Chapter Sixteen – Ryder

 

I laid her down in the guest bedroom, and couldn’t help but longingly look at that empty spot on the bed next to her.

Not just because I wanted to be next to her, to smooth her hair down, to hold her and whisper to her that everything was going to be all right. No, I was fucking bone-tired, an exhaustion that cut to my core. I needed coffee. Something.

Already, the sun was coming up outside, and I could practically smell the new day.

“Really think we can help Christina?” Stephanie asked as she looked up at me, the side of her face pressed into the decorative pillow the owners had placed on the bed. We hadn’t even bothered to pull back the handmade quilt, and she lay on top of the bed cover in a near-fetal position.

I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I think we can. Whatever’s causing this, it’s fresh. There might be time to reverse it.”

Her eyes unfocused a little, and she seemed to look past me. Definitely exhausted. “But we still don’t know,” she replied, trailing off.

I reached down again, brushed the hair from her cheek. “Get some sleep. Just an hour or so, to rest up. This ain’t over yet.”

She didn’t respond. She was already out like a light, her eyes closed, her breaths full and deep.

I backed out of the room, closed the door securely behind me, and looked around the house. I’d been focused on clearing the house when we’d first entered through the back door, and barely taken notice of anything.

Now, as the cool early morning light began to filter in through the curtained windows on the east side of the house, everything seemed to come to rustic life. Heavy wood for the banisters, old carpet on the floor that should have been replaced a decade, or more, ago. Old pictures and paintings on the wall, much like the ones hanging in the halls of the High Street Hotel, but with one important difference: these were mostly reproductions.

After a few moments’ study, I headed downstairs to the kitchen we’d passed by on our way in, shotgun in hand. The rest of the house was much the same. Old furniture that had been kept up well. Nothing was up to date, as far as I could tell, and nothing looked like it would be out of place in someone’s grandma’s house.

I rounded the corner into the kitchen, searching for the coffee maker with a practiced eye. Surely, they had coffee. Right then, I wouldn’t even have turned my nose up at a lip full of instant crystals washed down with a mouthful of lukewarm water from a canteen.

An old drip model sat on the counter next to the refrigerator, a big red plastic canister of Folger’s next to it. Dishes were piled in the sink, understandably unattended, and a half-empty cast iron pot of what smelled like canned chicken noodle soup sat forgotten on the stove. The rations of a man and a woman fighting a losing war against something they didn’t understand.

Resting the shotgun up against the pantry door, I went about making a half-pot of coffee. Hopefully, it’d give me the mental clarity I needed going forward. Even if Stephanie was able to sleep, that didn’t mean I could. I cleaned everything up, throwing out the old coffee and tossing the grounds in a small trashcan I’d sniffed out beneath the sink. I popped the lid of the Folger’s and looked inside. “What kind of savages don’t have a scoop in their coffee tin?” I mused. Without bothering to look for a spoon, I dumped what looked like an unhealthy amount into the fresh coffee filter I’d already managed to find in one of the cabinets.

I leaned back against the counter with my arms crossed as the coffee pot burbled to life, the electrical element inside beginning to heat the water in the reservoir. My head felt four times its normal size, and filled with cotton. As I sat there listening to the soothing sounds of the water readying itself, my head lolled forward. Less than a minute later, hot water began to drip into the basket of ground coffee, and the oily-looking drink dribbled down into the carafe below, the sudden shift in sounds rousing me from my brief rest.

But that wasn’t the only thing that had changed.

Not fifteen feet from me, filling the space between the kitchen and the hallway leading into the mudroom, stood Assholus Maximus, still wearing the remnants of his Roman centurion costume. Chad-cat.

Shit. We’d left the back door open and unlocked, practically an invitation for whatever these things patrolling town were.

His fur had started to come in nicely, though, and his new ears sprouting from the top of his head made him look less like a wax museum statue left without the air conditioner running during a heat wave. “Thought I smelled a rat,” he said, his voice distorted as the words tried to work through his strange vocal chords and a mouth full of strange, new teeth.

He began to advance towards me, careful to stop and, eyes still on mine, rub his head against the wall.

“Really?” I asked as my eyes glanced to my shotgun outside of arm’s reach. “That’s the best you got? Did they not hand out a reference manual to avoid clichés at your last bad guy meeting?”

He stepped fully into the kitchen, flexing the claws at the ends of his fingers as he continued to glare at me with those green cat eyes of his.

Winning in a fight against any enemy requires initiative, surprise, and the unexpected. Strike from their flank, strike fast, strike hard. Especially when you’re unarmed, and they have what amounts to ten razors attached to the tips of their fingers.

He took another step into the kitchen, his nose wrinkling as his lips drew back into a crude parody of a smile.

As his other foot touched down on the linoleum in another step forward, I sprang into action. My right hand shot out, grabbing the neglected cast iron pot of chicken noodle soup by its long handle as I stepped forward on the ball of my left foot.

Chad-cat’s eyes didn’t even flinch as I moved, so confident was he that I couldn’t hurt him.

I swung hard with the pot, but struck nothing but kitchen wall as he ducked beneath my swing. The metal reverberated all the way up through my hand and arm.

Pot lodged in the wall, he swiped at my exposed underside, right where he’d gotten me earlier in the night.

I gasped as I released the pot’s handle and dodged out of the way, barely saving my side as his Ginsu claws made julienne fries from my hanging shirt. I turned to face him, quickly, my feet dancing like I was on stage or in a boxing ring.

He struck again in a wide, sweeping swath, aiming to gut me.

I stepped in close, this time, and brought my knee up between his legs. He might have been part cat now, but I doubted the magic had neutered him.

He yowled loudly, his call nearly shaking the windows in their frames.

Both my arms shot out and entangled themselves in his flailing, furry limbs, wrapping him up and holding him close. I slammed my forehead down into his feline face, holding him still as I used my cranium as a hammer on his nose-cum-nail.

Hot blood spattered on my forehead as his snout exploded. He yowled in agony, struggling to get free of my grip. Only way that was going to happen was if he was Hulk Hogan, or “the Arnold.”

I didn’t let go. Instead, I head-butted him again, and again, and again, till he was slumping in my arms, nothing but dead weight.

The kitchen smelled of fresh blood and hot coffee, both scents duking it out for dominance in a weird mirror image of our own fight. The coffee eventually clawed its way to the top, its victory helping a grim smile grow on my lips.

Now, I released my grip, allowing Chad-cat to droop to the linoleum floor in a mewling pile of loose limbs and blood-matted fur.

By the time Stephanie came downstairs from the noise, I already had our new captive’s feet trussed up with the cord I’d ripped from the back of the coffee maker, and was in the midst of tying his wrists together with an old nylon rope I’d found in the mudroom.

“Jesus Christ!” she said as she saw our friend on the floor. Then, her eyes found the cast iron pot I’d left lodged in the entryway drywall. “What the hell, Ryder?”

“What?” I asked, taking the opportunity to flip Chad-cat over so I could go through the rags his clothes had been reduced to. “He’s the one who came in here!”

“I’m talking about Christina’s grandma’s pot! And Christina’s wall!”

As he lay there, still unconscious, I patted him down. Quickly, I realized he had pockets beneath the costume. Grimacing up at her, I reached beneath his leather skirt and dug around inside them.

“What are you…?”

I scowled at her. “I’m just trying to find his ID, Stephanie. Stop looking at me like I’m molesting him, or something.” My fingers closed around a slip of sturdy, glossy card stock. I pulled it from his pocket, muttering to myself. “What’s this?”

“Ticket for the festival?” Stephanie suggested as she came over and peered down at it.

Oversized, rectangular-shaped, with a solid black silhouette of a young woman’s profile against a white background, which dominated the right third. On the left were printed the words “Winifred’s Dead. Let’s Celebrate. Camelot, PA.” Dates were printed just below the block of text.

I flipped it over to the back.

A list of all the bands playing, along with a stream of legalese fine print across the bottom. All in that same black-on-white motif as the front.

I sniffed loudly as I read over the names of the appearing bands on the back. I didn’t recognize a single one of them. “Maneki Neko?” I asked. “Isn’t that the one the girl who snapped was looking forward to?”

Stephanie nodded. “Headliner, I think. Biggest name in the festival.”

“Know anything about them?”

She shrugged. “Do I look hip?”

“Fair enough.” I wrinkled my nose again, the smell of whatever was on the ticket getting to me. I brought it up closer to my nose, which drew a concerned look from Stephanie.

“You okay there?” she asked as I furrowed my brow.

“Smells like…catnip.”

“How the hell do you know what catnip smells like?”

“Uh,” I said, trying to buy time. “It’s used in some magic spells,” I lied. I’d never heard of catnip being used once in a spell, but how the hell was I supposed to tell her the real reason I knew what it was? If I’d been in my panther form, I would’ve been trying to ram the ticket up my nose, or chewing it up and pressing it against the roof of my mouth like some feline hedonist.

“So, the ticket’s a magical spell?” she asked, leaning down close, hands on her knees as she bent down in front of me, and over Chad-cat. The smell of her pushed even the catnip scent away, drowning my senses.

I frowned. Whoops. “Well, I didn’t say that.”

“You implied it,” she replied as she looked down at the ticket in my hand. She was close enough that I could feel her breath on my cheek as she spoke.

“Sorry, but no. I mean, I don’t think it is.” I handed it to her. “See?”

She took the ticket and straightened up, looking over it more closely. “Well, what is it, then?”

“A concert ticket?” I asked.

Between us, on the ground in a pile of fur and cheap costume rags, Chad-cat began to stir. He mewed softly from the back of his throat.

“What’s he doing?” Stephanie asked, tucking the ticket away in her back pocket.

“What’re you doing?” I asked, looking up at her. “Are you stealing that from him?”

She looked down at me, a confused look on her face. “Stealing what?”

“The ticket.”

She shook her head. “Well, he doesn’t need it, does he? And, isn’t it like evidence or something?”

“We’re not the cops, Stephanie. This isn’t going to a court. Give him some money for it, or an IOU, or something.”

She frowned. “He tried to gut me with a goddamn bottle, Ryder, and tried to tear your throat out with his creepy cat claws!” She raised her chin, stuck it out at me. “You pay him if you’re so adamant.”

I rolled my eyes and sighed. “Fine.” I got my wallet out from my back pocket and unfolded it, pulling out some money. “See? That so hard?” I stuffed two twenties into the pocket where I’d found the ticket.

“Now what?” she asked, her eyes shifting down to him for a second, uncertainty in her eyes. “We can’t just leave him here, can we?”

“We’re not going to,” I said. “Christina and Andy probably have salt, right?”

“Probably, yeah. Need me to get some?”

“Yeah,” I replied as I reached down beneath Chad-cat, easing my hands in through his armpits and half-picking him up off the tile.

“What’re you going to do with him?”

“Find a place to put him. Just get the salt as fast as you can, okay?”

A couple minutes later, I had a hall closet cleared out of all its contents. I’d piled up a veritable rainbow of winter coats, blankets, towels, and cold-weather sports gear out in the hall, and begun to drag him inside. Other than the sleep-mewling, he didn’t budge as I dropped him in a pile in the middle, his head and feet just inches from the walls.

“This work?” Stephanie asked as she came in, two big canisters of off-brand table salt in her hands.

“Perfect.” I took both from her and worked the little spout open. Careful not to step on our captive, I pushed myself into the closet and began to pour out a protective circle around the bound frat boy turned giant feral cat.

“What’re you doing?”

“Seeing if I can break the spell,” I said as the last little bits of salt grains fell from the mouth of the first can. “Assuming someone is casting this on him, a ring of salt should protect him from whatever is going on.”

“Like an electrical charge to a piece of machinery? You’re just pulling the battery.”

“Kind of, yeah.”

“What do we do?” she asked as she took the empty from me, and I opened up the newer, fuller one.

“Wait,” I said as I finished off the circle. I closed the spout as I examined my handiwork. “If it works to cut him off, then we should start to see some kind of results soon, if it’s not too late.”

While more of an ellipse, and not an exact circle, the inch-wide ring of unbroken powder ringed Chad-cat perfectly as he lay at its center, with about three inches of room on each side. If he thrashed, it might break the border, but there was nothing I could do about that. I just had to trust that the injuries would be enough to keep him out, and, barring that, that the bindings I used were tight enough to keep him in place.

We closed the closet door, and I dragged in a chair from the kitchen table, propping its back up against it so it lodged beneath the doorknob securely.

“Now what?” Stephanie asked as we stood in the little hallway. Inside the closet, Chad-cat continued to sleep, albeit fitfully. “What’s our plan?”

“Our?” I asked as I ran a hand down my face, before checking the time. The sun was still coming up, and I was surprised to see we were pushing six in the morning. “You need to get some more sleep. And I need to call Tabitha.”

“I’m feeling fine,” she said, stifling a yawn. “Get a cup of coffee in me, and I’ll be ready to go. You’re the one who hasn’t even taken a nap, or stopped for more than five minutes. Hell, you came to get coffee, and you got ambushed by a giant house cat.”

“Time to sleep when this is over,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.

She took a step closer to me and tilted back her head so she could get a good look at my eyes. “You know, considering the fact that I can’t leave you alone for five minutes without you wrecking the place, or trying to ditch me, I guess the same’s going to have to apply to me.”

I chuckled a little, nodding. “You sure?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? Besides, you still need me. With the internet out on your phone, you’ve got no idea where you’re going in this town.”

I nodded slowly, too exhausted to argue her point. After all, she was right. This was her town. She had as much of a right to try and defend it as I did. More so, probably.

“Come on,” she replied, gesturing with her head back towards the kitchen, and the blessedly hot coffee that was sitting on the burner crooning my name. “There’s a phone in the kitchen with a speaker on it. We can try calling your friend. Together.”

“Deal,” I said, following after her.