Cat Tales Read online

  The witch took out another box from the tin, this one larger, the box older. On the front was a painted picture of a shadowy woman standing in front of a cauldron, a cat with a bobbed tail at her feet and cave walls at her back. Stalactites dripped from overhead. A witch. “My grandmother’s cards,” Loriann said softly. Her cheeks took on a hint of color and she leaned forward, as if hiding behind the fall of her ink-black hair. She went through the deck, rearranging the placement of the cards. “No one has used them in . . . in a long time.” Loriann separated the cards into three stacks of differing depths: Two stacks were composed of cards that had titles on them and one stack contained cards with only numbers. She shuffled each stack until each was well mixed, and lifted a small stack toward him. She said, “Major Arcana. Cut.”

  Rick forced out a nail and directed it into the partial deck. He had lost feeling in his hand. He figured that wasn’t a good thing.

  “Personages of the Minor Arcana,” she said, lifting the second partial deck. “The Court Cards. Cut.” He cut the second partial deck and the third, which was larger, containing what looked like nearly half of the total number of cards. Loriann shuffled each stack, made him cut the decks again, then laid the cards out in the same three-row pattern as before. This time some cards were taken from the top of one pile, some from another. “Gramma liked gypsy readings, but she did them the way her mother taught her, with the three rows of seven, each column from a specific stack, and to the side, a cross of the Major Arcana. Her cards were specially painted just for her,” Loriann said, “and her deck is different. It has different . . .” Her voice trailed away, as if she had just realized she was speaking aloud. She pressed her lips together and bent her head, her hair sliding forward so that he couldn’t see her face.

  When Loriann finished laying out the cards, at the four corners and down the center column were the Court Cards. To the left top was Queen of Pentacles, upside down, a wolf asleep at her feet. At the top right was the King of Swords, an African lion at his feet and his sword made of gold. The left bottom corner was the Page of Pentacles. He was a vampire with a scroll under his arm. The right bottom corner was the King of Wands, and he was a witch with red hair, and with fire exploding from his wand, which was clearly a weapon. A huge owl flew overhead. “No cup cards,” she murmured. But she didn’t explain.

  The center column was also composed of Loriann’s Court of the Minor Arcana. The top card was the Queen of Swords—a woman in black, a wildcat with a bobbed tail and yellow eyes on her lap, claws drawing blood on her right thigh. The queen held a sword with a silver blade dripping with blood. The Knight of Wands was the center card: He sat on a rearing black horse, holding a bloodied stake and silver sword, with vampire heads beneath the horse’s hooves. A wolf howled in the background, head angled up toward a full moon. The Knight of Swords was at the bottom but was upside down, the first time a knight had appeared that way. His bloodied sword was silver and black, and a huge cat—a black leopard with yellow-gold eyes—sat on the horse’s rump.

  The cards were so old that paint flecked off them as Loriann worked. The edges were rounded and worn from long use. Despite himself, Rick was intrigued. It was almost as if he could sense meaning in the cards, but it seemed to be just out of reach or around the next corner. As if all he had to do was reach out or take a single step, and he would understand. But the significance was elusive, fragmentary.

  On the layout of cards in a cross pattern to the side were the Major Arcana. The Wheel of Fortune was in the middle, with animals racing on the wheel—a wolf, a big black cat, a flying owl, an alligator, a spotted dog, and a bear. Around it in a cross pattern was the Devil—a horned, wolf-headed beast with owl’s wings, a horse’s legs, and cloven feet. The Devil had bloody fangs, and claws hidden in the wing feathers. The Hanged Man was an American Indian chief in full feathered headdress. He had been tortured before the hanging, and a black leopard was curled up on the hanging branch above him, sleeping. At his feet were a small wolf, or a coyote, watching him and salivating, and a grouping of turkey buzzards staring at his head. A card called Strength was painted with an angry mountain lion, screaming, clawing the air, sitting on a dead vampire both with fangs bared. The last card was the Tower. It was on fire, and people and animals were falling out of it.

  Loriann studied the tarot placement for a while, while Rick tried to read something—anything—in the cards. “Animals,” Loriann muttered. “Vampires. Change everywhere.” And then, “Ahhh. I see.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  She gathered up the cards and put them away, then brought her needles and tattooing equipment closer. “Your future is both set and undecided. There are two moments when you will be allowed to choose, and both moments will change the course of your future. One is now, with the tattoo and the blood I’ll use to bind you to Isleen. You may choose canines, equines, or felines. Which do you desire?”

  He almost said horses, but the word that came from his mouth was, “Cats.” He stopped, surprised, because he detested his sisters’ cats, and preferred dogs and horses. He shook that away and asked, “But why me? Isleen said something about revenge on Katarina Fonteneau. Is that Katie of Katie’s Ladies?”

  Loriann nodded. “Katie did something bad to Isleen a long time ago. I’m not sure what. But she can use this spell to get back at her through your bloodline.”

  “How?”

  Loriann looked at him in true surprise. “Because Katie is your mother’s great-great-something-or-other-grandma.”

  “N—” Rick started to disagree and stopped.

  The memories of some weird things returned. Money for his education, deposited into his account, a gift from a distant cousin. His sister’s medical bills for leukemia, the huge ones not covered by insurance. They had amounted to nearly four hundred thousand dollars. Paid in full by that same distant cousin. His mother disappearing on Christmas Eve every year for an entire night. The strange French-accented voice on the phone several times, calling for his mother. At night. Always and only at night.

  Son of a bitch. He was related to one of the city’s most powerful vampires. And the cops had sent him in undercover to find out about her—

  “I can tell you don’t have tats,” Loriann said, drawing him back from his past. He turned his face to hers, trying to hide his shock. She shoved her hair behind an ear and almost smiled. Her eyes flickered down his body and back up, lingering at the V of his legs before she returned to her work. “This may hurt.”

  The first needle pierced his skin.

  At dawn, Loriann put away her torture implements. Rick was sweating, shaking with the continual pain. He had no idea how people could go through this over and over, getting full-sleeve tats, tats on their necks and throats. Under their arms, on their privates, on sensitive, tender skin.

  Loriann sighed, and he felt fatigue move through her and into his own skin, a shared exhaustion. Over the course of the night, he had become deeply aware of the little witch, pain bringing them close, making him conscious of her breath, alert to the slightest shift of her posture and position, sensitive to her ever-changing emotions, responsive to her intense concentration. It was as if they were two parts of one creature, sharing energy, breath, and his pain—one part administering pain, the other part enduring it. His blood had sealed the deal, trickling several times across his shoulder to the stone beneath him.

  He shuddered as his tormentor unclasped the shackles on his right arm. She stepped to his left arm and unclasped that restraint as well.

  He tightened his muscles as he had done over and over in the night to relieve the pain of immobility, contracting and releasing. He dragged his numb arms up and shoved his elbows under him. Groaning, he forced himself upward, reclining on his elbows and forearms. Loriann moved clockwise through the dim dawn to his legs.

  “I’m going to let you relieve yourself now,” she said softly. “Eat something. Drink. Shower off.”

  “Clean up my blood on the stone?” he said, mo
cking.

  “No,” she whispered. “It stays.”

  He understood. It was part of the sacrifice.

  She clicked his left leg shackle C le

  The shackle fell from his left leg with a heavy clank. The witch moved to his right leg. He couldn’t feel sensation beyond agony in his limbs, but he forced the toes of both feet to wiggle, and he could see them move in the slowly brightening light. He closed his eyes and breathed in. Brought up his free leg. Tried not to tense in preparation for a lunge.

  A click sounded, different from the other sounds. He opened his eyes, looked down. And cursed. With a clumsy roll, he rose and stumbled across the barn. Was brought up short. He tumbled to the dusty floor. Loriann had attached a shackle to his right ankle and had run a chain from that to one of the rings in the black stone. The chain was less than ten feet long.

  Lying in the dust of the stable floor, Rick started to laugh, the sound hollow and echoing. The peals sounded half mad. And he couldn’t stop.

  He rolled to his back and held out his leg, shaking it, the chain’s heavy links tinkling low. If he had an axe, he could try to cut through it. Or he could cut off his foot. And bleed to death getting to help. Of course, if he had an axe, he could kill Isleen . . . and thereby kill Loriann’s seven-year-old brother, Jason. Rick was as trapped as Loriann was.

  His muscles were weak from being tied down; his hands and feet were numb and swollen. The pustule at his wrist had broken open during the night and re-formed larger and flatter than before. Red streaks ran up his arm nearly to his elbow. The lower arm was hot to the touch. Blood poisoning. Gangrene could follow on its heels. He needed antibiotics or he might lose the arm. He had to get out of here. But Loriann wouldn’t help, and he was more exhausted than he could ever have imagined, his muscles quivering from stress and immobility.

  Sick, aching in ways he had never known a man could hurt, Rick rose and relieved himself in a metal bucket, no longer caring about unimportant things like privacy. Tears smeared through the sweaty, bloody barn dust coating him.

  He accepted the food and water that Loriann brought—soup right from the can, cling peaches in heavy syrup, and two liters of water—knowing it might be drugged, but not having any choice. Telling himself it wasn’t over. He wasn’t dead or blood-bound yet. He needed strength to get away, and he had only until eight p.m., when the sun set, to accomplish that goal. Getting drugged from the food was a risk, but no worse than being too drained to attempt an escape if the opportunity presented itself.

  He spotted his clothes—boxers, jeans, shirt, socks, and boots—piled in a corner, doing him no good. He couldn’t get the pants over the shackle, and he wouldn’t be able to wear a shirt anytime soon, not with the tattoo painful on his left shoulder. He studied Loriann’s work in the pale light but couldn’t make out the picture, not looking down on it. It might have been waves or mountains. Or both.

  Loriann went into the shadows of the barn, and when she came back, she was dragging a hose, held kinked off in one hand. “They used it to cool off horses and wash them.” She indicated the hose. “It’s only cold water, but at least you’ll be clean. If you want,” she said. When he nodded, she pointed to a corner. “The floor’s lower there, and the water will drain.”

  Naked, no longer caring, Rick clanked to the corner and stood, his back to her, his hands up high, supporting himself against the barn wall. The first gush of water felt icy, and he tensed, his skin pebbling as the spray drenched him from head to toe. But he relaxed as the grime and sweat of the night washed away. He turned slowly, facing the water, wondering what he should be feeling in this moment, as the little witch washed him. The water stopped, and he stood as Loriann kinked the hose again and dragged it away. When she returned, she tossed him a towel. He took it and dried off with the rough, coarse terrycloth. She gave him another bottle of water, which he opened and drank, feeling more human. He took the sheet Loriann offered and wrapped it around himself. It would give him some semblance of protection from bug bites. The insects had come in during the night, attracted by blood and sweat and misery.

  “Sit,” she said softly, pointing at the black stone circle. “I can help you.”

  “Like you’ve been helping me all night?” he said.

  She shrugged. “It’s up to you.”

  Too tired to argue, Rick sat on the edge of the stone altar and held his head in his hands. His fingers weren’t working well and his toes were on fire, aching with the return of blood supply. Prickles of electric pain ran up and down his limbs. Body limp, spirit dejected, he looked through his too-long, lank hair at the barn door, his way out if he could make it that far before closing his eyes.

  Loriann put her hands on his shoulders, and a moment later a cool release, like a salve, washed over him, passing through his skin into his muscles and deeper into his bones. He took a breath and let it out. He hated to feel grateful to his torturer, but he did. Grudgingly he said, “Thank you. That feels better.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t have a choice.”

  “We always have a choice,” he said. “Always.” He raised his head. “You have a choice now. You could go to Katie, or to my parents, or to the cops, or to Leo Pellissier. You have a choice.”

  “And my brother would die.”

  “She’s going to kill your brother anyway, Loriann. And you know it.”

  She didn’t answer. When he looked up again, Loriann was gone.

  He was pretty sure the food or water was drugged, but not enough to knock him out, just enough to leave him sluggish and woozy. The beams holding up the roof seemed faraway, shifting with shadows like bird wings; the wing shadows lightened, changed position, and lengthened again as the day moved past. Insects swarmed around Rick, biting and buzzing, gnats att Cng,, cacking his eyes and dive-bombing his breathing passages. His mouth and nose covered by an edge of the sheet, he slept until noon, surprisingly dreamless, or with no dreams worth remembering. Maybe the unconscious mind just couldn’t compete with a reality like sitting through needle torture for hours, torture that made less sense than any dream.

  Loriann had left him water, and he forced himself to drink every time he woke. Toward what he judged was midafternoon, the drugs wore off and the nerves in his muscles and flesh began to protest, itching and burning, tight with the futile resistance of the night before. He stood and began to stretch, trying to remember the moves his youngest sister had made when she took up yoga and vegetarianism at age thirteen. Surprisingly the slow stretching helped. When he could move without too much pain, he shoved an edge of his sheet between the shackle and his skin, and began to walk the length of his chain. It clanked hollowly as he moved; the dust beneath him was fine, almost soothing, as it slid around his feet.

  Pulling the chain to its full length, Rick searched the parts of the barn he could reach. He found a rake head, the kind with five thick tines for throwing hay. One tine was broken, but he could wrap the fingers of his left hand around the handle’s base and slide those of his right through the tines. It was a pretty good weapon against a lesser being than a vampire. For Isleen, the handle would have made a better weapon, a stake to plunge into her black heart. But there was no handle.

  I could kill the girl, though.

  The thought shocked, like a bucket of icy water. He stood unmoving, his thigh muscles trembling, his stomach cramping with hunger. The iron cool between his fingers.

  A weapon. He could kill Loriann. Kill her and take her key. And go to the Master of the City. He turned the rake head over in his hands. The iron was hard and deadly, rusted at the break. The tines were sharp, still showing flakes of green paint between them. I could kill the girl.

  The nuns had made it clear to them that all men could kill. Cain and Abel had been objects of lecture—the very first sibling rivalry and the very first murder. I could kill the girl. Grab her. Throw her to the ground. Plunge the tines into her abdomen, just below her rib cage. The idea turned his stomach. But . . . I could kill
the girl.

  He swiped experimentally at the air. It was a clumsy weapon. If he killed Loriann, her little brother would likely die before Rick could get to Pellissier and convince the MOC to go after one of his own. And of course he’d have to live with himself after.

  I could kill the girl.

  Rick took the weapon and sat on the black stone, trying to use the remaining tines to pick the lock on the shackle. They were too big for the tiny keyhole, but a nail might work. Excitement buzzed through him. Horses were shod with nails.

  He set the rake head aside and fell to his hands and knees, his fingers sifting through the fine dust. He concentrated on the area near the walls, as a good farrier would never leave a shoeing nail lying in the center of the barn, where it might injure the Cht d kill the tender part of a horse’s hoof. But if one went flying, it might land in the shadows, lost. He felt his way along one wall before his fingers found something hard and slender in the dust. His heart gave a single hard thump. A nail.

  But it was larger than might be used for shoeing a horse—a tenpenny nail, too thick to fit into the keyhole. I could kill the girl. Tears gathered in his eyes, burning. His nose ran. He laid his head against the wood and closed his eyes as tears leaked slowly from his eyes and trickled through the dust on his face. I could kill the girl. Hail Mary, full of grace, he thought. I could kill the girl. Hail Mary, full of grace . . .

  A measure of peace fell into the air with the words to rest across his shoulders and settle into his heart. The words of the Apostles’ Creed came to him, as clear as if Sister Mary Thomas were standing over him in the barn, ruler in hand, tapping his skull each time he forgot a word. She had never hurt him, but that ruler was a constant threat. Eyes closed against the falling light, he whispered, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. . . .” Murmuring the creed and starting the rest of the rosary, he searched the barn to the reaches of his bindings.