Claws That Catch

by Lee Hayton

  As we came together in a silent formation, changed to our feline forms all the better to reach out target undetected, I thought of the Pennyworth’s mansion and the gated entry that kept the riff-raff out.

  Asha had been able to override the electronic system to gain entry one time. I bet that they would have put measures in place to prevent that from happening again.

  Certainly, this new subdivision didn’t look like it would be bothering with the new-fangled electronics. The good thing about a metal row of spikes was that a savvy hacker couldn’t breach its security any more than a fat gardener.

  High-tech is great so long as you’re the only one with the passcode. Low-tech seemed to be swinging back into fashion as too many bright sparks fell on the wrong side of the divide.

  And if the gates failed? Well, I bet that whoever ended up living here wouldn’t wait twenty-four hours for a patrol car to respond to an urgent call out. Once, back in the day when I was still trying to be a part of my community, I’d pointed out that it was so useless to turn up that late, they may as well not bother at all.

  Turns out, that was the forces line of thinking as well. The have-nots were left to their own devices to battle it out.

  “Hey, Tiddles,” a voice called out from the darkness of my left-hand side. I slunk over toward the noise, gradually making out the shape of Pounce hiding behind a row of concrete piles.

  “What is it?”

  He pointed, and I saw the vampire crew being rounded up and placed back into their work van. I glanced up at the sky and tried to estimate the time. Midnight, maybe an hour past but no later. They still had half a day’s work to go, but instead, they were fucking off back to the pits.

  Or another job?

  Well, I couldn’t tell that from here.

  “Let’s go down to the other end,” I suggested. “The vamps working on the roading will be more spread out, which means more guards, but I don’t think this lot will be coming back.”

  A second and third van full of the other vampire crew passed us before we’d gotten halfway there. As the team of confused faces looked to me for an answer, I could only shrug. I didn’t have a clue.

  We headed home. I hadn’t worked out a plan B because I’d never heard of anything like this happening. As we walked through into a downpour, we met up with another of our teams also headed home in defeat.

  “They’ve sprung us,” I said to Asha and Norman, as though they wouldn’t have worked that out already. By the time I made it back through the door, eight other teams had reported on the strange news.

  “It could just be the blood banks,” Norman suggested. “If they're running low on supplies, then they might’ve started working everyone half days.”

  “Why?” I stared at him, unsure if he believed what he was saying or if he’d thought of something that hadn’t occurred to me. “If they’ve got enough blood to get the vamps working for a few hours, what’s to stop them working them all night?”

  “I don’t know.” He ran a hand through his hair and looked up at the ceiling. I still wasn’t used to seeing the pulse of blood through his veins or the blue color of his eyes. He looked like a fictional version of my old friend—if he hadn’t had the shared memories, it would be like starting over with a new person.

  “What happens to vampires if they can’t get enough blood?” Asha asked. “Do you just get tired and cranky?”

  “We die,” Norman said. “But it takes a long time. For the most part, it just makes us useless.”

  I smiled and ducked my face to hide it. I loved the way he still said us as though he remained part of the vampire clan.

  “In which case, they’d just work the vamps until they dropped,” I said. “It’s not as though they give a fuck one way or the other about your comfort. Once they ran every one of you into the ground, they’d be out of options, but it doesn’t make sense to rest shifts until then.”

  “I suppose not.” Norman huffed out a breath of air and shook his head. “Why the fuck did it take them until now to work it out?”

  “And what else have they worked out?” I added. “Have you considered that it’s about time we moved on?”

  “If they wanted to target us here, they’ve had ample opportunity,” Asha pointed out. “The Pennyworths know we live here, as does your old boss. It’s not as though they’ve come knocking and they should have by now if that were their goal.”

  “Maybe they haven’t connected the dots,” Norman said. “Online, there’re loads of forums with the bat pictures on them and conjecture that it’s happening spontaneously.”

  “That’s from a group of idiots who don’t have access to the truth.” I wrapped my arms around my legs and laid my cheek on my knees. “Anybody who wants to hurt us won’t be counted in that lot.”

  “We don’t have anywhere to go,” Asha repeated. “You’ve already tried to find places to expand into. If you couldn’t find room to overflow, then we’re hardly likely to stumble across a new home.”

  “I didn’t mean everyone moves as one,” I said in a small voice. “That would be impossible.”

  “What happened to the notion of mobilizing a team?” Asha’s hard voice cut through me like a knife as I tried to hide my dismay.

  “We’ll find another way,” Norman promised. “This is just the first thing I thought of, it doesn’t mean it’s the only way we can help.”

  “Last time I asked you if you wanted to form a plan, you weren’t interested.”

  “It got me thinking.”

  Asha looked over, her face a mask of concern. “I thought we’d been over this. No more sticking our necks out, since they’re just likely to be cut off.”

  Norman gave a snort of laughter. “Would you rather just sit around here, waiting for them to come to us?”

  “Nobody’s coming anywhere if we keep our heads down.” Asha stared out the window as another team headed inside, defeated. “That was the promise.”

  “Do you really trust the Pennyworths to make good on their promise?” I openly stared at Asha, shaking my head.

  “If we’re not enough of a nuisance to bother with, then they won’t bother with us,” she said in a tight voice. It was such a change from her usual Barbie doll tone that I was taken aback.

  “And how do you know how much of a nuisance you can be before you trip over that imaginary line?” I stood up and moved closer to her. “Surely, you realize that you’ll never know.”

  “We’re safe if we want to be,” Asha said, her voice barely qualifying as a whisper. “I just want to stay safe.”

  “You know that they can reach out at any time,” I said, edging closer. “That’s not safety. That’s spending the rest of your life living in fear.”

  “We can’t run away from them. I’ve tried that. I can’t live with what they’ll do to me if they take me again.”

  “I rescued you last time. I’ll do it again.”

  “Not if you’re in a jail cell next to me, you won’t.” Asha turned to me, and her eyes were soft with fear. “They let you get me out because it suited them last time. If they recapture me, it won’t be under the same circumstances.”

  “So, we fight.”

  “They’ll kill us if we do.”

  “At least you won’t be afraid if you’re dead.”

  As we locked our eyes in battle, I could feel the balance shifting. Even with the weight of those blood bank lives lying heavy on my soul, I wanted to fight with every inch of my being. Once, I hadn’t struggled—I hadn’t been able to—and I paid the price for that decision every day.

  “What’s your plan?” Asha asked.

  Game on.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I’d gone back to the boss’s office and picked up the folder with information on my son. Of course, I had. Any fool would. Those blood bank people had paid the cost for my thirst for knowledge with their lives, and it would be a cold-hearted bitch who’d throw that back in their faces.

  Not saying that I wouldn’t be a
cold-hearted bitch if the circumstances called for it.

  I’d had the self-respect to wait until I was sure the place was empty, but I hadn’t opened the folder while I was in there. It seemed like tempting fate to even consider doing that.

  No, I’d waited until I was back home safe in the apartment, then I’d stored the folder safely in the kitchen cupboard where the cleaning supplies were kept. Not anything that the current residents had bought, nor ever thought to use. I knew that the details would be safe in there until I had some time alone.

  With Norman not inviting me back into his room, I had the lounge to myself once Asha crawled off to bed. Percival might still put in an appearance, but we weren’t friends, so that didn’t matter. Not the same way that being caught by Asha or Norman would.

  The first half of the folder was a review of the early circumstances of my kitten’s life. I didn’t need reminding, my memories of that horror-show of a time were still far too fresh, so I skipped ahead to see what he was up to now.

  It was a shock to see that my son, the comically named Fluffy, was a guard for the slave pits. I shuddered to think of what he’d undergone to make that career seem like a good choice. When I had more time to read through, I’d probably find more answers in his folder.

  But the time wasn’t right for that now. I stored the papers away in their safe cupboard and lay down on the sofa to think about the little I’d learned. A guard who was sympathetic to our cause would be an ally worth more than their weight in gold.

  That presupposed that he would be favorable to me. I shouldn’t make that assumption, not until I’d met him.

  I wondered how I would feel in the same situation. Dragged from my mother’s loving arms as a child and forced to grow up, perhaps in the embrace of a caring new family, more probably alone.

  The thoughts were by turns tortuous and reassuring. If I met him, grew to know him, and forged a new relationship, then that would be wondrous beyond my ability to imagine. If I turned up on his doorstep and he rejected me, I would be destroyed.

  As I turned to my side, my wide-open eyes staring blankly at the wall to the kitchen, I pondered whether it would be better not to have found out that he’d lived at all. Thinking back to the time before I caught a glance at a precious piece of information on a random computer screen, it seemed a lot simpler. I hadn’t much cared for myself, but I also hadn’t been particularly concerned with others either. An empty life was a safe life.

  Now, not only did I have a son to imagine back into life, but I had reunited with a boy I’d thought dead and a friend who I would never have chosen for myself.

  “Are you awake?” a voice called out from the doorway. I hitched myself up onto my elbow and looked over to see Dory staring in through a gap in the door.

  “I am. Did you want something?”

  She opened the door wider, then beckoned at me to come over. I wondered if Norman’s concern over her wine supply was valid—even in the kind bath of moonlight, Dory looked close to a hundred years old.

  “Can you come with me for a minute?”

  I followed along behind her, curiosity my downfall as usual. When she paused at the doorway to her shared room with Earnest, my nose twitched. The scent of death wasn’t powerful yet, that would come in time, but it was enough for my animal senses to go screaming up the scales.

  “I don’t know what happened,” Dory said with a sob. “Yesterday, he was absolutely fine, then when I woke up today, I found him like this.”

  ‘Like this,’ turned out to be Earnest flat on his back, eyes open and staring blankly at a ceiling he could no longer see. His stomach was enormous, already bloated out with gases. Judging from some of the odors coming from his dead flesh, they’d already started to empty out his bowel.

  “We need to get him out of here before somebody finds out.” Dory stood back, wringing her hands in front of her. “If the council discovers that he’s no longer collecting rent, then they’ll kick us all out.”

  “He wasn’t collecting rent from us, anyway, was he?” I had to snap my fingers in front of Dory’s face to draw her attention away from the eyesore on the bed,

  “No, but he was covering the shortfall from his savings,” she said on a wave of sobbing. “I don’t know where he keeps the money though. I don’t even know if he paid by credit or by coin.”

  “If we want the council to stay away, the best course of action is to ensure that they don’t ask questions to begin with,” I said. With another quick glance at the bed, I realized how big an ask that was. Earnest wasn’t a small man to begin with, and not only did we need to get rid of his body, but also to access his accounts and work out how he paid his kickbacks. If we could track them at all.

  If somebody dropped by and collected payment in old-fashioned coin, then we’d be out of luck.

  “How long have the werecats been congregating here?” I asked Dory. I had a feeling I’d already been told the answer, but I couldn’t dredge it up just at that moment.

  “It’s been two months, give or take, since Norman brought the first dead cat home.” Dory shot a glare in the direction of the hallway. “They’ve been congregating ever since.”

  Two months. Even if a collector were running late, he would have seen evidence of the cat invasion on his visit last month. That meant no one came around in person. Even an idiot on the council wouldn’t let something like this slide.

  Not when he could use it to extract more money.

  “We need to find someplace to dump his body,” I said, realizing a second too late that the words might sound callous. My eyes slid across to Dory, but she seemed unfazed by the blunt sentence. I guess that in her time, she’d heard a lot worse.

  “There’s a dumpster two blocks down the road,” Dory said. “That’s the only place around here that the city clears trash.” She frowned. “It depends if you want him to end up in a landfill, or just rot away on the streets.”

  Well, that proved my worry about sounding abrasive was misplaced.

  “It’d be better if he goes to a landfill. I don’t think law enforcement would be fussed, but I don’t need some lowlife from our neighborhood getting the word out. Somebody would just try to muscle in on the apartment.”

  Rent was big business when there wasn’t any real competition for making a living. Given how much Earnest had let the apartment building standards slide since I’d last been there, people would already be watching.

  “There’s a tarp up in the attic,” Dory suggested. “I can go fetch that.”

  I nodded, and she scurried out of the room, probably glad to get out of the reach of the dead body’s odor. It had gone from barely noticeable to in-your-face in the short time I’d been standing inside the room. I moved across to open up the window and found it painted shut.

  One claw dragged along the ledge took care of that, but I hesitated. If we wanted to keep the place looking exactly as it had been, opening an always-closed window might be the signal someone had been waiting for.

  A long shot, but there were plenty out there who would notice the faintest hint of trouble.

  “Here you go,” Dory said as she returned and laid out the tarp on the floor. “If you grab his arms, I’ll take his legs.”

  We moved Earnest off the bed, releasing a glut of fresh odors and revealing a stain on the sheets where fluids had leaked. I stripped off the bedding and placed it on the tarp next to him. Some had dripped through to the mattress underneath, but it was so badly stained that it would be hard to tell.

  “Do you want to go out into the hallway?” I suggested in a gentle voice. “I can handle the next bit. I’ll need some trash bags if you can find those lying about.”

  Dory shot me a grateful look, then walked out of the room and closed the door firmly behind her. With her gone, I studied the corpse in front of me, planning each slice.

  Before cutting, I took off Earnest’s clothes and rifled through his pockets. Nada. Hopefully, the man had the sense to lock his essential documents aw
ay in a safe. If he’d stored them in his head, we were probably fucked.

  I flicked my claws out and cut him apart at the joints. Dory knocked on the door halfway through and shoved a pile of trash bags inside. When each piece of Earnest was small enough, I sealed it up into a trash bag. Some got a piece of clothing or a torn square of bedding to cushion them, others were large enough on their own.

  I ended up with thirty bags, all tied shut and ready to be transported. The last two had the tarpaulin, neatly clawed in half.

  Any detective worth his badge would be able to walk into the room and tell that something had gone on there. I wasn’t in the mood to scrub down wood or soak the mattress to remove every last stain.

  For our purposes, the scum out on the streets wouldn’t have a clue that anything was amiss. Since they were our target audience, that would have to do.

  All that would change if we dragged out the bags in full daylight. Even one at a time would clue in a watchful eye by the end of the day.

  The sewer system would come in useful, no matter how uncomfortable the werecats would find it to drag a bag through the tunnels. So long as they were careful, we might be able to get them to the waiting dumpster without accidentally biting or clawing them open.

  Part one down, I needed to rouse Asha from her sleep to get part two underway.

  After a moment’s thought, I left her to sleep until morning. The job would be easier to perform if she was alert, and I didn’t need the aggravation. Besides, I was exhausted after spending the night on my unpleasant tasks. One long, hot shower later, I lay back down on the couch. Within a few minutes, Dory joined me, her body shaking, even after she fell asleep.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I didn’t know you two had a thing,” Asha commented as she woke us both late in the morning. “Scoot on over. You can go back to sleep so long as you don’t mind the noise from the TV.”

  “I need to go and change,” Dory said, giving me a grateful look before she slipped out of the room. The bags of Earnest were already down in the drains, ready for the cats to be instructed to take them further afield.