Catopolis. Part 25

On the other hand, I hadn't known any useful magic-oh, I could conjure a feeble glow, or bring down darkness around myself, but all kittens could do as much, if they were royalty-while he'd been chasing me or earlier. If he still thought me helpless and gloated just a moment longer...

Surrender, he told me. Abase yourself, and receive me.

Once a tomcat, always a tomcat, first and foremost. His gloating and prancing had given me the time I needed.

"Take me. If you can," I whispered-and vanished.

He launched himself forward, claws flung wide, raking the s.p.a.ce where I'd been. He suspected I'd merely mastered invisibility and now, unseen but still in the closet, was seeking to dodge around him.

My spell was something a little more powerful. A translocation, "jumping" my body from the closet to a spot on that broad expanse of furs that I'd examined carefully earlier. Right beside Steve's leg, as it happened, as he tried to ask Walkingcorpse questions as he kept moving, to keep her from rubbing herself quite all over him.

He stared at me-my sudden appearance, and my hair on end in terror-in astonishment, jaw dropping open, and her surprise was hardly less.

I didn't wait for further reactions but raced past him like a storm wind, sprang to the sliding miniature and clawed it aside, landed thumpingly hard beneath it, and sprang right back up again to push a particular trio of the b.u.t.tons I'd seen her push.

In response, the door clicked open-just as Father burst out of the closet and streaked across the room toward me.

"There! The Ghost Cat!" Throneshuld cried, almost triumphantly, pointing. "That's it!"

Then I was out through the tiny gap between door and frame and running for my life, with Father bounding after me, eyes ablaze with anger and excitement.

"Sam?" Steve shouted, real alarm in his voice. "

Sam!"

I heard his shoes pounding across the floor after me, in the instant before the door shut itself again, m.u.f.fling a shout from him that was loud and angry. And no wonder; he'd never seen me frightened before, in all our time together, and I'd just left him helpless.

I was the ghostsniffer and expert, and without me he was just a man in a hat and coat who knew how to bl.u.s.ter.

He was probably as frightened now as I was. Perhaps more, because humans get so frightened of the unknown. Whereas I knew exactly what I was afraid of.

Thinking of which... I risked a glance back. Father was gaining on me.

Bast take him! I'd thought in a flat-out race I-being younger, sleeker, and a lot lighter-would be faster. I always had been faster!

Wherever he'd been, he'd evidently been doing a lot of running, or getting stronger, or learning some sort of magic that lent him greater speed.

Oh, jackal dung, as some of the priests had been wont to say.

I sprang, batted the elevator b.u.t.ton in pa.s.sing, and kept right on going. I hadn't the time to wait for its ponderous door to roll open, even if it was waiting on this floor-and it was far more likely sitting at street level, two floors down.

Nor did I really have time to use the stairs-not when Father could "fade" through flights of them, to appear below and wait for me. Or could he? Surely its frame would be iron, underneath the carpeting and the sound-deadening sandwiches of foam and wood I'd smelled beneath it. I-window!

That window had not been open when we'd come up, but it was open now. I sprang, trusting in my claws on the wooden sill to slow me enough to keep from hurtling helplessly out and down. The sharp stink of fresh cigarette ash told me why the window had been opened. The caretaker with the vacuum who'd been fussing in the lobby when Steve and I arrived had been smoking, and had dumped-or more likely flicked-the evidence out this window. I followed, quickly.

The ledge I'd seen from the street was more ornamental than useful; certainly no human could have walked along it, even one who knew the wall-clinging spell I had. Yet wires ran along it-what happens when television satellite dishes are added to older buildings as cheaply as possible-which should keep Father from "fading" through any walls to get me. He'd have to follow me, and he was a lot larger than I was.

Traffic honked, below, covering most of his snarls of anger as he thrust his head through the window and saw where I'd gone. By then I was well along the ledge, pa.s.sing Steve and our creepy dead or undead client again.

"Oh, you must stay, Mister Abernathy," she was telling him, arms around him so ardently that he'd have real trouble trying to do anything else. "You can stay in one of the unused floors below us, or better yet my guest room, to try to solve my little problem. You can find your Sam and rid me of my ghost cat."

Steve was frowning and shaking his head-but it was a frown of bafflement, not anger at her. "I-I-Yes, I must absolutely deal with your problem. Yet lacking my partner, I'm temporarily at a loss regarding the best way to proceed. She was crucial to, ah, 'flushing out' your ghost, you see, and-"

"Then stay, and we can talk this over. Coffee? Or something stronger, perhaps? Surely together we can think of..."

Father was out on the ledge, flattening himself against the wall almost bonelessly, and I couldn't tarry any longer.

I'd run out of ledge anyway, because I'd run out of building. If I followed the ledge on, around two corners, I'd probably be able to jump off it, out into the tree I'd seen rising behind The Coachlight as we'd approached it.

Well, Steve certainly seemed smitten. Perhaps Waking-corpse, too, had magic-to ensnare men, in her case. Why else would he be interested in so old and crude a flirt? She was energetic in her seduction attempts but about as subtle as a dog in heat.

I'd done it much better. Steve had been head-over-heels for me as a human and eager for each new session of sweet hot lovemaking before he'd ever known I was a cat who could shapechange. As I said, we're partners.

Now, however, he'd just have to fend for himself. I had bigger problems. Such as staying alive long enough to warn him about the true nature of Haughty Ms. Walkingcorpse-or anything at all, ever again.

Night was falling, of course.

Providing the right lighting for a lady cat to be chased by her murderous father, far across the city.

At least, I hoped I'd last that long.

The tree was old and gnarled; its branches sagged but held. Squirrel-like I scampered down them, then headed for the ground, well aware that Father would be right behind me.

Flattening himself out ribbon-thin must mean working a magic that made him temporarily boneless, because it certainly slowed him down. When I raced away along the top rail of a fence, he was two backyards behind me.

I had to stay ahead. He needed me trapped in a confined s.p.a.ce, or immobilized, to have time to cast his life-stealing. If he could bite the back of my neck, or get a good swipe at me with both sets of front claws, he could manage the maiming he was so infamous for, and I would be paralyzed-and doomed.

Life had suddenly become so simple-and so precious and hard to keep hold of.

So, just how well did he know this city? How well did I?

The difference between those two answers was probably all that was going to keep me alive for long.

He was gaining on me, fast.

I turned a corner, ran out of fence, sprang onto one of those crazy "spiderweb on a pole" backyard laundry racks, and from there plunged deep into the soft soil of a flowerbed, not wanting to bruise anything this early in the chase.

"Early" I hoped, that is. I scrabbled my way onto firmer ground and ran, streaking through a cat door and right up and along the back of a dog that had been waiting outside it to bully some other cat.

The dog barked and twisted furiously, its roaring din nigh deafening, but I doubted it would last more than a swift bark or two against Father. If he bothered to fight it at all.

I raced across several yards, not bothering to try to hide or misdirect by zigging here or zagging there. Right now, just moving quickly was all that was keeping me alive.

Stay near iron barriers, stay near iron...

The dog shrieked in sudden pain, and fell silent. Father.

He was keeping close. Which meant I had to get out of this neighborhood, away from the darkness and the trees that every cat instinctively welcomes and turns to, and into the bright concrete noise of the downtown. Where there would be more cars and people walking; more obstacles.

I darted across a road right in front of a surging taxi. Its front wheel came so close to clipping me that it numbed the end of my tail. There was a littered sidewalk beyond, and one of those two-rows-of-offset-vertical board fences. I went left, toward the busier street.

It was a long way to the corner, and it occurred to me that if Father had caught sight of me and dared to risk himself that much longer in the traffic, he could "cut the corner" diagonally and catch up with me.

So I found an old dented drainpipe with many straps to hook my claws into, and got aloft, fast.

I hadn't even made it to the lowest window-ledge of the apartments above this shop when I heard a furious scrabbling below. Father's weight was too much for his claws to hold him in his haste; he was slipping, old paint flaking away in a little cloud. Slipping, but not falling.

I wasted no time in watching or taunting but just got myself along those ledges, leaping from one to the next, and around the corner. Where a handy tree-limb let me ascend to the next row of ledges, which would put me higher than the aging shingle roof of the next building along.

Father was faster than ever. There came the crash of a window being thrown up behind me, and a man's voice shouting, "It was a cat! And here's another!"

Father hissed in the man's face as he raced past-and was startled to find that one human, at least, was just as fast as he was.

The man had been reading a book, and he thrust it hard into Father's ribs, or tried to. He got Father's rear instead and slammed it off the ledge into s.p.a.ce, the rest of Father following it.

To land heavily atop the store awning below. It was as rotten as most of them, and it tore, but Father wisely kept his claws sheathed, and climbed up out of the small hole, to wade along the dirty canvas.

I made the next shingle roof and paused to s.n.a.t.c.h my breath and plan my route ahead.

"Daughter!" Father hissed, reaching the end of the awning and seeing he was facing an impossible leap to reach me; he'd have to jump down instead, and find another way up.

"Last life, Father?"

"I only need one," he snarled, with a testiness that made me think he just might be on his last one, "to take all of yours!"

I turned away without another word, and ran. This was going to be a long night. I hoped.

And so it was. Time and again Father almost caught me, and I just eluded him, until we were on streets I knew well and could stay more than a whisker ahead of him.

Not that Father seemed to be tiring. I was, but he seemed as quick as ever. Which is how he caught me.

I'd been running along a lighted marquee, one of the huge sidewalk-overhanging pulsating signs that so few movie theaters still had these days, but every second store seemed to have gained. I hadn't seen Father fade through the wall of a building to ride a wire to the building that had the marquee-so I got a nasty shock when he faded right out of the wall ahead, to crash down on the marquee facing me, his fanged smile as big as ever.

Luckily for me, that's exactly what he did- crash down.

Through the gla.s.s panel, into the humming heart of dozens of flourescent tubes, some of which shattered and made his hair stand on end. He clawed his way along them anyway, dislodging some from their mounts so they went dark. So they were no longer alive and threatening to cook him, but they were now on a slant. And as smooth as ever. His claws shrieked as they scrabbled, but he couldn't climb toward me.

I turned and headed elsewhere, fast.

Trapped and knowing it, Father let himself fall through a tangle of tinkling tubes-their shards must have been razor-sharp, but pain had never bothered Father-to reach a metal frame beneath them, in the bright white heart of the marquee. He raced along it until he was under the end of the marquee where I was gathering myself for a difficult jump, and he punched his head upward, hard.

Much gla.s.s shattered, the end of the marquee fell in and my behind with it, and Father ended up pinned under my weight and the ends of about two dozen tubes. He snarled and shifted furiously, seeking to get his jaws or a claw on me, but he was covered in a shifting layer of sharp gla.s.s shards, and all that happened was that his bloodied shoulder touched my bloodied left hind leg for a moment.

And our minds met.

I had always known Father was insane, but plunging through the dark, swirling storm of his mind was still... an experience. He loved to kill, as well as loving all the other things tomcats do, and truly thought he had been touched and favored by his namesake, Montu, the G.o.d of war. He was addicted to the taste of human blood. Not a vampire; he was more like an alcoholic who had to taste strong drink as often as he could. So he clawed or bit every human who came within reach.

He'd been working with AnkhesenAkana for years.

Her, I mean. The Lady, Jethana Throneshuld, though that was just the body she was currently using.

Full working partners. She was some sort of ancient Egyptian undead spirit that he knew no name for, who went on living-I know that's not the right word, but let it pa.s.s-by possessing one living human body after another. Her current body, the unfortunate Jethana, was starting to wear out. The condo scheme had been meant to bring new host bodies within easy reach, but it wasn't going to work in time. So AnkhesenAkana had decided the body of someone else-my Steve!-would have to do.

I had to get away from Father, to get back to The Coachlight, and I had to do it fast!

Now there was irony, if you wanted it: the failing, hungry-for-life undead, and the cat who has taken so many lives already and has blood afire with life. Yet surely AnkhesenAkana would long ago have wrung his neck and taken the energy within him if it could use that energy. So the lives of cats evidently helped sustain undeath not at all...

It had been AnkhesenAkana who got Father his magic. She had no skill for it herself, but from her, er, first life knew where ancient texts were hidden and remembered some details seen when watching others cast spells.

He was a slow learner, it seemed; he kept undoing the incorporeal thing by indulging in his bloodl.u.s.t. Contact with blood-any sort of blood-turned him corporeal even if he didn't want to become solid.

Which gave me an idea. I had to get to a place I'd visited only once, a place any cat would hate fervently for its noise and perils and overwhelming smells. The city's recycling sorting plant.

I used my best spell again, to get myself out of the d.a.m.ned marquee and away from Father. Steve couldn't wait much longer.

I'd never much appreciated the pale gray beginnings of dawn, and they didn't look very entrancing now. With me exhausted, Father close behind, and the rotten stink of the recycling plant-humans just throw things out; they don't see any need to wash much-hammering my nose like... like...

No, nothing can describe this smell. It was like being blinded.

For a moment I feared Father would turn back, but no prey had ever eluded him before, and having found me after so long, he wasn't going to let me manage to be the first.

Good. I knew exactly where I wanted to be and got there.

The place was full of rats, who sneered at me as they waited for me to fall afoul of one of the many murderous pieces of machinery that were crushing, spinning, stamping, and spewing endless streams of cardboard, plastic, and gla.s.s. When I was broken or dead, they'd feast.

I raced past my umpteenth rat-and then whirled around and bit its neck, clamping my own jaws down hard. It died.

Rat in mouth, I turned to face Father.

He'd been following me rather gingerly, and no wonder: I'd reached that rat by running along a pipe high above the cardboard shredder. Which consisted of endless belts carrying waste cardboard to the open top of a large metal chute that dropped into a metal box. Rows of robotic metal knives, each the size of a surfboard, pierced that box repeatedly, amid endless, high-pitched screaming.

So we couldn't hear each other, couldn't smell each other, and were poised above one of the deadliest butchering contraptions I'd ever seen. Luckily, Father's reluctance told me he'd never been here before, which meant my desperate plan just might work.

There was a weight-sorting mechanism at the head end of this, to keep contaminants out. If it worked, I'd live. If not...

"Sorry, Steve," I mumbled, around the rat. It didn't taste any too good, but I didn't plan to have it in my mouth for much longer. Putting my head down, I ran right at Father.

He reared to swipe at me with his claws, but I stopped just out of reach-and he obligingly doomed himself, lunging forward to really get his claws into me.

I slammed into him and drove us both off the pipe, scrabbling at it just long enough so that we fell separately into the waiting chute.

The secret was staying still.

I landed on a good big piece of cardboard and sat there like a stone. Which made the cardboard too heavy, tripped a sensor, and the metal "lifts" rose between the knives to thrust up my cardboard from underneath and shunt it sideways, out of the chute, for hand sorting.

At the last moment, I spat out the rat, and watched it tumble down in front of Father. Who had seen his peril and struggled furiously, churning the cardboard until he could turn incorporeal.

As I got put onto the sorting belt, he was grinning furiously at me, a translucent ghost caged in metal but unharmed by the knives slamming through him.