by Trisha Telep
“I’m sorry, mon chaton,” she said for the umpteenth time as we ran. “I know you liked it here, and I know you were looking forward to your date Saturday.”
“I’ll live.”
“You liked him.”
I shrugged. “Just a guy. Probably turn out to be another jock-jerk anyway.”
Being on the run meant home-schooling. Home-schooling meant limited opportunities to meet guys. So I did most of my socializing at the gym, which had lots of really hot guys. Unfortunately, most of them knew how hot they were. Luke had seemed different, but I told myself it was just a front. That always made leaving easier.
We dashed behind a convenience store. I leapt onto the wooden fence and ran along the top of it.
“Slow down, Kat,” Marguerite called behind me. “You will fall.”
I shot a grin back. “Never. I’m a werecat, remember?”
She rolled her eyes. “There is no such thing.”
“Because I’m the first.”
It was an old routine, and we knew our lines by heart. I’ve loved cats for as long as I can remember, and I’m convinced it has something to do with my supernatural type. Marguerite says no—there are no werecats. She says the reason I like felines so much is just because, when I was little, people always told me I looked like one, with my sleek, golden brown hair and tilted green eyes. Even from the day we met, Marguerite had called me chaton—kitten.
Back when I lived with my parents and was named Kathy, I’d always wanted to be called Kat, but my mother said that was silly and Kathy was a perfectly good name. When I went away with Marguerite, I had to change my name, and I’d done so happily, wanting something fancier, more exotic, like her name. So I became Katiana, but everyone called me Kat.
I darted along the top of the wooden fence, then hopped down behind the bus station. When I headed for it, Marguerite caught my arm.
“You will stay close to me when we are inside,” she said. “No running off.”
“I’m not five, Mags,” I said.
I could also point out that she was the one the hunters were after, but she’d only say that still put me in danger. Given a chance, they’d grab me as bait for her. I’d say if they did grab me expecting a hysterical sixteen-year-old girl, they’d be in for a shock, but I wasn’t dumb enough to put myself in harm’s way. Rule one of martial arts: never underestimate your opponent, and I didn’t know a thing about these opponents. Marguerite said they’d be supernaturals—all vampire hunters are, because humans don’t know about our world—so we could be facing anything from spellcasters to half-demons to werewolves.
As we entered the trash-strewn alley, I noticed a foot poking out from a cardboard box.
“Dinner,” I said, pointing.
“We do not have time—”
“We’ll make time,” I said, lowering my voice as I strode to the box. “You need your energy.”
I bent and peered into the box. The guy inside was sound asleep. I motioned Marguerite over. She took a look and hesitated, glancing over at me. She’d rather not do this with me watching, but I was right—she needed the energy boost. So, she daintily wedged her shoulders into the box, moving soundlessly. Another pause. I couldn’t see her face, but I knew what she was doing—extending her fangs.
When she struck, it was with the speed and precision of a hawk. Her fangs sank in. The homeless guy jerked awake, but before he could make a sound, he slumped back into the box, out cold again. A vampire’s saliva contains a sedative to knock their prey out while they feed. Like I said, perfectly evolved predators.
I didn’t look away as Marguerite fed. Why would I? She didn’t turn her head when I downed a burger. Humans kill animals for food. Vampires knock out humans and borrow some blood. People would donate that pint at a clinic to keep a human alive, so what’s wrong with taking it fresh from the source to keep a vampire alive? Marguerite says I’m oversimplifying things. I say she overcomplicates them.
When Marguerite finished feeding, she took a moment to seal the wound and make sure the man was comfortable. Then she tucked five twenty-dollar bills into his pocket, and motioned for me to fall in behind her as she continued to the end of the alley.
Of the five people inside the bus depot, two were sprawled out asleep on the seats. They clutched tickets in their hands, as if to prove they had a reason to be there, but I bet if I checked the tickets they’d be months old. Homeless, like the guy in the alley.
Marguerite caught my elbow and whispered, “We will go home, Katiana. I promise.”
“I wasn’t thinking about that.”
But, of course, I was. I missed home. Not the house or even the neighborhood, just the feeling of having a house and a neighborhood. Even as I walked past the posted bus schedule, I couldn’t help looking down the list of names, finding my city. Montreal. Not the city where I was born, but my real home with Marguerite, the one we’d been forced to leave when the hunters tracked her down two years ago.
We walked to the counter.
“Kathy,” a woman called.
I didn’t turn. Marguerite had drilled that instinct out of me years ago. But I still tensed and looked up. Reflected in the glass of the ticket booth, I saw a woman approaching me, smiling.
“Kathy.”
Marguerite caught my hand, squeezing tight. I glanced over, slowly, saw the woman and my gut went cold—a sudden, mindless reaction, something deep in me that said I knew her, and I should run, run as fast as I could.
Still gripping my hand, Marguerite started for the door. The woman only watched us as we hurried outside.
“She knew my name,” I said.
“Yes, they know about you. That is why—”
“She knew my real name.”
Marguerite looked away. I stopped walking. When she tugged my hand, I locked my knees.
“What’s going—?”
“Not now. We must leave.”
I didn’t move.
She met my gaze. “Do you trust me, Kat?”
I answered by letting her lead me to the sidewalk.
“We will call a taxi,” she said, fumbling with her cell phone.
Two figures stepped from behind the bus depot and started bearing down on us.
“Marguerite?”
She looked up. “Merde!” She grabbed my hand again. “Run, Kat.”
“But we’re in a public place. Shouldn’t we just go back inside—?”
“They will not care. Run!”
I raced back down the alley, past the homeless guy in his cardboard box, and vaulted the fence, Marguerite at my heels. As I tore down the next alley, two more figures stepped across the end of it. I wheeled. The other two men were coming over the fence.
Trapped.
The men in front of us didn’t say a word, just started walking slowly our way. I squared my shoulders and flexed my hands, then broke into a sprint, running straight for them, hoping that would catch them off-guard. If not, I’d rather start the fight before the other two joined in.
One of the men reached into his pocket. He pulled out something. It was still barely dawn, the alley dark with shadows, and I saw only a silver object. A cell phone maybe. Or a radio. Or—
He lifted a gun. Pointed at me.
“Kat!” Marguerite shrieked.
She grabbed my shirt and wrenched me back. I flew off my feet. She dashed in front of me. The gun fired—a quiet pfft. The bullet hit her in the chest. She toppled beside me, hands clutching her heart, gasping. Her face, though, was perfectly calm. No blood flowed between her fingers.
“On my count,” she whispered. “Three, two, one …”
We leapt up. Marguerite went for the guy with the gun. He fell back in surprise. She grabbed the gun as I caught the second guy by the wrist and threw him down. Behind us, the other two were running, feet pounding the pavement, getting louder by the second.
Marguerite kicked her opponent to the ground, and we ran. As we did, I glanced over. The hole in her chest was closing fast, le
aving only a rip in her shirt.
“—vampire?” one of the men behind us was saying. “Why the hell didn’t someone know she was a vampire?”
I looked at Marguerite. She met my gaze, then tore hers away, and we kept going.
On the next street, we saw a city bus and flagged it down. The driver was nice enough to stop. We climbed on. I looked out the window as we pulled away from the curb, but there was no sign of our pursuers.
“They aren’t vampire hunters, are they?” I murmured.
“No.”
I looked over at her. “Were there ever vampire hunters?”
She shook her head, gaze down. “No. Only them.”
“Coming for me, not you. They’re from that place, aren’t they? Part of that group that experimented on me.”
“The Edison Group. Yes. At first, I thought they might be vampire hunters. There is such a thing, though rare, so I should have known …” She shook her head. “I wanted them to be vampire hunters. When I realized otherwise … I should have told you.”
“Yeah.” I met her gaze. “You should have.”
“I’m sorry.”
I nodded. She put her arm around my shoulders, and I rested my head on hers and closed my eyes.
I don’t remember much about my mother and father. They’d always seemed more like paid guardians than parents. They’d treated me well and given me everything I needed. Almost everything. There was no cuddling at my house. No curling up on Daddy’s lap with a book. No bedtime tuck-in with hugs, kisses, and tickles from Mommy. I hadn’t known I was missing anything, only that I wasn’t a happy child.
The hospital visits didn’t help. Once a month, late at night, my father would wake me up and we’d drive to this place that he said was a hospital, but looking back, I know it was a laboratory. We always had to go in through the back door, where we’d be met by a tall man named Dr. Davidoff. He’d whisk us into a room and run all kinds of tests on me. Painful tests that left me weak and sore for days. My parents said I was sick and needed these visits. I’d say I felt fine, and they’d say, “Yes, that’s why you need to keep going.”
When I was in kindergarten, a new library assistant came to our school. Her name was Marguerite and she was the prettiest lady I’d ever seen. The nicest, too. All the kids wanted to help her put away books and listen to her talk with that exotic accent. But I was her special pet. Her kitten. Whenever I was alone at recess, she’d come over and talk to me. And she’d keep me company after school, while I waited for my father to pick me up.
One day, Marguerite said she had to leave and asked me to come with her. I said yes. Simple as that. I was five and I loved Marguerite, and I didn’t particularly love my parents, so it seemed like a good trade-up. I went to live with her in Montreal, where I was Katiana and she was my Aunt Marguerite, and the story of how I came to live with her was a delicious secret between us.
When I’d been with her a few years, Marguerite told me the truth. I was a supernatural, and a subject in a genetic modification experiment, supposedly to reduce the negative side-effects of supernatural powers. Marguerite had been part of a network of supernaturals concerned about the experiments. She’d been assigned to monitor me, so she’d taken the job at my school.
When she saw how miserable I was, she told the group, but they wouldn’t let her do anything—her job was to only watch and report. Marguerite couldn’t do that. So she’d asked me to come away with her, and no matter what has happened since, I’ve never regretted saying yes.
The bus went downtown, so that’s where we got off.
“There is a car rental place on the other side of the river,” Marguerite said. “We will go there.”
I nodded and said nothing. It was barely seven, and the downtown streets were almost empty. A vehicle rolled by now and then, most of them cube vans making early deliveries. A few police cars crawled along the streets, looking for trouble left over from the night before.
Sleepy-eyed businessman dragged themselves into office buildings, coffee clutched in their hands, the smell making my stomach perk up. If we’d been back at the apartment, I’d be just rolling out of bed, a steaming mug of hazelnut coffee on my nightstand, Marguerite knowing that woke me better than any alarm clock.
As we reached the end of the block, the smell of coffee was overwhelmed by a far less enticing odor: the river. I could hear it, too, the crash of the dam not yet swallowed by the roar of downtown traffic. As we turned the corner, a blast of wind hit, and I swore I could feel the spray of water.
I shivered. Marguerite reached for my backpack. “Let me get your sweater.”
“I’m okay.”
“A coffee then.” She gave a wan smile. “I know you like your morning coffee. It will not be your fancy flavored sort, but—”
“I’m okay.”
She turned another corner, getting us out of the wind. “You’re not okay, Kat. I know that. I …”
“You thought it was for the best. I get that.” I cleared my throat, anxious to change the subject. “I recognized the woman in the bus station. I think she was one of the nurses from the lab. I guess they finally tracked me down, and now they want to kill me.”
“No. They would not do that. You are too valuable.”
I snorted. “Yeah, as a trophy. If you didn’t think he meant to shoot me, you wouldn’t have jumped in the way.”
She walked a few more steps before answering. “I am certain they would not kill you. But certain enough to risk your life on it? No.” She looked over at me. “You are valuable, Kat. Even in their experiment, you were special. That is why you had to go to the laboratory at night, away from the other children, hidden from most of those who worked there.”
“So I was a top-secret part of a top-secret experiment?”
A tiny smile. “Something like that.”
“A werecat. Gotta be.”
I expected her to roll her eyes, shoot back her usual line, but she only hunched her shoulders against the cold morning air, and stared off down the empty street.
“The bullet,” I said. “Is it still … in you?”
She nodded. When I tried to press her on that, worried that it might be dangerous, she brushed off my concern with uncharacteristic impatience, her gaze fixed on the next corner. Then she caught my arm.
“Someone is there. He stopped at the corner.”
I could come up with a dozen logical explanations for someone to pause at a corner, but Marguerite held me still as she strained to look, listen and sense.
“Someone else is approaching,” she whispered. “He stops beside the first …”
Vampires don’t have super-sonic hearing, but it was so quiet that even I could pick up the murmur of conversation. Marguerite pushed me into an alcove as footsteps sounded. Then a man cursed. Marguerite pushed me farther into the alcove, and we huddled there, listening.
“Are you sure your spell picked them up?” the man asked.
“It detected the girl,” a woman said. “It only works on the living. And only intermittently with her.”
The man said something I didn’t catch.
“I suppose so,” his companion replied. “Let me cast again.”
She murmured words in a foreign language. A spell. I shivered. Marguerite rubbed my arm, but it wasn’t the cold that made me tremble now. I might be a supernatural, and I might live with one, but their world was still foreign to me, mysterious. I don’t like mysteries. I like what I can see, feel, touch and understand. I like what I can fight. Spells? I had no idea how to defend myself against those.
We pressed deeper into the shadows as the voices approached.
“Nothing,” the woman said.
“We—”
“Shhh,” she said. “I heard something.”
We’d barely breathed, so it wasn’t us. A door creaked open. Footsteps again, but it was another pair, coming from the opposite direction, like someone had stepped out of a shop down the road. The footsteps headed our way.
&nb
sp; Marguerite’s slender hands flew in familiar code, outlining a plan. I barely needed to watch—I knew what she’d be thinking. With a bystander approaching, our pursuers would be focused on getting past him, any weapons hidden. So when they reached the alcove—
Marguerite sprang first, grabbing the man as he stepped into view, then yanking him into the darkened alcove. I leapt out behind her. The woman backpedaled, hands sailing up, lips parting. An invisible blow hit me in the chest. I tottered backward. That was it—just thrown off balance. I smiled. Now that I could handle.
I charged. Her hands flew up again. I chopped them down, disrupting her spell. She started to cast again, this time not using her hands. A witch spell. A roundhouse kick knocked her off her feet and cut that one short.
Marguerite leapt between us. She grabbed the woman and dragged her into the alcove. Inside, the man lay on his back, out cold from her bite.
As Marguerite took the woman into the shadows for the same treatment, I looked down the street. A chubby guy in a business suit stood twenty feet away. Just stood there, travel mug raised halfway to his lips, like he’d been frozen there the whole time, watching the fight.
“Morning,” I said.
He skittered across the road and took off the other way.
“Looks like he didn’t want to play Good Samaritan today,” I said as Marguerite joined me on the sidewalk. “But he probably has a cell, so he might call …” I stopped, seeing her holding what looked like a phone. “Did they manage to call someone?”
“A radio with a GPS.” She lifted the box. “They sent our coordinates.”
She dropped it over the side of a trash bin, and we took off. As we turned the corner, we saw the woman from the bus station rounding the next one down the block. I wheeled. Two unfamiliar men were approaching from the rear. I hesitated, telling myself they were just humans, bystanders, heading off to work. Then one reached into his coat and pulled out a gun.
Marguerite grabbed my shoulder, steering me to the nearest exit: a service lane just ahead. At the mouth, she caught my arm and peered down the lane, making sure it wasn’t a dead end. There was a wall thirty feet down, but the lane continued, turning left.
