Eyes of the Cat

by Mimi Riser

  Her stomach suddenly feeling like a lead weight, she padded after him. The tree was her only option, of course. She had realized that the moment she’d discovered the skeleton key wouldn’t get her out of the cell.

  “Yes, I suppose I’ve been expecting this, too— Caliban! What’s the matter with you?”

  Back arched in front of the window, he was blocking her exit, hissing and spitting as though he thought he really was a demon.

  “Believe me, I’m well aware that even if I survive the climb, the final drop will probably kill me. But at least it’ll be faster than being tortured to death in the dungeon. Which is undoubtedly what Uncle Angus will do to me, if I let him carve up Alan with a claymore. I appreciate your concern, but there’s nothing else I can do. So be a good boy and get out of the way.”

  Tucking up her skirt to protect it from the branches, and closing her eyes to protect them from the sight of her own coming demise, she fumbled the agitated cat aside, squirmed through the window crevice, and blindly groped her way down…down…dizzying down to the last, long leap.

  And a startled gasp when that leap landed her, once again, in a waiting pair of muscular, MacAllister-Comanche arms.

  “Alan!”

  “Guess again,” a rusty voice spoke close to her ear.

  Very slowly, as if delay itself might change what she knew she would see into what she wanted it to be, Tabitha opened her eyes and peered into the dusky face of Wild Horse with its squashed potato nose—a face that seemed to lay for an instant over another, covering it like a translucent mask. The underlying image was gone almost before she could blink, but it had been visible long enough for her to be certain it was a face she had seen twice before. Once that morning, when her wits were too scattered to fully recognize it, and once in an old tintype of his parents her father had shown her—the same day, in fact, he had told her the story of Elspeth and the Panther.

  “I don’t have to guess. I know who you are,” she whispered, thinking how miserable it was to know so much, and feeling not the least vindicated by the revelation that all her original fears had been correct. There was a diabolical presence and a form of possession at work here. Someone had been toying with her mind. And a trap had been set for an unwary quarry. It was all just as she had suspected. The only little point she had missed somehow was that this evening’s quarry would turn out to be herself.

  “You’re a perversion. A paradox. A freak of fate,” she told him. “How it happened, I can hardly even imagine—and I know more of the story than most—but you’re Jeremy Earnshaw’s mind in Wild Horse’s body. That’s who you are.”

  “Clever girl.” He lowered her to her feet and rested his hands on her shoulders. “Now you get to ask me a question.”

  “Only one?”

  The face above hers stretched into a mirthless grin. “Well, one for starters, and we’ll see where that leads us.”

  I know where it’s leading, Tabitha thought, staring up at him and realizing that she was looking straight into the eyes of genuine, cold-blooded insanity.

  “Then, for starters, I want to know where Wild Horse is,” she said, amazed that she could speak the words so calmly when her heart was trying to hammer its way out through her throat.

  The grin twisted into a slight frown. “You disappoint me. I was hoping you would ask who you were… Well, no matter.” He shrugged. “This question is a good one, too. And one I’m anxious to find an answer for, myself. Where do any of us go when we die?”

  “Are you telling me he…his mind and spirit, that is, are…gone?”

  “That’s a second question, by the way, and it’s really my turn now… But, yes,” he replied, looking quite pleased at his own benevolence in doing so, “the former occupant of this fleshy prison is no longer with us. He escaped it the night you arrived. A lucky coincidence for me, since I had just managed to escape from my own beastly confinement in that wretched piece of metal. I was able to enter his body at the exact moment his mind departed, but right before his heart stopped beating… Though, if I’d realized what I was getting myself into, I might have thought twice about it. Did you know there’s a bullet lodged in this brain?”

  His left hand pressed down harder on her shoulder as the right tangled in Wild Horse’s thick forelock. “How the man survived so long with what little mind he must have had left can only be one of the Devil’s miracles. The poor fellow must have suffered the most hellish headaches. I know I’ve had one since being in here.” He winced with the obvious pain of it. “Fortunately, it’ll soon be over.”

  “You’re not planning on staying then?” Tabitha’s gaze flickered upward, then quickly down again, as a slight rustling overhead drew her attention for an instant.

  “A third question? Oh well, I suppose I can afford to be generous.” He sighed. “No, I’ll shortly be free of earthly aches. I’m going to cut this walking torture chamber’s throat, and release myself into blessed oblivion,” he explained, his hands beginning to shift. “But first, I’m going to perform the same favor for you, my dear, darling…disloyal Elspeth!”

  Before she could even gasp, his grip was biting into her windpipe, and razor sharp steel glinted a deadly arc upward from his belt sheath to her throat.

  “I promised you this would happen, didn’t I, if you chose that heathen over me?” He made a slow practice slice from one ear to the other with the blade held a hairsbreadth from her flesh. “The thought of sending you to Hell has been my only solace these endless, empty years of blackness and cold—the only thing that’s kept my mind functioning through its torment. I could have killed you almost any time these past days, you know. I was planning on killing you this morning at that ranch I followed you to… But I decided I wanted you to remember first who you were. I want you to know the anguish of what you and your Comanche lover did to me!”

  “They did nothing to you,” Tabitha strained out, her voice a scratchy rasp. “You did it to yourself when you secretly told the MacAllisters who had freed their prisoner. Then you sealed it by trying to kill him and Elspeth yourself when she was helpless at the stake. The Panther did the only thing he could to save her. And he paid dearly for it. They both paid!” Her eyes darted from his to the lower branches of the tree and back again. “But I’m not her. I’m only her granddaughter. Can’t you see that? I’m not Elspeth.”

  “You may be right… Perhaps Jezebel would be a more appropriate name for you,” Jeremy Earnshaw’s rusty tones grated through Wild Horse’s clenched teeth.

  Jerking her half off her feet, he swung the knife back for its fatal stroke, quoting righteously, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”—and screaming like a holy terror when the witch’s demon dropped out of tree onto his head.

  The grip on her throat torn open by frenzied fangs and claws, Tabitha stumbled backward, grappling a dizzy moment for breath and balance. Then, like a snared bird escaping through a sudden break in the net, she turned and flew across the castle’s dark, deserted inner yard toward the gate to the outer court. Toward a blaze of torches where she doubted her attacker would follow. Toward a circle of kilts and fierce eyes gathered to witness an ancient ritual. Toward clashing claymores, old grievances, and fresh fears. Toward Alan, in the center of it all.

  Only…

  He wasn’t.

  Bursting from the inner to the outer courtyard, she staggered to a gasping halt. The torches, eyes, ancient ritual, and grievances were there as expected. But the fear was her own, because in the center of it all stood a large stake piled high about with smoking brush. And tied to it was a girl not too unlike herself, who kept flickering in and out of the picture like a candle flame nearly snuffed by a draft, then catching itself and flaring high again.

  Jeremy Earnshaw? One of the mind-control tricks he had learned from the Panther before blind jealousy twisted friendship into hate?

  It might be. She thought she could feel his will prickling at the edges of her consciousness, just as she had felt it before during these past da
ys. Was he trying to goad her back through the gate? Back through the dark? Back into the arms of death?

  This had to be some hypnotic projection. It was too like those muddled memories and dreams she now realized he had been using to manipulate and confuse her. But it wouldn’t work, Tabitha told herself, setting her feet and her resolve to not tumble into it. She would deny this vision as she had the others.

  She was still denying it even as several sets of heavy hands took hold and began dragging her toward the stake. It was an unusually tactile vision, apparently.

  Too tactile? A different memory suddenly elbowed its way through the jostling crowd of images in her head. A genuine memory, this time. A recent one, and her own, of these same hands hauling her up out of…

  “Nice of her tae spare us the bother o’ fetchin’ her, ain’t it? I’d check the vats, though, if I were you, Geordie. No tellin’ what mischief she was makin’ on the way here.” One of the visions laughed. “She feels dry enoof, but witches can spoil beer with a look, sae I’ve heard.”

  “Shut your face, you blatherin’ arse. If you make mock o’ this, some’ll suspect ’tain’t real.”

  Real? As an opiate soaked rag was stuffed into her mouth, their mock witch knew that it was. Digging in her heels, she began a furious and ultimately futile battle to break free, scarcely noticing in the hysteria when her bodice ripped and a slender piece of iron dropped out—not even certain she had seen the flash of black that retrieved it and streaked off, until she heard the cries:

  “There be more proof of her sorceries! D’ye see?”

  “See what?”

  “The demon! Are y’blind?”

  “Nay, but you mun be. ’Tis nothin’ there.”

  “’Tis the demon, I tell you!”

  “Aw, you’re daft.”

  “Daft am I? ’Tis Satan desertin’ his own!”

  “Run, Caliban!”

  The last was from her, as a sickly sweet gag went flying before being snatched out of the air and roughly shoved back in place. Though where her furred emissary was going with the key… Alan? She wondered, and tossed hope aside with the thought.

  Wherever he was, Alan wouldn’t know what the key meant or even that it was from her. Her father would recognize it, but she doubted he would relate it to a murderous replay of history like this. As far as she could figure, there was only one soul nearby who would be able to read that small metal message, as he had once before. But would the cat dare take it to him? He might, if he thought it was the only chance to spare her.

  He’d be right, too, she realized wretchedly, as thick cords lashed her tightly to the stake. Jeremy Earnshaw in Wild Horse’s powerful body probably would be able to free her. And a slashed throat would be easier than a slow, agonizing burn.

  “Clever girl, Elspeth. I’m coming!”

  The words sounded clearly in her head at the same instant murky billows of smoke swirled up, choking and blinding her. The courtyard exploded in earsplitting pandemonium—

  Dear God, what was happening? ’Twas beastly tae be hooded! Drat Stuart and his mercy. ’Twould be simpler for her, he’d said. Simpler her foot! He simply couldna abide the thought o’ lookin’ at her face when he set the torch tae the wood. This hood made it simpler for him, it did. But…

  Twisting in her bonds, she felt for it again.

  There ’twas! A nail or somethin’ in the stake.

  A rewarding bit of a rip, and she had a small peephole. A big peep through it, and she wished she’d left well enough alone.

  Saints forgive her for causin’ such a fury. And saints forgive him for nay trustin’ her, for mistakin’ friendship for love… Was he sorry for it now? ’Twas him there alangside the Panther, wasn’t it? God protect them both… If they got themselves killed for her, she’d ne’er— Sweet heaven! Was that his game? Tae use this battle as a shield for his own vengeance? But the Panther wouldna suspect that. He’d think Jeremy was tryin’ tae help and—

  Screaming out a warning that split time itself, she watched in horror as two forms collided in a locking of limbs and minds that nearly tore her own skull apart with its force. Suffocating in the smoke, blinded by terror, she never knew when it was over or who had pushed to her side, until her sliced bonds dropped away, and she fell forward out of a nightmare into the sound of his voice calling her name…

  “Tabitha!”

  Chapter 13

  “All right, if someone will oblige me with a drum roll,” Kathleen Kildare was saying, as the evening shadows deepened in the castle’s inner court, “I’ll attempt to repeat this tangled little epic and see if I’ve gotten all the threads sorted out.”

  Tabitha humored her with a halfhearted thrumming of fingers against the side of the wooden bench they were stationed on. Tucked between a wall and the end of the keep’s entrance ramp it provided a welcome spot to enjoy the sunset breezes without being on public display. Neither female was much in the mood for company at the moment, beyond the company they could offer each other.

  “First,” Kathy began after dramatically clearing her throat, smoothing her flounced skirt, and raising the forefinger of her right hand.

  “First… And I hope you’ll forgive me for starting with the part that concerns myself. First”—she raised the forefinger higher—“Captain Simon Elliott of the Texas Rangers, better known as Smoke, because of his inscrutable and cryptic ways… Though if you ask me, it’s really more because being near him makes a person want to break out in fits of coughing. At least, that’s how he affects me… Anyway, he did not come here initially to spy on yours truly, much as it pains me to admit such a ruthless and undeserved slight to my professional ego. Nor did he come merely to aid Dr. Earnshaw. The insufferable Mr. Wizard does have a science background, is a former student of Dr. Earnshaw’s, and has been assisting him, but all that was actually just a convenient cover for his true purpose. His true purpose being to discreetly observe castle life from the inside.

  “Because”—the forefinger shot skyward a melodramatic moment before plummeting breathless into her lap—“some overly zealous official at the state capital had received an anonymous letter claiming that Clan MacAllister has been taking too much upon itself, legally speaking, and advising that their special pact with Texas ought to be dissolved before they instigated a revolution. Or something equally embarrassing.

  “We now know, of course, that provocative little warning was penned by Geordie. And the only thing that surprises me about that,” she inserted thoughtfully, “is the idea that imbecile knew how to write, in the first place.

  “At any rate,” she continued with a brief shake of her head, “that is why our brewer, with a little help from some of his best customers, organized that lovely cookout for you last night. Taking advantage of the fact that most of the clan would be occupied far from the outer court with a trial-by-combat in the great hall, and having overheard enough of your shouting match with Uncle Angus to know that Captain Elliott would be arriving this morning with a marshal and deputies, he decided to give the authorities such a hot demonstration of clan tradition, that it would scotch the whole pact for good—if you’ll pardon the puns.

  “Not because Geordie was anti-traditionalist, mind you, but because he was anti Alan and Angus. He’d been wanting to pull apart the entire MacAllister hierarchy since the day Heather jilted him for Alan—probably the only intelligent thing that poor girl ever did, too. Though if he’d known you had guessed the truth about him, he would have had an even better reason. I find that wonderfully ironic, by the way—the fact that he didn’t realize you’d already pegged him for Heather’s death, and was trying to dispose of you anyway.

  “Which…” The hand flitted up again for an instant, this time with the second finger joining the first. “Which brings us to Act Two, subtitled What Really Happened on the Prairie that Day.

  “Unfortunately, we’ll never be able to confront him with it, since he tripped into his own bonfire last night and went off like a Roman candle when
one of his drunken cronies tried to put him out by dumping whiskey on him—very clumsy of them both, I must say—but it’s certain now that Geordie was the one who murdered Heather, having first shot Wild Horse, thinking he was Alan, and leaving him for dead a short ways off.

  “Aside from the other evidence—such as motive and that asinine story of his—what makes it certain is Wild Horse calling for beer all those years when he hates beer. With his mind virtually destroyed by his wound, it was the only way he had of naming the true culprit. Instead of saying Geordie the Brewer, he just kept saying beer—an obvious clue, really. Alan probably would have caught it himself, if he hadn’t been so intent on suspecting his uncle—just as you did for a while, and for the same reasons.

  “All that came out during the combat, naturally. It’s a pity you were so busy being burned at the stake and had to miss that. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Especially the look on Uncle Angus’s face when he realized it was Alan he’d been trying to skewer.

  “Not that the battle lasted very long. Having been taught claymore fighting by Angus himself, Alan knew all the old bear’s tricks and had him disarmed within a dozen or so strokes. Then for an entertaining few moments, the accusations clashed louder than their claymores had—until Angus managed to convince Alan of his innocence by swearing it on the sacred honor of the clan.

  “It was all so preposterous, I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing out loud. I mean, the idea of Angus being a murderer! If either of you had asked me, I could have assured you he wasn’t the type. He does have sort of a criminal nature, but it’s more my sort. Uncle Angus is a master manipulator. A con-artist.” She grinned. “He’ll grab any opportunity and twist it to his advantage if he can.