Cat's Claw (32 page)

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Authors: Amber Benson

Tags: #Fantasy, #Contemporary, #Fiction, #General, #Fantasy fiction, #Fiction - Fantasy, #Science Fiction And Fantasy, #Fantasy - Contemporary

BOOK: Cat's Claw
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And thus it went with the next six Targets we attacked.
Luckily, I’d brought my purse with me, so we didn’t have to hoof it all over town. Senenmut was terribly intrigued by the taxis we trooped in and out of, which made me realize just how foreign my world must seem to him. He’d actually climbed on top of the first taxi that picked us up and I had to gently, yet firmly, yank him off the car’s roof.
Like an irate child, he “not so” gently protested my being hands-on with him—and at one point, he might have even been having what I think parents like to term a “temper tantrum.” In retrospect, I guess it
had
been a while since he’d been manhandled by a girl, but that was still no excuse for his trying to bite me as I settled him into the interior of the taxi and threw a wad of bills in the taxi driver’s direction.
“Drive!”
The whole experience made me even more certain that having children was going to be a low priority on my “things to do before I die” list.
At the seventh Target—and after Senenmut had gotten completely bored with driving around in “horseless chariot” after “horseless chariot,” as he called the taxis—we finally hit pay dirt.
 
 
she was standing in one of the checkout aisles, her short, dyed-black hair pulled back in a silver bandanna. She had on a pair of fitted black leggings that made her twiggy legs look even more emaciated than they were, a wifebeater that was two sizes too big for her—it was really more of a dress than a shirt—and a wide silver belt that kept the wifebeater cinched at her waist.
“That’s her?” I asked incredulously as Senenmut pointed at her.
She was unloading the last items out of her shopping cart and appeared to be having trouble lifting a twenty-four-pack of bottled water from the cart’s bottom rack.
“I feel a connection to her,” Senenmut said, still pointing. I pushed his hand down so people would stop staring at us.
“So what do we do now?” I asked uncertainly.
Senenmut didn’t even bother to answer my question.
Seeing his opening, he took it. Like a proud parent, I watched him saunter over to the struggling girl—she couldn’t have been more than eighteen—and offer to help her. She looked around suspiciously, sensing some kind of trick, but when no camera-men leapt out of the shadows to yell
Punk’d
at her, she relented and let him lift the water out of the cart for her.
Once the water was on the conveyor belt, Senenmut leaned on the cart, trying to engage the girl in conversation. She looked around worriedly, wondering why no one from Target upper management was calling security on the weird terrorist-looking guy who wouldn’t leave her alone.
I stood on the sidelines, watching and waiting for a sign—or better yet a frantic 911 call on the girl’s cell—that signaled a need for me to intercede, but after a few more minutes of talking at the girl, Senenmut frowned and walked back over to where I had nonchalantly hidden behind a glass case of revolving soft pretzels.
“What’s wrong?”
Senenmut merely shook his head, unable to speak.
“What happened?” I pestered him.
Senenmut shook his head again, and as I watched, one single, solitary tear slipped down his cheek.
“She doesn’t know me,”
came the dejected answer.
And then the big strong man standing before me began to cry.
twenty
 
 
As the tears began to trickle down his cheeks, I found myself pulling him toward me into a giant bear hug. Even though I now felt more like his mother than a single female in close proximity to a hunka, hunka burning manhood, I had to admit that it was really nice to have a firm pair of man-arms wrapped around me. Needless to say, it had been a while since I’d had any kind of physical contact with someone I wasn’t related to.
“Hey, don’t cry,” I said, patting his back in the best approximation of parental support that I could muster. It felt awkward and uncomfortable, but it seemed to make Senenmut less miserable, so I just kept patting.
Now, I had
never
been one of those girls who adored babies and small children. I
liked
them—don’t get me wrong—but was I interested in getting drool and baby food all over myself just for, like,
fun
?
Nope.
I’d never done any babysitting, never been a camp counselor or even a card-carrying member of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. I didn’t plan elaborate baby showers for my pregnant friends, nor had I
ever
gone specifically to visit a friend because she’d just—
ouch
—given birth to a newborn.
I was one of the large but mostly silent group of women out there who just didn’t get the whole “baby” thing. I understood that having children fulfilled some kind of biological imperative, but that still didn’t mean I
had
to listen to my biological clock. I didn’t want to deal with motherhood until it was (1) thrust upon me, and (2) someone had found a way to put a stop to all that pesky weight gain that went along with it.
Yes, I was being shallow, but it was my body, so bug off.
Besides, I had, like, a zillion years in which to change my mind. Unlike pretty much 95 percent of other women on the planet, I was immortal. I could take my time making important decisions like whether or not to pop out a screaming bundle of joy that I would have to be responsible for until the end of time.
Speaking of immortality, I suppose since we’re already on the topic, now would be as good a time as any to explain how it works. You see, there are two ways to live forever. The first—and best—is to be born that way. You lead a pretty normal existence for your first eighteen or so years, but then at the point when a normal person’s body stops growing and starts dying, an immortal’s body diverges from the pattern and just kind of goes into a state of suspended animation—your cells don’t die; your body doesn’t age . . . You basically stay exactly the same forever and ever.
Now, the second—and not as good—way to get on the immortality gravy train is to be
granted
immortality by some supernatural entity. That’s the path that both of my parents took. When you’re
made
immortal, the same suspended animation thing happens to your body, but you stay whatever age you were when you were granted immortality. So, instead of looking all young and beautiful forever, you
might
look like an old, wrinkly grandma—if that’s what you were when you got your “gift.”
Craziness, huh?
“What can I do to help you?” I asked Senenmut as I ceased my incessant patting and took a step away from him. I was hoping that he’d say, “Just take me down to Hell and hand me over to your buddy Cerberus and be done with it,” but of course,
that
didn’t happen.
“I want to go back to Egypt,” he said in between sniffles.
“Yeah,” I said. “I can see why that would sound like a good idea to you, but trust me when I say it’s not the same place you knew anymore.”
Until that moment there’d been only a few weird looks from our fellow shoppers as Senenmut blubbered against my shoulder, but now a security guard I hadn’t noticed before was slowly sneaking toward the little deli/restaurant area where we were standing, a crackling walkie-talkie in his hand.
Finally, it seemed we had started to wear out our Target welcome.
“I think we should talk about this outside,” I said, taking his hand and leading him toward the exit—with a quick pause so that Senenmut could watch the automatic doors open and close twice before we went outside.
Once we were standing out in front of the store, I thought we were home free, but before I could explain to Senenmut
why
the Egypt of today was so very different from the Egypt that he had known, the dumb girl who was the reincarnation of his lost love pushed her stupid cart through the automatic doors.
Senenmut’s head instantly went up, and suddenly, like an overexcited dog, he was dragging me over to the girl. She saw us coming and began to pick up speed. I think she was trying to outrun us, but there was no hope of that happening now that Senenmut had regained most of his old agility and speed.
“Senenmut, stop!”
I commanded as I was pulled bodily forward, my feet barely touching the ground as he gave chase to the frightened shopping cart-wielding girl.
I realized that it didn’t matter what I said because he was hell-bent on catching her. The best I could do, given the situation, was to try to ease the awkwardness of the whole thing once he caught her—so I was totally unprepared for what happened next.
“Eat shit and die!”
the girl screamed as she let go of her cart and held up her key chain, spraying Senenmut right in the eyes with a liberal dose of pepper spray. The Egyptian let go of my hand and began clawing at his eyes, tears of anger and pain running down his face.
“Hey, why’d you do
that
?” I screamed at the girl as she chased after her cart.
“You want some of this, bitch!” she called back at me as her hands grasped the cart’s handle and she started to roll her groceries toward a green Honda Element parked about three cars away.
“He just wanted to ask you a few questions,” I yelled, keeping my distance because I so did
not
want to get splashed with any pepper spray.
“Questions, my ass!” she yelled back at me. “If you don’t back off, I’m calling the police!”
She held up her cute pink RAZR phone like a weapon as she fumbled with the lock on the driver’s-side door.
“It’s just that you really look like someone he used to know,” I said, trying a different tack, but the girl was having none of it as she threw open the car door and began shoveling her groceries inside.
“Yeah, a dead Queen,” the girl said angrily, “
from ancient Egypt.
Now, why don’t you two just go back to whatever mental institution you escaped from and leave me alone!”
Well, I couldn’t argue with her. Madame Papillon had told me that it was rare for a soul to remember its past lives, so if this girl didn’t know that once upon a time she was an ancient Egyptian Queen, then there was nothing Senenmut or I could do about it.
“Okay, you win,” I said. “We’ll get out of your hair.”
I turned around, not bothering to listen to her obscenity-laden response.
I found Senenmut lying in the fetal position right in the middle of the parking lot, his arms wrapped around his legs as if he had returned to the womb. I squatted down beside him.
“You all right?” I asked, reaching out to stroke the small of his back with my hand.
I ignored the fearful looks we were getting from shoppers as they wheeled their carts around us to get to their cars and focused my attention on getting Senenmut out of the parking lot before the police arrived. I had absolutely
no
doubt that they were already on their way because out of the corner of my eye, I had spotted three Target security guards moving stealthily toward us.
“My eyes burn like they are on fire,” Senenmut moaned as he rubbed at them—probably making himself worse in the process.
“Well, don’t rub ’em anymore,” I said helpfully. “It’s just pepper spray. You’ll be fine . . . I think.”
I looked over at the entrance to the Target and saw that the guards had gained ground on us. If we didn’t get our butts in gear soon, we were gonna be singing for our supper in jail—and how much fun would
that
be, explaining to the Las Vegas PD that they wouldn’t find my new Egyptian friend in their database because he’d been cooped up in a medieval torture chamber for the last couple thousand years.
“Okay, I know your eyes hurt, but we have to get out of here,” I said, trying to be as calm and soothing as possible.
“I don’t want to go,” he whined. “My eyes hurt.”
“Well, guess what? I don’t care
what
you want,” I sniped back at him. “You’re just gonna have to trust me on this one.”
I grasped him around the middle and tried to lift him onto his feet, but he was
way
heavier than I had anticipated.
“Get up!” I hissed in his ear. He wrapped his arms around my middle and together we got him back on his feet. He leaned his head—and most of his weight—against me, causing me to almost lose my footing.
“Stop it,” I said as I braced myself against a nearby car. “I can’t do this if you’re gonna be a baby about it.”
Being called a baby seemed to be the kick in the pants that Senenmut needed. He stood up straighter, relieving me of the weight that had been so incapacitating.
“Now, just follow where I lead,” I said, holding on to his arm as I began to snake through the aisles of parked cars, trying to keep the Target security brigade at bay.
“Ow!” Senenmut said as his knee slammed into the bumper of a Buick Skylark because of my poor maneuvering skills.
“Sorry,” I murmured as I wiped away the thick bead of sweat that had accumulated on my upper lip. I looked up at the brilliant blue sky and cursed the disgustingly hot weather.

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