Hesitation would become no less fatal. Scamper bunched his hindquarters and pounced, snagging the nearest tendril. Teeth closed and claws ripped, to no avail. His grip met no resistance, no taut wrack of spiteful entanglement. He yowled, off-balanced and bashed topsy-turvy as the ruinous maelstrom closed over him. A growl, nearby, bespoke Bouncer’s attack. But greater bulk lent no advantage. The dark-doing writhed, its explosive ferocity unfazed by their combined assault.
Scamper snapped and bit. He lashed with his claws, seeking for the pattern inside the morass: the hard tie of malice that locked two human beings into mutual hatred. Yet his raking search exposed nothing. No knot existed, to break in release. This mangle of animate thought-stream did not harbor so much as a vicious kink.
Something else was horribly wrong. Claws and teeth sliced only an inchoate emptiness that seared feline instincts with dread. This dark-doing was like no other before. No trained skill, and no trick Scamper knew could unravel the horrible force of it
Now desperate, the cats grappled elusive, black lightning. Neither could see how the other one fared. Exhausted and tumbling, Scamper thrashed as a tendril noosed over his chest. It tightened, driving the breath from his body and throttling him dizzy.
Last sensation, he felt Bouncer’s teeth on his nape, then a tug, before sliding headlong into darkness.
Scamper woke to the scrape of another cat’s tongue rasping across his shut eyelids. He blinked, stirred in protest, shook his aching head. As his bleary vision recovered, he focused on a familiar face.
That worried, green eye, mangled ear, and marmalade nose marked with scars bespoke alley origins and roughneck experience.
“Chief?” Scamper coughed and tried to arise.
The older cat’s paw knocked him prostrate. “You bit off more than one copper could chew!” Chief’s reprimand granted no grace for excuses. “Good thing that Bouncer dragged you to safety!”
Scamper sucked a deep breath. His ribs hurt. His throat stung. He reeked of singed fur and, more faintly, of the sardines the Chief had been munching before being called to the scene. Collapsed in the gutter between two parked cars, Scamper turned his concern back toward the infested alley. “Has the crisis been tamed?”
“No.” The chief perked his good ear, his single eye burning cold emerald. “No copper of mine ventures into a dark-doing alone, far less undertakes the flea-brained idea of involving a noncombatant!”
Still on the sidelines, Bouncer lashed his tail, angered by the dismissal. The tip reeked of garbage, scraped up from the street, which further rumpled his dignity. “No runt-sized shorthair tells me not to fight! Certainly not while that gristly horror invades the strip and threatens my turf!”
Which was the boulder informing the pebble: the Chief winced, mollified, as Scamper bit back that his courageous friend was owed thanks for the rescue. Too upset to dwell on his embarrassing mistake, he added, “What was that thing? I bit the thought-shadow down to the core. Nothing was inside! No strand of hatred between human folks had tangled a knot to be severed.”
“There won’t be one.” The Chief sighed, all at once sounding tired. “The dark-doing that’s blighting that alley has nothing to do with two humans linked by active animosity. What idiot idea took you in without back-up?”
“A rat’s taunt!” Scamper snapped, which was no less than the irreverent truth.
The shifty critter had lied through its teeth, most likely to lure a copper cat into jeopardy. Now maddened beyond the sting of his scrape, Scamper glared in dead earnest. “What created that shadow? How can it exist? What form of nothing on the green earth could fuel such voracious unpleasantness?”
“You encountered the horror of human despair,” the Chief explained, looking fraught. “People who lose all hope can give up their belief that life matters. All by themselves, they can think empty thoughts and punch such a hole in the world.”
“Hole in the world?” Scamper blinked, appalled. “Grief like that puts my tail in a pinch, something worse than a roomful of rockers!”
The Chief lowered his bony shoulders into a sorrowful crouch. “People aren’t like animals, Scamp. Not as cats, knowing since birth to enjoy every day we are given.”
“Dumber than dormice, some human folks,” Bouncer observed in agreement. “They’ll stare at a squawk box for hours on end. Or yap into phones, before visiting. I’ve listened. They’ll squabble over conflicting ideas! Puts a snarking kink in your whiskers, overhearing their petty gripes.”
Scamper furrowed his brow, stunned to disbelief. The tiniest kitten understood how to live! The seasons cued the innate urge to grow, then to hunt, to mature, and to breed. When the time came to play or just bask in the sun, cats knew to indulge in delight.
“Human children don’t have our instincts,” the Chief lamented, quietly patient. “They think, sure enough! It’s their meddling nature. But their prodigious gift of reason gets muddled if they forget to pursue their own joy. When trouble arises, they neglect to give credence to how they feel, from moment to moment. Immersed in the logic of looking for why, quite often they lose their own way.” The Chief shook his head. “Worse for them, if they do as they think they ought and stop hearing the dreams inside themselves. The pity is, most of them have no clue, no concept at all, of how powerful those dreams truly are.”
“They abandon their fun? How do we fight that?” Never had Scamper felt more hampered by the misfortune of his runt size. With no active tangle of discord to cut, surely a giant was needed. What good could a cat do if a human’s own reason squelched pleasure and left them to wallow in misery?
The chief licked a paw, scrubbed at his ripped ear, nerves salved by the comfort of washing. “To lift this blight will take extreme courage, not to mention a copper of uncommon wit and agility.”
Dawn was breaking, gray, above the sodium gleam of the lamps that soon would be extinguished. In that mixed light, Chiefs flame coat shone dull brown. His eye showed a bleak glint as he added, “We haven’t much time. Are you up to the fight?”
“I got my behind kicked. That’s nothing near dead,” Scamper shot back, insulted. He sprang to his feet, quivering with readiness.
Bouncer also rammed erect, bristling. “You’re going back?”
The battle-scarred Chief stood up and brushed past. Lean but dauntless, he skittered across the cracked sidewalk. “We must do just that. And fast! If this case of human despair ends by suicide, a blight will be left in the world. Unless we act first, even cat-magic can’t mend the extent of the damage.”
“Then I’m coming along,” Bouncer declared.
The Chiefs screeching argument fell on deaf ears. No better than Scamper, he could not repress the Maine Coon’s obstinate loyalty.
“At your peril, then,” the Chief warned, and stalked past the flickering street lamp. His brusque tone continued, plunged into the gloom. “My detectives are fishing for clues as they can. Let’s hope they’ve found what direction the battle must take.”
The nexus that had beaten Scamper before now appeared to have swallowed the entire alley. Its hectic growth had not abated, although Chief had dispatched his best reinforcements. Copper cats now attacked the morass in numbers, tearing off scraps with their teeth. For each bite they took, the whirlwind swelled faster. Now fed by its own spinning impetus, thoughts shadows boiled into existence faster than any trained corps could reduce them.
A fat yellow Persian named Sarge oversaw, perched on a trashcan lid to one side. When the Chief sauntered up, he summarized his frustration with a deep growl of annoyance.
Chief’s emerald eye glinted. “Report!”
“The whole stinking list?” Fat Sarge yawned, his stiff silver whiskers raked back. “Petty as flea rash! First off, the human perp’s female. Nagged the living hair off the head of her mate. The poor, mangled creature finally regained his sanity and got a divorce. Since then, the exwife harps on about his allegedly faithless betrayal. We’ve logged her whining complaints by the thousands: that he was a drunk who lounged on the sofa, too lazy to hang up the paper roll next to the toilet! Ten thoughts a minute, she insists how she’s wronged: that the world’s going to ruin; that the rent won’t be paid; or that the fancy new shoes for her kid cost more than her child support.” Sarge heaved a sigh. “You’d think, overhearing, that no patch of soil grows any flowers. Or that toddlers don’t laugh in the park! Who cares a hoot for a label, by gosh? Can a brand-name sneaker matter so much if the kid’s going to splash in the mud puddles?”