Catspell

by Colleen Shannon

  “I told the driver to return in an hour. He’ll be waiting.” Arielle held out her hand. “Thank you. You are a kind woman.”

  Madame Aurora ignored the outstretched hand and instead gave Arielle a brief, matronly hug. “Study, as your mother said, my dear. Somewhere in the things she left you are the answers you seek. They will guide you.”

  Arielle gave a hollow laugh. “To what? To become a toy for a cat’s paw for all time…or to die because I refuse to live a half life, like my mother, and must stop the madness overtaking me. What choice is this?” She exited, her bitter words ringing still after she left. Her gaze was blinded with tears, so she didn’t see the glowing eyes watching her from an alcove.

  As the Hansom cab drew away, a horse tied to a hitching post shied aside.

  It was a powerful black stallion of Arab blood.

  A gold-headed lion’s cane rapped on the medium’s door.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  An hour later, Arielle was climbing into bed to stare dull eyed into the darkness. The fact that she could see every object in the room as if it were daylight was no longer a mystery to her. The strange hunger she’d felt for cream, the allure of Luke’s scent, which she now realized must have been catnip…all the signs of her ‘becoming’ as her mother put it, had been there if she hadn’t been too afraid to heed them. Now, she was just exhausted, weary of looking for cures to an ailment no young woman should have to face.

  She’d spent thirty minutes searching the larder for her mother’s trunk, a box, anything, but she’d found no spell book, only a lovely costume of Egyptian glory. It was a diaphanous affair of golden fabric, finely pleated, that wrapped about the hips. Sandals inlaid with carnelian and lapis lazuli matched the beading on the gown. The almost bare bosom had an appurtenance that was unlike anything Arielle had ever seen. It was a breast plate of precious materials, gold, pearls, even a few unpolished diamonds, all inset into thin golden strands so finely woven that they would be flexible when worn.

  And the diadem. She put it on, thrilled, wishing for a mirror. She recognized the ancient symbols of the pharaoh: the vulture and the hooded cobra, attached to the front of a crown that would leave the wearer’s hair bare. For an instant, an image of her mother wearing these garments flashed in her mind. Her father, much younger, coming into the room and yelling. Her mother, crying, folding the garments away into a trunk…

  Arielle removed the diadem, feeling sad as she looked down at the very old but still lustrous garments. They didn’t look old enough to have been Cleopatra’s, surely, but if they were a legacy of her mother’s mother, they were still precious. The mere fact that her father had not wanted her mother to wear them, and denied giving them to her daughter, spoke highly of their power to transform, and not just in image. Bundling them into a clean cloth, Arielle took them with her to her room and hid them in a box beneath several hats.

  Then, exhausted, she changed and got into bed. Soon she’d demand the book from her father. Soon she’d look for the guidance both her mother and the medium promised. Tonight, she needed only to rest and forget the trials and tribulations that lay ahead. Her head scarcely touched the pillow before she was asleep.

  But it was not a dreamless sleep.

  They were there. Both of them.

  The one of brightness and the one of dark. As usual, she could not see their faces behind the lion headed masks they wore, but she’d always thought the golden haired one seemed the kinder of the two, for the man in the black-maned mask was rougher. He tormented her and teased her like the great cat he was, forcing her to taste of her own blood and marking her with scratches as he learned her end to end. Yet strangely, the marks roused rather than pained her, made her ache between the legs and reach back to him. But when she opened her eyes to see him better, a strange image stared back, a white leopard with spots and glowing blue eyes exactly the color of her own.

  From the cock of the head, the curve of the mouth, she knew she stared at herself, and what she would be soon enough. The lions and the snow leopard bounded off together into the darkness, roaring. Then came the sounds of tearing flesh and slurping, and she was drowning in the taste of blood….

  She awoke, drenched in sweat, her night rail sticking to her, so sick she had to rush to the ewer and vomit. As she straightened, wiping her mouth on a towel, she felt more than heard, “Arielle…come to me.”

  She backed away from the window even as her heart surged in response.

  “Arielle…” came the soft caress of verbal temptation. Smoke winnowed through the closed shutters and barred windows of her room, filling her chamber with a scent she recognized, a manly scent counterbalanced by the spice of cloves and catnip.

  The smoke began coalescing, glittering like gold dust, forming into a beautiful being. Luke stood before her, his chest broad and muscular, his legs lithe with controlled power. He wore only a simple sarong and sandals. He could have stepped down from an Egyptian relief, his face hidden behind a golden headed lion’s mask. But when he reached a hand toward her, the man’s hand was tipped with powerful lion’s claws.

  Arielle shrank against the wall even as her nostrils flared at the luscious scents. He smelled so good, looked so magnificent. Exactly like her dreams.

  But was he good or evil? The rogue thought came–does it matter? You are a superior being. Roam the night with him and become one with him.

  “Come, Arielle,” Luke commanded. “It is time to seek your destiny.”

  Arielle forced the word out through the lump in her throat. “No. Go away.”

  Luke stalked her as she sidled along the wall toward the hallway door. “You fear what you do not understand. Come with me, feel the wet grass soft on the pads of your feet, scent the night and let it fill you with its power. Such is your birth right. Why do you think your mother named you Arielle, lioness of God?”

  Arielle dashed around the corner and put a table between them, struggling hard to remember the taste of the blood in her dream. “My mother now regrets what she became and wants me to be stronger. I am a Blaylock, too.” Arielle took a deep, calming breath, trying to view the fantastic through her father’s phlegmatic English eyes, but the inhalation made her dizzy with the promise of Egyptian magic.

  Luke tossed the mask aside, revealing his handsome, frustrated face. “Every sinew and bone of you knows I speak the truth. All that makes you unique, all that makes you powerful, comes from your Egyptian blood. Embrace it. You are better than these weak humans. We can both live forever if you only accept your place by my side.”

  “And all that makes me human? You have no use for that, but it is very important to me.”

  Stubbornly, Arielle forced herself to stay put as Luke, with one swipe, knocked the table out of his way, leaving the glossy wood scratched with claw marks. Then he was on her, looking all male, but he had the acrid scent of the arousal of a cat. He touched her shoulder tenderly, with just a fingertip, and she realized he traced a scratch, remnant of her dreams. “Do you resist me because of this? Seth did this to you. He likes it rough. He is not meant for you, Arielle.”

  He tasted of cloves, and cinnamon, and catnip, his lips so soft she barely felt them. But she felt his body well enough. His bare chest was warm and vital against her own almost bare bosom. She felt so…one with him when he held her like this, gently, so that she could pull away whenever she pleased.

  So very unlike Seth, who commanded, and lectured, and was often rough. Yet the mere thought of him brought that tale tale oozing between her legs in a way Luke never had…No, she refused to think of him while she was in another man’s arms. Rebelliously she told herself she had to give Luke a chance. Perhaps he was the good one, after all. The Chosen One.

  It was easier than she’d expected. That luscious scent invaded her nostrils as he kissed her more deeply, insinuating itself into her brain until she was filled with its promise of a better life. A life of forever, where she could cast off the infirmities and fears of her human half for the cert
ainty of the hunt and the kill…Dimly she tried to latch onto her mother’s face, but she saw only Bast, the cat.

  “Be strong,” Bast said.

  She was strong. Had always been strong, never so much as now, in the arms of this being part man, part cat. Even more important, Luke filled her with joy, his tongue now gently assuaging the bitter parched feel of her mouth, like the Nile blessing the sere Egyptian plains with life. He was right. Unlike Seth, he had never hurt her, either physically or emotionally. What else could she do but embrace him and the power he drew from her?

  She kissed him back, fully and completely, her acrid scent of feline arousal joining his own, hairs beginning to grow on the backs of her hands, claws peeking from the tips of her fingers.

  Several miles away, in the alley leading to Madame Aurora’s modest home, bobbies swarmed, blocking off the narrow path and keeping the curious at bay. Lights blazed from every room of the house, illuminating the interior in the predawn darkness. Inside a physician could just be seen bent over something. The walls were spattered and streaked in what looked to be dark red paint. A curious boy sidled under the rope blocking off the alley and dashed up to the window for a closer look.

  He a better one than he bargained for. He cried out, his dirty hand over his mouth to force back a gag. Inside the room, a curtain was pulled shut, and then a bobbie was jerking him away and shoving him back outside the rope. This time, the boy went without protest. Some of his friends descended on him, whispering questions, but under the severe stare of several constables, the boy remained mum.

  “Did anyone see anythin’ hereabouts in the past hour or so?” demanded a tall, thin policeman wearing his distinctive bobbie hat. A portly man, in an apron streaked with flour, stepped forward.

  “I was leavin’ to deliver me bread when I saw this great black horse, and a man in a black cape standing quiet like. In that alcove there.” He pointed to a doorway directly across the street.

  “Quiet like? You mean like he didn’t want to be seen?” demanded the bobbie.

  “Aye. He moved so quick and silent, like a dream almost, that he scared me so I near dropped me tray of Johnny cakes and miner’s pies. He looked in me direction once and I ducked behind a corner because somethin’ about him…made me affrighted. But I couldn’t hide there forever, and when I looked again, I saw a girl come out, a girl in a green cloak, and I saw the Madame hug her good bye. Neither one o’ them saw the gent.”

  “You think he was a gent?”

  “He had the dress and manner ‘o one, and a great gold headed cane.” The baker scratched his head, making his floppy hat even floppier. “I went on me way just as the Madame opened the door and let him in. Like she knew him.”

  “Can you describe him?” demanded the bobbie, pencil poised over a notebook.

  “It were dark and he moved so fast, and he wore a hat. But I saw that there cane clear enough in the light by the door.”

  “Gold, you said?”

  “Aye.” The baker swallowed as the door opened and a blood spattered bobbie staggered outside to retch against the wall. “It were in the shape of a lion. A roaring lion.”

  About the time Madame Aurora’s mortal remains were wheeled away on a cart before a growing and frightened crowd of poor Londoners, the barred windows of Arielle’s room burst free, taking a good chunk of wall with them, the racket bringing instant lights all over the mansion. As the wall continued to crumble, two magnificent felines followed the shutters and barred windows down, jumping the two stories as if it were two feet.

  The larger of the two was a huge lion with a full golden mane and green eyes. The smaller, but no less imposing, was a snow leopard with enormous feet the size of small snowshoes. Her eyes were blue and she had a gorgeous white coat speckled with spots. They disappeared into the darkness just as several armed footmen, the earl in a cap, and Shelly in a robe, appeared on the grounds.

  They all stared at the debris on the cropped grass, up at the gaping hole, then into the darkness. Shelly bent and tugged at something. It was the tip of a lethal claw stuck in a shutter, still curved and gleaming in the torchlight. They all stared at it. Without apology, Shelly grabbed a torch from a footman and pulled two long hairs off the side of the wall where they’d caught on a rough piece of stone. Turning them this way and that in the light, she said to herself, “Gold. Like a lion’s mane.”

  The footmen and the earl all gasped.

  Shelly went back inside without a word, pocketing the claw and hairs.

  The earl collapsed where he stood. “Arielle,” he whispered. And then, “Isis.” He rocked himself back and forth, holding his head as if he could not bear the memories tormenting him.

  The footmen exchanged a glance. His wife had died long before their employment, but they did not need to be told that the earl had seen this behavior before. He was so distraught that it took two of the footmen to support him inside. While they poured him a brandy, Shelly hurried downstairs dressed now in her breeches, a plain linen shirt and long pea coat.

  “I shall do my best to follow them and bring her back,” she said curtly.

  The earl merely stared at a wall.

  “Get him a doctor and tell Ethan Perot I have gone to Luke Simball’s flat,” she ordered the footmen and the butler, who had just come into the hallway, half dressed.

  The earl roused himself from his daze. “Simball? Why him?”

  “Do you not know? Simball means lion in several African cultures. I have had colleagues investigate Luke Simball, and his whereabouts on the nights of the murders cannot be verified. Besides, I have other reasons to believe him dangerous.” She grabbed a brace of pistols from a footman. “Something else I have recently discovered: Seth Taub is his half brother, and both of them had recently moved to England when their father was killed by cats. Seth is not what he seems and is not to be trusted with Arielle either.” She slammed out the door, leaving the poor earl gaping.

  The lioness of God had never felt more free or alive. Luke was right: the plush, wet grass against the pads of her feet, the taste of the night on her tongue, these were the reasons she had been born. Why had she struggled against this becoming?

  By the time the ground hit her feet outside, she had only the vaguest realization that she now had four legs, not two. That her senses had never been so sharply acute, especially her vision and hearing. As she ran, she could feel her own muscles rippling, the whiskers making her nose unbearably sensitive.

  And the small structures they passed with lights blazing inside…how confining they seemed. How pitiful, as pitiful as the creatures they sheltered. She looked at the being loping next to her and wondered if God had ever made anything more magnificent. Luke as a man was powerful enough, but as a lion, golden mane streaming in the night breeze, he was indomitable, a being born of bright things only kings could reckon.

  And she knew, even without him saying so, that he wanted her for his consort. This was why he led her past the outskirts of London, avoiding the roads, deeper into the woods. This night would be her first test. Was she wild enough and strong enough to rule with him?

  The dwindling human side of Arielle realized that for once, her leg pained her not at all. She felt no unevenness in her gait nor awkwardness in her lope. She felt instead one with the night and the creature next to her who seemed to rule it.

  Here, the rustle of wild things scrambled out of their path. With a lethal paw, Luke swatted at a pheasant without breaking stride and the bird collapsed in a bleeding pile of feathers, its neck severed.

  Arielle’s nostrils flared at the scent of blood. She slowed, about to turn back, but Luke nudged her in the side, saying with words she heard only in her head, “Not yet, my love. We feast soon on suitable prey. First, you must learn.”

  Reluctantly, her stomach growling, Arielle ran on, the woods so thick now that even her acute night vision was limited. Finally, Luke stopped dead and crouched in the thick brush. Arielle dropped down beside him, peeking through the undergro
wth to see what he stared at, his eyes glowing bright green in the fitful moonlight glinting between the thick tree branches.

  Then she saw it. A buck. His magnificent antlered head was tilted warily as he lifted his head to sniff, as if he picked up on a strange scent. A doe and fawn fed next to him, attuned to his nervousness. Their tails began to twitch back and forth.

  Arielle shifted her weight slightly, and a leaf, one only, rustled.

  All three heads popped up to stare at where they crouched. The three deer tensed to run away.

  A blur of motion, Luke burst free of the bushes in one giant leap, his claws dragging down the doe. He moved to bite the neck, but the buck bent his head and rammed Luke with all his might. Arielle ran out to help, but she shifted from foot to foot, unsure what to do.

  Luke was hit directly in the head and blinked, dazed enough to allow the doe to struggle free. Her neck bleeding from the deep claw marks, she still ran fleetly, her fawn next to her, and disappeared. The buck blocked their escape for precious seconds. Then, when he turned to follow, Luke had recovered enough to hook his claws into the thick hide covering the rump. The buck kicked backward with his pointed hoof, but this time Luke was ready and merely used the opportunity to hook the leg with his other paw.

  As if he swatted a gnat, Luke brought the buck down and bit casually into the neck, immobilizing it.

  The scent of blood wafted to Arielle. Her deep blue eyes began to glow with icy desire. Without being told to, she joined Luke. Jaws gaping, she bent to nip at the neck, but Luke released his grip enough for the strangling buck to wheeze in air. Slashing the legs deeply, Luke held the buck in place and looked at Arielle, blood dripping from his mouth.

  “I promised you play, dear one. He’s all yours.”

  Arielle looked between the panic stricken buck and Luke. Some weakening remnant of compassion made her hesitate. The deer’s eyes were huge and dark with pain.

  But Luke looked at her, his green eyes so magnetic and fierce with pride in her and the hunt, that she could not disappoint him. Bending her head, she nipped a chunk out of the deer’s hide. With a terrified bleat, it struggled harder, only to be held still by Luke’s digging claws.