Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand

by Carrie Vaughn

  “I look forward to it. I’ll see you this afternoon.” He stalked off like a cat through his jungle domain. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

  Flustered, I sat back in my chair and downed half the margarita in a go.

  When I gave my name at the box office, they were all ready for me with my ticket and instructions on waiting for an usher to take me backstage after the show. Legitimately, for a change. Inside the theater, I found myself fidgeting, anxious. If I hadn’t known the act was full of lycanthropes before, I would have discovered it now. Here, the merged scent of fur and skin was unmistakable. The feeling that I was invading another pack’s territory was unmistakable, and it made me antsy. I had to concentrate to calm down, to force my muscles to relax. There was a contradiction.

  The curtain went up, and the show began.

  Balthasar’s show had all the glitz and chaos that Odysseus Grant’s lacked. Strobe lights and spinners in every color blasted over the stage. Spots tracked across a chrome-trimmed set at super speed. Fog from an industrial-strength fog machine oozed and morphed, adding to the sensory overload, and a pounding rock extravaganza poured through a top-flight speaker system. The whole effect pumped up the audience’s anticipation to a pitch. What’s gonna happen, what’s gonna happen. . .

  The cynic in me saw it all as artificial hype, priming the audience to be excited no matter what happened.

  The music rose to climax and crashed together at the moment Balthasar leaped out to center stage via some unseen access. He smiled and punched his hands into the air, fog swirled around him, the lights went wild, and the crowd cheered. He looked even better amid the fog and lights. The audience’s screams had a definite feminine tone to them. Balthasar remained in that pose for a moment, as if absorbing the adulation of his audience.

  Turning around, he got to work. At a gesture, a tiger ran onto the stage from the right. It bounded up a riser and leapt—almost covering the entire distance to the other side of the stage. At another gesture, a second tiger did the same thing from the left. Then another from the right, and a fourth from the left. All four tigers perched where they landed, so Balthasar was now surrounded by the terrifying, man-eating beasts. One of the tigers yawned, showing thick, sharp teeth, to prove the point.

  He ran the tigers through their paces. They performed leaps, did acrobatics, wrestled with each other, wrestled with Balthasar, all on cue, with a focus that was uncanny. It wasn’t natural. And of course it wasn’t—they were were-tigers. It was supernatural.

  Once it started, the pace of the performance didn’t slow down. Which was the point. He didn’t give the audience time to question what was happening, or to wonder about anything but the amazing feats they were being shown. Like, those tigers were definitely on the small side.

  Balthasar sent the tigers away and brought out a lion. A couple of bespangled female stage assistants, shapely and smiling, wheeled out some props: hoops mounted on posts taller than Balthasar. The King of Beasts touched them with a lighter and they roared to flaming life. The lion jumped through them all, back and forth, landing each time with a flick of his tail and a shake of his mane.

  His act had magic in it as well, flashier than what Grant performed. Balthasar levitated leopards, made a panther vanish and reappear, locked himself in a box full of cobras and escaped, unscathed, proving he was the king of all beasts.

  This went on for an hour without interruption. If nothing else, my own recent stint onstage had given me a newfound appreciation for people who did this every day, sometimes twice a day. The sheer amount of energy it took to be onstage and keep an audience’s attention was phenomenal.

  With all that had already happened, I couldn’t guess what he’d pull out for the big finish. Exploding jet planes? King Kong?

  As it happened, the last number told a bit of a story. The painted backdrop lifted into the rafters, revealing a set elaborate even by the standards of the rest of the show. A Babylonian ziggurat—or a really great mock-up of one—rolled in from the back. Another dozen flaming torches sprang to life around it. At its base, two stone pillars were set about an arm’s span apart. Chains and manacles dangled from them.

  I wasn’t sure where they came from—maybe from behind the ziggurat or some other piece of stage dressing— but a group of human warriors dressed in leather and headdresses decorated with feathers and bones sprang out and attacked Balthasar. He seemed surprised at the appearance of the stage-dominating structure, but now he looked determined, like he should have expected this all along, like he’d been fighting his way through a jungle and this was the inevitable goal of the journey. He tossed one warrior, who rolled away, but the others sprang at him, subdued him, and dragged him toward the chains.

  The warriors were also lycanthropes, other members of Balthasar’s troupe, I assumed. I watched, my heart racing in spite of my determination to be cynical.

  Once they had him chained to the pillars, the warriors departed. Then came the cabana boys with the bullwhips.

  Things got a little weird.

  The boys—young men, really, lean and smooth-skinned where the warriors had been hulking and bearded—wore nothing but loincloths. They approached Balthasar. One ripped his shirt off, and the other toyed with him, running a finger along his shoulder. Balthasar thrashed at the end of the chains, like he might pull his arms out of his sockets rather than undergo this torture. Shirtless now, his muscles rippled for all to see. He snarled, and the boys laughed.

  A woman appeared. She might have risen out of the floor through a trapdoor. It was hard to tell—no doubt intentionally—with all the fog and strobe lights. Also because of all the fog and lights, it was hard to tell exactly how much or how little she was wearing. She had gold around her neck, jewels pinned in her luxurious dark hair, and strings of glittering beads hung in a strategic arrangement around her chest and hips. It had to be some kind of illusion, but she looked like she might lose it all if she turned too quickly. She went barefoot, but gold anklets decorated her feet. Like everything else, her ensemble had an exotic mystique.

  She sashayed to Balthasar and ran red-painted nails down his chest. He writhed at the touch, baring his teeth in either pain or pleasure. She brought her face close to his, making as if to kiss him. He leaned forward as much as he could, craning his neck, yearning for that kiss, but she dodged, stroked his arms, teased again—and this time, he smiled.

  I shouldn’t have been turned on by all this, but I couldn’t deny the allure of Balthasar’s perfectly formed body, flexing and sweating at this woman’s touch. And the idea of what I would do if I had him chained up for my benefit. . .

  Okay. Enough of that. This was voyeuristic spectacle, designed to titillate and discomfit all at the same time. Nothing more.

  Behind him now, one of the boys cracked his whip, and Balthasar flinched, arcing his back, teeth bared. The woman, still holding his arms, threw her head back and seemed to laugh, but I couldn’t hear anything over the pounding soundtrack. He was now torn between her promises of pleasure before him and the pain behind him. They were teasing, torturing him, he was struggling like a caged animal, and the torches were flaring, the fake smoke swirling, and was it getting hot in here?

  The tigers came to the rescue.

  One leaped to the top of the ziggurat and roared, calling the other three to flank him. The warriors attempted to face them down, but the tigers chased them, sprang at them, rolled offstage with them—nobody’s skin got punctured, no one bled, it was all very well choreographed. With the warriors dispatched, the tigers returned to corner the sadistic cabana boys. They cowered in fear, slowly backing away, until the tigers forced them into a smoking trapdoor at the base of the ziggurat. They disappeared with a recorded roar and blast of fog.

  All four tigers approached the woman, who looked around, fierce, angry—denied. She threw her head back, screamed to the rafters—and vanished. Another bout of fog, another trapdoor had taken her.

  Two tigers reared up and seemed to bite
through the chains. Balthasar yanked himself free from the manacles and, wearing a triumphant grin, faced the audience, victorious, flanked by his animal companions. The music swelled, the applause deafened, Balthasar gave a bow, and the curtain raced down. Show over.

  The music kept droning as the audience filed out. The departing crowd was filled with giggling women. That and the cheesy rock beat were starting to give me a headache.

  When the place was clear, an usher found me, showed me through a backstage door, and directed me to wait for Balthasar near the stage.

  Here, the smell almost overpowered me. Ripe, full of fur and the breath of creatures that ate meat and little else. I caught my breath, startled by the heat of it, the pressure, and something else—it wasn’t purely animal. I might have expected something like a zoo. But this had skin and human sweat with it, the distinctive smell of lycanthropes, and not just one or two, but a whole pack. A territory. Backstage at Grant’s show had smelled like sweat and effort, years of performances and people working piled up on each other, creating an atmosphere rich with history. But this was a whole other world, right on the edge of wild. Tamed, but not very. Wolf wanted to growl—this felt like entering the lair of an enemy.

  I didn’t see any of the lycanthropes. No cages in sight. Would they even have cages? Or dressing rooms with stars on them? I wondered when I could talk to the performers. When they weren’t being animals.

  I was concentrating on taking slow breaths, steadying my nerves, when Balthasar found me. I sensed him before I saw him and collected myself before he could startle me. He was glowing from his performance. That after-show rush. I knew all about that. He didn’t seem to have a bit of sweat on him and didn’t seem tired. Then again, he did this every day.

  I managed to smile. His own smile glittered. He wore boots, black leather pants, and a white silk shirt, open to show off his chest. His wavy dark hair must have had a ton of mousse in it to keep it in place, but it looked natural. He looked like the model from the cover of a romance novel. A romance novel with pirates.

  “Did you enjoy it?” he asked.

  “I have to admit, it was interesting.”

  “Interesting. That’s all?”

  “Okay. . . it was kind of hot. Totally hot.” I blushed. It was just the heat. The torches—gas-lit—were just now being turned off.

  “Good. It’s supposed to be.”

  “Sex sells, I guess,” I said.

  “The question is, are you buying?”

  Oh, I didn’t want to have to handle this. Did he ever turn it off? Because I didn’t want to let him know he was getting to me—not that I could possibly hide it. I met his gaze, determined not to show any sign of canine submission. We were equals here.

  “You mind if I ask a question?” I said. Time for some of my hard-hitting journalism.

  “I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”

  “You’re the alpha of this little pack, I take it?”

  He spread his arms, a gesture of assent. “Inasmuch as we ever work like that, yes.”

  I couldn’t hide my astonishment at this whole setup. “How do you do it? How do you keep them all together, listening, and under control?”

  “You assume that I control them. They’re professionals. They’re performers who know their job.”

  “Then they want to be here. They’re here voluntarily.”

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t they be?”

  “I don’t trust the whole pack mentality. I’ve seen some pretty coercive packs in my time.” I used to be in one, in fact, and it hadn’t been pretty. “I’m a lycanthrope; I know what it’s like. I can’t imagine someone wanting to shift every day like that.” Once a month was bad enough, in my opinion.

  He looked contemptuous. “You think it’s dangerous. You’ve heard stories, that a lycanthrope who shifts too often will forget how to be human. You believe that? Have you ever seen it happen?”

  “Not personally.”

  He arched a brow as if his point had been proven. “Nobody changes two days in a row. My actors work in shifts, trading out the human roles, and the show is dark two days a week. We know what we’re doing. We’ve been at it for a while.”

  In other words, trust him, he’s a professional. I couldn’t get past the feeling that this was all. . . weird. Exploitative, maybe. Like a freakshow. Which begged the question, “What gave you the idea to get your were-tiger buddies together and stage a show in Vegas?”

  His smile turned sly, back to his romance-cover-model look. “We had inspiration. You don’t think we’re the first to do this, do you? This sort of thing’s been going on for thousands of years.”

  “Some of those dancing bears at the carnival might not have been bears, is that what you’re saying?”

  “I’m saying some of those bears absolutely weren’t bears. Ah, here’s someone who wants to meet you.” He turned back to look.

  The tiger stalked toward me from behind the curtain. Gaze focused, it moved with purpose, striding without a sound.

  I’d seen tigers in the zoo. Maybe not up close, but close enough, and they were big animals. Intellectually, I knew this wasn’t as big as a real tiger. It seemed maybe two hundred pounds. But even a small tiger was plenty big enough for me. He still came up to my waist, and his paws looked like they could bat me to the floor in a heartbeat, without effort.

  I stood my ground. Kept my shoulders back and let him know I wasn’t afraid of him. He didn’t show any aggression. No bared teeth or raised hackles, nothing that indicated he wanted a fight or thought I was here looking for a fight. He had to sense what I was. He had to smell the lycanthropy on me. Heck, he had to smell the anxiety.

  He kept moving toward me, until I could feel the heat from his body, then at the last moment he turned and bumped my thigh with his shoulder. He rubbed the whole length of his body against me, his tail curling. Then I realized: he smelled like Nick. This was Nick, who’d given me the tickets. We’d already met.

  Turning around, he rubbed his other side against me and tilted his head to look up at me with bright gold eyes. He looked like a giant kitten who wanted to play.

  Tentative, I touched the top of his head, behind an ear. He butted my hand encouragingly, so I started petting him. His coat was thick and silky. I brushed my fingers through it. He closed his eyes and seemed positively blissful. I smiled. He was just a big friendly cat. Until I thought about petting the human Nick like this. I curled my hands up and drew them to my sides. The tiger actually looked disappointed, blinking up at me.

  “You’ve met Nick, I think,” Balthasar said.

  “I guess I have,” I said.

  Two more animals approached, ducking from behind Balthasar and darting forward. Two of the leopards, only slightly smaller than Nick the tiger. Like the tiger, their tails were flicking, their ears up, and they practically ran into me, smoothing their coats along my legs.

  “And these are?”

  “Sanjay and Avi,” he said.

  I now had three big cats pinning me to the wall, straining for my attention as they butted their heads against me and flicked their tails.

  “I’m not entirely sure I’m comfortable here,” I said. I was having trouble seeing which tails and paws went with which cat, as they writhed around each other in their efforts to get to me, orange and yellow fur, stripes and spots, all blending together. At least they weren’t fighting.

  “I told you they’d like you.”

  This must have been what it felt like to be surrounded by toddlers. I tried to extricate myself from the mob, distracted by their pawing. Wolf was bristling.

  “You should come back and meet them after they’ve rested.”

  “I think I might.”

  “We have our own suite here in the hotel. On the eighth floor. Follow your nose.” He touched Nick on the shoulder. “Come on, guys. She’ll visit later. Have a good afternoon, Kitty.”

  “Thanks. You, too.”

  All three cats glanced at me one last time befo
re turning to follow Balthasar farther backstage.

  That was awfully surreal.

  By the time I wandered out of the theater, the lobby was empty, the box office shut up for a break before the evening show. The place took on a surprisingly peaceful atmosphere, almost like it was sleeping. I wandered into the lobby, gaze inward, relishing the calm. I wasn’t expecting to see a figure leaning against the wall near the box office, waiting. Maybe I should have been.

  Odysseus Grant managed to look like he was on his way to a formal dinner party or the Oscars, even offstage, even in the middle of the day. He wasn’t wearing a tux this time, but his dark trousers were tailored, with a perfect crease, and his white shirt was crisp, even with the collar open and sleeves rolled up. He straightened from the wall when he saw me.

  I stopped. “Are you stalking me?”

  “It does seem that way, doesn’t it?”

  We were in a public place. He couldn’t make me disappear. I couldn’t let him intimidate me.

  “May I ask why?” I said, annoyed.

  Grant nodded toward the theater. “It’s intriguing, isn’t it? It’s less a trained-animal show than a dance.”

  “Yeah. Kind of,” I said. “When you know what to look for. Otherwise it looks like magic. Kind of like your act.”

  His smile lasted the length of a blink. “Balthasar has certainly taken an interest in you.”

  “What’s your problem with him? Why the warning? It seems like they’re just my kind of people—lycanthropes using their abilities to make their way in the world. Turning lemons into lemonade and all that.”

  His expression revealed nothing. It was his stage face. “One wonders how a wolf would do in an act like that.”

  Not well, I’d guess. “I’m not looking for another career. I have enough shameless exhibitionism in the one I have. Why are you so interested in what happens to me?”

  “Balthasar, his people—they’re not what they seem.”

  “Look, instead of a vague warning why can’t you just tell me why you don’t like them? Give me some information here.”