mortality rate is low.”
Louise smiled at him. He seemed to have done okay.
“Maybe somethings need to change,” he continued. “Maybe it is time someone new was in the head seat of the Society.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “And how do you intend to do that?”
He paused, breathing slowly, watching Louise as he did, his mind obviously going over whatever i
t was that he planned. She swallowed, hard, as she watched him. She was sure that whatever he was about to say to her, she would not like.
“This spring,” he said. “It is time when every animal or Other is at their most fertile. You have a tree—a large tree. A tree that I believe can boost this already fertile time.”
“Yes,” she said cautiously, waiting for what he was going to say next.
“My wish is very simple. If Gemma Davies was to carry my child … my line, then we would have a new world—a world where strays would be equal. In fact, there would be no strays because everyone would be the same.”
“Maybe we don’t need a new world? Maybe there has to be some kind of order?”
“Perhaps. But …”
She got what he was saying. She really did. Sometimes, when she paid her fees to Society, handing over a percentage of her wage, she felt the injustice of it. But not enough for any radical action. “I’ll ask again, what is it that you need me to do?”
“Seduce her.” He flicked his eyebrows and smiled, as if it was that simple. “You get her to your tree, have her ready, and I can do the rest. Nymphs have the power to make anyone do what they want, without force. I need that power.”
“You want me to participate in rape?”
“It is not rape, if she is willing.”
Louise felt the anger flaring under her skin, red hot, blood pumping through her veins. “Just because I would have seduced her, does not mean she is willing.”
“No. But this is business. There is another full moon soon. If I can make her mine before then, I can claim my seat by her side.”
“That is not your seat,” Louise spat.
He sat back again with his drink, watching her with quiet contemplation on his face as he waited for Louise to digest what he had just said. He wanted her to seduce Gemma so that he could impregnate her. It was madness.
“And when exactly is this meant to take place?” she asked, as if she were considering it.
“As soon as you are ready. But don’t take too long”. He smiled. “I am not known for my patience.”
