He sighed and pushed away his plate. “I don’t know what to think,” he said honestly. “It just didn’t feel right. It was like I was looking at it through a distortion lens – the jaguar itself was clear, but the landscape around it was fuzzy.”
“Maybe it was a vision?”
“It wasn’t anything like any vision I’ve ever had before. It might have been a spirit animal – a totem – but I couldn’t tell you whose.” He shook his head again. “I have no idea what the hell it was. I was all set to forget about it.” Although, he left unspoken, it did prompt me to come down here and wait for you to come home. He looked up at me. “But now you’ve had this dream. Who was it who told you to beware?”
I pondered my own food. “I dunno. I didn’t recognize the voice, other than that it was male.”
He shrugged and reached for his plate. “I guess we could ask Grandfather.”
“Or Shannon.” My best friend, Shannon McDonough, was fey on her Irish granny’s side, with a little added oomph from White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman. She was another member of our ad hoc woo-woo team. “I’ll call her after supper.”
But I forgot that after supper I had intended to do some work. While Joseph cleared away the leftovers, I hauled out the litigation case and dumped a pile of papers from it onto my desk: reports I needed to read, notes from a mediation session I needed to transcribe into my computer (oh, for the days when I had a secretary to do it for me), and an application for a small business loan to tide me over until my clients started paying me. Which was never going to happen if I didn’t mail them invoices for the work I’d done in January. I had installed a program to generate the invoices on my laptop, but that’s as far as I had gotten with it.
“Wow,” Joseph said, glancing at the pile. “Anything I can do to help?”
His question was sincere, and I knew it, but it still irritated me. “Not really, no,” I said shortly.
“I can call Shannon,” he offered.
“No thanks,” I said. “She’s my friend. I’ll call her.”
“You know,” he said, his temper rising, “I’m just trying to be sympathetic.”
“It’s not helping.”
“No, really?” He didn’t usually resort to sarcasm. “If I’m just going to be in the way, maybe I should just go home.”
“Maybe you should.”
This was dangerous ground for us. He had gotten into my apartment the first few times by shapeshifting into a bird and flying down my chimney. We both knew it would have classified as breaking and entering if he hadn’t had the excuse that the goddess made him do it. I’d certainly been welcoming enough later, but he still harbored a near-constant fear that eventually I’d kick him out.
We glared at each other for a minute. Then he stomped into the kitchen and ran water for the dishes with vehemence.
There was no way I could concentrate now. I tossed aside the report I’d been holding and went to get my ski jacket.
He turned, his hands still in the dish water. “Where are you going?”
“Out,” I said, and did.
I walked rapidly for a couple of blocks, to take the edge off my irritation. The night sky was clear and crisp, the neighborhood bars noisy. Feeling antisocial, I stuck to the quieter streets, finally turning right onto Wynkoop near Union Station. I was aiming, more or less, for the trail along Cherry Creek. Maybe hiking an urban trail wasn’t the smartest thing to do after dark, but Speer Boulevard, which is pretty heavily traveled, is well-lit and runs parallel to the creek – although the creek and the trail are several feet lower than the road bed, and the space between street level and the trail is lined with a sloping concrete retaining wall. Anyway, I wasn’t feeling particularly smart just then.
I passed one or two people headed the opposite way, but mostly I had the trail to myself.
The exercise and the sound of the water rushing by me both served to calm me. By the time I approached the Colfax Avenue underpass, I was beginning to feel human again. I was thinking about turning around and going home when the ambient light began to dissipate. It was as if I were walking into a bank of fog – unusual in semi-arid Denver – or maybe smoke, although I didn’t smell anything burning.
Then I got the feeling that something was watching me.
I glanced around. I was alone on the trail, and I couldn’t see anyone either at the top of the retaining wall or on its banks. Still, the sense that I was being watched persisted.
I knew it wasn’t Joseph. I felt sure I would have known if it were him. This was someone – or something – else. Something other.
My heart rate sped up. I tried to calm my breathing, but I didn’t have much luck.
The mist or smoke or fog was thickening, to the point where I could see only a few yards in front of me. I was coming up on the footbridge across the creek, just before the multi-lane underpass, and I didn’t relish the thought of crossing over it while I was being stalked.
I stopped at the edge of the footbridge. With one hand on the railing, I turned around to head back.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw it launch itself from the top of the retaining wall – a yellow streak – and then I felt it wham into my left shoulder. The impact knocked me flat on the bridge deck, the intruder landing on top of me.
I cried out as I hit, conking my head on the railing support bar. But then I got a good look at my stalker and was too scared to make another sound.
The big, spotted cat’s front claws pierced my winter coat as it held me down; its back paws straddled my legs and its tail brushed my ankles as it twitched back and forth. Its muzzle was inches from my face, its eyes glowing like coals. I could smell its oddly fruity breath as it opened its mouth. Its fangs gleamed unnaturally in the dark. I shut my eyes and turned my head away; I was sure I was moments from death, and crazily, I thought it would hurt less if the cat ripped out my throat than if it bit off my face.
Then I felt sandpaper on my exposed neck.
Then, I swear, the monster began to make a rumbling noise. Jesus God, do jaguars purr?
Still scared, I opened one eye just as the rumbling stopped abruptly and the cat’s head jerked up. It looked down the trail, back the way I’d come. Now an unmistakable growl issued from the jaguar’s throat as it crouched atop me. It screamed once, then launched itself off me and disappeared into the mist.
I pushed myself up and sat for a second, disoriented. Then a shape rushed at me out of the thinning mist. Fear gripped me again. I screamed.
Then I realized it was Joseph.
His eyes glowed amber as he reached me. I clung to him, babbling about being attacked by a jaguar. He helped me up and checked me quickly for injuries. Then he left me for a few moments to see if he could find some trace of the cat.
I held onto the bridge railing, swaying, while I waited for him to come back. My adrenaline level was dissipating as quickly as the mist or smoke or whatever it was, leaving me almost too weak to stay upright. My head ached and my jacket was ripped on the shoulders where the cat’s claws had gripped me.
I heard someone approaching and gasped, but it was Joseph coming back. He shook his head. “Nothing. There are tracks just on the other side of the bridge, but then they disappear.”
I laughed shakily. “Maybe it didn’t really happen.”
“Oh, it happened,” he said. “Are you okay? Can you walk?”
“I think so,” I said. “Sure.” Still, I leaned pretty heavily on him as we started back to my place. “What made you come after me?”
“You were gone a lot longer than usual. Then I remembered the jaguar I’d seen, and I started to get worried.”
“I’m glad you came,” I told him. But then I remembered the voice from my dream that had told me to beware, and how terrified I’d been of Joseph as he arrived on the scene, his identity shrouded by smoke, and I wondered which beast I was supposed to be wary of – the jaguar or the coyote.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Ch
apter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Author’s Note
About the Author
Sneak preview of Fissured
Here’s a sneak preview of Fissured: Book Two of the Pipe Woman Chronicles, coming in September 2012!
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