I decided to put her out of her misery by ringing her bell with Father’s special code.
And pouncing on her head when she snarlingly opened the door, bounding on from that lofty perch into her lair before she could even pummel me off.
She followed. I did a lot of clawing in the frantic moments that followed and managed to make Jethana Walkingcorpse brain herself against one of the gilded posts of her own bed, hard enough to awaken Steve.
Who stared in bleary astonishment as I rolled across the dazed woman’s throat, smearing her with Father’s blood-and then, rather awkwardly, pricked her with the shard, in the midst of the gore.
Whereupon Montuhotep’s “blood of many lives” started to mix with that human body’s own blood… poisoning the resident AnkhesenAkana.
Inside the now-writhing woman, it started to burn. She wailed helplessly.
“What-?” Steve contributed in astonishment. “What’d you do to her?”
By then, we were both looking at a blood-smeared but quite alive mindless living human woman. Who had seen better days and had a body no longer really suited to the negligée she was-mostly-wearing.
“Let’s go,” I snarled at my partner. “Get your clothes and everything, and let’s get out of here!”
Steve blinked at me, and I sighed, took on human form to start dressing him, and snapped, “Or can you think of some way to make the police believe all of this?”
CAT CALL 911 by Janny Wurts
The rumor that proved to be no rumor at all began with a no-account rat. Scamper encountered the creature, lean as a snake, twitching its whiskers over the rim of the dumpster. No one else was abroad in the midnight alley, just behind the respectable shop front housing Cat-A-Combs hair parlor. Madame Persian’s haberdashery was locked. The darlings who sparkled in diamond collars never stirred from their penthouse comforts past sundown.
The gleam in the rat’s shifty eyes sparked like sulfur as it bared yellow teeth.
“Hey, Copper!” it taunted. “A dark-doing’sss at large in the city again. Made a moussse eat her newbornsss from dessspair. Ssso also, it missled a dog that ssstrayed and drowned in the river.”
“Feckless folk, dogs.” Scamper jerked his tail in contempt. Rat’s gossip! He dabbed a lick on his orange shoulder and prowled on, supremely dismissive. “Don’t have to be puppies to howl and run riot. And mice eat their young in the lean times without any dark-doing’s help.”
No tip-off had reached the copper-cat dispatcher, back at the police barracks stables. On the hour that Scamper left on patrol, the Chief had been napping, curled on a straw bale, the reports off the streets uneventful enough that no vigilant copper would wake him.
“You’ll wissssh you’d lissstened,” insisted the rat. “Thessse mice lived in sssugarplum plenty behind the wallsss of the passstry ssshop.” With a gnashing of incisors, the creature scuttled. Its last word emerged through the rustle of trash, as it resumed its noisome scavenging. “A nexusss knot’sss forming. My warning’sss the firssst.”
“Get flea dipped, pal.” Scamper twitched his damp hair, not impressed. Rats lied. The whole scumbag lot were a furtive breed, naked of tail, and too garrulous for scruples or dignity. Scamper flicked his whiskers forward, alert. Though loath to rely on what might be a hoax, he was a street copper down to the bone, born to patrol the back alleys. No use wishing such work was the good life, snacking on tuna fish out of a can.
Still, this was not the dockside, and he, dapper fellow, was no rip-eared tom, assigned to a thug’s beat in the slums. The sort of people who started dark-doings seldom strayed from the seedier neighborhoods. No hint of dire trouble blew on the wind. The deserted buildings wore nothing but their usual night-time shadow.
“I’ll be declawed,” Scamper grumbled, “before I ask the Chief to send a back-up squad on a rat-race!”
Scamper loped past the maw of a parking garage and slipped through the short cut under a culvert. Now across the street, he emerged at the pastry shop, but he found no hysterical mice. Only the drunk he had rousted up, earlier, reeling on his inebriated way. The bum shuffled along, a sad, lonely creature in a tattered coat, mumbling admonishments to his reflection in the street side windows. The fellow seemed harmless. Scamper widened his pupils, just to make certain. He engaged the sixth sense, peculiar to cats, and scanned for any latent anomaly.
Nothing emerged. The residue streamed by the homeless man’s thoughts spun off maudlin regrets, not one of them vicious or threatening. Unlike some humans, he blamed no one else for the wretchedness of his condition. His sorry nostalgia stayed self-contained, a wistful murk too diffuse to take fire, or fuse into entangling spite.
Copper-cats hunted the streets for such things. Where acres of concrete replaced living trees, the whisk of the wind raised no rustle of twigs and leaves; here, no falling water or meandering brooks erased the filmy detritus of human afterthought. The work fell to cats, to break the ephemeral ribbons before they burned black and became entangled. That insidious wrack was obvious to felines. Yet people themselves seldom noticed the tempests, unreeled in their wake like thrown litter.
Scamper prowled on. Nothing dangerous lurked here! Surely the feckless rat led him astray. No human seeking a fight walked abroad, and nothing spawned by a late-going hustler held the passion to weave a dark-doing. Nary a trace of wicked intent required a cat scan to chase down and disperse.
“May a plague of fleas chew that rat to perdition!” Scamper huffed, turned left to sweep the back alley that harbored the strip. He stalked past a blinking storefront selling electronic gadgetry and another crammed with tourist novelties.
The recessed doorway beyond sheltered two lovers, breathless with laughter and tender kisses. Contentment lit sparks of delight in their presence. The air danced with showering flurries of gold, wrought by their giggles and happiness. Scamper knew his job. Most agile of his copper colleagues, he pounced on those delectable fragments. Before their shine faded, he batted that merriment into a tingling wad. The finishing touch required cat-magic. Scamper swatted the captured billow of joy under his extended claws.
The shreds scattered. Whirling like falling stars, they sank with a glittering flourish into the pavement.
A cat’s eye could discern the faint sheen that remained. Taut whiskers could sense the vibration. Whether a starved feral, or a pampered pet on a stroll, every feline would be tempted to roll with abandon, paws in the air. In back-scratching pleasure, they would soak up the run of sweet luck that now welled from the sidewalk. Serendipity, also, would touch the lives of unsuspecting pedestrians. A school child might find an escaped coin and buy candy. Or a weary mother might sigh with relief as her cranky infant changed mood to delight. Here, an artist might stumble on fresh inspiration, or a worried man might soften his heart and take pause to lend help to a beggar.
The wide world was alive with such wonders. Wherever people shed formative thoughts, the curious nature of cats would make sport with the exuberant residue. They knew to play tag with the colorful aspects, and weave them into the manifest world.
When the couple departed, Scamper shoved off, no little bit smug that the rat’s doom-and-glooming had given him a false lead.
A woman rushed past, heels clicking as she bustled into the subway. Her fizz of anxiety sent bubbles of energy bouncing off the lit street lamps. Scamper sensed no threatening darkness swirling behind her brisk footsteps. If she resented her job, she did not hate her boss. Though her day had been riddled with disappointments, she did not nurse any poisonous urge to dump her malaise on her coworkers. Her loose discontent would not form a vortex. No quivering, plucked string of entanglement waited to snag into other folks’ unresolved angst.