by Lee Hayton
Except that boots were stamping in unison down the corridor in the direction we needed to go.
“Did the guard have anything else useful on him?” I asked. “A weapon, a map, a fob to release the exit door?”
“Her not him,” Miss Tiddles responded, then shook her head. “Nothing apart from a set of silver handcuffs and I don’t think they’ll be useful.”
I nodded, then changed my mind, skipping out of the cell and crossing to the desk to pull them out of the dead woman’s belt. I tried not to look at what the cat had done to her. The blood sprayed everywhere actually helped to cover much of the carnage.
“Remind me not to get on the wrong side of you,” I said with a low whistle. “Which way?”
Miss Tiddles pointed in the direction away from the clip of boot heels striking concrete. It occurred to me after we’d run fifty yards down the hall, that she probably didn’t know the way any better than I did.
“How did you get in here?” I asked, looking over my shoulder.
“It’s easy,” she answered. “There are plenty of entryways. But first, you need to be a shape-shifting cat.”
The answer was ludicrous, so again, I ignored it. A set of double doors, locked from the opposite side, took up my concentration. I looked at the walls, searching for an electronic connection—something I could manipulate to break us out of this place.
Damn the empire. For some reason, they’d constructed the building with old-fashioned turnkeys and locks rather than wiring it into a mainframe.
On second thought, perhaps I knew the reason. They’d known about creatures like me—had created me from roadkill—so it stood to reason they’d protect themselves against the new threat.
“Do you have a gun or a knife?” I asked, my baby doll voice rising with my increasing desperation. The woman shook her head, looking over her shoulder as the boots marched with more clarity.
Damn it. Brute strength then. It was the only answer.
Adding two days idle in a cell—no food, no water—to my already weakened state, didn’t bode well for my plan. However, the renewed fear of the mobility imprisonment gave added impetus to my actions.
I braced one leg against the concrete walls and put my shoulder to the locked bar, pushing back with all my weight. At the same time, I gripped the metal juncture above the lock and twisted with all my strength.
Yeah. I still got it, baby.
The lock gave a groan and twisted. I rattled the bars, but the gate held in place. With the woman humming frantically beside me, accompanied by the staccato beat of heels on concrete, I tried again.
This time, the lock squealed and twisted in the other direction. I hauled at it again before it had a chance to acclimatize itself to the new shape. Another squeal, a groan as the linking fibers in the alloy gave up their grip, and the lock fell to the floor.
“Come on,” Miss Tiddles said, clapping my shoulder as she pushed through the swinging gate ahead of me. “Don’t hang about!”
I followed her, rubbing my shoulder where the press of metal had left a sizeable dent, trying to pop it out. We rounded the corner and stopped short. Shadows on the wall in front of us showed that soon more soldiers would be in the corridor. They were advancing from both sides.
I looked Miss Tiddles up and down, categorizing her clothing. A long leather coat—PU leather, she wasn’t a caveman—hung over jeans and boots that buckled up to her knees.
Compared to my tattered Joy Division T-shirt and yoga pants, I reckoned she had the jump on me.
“Put these on me,” I ordered, shoving the handcuffs at her. “Then lead me as though I’m a captive of yours.”
Her eyes widened, and she frowned. For a moment, I thought I was going to have to explain in a lot more detail—something that neither of us had time for. Then she grasped the concept and gripped the cuffs, snapping them onto my wrists and pulling them tight.
“This way,” Miss Tiddles shouted while the shadows on the wall in front of us halted in confusion. “If the minister doesn’t like you, then I’m afraid you’ll be spending the rest of the year down in the cells. Make an effort this time, will you? I know you’re dressed like scum, but if you wiggle your ass, perhaps he’ll overlook it.”
I mumbled something, wishing that Miss Tiddles wasn’t quite so good at acting. She reminded me of a compilation of my mom and a guard from the last time I’d been held captive. A combination that floated straight up from hell.
“Watch it,” Miss Tiddles snarled, catching at my arm as though I’d tried to get away from her. The movement allowed us both to duck our heads away from the oncoming stomp of soldiers.
They split apart like the red sea, and my Moses led me through. When we were out the other side, I suppressed a grin and resisted the urge to look back. Miss Tiddles hit me on the shoulder again and jerked my hands. “Speed up. Some of us have deadlines. We don’t have the luxury of lazing about a cell all day.”
She was far too good at this.
With the empire men falling further away behind us, I twisted my neck, searching for an exit. When Miss Tiddles gave my handcuffed wrists another shake, I turned my head and growled. “Act’s over,” I said, baring my teeth.
Miss Tiddles did the same back to me, and I froze for a moment, mid-step. Then my mind shoved all my thoughts to one side, insisting EXIT was the only consideration.
“Over there?” I said, nodding at a slight indent in the curve of the concrete wall. The woman swayed to that side, tilting her head and squinting at the markings as though she struggled to see.
“I think so,” she said. I strode ahead of her and looked up and down the corridor to check nobody had a line of sight on us. Then I lifted one foot, and karate kicked it out, hitting the side wall just below where a handle should be.
“Nope,” I said, grimacing as the impact shuddered up my calf, my knee, my thigh. When it dug sharp teeth into my hip, I hopped in place, closing my eyes against the pain.
“Get a wriggle on,” Miss Tiddles shouted again. I opened my eyes to see a shadow moving along the wall in front of us once more. An individual, this time. Meandering, rather than marching.
As the slope of the corridor revealed the man sauntering along, I spoke just as loudly back to her, “Where’s the exit, then? I’m sick of walking.”
She hissed and struck me on the side of the head. Play-acting, maybe, but the blow caused ringing in my ears. It was worth it. The man looked directly at the side wall before his eyes flicked forward again.
The exit. Indistinguishable from the wall unless someone familiar with the place looked straight at it.
Once the man had gone past and was out of earshot, I kicked the area he’d glanced at. The memory of the last incident recurred just as I struck out, and my body recoiled from the force.
It didn’t matter. This time, the wall gave way, opening out into another corridor. This new one wasn’t lined with cells, it was pockmarked with windows and held the cool breeze of fresh air.
“I know this part,” Miss Tiddles said, hurrying forward. She pressed at a window, and the glass tipped outward at the base and leaned inward at the top. I eyed the gap with some suspicion, glad that I hadn’t eaten for two days.
It would be a squeeze.
Miss Tiddles had already jumped through, twisting her body in lithe motions that resembled a pouring liquid rather than a solid mammal. I pulled at my wrists, flicking the silver-veined handcuffs into pieces, so I had the full use of my hands to maneuver my way through.
I jumped through the gap, holding my breath and thinking thin. It didn’t negate the physical reality of my form, however. I stuck fast. My legs wriggled and kicked on one side while my arms and torso jiggled on the other.
“Can you give me a pull?” I asked the woman.
Just as Miss Tiddles stepped forward to grasp my forearm, the door opened down the corridor.
Chapter Thirteen
Panic roared through my body. For a moment, it seemed impossible. My hips and as
s stuck fast in the gap, no matter how much I squirmed. With one heave on my outstretched arm, though, Miss Tiddles pulled me through. The momentum catapulted me over to tumble face first into the mud.
“Nice,” Miss Tiddles said, stepping back from me with a curl of her lip. She licked the side of her hand and pressed it against an errant strand of wavy hair on her temple. For the first time, I truly comprehended that the woman was telling the truth.
The redhead in front of me was Norman’s cat.
I held my finger up to my lips, angling my head to hear the corridor on the other side of the window. Footsteps walked past, never hesitating at the open window that I’d just fallen through.
Once another door opened back in the connecting corridor where we’d come from, I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I turned to look at the ginger-haired woman standing beside me.
“What are you?” I asked, stepping back as danger signals twigged up and down my body.
She sniffed, her pert nose poking straight up into the air, demonstrating her affront.
“I’m a shapeshifting cat,” Miss Tiddles answered. “I already told you that. I suppose that I’m officially a werecat, if you want to get all fancy.”
I burst into laughter. The relief of escaping my prison cell added to the sense of unreality. Like a flashback to my LSD years, the fabric of the space around me rippled, tore apart, and regrouped.
“It sounds like a made-up thing to me,” I said.
I stretched out my hand and touched it gently to the side of Miss Tiddles’ face. She tilted around, so I was stroking her neck while my eyes widened in fascination.
“Come on,” Miss Tiddles said, breaking away. “We still need to get out of the compound. I got in through a gap in the fence back here.” She waved a hand to indicate the place.
“Let’s go, then.”
We ran for the fence line, both of us bending double to avoid being hit by the turning spotlight. At the gap, I let Miss Tiddles go first, following up and having to tear a larger hole in the fence when my leg got caught.
Damn it. Now my yoga pants had a fashionable rip.
“I hitchhiked on the back of a truck,” the cat continued. “Do you think you’re up to the task?”
I looked at her in the moonlight, gauging her words. “I can jump in a truck, sure,” I said. “Not without being seen, though. I’m five foot ten, for goodness sake.”
“How about you work your mind magic on the driver, then?”
I frowned. “While they’re driving a car toward us at full speed? Does that sound safe to you? Isn’t there another way? What about the train tracks?”
I indicated the steel lines a couple of football fields distance away.
“Besides,” I continued, “until we get Norman it’s a moot point, isn’t it? We need to hurry. If we can’t get into the vampire compound soon, then we won’t be able to rescue him before sunup.”
Something about the way the cat looked at me sent a chill zapping along my nerves. A faint frown of pity. A twist of her lips that said Are you kidding?
“I don’t think we can bust into the vampire compound,” Miss Tiddles answered. “They’ll soon be sounding the alarms over your disappearance. They’ll stake guards ten thick around Norman.” She shook her head. “There’s no way we’ll be able to get him out.”
I took a step back, looking behind me at the fortress I’d so easily escaped from. The ease had been because no one expected the effort. Miss Tiddles was right. Another minute or two, they’d be on our trail, and the whole area would be on high alert.
When Norman and I had been through this before, we’d been together. Now, we were separated. To go back in would be to hand ourselves over to the empire.
“Where’s the nearest phone?”
The cat stared at me with green eyes that darkened to amber pools of liquid in the night. She shrugged. “I don’t know. Not in the habit of calling anybody, am I?”
“I don’t know what you’re in the habit of,” I shot back. “Far as I can tell, I don’t know you at all. Why’d you pick me?”
The question burst out of me before I had the chance to think about it. The cat tilted her head to one side, looking more feline than she had since first appearing in my cell.
“I had to choose one of you. I couldn’t rescue both.”
“But you’re Norman’s cat.” The words sounded ridiculous coming out of my mouth. In front of me stood a grown woman, looking years older than I did. To assign her as a possession to a teenager, was ridiculous.
“I knew what you meant,” Miss Tiddles said.
When I stared at her in puzzlement, she frowned back at me.
After a long pause, Miss Tiddles continued, “When you said that you hadn’t chosen the body they built you.” She paused, pursing her lips and scrunching up her nose. “I knew what you meant.”
A horror that I’d shut out of my thoughts for too long burst up in a surge of bile, wiping my mind clean. I staggered back a step, darkness threatening to close in and never let go. I curled my hands into fists and pounded them into my thighs, just so I could connect back to my body. I didn’t have time to get hysterical. Norman needed a savior right now, and I owed him one.
“If we can get to a phone,” I said slowly, opening my eyes cautiously to find the world still waiting there for me to return. “There’s someone who might be able to help us.”
I touched my right hand to my jeans pocket then dropped it back to my side. The man on the other end of that card frightened the life out of me. This was the end of the road, though. Without a glut of friends in high places, I only had one way to turn.
“There’s a town not far from here,” Miss Tiddles answered. “If we walk fast, we could get there in an hour or so.”
“Can you change back?” I asked, calculating the timing, “into a cat, I mean.”
“I know what you mean,” she said. “Why?”
“If I can carry you, I can run there. It’ll get us there in half the time.”
“Don’t look at me,” she said, and I turned my back in obedience. There was a grunt of effort, then a moment later, Miss Tiddles wended her way between my legs.
It felt odd to pick her up and tuck her under my arm. After a moment, I turned her around so she could rest her forearms on my shoulder, looking behind me for trouble.
I started to jog. When I found my rhythm, I increased my speed until I was sprinting along the side of the road. I hoped when we found a phone, it was in time.
My energy supplies were still low. By the time I reached the town, my pace had slowed to a fast jog. I stopped near a garage on the outskirts and turned my back while Miss Tiddles changed again.
“Should we try in there?” she asked, pointing at the service station shop, illuminated with the harsh glare of far too many fluorescent bulbs.
I shook my head and walked along the street, uncertain what I was searching for. There’d be no phone boxes by the side of the road like there had been in my childhood. Mobile phones had signed their death knell with more authority than the urine of ten thousand homeless tramps.
“Shouldn’t we just stop at the first open shop?” Miss Tiddles asked, urgency crowding her voice. “If we don’t call soon, then everyone will pack up and go home.”
Unless we wanted to stop at a fast food joint, then she had a point, but I still kept walking, cutting across the main street to head into a back alleyway.
Ah. There it was.
Without even knowing what it was I searched for, I’d found it all the same. A dive bar, crowded with regular patrons. Early-bird hookers sat on stools next to their flashy pimps while the dedicated drinkers looked straight into their beer.
“This one,” I said. “We’ll find something in here.”
After years on the run, I knew these pubs like the back of my hand. The games the patrons played, the barmaids who could be trusted.
“They won’t have a payphone in there,” the cat said, hanging back. The hair on her head had rise
n into a ginger bouffant.
“We’re not looking for a payphone,” I said, hooking my hand through her arm. “We’re looking for someone with deep pockets and an ugly mug.”
Before I could explain further, I spotted my perfect mark on the far side of the bar. He’d just shouted drinks to two young ladies, both of whom giggled and immediately took their glasses to lean against the wall, far away.
I’d pity the fellow, but given he had thirty years on both of them combined, my sympathy was dried up.
I squeezed in next to him, dragging the cat in beside me even though she screwed up her face in displeasure. Bars didn’t exist for the fun of it. The sooner she learned that the better off she’d be.
“What’s your cheapest drink?” I asked the barman in as loud a voice as my baby-doll vocal cords could manage. “I need a stiff one, and I can’t afford much.”
When he smirked at the double entendre, I blushed and turned my head away, ending up facing the man with his money face hanging out.
“Buy you a drink?” he asked, just like I wanted him to. I nodded, and he said, “And what about one for your friend?”
“A glass of milk, please,” Miss Tiddles said. Apparently, fitting in just wasn’t her thing.
“I’ll take a vodka and cola if that’s okay?” I said. When he nodded, I gave him my broadest smile. The gratitude was only half-faked.
“Is there a table free?” I asked before turning to look around. The crowd behind me, heaved as something happened on the giant TV screen.
“‘Fraid not, love,” he said. “You have to be in early to grab one of those.”
When the bartender served up my drink, I took it and raised the glass to him, mouthing the word “thanks.” I had a sip—well, I gulped half of it down—and his eyes brightened at the speed.
When I lifted my elbow to tip the glass up again, I pretended that someone to my right had jostled my elbow. The drink sprayed straight across the man’s shirt and spattered along the arm of his leather jacket.
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” I grabbed a stack of napkins off the bar and patted down the stain that I’d caused. Halfway through the charade, I also pocketed his phone, hoping the bulge wouldn’t be noticeable through the pockets of my jeans.
