Chapter Ten – Ryder

 

“I’m not getting anything,” Stephanie said from the other side of the room, a look of frustration on her face.

The chiming bell of the line, followed by a woman’s voice explaining that my call couldn’t be connected at the moment, rang in my ear. I was trying to reach Tabitha, finally, but not having any luck, either, on my end of things.

“No answer?” Jeff asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing. At all. Won’t even ring or give me a voicemail.”

“Same here,” I said, disconnecting the call and stuffing my phone away in a hip pocket. “Sometimes event planners don’t plan well enough, and cell carriers don’t bring enough signal boosters to handle the extra load. Got a landline, Jeff? Maybe we can get through on that?”

Still seated on the couch, and looking exhausted and confused, the old bartender just shook his head. The symptoms seemed to have receded almost entirely, and looked to be staying that way for the time being.

“Got one in back.”

We both tried our respective calls on the little cordless phone Jeff had, but with no luck. Neither Christina, nor Tabitha, was answering. In Tabitha’s case, with it being so late, I wasn’t surprised.

“Well,” Stephanie said as I joined her in the living room, “that just means we need to go over there in person.” She paused, looking at me. “Right?”

A vision of Stephanie being torn to shreds by parties with cat eyes thrust itself into my mind. I frowned, locked my jaw. There was no way she was coming along with me. This whole thing was spiraling out of control, not that it had ever been under control in the first place. “Don’t you think it’d be a bit safer for you to just stay here with Jeff? You might not be having any problems from this curse, but what if we run into more of these people that are getting into fights? You saw what that woman did to the guy in the bar. It’s not safe out there.”

Both hands on her hips, she sucked her lips in a little and seemed to bite down on them as she nodded. “So, you’re saying I can’t go along? Is that it? Is that what you’re saying to me?”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “That’s what I’m saying.”

“Well, how about this, Ryder? Why don’t you pull up the town map on your phone and let me know what the fastest route to Christina’s place is? Or even back to your car?”

I swallowed as I went to pull out my phone. I flipped on the screen and pulled up my app. A blank screen greeted me, though, and it complained about how I didn’t have an internet connection.

“Like you said,” Stephanie continued, “service out here sucks. If you’re not getting a wireless signal, you’re not getting the internet, either.”

“Why don’t you just draw up a map for me, or something?” I asked. “Let a professional handle this.”

“Well,” she said, “because she’s my friend. And my employee. Besides, what if she doesn’t answer the door because she doesn’t recognize you? Or you get the wrong house and freak out someone else? What then? Camelot’s small, but I’ve lived here nearly my whole life. I know everyone here, and I know every shortcut. You’ll be lost without me.”

I sighed, grumbling deep in my chest.

Fuck. She was right.

Not that I wanted to admit it. But, she was.

How could a woman as beautiful as she was have a head as hard as mine?

“Fine,” I growled. “We’ll go together.”

She gave me a tight-lipped smile as she tilted her head to the side. “Good of you to see reason, Ryder.” She turned to Jeff. “You good?”

“Yeah,” he said with a wave, barely moving from where he was nestled in on the couch. “Y’all take care of Christina, make sure she’s okay.” He dug into the breast pocket of his button-up and pulled out the lizard amulet the old woman had given me three years before as the Milky Way spread over our heads in the desert sky. “Y’all need this back?”

I shook my head. “There’s some other things I know to do. Hold onto it for me, would you?”

He stuffed it back in his shirt as I spoke, patted it like the good luck charm I knew it to be. “Keeping it right by my heart, Ryder. Thanks.”

I nodded right back. “Good man.”

“Sure you’re gonna be okay?” Stephanie asked as she walked over to Jeff, dropping to her knees next to him. “I mean, I know I seem all gung ho about this, but I can stay if you want.”

He patted the top of her head, almost as if she were his niece. Stroked her hair for a second. “You sure do remind me of Sharon these days. You know that?”

She smiled, but only for a brief moment.

“Smoke less, of course,” Jeff said with a grin. “Nah, I’m good. Go and make sure Christina’s all right. Make sure she’s safe, then make sure y’all get somewhere safe. Okay?”

Stephanie nodded. “Yeah. I will.” She got up from her knees, came to stand by me. For a brief moment, I could see her eyes shimmer in the dim, sepia-toned light of the living room. Not because they were changing into the eyes of a cat, though. It was because of the tears dangerously welling up there, threatening to fall down her cheeks. With her back to Jeff, she wiped the heel of her hand across her eye as she came over to stand next to me.

“Y’all be careful, okay?” Jeff said, his voice as dry and brittle as centuries-old parchment.

“We will,” I said.

“Good,” the older man said with a nod. “Don’t know why I trust you, Ryder. But I do. Make sure she stays in one piece.”

“If it comes down to it,” I said with a wry smile, “I don’t think she’ll let me have much input in the matter.”

Beside me, Stephanie sighed. “Come on, Ryder. Sooner we can check on Christina, sooner I can stop worrying about her.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s go. Jeff? We need you to lock the door behind us, okay? Anyone comes up here that’s not us, don’t let them in.”

“That bad, you think?” Jeff asked as he joined us in the entryway.

I turned and faced the old bartender, looking him right in the eye. “Serious question, here. Not trying to be alarmist or anything, but do you own a gun?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding, his face going paler. “A deer rifle.”

“Plenty of ammo?” I asked.

Solemnly, he nodded again. “Really? You think I’ll need that kind of thing?”

“Get it out,” Stephanie said from beside me. “Put it next to the door, Jeff, and lock up behind us.”

“Make sure the back one is locked, too,” I said. “Hopefully, this’ll all blow over, and you won’t need to fire a shot.”

“But, still…” Stephanie added, swallowing loudly enough for me to hear. “Be ready, okay? And be careful.”

At least she was taking this seriously. When we’d first seen Jeff and whatever the hell was happening to him, I thought she was going to break. But then, when the rational part of her mind kicked in, she’d seemed like she wasn’t going to believe any of this.

And, in this line of work, sometimes the rational mind was the one that got you killed. Because none of this was rational. Not in the way the modern world defined rationality, at least.

“Yeah,” Jeff said with a nod. “Y’all, too, okay?”

Suddenly, Stephanie threw her arms around his neck and gave him a big hug. He patted her back, a slightly surprised look on his face.

And then they were apart, and we were back out the door, heading back down from where we’d just come.

“Level with me,” Stephanie said as we set foot on the sidewalk, glancing back over her shoulder up at Jeff’s place. “Think he’ll be okay?”

Trying to buy time while I debated about what to tell her, I cleared my throat. I didn’t want to sugarcoat things, because we were likely all in danger. But I didn’t want to make it sound so dire that she completely turtled on me, just drew up within herself and refused to come out of her shell.

“You don’t think he’ll be okay,” she said, almost as if she were reading my thoughts.

“I didn’t say that. Shit, I didn’t say anything.”

“It’s what your shoulders were saying, Ryder, not your lips.”

“Shoulders weren’t saying that, either.”

“Look, I’ve been a bartender for a long time now, and I know when someone’s having a rough day.” She chuckled a little as we walked beneath the boughs of the outstretched oaks, the dim light overhead barely filtering down to us. “And if I saw you come in right now, I’d give you one on the house just to lighten your load.”

“Didn’t you already give me one on the house, though?”

“Did that because you made me laugh, not because you looked like you were having the worst day of your life.”

“Two free drinks in one day? Looks like I’m coming out on top.”

I kept one ear perked up as we continued to walk in silence, our footfalls crunching over the occasional rock or snapping, here and there, a dry twig. The town was quiet. Almost too quiet. Out in the middle of nowhere like this, I’d expect to hear at least a raccoon or a deer out there in the trees. Something. Anything.

“Back at Jeff’s,” Stephanie said after a minute or so of just our walking, “you mentioned that you used to work for the government. Not just in the military, I mean.”

“Yeah.”

“Who?”

“Really want to know?”

“You’re not going to have to kill me or something if you tell me, are you?”

“Hell, I wouldn’t even get brought up on charges if I told you. I’m not sure the agency even existed in the first place, let alone got classified top secret.”

She came to a stop beside me. “Seriously?”

“You don’t have to hide what’s not really there,” I replied with a tight smile. “The Paranormal Research Board is what we were called. Buried in a little building on the outskirts of Alexandria, Virginia, paid for out of some Pentagon black budget that our founder, Harrington, managed to get hold of. Who would investigate us? You need a paper trail for that kind of thing, you need evidence we were ever there in the first place.”

“So, you guys were corrupt?”

Now, it was my turn to stop in my tracks. “What?” I asked with a shake of my head. “No! God, no.”

“Well, why bother hiding it, then?”

“You want to explain to a bunch of senators on some committee why you need to spend taxpayer money on silver bullets? Or ingredients for magical spells?”

Her eyes widened by the tiniest of fractions. “Silver bullets? Like the Wolfman?”

I chuckled a little, shook my head. “Not just the Wolfman, but the Bearman, the Lionman, and others.”

“What?” she pressed, looking up at me. “What else?”

I’d thought, for the briefest of moments, of telling her I was one. The Pantherman. That the silver bullets were as effective on me as they had been on the Wolfman of the Hollywood films. But, I quickly reconsidered. She didn’t need to know that, not with everything else already piling up around our heads. Instead, I just shook my head. “Nothing.”

Turns out she actually was pretty good at reading body language, because she must have sensed I was holding back on purpose. Not just for her own good, but for mine. She didn’t keep pushing.

“Christina’s place is a couple blocks down on the right, just on the other side of Main Street.”

As we stepped up to Main, I put a hand on her shoulder, brought her to a stop.

“What’s going on?” she asked, looking up at me.

“There’s some people down that way,” I said. I could hear them arguing back and forth, like two destructions of cats fighting over a piece of disputed territory. I recognized one of the voices, too.

“Who?” she asked, her voice instinctively dropping its register till she was speaking in just barely above a whisper.

“Told you to step back,” a man growled somewhere down the block, somewhere hidden in the shadow of a stand of trees.

Assholus Maximus.

Hisses followed his words, this time from a more feminine throat.

And his Queen, from the sound of it.

“This is our fucking street, Chad,” returned another voice. The girl from Stan & Sons, the one who’d attacked the random stranger and left him bleeding and nearly concussed on the barroom floor.

Squalls erupted, filling the air with their ear-splitting screeches as the two groups fell on each other.

I peered off into the darkness on the other side of Main. Finally, I spotted them.

Two masses of people, falling on each other. If they’d been actual cats, fur would have been flying. Instead, it was just remnants of costumes, rent by human fingers. Or, rather, what had once been human fingers.

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.

Stephanie’s hand found mine, her nervous and clammy fingers threading with my own as she squeezed tightly.

I squeezed right back.

“My God,” Stephanie whispered. “Is that Centurion? The guy from the alley?”

I nodded in the darkness. Not for the first time tonight, I wished I’d brought my sidearm with me, or my sawed off shotgun loaded with rock salt. Not to kill them, but just to protect myself. Because, like it or not, they were still human. I still didn’t smell a hint of shifter on them, just something animalistic. I couldn’t shoot them while they were like this. Not in good conscience. And not before I’d even tried to find a way to return them to their normal selves.

“Pretty sure he’s got his Queen with him, too.”

“Toga Girl, you mean?”

“Right,” I said. “And more besides.”

There was no way we were going to make it down that street, not while I was in my human form and unarmed. But, even if this were a perfect scenario, I still couldn’t risk Stephanie. “Can we go around?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. “Is there a shortcut or something?”

“Yeah,” Stephanie said quickly. “Behind Stan & Sons, the trees open up. She walks to work most days through a back path she showed me. We can go straight to her back door from there.”

She tugged me along, dragging me by the hand as we turned right onto Main and headed back up to the road towards the bar and the hotel, and my car. On this street, there was no stalking or hiding possible, though. Storefronts and businesses lined both sides of the well-lit road. If they spotted us here, we’d stick out like a pair of giraffes on the plains.

Releasing our grip on each other, we picked up the pace to a light jog, our feet slapping the concrete with each step.

A cool breeze swept down from the street ahead of us, rustling the oak and maple leaves like the breath of a goddess. It brought with it the fresh smells of spring, the slightly rotting vegetation, the budding plants that were desperate to flower and repopulate the world. New life.

I could have outdistanced Stephanie in a heartbeat, but I kept my pace even with hers. Even if she hadn’t known the shortcut, there was no way I could leave her behind. Not for these people-turned-beasts. Not for anything.

I strained my ears, blocked out my quickening heartbeat and steady breath, as we made our way up to Stan & Sons. Even at our fastest pace, it seemed like the road had grown longer during our time checking in on Jeff. Like Camelot was working against us, stretching out distances. Almost as if I could run twice as fast and get there in twice the time.

Shit. The wind.

Silence spread over Camelot now, with the breeze picking up more. A newspaper rustled as it went tumbling past. The sound of my feet filled my ears, and a cold sweat broke out over my body. Not because of fear for myself, but for the woman beside me.

But, still, it was fear.

Behind us, the fight had stopped. The wind must have carried my and Stephanie’s scent right along with it like a hitchhiker.

I could just imagine the way the changing beasts behind us had perked up, their nostrils flaring as they realized there was prey nearby. Prey on the loose. Scared prey.

“Here,” Stephanie called, probably more loudly than she should have, as she grabbed my hand and tried to yank me into the little alley we’d walked through earlier, “the woods are this way.”

I kept steady, though, my thoughts on the trunk of the Charger just up the road. “My car,” I said, pulling her down the street towards it. “I need to get my gun. Some other things.”

A chirping, like a bird but not, sounded. A clicking, high-pitched noise that seemed to rise out of nowhere.

Stephanie and I both stopped in our tracks. She was the first to speak, though. “Wh-wh-what’s that?”

“Cats.” I turned and looked down the alleyway, towards the darkness and the trees where we were headed. They were cutting us off. Encircling us. Playing with us.

Beside me, Stephanie breathed heavily, swallowing hard. She looked up at me. “Cats?”

“That’s what they sound like when they’re hunting.”

Another chirp, making Stephanie nearly jump from her shoes as she turned around to face the trees we’d just been headed for. She backed up, bumping into my side.

I put an arm around her, squeezed her shoulder. “It’s okay,” I whispered as I pulled her close against me. “Stay calm, all right? Don’t panic.”

“Not telling people to panic has never worked,” she said, breathing harder. “I don’t like this, Ryder.”

“Neither do I.”

Behind me, on the street itself, was another chirp.

Stephanie and I turned as one, nearly gasped together.

There were a half-dozen of them, all covered in scraps of costumes and patches of quickly growing fur. The ears on the sides of their heads, their human ears, were seemingly receding and melting away, like wax candles left out on a warm, Southern August day. At the ends of their fingers extended long, deadly-looking claws, the tips already stained brown and red from the earlier turf war. Their eyes, all yellows and greens and blues, shone out at us like sequins over the reshaped snouts that sprouted from their faces, scintillating and bright as they twinkled in the street lights.

And, God, the way they moved. Like cats given opposable thumbs, all stealth and deadly grace.

“Oh,” Stephanie said, simply. “Oh my.”

I gripped her more tightly, my finger digging into her shoulder as I pulled her back down the sidewalk away from the cats.

Down the alley we’d just been headed, a glass bottle scraped against the gravel and rocks strewn across the ground. Then the sound of steel on rock, or concrete. Still dragging Stephanie, I glanced that direction.

A barefoot man-cat wearing a tattered crimson cloth and leather skirt came down the little cut-through, his clawed fingers scratching down the brick wall. Behind him, his Queen, half-naked and mostly covered in downy blonde fur, stalked along like the cock of the walk, licking her lips in the least seductive gesture I’d ever seen.

Not that it was meant to be seductive, of course.

“Hello again, miss,” he said, his voice nearly a purr. “I’d like to talk about your customer service skills again, if you got a moment.”

Assholus Maximus.

Chad.

Stephanie gasped at his words, her whole body tensing against mine.

“We need to get to my car,” I whispered as I stepped back, bringing her along with me. Freezing up right now wasn’t the answer, not for her. Not for me. “We need to get to my trunk, now.”

“And do what?” she asked, her voice rough and cracking. “There’s too many of them.”

Chad and his lady friend came closer, lazily strutting and taking their time. They thought they had us cornered. They thought we were easy prey.

“At least it’ll give us a chance,” I said as I pulled Stephanie off the sidewalk and out into the street. “I have guns.”

“There’s too many of them,” she whispered. “We run, they’ll catch us. Maybe not you, but I’m not as fast, and I know it. Besides, what if we can fix this like you fixed Jeff?”

“I know,” I growled, still stepping back, angling myself away from Chad and his girl, and the other half-dozen man-cats approaching. “But what should we do in the meantime?”

“The hotel,” Stephanie gasped. “Behind us. Esther will help us—she’s good people. She’ll have a phone, too.”

The hotel? That actually wasn’t a bad idea. If we could get somewhere locked in, maybe they’d lose their taste for us when we stopped being such easy prey. And we could try calling Tabitha again, maybe even Christina.

“Okay,” I whispered. “Let’s do it.”

“One,” Stephanie whispered as we continued to back up across the street, angling away from my Charger and back towards the room I’d just rented a few hours before.

“Two,” I whispered.

“Three!”