Scratch

by Skye MacKinnon

  Gryphon is examining the girl, expertly checking her vitals. He lifts her shirt a little, exposing ribs that protrude more than they should. She’s not just thin, she’s extremely malnourished. It was hidden underneath her clothes before, but I’m starting to get worried about her. And angry at whoever neglected her.

  She’s fast asleep now. Lucky her.

  “Once she wakes up, we need to get some food in her,” Gryphon says. Stating the obvious. Even I would have known that, and I’m much better with killing than with healing.

  Benjamin returns and hands me a large mug of tea. Heaven in a cup. I start drinking immediately, burning my gums, but I don’t care. Maybe this will give me some of the energy I sorely lack. When he gives me a plate full of ham sandwiches, I fall in love with him.

  “You’re my hero,” I mutter, my mouth already full of food.

  “I thought I was your hero,” Gryphon quips. He’s sat down at the end of the sofa the little girl is lying on and is slowly sipping some tea. He’s all in black, as always, but the way he holds his cup makes him look like an aristocrat rather than a thug. I wonder what kind of upbringing he had. Something posh? Is he some kind of wealthy rebel, someone who does his because he enjoys it rather than because he has to.

  Not that I don’t enjoy it, but I never had much of a choice. I was trained to be a killer. My education wasn’t history, politics, grammar. We were taught to read and write, but that was about it. Our other lessons were about how the human body worked, how it could be hurt, how poisons would impact organs and flesh. Lockpicking rather than maths. Breaking and entering instead of physics.

  “How did you find us? How did you know that we might need you?” I ask instead of all the other questions I need answers to. They can wait, for now.

  Gryphon points at the little cat lying at his feet. She looks like a hairball another cat has thrown up. More fluff than cat. Her fur would probably be white if she wasn’t covered in dirt. For all my love of cats, I couldn’t call her pretty. Unique, maybe. That’s as far as I can go.

  “This little furball came to find me. I assume Ryker sent her?”

  The larger cat nods in confirmation. Benjamin has given him a bowl of water and I bet there will be some treats coming soon. That boy has fallen in love with the cats, and has become an expert at spoiling them. I bet he knows every single cat’s favourite treat.

  “I didn’t have any other plans, so I followed her. But I think you have some explaining to do. Who is she? Why are you saying she’s your sister? I mean, the similarity is obvious, but it seems like you didn’t know about her? How’s that even possible?”

  I groan. “Too many questions. She’s my mother’s daughter, because yes, my mother is alive even though I thought she was dead. No idea who her father is. Her scent is similar to mine, which is why the cats thought they were tracking my mother, rather than her. She’s not spoken a single word, so we have no idea what’s happened to her or where she’s come from. Basically, we don’t know anything. Lennox is trying to find a key to open her collar, maybe that will enable her to speak to us. Until then-“

  A wave of dizziness overcomes me and I close my eyes for a second.

  “Are you alright?”

  His voice contains a surprising amount of concern.

  I force my eyes open to look at him. “I’m fine. Just a bit tired.”

  “She lost a lot of blood,” Bethany blurts. I could kill her. “Kat, you should lie down and get some rest. You look like you’re about to faint.”

  Is it that obvious?

  “I’m fine. Pumpkin and the other kittens are still missing. This has cost us valuable time.”

  Ryker gets up and rubs against my legs. I meet his bright blue eyes, as deep as the sea. I’ve never seen the ocean, but I imagine it to be like Ryker’s eyes, full of swirling shades of blue. Mysterious. Beautiful.

  He meows, conveying a strange mixture of worry and reassurance.

  “Yes, I know your cats are still out there looking for my mother’s scent, but I might be able to find her faster if I was able to shift. She’s my mother, she’s my responsibility.”

  He meows again, more forcefully this time.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not stupid enough to shift anytime soon. I didn’t enjoy being suffocated by you.”

  Gryphon lifts a questioning eyebrow and I realise that it must have sounded strange without context. I don’t waste energy on explaining it though. My thoughts are turning sluggish. I really need to get some sleep, but no, I can’t afford to waste any more time. Who knows what’s happening to Pumpkin just now. I hadn’t realised how attached I’d become to the little kitten, but now that he’s gone, I want to do anything I can to get him back.

  “We should go and…”

  Darkness overwhelms me before I can even finish my sentence.

  I don’t know how long I sleep. It’s not enough though. When I wake up, I’m still tired. Not quite as exhausted, but still not as awake as I’d like to be. I’m still in the armchair in the living room. Someone’s put a blanket over my legs. Seriously? Do they think I’m an old woman who needs a blanket? I need to teach them that I’m not weak, not in the slightest. Things are getting out of control and I can’t afford to lose my reputation.

  The little girl is still asleep, but there are crumbs on her shirt now. She must have eaten something while I slept. Good.

  Everyone else has left, so I let myself yawn and stretch for a while, before getting up from the armchair. I half expect the world to sway again, but besides a slight weakness in my knees, I’m feeling much better.

  I listen to the sounds of the house. Someone’s downstairs in the lab, rummaging in cupboards. I concentrate on the scent. Bethany. I can’t sense Benjamin anywhere, but Gryphon is in the kitchen. What is he still doing here? His scent is mixed with that of salty broth. Is he making soup? Now that’s something I have to see.

  Slowly, I walk to the kitchen. I might be able to walk faster now, but I want to conserve my energy as much as possible. This feels like a moment of peace before the storm. I better enjoy it while it lasts.

  “You’re up,” Gryphon says without turning around.

  “Stating the obvious. What are you doing?”

  “Making soup. The girl had trouble eating solid food, so I thought this might be better for her.” He continues stirring the broth without looking at me. My mouth is starting to water. It smells delicious.

  I walk over to his side and take a spoon from a drawer. “I need to test it for poison,” I tell him and dip my spoon into the soup.

  He chuckles. “Obviously.”

  The soup doesn’t just smell delicious, it also tastes amazing. “What did you put in there?” I ask. “Some kind of miracle spices?”

  Gryphon laughs. “Exactly. Secret ingredients like carrots, parsley and parsnips. Which are so secret that they’re hidden in plain sight, without actually being hidden.”

  He points at the carrot peels to his left. Yeah, right. As if. Carrots don’t taste this good. At least not when I try to cook them. And parsnips, they’re just white ugly carrots. Definitely not as divine tasting as whatever he’s put in his soup.

  “Give it another ten minutes to stew, then you’ll get a whole bowl full,” he promises. “The others told me what happened to you. The fluids will be good for you. Losing that amount of blood isn’t to be taken lightly, even as a shifter.”

  I scoff. “So you’re a doctor now?”

  “In a way.”

  “Wait, you’re a doctor?”

  “I never finished my exams, but I studied long enough to know the basics. But even a blind person could see that you’re not at your full strength just now. You need to rest.”

  “I don’t have time to rest. Besides, you don’t look like a doctor.”

  He turns to me and frowns. “Because of my scars?”

  “I don’t care about your scars. Because you wear tight black clothes that hide more weapons than even I carry, because you move like a predator
about to pounce at his prey, because your eyes show how many people you’ve killed. Doctors save lives, they don’t take them.”

  He smiles sadly. “Sometimes, you have to take a life to save another. Just because I kill bad people doesn’t mean that I don’t care about the wellbeing of the good.”

  “The world isn’t black and white. You can’t divide people into good and bad.”

  “Isn’t that what you do when you kill?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t distinguish. If I get paid, I do the job. I don’t care whether the person I terminate has done amazing things for society or killed a dozen people. Well, I might be a little more violent if it’s the latter, but I still kill for money. That’s what I am. An assassin. Not a vigilante.”

  His frown deepens. “I don’t believe that.”

  “Then don’t.” I laugh harshly. “People keep thinking that I’m a good person because I’m a woman, because I’m young, because I don’t look like they imagine a villain to look. But inside, I’m cold. I’m a weapon, Gryphon, and just because I occasionally seem to show some semblance of humanity doesn’t mean that it’s real.”

  “If you really believe that, you’re lying to yourself. I’ve seen you save those kids. I’ve seen how you care for the cats that frequent this house. And earlier, when you looked at the little girl, there was something beautiful in your eyes.”

  “And what was that?”

  “Love.”

  I laugh, but there’s no humour in the sound. “I don’t love. Just ask Lennox.”

  The last sentence slips out before I can stop myself.

  He smiles at me, not reacting to that statement. “Ever thought about therapy?”

  I gape at him. “Are you for real? Did whoever claw your face mess with your brain?”

  “Now you’re getting defensive. Is that what you do? Push people away as soon as they get close?”

  “You’re not close. You’re nowhere near close. And you’ll never be.”

  I storm out of the kitchen. I lied. He got close. Not to me, but to the truth.

  I hate him for it.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Take my blood.”

  “Huh?” Bethany looks at me in confusion.

  “Check it for infections. I should be back to normal by now. I’m a shifter, I heal fast. I think there might be something wrong with me. Maybe some kind of virus.”

  “You do know that I have no idea about what kind of bugs cats might get?”

  I sigh. “Just check for increased white blood cell count. That should at least give us an idea on whether there’s an infection.”

  She nods and gets her equipment. She’s somehow turned into our lab person, even though that’s not what she excels at. Lily used to spend a lot more time down here, experimenting with poisons, but then she started taking on more cases that involved her using her skills of seduction, so Bethany took over a lot of Lily’s tasks. She’s good at it though. She immediately finds my vein and starts taking my blood until she’s got two vials filled.

  “If you want, I can compare it to the blood I took from the cat’s claws,” Beth says quietly. “I know we all think that it’s that of your mother, but shall I make sure it really is?”

  “Do it.”

  “Alright. It won’t take long. I’ll let you know as soon as I have a result. Until then, you could spend time with sexy Gryphon?”

  I snort. “Did you just call him sexy?”

  Bethany shrugs and wiggles her eyebrows. “Have you looked at him? Those scars only make him look even more like a hot bad boy. Unless you and Lennox are exclusive?”

  “Okay, I’m leaving now. I won’t be having girly conversations.”

  She laughs. “Wait, you’ve still got the cannula stuck in your arm.”

  Oh. So I have. I let her remove it, but ignore the band aid she tries to hand me. I don’t need something as human as that. The wound will seal itself in a couple of seconds.

  “You know where I am, if you ever want a girls talk,” Beth says with a giggle. “I’d love to find out more about your love life.”

  “I don’t have a love life,” I growl. “Why the fuck is everyone using the L-word today?”

  “Everyone? Did Gryphon confess his undying love for you?”

  “His undying- for fuck’s sake. Stop it.”

  I storm out of the room, slamming the door shut for dramatic effect. Why is everyone acting weird today? Is it a full moon yet? Some kind of hormone fluctuation?

  Since all the adults in this house are being strange, I decide to check on the girl again.

  She’s awake, but staring blankly at the ceiling, not reacting to me entering the room at all. Not even her heartbeat increases. It’s like all her senses are turned off. Standby mode.

  I kneel in front of the sofa and simply watch her for a bit. The longer I look at her, the more striking the similarities between us become. I have no idea if I take after my mother or my father, since I can’t remember what either of them looked like, but now that I see my sister, it must be my mother who gave us our looks. I wonder who the girl’s father is. Is he still alive? Is my mother in love with him? Married to him? In effect, that would make him my stepfather. No thanks. I don’t need a family. Yesterday morning, I was all on my own. Now I have a sister and a mother that’s turned out to be alive. Life is moving a little too fast for me.

  “Sit up,” I command, and the girl does it immediately. Her back is straight as a board and while she looks in my direction, she doesn’t look at me. Her eyes are blank.

  “Can you write?” I ask, hopeful that this might be a solution to her not being able to speak.

  She shakes her head. There goes that idea.

  “Alright, I’m going to ask you some yes and no questions and I want you to answer them truthfully. Do you understand?”

  She nods.

  I feel bad for how harsh I’m being, how I’m ordering her around, but this seems to be the only way to get her to react.

  “Are you part of the Pack?”

  She nods and my heart sinks. I mean, the collar made it kind of obvious, but because it looked different than my own one had, I still had a flicker of hope that she might have been under the control of someone else. Like my mother. Just one person, easy to deal with. Not the entire Pack.

  “Will they be searching for you?”

  She shrugs. At least it’s not an outright yes.

  “Have they hurt you?”

  There’s the tiniest of pauses before she nods. A cold shiver runs down my back. She’s not even able to cry. Not able to ask for help. She’s forced to accept her plight.

  I need to kill something, soon. The anger in me is spreading and I know that if I don’t get it under control, my panther will want to take over. Which would probably kill me, and I’m far too selfish to let it do that.

  “Do you know who she is?” Bethany steps into the room, asking the question without giving me any explanation. “Do you know who the woman in front of you is?”

  The girl nods.

  “That’s what I thought. Kat, we need to talk. Now.”

  I stare at her in confusion, but then follow her out of the room and into the hallway.

  “Ben!” Bethany shouts. “Come down and watch over the girl for a bit!” She turns to me and lowers her voice. “We can’t leave her alone in there. I don’t know why she’s here, but I doubt it’s because she wants a family reunion.”

  “We brought her here,” I protest. “She had no choice in the matter.”

  “Didn’t she? When we found her, did she try to run? Did she seem like she didn’t want to go with us, strangers?”

  “No, but she’s wearing a collar. She doesn’t have the capacity to express her own opinion. She probably doesn’t even know where she is.”

  “I wish I could believe that,” Bethany mutters and slowly walks into the dining room. I follow her, not quite sure what she’s on about. I wait while she pours us two cups of tea. It’s only lukewarm, but I think she
needs this moment to collect her thoughts, to decide how to break her news to me.

  I take one sip of tea and then decide that I don’t want any more of it. I hate cold tea.

  “While you were asleep, I took a blood sample from her,” Bethany starts, her voice quiet. “Not because I wanted to know whether she really was your sister, but because I wanted to do a health check on it, see what kind of nutrients she’s missing the most so that we could help her get back to full strength quickly. Well, when you came down and gave me some of your own blood, I thought I’d compare it, just for… for fun, I guess. Maybe it was intuition, I don’t know.”

  “What did you find?” I interrupt her. “What’s so special about her blood?”

  Bethany takes a deep breath. “It’s like yours.”

  “Of course it’s like mine, we have the same mother.”

  “No, you don’t get it. It’s exactly like yours. Your DNA is identical. Not just similar like it should be for siblings. Identical. Do you understand what that means? She’s not your sister, Kat. She’s your clone.”

  I drink that cold tea after all. And then Bethany makes us a new pot of tea. I feel more like downing an entire bottle of whisky, but I need my mind clear to think.

  At some point, Bethany leaves and returns with Gryphon. I can sense Benjamin in the living room together with the girl. The child who I thought was my sister. Even though I only met her earlier today, I feel it almost as a loss. I no longer have a sister. It was just an illusion. Instead, she’s a construct, a copy of me, created for reasons that I haven’t figured out yet.

  “Bethany,” I say when a rogue thought enters my mind. “Did you compare my mother’s blood with mine yet?”

  She shakes her head. “The girl’s sample was already in the machine, so I did hers first. We analysed you mother’s DNA, but haven’t matched it with your own yet.”

  “Then do it now. Compare the blood sample we got from the crime scene with that of the girl and my own.”