Fur-miliar Felines Read online

  The driver’s-side door wasn’t even closed before the engine was running and I had the accelerator pressed to the floor. Tires squealing, I peeled out of there and didn’t dare look in the rearview mirror until I was well meshed with the daily lunch traffic on the road.

  Brushing my hair out of my face and trying to smooth it out with one trembling hand, I wondered if I should say anything to my aunt and cousin. Did they need to know what I did? Did they need to know that I saw that thing and that it saw me? And what it said? The awful threat it screamed in my head?

  If Clyde was that cat or talked to that cat or had anything to do with the giant hairless cats, there was no way he would agree to meet with me now.

  “I don’t know if he recognized me,” I mumbled as I looked in the rearview mirror again. My hair was a mess. “It looks like I had a wild tryst.” Bea was certainly going to have something to say about my appearance, for sure.

  I decided I was going to have to tell them I went to investigate on my own and it turned out horribly, horribly wrong.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Bea cried, causing two ladies who had been deep in their conversation to stop and turn in our direction.

  “Apparently,” I said and sighed as I pulled off my coat.

  “Cath, why do you take such crazy chances?” Bea rushed around the counter and took me in her arms, giving me a tight squeeze. “You could have gotten hurt or even worse. Do you think it saw you? Maybe it followed you.”

  “I know. I don’t know. Maybe?” I sulked. When my aunt came from the kitchen and looked at the two of us, it was apparent by her expression that she knew something was up.

  “What did you do, Cath?”

  Thankfully, Bea pleaded my defense and really put quite a spin on my whole debacle, reminding my aunt that this gave us a good bit more information than we had before and that we were going to have to check into the Wayne house sooner or later. By the time she was done, I was feeling downright proud, and Aunt Astrid’s glare was quickly melting into a smirk.

  “Well, Bea is right about one thing.” My aunt brushed my long hair behind my shoulder. “You certainly did show great bravery. Or could it have been stupidity?”

  “Maybe a little of both,” I said.

  As the afternoon became evening, and after the sun had totally disappeared behind the horizon, we experienced a little lull in foot traffic.

  “So tell us a little more about what exactly you saw,” my aunt urged me.

  Making a Scene

  By the time I finished relaying every detail of my harrowing experience, it was pitch black outside and a few flurries had started to waft around.

  “Well, whatever this Diabolus Formarum Catus is doing, it likes to do it from the Wayne house.” Aunt Astrid held her tarot card deck in her hands and shuffled it casually as we discussed our options. “Sadly, we may have to go back there. But we can be better prepared this time.”

  “For sure.” I walked over to the right storefront window to pull up the blinds.

  Someone had obviously closed them to block out the afternoon sun that sometimes temporarily blinded a person. “I’m thinking maybe a nice invisibility spell along with a teleportation spell, and maybe you can fix it so I shoot electricity out of my fingernails. Bea can’t be trusted with such power. Give her the ability to throw her voice. That’s a good one.”

  “Oh, I can be trusted,” Bea snapped as she rolled her eyes at me.

  Still giggling, I grabbed the string for the blinds and gave them a yank. There, standing behind the glass, staring in at me, was Clyde Tumble. I let out a totally embarrassing yelp. After putting my hand over my heart and looking up at the ceiling, I waved at him without smiling.

  Before I could catch my breath, he was waving to me to come outside. He looked bashful, as if he were a high school boy trying to woo a girl while her mother and father were standing behind her.

  I pinched my eyebrows together and mouthed the words, It’s cold out there.

  “Cath, get him to come in, and I’ll make him a special tea. We’ll see what’s going on inside that very handsome head of his.” Bea pretended to look over her mother’s shoulder at her tarot cards.

  I smiled as pleasantly as I could and waved for him to come in. But he thrust his hands in his pockets and jerked his head for me to go outside.

  “I don’t think he’s falling for it,” I muttered as I went for my coat. As I pulled it from behind the counter, the chimes over the door went off, and Clyde was leaning his head inside.

  “Cath. Come take a quick walk with me.”

  “Hi, Clyde,” I answered rather loudly. “Come on in and meet my family.”

  Without crossing the threshold, Clyde waved, said a quick howdy, then pulled his head back outside, letting the door close behind him.

  “Well, if he isn’t the Diabolus Formarum Catus, he has the manners of a 1700s Romanian thaumaturge,” Aunt Astrid muttered.

  “I’ll be back in a minute.” I flipped my hair out of the collar of my coat and stepped toward the door.

  “I don’t think you should go.” My cousin touched my arm. “Not by yourself.”

  “What can he do?” I looked from Bea to my aunt. “It’s busy out there with last-minute shoppers, and there is plenty of light from the streetlamps. He won’t do anything. I’ll be fine and see what I can find out. Knowledge is power. Isn’t that what GI Joe always said?”

  “Now isn’t the time to seek sage advice from a cartoon soldier.” Bea looked sternly at me. “Tell him to come back later.”

  “It will look suspicious.” I grumbled as if I were having a real hard time putting on my mittens. “Look, I’ll stay in front of the café. That way you can keep an eye on me.”

  “Heaven knows you need that.” Bea folded her arms in front of her and looked suspiciously out the window at Clyde, who was looking at her and Aunt Astrid then back to the people passing by.

  I walked outside, setting off the wind chimes that hung from the door, and for an unknown reason, it reminded me of funeral glockenspiels instead of just the pretty tinkling of metal chimes. I shook my head and rubbed my arms against the cold.

  “Hi.”

  “Thanks for coming out to meet me,” Clyde purred. “Walk with me.”

  “What?” I smiled and blinked as if my IQ had suddenly dropped to the floor and I didn’t understand his words.

  “Take a walk with me.” He slipped his arm around mine and began to gently guide me down the sidewalk. “Let’s talk.”

  “Sure,” I agreed pleasantly. “I love to talk. In fact, my boyfriend says I have something to say about everything. I don’t know if that’s good or not. My whole life, I’ve been told I talk too much. Unfortunately, I don’t really have a filter. That’s too bad. Bea does. My cousin, Bea, is like a picture-perfect example of a lady. She really is. That’s probably why we get along so well because we are such opposites.”

  I was rambling, letting the words fall out of my mouth like tumbleweeds skittering across the desert. Something was not right, and I felt a dread in the very center of my chest. I never use the word dread. But this was unequivocally dread.

  As I looked around, I expected to see that thing that was in the kitchen of the Wayne house, but all I saw were Christmas shoppers and a couple of carolers and a few couples walking hand in hand. I was talking, but I barely heard what I was saying as my eyes flitted around, looking for the doom I was sure was creeping up on me.

  “Have you gotten your Christmas shopping done?” I continued. “I’ve got just a few more things to buy. I don’t know when I’ll be able to get to it. It might be better to wait until the day after when everything goes on sale. Right? Not a bad idea.”

  “You seem nervous.” Clyde’s voice was velvety. His eyes were clear and sparkly, and I was sure I could see the snowflakes falling reflected in them.

  “Oh, no,” I lied. “I’m just talkative.”

  “I think you should shut your flapping mouth,” Clyde whispered to me as h
is grip tightened around my arm. “We can do this quickly, but if you try and fight me, I’ll make it very uncomfortable for you.”

  “What are you talking about?” I played dumb.

  “I know who you are…Greenstone.” He grinned at me like a devil. His handsome face contorted into the mask of a gargoyle before my eyes. “Your family has caused me decades of pain. It’s time to return the favor.”

  “What?” I tried to claw his fingers from my arm, but they were clamped down too tightly. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about. There’s got to be at least a hundred Greenstones in the world. Are you sure you have the right one? I’m sure there are a couple of weirdoes in the family tree living in Wisconsin or Nebraska that might fit your bill a little better. Have you checked that out?”

  “You’re not making your situation any better,” he growled.

  “I don’t believe that,” I protested.

  “Cath?” There it was, that voice that brought with it the feeling of dread. Now I agreed with Clyde that my situation wasn’t getting better.

  “Tom?” I whirled around and saw him walking slowly up behind me as if he were approaching a coiled-up rattlesnake. “What are you doing here?”

  “I stopped by the café, and your aunt and cousin said they didn’t know where you’d gone.” He looked skeptically at Clyde, and I could tell he didn’t like him instantly. There was no cordiality, as there was with Blake Samberg. These two guys would not be standing around, shooting the breeze over a couple of beers, that was obvious. “So…here you are.”

  I swallowed hard. Looking at Clyde, I tried to pull my arm away casually but to no avail.

  “Yeah, um, I’m just taking a stroll with my friend Clyde.” I had to get Tom out of here. My heart began to break as I imagined the only way I could chase him away. “I mean, that’s okay, right?”

  “What?” Tom looked at me, and I could feel the weight of his disappointment settle on my bones like a metal coating. “Cath, would you mind if I talked to you alone for just a second?”

  “You’re not going to make a scene, are you?” The words were like nails scraping out of my mouth. I could see the confusion and hurt on his face. But he had to get out of there. He might have accepted me as his witchy-woman, but I couldn’t risk him getting hurt or worse by this man-creature. He had to leave. “I’ll call you maybe.”

  Tom stared at me before snapping his eyes toward Clyde. I saw them focus on his fingers around my arm. It didn’t take a genius to figure out I was being held there against my will.

  “Hey, friend.” Tom took a step forward, not looking at me at all, but squinting at Clyde. “I just need to talk to Cath for a second. Do you mind?”

  “Actually, I do,” Clyde replied.

  I sighed out loud. This was ridiculous. I was starting to feel very embarrassed as some of the passersby were looking in our direction.

  “Okay, no need to make a scene.” I balked. “Tom, you’ve got thirty seconds.” I pulled away from Clyde, his fingers still holding on to my jacket as I walked toward the alley on our right. A few steps in, I turned around to look at Tom and hopefully say one thing in words while indicating my real meaning that he needed to leave with my eyes.

  “Cath, what in the world is this all about?” he asked, frustration dripping from his words.

  “Look. I don’t have the time to explain to you.” I blinked. I stretched my eyebrows. “Can we just talk tomorrow?”

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “Of course not.” I nodded yes. “Besides, even if I was, I could handle myself. You, of all people, should know that.”

  “That’s enough,” Clyde hissed as he blocked the exit from the alley. “I’ve had enough of this.”

  “Back off, pal. I’m talking to Cath,” Tom said.

  “She obviously doesn’t want to talk to you. Even if she did, I wouldn’t let her.”

  “You wouldn’t let her?” Tom choked out.

  “Cath, come with me. We’ve got to finish our conversation in private.” Clyde stepped toward Tom.

  “Tom, please. Maybe you could…”

  Before I finished my sentence, Clyde swung his arm and made contact with Tom’s shoulder, knocking him several feet to my left, where he hit the brick wall with a sickening smack and crumpled in a heap on the dirty ground of the alley.

  “What the heck?” I cried and went to check on Tom but was stopped, not making a single successful step, as bony talons clamped around my throat.

  Instantly, I tried to swallow, but my muscles wouldn’t respond. I tried to breathe, but it was as though I were sucking through a straw. My hands went to the clamps around my throat, and I pulled at them, scratching and yanking, but nothing was pulling these fingers from my throat. He was going to crush my windpipe.

  I kicked my legs and looked into Clyde’s face, which morphed right in front of me. His teeth elongated. His eyes slipped into blackness like the sun going down on the horizon with a yellow moon iris to stare back at me. His skin turned a sickly yellowish-pink color, and his eyes sank back, creating a fleshy cave that the yellow pinpoints peered out from.

  The smell of the alley filled my nose. I couldn’t say why my senses became so intense except that I was dying. But I could smell the sickly-sweet tang of the garbage cans. I could feel the moisture bouncing off the ground as just enough precipitation fell between the buildings to dampen everything in the dumpsters and cans and the garbage scattered all over the ground.

  “This isn’t exactly how I wanted this to go.” The Clyde-beast scowled. “But your relatives, Bea and Astrid, will come looking for you soon enough. When you don’t make it back to the café tonight, when they don’t see you tomorrow or the next day, they’ll try their magic to find you. When they do, I’ll be waiting.”

  I continued to scratch at Clyde-beast’s hand, struggling to get my fingers beneath his to gasp for some air, but they seemed to get tighter and tighter. Just before I was about to lose consciousness, I heard his voice again.

  “Funny how you had Mr. Wayne living here all these years, eating children every December Solstice, and you never suspected a thing. Perhaps his methods were correct all along.” The Clyde-beast growled, still looking very much like Clyde Tumble but at the same time resembling the beast in Aunt Astrid’s book.

  At this new revelation, my eyes snapped open, and I fought away unconsciousness. Did Clyde-beast just say Mr. Wayne and eating children in the same sentence?

  Tainted Bloodline

  “What does it matter now?” Clyde purred. “I always preferred the chaos, the fear that accompanied my child abductions, especially at this time of the year.”

  My gosh. How many times had I used that phrase when talking about feeling warm fuzzies and peace on earth and good will to all? Here, Clyde-beast had twisted it into something dirty. I doubt I’d ever be able to utter those words again. I scratched at his hand around my throat.

  “How?” I choked the word out, but it sounded as if I were saying “ow.” That applied too. Being choked hurt.

  “What did you say?” He slightly loosened his grip and yanked my head toward his ear.

  He was still on two legs like a man. It was obvious he didn’t plan to fully transform into his real shape. He let me just see a shadow of what he really was, like looking into the sky and seeing the crescent moon.

  “How—” I gasped, taking in a huge gulp of air. I tried to kick my legs, but they felt as if someone had attached lead weights to them.

  “How?” He grinned, exposing more teeth that lined his mouth like those of a shark. He raised his other hand and pointed to the sky. “Mr. Gale Wayne fed off runaways and transient children from Portland and Salem and Medford. Wherever there were troubled teens, he could be found.” Clyde-beast chortled. It sounded like a phlegmy, bubbling soup in his throat.

  My mind kept drifting toward blackness but was painfully shocked into brutal awareness every couple of seconds. I was sure I was never going to get out of this alive. I stretched my
eyes to see if Tom was all right, but he was still lying there on the filthy ground.

  “You see.” Clyde-beast stepped farther and farther into the alley, the shadows slowly consuming both of us as he whispered the horrifying tale of his kindred spirit, Mr. Wayne, and why he had to be destroyed. “Mr. Wayne wasn’t the innocent persecuted teacher from Bibich High School that you might have thought. In fact, it was his journeys to far-off cities that ended up being his undoing. Those kids who live underneath bridges and sleep in the bus station are sharp as tacks. Well, some of them are. And they watch out for each other. It only makes sense, right? They are on the street, after all. No warm beds. No television or food whenever they want it. These kids know the value of looking behind every once in a while as you walk the streets at night.”

  He released my throat, and I slammed to the ground, feeling my elbow shatter against the concrete and cobblestone. The flash was white, searing pain that snapped me awake, forcing tears into my eyes as I gurgled pitifully.

  “One of those children had a friend visiting. That boy Bruce Lyle had a cousin who was a troubled boy. Bruce often paid his cousin a simple visit, slumming it with him as they smoked pot and stayed out all night. Mr. Wayne pulled up in that piece of garbage car of his and asked the boys if they needed a ride before realizing one of them was a student. Nice, right?”

  “He was going to murder them.” I didn’t recognize my own voice. As if I’d smoked over twenty packs of cigarettes within the last half hour, my voice was gravelly, and the words painfully scraped my throat as they came out.

  “That he was.” The Clyde-beast towered over me. I wanted to run. My gut was telling me to just push off and bolt in any direction. “But he lost his composure when little Bruce Lyle recognized him and said his name out loud. That kid thought Mr. Wayne was one of those kiddie molesters. Little did he know he was so wrong.”

  Clyde’s hands furled and unfurled as he began panting, his broad shoulders hulking up and down and his face looming down at me. Those eyes, like sick cat eyes, looked deep into mine. My lower lip trembled.