Cat Tales (6 page)

Humanize yourself. Talk to the captor. Right . . .
“What’s your name?” he croaked. Ignoring him, the girl lifted out vials and bottles of chemicals, and set them on a small tray, one she could carry and maneuver easily. When she was satisfied, she stepped back and uncoiled an electrical extension cord. Which meant there was a generator—which he couldn’t hear—or a building nearby. Someplace to escape to. Maybe find a phone. “What’s your name?” he said again, and when she didn’t answer, he said, “My name’s Rick.”

“I don’t care,” she whispered. She took out a small clock and opened out little legs on the back, making a stand, placing it so that she could see its face. The time read nine twenty-seven. “I don’t care what you do or why she brought you here. I don’t care if you rescue puppies and heal the sick with a touch of your hand. I’m going to do what she wants. So shut up.” She placed the glass, newly filled with water, at his lips.

He drank, and when he spoke, his voice was stronger. “Why? Why are you going to do what she wants?”

The girl’s hands stilled. She was so thin that light from the closest lantern spilled through her flesh, turning her bones dark and red, ghostlike and ephemeral. “She tried to force me as her blood-servant”—she glanced away, and when she swallowed, it looked painful—“but she couldn’t bind me. I don’t know why. But when she failed, she lost control. She nearly drained me.”

“Forcing a blood bond is illegal according to Mithran law. So is draining humans.”

“I know.”

“We could go to the Master of the City. Leo Pellissier is big on vampire law and order. He would make her stop. Punish her.”

“I can’t.” She tried to take a breath, and it sounded like silk tearing, wet and painful along her throat. “I tried to get away. Three times. And this last time . . . ” Her voice broke, mewling like a kitten crushed in a fist. Tears filled her eyes, and she rolled her lips in, as if sealing in a memory and its pain. Her breath was tortured, and she pressed her pale hand to her even paler throat. “This last time . . . she took my brother. He’s seven.” The girl turned her face away, hiding behind a spill of black hair. “She made me watch as she fed on him.”

A first feeding always had sexual overtones. What the girl described was Cdes">

“No. If she dies, Jason is dead. She hid him with her scions,” the girl said, “which she calls the long-chained. I don’t know where. And if she doesn’t come back, they’ll all die. If she lives, and if I don’t do what she wants, she’ll make me watch him die.”

“We can find him in time,” he snarled.

“I can’t take that chance. But thank you for the anger. No one has been angry for us in . . . in forever.”

Rick shoved down his rage. It wouldn’t help. Neither would the fight-or-flight instincts that battled through his blood. Forcibly he silenced his fury, tamping it down, sealing it off. “What does she want?” he asked when he could, his voice low and even.

Her movements economical and fiercely determined, the girl positioned the lanterns around him, uncapped a marker, and placed it against his skin at his shoulder. “She wants you bound to her,” she whispered. “And if she can’t do it with her vampire gift, she’ll do it with magic.” She began drawing on his skin with the marker, drawing and wiping away most of the ink, leaving only a faint outline.

“You’re going to tattoo me?” he asked, incredulous, relief flooding his system. “That’s all?”

“A tattoo of binding. Using her blood and animal blood in the final part of the spell. The blood will bind you to her. You’ll be a blood-servant. Of sorts.” The girl looked at him through her bangs, her eyes smoky brown. “It’s an old spell. I think she stole it from my grandmother. And I’m sorry to use it on you.” Her voice dropped lower. “So very sorry.”

Hot sweat broke out along his skin, and his sphincters pulled in so tight that his belly ached. He swore violently as his hope evaporated.
The girl’s a witch.
Rick raised his head and looked at the black marble beneath him. Considered the metal ring. An impressive witches’ circle, one used for a long time by powerful witches. Probably the girl’s grandmother and her coven. He dropped his head back. “Can your grandmother break it once it’s done?”

“She could. But Isleen killed her. Broke her neck and threw her in the bayou.” Her voice shook, and there was something dark and terrible in her tone. Rick knew Isleen had made the girl watch.

The cute little vampire, Isleen, needed a stake and a beheading. As soon as he got free. Assuming he could get free before his will was sapped and he was magically bound to the crazy bitch vamp. But if one witch knew how to break the spell, then others would too. Assuming he could find them. Assuming . . . assuming a hell of a lot for a guy stretched out naked in a witches’ circle. He concentrated on regulating his breathing, feeling the pen against his skin. Pen, then cool, damp cloth. Pen, then cloth. He had to keep his head if he was going to get out of this. He marshaled the negotiation techniques taught in class. “What’s your name?”

“Loriann Cn">owerful .” She lifted his head and shoved a pillow under his neck so that he could see without strain. She turned her back a moment, and Rick quickly scanned the barn. Nothing. Nothing there to help him at all. Not even an old hoe to fight with.

“Put out a finger. Cut the cards.”

When Rick looked at her, she was holding cards, bigger than playing cards. Tarot. “I’m Catholic. I don’t read tarot.” Which was utterly stupid considering his current position, but refusal was instinct, pounded into him by a lifetime of nuns.

“I don’t care. Put out a finger or”—Loriann pulled in a breath and firmed her face, steeled her voice “—or I’ll make you wish you had.”

Shock spilled through him, an icy chill. “You’re not a black witch,” he managed.

Loriann closed her eyes. Her skin paled even more, looking almost translucent in the lantern light. “It doesn’t matter what I am anymore,” she whispered. “White, black, blood, light, or dark.” She laughed, the sound broken. “I’ve lost myself. I’ve lost my choice. So put out your finger and cut this deck, or I’ll hurt you.”

Straining to move the blood-deprived digit, Rick put out a finger. Placed his nail into the deck about midway through, parting the cards. Loriann separated the deck and shuffled until the oversized cards were well mixed. Then she laid one out. It was a skeleton riding a horse, and the legend beneath the picture read
DEATH
. “Great,” he said. “This is why I don’t do tarot.”

Loriann said, “Death isn’t usually real death. It means change. Now shut up.” After that she ignored him and laid out twelve cards in a circular pattern around Death, mumbling to herself. The last card, at the twelve o’clock position, was the Hanged Man. Whatever she saw didn’t make her happy, and she gathered up the cards and reshuffled them, mumbling, “I never liked Aunt Morella’s time reading anyway.” Louder, she said, “Stick out a finger.”

Again he cut the deck with his fingernail, and Loriann laid out a card. The title at the bottom read
KNIGHT OF WANDS
; the knight was wearing plate armor and riding a red horse, and carried a stick with leaves growing out of it. “This is you,” she said. Over that card, at an angle, she laid out a another card. It was Death. Again. “This is the problem.”

“No shit.” He laughed, and it sounded hopeless even to his own ears.

Over that she laid another. The card depicted a woman sitting on a throne between two pillars: one white, one black. She wore a white crown like a nun’s wimple and a white dress, with a cross on her chest. The card read
HIGH PRIESTESS
. “Hmmm. This is the solution or best course of action.” Quickly Loriann laid out four cards: the first at the bottom, the next to the left, then the top card, placing the last card to the right, in a cross pattern. She laid down four more cards in a line to the far right. The last card she set down showed two naked people. The Lovers. She studied the cards silently. Then gathered them all up again.

“What?” he asked.

She shuffled and held out the deck. “Again.” Rick complied. He figured anything that kept her from sticking a needle into him was a good thing. This time she laid out three rows of seven cards. The far left column came up as three knights, the knights of Swords, Wands, and Cups. “Interesting,” she said, surprised. She looked at him quickly, something new in her eyes, and then glanced away. Down the middle column were Death, the Queen of Swords, and the Lovers. Loriann studied the cards up and down, left to right, as the night flowed on. It was now ten twenty-five. Closing in on the witching hour.

Loriann arranged the cards, putting them into an order that must have made sense to her, and shoved them into a box, then into a small tin at her side. It was brightly painted in little dots of color, like a print of stained glass in miniature. On the top, the Virgin Mary stood in a pointed, arched window.

The witch took out another box from the tin, this one larger, the box older. On the front was a painted picture of a shadowy woman standing in front of a cauldron, a cat with a bobbed tail at her feet and cave walls at her back. Stalactites dripped from overhead. A witch. “My grandmother’s cards,” Loriann said softly. Her cheeks took on a hint of color and she leaned forward, as if hiding behind the fall of her ink-black hair. She went through the deck, rearranging the placement of the cards. “No one has used them in . . . in a long time.” Loriann separated the cards into three stacks of differing depths: Two stacks were composed of cards that had titles on them and one stack contained cards with only numbers. She shuffled each stack until each was well mixed, and lifted a small stack toward him. She said, “Major Arcana. Cut.”

Rick forced out a nail and directed it into the partial deck. He had lost feeling in his hand. He figured that wasn’t a good thing.

“Personages of the Minor Arcana,” she said, lifting the second partial deck. “The Court Cards. Cut.” He cut the second partial deck and the third, which was larger, containing what looked like nearly half of the total number of cards. Loriann shuffled each stack, made him cut the decks again, then laid the cards out in the same three-row pattern as before. This time some cards were taken from the top of one pile, some from another. “Gramma liked gypsy readings, but she did them the way her mother taught her, with the three rows of seven, each column from a specific stack, and to the side, a cross of the Major Arcana. Her cards were specially painted just for her,” Loriann said, “and her deck is different. It has different . . .” Her voice trailed away, as if she had just realized she was speaking aloud. She pressed her lips together and bent her head, her hair sliding forward so that he couldn’t see her face.

When Loriann finished laying out the cards, at the four corners and down the center column were the Court Cards. To the left top was Queen of Pentacles, upside down, a wolf asleep at her feet. At the top right was the King of Swords, an African lion at his feet and his sword made of gold. The left bottom corner was the Page of Pentacles. He was a vampire with a scroll under his arm. The right bottom corner was the King of Wands, and he was a witch with red hair, and with fire exploding from his wand, which was clearly a weapon. A huge owl flew overhead. “No cup cards,” she murmured. But she didn’t explain.

The center column was also composed of Loriann’s Court of the Minor Arcana. The top card was the Queen of Swords—a woman in black, a wildcat with a bobbed tail and yellow eyes on her lap, claws drawing blood on her right thigh. The queen held a sword with a silver blade dripping with blood. The Knight of Wands was the center card: He sat on a rearing black horse, holding a bloodied stake and silver sword, with vampire heads beneath the horse’s hooves. A wolf howled in the background, head angled up toward a full moon. The Knight of Swords was at the bottom but was upside down, the first time a knight had appeared that way. His bloodied sword was silver and black, and a huge cat—a black leopard with yellow-gold eyes—sat on the horse’s rump.

The cards were so old that paint flecked off them as Loriann worked. The edges were rounded and worn from long use. Despite himself, Rick was intrigued. It was almost as if he could sense meaning in the cards, but it seemed to be just out of reach or around the next corner. As if all he had to do was reach out or take a single step, and he would understand. But the significance was elusive, fragmentary.

On the layout of cards in a cross pattern to the side were the Major Arcana. The Wheel of Fortune was in the middle, with animals racing on the wheel—a wolf, a big black cat, a flying owl, an alligator, a spotted dog, and a bear. Around it in a cross pattern was the Devil—a horned, wolf-headed beast with owl’s wings, a horse’s legs, and cloven feet. The Devil had bloody fangs, and claws hidden in the wing feathers. The Hanged Man was an American Indian chief in full feathered headdress. He had been tortured before the hanging, and a black leopard was curled up on the hanging branch above him, sleeping. At his feet were a small wolf, or a coyote, watching him and salivating, and a grouping of turkey buzzards staring at his head. A card called Strength was painted with an angry mountain lion, screaming, clawing the air, sitting on a dead vampire both with fangs bared. The last card was the Tower. It was on fire, and people and animals were falling out of it.

Loriann studied the tarot placement for a while, while Rick tried to read something—anything—in the cards. “Animals,” Loriann muttered. “Vampires. Change everywhere.” And then, “Ahhh. I see.”

“Well, I don’t.”

She gathered up the cards and put them away, then brought her needles and tattooing equipment closer. “Your future is both set and undecided. There are two moments when you will be allowed to choose, and both moments will change the course of your future. One is now, with the tattoo and the blood I’ll use to bind you to Isleen. You may choose canines, equines, or felines. Which do you desire?”

He almost said horses, but the word that came from his mouth was, “Cats.” He stopped, surprised, because he detested his sisters’ cats, and preferred dogs and horses. He shook that away and asked, “But why me? Isleen said something about revenge on Katarina Fonteneau. Is that Katie of Katie’s Ladies?”