by Steve Vernon
And besides, she always kept her doors locked. She was a woman living alone in a neighborhood where she didn’t even know the names of all her neighbors—and some of them she didn’t want to know—so she kept every door locked that could be locked.
But just in case, she ran through the house checking each and every door. She turned the lights on as she went just so she wouldn’t run into something, fall down, and break a leg or an arm or maybe both. She could just imagine that phone call for help.
“You were running from…a shadow?” the kindly 9-1-1 operator would say.
Then she’d find herself explaining all of her childhood traumas to some pasty-faced shrink who’d nod encouragingly while recommending her for her very own padded room in the psych ward.
Uh, no.
No self-inflicted broken bones.
By the time she’d checked all four doors—front, back, garage, and the sliding door that went from her bedroom into her back yard—she was out of breath and her house was blazing with electric light. Her mother would have been appalled.
But all the light made Chessa feel better. How else could you protect yourself from something made of shadows? Turn on the lights, right?
Her heart was still pounding when she made it back to her living room. She didn’t want to look through the blinds again, but she had to know if the thing in her front yard was still out there.
She took a deep breath and blew it out. Did the same with a second deep breath. Thought about doing it a third time and decided hyperventilating would be about as lame a thing to do as breaking a leg running through the house to check on the door locks.
“Seriously, just do it already,” she muttered.
At least that came out in her own voice.
She reached for the blinds in her window and pretended not to notice how much her hands were trembling.
With all the lights blazing inside her house, she had to press her face as close as she could to the glass to actually see her yard.
She breathed a sigh of relief.
No wolf-shaped shadows out there. None whatsoever. She did see a small gray—at least she thought it was gray—cat skulking along the front fence, but that was it.
“Silly me,” she said, her voice shaky. She’d probably imagined the whole thing.
She’d just started to back away from the window when the air near the glass turned arctic. She actually saw her breath steam up the inside of the window.
Her hands grew numb, and her knees felt wobbly. It was only the middle of September, and not all that cold yet. She hadn’t even turned her air conditioning off for the year, not that she’d heard it come on tonight. Besides, even when it was running, the air conditioning never got the house down below seventy degrees.
Something weird was going on here, and not just in her imagination.
With any luck, whatever the hell it was would stay outside where it belonged. She had so many lights turned on it her house, she was sure not one single shadowy area remained. She could probably shoot a Hollywood movie in here without having to add any more lights.
Good job.
She’d be safe. She just had to stay in the light.
She could do that.
She was sure she could do that.
Without warning, something slammed into the side of the house hard enough to make the windows rattle in their frames.
Chessa let out an involuntary little eep!
She backed away from the window just as a barrage of gunfire erupted from the television. Her long-forgotten action movie.
What she wouldn’t give for some real firepower. Although she was so scared she’d probably end up blowing her foot off.
She went to turn off the television so she could hear something other than what Hollywood thought real gunfire sounded like.
She hadn’t taken more than two steps before all the lights in the house went out.
Mischief’s human—the human Mischief hoped would want her—had done a smart thing.
She’d brightened the inside of her house.
Shadow creatures couldn’t stand artificial light. It hurt them, just like bright sunlight hurt them. Bright light burned through their shadows, and enough bright light tore them apart.
It was one of the tools shadow hunters like Mischief’s mother could use against them.
Moonlight didn’t hurt shadow creatures in the same way. Even the full moon didn’t have enough like to hurt them. It just made them crazy enough—angry enough—to leave the protection of the world’s dark places.
Mischief’s mother used to say that the full moon made the shadow creatures so angry because the moon had no light of its own, just like the shadow creatures had no real bodies of their own. She used to say that the shadow creatures were only reflections of things that had been in the world at one time, like the moon’s light was only a reflection of the sun.
Whether that was true or if it was just an old tale the feline fey told their children, the only thing that mattered to Mischief was that artificial light could hurt this shadow creature. And brilliant artificial light blazed from every window in the house.
Maybe the creature would go away without trying to do anyone harm.
Maybe Mischief wouldn’t have to fight for her human after all.
Bright patches of light spilled out in narrow stripes on the lawn from the front window of the house. The shadow creature, so intent on changing shapes, got too close to one of the stripes. A puff of powder-gray smoke erupted from its flank.
The creature screamed in pain.
Somewhere in the neighborhood, a dog yipped in fear. Other dogs took up its cry.
The fur along Mischief’s spine was a hard ridge now, it stood so stiff and tall, and a shiver ran down the entire length of her tail. She planted her back legs, shifting from side to side to get better purchase in the dirt beneath the flowering shrub.
Her body was getting ready to launch into battle.
The shadow creature sprang forward. It hit the house so hard that Mischief felt the impact in the trembling of the ground beneath her paws.
The shadow creature was infuriated. It beat at the house. Raked its solid, transformed claws along the wood covering the outside of the house and screamed, this time in anger.
Mischief felt a change in the air. A drawing together of magic.
The shadow creature was trying to get inside.
Mischief had to stop it.
She had to get the woman inside the house to light up the yard.
Humans could do that. When the dogs had started yipping, lights had flicked on outside the house next door. If Mischief’s human would only make that brilliant, artificial light happen outside her house, the shadow creature might go away.
But that’s not what happened.
Mischief hopped up on the porch and started to yowl, hoping the woman inside would illuminate the porch to see what was happening, when all that brilliant, wonderful light inside the house blinked out.
The shadow creature roared in triumph.
Had it done that? Made the light go away?
Mischief’s eyes adjusted instantly to the sudden dark. She risked a glance behind herself.
All the artificial light in the neighborhood was gone. The only light now came from the moon.
The creature’s transformation was complete. The wooden boards on the front porch creaked beneath its weight.
The flower fairies fled from the shrubs in a burst of tiny sparks.
Mischief crouched down on the porch, her ears flattened against her skull, and hissed at the shadow creature who’d transformed itself into a wolf that walked on two legs.
The wolf creature ignored her. It was too intent on getting inside the house. She could feel sick hunger radiating off it in waves.
Mischief couldn’t fight it with light. She was just a cat now, and she had no magic. She would have to fight the creature like a cat. With teeth and claws and furious speed.
Without letting herself think abou
t what would happen if she failed, she launched herself at the wolf creature, aiming for its throat.
Chessa couldn’t help it. She yelped in fear when the lights went out.
Go figure. The one time she didn’t have her cell phone—and its handy dandy flashlight app—in her pocket was the one time she really needed it.
She always carried a slim wallet in the pocket of her jeans when she went out on a date. The wallet was a convenient place for her I.D., a single credit card, and enough cash to get by in case the evening went south. She’d read somewhere that keeping her cell in the same place as her credit cards was a bad idea, so she always put the cell in a different pocket. The night was cool enough for a jacket, so that’s where she put the cell.
And that’s where it still was—in the pocket of her jacket, which was hung up in her coat closet.
In the hallway.
A full room and a half away from where she stood.
Did she even have another flashlight in the house?
“You’re too dependent on technology,” her mother’s voice ragged in her ear.
Yeah, yeah, and who wasn’t these days?
Besides, all she had to do was find her way to the hall without tripping over anything and breaking an arm or a leg—or her neck—and she could get her cell, go light a few candles, and just sit tight until the whole thing blew over.
Provided the thing on her porch trying to claw its way into her house didn’t kill her first.
It howled the kind of blood-curdling howl Chessa had only ever heard before in the movies. And while it didn’t exactly curdle her blood, it certainly made her blood run cold.
In fact, the whole house felt like it had turned into a walk-in freezer. She shivered hard enough her teeth chattered, and that was enough to get her moving.
Whether the thing outside could exist in nature or not, the fact was that it did exist, and it was trying to break into her house. She couldn’t treat this like a normal power outage. There was nothing at all normal about this night.
Before the lights had gone out, she’d thought the light might drive the thing away. Lights banished shadows, right? But the lights were gone now. The only hope she had of fending that thing off was to get grab her cell and hope to hell it had enough of a charge to hold the thing off until the lights came back on.
She felt behind her for the closest chair to the window, an old thing that like her comfy recliner she’d bought at a second-hand store. She found the top of the back and inched her way around it as the thing outside her house screamed again.
Chessa nearly jumped out of her skin when another screech joined the thing’s howl.
Loud and getting louder, high and furious and wild, and yet somehow familiar.
Was that a cat?
Chessa loved cats. She’d never had one of her own, but when she was a kid, she’d always loved visiting with her friends’ cats. And they’d seemed to like her.
She’d just never had that special connection with a cat. And then she’d grown up, gone away to college, and then got a job that kept her busy. She didn’t have much time for dating, much less for a pet of her own.
But now? Hearing that thing go from attacking her house to attacking a poor, defenseless cat?
Chessa quit being scared and got angry.
How dare something that big—something that weird—go after a cat?
Screw the blackout and screw her shins. She needed her cell phone and she needed it now.
She ran for the hallway closet. As the battle on her front porch grew in ferocity, she smacked into her coffee table and bounced off her recliner, but she managed to stay on her feet. By the time she got to the hallway, she realized that she could see dim outlines of things thanks to the light of the full moon coming in through the window in her front bedroom.
She yanked open the closet door and grabbed her jacket.
Her cell phone wasn’t in her pocket.
She swore out loud, colorful and inventive cuss words that would have scandalized her mother, before she realized she was rooting around in the wrong pocket. She turned the jacket around, plunged her hand inside the other pocket, and closed her fingers around her cell.
Glass crashed on the tile in her entryway as the thing broke the window next to her door.
Chessa screamed as she thumbed on her cell.
A moment later the harsh, blue-white light from her cell’s flashlight filled the hallway. Chessa turned her light toward the front door.
She had to blink twice to make sure she was really seeing what she thought she saw.
The little gray cat she’d seen earlier was fighting a werewolf.
In her entry way.
The fight had spilled in through the broken window. The werewolf was the epitome of every Hollywood bad horror movie werewolf. It stood on its two hind legs. Its head was huge, its fur dirty and shaggy. Its eyes were red, and drool ran from its huge, open mouth.
The cat had latched itself onto the werewolf’s neck, teeth and front claws sunk in deep as it rabbit-punched the wolf’s neck, trying to rake open its veins. The cat’s tail whipped back and forth as the wolf tried to bat the cat away with its front paws, but the cat hung on.
It was a losing battle. The little cat was tough, but it couldn’t survive. Could it?
Chessa wasn’t about to find out.
Holding her cell phone flashlight in front of her like a torch, Chessa ran toward the battle.
The wolf creature was stronger than Mischief thought it would be.
It had gained strength from the human’s fear, and strength from the dark of night. Moonlight couldn’t touch it, and as much as Mischief tried to rake her claws through its tough fur and skin to the blood flowing through its transformed veins, she couldn’t hurt it.
She barely felt when the wolf crashed through the glass and into the human’s house.
The wolf creature batted at her with its paws. Its sharp nails raked at her own skin. She kept her belly close to the wolf’s body, her face pressed tight against its skin as she tried to rip open its throat.
Sudden light flared to life deeper inside the house. The wolf twitched and roared, but the light wasn’t strong enough to hurt it.
Mischief’s mother would be so disappointed in her. She might not be feline fey any longer, but she was the daughter of a shadow hunter. She was strong and fast, her claws and teeth sharp, her senses so much better than when she’d simply been a fairy.
And this was her human. Mischief had to protect her.
Even if it meant her death.
She couldn’t rip through the wolf creature’s skin, but she could rip out its eyes.
She would have to climb up past its mouth. Expose her belly to its flashing teeth, its snapping jaws. But if she could blind it, she stood a better chance of killing it.
Mischief let go of its neck and scrambled up its body towards its eyes.
The wolf roared in triumph. It shook its head and swatted at her. One of its front paws caught her in the ribs and a sudden, sharp pain shot through her body. She screeched and sank her claws into the wolf creature’s cheek.
Her claws actually sank into the thing’s transformed flesh.
Mischief realized the light had grown brighter.
Her human had actually brought the light closer, almost like she understood that bright light would hurt the creature.
Mischief ripped at the wolf creature’s snout, and this time her claws gouged out great hunks of flesh. She clawed her way up the creature’s head. She kicked at it with her strong hind legs, and her claws pierced its eye.
“Yes!” her human shouted in triumph. “Get the hell out of my house, whatever you are!”
Mischief’s human actually pressed the light against the wolf creature’s back, and the thing shrieked in agony. It’s flesh and fur and bone under Mischief’s claws became insubstantial. The human pressed her light against its head, and the shadow creature melted away into nothingness.
Mischief fell to the floor,
landing on all four of her feet. Her ribs ached where the wolf creature had struck her, and she had an irresistible urge to wash her fur to rid herself of the stench of battle.
“Well, holy shit,” Mischief’s human said. “I just had to tell it to go away? Just like that?” She looked down at Mischief. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Mischief gave an annoyed flick of her tail. It was a little more complicated than that. Not that she could ever tell her human that. Not now that she was just a cat.
She gave in to the urge, sat down among the broken glass, and proceeded to give her fur a good cleaning.
Chessa sat in her comfy chair and stared at the little gray cat who’d come into her life in the oddest way possible.
If it wasn’t for the broken window next to her front door, Chessa might be tempted to think she’d imagined the whole thing. That she’d fallen asleep watching some dumb horror movie on the television and dreamed that she’d seen a shadow in her front yard turn into a werewolf.
And that she’d killed the werewolf with her cell phone’s flashlight app.
Who knew? Cell phones. Better than a silver bullet.
Right after the wolf had disappeared into thin air—they didn’t do that in the movies—the lights had come back on. Coincidence? Chessa didn’t think so.
There was something magical about the whole thing, including the appearance of the cat.
The cat had watched Chessa the whole time she’d swept up the broken glass and then covered the window with her shower curtain duct taped into place. She’d sat quietly while Chessa cleaned the wound in her side, which hadn’t been much more than a few shallow scratches. She’d daintily accepted a dish of tuna, washed her face with one paw, and then hopped up in the spare chair in Chessa’s living room and curled up like she’d been living there all her life.
It looked like the cat had adopted her.
But did she really have time in her life for a cat?
Well, if she had time to schedule a blind date (who’d cancelled out on her) she certainly had time for a cat.
