The Night Serpent

by Anna Leonard

  “Nah, man, not until I saw it.” Hooperman lost none of his bravado. “Saw what that guy’d done.”

  “And then you called the cops.”

  “Damn straight.”

  “Was that before or after you called the local television stations and informed them that you’d found evidence of a satanic cult in Newfield?”

  The cops looked startled, but Hooperman simply shrugged. “Hey, news is news.” If he was even remotely embarrassed by his actions, he hid it like a pro.

  Patrick had stopped being amazed by what people would do for publicity. “And your face and storefront in the news can only mean curious people coming by, which means business.”

  Hooperman kept his cool, even in the face of the agent’s scorn. “Got it in one. But that guy, he’s still scum. You’ll find him.”

  That was the second time since arriving in Newfield that someone had said those words to him. He was used to being told to solve cases, find killers. But the words echoed with him oddly as he walked down the narrow stairwell, the smell of cat piss and bleach almost overwhelming the stink Hooperman had mentioned. Patrick didn’t believe in fate, karma or predestination. But this case was almost designed for his skills, designed to bring him to this town, to this place, these players.

  “And bring you to this specific basement? Get a grip, Jon T.,” he told himself, then stopped, both his speech and his steps.

  You had to know what you were looking for to smell it. But once you knew, there was no way to ignore it.

  “Damn.” He pushed open the door, already knowing what he would find.

  The setup was almost exactly as the last one: a room filled with makeshift metal cages—fewer this time, and smaller—and another room with a black drape on the floor, seven limp bodies arranged nose to tail.

  He knelt and inspected the bodies without touching them. They were fresh—the time between the killings was definitely getting shorter. Not a good sign. But all the details were wrong, just as he’d said to Lily. This guy wasn’t playing by the usual rules. He had some other game in mind. But what? He needed to get inside this guy’s motivations, to figure out what had triggered the killing, what was driving him to such extremes, to breed his own victims and set up such careful scenes.

  Patrick recognized Petrosian’s tread on the stairs behind him, the walk heavy without sounding lumbering or awkward.

  “The cuts are more jagged,” the agent said without rising from his crouch over the grisly display. “He wasn’t being as precise. Maybe rushed. Or nervous.”

  “Or the kitties were giving him trouble? Because that’s been bothering me. How does he get them so calm?” Petrosian moved around to face Patrick, looking down at the bodies. “Tox came back. None of the cats so far have been drugged. When I try to clip my cats’ claws, they put up a fight. But these…they just lay there and let him do it, one after the other?”

  Patrick stared at the bodies. That was a good question. A damn good question. And, short of drugs, or restraints—neither of which were showing up at the scene or coming up on the toxicology screens, he could only come up with one answer. “Lily could do it, based on what you’ve said. Maybe we’ve got another cat talker on our hands.”

  “Jesus.” Petrosian didn’t sound happy. Good. Patrick wasn’t happy either. He wanted to see Lily again, yeah, but not like this. Not over the bodies of more dead moggies. Not with her thinking about someone with her skill doing this. He selfishly wanted her relaxed, soft, not tense or worried.

  But the job came first, last and always.

  He pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number he’d already memorized.

  “This is Lily. Leave a message.”

  Despite himself, he was amused. Short and to the point, just like the woman herself. Nothing in the voice even suggested the way she smelled, sun-warmed even on a cool evening, or the way she felt, sparks and shivers under his lips. Or the way she made blood rush from his brain to his groin in a manner definitely unbecoming to a federal agent on the case.

  “It’s Jon. Agent Patrick. Call me.”

  Nothing of what he really wanted to say. No time for that, not now.

  The bar was wide but not very deep, and there were too many people crowded together. The news droned in the background, a woman with a microphone and a stylish wool coat, standing in a run-down part of town. Red lights flashed against the gray concrete walls, and the yellow stretch of tape kept people out of the alley between two buildings

  The phone was in the back, near the bathrooms, and it was quieter there, nobody lingering to use the johns. The phone’s receiver was cold in his hand, the plastic odd feeling and wrongly shaped. He hadn’t wanted to call in the place he lived. He had gotten the number off the computer at home, written it down and walked with it in his hand until he came in here on a whim.

  One ring. Two, and someone on the other end picked up before the ring was completed. When a woman answered, he closed his eyes and spoke clearly, calmly, with the proper enunciation. The language felt strange in his mouth, his brain wanting to use other words, but he forced his way through.

  He had to be heard. They had to understand.

  “You don’t understand. I’m not dangerous. They should just leave me alone. I only want what’s mine.”

  “Sir?” A clicking noise, and he was transferred, almost immediately. He could almost feel himself racing through the wires, up and down the building, until finally landing in the proper department, with the right person to hear him.

  That was what it took; knowing how to make the right people hear you.

  “Talk to me.” A man’s voice this time, commanding in a way that thrilled him with fear. He could almost see them scurrying around, waving their arms and trying to trace his call. It didn’t matter. He would be gone soon. He would win this time.

  “Tell your warriors to hold off. The Serpent hunting in the night does not wish to strike. It desires only to return to its home. To be safe and warm and dry, away from the talons of the hawk, the claws of the hunting cat. It will not strike unless cornered.”

  A cough, the sound of chairs pushing away from desks in the background. He had keen hearing, and he heard all, alert to every nuance, every dip and change.

  “Are you telling us you are no danger? Are you the Night Serpent?”

  “It is as good a name as any.” He preferred talking to a woman; women understood things that needed to be done. Women understood that power ebbed and flowed, came and went, that it needed to be coaxed, cajoled before it would respond. They did not waste time naming things, but went to the heart of them. They had always been the heart of power.

  Women. Woman. The woman he had seen. Maybe he had been wrong to dismiss her. She was golden, filled with life, where all others were gray and unreal. She had power there, inside. Golden shining power, sun and sand, not the drab of this world. Maybe the power he needed. If he could find her again, she would be able to tell him what to do, what he was doing wrong.

  “The cat woman. She knows. She knows.”

  He had only meant to say it to himself. He didn’t realize until the man repeated it, that the words had been said out loud.

  “Knows what? Sir, if you’ll talk to me, I can help you.”

  They had no idea who he was. He had wanted to reassure them, let them know that he would not bother them, so long as they left him be. But he knew now that it couldn’t be. Just as before…

  Before when?

  In the place where he had been warm. Powerful. Before they had cast him down and thrown him away, sent him to this dreary place.

  Everything was smaller here. Colder. Worn down.

  He was confused again. But he knew where he had gone wrong.

  “Sir, talk to me.”

  There was only way back to what had been. He needed power, yes. The woman had shown him, simply by her being. By the way the beasts responded to her. The beasts would bring him what he needed…but he needed beasts of the old world, not this cold new one, this
suddenly unfamiliar one. He needed beasts who felt the taste of that golden shining in them. He needed to set that free, bathe in it, become it. Only then would he find his way home.

  He hung up the phone carefully, the man still speaking on the other end, and walked through the crowd, out the front door and into the cool night air.

  Yes. Oh, yes. He was on his way now.

  Chapter 9

  Lily came home from work to find a familiar unmarked police car sitting in front of her condo. “Damn it.” All she wanted was to get through life without a fuss, without drama or trauma. Having cops staking out her home did not qualify under any of those headings, especially if the neighbors caught wind of it.

  She probably should have called Jon when he left a message, but she’d not been sleeping well, and the thought of having to deal with him—or, worse, more of the case—pushed her over the line from exhausted to unable to deal. So she had left the message, undeleted, on her machine, and pretended it didn’t exist.

  Piper had come to be paid.

  She pulled past them and into her driveway, leaving the garage door open so that they could join her.

  “Gentlemen,” she said. She was too tired for this; as much as the sight of her Fibbie, almost as rumpled as Aggie now, with his tie slightly askew, made her want to smile, she really just wanted to fall over on the sofa and cry herself to sleep. Except sleep wasn’t such a good thing these days, because every time she closed her eyes she saw a dignified cat sitting there, tawny coat glimmering, green eyes glinting at her as though expecting her to do something brilliant, wonderful, heroic, and save him.

  “I need coffee,” Aggie said. “And so do you.”

  Lily tried to dig in her heels. “What happened?”

  He shook his head at her. “Coffee first.”

  So she let them into her home, settled them at the table in the open space that served as a combination dining room/living room and went into the kitchen to brew up a pot of Hawaii’s best. It was rare enough that she had company; she had to hunt through the cabinets for three mugs that would do.

  “Milk? Sugar?”

  Aggie took it fully doctored; Jon only wanted sugar. She fixed the mugs and brought them out, sitting across the table from Jon, next to Aggie. She didn’t plan it that way, but having the table between her and him seemed like a good idea.

  Until she looked at him and saw that intense gaze fixed on her. Suddenly she wanted Aggie to shut up and go away. And at the same time she was very glad that he was there with them.

  Then that gaze flickered off, going from molten to business cool. “Have you watched the news today?” Jon—Agent Patrick—asked.

  “I read the paper this morning, but no. Why?” She turned to look at Aggie, struck by the look in his eyes. It was more than worry or exhaustion. There was…anger there.

  He fiddled with his coffee, took a long sip. “Jesus, that’s good. Better than the swill at the station.”

  “Aggie?” She trusted him to tell her the truth. But he merely looked away.

  Patrick was the one who started talking. “There was another…We found more cats.” The way he said it, she knew they were already dead. “We have a description of the guy who stole them. And we have a possible witness who may be able to identify him in person.”

  She turned to face him, warming her fingers on her coffee cup. Her hands were cold. Everything was cold. “Oh God, the poor cats. But it’s good, right, that you have a witness?”

  “It’s good, yeah.” He didn’t sound convinced of that. “But the witness called the media, too. Bad luck for us, it’s a slow day. They ran the story on the five-o’clock broadcast.”

  Lily drank her own coffee, hoping the warmth would spread through her, trying to understand why the publicity would be a bad thing. “He might see it and run?” she guessed. But that didn’t explain why they were here, looking so nervous. “Jon? What did they say, on the news?”

  He opened his mouth to say something, but couldn’t get the words to come out.

  “Lily.” Petrosian took over again. “It wasn’t what was on the news that was the problem. Exactly.”

  She turned to face Aggie again, feeling a cold curling unease in her belly that not even the warmest coffee could ward off. “What?”

  “The guy? The killer, or someone who claimed to be him? He called the local station. The television station. After they ran the clip. He’s crazy, or making a good show of it, but—”

  Patrick interrupted Aggie’s ramblings, finally managing to get to the point. “Lily, he mentioned you.”

  “What?” The cold abandoned her belly and went right up her spine, freezing her brain.

  “Not by name,” Aggie reassured her, putting his coffee down to reach over and pat her hand awkwardly. “But he definitely mentioned a cat lady. And who else could it be but you?”

  “But…how? And why?”

  Patrick slumped in his chair, for the first time since she had met him giving up entirely on the “agent in charge” arrogance. That scared her more than anything else. “I don’t know. Maybe he adopted—or tried to adopt—a cat from your shelter and heard about you? Or, if he watches the news, which he seems to, maybe he’s seen you on TV before, and somehow got you tangled up in whatever he’s trying to do? Maybe, if he’s a local boy.

  “Christ. I don’t even know that, maybe your coming here was what triggered him, or…The fact that he only started recently doesn’t mean he just got here, he could have done this before our three-year mark, too. And if that’s true, then the trigger could be anything.”

  He sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “I haven’t been able to get a fix on what he wants, or where he’s coming from. I don’t have anything yet.”

  He suddenly seemed to remember who he was talking to and straightened in his chair. “But I’m working on it,” he promised her. “We know more than we did before. I have a call in to the bureau—he didn’t make any direct threats against you, but the fact that you’ve been brought in even by implication raises the case’s priority from animal to human threat.”

  Lily wasn’t sure that made her feel much better. Not that she didn’t trust him, it was just…the witness must be useless, otherwise they’d already be arresting the guy—the unsub was the term, right? They wouldn’t be sitting here at her table drinking coffee and looking worried. If they didn’t know who he was, or why he was doing this, or what had made him focus on her, how could they stop him? How could they even find him?

  I can’t help you, kitten, she whispered to the waiting cat of her dreams. I’m not even sure how to help myself.

  “You shouldn’t go back to the shelter,” Aggie said.

  “Excuse me?” That had the ability to shake her out of her thoughts.

  The older man leaned on the table, his houndlike face full of earnest concern. “Lily, this guy, okay so maybe he hasn’t hurt any humans yet. Yet. And what he said, it wasn’t a threat. But I don’t like him even knowing you exist. If he found out about you through the shelter, then that’s where he’s going to be looking. And no matter what J. Edgar here says, we can’t spare someone to follow you around just on the off chance that this guy might actually be dangerous. You know that. So staying away from where he might look for you only makes sense.”

  Lily scowled into her coffee. It might make sense. But the thought of not being allowed to go to the shelter, not to be able to handle the new kittens so that they became used to humans; not to see the older cats as they came out of their shyness and started interacting, to be away from the soothing smells and sounds…

  And then she had to laugh at herself. When did cats become comfort to her?

  “Lily.” Aggie was still talking. “And even if we manage to keep a lid on what he said, which I doubt, the media’s gonna show up at the shelter soon too. Cats have been slaughtered, and Felidae No-Kill is the best game in town for publicity hounds. They’ll want a sound bite, and they’ll probably want it from you. And if somebody puts the pieces toge
ther, which they’re smart enough to do…”

  “What’s to stop them from coming here?” she asked.

  “This is private property. They can camp outside, but they can’t harass you, or I get to come over and harass them in return.” Aggie looked almost happy at that thought, and Lily felt herself smile a little in return. He so badly wanted—needed—to do something.

  “You should take a leave of absence from work, as well,” Patrick said, breaking into the moment.

  “What?” Lily felt her hackles rise up. “I can’t do that.” Mr. FBI might be able to take time off on a whim, but she had bills to pay. And it wasn’t as though there was anyone who could just step in and take over for her; they were shorthanded already. And—

  “Lily, don’t be an idiot,” Jon said sharply.

  “Excuse me?” Her gaze met his, ice cold to burning hot. As hard as he pushed her physical buttons he could nail the emotional ones too, apparently. She felt the urge to arch her back and hiss at him.

  Aggie put his coffee down and pushed his chair away. “Children, play nice. I have to get back to the station. Patrick, you coming back with me?” The implication in his voice was that Agent Patrick should say yes, and leave Lily alone to deal with her own decisions. Jon, however, wasn’t listening, still holding her gaze with his own.

  “I’ll be fine. I can call a cab. Go on.”

  Petrosian shrugged, abandoning them to their own fates. He wasn’t fool enough to put his hand into a cat-spat, even before the claws actually showed up.

  He reached over to pat Lily’s hand again, not taking offense when she flinched. “I’ll make sure patrol cars up their drive-bys. If anything’s even the slightest bit hinky, or you just want them to stop by for some of this damn fine coffee, you let me know, okay?”

  “All right. Thank you, Aggie. For everything.” She stood up, intending to see him to the door.

  “Just doin’ my job, ma’am.” He grinned at her; it was forced, but she appreciated the effort. “You stay safe, is all I ask. And don’t hurt the Fibbie, okay?”