Rob Thurman - Chimera

I followed the walls of the looming buildings when I could. They shielded us to a certain extent, but not enough. We had coats and gloves, but we were still in jeans. The snow pushed its way up my pant legs to pack tightly against my skin, and sneakers did nothing to keep my feet from aching fiercely before losing feeling altogether. We kept moving for nearly thirty minutes before the district began to change from industrial to residential.

“You still kicking, kiddo?” Michael’s grip on my jacket hadn’t wavered, but the weight of it had increased. I’d slowed accordingly, as much as I could, but taking a break had been out of the question. The weather had deteriorated rapidly. The snow was falling harder than a warm-blooded creature like me thought possible; it was knee-deep and drifting dramatically in the fierce wind. Boston seemed determined to give the Antarctic a run for its money.

“Walking is hard enough.” He sounded winded. “Kicking . . . out of . . . the question.”

I looked back at him to see his face drawn with cold but resolute. He was shorter than I by a few inches and was having a more difficult time. What was knee-deep for me was almost thigh high on him. I stopped walking and turned to face him. “Seriously, Misha, you okay?” I lifted his hood an inch or two to see that his cut had scabbed over. It was like time-lapse photography; I could practically see the healing taking place.

“I’m fine. Just tired.” He made an aggrieved face. “And cold. It was never cold at the Institute.” He was waxing nostalgic for his prison; that couldn’t be a positive sign.

“Yeah, I hear that place was like a Caribbean resort.” I pulled his hood back into place and hefted the plastic bag with a leaden grip. “Buck up. We’re almost there.”

“Almost where?”

I shifted and pointed across the street at the nearest possibility, a house that huddled as an amorphous shape in the storm. The porch light twinkled dimly in the murk, hopefully advertising that no one was at home. “There.”

His hand latched on to the duffel strap across my back. “Why there?” He was trying so desperately not to lean against me that I made up my mind. The possibility was now a dead certainty. We had come as far as we could go. If we were lucky, the place would be empty. And if we weren’t lucky, it wasn’t as if it would be the first time that day. I would deal with it.

“Because it’s the closest.” I started across the street, keeping the pace slow and easy.

“With logic like that . . . how can we go wrong?” Breathing heavily, Michael plodded at my side, lacking the strength for the sarcasm that the statement deserved. I switched the bag to my other hand and grasped his arm with a supportive grip. I expected him to be mulish as always and protest that he didn’t need any help, but he didn’t. I was beginning to suspect his improved healing ability used up a considerable amount of energy when it was in full swing, as it was now. “If it’s the closest,” he murmured, stumbling a bit, “why doesn’t it feel that way?”

“Bitch. Bitch. Bitch,” I said with grimly determined cheer as I steadied him and kept us both moving. “I’m showing you a winter wonderland and this is the thanks I get.” Dropping my hand from his sleeve, I wrapped my arm around his shoulders and took the majority of his weight. “You liked it fine when we were building snowmen at the motel.”

“I’ve changed my mind.” He leaned heavily against me, his legs beginning to shake. “Snowmen suck.”

My lips curled despite our situation. Cursing, pornography, and obstinacy; under that shockingly mature façade the teenager just kept breaking out, bit by bit. “I guess maybe they do,” I said placatingly as we reached the front of the house. Two-storied and sprawling, it was separated from the others on the street by a large lot and a literal wall of trash. Old tires seemed to make the majority of the divider, but I was only guessing by the shapes under the snow. The house itself was old and in a better neighborhood would’ve been considered a historical treasure. Here it was one more pile of crap two or three years away from being condemned, razed, and replaced with a parking garage.

Warped and uneven, the ancient wood of the stoop was as rippled as the incoming tide. But it was somewhat protected from the icy onslaught by a shingled overhang. That left the surface clear enough that Michael breathed a sigh of relief to be on more or less solid ground. Knocking sharply on the door, I kept an eye on him as he rested against the wall of the house. “Don’t lean too hard,” I advised. “You might take the wall down.”

“There was a crooked house. . . .” His smile was equally as crooked as he began to regain his breath. “A lady was reading nursery rhymes to the children at that bookstore.”

“Clowns and nursery rhymes, the two creepiest memories of any childhood.” I knocked again in case some elderly person as decrepit as their house was meandering their slow way down from the top floor. When that didn’t happen, I stripped off my gloves, pulled out a card from the wallet I’d taken from Pavel before we’d left the mansion, and went to work. I wished I had something more high-tech than that asshole’s credit card.

The card, despite being maligned, did the job. A few jiggles had the old lock giving way with a rusty creak and then we were in. Closing the door behind us, I sneezed immediately. The dust was thick in the air—dust and something far worse for my sinuses. I sneezed three more times and didn’t have to rely on the winding motion around my ankles to identify the type of fur floating in the flickering lamplight. Cat.

“Ah, damn it.” I rubbed at my stinging nose with the back of my hand.

“What’s wrong?” Snow was sliding off Michael and melting into a puddle on the wood floor. There were so many other stains—cat urine from the smell—that I didn’t think we needed to worry about one more.

“I’m allergic to cats.” I carefully nudged away the one now gnawing at my shoe. It was gray with black stripes, a huge puffball of long hair, pumpkin orange eyes, and rampant feline dander. Another one, white with a lashing tail, sat at the bottom of the stairs curving up to the second floor. The third was yellow, hugely obese, and curled around the base of a lamp. The lamp sat on a table that rested against a wall covered with patterned paper. With roses, roses, and more roses under the yellow film of age, cats, and paper flowers, this place had old lady written all over it. I wondered where she was. Maybe she was staying with her kids until the storm blew over.

“You’re not much of an animal person, are you?” Michael pushed his hood back and bent over to give the tabby a pat on its head. “Nice kitty.”

Feeling another sneeze coming on, I buried the lower half of my face in the crook of my arm to muffle the wet explosion. “That nice kitty is suffocating me,” I said nasally before straightening. “Stay here. I’m going to check out the house and make sure we’re alone.”

I did a quick run-through of the place. Everything was old. The furniture, appliances, rugs—all dated to several decades before my birth. Even the quilts on the beds were faded and worn; the afghans raveled and covered with fuzz balls. It definitely belonged to an old lady. Two bedrooms, a bathroom with a claw-foot tub and cloudy mirror, and a sewing room made up the second floor. After a quick look around, I concentrated on scooping up two blankets, a quilt, and a pillow before heading back down the stairs.

Michael was sitting on the bottom step, leaning against the wall. He was fast asleep and he wasn’t alone. One of the cats had seized the opportunity to curl up in a convenient lap. Annoyed at the competition, Zilla had crawled out of the ski jacket and was currently racing up the banister. I let it go. If anyone was a match for three cats, it would be that damn ferret. “Misha.” I shook his shoulder lightly before shooing off the cat. “Come on.”