Catnip (11 page)

Anastasia snarled and he hastily changed his
reply to, “Have a cow, okay? She’s gonna have a cow!”

He walked into another room and Harry heard
the sound of running water. Jason came back a minute later holding
a damp cloth to his neck. Unusual circumstances notwithstanding, he
seemed to have recovered his cheerful attitude pretty quickly. “So,
you like the place or what?”

The house had all the trappings of
upper-class wealth—expensive couches and sofas, an enormous
fifty-two inch screen flat television, antique furniture—the works.
Harry also noticed a number of electronic gadgets lying around,
mainly game-players, software, modems, and more. “Yeah, it’s pretty
nice.”

Anastasia gave a soft purr, sniffed the air,
and then nosed her arms and shoulders. “I need a shower.”

Her comment reminded Harry that his own body
reeked and reeked hard. “Yeah, I guess I need one, too.”

Jason simply pointed to the upstairs and
stole a quick glance at Anastasia. “You already know where
everything is. I think I got some extra clothes for you. My big sis
moved out last year to a college dorm, but she left some stuff
behind. I’ll do a search-and-find mission while you’re getting
clean.”

“What about me?” Harry asked.

Parham scratched his head as if in deep
thought and snapped his fingers. “I got some old clothes from a few
years back when I was shorter. Do you like Naruno? He was the
hottest anime character in junior high.”

Harry had no idea who or what a
Naruno
was, but right now he would have worn a trash bag. Anastasia
bounded up the stairs. “Give me five minutes,” she called down.
“I’m quick that way.”

Dibs on the shower—Harry nodded and followed
her up.

While he waited outside the shower room for
her to finish, Harry wondered about his fellow escapee. She might
have resembled a cat, but the way she walked and spoke—in a very
feminine way—made him think she was just another girl. Then again,
the way she moved, her lightning-fast reflexes, the way she
fought—this was no ordinary girl, and he wondered if…

“I’m done.”

Her voice startled him from his reverie. She
came out with a towel wrapped around her torso, gave him a shy
glance and sniffed the air again. Then she swiveled her head away
from him, carefully taking in the details of the house, studying
them with the same intensity as she’d done with the photograph on
the computer back at FBI headquarters. Total recall, he thought,
she had total recall. It still didn’t answer the question of who’d
want someone with a photographic memory. Maybe she
was
a spy
after all.

Jason interrupted his musings by poking his
head out of a room down the hallway and waved in their direction.
“Over here. This is my room. I found my sister’s stuff.” He quickly
got out of harm’s way and went downstairs to wait.

Anastasia walked into the room and Harry took
the opportunity to step into the bathroom, strip off his clothes
and take a shower. The hot water felt good and the soap soon rinsed
the stink away. After shutting off the water, he grabbed a towel
from an overhead rack, dried himself off, and looked at his eye in
the mirror. It was still swollen and discolored, but at least he
could see out of it.

He wrapped the towel around his waist, walked
out of the shower and found Jason’s room. Wait, Anastasia was still
inside, so he knocked on the door, heard her say “what is it?” and
then the door opened. Anastasia stood there dressed in a bright
yellow blouse and a matching yellow skirt, and he pulled up short
when he saw her.

“Oh.” Nothing else came out of his mouth for
a moment, as he felt simultaneously turned on by her and also
ashamed of his skinny body. He looked like the proverbial
ninety-seven pound weakling and knew it. If someone kicked sand in
his face, the sand would probably knock him out. “Sorry, I didn’t
know you were, uh, here.”

She frowned at him. “How’s this outfit?” she
asked in a voice which he took to mean
say something
uncomplimentary and you get slashed.

Anastasia had some attitude, but he had no
intention of saying anything rude. She looked…great.

“Oh, uh, you look fine,” he stammered out and
wondered why she had this effect on him. Was it pheromones, or
something else? Maybe she liked him, although he didn’t know why.
Then Agent Farrell’s warning of
be careful around her
sounded in his brain. With a savage mental thrust, he told the
warning to shut up.

“Thanks,” she said shortly, and her frown
switched to a smile. As she ambled out of the room, she patted him
on the shoulder and her tail swished lazily behind her. Yeah, maybe
she liked him. Her touch…

Never mind. As he got dressed, he looked
around and noted the anime posters that covered the entire room.
Then there were the toys, dolls, magazines, and paraphernalia
denoting a fantasy geek of the most serious nature. The room was
wall-to-wall
otaku,
the Japanese word for nerd
.
He
shook his head.
Jason says I’m missing out on this? What am I
missing out on?

“Hey, I got food on the table!” his host
called up. “Come and get it!”

Harry quickly pulled on a pair of jeans that
were a bit too long and sagged in the waist. A tightly cinched belt
took care of the latter problem, along with rolled-up pant legs,
and then he put on a T-shirt with a picture of an elf character on
it—it had to be Naruno, Jason and more of his make-believe
world—and went downstairs.

Anastasia sat on a couch in the living room,
her legs tucked neatly underneath her body. She held a pastry in
each hand and daintily took bites from both. “Food’s ready,” Jason
announced as he came in from the kitchen, and he held a tray full
of sandwiches and pastries. “I’m not much of a cook, so my folks
left these frozen things for me.”

Harry took a sandwich and then remembered his
computer. His friend held up his hand. “It’s recharging in the
corner,” he said and pointed. “I got everything you need. You need
software, modems, USB ports, anything—I got it all.”

Satisfied, Harry sat back and the other teen
flicked on the television. “Maybe you guys made the news.”

Sure enough, a reporter, her hair
appropriately disheveled and with a serious expression on her face
stood outside the Federal Plaza building, breathlessly intoning
into a microphone, “…and the attack occurred last night around
eleven o’clock. Sixteen men and women were slain in a gruesome
fashion. According to sources, they were torn open. The FBI has
released a photo of a possible suspect, Harry Alan Goldman, age
eighteen. He was allegedly aided in his rampage by an unknown
female accomplice…”

Harry’s mug shot flashed on the screen. The
reporter went on to add that Harry had been incarcerated for
illegally experimenting in transgenic research. The reporter also
went on to add—erroneously—that Harry’s father had been
investigated for doing the same thing. Anastasia stopped eating and
put the snacks down on her plate. The look on her face read
disbelief all the way.

“Turn it off,” Harry said. This was nothing
more than a smear campaign, not only on him but also on his father.
He’d been incarcerated, almost gotten killed, had gotten involved
with someone who’d been experimented on and now he was a
suspect
?

“This is a load of crap!” he exploded,
dropping his sandwich, his appetite suddenly gone. “They toss me in
jail and then do a number on my father? What kind of garbage is
this?”

“They set you up, man,” Jason said, stating
the obvious. He chewed a pastry messily, crumbs scattering all over
the table. “Your father didn’t really do that, did he?”

Before Harry could answer, Anastasia rapped
her claws on the table to get Jason’s attention. “I hate a dirty
place. Clean it up.” She suddenly stopped and blinked, as if a
memory had surfaced.

Jason didn’t catch the twitch. Perhaps scared
by the claws or the insistent tone in which the order came, he
scooped all the crumbs up and dumped them on the tray. After
gathering up the plates, he took them into the kitchen, returned
with a damp washcloth, and wiped the table. Job over for the moment
he focused his attention on Harry. “What did you really do?”

Quickly, Harry went through the story of his
experiments, his parents’ deaths, his unfortunate incarceration,
the FBI using him, and his meeting with Anastasia. Jason nodded at
every word and his jaw gradually dropped lower and lower, flakes of
frosting still around the edges.

“…and that’s how it all happened,” he
finished dully.

Jason let out a low whistle. “Man, this is
just too radical for me to process.” He got up and paced around the
room for a few moments, then turned back to ask, “So what are you
gonna do?”

When one is a fugitive, what
did
one
do? Harry figured if anyone with a gun saw him, they’d shoot on
sight. And what about Anastasia, what would the authorities do with
her? He had to get out of here, and fast. But he had little money,
didn’t dare go to an ATM machine, and he was more than positive the
agents were watching every possible escape route.

His friend’s voice broke through his fog.
“Listen, you guys can crash here for a few nights if you want. My
parents won’t be back until next week, so it’s chill if you
stay.”

“Are you sure it’s okay?”

Jason nodded. “Hey,
mi casa es su casa
and all that, like they say. You can use my folks’ room and,” he
stopped for a moment to glance at Anastasia, “your friend can have
my sister’s room.”

It seemed like the best plan, and they
accepted. Jason cleaned up the rooms, ran a vacuum cleaner over the
floor, and gathered up their dirty clothes. “I’ll put these in the
washer,” he said. Anastasia offered to help him. He waved her off.
“No, it’s cool,” he said. “You guys should, uh, relax.”

There didn’t seem to be much else to do.
After cleaning up a bit more, the three of them went upstairs.
Jason guided them into his sister’s old room, very girly and
everything pink except for the lacy white curtains, but Anastasia
didn’t seem to mind.

“I’ll see you later,” she said, favoring
Harry with a tiny smile. The gesture was not lost on Jason. He
shook his head and walked out. Anastasia then smiled once more at
Harry, immediately curled up on the bed, and passed out.

He went downstairs. Checking on his computer,
he found it had finished recharging. He located an outlet near the
dining room table, set his computer down on it and plugged in, and
got to work while his friend flicked on the television and settled
into playing some zombie shoot-‘em-up, hands busily working the
controls.

“You’re gonna work, right?” Jason asked, not
looking at him.

Harry nodded and concentrated on unlocking
the secrets to the DNA universe. There had to be an answer to the
question of what Anastasia really was, and he wanted to find
out.

“Dinner,” Jason announced, breaking through
Harry’s concentration.

“What time is it?”

His host pointed at the clock. It was just
past six. Harry stared for a moment and rubbed his tired eyes. He’d
been running simulations for the past five-plus hours and hadn’t
thought about eating. He rolled his shoulders, and while his joints
cracked softly, his muscles didn’t seem to feel so beat up.

“I’ll nuke a few pizzas,” Jason told him. He
hesitated slightly. “Your girlfriend likes pizza, right?”

Harry flushed. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

His friend walked into the kitchen and paused
at the doorway. “She’s kinda cute. You could do worse, you know?
And she likes you.”

Turning around, he saw the sincere expression
on Jason’s visage. “Since when did you become an expert on
women?”

Jason shrugged. “It’s just a feeling. If she
didn’t trust you or like you, she would’ve split, right? Well,
she’s still here.”

He disappeared into the kitchen. Harry shut
off his computer and went upstairs to see if his companion was
awake. He knocked on the door and heard a “come in” reply.

Anastasia sat on the edge of the bed,
stretching out. “How are you doing?” he asked.

She gave him another tiny smile which
revealed small, perfectly shaped white teeth. Her eyes had a
thoughtful glow. “I’ll make it. I just hope that thing doesn’t
follow us here.”

“Are you two psychically linked or
something?” He remembered reading about that phenomenon somewhere
and wondered if it was true.

Anastasia shook her head and replied, “No,
but we both have upgraded senses. I can smell everything inside of
a mile. I can tell your friend exactly what’s inside his fridge. I
just know…and I know this thing is looking for a trail. He’ll pick
up my scent sooner or later or I’ll pick up his.” She suddenly
hugged herself. “I’m not afraid of much—but I’m afraid of him.”

Harry remembered how she’d acted when
confronted by the larger foe. She didn’t know the meaning of
backing down. “You don’t know who he is, do you?”

Her mouth twisted and she said, “I don’t
remember.”

Some detective he was…and then he killed the
thought. Only Anastasia had the answer to the riddle, and it was
locked away in her mind. He sat down beside her, unsure of what to
say or how she’d take it. “You told me yesterday you thought I was
a friend,” he said slowly, uncertain how she’d take his words. “Did
you mean it?”

Her yellow eyes shifted back and forth as if
she was rating and assessing his statement for truth. Finally, she
nodded. “Yeah, I did. I like your smell, if that counts for
anything.”

It should have surprised him, but it didn’t.
From what he’d read, some animals liked the smells of people or
other animals better than others. “I like yours, too.” Then he
stood up, somewhat embarrassed by his admission. “Are you in for
some pizza?”