Cat Tales

by Faith Hunter

  By the time he was done, he had found three more tenpenny nails and discovered the boards of a stall wall that had been replaced. The carpenter had dropped the nails during his repair job. Rick placed the nails with the rake head, a metal button, a buckle, part of a leather bridle with two rusted rings, a broken plastic spoon, and a dog collar. Nothing that would kill a vampire.

  He was filthy, his sheet so full of dust that he looked as if he had been rolling around on the ground. Which he had. Sister Mary Thomas would have smacked him with her ruler if he’d come back in from recess looking like this. Nuns, especially the older ones, still believed in corporal punishment, although not to the black-and-blue state. And back when he was in school, he had figured they practiced punishment searching for perfection—though whether they hunted for the perfection of the method of chastisement or perfection of the souls of their charges he had never decided. When he was a lot older and a little wiser, he figured he had been a pain in the nuns’ collective butts and had brought the punishment on himself.

  It was late afternoon when he thought to use the rake tines to pry and chop a stake from the old wood. And felt so stupid that he started laughing. “I’m an idiot,” he said. “A damn fool idiot.”

  He chose a board low down on the wall that could be hidden in piled dust, and felt along it with his fingers, searching out a weak spot. He found one in the corner, damp from long contact with the ground. Rick pried into the grain with the tines and started to chop.

  Rick stopped chopping before dark and hid his tools, tucking the rake head into the shadows of the stall wall across from his work site and covering it with a natural-looking pile of stall dust. He stepped back and, seeing his footprints, knelt and brushed them away. When it still didn’t look totally natural, he picked up handfuls of dirt and tossed them into the air. They made a convincingly haphazard pattern when they fell, and he repeated the dirt-tossing everywhere. It left him sneezing but feeling safer.

  He had decided during the slow course of his labor that he couldn’t kill the little witch. She might deserve it, but she was as trapped as he was. And maybe he didn’t have premeditated murder in him. When it came to humans. But if push came to shove, he’d find a way to kill himself before he’d let Isleen bind him with black magic. And he had the weapon, nicely hidden, that would do the deed easily. If he couldn’t get away in twenty-four hours, then . . . then he’d find the pulse point on the inside of his elbow and puncture his artery with a sharp tine. Or he’d fall on the tines. Something. He’d be dead meat when Isleen came for him, which brought grim satisfaction.

  Just having a plan was enough to raise his spirits and help him to face another night bound to the stone. Well, a plan and the first of his weapons. If he’d had half a brain, he would have been ready to put the plan into action tonight, but he’d moped away half the day and had only part of the tools he needed.

  He had excised two stakes from the bottom board of the stall wall; he hefted them in his hands, feeling for weight and balance. They were short, maybe too short at only eight inches, give or take.

  A good stake needed to be wide enough at the base to provide stability in one’s grip and strength in a thrust but narrow enough to slide between ribs. Vamp hunters each had their own preferences as to length and circumference, based on hand and grip size and upper-body strength. For most, fourteen inches was way too long and increased the chance that the vampire might bat the weapon away before it hit home or twist his body and cause the tip to miss the heart. Anything smaller than ten inches was considered too short. Rick’s stakes were only around eight inches long, shorter than most, which put him at a disadvantage. Not that he’d planned it. He had been trying to pry out a single long stake with the objective of making two twelve-inch stakes from the one. It had broken, teaching him patience he hadn’t wanted to learn.

  The effect of the day’s labor on his infected wounds was obvious. They were bigger and more painful, and his arm from fingertips to elbow was now a constant throb of infection. But he’d worry about the arm later. If he survived.

  He tested the heft of the stakes, making sure he could grip with his swollen hand. The stakes were as big around on the blunt end as his thumb, and nicely pointed. Stakes needed to be about the circumference of a drumstick to pierce through skin, pass between ribs, and puncture a heart without snagging on muscle, cartilage, or bone, and without breaking. His were rough and full of splinters, which might catch on tissue instead of sliding through and between. Tomorrow he would smooth them as much as possible with the few metal scraps he had uncovered.

  Rick had never killed a vampire. He’d never killed anything but deer and a few turkeys. He’d never forgotten his first kill—a buck that got hung on a downed limb in a bayou near his house and was being attacked by gators. He couldn’t save the deer. So he’d stolen his daddy’s shotgun and put it out of its misery. It had taken four rounds, and he’d cried for days.

  But killing a vampire, killing Isleen, he figured he could do. And he wouldn’t cry a single tear. He’d probably be laughing his head off when he buried his stake in her black heart.

  He studied the final stake, now only half removed from the wall. It was longer, a bit wider, and the wood was paler, with a tighter grain. Tomorrow night Isleen would have a problem when she showed up. Tonight . . . tonight he was going to be in a spot of discomfort. As the sun set and golden rays poured through the slats of the barn, he shook as much of the filth out of the sheet as he could, then used a stake to stretch to the hose and turn on the water Loriann had showered him with. Lastly he hid the stakes in different spots and covered his tracks. When the little witch showed up at his barn door, he was clean and dry and waiting.

  That night was worse than the previous one, as much because of his psyche as the fact that the injured skin was being worked on again. And, of course, the throbbing of infection. He bled more, he had to work harder to control his breathing, and Loriann didn’t drug him this time, so he felt everything. Including a whole lot more pissed off.

  Somehow it had been easier to accept being tattooed against his will when he’d woken up chained. Having to lie down like a willing sacrifice and be shackled to the black stone sucked, especially when he’d sworn he’d never do it again. The only break the witch gave him was when she transferred her tools to the other side and started work on his other arm. It was some kind of circular design. He’d thought at first that she was tattooing Christ’s crown of thorns on him, but when he asked, she shook her head and said, “Shut up. I’m working.”

  So much for casual conversation. There was no more getting-to-know-you conversation either. In fact the only sound was his breathing like a bellows, his occasional gasp, and Loriann mumbling under her breath. Spell casting, he figured.

  But at least he knew what the big tat was. Cats. Which made some sense from her original question—cats, horses, or wolves? In her oblique way, she had had been asking him to pick his tat. He could make out a mountain lion and what looked like a house cat.

  His mom would be royally ticked off. His parents had long ago proclaimed that no child of theirs would come home with a tattoo. But if he had to have a tattoo, Loriann did good work.

  Two hours before dawn, Loriann packed up her torture implements and allowed him to wash off and eat a meal. Near dawn Isleen appeared in a whoosh of air, creating her own wind, and stood there bent over him, fully vamped out, fangs exposed and fresh blood on her mouth and chin. Her fingers were almost warm—though still cooler than a human’s—where she traced the tattoos, and they grew warmer when she slid her fingertips up to touch the pulse point in his throat.

  Her body was bent weirdly, as if her spine was more articulated, snakelike. Her fingers were spread, and bloody claws were out, held wide, fingers curved as if to catch prey. Rick couldn’t help the hard thump of his heart or the way it raced when she bent lower, folding herself in two, and licked the trace of his blood from his skin with a dead, cold tongue. A shiver raced over his skin, and Isle
en laughed, her vamped-out eyes blacker than the doorway into hell.

  “You have done well, little witch,” she whispered, her chilled, fetid breath blowing across Rick’s face. “He tastes . . . lovely.”

  “Thank you, mistress,” Loriann whispered, her face averted from the vampire.

  “You will be finished tomorrow?”

  “Before the moon rises, mistress.”

  “Good. I shall be here. The ceremony will go forward.”

  “And Jason?” Loriann whispered even more softly, as if the words strangled in her throat.

  “Who? Oh.” Isleen stood and flicked her fingers as if brushing something inconsequential from her. “The child. You may have him when the work is completed.”

  “Will you bring him when you come?”

  Isleen tilted her head to the side, that lizard-movement-thing again that vampires never did in front of humans because they knew it creeped out their dinner. “I suppose I can bring him. Perhaps seeing him will convince you to work well and finish the project on time.”

  “Yes, mistress.” But the witch was watching Rick through her dyed tresses, some meaning in her expression.

  “Before midnight, then, witch, for the ceremony.” And Isleen was gone.

  Loriann unlocked three of his shackles, gathered up her belongings, and walked to the door just as the sun rose over the horizon. Framed in golden light in the doorway, she stopped. “You’ll have only a moment,” she whispered. And then she was gone.

  Rick rose and wrapped himself in the clean sheet she had left folded on the black stone. Pressed into the dirt by the rectangular shape of the kit that carried her needles was a knife, its sturdy blade about four inches long, and a rasp, a kind of sanding implement used by farriers when they needed to reshape a horse’s hooves. It was perfect for smoothing rough wood implements. The kind one might make with a knife, from boards in a barn, to kill vampires.

  Rick laughed, the sound low and vicious and victorious. She had decided to trust him. She had arranged for the dangerous, insane vampire to bring Jason here tomorrow night. And at some point in the proceedings Loriann was going to make sure he got the chance to stake Isleen.

  The knife and rasp made the work of chipping and shaping stakes much easier, and by nightfall Rick had six good stakes, two short ones and four well-shaped, well-balanced ones that hefted nicely in his hand. And he had the knife, which he had carefully honed with the rasp, though the edge wasn’t particularly sharp; the rasp wasn’t manufactured with the goal of smoothing steel, and his efforts had been laughable at best. It also wasn’t plated with silver to kill a vampire. But it was a bladed weapon, and having the weapons improved his chances of saving his hide. Rick knew that fighting a pissed-off vamp while naked, weakened, hungry, and sick as he was wasn’t likely a survivable endeavor, but he had decided that going down fighting was better than submitting.

  Midafternoon he showered in the cold water, ate the Cterh="small plate of food left by Loriann, and took a nap on the dusty floor, curled on the folded sheet, hoping to garner some strength for the night.

  And he woke with a vampire’s jaws at his throat. Drinking.

  His body reacted instantly, sexually, to the attack. One of Isleen’s hands was holding his nape, the other playing him. He couldn’t scream; he couldn’t fight. He couldn’t stop her. And with the vampire saliva entering his bloodstream, he didn’t want to. He was aroused, chained by the ankle, and drunk on vamp. Her hunger was insatiable. Her body corpse cold. But resisting was all he had left.

  One hand wound into her hair, holding her. His head fell back and his spine arched up, closer to her. His other hand found a stake under the edge of the sheet. He curled his fingers around it.

  Isleen pulled away, her body moving so fast that he couldn’t follow, seeing only a wisp of movement and the vampire standing in the shadows at his feet. The stake was in his hand, still hidden beneath the sheet. He’d missed his chance. Rick laughed, a biting bark of sound; he could almost see the laughter float around the barn, bitter as the taste of weeds and ash. Cold as the vampire’s lips on his throat. Colder than the feel of her dead fingers on his flesh.

  She held his eyes with hers, which glowed like a deer’s in headlights; her blond hair fell around her face like a veil. He heard a click to the side, and a lamp lit the barn. Isleen was revealed out of the dusky shadows, dressed in a white lace gown. It was stained with blood, crusty brown overlaid with fresh blood, scarlet and damp. The fresh blood was his, he figured. The old stuff was probably from some other poor bastard she had trapped and chained up. Isleen’s eyes seemed to fix him in place, holding him as surely as her hand and fangs had only moments before.

  He heard the roar of a generator in the distance. The sound of wind in the foliage outside. The twitter of birds nesting in the rafters overhead. He’d missed his chance. And he laughed again once, the sound crazy, harsh as graveyard sobs.

  Loriann handed Isleen a small cup. Isleen spit into it. My blood. She’s spitting out my blood. With one sharp canine tooth, the vampire pierced her finger and held it over the cup, allowing her cold, dead blood to drip down into his own blood, mixing them. The drops seemed to echo into the barn, distinct and ominous, flying like bats’ wings, darting into the shadows.

  Isleen handed Loriann the cup, then licked her finger and her lips, still holding his eyes. With a poof of sound, the vamp was gone. His arousal drained away. Tears he hadn’t known had fallen dried on his face.

  Loriann turned on more lights, and he could see clearly. He should have been embarrassed about the little witch watching while Isleen . . . But he wasn’t. He couldn’t seem to care about much tonight except his failure to stake the vamp. He turned his head, watching the witch as she moved around the small space, setting out her tools. She knelt at his side and handed him a plastic bottle of water. He drank. His throat ached with the movement. Isleen hadn’t been gentle with him. When the bottle was empty, he said, “Is she gone?”

  “Yes. She’ll be back at midnight for me to finish the spell. And she’ll bring Jason. It’ll be your only chance.”

  He sat up slowly, belly muscles protesting, bringing the stake with him. “You didn’t mean for me to stake her just now?”

  Her eyes widened. “No. No, not until Jason is here.”

  “Mighta been nice to know that.”

  “I didn’t think—Oh my God.” She turned away, holding herself around the waist, her hair sliding forward, hiding her face. “Okay,” she said after a moment. “Okay. Never mind.” Her tone said that she was forgiving herself and him for the near miss. She stood straight and went back to work. “We don’t have much time. Do I have to chain you to the stone tonight?”

  “No. I’ll be a good little human vamp-snack.” He could hear the bitterness and anger in his tone, but the hopelessness that had settled on him like a grave shroud had lightened. He had another chance. “Speaking of which, I smell food.”

  “I brought you some Popeyes chicken, biscuits, and sides. A gallon of tea. Hope you like it sweet.”

  “Yes. I’m starving. Can I eat while you work?”

  “No. So eat fast. And we have to talk. I need to tell you how the spell works so you can pick the right time to . . . to kill her.” Loriann placed a bucket of chicken at his side, and he dug in, listening, wondering at himself and at the way he could plan the death of an insane, undead monster with such enthusiasm.

  Loriann was almost done with the tats. Around his right bicep was a circlet of something that looked like barbed wire but was really twisted vines in a dark green ink. Interspersed throughout the vines were claws and talons, recurved big-cat claws and raptor talons, some with small drops of blood on the tips—blood from Isleen and from his own body, mixed with some cat blood and scarlet dye, the mixture meant to bind his body to the vampire once the spell was complete. On his left shoulder, following the line of his collarbone, down across his left pec, down from his shoulder to his upper arm, and almost to his spine in back, was a mounta
in lion. He was a tawny beast, with darker markings on his face, body, and tail, his amber eyes staring. He was crouched as if to watch for unwary prey, the clublike tail curved up around his shoulder blade. Behind his predator’s face peeked a smaller cat with pointed ears and curious, almost amused eyes, lips pulled up in a snarl to reveal predator teeth—a bobcat, snuggled up to the larger cat. It was beautiful work. But it was a spell woven into Rick’s body.

  “The gold in the eyes is pure gold foil, mixed with my grandmother’s inks. It shouldn’t infect or cause you trouble. And as long as you kill Isleen before the spell is finished, the eyes won’t glow. If the binding is completed, you’ll know it, because the eyes, all four of them, will catch the light and glimmer just like gold jewelry. Either way the tattoos won’t fade, not ever. And you probably can’t get them lasered off. Not with the dyes my grandmother used—” Loriann stopped and stood unmoving, her body almost vibrating with fear, exhaustion, and excitement. She met his eye Ce m bos, hers dark ringed with fatigue and blood loss from feeding the vampire. “You’ll save Jason?”

  “We don’t know where he’ll be. In a stall. Hanging from the rafters in a cage. I’ll kill Isleen. Whoever is closest will save Jason.”

  “Okay.” Loriann licked her lips. “One last thing. I called Katie. A guy answered. I told him about you. About Isleen and Jason. He was pretty pissed.”

  Hope shot through Rick. He could feel his own heart thud in his chest. His uncle Tom answered the phone at Katie’s Ladies. “And?”

  “I told him to expect a text message with directions. And I programmed the message with directions on how to get here.” She pulled out a cell phone and snapped it open. “It’s in my phone, waiting. As soon as Isleen arrives, and I see that my brother is still alive, I’ll hit send. If I can. I don’t know—”

  With a pop of displaced air, Isleen appeared. She held a small boy in the crook of her arm, his long legs dangling. The boy was asleep or unconscious but breathing. Isleen had fed again, and the front of her dress was soaked with blood. Rick had no idea how much of it was the boy’s.