Catnip (24 page)

Harry stared at her and realized she wasn’t
totally crazy—but she was
seriously
deluded. “So God told
you to kill these animals?”

“Just the cats and dogs,” she replied and
gave a slight shrug. “I hate ‘em both. Other animals, well, they’re
pretty useful critters, but cats and dogs are the devil’s creation.
I’m just doing what the good Lord tells me to do. Now I have to
decide what to do with you. I know what to do with your
friend.”

Her threat to Anastasia—and he was pretty
sure by this point in time that it would be carried out—scared him,
but anger won out over fear. He started to get up, kept his gaze
focused on her pistol, and knew he could wrench it away from her
before she had a chance to fire.

However, the massive woman moved faster than
he thought possible and brought the barrel of the pistol across his
temple just as he got to his feet. He felt a massive wave of pain
and the flashing lights came and the pain got worse.

Being hit all the time without getting the
opportunity to hit back pissed him off…and without warning the
floor came up out of nowhere to smack him in the face.

“Aw, crap.”

The sound of his voice, racked with pain and
frustration, made him feel worse than anyone had a right to feel.
Harry swam up from the depths of unconsciousness and found himself
in a corner with Anastasia at his feet. His hands were bound behind
his back and try as he might, he couldn’t work his way out of them.
Granny Tillman sure had a way with ropes.

The room was dark and the only light came
from the ancient oil lamp on the table. Any movement caused him to
wince, but he told himself to put up with the pain, turned his head
to the right, and peered through a crack in the wall. Night had
fallen. He heard a faint moan and painfully twisted his way back to
his girlfriend. “Anastasia, are you okay?”

She stirred briefly, tried to rise, and then
fell back to the floor again. Her hands had also been tied and very
securely, too. In the dim light, her features had shifted yet
again, her cheekbones getting higher and her face more feline. Her
body, though, had remained essentially the same.

Then the memory of her eating an animal she’d
killed—eating it raw—came back to him. When would she devolve?
Would there be any human component of her left, or would she think
like a cat? Little by little her body would be taken over, and
she’d be forced to give up what she’d been. He tried to calculate
the hours it would take for the animal genes to overwhelm her human
ones and then gave up. It made his heart hurt too much.

Anastasia moaned again, which interrupted his
musings. This time she became totally conscious and managed to roll
over on her side. She shook her head and asked, “Where are we?”

“In some crazy person’s house,” he answered.
“I don’t know which is worse, Ivan or this nutcase.”

Granny Tillman walked in from outside
carrying the carcasses of two rabbits and a cat in one hand and her
pistol in the other. The smell of fresh blood turned Harry off, but
he saw Anastasia’s eyes had started to shine. The fat lady walked
over to them, waving the fresh kill and smiled—malevolently, it
seemed to Harry—at his girlfriend.

“So, you want some of this, girl? Or are you
a girl?” Tillman asked with a spiteful tone in her voice. “Can you
talk or just mewl like the animal you are?”

Anastasia started to reach her body toward
the rabbit, but pulled up short and set her mouth in a straight
line. “I can talk just fine, you fat pig,” she said coldly. “What
are you going to do with us?”

Tillman lost her look of confidence for a
moment, and then resumed waving the fresh meat around. Droplets of
blood flew through the air, spattering them both, and with a quick
motion the fat woman dumped her killings on the table. “You ought
to watch yer mouth,” she said and hefted the pistol in her hand.
“This is a righteous weapon I have. You make one wrong move and
you’ll end up hibbled.”

Anastasia glared at her defiantly. “What does
hibbled
mean?”

Tillman returned the stare threefold. “Let’s
just say that if you’re hibbled, it’s only a shade better than
being buried.”

“Try speaking proper English,” Harry said. He
had the feeling this nutball was going to kill them anyway and he
was tired of simply letting people dictate his future. He might
die, but not without getting the last word in.

The woman’s stare continued, hot enough to
cut through steel. She gave a derisive snort. “It means to cripple
someone. Hobble them. Are you satisfied now? My way of speakin’ has
nothin’ to do with what you’re gonna go through if you don’t come
clean.”

Fine, she could speak fairly decent English,
he thought. “So what are you going to do with us?” he repeated for
his girlfriend’s sake.

Tillman scratched her head. “I don’t rightly
know,” she finally said after mulling the question over. “I went
huntin’ before, and while I was in God’s country, I decided to ask
Him for a little advice. He said I should talk to you and make you
realize the error of your ways before I set my course.”

Which course is that, Harry wondered. Then he
stopped wondering. He knew. “Lady, if you kill us you’re going to
get into a lot of trouble with the law. The FBI is after me and
her, and if you think…”

His rant got interrupted when the whale
waddled over and slapped him hard against the side of his head.
That started a fresh wave of pain, and with a supreme effort he
forced himself to sharpen up and focus in on her words.

“Don’t you talk to me about the law, sonny!”
she snapped. “I know the law! There is the law of man and the law
of God. God made men who make the laws to follow His will. Nothing
you can say or do will change that!”

“Would it do any good to try?” he asked.

No, of course not, as she started spewing
more words about the Bible—the Old Testament as well as the New—and
Harry felt profoundly grateful his parents had raised him in a
secular environment. He had nothing against religion unless it was
taken to the extreme, and this woman embodied the word
extreme
.

Finally, she stopped ranting and pulled up
her chair to sit in front of them, her pistol pointed at
Anastasia’s heart, but she addressed Harry first. “If you’re some
kind of doctor or scientist, then how can you explain this
creature?”

He started to tell her about the science of
transposing genes, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out she
wouldn’t understand and more important, she didn’t
want
to
understand. Finally, he decided on a different course. “I can’t.
That’s not what my research was about. I was trying to cure her.
The man—Nurmelev—he might know what’s going on.”

Tillman took in his words without batting an
eye. Finally, she stood up, heaved in a deep breath, and shook her
head. For the first time her face actually had a look of regret on
it. “Son, Lord knows I want to believe you, but you won’t accept
His reasoning.”

She turned around and picked up a meat
cleaver from the table. “I won’t kill you, though, on account of
you being human. Your friend, though…”

Her voice abruptly cut off when a familiar
roar sounded followed by a deep and menacing growl. Anastasia’s
ears twitched as did her nose, and Harry knew what would happen
next. The fat woman’s mouth quivered. “What in the good Lord’s name
was
that
?”

He eyed her impassively. “
That’s
the
real abomination, and he’s going to be here very soon. Cut us loose
and we’ll help you out.”

Another roar sounded and this time it was
closer. Tillman dropped the cleaver and pulled the pistol out of
her pants. “It’s the devil himself sending a minion to do his
work,” she breathed. Her head swiveled left and right and she
crossed herself repeatedly.

The bellows of rage continued and the house
fairly shook. Tillman frantically swung her gaze in every
direction, and then looked upward as if to call down some divine
intervention. No one answered her plea and her eyes came to rest on
Anastasia. She pointed the pistol at her and cocked it. “The devil
himself has followed you here, cat-girl, and you’re the cause of
it! It’s the devil, I tell you!”

“No, it’s someone who’s like me and he’s
coming here!” Anastasia’s voice cut through the air and seemed to
shake the woman into semi-sanity. “Cut us loose!”

The fat lady hesitated, and then she took a
knife from the table and sliced through their bonds. “You’d better
be good to your word!” she threatened.

The door burst open and Ivan stood there, his
breathing heavy and loud. He took a step into the room, and then
another, and his beady red eyes targeted everyone with a laser-like
accuracy. Tillman backed up. “Oh, sweet Jesus, save us,” she
implored, her body shaking with fear.

No, God had nothing to do with it, Harry
decided. “Shoot him!” he yelled.

Tillman did, opening fire. She had good aim.
All six of her shots went right into the monster’s chest, a nice,
tight grouping. It didn’t slow him down for a moment.

Ivan staggered forward, and even in the dim
light, Harry saw the wounds close almost instantaneously. The
bear-creature lunged forward, slapped the pistol out of her hand
and grabbed her around the throat. He effortlessly lifted her off
the ground. She thrashed and gurgled, and her eyes practically
popped out of her head from the pressure of his grip.

“Don’t kill her!” Harry yelled.

The monster grunted, looked at him, and
dropped the fat woman. Tillman briefly stirred, so checking just to
make sure, Harry knelt down and put a finger to her neck. No, she
wasn’t dead. She’d just fainted.

Anastasia backed off, body tense and claws
fully out, but managed to keep her rage in control. Much as Harry
wanted to blow this creature’s head off, right now Ivan held all
the cards. Besides, Tillman had used up all her ammo.

He cautiously sidled over to the monster and
shook his head. Harry’s heart beat so hard he thought it would
crack out of his chest, but oddly enough, right at this moment, he
felt no fear. He looked up at Ivan, noticed the saliva dripping
from his fangs, felt a stab of fear and fought it off. “Hey, you
want to kill me, go ahead,” he said, “but don’t kill the lady.
She’s crazy, but she didn’t do anything to you.”

The monster raised his massive arms and Harry
looked at certain death. He stood there, waiting, and suddenly Ivan
dropped his arms and gave a faint nod. Good, the creature
understood what was going on—maybe.

“Harry,” Anastasia said, “hold me, please.”
The very sound of her voice gave him a measure of courage.

She retracted her claws and he put his arms
around her. “You know what’s coming next, don’t you?” she
asked.

He did, and then Ivan let loose with a mighty
swipe which caused their heads to bang together sharply. Anastasia
dropped to the floor as if she’d been shot and Harry fell beside
her. In his last second of consciousness, he hoped his death would
be a merciful one.

Harry dreamed of bears and lions and cats
and…

Somewhere in the middle of his dream he
realized it hadn’t been a dream, more like a nightmare. He
remembered Anastasia snarling and spitting, the bear-thing standing
over the old woman, and he recalled the impact of the almost casual
slap which sent him on a collision course with his girlfriend and
into a world of spinning pain only to find he was…

Awake!

He opened his eyes and thought he’d finally
lost his mind. The world tilted at an angle, he felt his body
swaying back and forth, his head throbbed, and everything seemed to
be upside-down somehow. A groan came from his mouth, and after
sensing someone beside him, he turned his head to the right. The
movement sent shock waves of pain through his body. Anastasia was
in the same position, her arms limp, and then he realized he
was
hanging upside-down. They both were.

Crap.

“Anastasia,” he whispered. “Are you up?”

She didn’t answer and he swung his gaze
around the room. It was dim, but squinting hard, he made out they’d
been taken to some kind of storage area. A door lay to his left, an
air vent sat above it, and a larger door lay in front of him which
presumably led to the main room. Well, Captain Obvious to the
rescue. They’d been captured and he was pretty sure what would
happen next.

Anastasia stirred briefly and lapsed back
into unconsciousness. He twisted his neck up and found his legs had
been tied with thick rope and tightly bound to an overhead beam.
Helpless, they were helpless, and sick to his stomach, he now
understood this whole adventure had been one big plan to trap them.
Lured in and caged, they’d traded one cell for another, and it
didn’t look like they were going to get out of there any time
soon…

The sound of the door opening caught his
attention. Light filled the room and he tried to focus. “I see you
are awake,” a voice said.

A small, bald man who appeared to be in his
fifties walked over to him along with Ivan, the lumbering
nightmare. The man flicked a switch on the wall and the light came
on, a harsh, yellowish-white glare which came from a single
overhead bulb. Harry’s vision blurred for a moment, and then
cleared. “Are you gonna cut us down or what?” he asked.

The man whispered something to his bearlike
assassin. In response, the creature reached up and slashed at the
cords which bound Harry’s legs to the pole and he fell heavily to
the floor.

“Get up,” the bald man said pleasantly, a
faint accent in his voice. “I will explain everything, and then you
may ask your questions.”

Harry rubbed his legs to get the circulation
going, and then slowly got to his feet. The huge bodyguard stood
near the door, his tiny, beady eyes constantly on the move,
searching out, categorizing, and sorting data.
Just like my
girlfriend. He’s been trained to remember every detail
.