Within the Shadows (27 page)

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Authors: Brandon Massey

BOOK: Within the Shadows

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A large cat stood on the edge of the kitchen. Watching her.

Cold sweat dampened her brow.

This was one of the mean-assed cats she’d seen sitting on her car earlier that evening.

Movement past the doorway, on her left.

A second feline was walking through the dining room.

What was going on? How had they gotten inside?

A hissing, above her.

She looked up.

A third cat sat atop the refrigerator, glaring at her with dilated pupils.

Too terrified to breathe, she instinctively raised her arms, dropping the water bottle to the floor.

The cat pounced.

A scream snatched Andrew out of sleep.

Oh, God, that was Carmen. Had to be her. What was going on?

He rolled over and yanked the drawer of the nightstand so hard that it crashed to the floor. Normally, he kept the gun case therein locked; tonight, he’d left it unlatched, so that he could open it at a moment’s notice.

He closed his hand over the cool handle of the Smith & Wesson .38 revolver. The gun was already loaded.

He’d never fired the .38 in a real-world situation, but he was more than willing to use it to protect her. This was one of those times when he didn’t need to ask Mark Justice for advice. His response was automatic.

He leapt out of bed, flung open the door, and raced down the hallway, calling her name.

Like an uncoiling cobra, the cat sprang onto Carmen’s head. Claws and teeth tore into her upraised arms and ripped through her hair.

She screamed.

The animal’s furry tail swung in her face, like a noose.

Terror gripped her heart in a stranglehold. She staggered, stumbled. Trying to fling the cat off her, trying to keep it from gouging her eyes out with its wicked claws.

She felt another cat attack her calf. Teeth sank into her flesh. She kicked, wildly. But the feline held fast.

Another cat leapt onto her back and attached itself to her T-shirt. It pawed at her neck.

Jesus, they were going to kill her.

Tears flooded her eyes. Each claw and tooth opened a searing wound. She felt warm blood streaming down her skin.

Gotta get them off me, dammit!

She finally got ahold of the tail of the feline crawling on her head. She whipped it around and flung it across the kitchen. The cat landed nimbly on the counter. It flashed its teeth at her.

Through her tears, she saw the knife block, and yanked a blade out of there. She swung it at the cat mauling her leg. The blade lopped off the animal’s ear. Howling, the cat fell away.

The feline clinging to her back raked its razor-sharp claws down her spine.

She drove into the refrigerator backwards, crushing the cat against the door. Bones crunched. Wailing, the feline fell off her, slumped to the floor.

She was dizzy with pain, felt blackness tugging at her, trying to drown her. But she didn’t dare lose consciousness.

The feline on the counter hissed, muscles bunched.

God, this wasn’t over yet.

The cat launched itself at her again.

She thrust with the knife and swiped the cat’s throat. The cat dropped like a stuffed animal.

She backpedaled to the far counter.

The injured felines clustered together and faced her. Their eerily intelligent eyes burned with malice.

She waved the blood-spattered knife in front of her. She bled from multiple bites and scratches, and her body was a throbbing pulse of agony, but she’d be damned if she let some cats get the best of her.

“Bring it on!” she said.

The cats hissed in unison, their fur standing on end.

These weren’t normal cats. No way. They were too synchronized in their movements, too purposeful in their violence. These animals behaved as if they were under the influence of a single, malevolent mind.

Andrew rounded the bottom of the staircase. He had a gun. “Carmen!”

As one, the cats spotted him. They streaked into the dark dining room across the hallway.

“Follow them!” she said. She hurried into the room and switched on the lights, no more than a second behind the creatures.

But the cats had vanished.

She glanced beneath the dining room table and chairs. No sign of them.

Cats couldn’t vanish like that. It was impossible.

A spell of dizziness hit her. She gripped a chair to regain her balance.

Andrew arrived in the doorway, scratching his head.

“Where’d they go?” he asked.

In the family room, Carmen lay on the sofa in her bra and panties, while Andrew sat beside her and applied ointment to her scratches and bites, to disinfect the wounds.

Although she lay in front of him, nearly nude, sex was the farthest thing from his mind. Other, disturbing thoughts took precedence.

It pissed him off that she’d been hurt at all, but it made him especially angry that it had occurred in his house. Although he couldn’t have predicted what had happened, he felt responsible for her safety. Maybe it wasn’t fair for him to accept the blame, but he blamed himself anyway. He’d been asleep when she’d come under attack. Thank God, she’d been capable of fighting back.

She was precious to him. If the assault had been worse . . . he didn’t want to dwell on it anymore. The idea made him almost ill.

Once he’d confirmed that she was okay, he had spent a few minutes searching for the felines. He hadn’t found so much as a fur ball to verify their presence inside his house.

It couldn’t have happened. But it had.

As he attended to her, she sipped a cup of chamomile tea. She’d been trembling and the tea helped to calm her.

“I knew they didn’t like me,” she said. “That was obvious when we got back home from dinner. One of them hissed at me, remember?”

“I just don’t understand how they got in the house. Or how they disappeared like that.”

“Me, neither, but they did,” she said in a don’t-argue-with-me tone.

“Still think we should take you to the hospital, in case they have rabies or something. Stray cats could be carrying anything.”

“I’ll go to the doctor later today, but those weren’t ordinary, disease-carrying stray cats, Drew. They’re something else, something scary and weird.”

She shivered. The coldness she felt must have jumped to him, because a shudder rippled through his body, too. She had voiced his same worries.

“I don’t know what they are, where they came from,” she said, “but they hate me. And they didn’t want to hurt you.”

That was another point that bothered him. Why did the cats attack her, but run when he arrived?

“They’ve been watching me for days,” he said. “But this is the first time they set foot in the house.”

“That you know of. They could’ve come in here while you were away.”

“Good point. But the real question is, why? I’m thinking the cats belong to someone, someone who commands them. They seem to be acting out of some purpose, know what I mean?”

She sucked in her lip, nodded. He dabbed ointment on a scratch across her cheek.

“I can think of only one person who’d be pissed at me right now,” she said. “Psycho chick.”

Squeezing the tube of ointment, he stopped. “What?”

“You know she’s jealous of me. My spending the night with you would be the kind of thing that would set her crazy ass off. She’s the only one who has a motive.”

“But we’re talking about her commanding some, I don’t know, supernatural cats to attack you? How could she do that?”

“Don’t know, but doesn’t it make sense? You just said those cats have been spying on you for days. She’s the only one who’d want to constantly keep an eye on you.”

“But Mika is only a regular woman. Yeah, she’s been obsessing over me, but it’s a helluva jump to go from calling her a psycho chick to believing that she’s got some trained attack cats that can vanish in thin air.”

“It wouldn’t be the first jump you’ve made lately. Last week, did you really think you’d be chatting with a ghost on your computer?”

He pondered her words. He rubbed ointment into a cut on her leg, and taped a bandage across the affected area.

He wasn’t ready to admit that Mika owned the cats. If it were true, it would change everything—for the worst. He wanted to hold onto his optimism for as long as he could.

“Let’s talk to Sammy,” he said. “He said he wants to help me, and he’s been quiet all night. It’s time for him to give us some answers.”

He brought a folding chair into the office, so that Carmen could sit beside him while he attempted to communicate with Sammy again.

His last question—
Why do you say I’m in big trouble now?
—remained unaddressed. Perhaps, at this point, it was moot. Mika had thrown a violent fit in his house and the weird cats had attacked Carmen. Obviously, he was in big trouble of some kind.

He erased the question and typed a new one: SAMMY, ARE YOU HERE?

“Might take him a few minutes to reply,” he said to her. “It did the first time.”

“Guess it’s a long walk to here from the other side,” she said.

“Or he could be sleeping,” he said, playing along. They desperately needed some humor to lighten the bleak mood.

“Doubt it,” she said. “Haven’t you seen the movies? The other side is always full of bright light. How could a ghost sleep somewhere like that? Bet he’s got bags under his eyes.”

He chuckled. Then he looked at her, solemn.

“I’m really glad you’re okay, Carmen.”

“Come on, I’m a tough chick, Drew. Your girl ain’t one of those damsels in distress that can’t run across a room without falling on her ass.”

Sudden coldness in the room brought their conversation to a halt. The frigid air swirled around them, and gathered near the laptop.

Both Andrew and Carmen’s breaths frosted in the ether in front of them.

“Sammy’s here,” Andrew said.

Carmen’s eyes shone with awe.

The laptop’s keys moved. Sluggishly—as if the ghost had been pulled from slumber, like they had joked.

I HEAR TYPENG MAKE TIRED

“Typing must be hard for him,” Carmen said. “We better get right to it.”

Andrew typed: WHO OWNS THE CATS?

He received the answer that he feared. The answer that changed everything.

HERS SENT THEM TO SEE YOU

“So Mika owns the cats,” he said. “She sent them to watch me.”

“Like I thought,” Carmen said, but without the usual glee that she had whenever she had the correct answer.

Sammy’s response triggered a batch of questions. Who was Mika—really? How did she have the ability to command the extraordinary cats? If the cats were not ordinary cats, then in what way was Mika not an ordinary woman?

Most important of all: Why had she chosen him?

“Ask something else,” Carmen said.

He typed: TELL US MORE ABOUT HER.

The keys moved, slowly.

VEREY SCAREY

Such iciness fell over him that the temperature in the room felt as if it had dropped thirty degrees. Carmen, too, looked frightened.

He typed: WHY DID SHE CHOOSE ME?

SEEN YOU

“Seen me?” he said. “I don’t get it. Of course she saw me, we met at Starbucks.”

“Ask a different question,” Carmen said.

He typed: WHERE IS SHE FROM?

SAD PLACE