Carrie Vaughn - Kitty Rocks the House

Cheryl herself was in transition. She’d stayed home when the kids came along. Now that they were older and had started school, she had decisions to make about what to do next. Go back to work, and if so, doing what? Her IT credentials were eight years out of date. I didn’t envy her position.

We settled in the kitchen, where I smelled pepperoni pizza baking. I wasn’t hungry.

She paced, kneading a damp tissue in her fist. Her footsteps padded on the linoleum.

“Kids in school?” I said. Nicky was eight, and five-year-old Jeffy was in preschool.

“For a couple more weeks.”

“Plans for the summer?”

“No idea,” she said.

The timer on the oven dinged, and she fussed over it, getting out plates and so on.

“So,” I said, growing impatient, my foot tapping on the linoleum. “What about this party you want to do?”

“You don’t really have to help if you don’t want to. I just thought it would be nice for you to be involved.”

“I want to help. Seriously.”

“Don’t say it if you don’t mean it.”

Now I was getting angry. “Cheryl, what has gotten into you?”

She slammed a cupboard door, then stopped herself, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. “Ever since Grandma’s funeral … I just keep thinking about what would happen if Mom got sick again.”

“Well, she’s not sick. Don’t worry about it until it happens.”

“That’s real responsible of you—”

“What is this, I have to help you plan a party to prove I’m responsible?” I flushed. I didn’t want to be fighting like this.

“What would you do, if Mom got sick?”

I was out of my depth. She was right—I hadn’t thought about it because I didn’t want to think about it. I shouldn’t have to think about it, not until it actually happened. “I don’t know. I’ll do whatever I need to, just like last time.” Like last time, when I’d returned to a territory I’d been banished from on pain of death, that was how far I’d go. Cheryl didn’t know about that part.

She continued, glaring at me with a challenge that Wolf couldn’t help but respond to, hackles rising.

“They’re getting older. They need us—”

“I’m not arguing with that,” I said. “But why are we talking about this now, like this?” I felt like I was twelve years old again and getting lectured by my oh-so-older and smugger sister.

Keeping her voice steady she said, “They’ll need us to be there for them—”

“And we will be—”

Her patience finally vanished. “But you’re never here! You’re always off on some weird trip or celebrity adventure. Tell me, how can you help if you’re not here? You never help—”

“You never ask!”

“I shouldn’t have to!”

Something inside me extended claws and growled. I felt a tension, like a leash stretching, then breaking. Snapping, with a satisfying whip crack. And I felt free. So free, all my limbs stretching outward. A prickling, bristling sensation sprouting just under my skin—

I had to go. I had to get out of here.

“Kitty—” Cheryl said, her tone demanding, as I turned and walked out. “Kitty, don’t go ignoring me, you can’t just walk away from this.”

A hand landed on my arm, and I turned, bared my teeth, made a noise— My sister stumbled away from me. I couldn’t guess what she saw.

I had to leave. I went out the front of the house, left the door open behind me, heard my sister call, “Kitty!”

But I didn’t hear, not really. I ran, past my car and down the sidewalk.

Wolf was trapped; we had to run, it was the only thing for it. Run, and run. But concrete and asphalt stretched all around us. Rows of houses, a concentrated mass of civilization hemmed us in worse than any chain or bars of a cage. We could run, but where could we go? We tipped our nose to the air and smelled, searching for the wide open spaces and natural shelter that would mean our release, our only release.

Too many people here. Too much prey. Wrong kind of prey. I couldn’t stop running, to try to get away from it. To run until exhaustion took me. I’d be running all day.

Then, we found green. A swathe of prairie had been preserved in the middle of this modern suburb, a creek-cut ravine covered with dry grass and cottonwoods. A dry, washed-out, hemmed-in version of nature. But it was open. It smelled clean. I ran, pulling my shirt over my head, dropping it, not caring, and steered toward a stand of cottonwoods. Wanted to hide. Wanted to run.

Wanted to be free, and Wolf slashed my skin with her claws and tore her way out. I hardly cared.

DOESN’T THINK of much of anything but the movement of her body, claws digging into hard earth, wind in her nose. This isn’t where she wants to be, but she’s trapped on all sides by steel. She will run in circles.

The prey here smells different, wrong, of oil and trash. Prey living trapped by concrete. She is angry, starved for blood. Blood will staunch the anger, so she hunts. So many trails to follow—raccoon, rabbit, fox, even coyote. But the musky, feline scent catches her attention because it is different.

Her target is fast, agile—a challenge. Makes her more fierce. Her blood thunders, her mouth waters, she bares her teeth to the sky. And pounces. It lets out a high-pitched yowl, but only briefly. She devours it, ripping through skin, picking past dense fur. The meat is stringy, there isn’t much of it. She finishes it in moments, cracking bones and gnawing them until nothing remains but a smear of blood, fur, and viscera on the ground.

She licks her lips and paws, cleaning herself, then looks at the sky again and howls. No one answers. How lost is she?

Only thing to do is run, her sides heaving and skin quivering.

She runs until exhausted, as the sun drops across the sky. In a hollow under a stand of cottonwoods, she finds shelter, an inadequate den where she lies, panting. Too unhappy, too insecure to sleep.

After minutes or hours or some other vague length of time, a scent crosses her awareness—of home and safety. At the same time, she hears a call.

“Kitty.” A low, steady sound. Calming.

She pricks her ears, raises her head high.

“Kitty,” the voice says again.

Her mate, his sharp and welcome smell cutting through the noise, stinging in her nose. Without thinking, she stands and runs to him.

He is on two legs, which doesn’t seem right. Lowering her head, she paces, uncertain. They should be hunting together. She loops a wide circle around him, waiting for him to join her. But he waits, standing calmly, his gaze turned, his body relaxed.

She is not hunting, she is fleeing. But he smells safe. Maybe she meant to flee toward him. The thought calms her. Her tail and head droop.

“You okay?” he says, and she doesn’t know what the words mean. She keeps moving, pacing step by step, waiting for him to react. He only watches.

“We should get home, Kitty. You ready to sleep it off?”

The familiar gentleness of his voice keeps her from fleeing again. But she isn’t ready to come to him.

He walks to a stunted scrub oak and sits, propping his back against it. The urge to curl up against him is strong. But so is the urge to keep running.

Finally, with daylight fading, with the air cooling, she rests, curling up on the prairie ground, tucking in her paws.

I’D HAD a very bad dream. Funny, because I didn’t remember going to sleep. I remembered—not very much, as it turned out. But the evidence around me filled in some of the blanks. I was naked. A bed of dry grass pressed into my skin, crunching under me when I breathed. Ben sat nearby, not touching me, his scent and body heat projecting toward me. He was fully dressed, fully human. I could smell his clothing, hear the rustle of his shirt when he moved. We hadn’t been hunting together. Which meant I had Changed and run on my own. My stomach rumbled, my nerves quaked. An awful, tinny taste coated my mouth, a thin film of blood remained on my teeth. I’d caught something, who knew what, but that wasn’t what bothered me. The anxiety and fear did.