He stared off into the trees and shook his head. “It really was quite a nasty break. I’d still like to know how it happened.”
“So would I.”
He lit up another cigarette and offered one to me. I shook my head. “No, I should be going.”
“Where?”
“Home. Thank you for all your help.” I began to walk away from him.
“Hey, how are you going to get there?”
I’d planned to get into the woods as quickly as possible and give free rein to the Cat. But I could hardly admit that.
“I’ll walk.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. All that way? In the dark? In the cold? I’m off duty now. Let me get my stuff together and I’ll drive you. I need to stop by Elly’s place and lock up, anyway.”
Bob drove a little red convertible with plates reading BABE-MGNT. After I’d settled into the seat I turned to him and smiled. “Babe Management?”
Even in the darkness of the car, I could tell that he was blushing.
“They’re old plates. From my youthful days. I just never got around to changing them. And besides, it’s Babe Magnet.”
“Oh.” I gave him an appraising glance. He was quite good-looking; although just a few inches taller than I, he was wellproportioned and muscular, with clean features and white teeth. I could well believe the epithet was apt.
“Youthful days? And just when would that have been? Two years ago?”
“More like nine years. I don’t think I’m any younger than you. You’re what? Twenty-six? Twenty-seven?”
“Close enough.”
We rode in silence for a while.
“So why were you sleeping at Elly’s place?”
“You never stop, do you? If you must know, my husband and I had a small disagreement.” Yes, I thought to myself, if hearing that someone you love wants to kill you could be considered small.
“Eh. Marriage. I have to admit I don’t understand it. And I wasn’t very good at it. This your first?”
“Second, actually.” The tone of my voice went flat, expressionless.
“A rough time, Deirdre? And this one isn’t going any better? You can tell me all about it.”
“No,” I said firmly, “the first was not a rough time. He died. And Mitch is not a rough time, either.”
“Which, if you don’t mind my saying so, is why you spent the night at Elly’s place. I understand.”
“No, Bob. I do not think you do. But it does not matter.”
He gave a small snort of amusement. “You’re probably right, especially since I don’t seem to be getting anywhere. You can’t blame a guy for trying.”
Trying? Was that what he was doing? And was I that much out of practice? I had been holed up for way too long, I realized, to not recognize a pickup attempt. I glanced over at him again, reassessing, reevaluating. Yes, he would do. He would do quite well.
Still, I was nervous. I had fed for over a year from animals or from the supplies that Sam provided; I was a long way from the lone huntress I’d been. “But fresh blood,” the Cat protested. “You promised fresh blood.”
“That I did, my pet,” I whispered as the car pulled into a rutted lane that led to Elly’s cabin. “And we shall have it.”
Bob stopped the car. “I’ll just be a second,” he said, opening the car door. “Have to make sure everything is secure.”
I followed closely behind him. “I will come in with you if you don’t mind. I need to get my stuff together and use the bathroom. I will only be a few minutes.”
“No problem.”
As I walked up the stairs, I could feel his eyes on me. I went into the bathroom, closed the door and ran the water to disguise the fact that I was not tending to natural functions. “This should not be difficult,” I told my reflection. “You used to do it all the time. He is already interested. Take it slow and easy, make up something to keep the two of you here.” I combed through my hair with my fingers, pinched my cheeks to coax a little bit of color into my pale skin. Not that it really mattered; his kind always found me attractive. “The nature of the beast,” I said, giving myself a wide smile, feeling the excited anticipation of feeding build, the slight tingle of gums as my fangs began to grow. “It’s show time.”
“Bob?” I called out to him as I came down the stairs. “I don’t think I want to leave here yet.” I tried to put a small tinge of fear into my voice.
“Why, what’s wrong?”
I avoided his eyes and shrugged. “If you must know, I’m a little nervous about going home. It would probably be better if I wait and sneak in while my husband is sleeping. He always goes to bed right at ten o’clock, no matter what.” It was a blatant lie, but Bob would have no way of knowing that. I warmed to the part and expanded a bit. “He’ll have put away enough beer by then to be totally unaware of anything. And in the morning, well”—I dropped my head as if ashamed—“he’ll be so hungover, he will take any sort of explanation I give. Yes,” I said as if just making up my mind that second, “I should probably stay here for a while.”
“He won’t come looking for you?” Bob was falling very nicely into the role of protector. I almost laughed out loud; if anyone needed protection right now, he did. And if Mitch came for me, he would allow nothing to stand in his way.
But I played along and hesitated as I looked at the clock on Elly’s mantel. Not quite nine-thirty. “Probably not.”
“But he might?”
“It is possible, I suppose.”
He nodded. “Then I’ll stay as well. Just in case.”
“Thank you.” I gave him a weak smile. “Why don’t you build a fire and I’ll find us something to drink?”
He began to hum a song as he eagerly arranged some wood in the fireplace, and his thoughts were easy to guess. The babe magnet strikes again. I shook my head as I walked into the kitchen. Why was I playing this game? It was demeaning to all of us. And totally unnecessary. I could do anything I wanted with this man and make him forget it all one second later. He was mine for the taking, game or no game.
“Bob, can you come in here for a minute?”
“Sure thing.” He moved into the doorway. “Need help with a bottle or something?”
“No.” I looked him straight in the eyes. “Come closer, please.”
He approached, curious, but with just a small touch of fear. “So, what’s up?”
“I did not bring you here for protection from my husband, who is neither a drunkard nor an abusive man.”
Still held by my stare, he took this in. “So why are we here?”
“We are here because I want you. Because I need you. Because it has been way too long since I have fed.”
“Fed?”
I smiled at him. It might have been an encouraging smile, even a reassuring smile, except for the fangs that were growing in anticipation.
He stiffened and made an effort to pull away. But held by my gaze, he was helpless. I moved over to him and took him into my arms. “Yes, my darling. My sweet, sweet darling. And you will feed us well, won’t you?”
Bob shivered, trying to break my grasp, then relaxed as I continued to look into his eyes. “Yes,” he whispered. “I will feed you. I will give you anything you want.”
“I know you will.” I smiled one more time, fangs fully grown, fully visible. Then my mouth went to his neck and we were both carried away by the tide of his blood.
I had almost forgotten the taste of fresh human blood; forgotten the sheer ecstasy feeding was. Time seemed suspended, thoughts forgotten; all that was important was my mouth and his blood, the pressure of his warm body up against mine, his moans, my contented sighs.
How could I have gone so long without human blood? And what had I become in the interval? A hunter of plastic bags and animals? I almost choked in scorn, and the Cat rejoiced deep in my mind. “Yes,” it purred, “this is what we’ve needed. This is what we have craved. Take it all.”
Not all, I thought, we must never take it all. But s
till I drew upon him, one glorious mouthful after another, a hand holding the back of his head, and the other pressed up against his heart, measuring the beats, waiting for them to slow. And when they slow, I told the Cat, reminding it and reminding me, when they slow, we must stop.
And there it was: the jump of his heart and a faltering of the steady pulse. Stop. Now. We must stop now.
I pulled my bloody mouth away from his neck as I forced the snarling Cat back down deep into my mind. Poor pet, I thought with sympathy, you are still hungry, I know. And I am still hungry. We will have more later.
His eyes rolled open and focused on mine; he smiled, faintly. “Are you all right?” I asked, my voice husky from the emotion of feeding.
“What happened?”
I shook my head. “Nothing happened, Bob. Do you understand? Nothing happened. You took me home and came over here. You checked the inside of the cabin and then lay down on the couch. You were very, very tired.”
He yawned. “Yeah, I’m very tired. But if I’m sleeping, why am I here with you . . .”
“A dream, of course. I was never here with you.You dropped me off at my cabin and came here by yourself. Go lie down again and sleep.”
I led him over to the couch and laid him down. There were no blankets with which to cover him; I’d taken them for Elly earlier. But I smoothed his hair back and kissed the top of his forehead. “Sleep now, Bob. And remember, I was never here.”
He muttered the words back to me and fell asleep. I checked his pulse one last time. He would live.
I moved out of the door, closed it and started down the front porch steps, phasing into the Cat as I did so, with only one thought in my mind. “Home. I am coming home.”
Chapter 12
Something was wrong. The Cat paced around outside the cabin, uneasy, sniffing the night air. It smelled wrong; the other’s scent was still here, but not strong; neither the man’s, nor the Wolf’s. Instead there was a sickly sweet smell, different and new, but not unlike the scent in that other place we had been. The Cat wailed, its tail thrashed and its ears flattened on top of its head.
I concentrated on calming and suppressing the Cat; recreating my human form in its place. Shivering and naked, I walked up the steps, opened the door and started to call, “Hi, honey, I’m . . .”
The cabin was empty. And not just empty of life and Mitch; there was nothing there. The kitchen cabinets hung open, with nothing inside. The furniture, the rugs, the draperies were gone. I stared for a while in disbelief and then climbed the stairs, checking on the other rooms. The towels and toiletries were missing from the bathroom; only a slight moistness in the air showed that this room had been used recently. The bedroom had been stripped as well, and on opening the closet I discovered that even my clothes were gone.
I leaned up against the wall and began to laugh. It had a hysterical sound, echoing through the rooms. That he had left was perhaps not surprising, given the recent content of his dreams. But to take everything? Even down to the draperies at the windows? It made no sense.
Then again, he wanted me dead. And this would most certainly do it. Mitch had to have known that I’d be forced to assume the cat form, and he knew as well as I the hazards inherent there. He had left me naked, cold and with inadequate protection from the coming sun.
“Cruelly done, my love.” I slid along the wall, sat down on the bare wood floor and began to cry, quietly and desperately. With nothing and no one left to me in the world, all that was left to do was to wait for the dawn.
I must have sat for hours, hunched over in my misery, weeping bloody tears, expending the precious energy stolen what now seemed a lifetime ago. Eventually, though, I ran out of tears and a deadly calm took over. I got up from the floor, opened the window shutters and looked out on the night. Dawn was no more than an hour or two away.
I almost expected to see the Wolf come loping through the trees and up to the door, like so many nights before. Or to hear Mitch’s voice call from another room. Despite the physical evidence, his leaving was hard for me to believe. There must be some explanation, my heart insisted, some reason for him to do this. How could I have been so wrong about this man? I knew him so well, I thought, I knew his mind and his heart and his soul. The Mitch I knew would never have done this.
And yet, was he the Mitch I knew? I had taken him away from all he valued. His son died because of me. To say that his life had changed drastically because of me was one of the century’s greatest understatements.
I had let my love and need for him rule me. I realized now that I was a fool to think that our love was great enough to surmount the impossible obstacles. I’d made him into a monster, turned him into a feral hunter. And then I’d locked him up here, and taken away even the bitter pleasures of our kind.
“Of course he left,” the Cat scoffed. “It is right that he left. He did not love us. He did not know us. And we will survive without him.”
“Perhaps you are right, my pet,” I soothed, managing to hide my inner thoughts. I did not want it to interfere with what I had planned. “We will leave soon,” I said, “but first there is something I must do.”
I padded down the stairs and into the kitchen. He hadn’t taken everything, of course; some of the drawers still contained valueless junk: candle ends, corks from wine bottles, bits of papers, matches. I pulled out a pack of the latter and gave a hard little laugh. “The Ballroom of Romance, again, I see. But Max would be happy, no doubt, to be a part of this last act.”
Stacked in the corner of the kitchen was a pile of newspapers. And yes, under the sink, he had left the cans of kerosene, something Sam had brought in each and every delivery, along with matching lamps the first time, thinking we might need it should the power go out. “Thank you, Sam. Although I fear you will find nothing much of value on your next visit.”
Starting upstairs, I crumpled up sheets of paper and placed them along the hallway, on the outer walls of the bedroom and bathroom, in the closet. Then, area by area, I splashed some of the kerosene onto the paper and tossed a few matches onto the piles. The flames were slow to catch at first, but I spilled more kerosene onto the open flames and walls. Soon the fire burned brightly and fiercely, licking at the walls. Lovely flames with such wonderful warmth, burning away the deceit and lies that lingered in Mitch’s absence.
I laid a path of fire down the stairs, and repeated the same process on the ground level. Almost, I wanted to stay and let the fire take me, but by this time, the Cat was in a state of nearpanic. I soothed it again, and went outside to watch the cabin burn.
As I’d hoped, the entire structure was quickly engulfed in flames. I was surprised, though, when I heard the sirens. It should have taken them longer to respond. I pulled back deeper into the woods and watched the trucks pull up in front of the cabin, followed by a familiar red convertible. Bob flung his door open and began to yell at the crew. “Someone’s in there. Or was in there. Did she get out in time?”
“Haven’t seen anyone,” one of the police answered. “Besides, they left town. That Greer fellow stopped by the station last night sometime and said they’d be gone for a while and asked if we could look out for things until they get back.”
Bob shook his head. “You must’ve heard him wrong. I dropped the woman off here earlier this evening. Around ten or so.”
The cabin shuddered, and the roof fell in. “You’d better be wrong, Bob, because no one’s going to be walking out of that. I just hope we can keep the trees from burning—a fire like this can take out acres. Wonder how it started.”
“Jesus.” Bob took a step toward the cabin, his voice rising in panic. “She has to still be in there. Otherwise, she’d be standing out here.”
“No one in there, Bob. In fact, there’s nothing in there at all. Some moving van came in and packed up all their stuff today. They stopped for directions is how I know. They moved out, so far as I can tell. You know how it is with summer folk.”
“But she was here. Earlier this eveni
ng, she was with Elly at the hospital. How can she have moved out?”
The police officer shrugged. “I’ll tell you what I think, Bob. I think he left her. Moved out while she was with Elly, lock, stock and barrel. I do know there was a woman with him when he stopped by the station. Couldn’t have been her, I guess, from what you say. So here’s the picture: Greer’s got himself another woman and they go off together. And she gets home and realizes what happened, she gets mad and starts the fire herself, then heads out somewhere else. Won’t be the first time a woman did something crazy when she got rejected.”
Another woman? I wanted to come out of the woods and question this man. But what did it matter? Mitch was gone and I was alone. I turned my back on all of them and headed deeper into the trees, phasing into the Cat as I ran, letting it carry me where it willed.
I woke the next evening, shortly after sunset, safely tucked up into a cave. Human once again, or as close to human as I would ever be. Naked. But alive. The Cat had more self-preservation instincts than I’d ever expected. I probed its mind, deeply embedded in mine. Revenge burned close to the surface; it had kept us alive because it wanted Mitch dead. I knew that feeling. Thoughts of revenge had kept me going for almost a century. But the Cat did not remember the regret and the high price that came with the goal. I did not want Mitch’s death. I wanted an explanation, a reckoning. Most of all, I wanted my life back the way it had been, when I had been his love and he had been my reason to exist.
“The one certainty in the world, Cat,” I said as I crawled out of the cave, “is that once changed, life is never the same. But it does go on.”
Our cabin was now nothing more than a few charred timbers standing in a pile of ashes, all cordoned off with yellow police tape. By now they’d have discovered that the fire had been set deliberately and that I did not die inside. I suspected with a bitter laugh that there would be a warrant out for me.
I needed to get out of this place, out of this state. Cadre headquarters in New York seemed a long way away, but it was my only refuge now. From there I could rebuild what was left of my previous life. But I could hardly make the entire trip as the Cat. I needed clothes, at the very least, to get to some other town where I wasn’t known, where I wasn’t wanted by the law. I would need access to my bank accounts.
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