The Dark Yule Page 8

  Puzzled, I sat down in the doorway. This was a mistake, as only a second later Morwen nearly ran me over. She also had come running—all right, waddling—in response to my baby’s shrieks.

  It’s ok, darling, mama’s here, I understood her to say, as she lifted him out of the crib and cradled him in her arms. My presence must have registered belatedly, for once the baby had quieted, she turned sharply toward the door, her eyes wide, her mouth a silent O.

  Pumpkin Spice! What happened to you?!

  “Oh, you know,” I said, demurely. “This, that, and the other. Trying to save the town, darling, that’s all.”

  You naughty cat! She plopped my baby down in his crib again, prompting fresh wails from him, which she now ignored. Kneeling before me, she probed my injuries with gentle fingers, and soothed the fur along my ears. I purred, rather feebly, I admit, at her ministrations.

  You awful kitten, I was so worried about you!

  “And I you,” I responded, rubbing my cheek against the side of her hand. I caught an interesting whiff of scent as I did, something I hadn’t smelled in a long time: incense. Dragon’s blood, to be precise.

  You come with me, I’m taking you to the vet right now!

  I suddenly understood why not one, not two, but three night-gaunts were resting upon our rooftop. I could also make a guess as to the source of the chanting, and even why Morwen had been absent from my baby’s room. Put all these facts together, and the conclusion left me purring, even as Morwen hauled me bodily to the dreaded plastic cat carrier.

  My witch was practicing again!

  7

  Maddening

  The next day I spent almost entirely in the dreamlands. Trapped in a tiny overflow cage in the stuffy vet’s office—for “observation”—there was little else to do.

  The first country I visited was Ulthar, and though cats of all sizes, shapes, and colors crowded upon the wide hearths of the Arched Back Inn, I could not spot Solar’s tawny fur among them. So I slipped away into the sunset city, taking an interdimensional shortcut through the silent forest, which—now that I was no longer in shock—remained as eerie and discomforting as usual.

  But the sunset city was what it always was, and I was free to ignore the shadows of unknown cats, and to sprawl lazily upon warm, sunny flagstones in the grass-choked streets. Intriguing little shadows hopped and squeaked nearby, and I thought about rising to catch them—and then again, perhaps not. It was a beautiful early evening, there where it’s always early evening, and it became even better when I heard a familiar purr above me.

  “May I?”

  “Sure,” I said, though somewhat surprised. I rolled over, so that Tilly could join me. She was in her dreamlands form, young and beautiful, with velvety black fur and a white star upon her chest. No mangy fur or broken tail or cataracts for her here. With a sigh she flopped down, stretching full-length upon the smooth stone, and I snuggled my back into the warmth of her.

  We dozed like that for some time, with no movement but the occasional flick of an ear. At last Tilly rolled over and sat up. Putting one paw on my face to hold me still, as if I were a mere kitten, she bent down to lick my ear into shape.

  “You look like hell,” she observed.

  From my prone position I tried to look at myself. “I thought I looked normal.”

  “Underneath the dream-form, I mean. Your chi is just a mess.”

  “I’m at the vet’s,” I told her drowsily. The combination of it all—the sun, the hot stone, the maternal grooming—was extremely pleasant. I began to feel I was a kitten, after all. Old, simple memories emerged, of blind groping towards the soft warmth of Mother, and of seizing a nipple to enjoy spurts of hot, sweet milk. “I got pretty torn up.”

  “So? What happened?” Tilly wanted to know.

  Sleepily, I related all that had passed since our last encounter. The peculiar fight I’d observed between my humans, my visit to the temple of visions, the albino ghoul, the mist monster he’d led us to, the Deep Ones we encountered at every turn—at least, every turn with water in it. When I’d finished, Tilly ceased her slow grooming, though her paw remained pressed into my cheek, so that I could not move.

  Just as I was about to try and sit up anyway, she spoke. “This seems much more complicated, and serious, than I’d realized. That incident with the car…”

  I mrrowed in soft affirmation. She went on: “Yet you seem to be doing a decent job of handling it. I’ve been worried about leaving Kingsport in this time of crisis, though at my advanced age it seems inevitable. I’m a little less bothered, now, since you seem to have emerged as a leader amongst the youngsters.”

  At six years old I was hardly a youngster, but I wasn’t going to argue away praise—that would be downright uncat-like. “Thank you,” I purred. “But…what about…?”

  “The King?” she guessed, when I was unwilling to finish my query. “Hah! Toms. And that one in particular. Oh, a King is all well and good to keep social order amongst the cats, and to make sure plenty of kittens are born. But no King I’ve ever known trapped and questioned a ghoul. Even—” here she paused mischievously—“if it was mostly by accident.”

  Accident or no, I was purring so hard I’m sure it could be heard three blocks in every direction.

  “Or made it to the haunted island in the middle of the pond,” she went on. “Speaking of which—you said the ghoul told you they’d made a deal with that thing?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Hmm.” She sounded quite disbelieving.

  I raised my head—with difficulty, as she was still holding me down. Even now she didn’t move her paw off my face. “You don’t think so?”

  “I’ve been alive a long time, and never heard a peep from that island. Oh, you can’t get there, and you know something’s there, of course, but…”

  “It never leaves?”

  She looked at me. “Don’t you think you would’ve noticed it before?”

  I considered. Damn it, Tilly was likely right. Also, now that I thought about it, the creature hadn’t been interested in pursuing us or even really in killing us—because it could have, easily. It had just wanted us to leave. Did that square with whatever aggressive enchantment was shaking Kingsport loose from its foundings? No, blast it, it did not.

  “That son of a bitch lied to me!” I exclaimed.

  Tilly chuckled. “Probably.”

  “He was just trying to get us killed!”

  “You bet.”

  With a groan I slumped back onto the flagstone. Tilly patted my cheek sympathetically.

  “Listen, Spice,” she said. “I have to go—Violet will be home soon, and there are things I need to take care of before she gets back. Take this. You need it more than I do.”

  Holding me firmly down, she bent forward and touched noses with me. The touch shocked me slightly, and I blinked.

  In that blink, Tilly was gone. She’d already returned to the material world.

  My nose still stung from the static. I wrinkled it, and sneezed. With the sneeze—as if I’d broken a barrier—a wave of heat surged through my body. It was so distinct an impression, and so different from anything I’d ever experienced, that I found myself on my feet, shuddering from head to toe. Gradually the warmth ebbed away, though it lingered as a pleasant kind of afterburn, and I stopped my mad shivering.

  What had caused that? Had something happened to my body while I was in the dreamlands? Uneasily I considered awakening. Was it better to know? Or to sleep through whatever unpleasantness the vet might be inflicting?

  My somewhat queasy meditations were interrupted by Libby, who charged around the corner with all the grace and composure of a dog.

  “There you are!” he exclaimed, pouncing upon me and nearly knocking me over. At first I thought he was in the mood to play, or even to mate (Libby sometimes forgets I’m fixed), but a good sniff revealed the acrid stench of fear, and convinced me that his pupils were dilated with terror, not mischief.

&nb
sp; “What’s wrong, Libby?” I asked, pushing him off me, and pointedly grooming my ruffled chest fur.

  “There are night-gaunts at my house!”

  I looked at him sideways. “Libby, there were night-gaunts at your house before. You said so. And there were three at mine. Three! It’s because—”

  “But there are seventeen!”

  I stopped what I’d been about to say, about Morwen resuming the craft. I’m afraid I rather gaped at him.

  “Seventeen?” I echoed.

  “Seventeen!”

  I laid my ears against my head. “I was just speaking with Tilly. She’s convinced me the albino ghoul lied to us.”

  I wouldn’t have thought Libby’s pupils could grow larger, but I would’ve been wrong. The twin black holes nearly swallowed the irises. “So the mist monster thing doesn’t have anything to do with the night-gaunts, and the time shifts, and all the rest of it?”

  My teeth ground together before I could admit, “No. Maybe not. I don’t know.” I added, after further grinding, “And…I’m sorry I put you all in danger to follow up on some stupid lead from a stupid ghoul.” My ears flattened even further against my skull, and I dipped my head submissively. “I should’ve known he was lying.”

  Libby sat back and stared at me, seeming quite astonished. “Well, goodness, Spice, you’re only feline, you know. And we’ve all been worried about what’s happening in Kingsport, and we all agreed to go with you. It wasn’t as if you could have made us go.” He chuckled suddenly. “You know, the humans have a saying about herding cats.”

  “Oh? What do they say?”

  “That it’s impossible.” Libby licked his nose in amusement. “And Mark and Clarence’s friend Amy always says it about them, whenever she’s trying to get them somewhere on time.”

  “That is funny.” I pondered the wise saying while surreptitiously studying Libby. Bless him, he’d regained his composure in almost no time at all. The Devon Rex was a resilient little cat, for all his funny ways.

  As for myself, I also felt much better. A little time in the dreamlands appeared to have done me wonders. And while the albino ghoul might have gotten the better of us, I still had faith in my vision in the divining pool of the lost temple. It proved the ghouls were involved in some way; I just had to figure out how.

  I twisted round to lick a few back hairs into order, preparatory to testing Libby’s recovery.

  “I still think,” I began rather cautiously, “that the ghouls are the key to solving this problem.”

  “You don’t want to talk to one again, do you?” Libby asked at once, narrowing his enormous eyes.

  “No.” I dismissed the notion with a flick of my ear. “But we might consider following them, and observing them from a distance.”

  Libby’s tail thrashed uneasily, and he shifted from paw to paw. “How much of a distance?”

  “You know,” someone interrupted, “there’s always another option.”

  The black panther form of the King stalked around the corner. The hair along my spine bristled, and I fought the urge to arch my back. Even if you knew, for certain, that the material form of the King was merely that of a short-haired domestic, it’s hard to shut down that part of your brain that shrieks, Giant predator prowling this way!

  “Yes, sir?” Libby asked, crouching down low on the weed-choked flagstones, so that he was half-hidden by bobbing wildflowers. “What’s that?”

  “Leave,” the panther suggested. He rested his enormous hindquarters on the road, giving us all a nice, clear look at his oversized genitalia.

  By the stars, I missed the old king, Big Red. He hadn’t been classier, exactly—big, swinging balls, and the personality to go with them, being a prime requisite of cat royalty. He’d been just, somehow, more likeable about it all. And he’d been my father, too, though fatherhood means comparatively little amongst us cats.

  “Leave?” Libby queried, now three-quarters hidden behind the weeds.

  “Leave,” the panther affirmed, addressing me, as if I’d spoken. “Soon.”

  “What good would leaving do?” I asked. “You can’t escape time!”

  “The effects in Kingsport are purely local,” said the King, eyes slitted sleepily. “I have it on good authority that these phenomena barely extend past the town’s borders. Everything is quite normal, just a half-day’s walk away.”

  “And is retreat your intention, then? Your Majesty?” I asked, endeavoring to keep as polite a tone as possible. I noted that my claws had unsheathed themselves; though the gesture was unconscious, I did not attempt to retract them.

  “If necessary,” the panther said languidly. “I am monitoring the situation closely. Should Kingsport prove temporarily unsafe, I’ll form a court and take up residence in an abandoned barn just south of here, until the situation passes. You may join us, if you so desire.”

  I was surprised that the King had thought this far ahead, and also that he’d invited us—me, a fixed female, and Libby, a (theoretically) competing male. “Thank you,” I said, although I immediately rather wished I hadn’t. “We’ll consider it.”

  “I’ll want that key back before we leave,” the King said. Then the panther rose gracefully, hindquarters swinging, and stalked past us without further ado. Perhaps he was off to spread the word of his proposed refugee court. I wondered if he’d already spoken to Dot. Surely he’d at least tried to track down Cinnamon, a prime specimen who’d just reached breeding age.

  I also pondered, briefly, what had become of the key. I’d been far too groggy to keep track of the talisman after our battle with the giant fish, and no cat had mentioned it since.

  “What do you think?” I asked Libby. “About the court?”

  Libby, still flattened to the ground, shook his head, sending the tall-stemmed flowers around him quivering and shaking. “Not here!” he hissed. “We’ll speak in the material realm.”

  “Then we’d better get back to it. Let’s meet at twilight by Burying Hill. Tell Dot and Cinnamon if you see them, by chance.”

  “What, the graveyard? Again?!”

  “We’ll be more careful this time,” I assured him, and woke myself up before he could argue further.

  * * *

  My body was still in the cramped overflow cage with its flimsy wire walls and omnipresent smell of piss. With difficulty, my face jammed against the door, I stretched as best as I could. I was feeling pretty good—better than I’d felt in ages, in fact. You’d never hear me admit to Morwen, though, that a vet could make me well.

  There remained the question of how I intended to escape this place in time to visit Burying Hill by twilight. With care I managed to squirm a paw through the door and pat at the latch, but could achieve no leverage. Damn. I had no idea when Morwen intended to rescue me, and even when she had, past experience taught me she was bound to keep a close watch on my movements for some time afterwards. Besides, I’d already hurt her feelings once, running away after the wreck; I didn’t want to send her into one of her pouts by repeating an apparent betrayal. Yet who could blame a cat for running away from the vet? With the right approach, I could probably make Morwen feel guilty for leaving her “poor baby” at the “mean ol’ vet’s” for such a lengthy period—and more guilt invariably meant more catnip treats. I caught myself purring at the very thought.

  “What have you got to purr about?” a sour cat voice sounded from somewhere above. I ignored it. More difficult to block out were the whines and pleas from the canine prisoners around me, and the occasional scream that tore itself from a terrified rabbit. The cages were quite full at this time of year, what with humans travelling home for the holidays. The usual wall of stainless steel compartments had been completely occupied by the time I arrived; hence my placement in a spare cage shoved into a corner, where I was already accumulating neighbors as yet more animals poured in.

  Still, in some ways we were the lucky ones, for other humans were busy turning their homes into animal death-traps. One poor kitten had
been brought in more dead than alive, having accidentally hung himself in a Christmas tree’s lights. The doctor had revived him, but even without a vet’s fancy equipment, I could tell that the pitiful little thing would never be the same. Better luck next lifetime.

  And now, to add to all the noise, some sort of ruckus was taking place in the front office. I cocked my ear in that direction, only to wince at an incessant, high-pitched canine whine. Drunken slurring from a human raised my suspicions, and a quick sniff confirmed: the vet’s office had been breached by the Bastard Pack.

  They burst through the door of the back room like chaos incarnate: the owner staggering on every step and dragging on a chain his enormous mastiff, which yelped and cried with the earnestness of a newborn pup. They weren’t supposed to be back here, I was sure, but that was explained by the human himself, in speech whose intent was shockingly clear to my ears:

  I don’t care if the vets are busy, you’ll see him now, damn it!

  Given his red eyes and the smell of his breath, I bet I understood him better than the poor, flustered female tech trying to usher him out.

  The human, with surprising strength, wrapped his arms around the hulking canine and heaved him onto an operating table. As my cage was on the floor, this put the dog a little above my line of sight, but I could hear him quite clearly as he thrashed and whined. “Ow, ow, it bites, it bites! Off! Off!” he called in his own language, of which, sadly, I understood more than a little. In previous lifetimes it had behooved me to learn the speech of canines; like our own (and unlike that of humans), it was based more on body language, scent, and the shared unconscious of the species than verbalization. There were a number of differences between our own methods of communication and that of canines, but I could generally comprehend what a dog said, and even make shift to respond in the same, if I wanted to.