Cat in the Dark (2 page)

Alone. At last she was alone.

Trotting out from beneath the desk, she leaped to its top and spun, chasing her tail, then flew to the floor again and hit the carpet running, racing through the reading rooms under tables and desks, tearing through moonlight and shadow. Around her, the darkened rooms seemed larger, as if the daytime walls had melted away into wind-tossed space. Leaping to a bookshelf, she pawed down a claw-marked volume. With a soft thud it hit the carpet.

Carrying it in her teeth, she sprang to a table where the moon's light shone brightest. Pawing the
book open, she soon was wandering Africa, prowling the open grasslands, her nostrils filled with the sharp scent of wildebeest and antelope, and around her the African night reeled away to mountains so tall they vanished among the stars. Feasting on gazelle, she raced across grassy plains so vast that if Molena Point were set down there, it would seem only a child's toy village. Roaring and chuffing, she was a leopard padding among clay huts terrifying sleeping humans, leaving gigantic pawprints in the dust for unlucky hunters to follow. And when at last she was overwhelmed by Africa's immense spaces, she turned to the close, confining alleys of tenth-century England, to tales of narrow medieval streets.

But too soon those tales turned dark. Hecate wooed her. Evil beckoned to her. She blundered into stories of witches in cat-form and of cat familiars. Medieval humans stalked her, folk terrified by the sight of a cat and wanting only to kill it. Trapped by that era of cruelty, she was sucked down into darkness, unable to shake the bloody and horror-ridden images. These stories were nothing like the gentler, Celtic dramas that she liked to browse through when ancient peoples, taking cat-form, wandered down to a nether-world beneath the soft green hills, when the magical race that was kin to both man and cat could take the shape of either. When that ancient tribe of speaking cats to which she and Joe belonged—and of which they might be nearly the last survivors—had been understood and loved by the Celts. Unable to rid herself of the darker visions, she backed away from the open book, slashing at the offending volume, almost bereft of her reason.

Then she whirled away to crouch at the edge of the table, shocked at her own loss of control.

What am I doing? There is nothing here, only stories. Words on a page, nothing more. That evil time is gone, ages gone. Why am I crouching here trembling like a terrified hunk of cat fur? What set me off like that, to nearly lose myself?
Shivering, she felt almost as if someone had fixed dark thoughts on her. Lashing her tail, disgusted by her pointless fear, by her sudden failure of spirit, she leaped to the floor and fled through Wilma's office and out her cat door into the night, into the soft and welcoming night, into Molena Point's safe and moonlit night.

I
N THE BEDROOM
of the white Cape Cod cottage, moonlight shone through the open windows and a fitful breeze fingered across the bed, teasing the ears of the tomcat who slept curled in the blankets, his muscular body gleaming as sleek as gray velvet. Beside him on the double bed, his human housemate snored softly, clutching the pillow for warmth, unaware that Joe Grey had clawed away the covers into a comfortable and exclusive nest. Clyde, naked and chilled, was too deep in sleep to wake and retrieve the blankets, but Joe Grey stirred as the breeze quickened, his white paws flexed and his nose lifted, catching an elusive scent.

He woke fully, staring toward the open window, drawing his lips back in a grimace at the stink he detected on the cool night air.

Tomcat.

The smell that came to him on the ocean breeze was the rank odor of an unknown tom—a stranger in the village.

Joe might not encounter a village tom for months,
but he knew each one, knew what routes he favored and which pals he hung out with, by the scent marks left on storefronts and tree trunks, aromas as individual as hand-lettered placards stating name and residence. He knew the smell of every cat in Molena Point, but this one was exotic and foreign.

Joe tolerated the regular village toms, because how could he not? Without some degree of civility, life would degenerate into a succession of endless and meaningless battles. One restrained oneself until the prize was greatest, until a queen in heat ruled the night—then it was war, bloody and decisive.

But no amount of civilized restraint among the village toms left room for strangers on their turf.

This could be a stray from the wharf who had decided to prowl among the shops, or maybe some tourist's cat; whatever the case, he didn't like the intruder's belligerent, testosterone-heavy message. The beast's odor reeked of insolence and of a bold and dark malaise—a hotly aggressive, sour aroma. The cat smelled like trouble.

In the moon's glow, the cottage bedroom was lent a charm not apparent in the daytime. A plain room, it was suited to a simple bachelor's spartan tastes, comfortable but shabby, the pine dresser and pine nightstand sturdily made and ugly, the ladder-back chair old and scarred. But now, in the moonlight, the unadorned white walls were enlivened by the shifting shadows of the oak trees that spread just outside the window, their knotted patterns softening the room's stark lines and offering a sense of mystery and depth. And beside the bed, a thick, ruby-toned Persian rug added a single touch of luxury, gleaming like jewels in the moonlight—a tender and extravagant gift from one of Clyde's former lovers.

Pawing free of the confining bedcovers, Joe Grey walked heavily across the bed and across Clyde's stomach and dropped down to the thick, soft rug. Clyde, grunting, raised up and glared at him.

“Why the hell do you do that? You're heavy as a damned moose!”

Joe smiled and dug his claws into the rug's silky pile.

Clyde's black hair was wild from sleep, his cheeks dark with a day's growth of stubble. A line of black grease streaked his forehead, residue from the innards of some ailing Rolls Royce or Mercedes.

“You have the whole damned bed to walk on. Can't you show a little consideration? I don't walk on your stomach.”

Joe dug his claws deeper into the Persian weave, his yellow eyes sly with amusement. “You work out, you're always bragging about your great stomach muscles—you shouldn't even feel my featherweight. Anyway, you were snoring so loud, so deep under, that a Great Dane on your stomach shouldn't have waked you.”

“Get the hell out of here. Go on out and hunt, let me get some sleep. Go roll in warm blood or whatever you do at night.”

“For your information, I'm going straight to the library. What more sedate and respectable destination could one possibly…”

“Can it, Joe. Of course you're going to the library—but only to get Dulcie. Then off to murder some helpless animal, attack some innocent little mouse or cute, cuddly rabbit. Look at you—that killer expression plastered all over your furry face.”

“Rabbits are not cuddly. A rabbit can be as vicious as a bullterrier—their claws are incredibly sharp. And what gives you the slightest clue to Dulcie's and my
plans for the evening? You're suddenly an authority on the behavior of
felis domesticus
?”

Clyde doubled the pillow behind his head. “I don't have to be an authority to smell the blood on your breath when you come stomping in at dawn.”

“I don't come in here at dawn. I go directly to the kitchen, minding my own business.”

“And trailing muddy pawprints all over the kitchen table. Can't you wash like a normal cat? You get so much mud on the morning paper, who can read it?”

“I have no trouble reading it. Though why anyone would waste more than five minutes on that rag is hard to understand.”

Clyde picked up the clock, which he kept face-down on the night table. The luminous dial said twelve thirty-three. “It's late, Joe. Get on out of here. Save your sarcasm for Dulcie. Some of us have to get up in the morning, go to work to support the indigent members of the household.”

“I can support myself very nicely, thank you. I let you think otherwise simply to make you feel needed, to let you think you perform some useful function in the world.”

Padding across the oak floor, Joe pawed open the bedroom door. “So go to sleep. Sleep your life away.” Giving Clyde a last, narrow glare, he left the room. Behind him, he heard Clyde groan and pound his pillow and roll over.

Trotting down the hall and through the living room, brushing past his own tattered, hair-matted easy chair, he slipped out through his cat door. He supposed he should feel sorry for Clyde. How could a mere human, with inferior human senses, appreciate the glory of the moonlit night that surrounded him as he headed across the village?

To his right, above the village roofs, the Molena Point hills rose round and silvered like the pale, humped backs of grazing beasts. All around him, the shop windows gleamed with lunar light, and as he crossed Ocean Avenue with its eucalyptus-shaded median, the trees' narrow leaves, long and polished, reflected the moon's glow like silver fish hung from the branches—thousands, millions of bright fish. No human, with inferior human eyesight, could appreciate such a night. No human, with dull human hearing and minimal sense of smell, could enjoy any of the glories of the natural world as vividly as did a cat. Clyde, poor pitiful biped, didn't have a clue.

Trotting up the moon-whitened sidewalk, he caught again the scent of the vagrant tom and followed it on the shifting wind, watching for any stealthy movement in the tangled shadows. But then, hurrying past the softly lit shops and galleries, he lost that sour odor; now, passing a block of real estate offices and little cafes, sniffing at the doors and at the oversized flower pots that stood along the curb, he smelled only dog urine and the markings of the cats he knew. The tom had, somewhere behind him, taken a different route.

Approaching Dulcie's cat door, which had been cut at the back of the library into Wilma's office, he startled at a sound within—and the door flap exploded out and Dulcie shot through nearly on top of him, her green eyes wildly blazing.

She froze, staring at him. She said no word. She lashed her tail and spun away again, racing for the nearest tree and up it, swarming up to the roofs.

Puzzled and concerned, he followed her.

Was she simply moon-maddened, wild with the pull of the full moon? Or had something frightened her in the library's dark rooms?

With Dulcie, who knew? His lady's moods could explode as crazily as moths flung in a windstorm.

At least he hadn't scented the strange tom around her door, he thought with relief as he gained the moonlit peaks.

Already she had disappeared. But her scent was there, warm and sweet, leading away into dense blackness between a tangle of vent pipes that rose from a roof as silvered and flat as a frozen pond. Slipping between the slashing shadows, he galloped past a dozen east-facing windows that reflected a dozen pale moons. Rearing up to look across the roofs for her, peering beneath overhangs and around dormers, he softly called to her. He spoke her name half a dozen times before he grew uneasy, began to worry that the tom had found her first.

Most toms wouldn't harm a female, but there was always the nasty-tempered beast who liked to hurt a lady more than he liked to love her, the unusual, twisted male who fed on fear and pain—beasts little different from a similarly warped human. Except there were far fewer such cats than men.

Not that Dulcie couldn't take care of herself. There wasn't a dog in Molena Point who would tangle with his lady. But despite Dulcie's temper and her swift claws, Joe searched with growing concern, hurrying along the peaks and watching the shadows and calling. Beneath the moon's shifting light he could see nothing alive but the darting bats that skimmed the rooftops sucking up bugs and squeaking their shrill radar cries.

Suddenly the tom's scent hit him strong, clinging to the wall of a little, one-room penthouse.

Sniffing at the window, Joe could smell where the cat had rubbed his cheek along the glass, arrogantly marking this territory as if it were his own.

Peering in through the dusty pane, he studied the old desk stacked with papers and catalogs and the shelves behind, crammed with books and ledgers. What had the tom seen in there of interest?

Beyond the desk a spiral staircase led down to the bookstore below. Maybe this cat, like Dulcie and like Joe himself, found a bookstore inviting; certainly bookstores had a warm coziness, and they always smelled safe.

Maybe the cat had taken up residence there; maybe the two young women who kept the shop had adopted him, picked him up on the highway or at the animal pound. How would they know that Molena Point already had enough tomcats? And why would they care? Why would a human care about the delicate balance of territory necessary to the village males?

A nudge against his flank spun him around crouched to attack.

Dulcie bounced aside laughing, her green eyes flashing. Cuffing his face, she raced to the edge of the roof and dropped off, plummeting down into the concrete canyon—he heard her claws catch on an awning.

Crouching on the rain gutter, he looked down where she clung in the swaying canvas, her eyes blazing. Lashing her tail, she leaped up past him to the roof again and sped away. He burst after her and they fled along the rooftops laughing with human voices.

“You can't escape…”

“No scruffy tom can catch me…”

“No hoyden queen can outrun
this
tomcat, baby.”

“Try me.” She laughed, scorching away into the dark and twisted shadows. And who was to hear them? Below, the village slept. No one would hear them laughing and talking—no one, seeing them racing across the rooftops, would connect two cats with
human voices. Wildly they fled across the peaks, leaping from shingled hip to dormer and up the winding stairs of the courthouse tower, swiftly up to its high, open lookout.

On the small circular terrace beneath the tower's conical roof they trotted along the top of the brick rail, looking down at the world spread all below them, at a vast mosaic stained to silver and black. Nothing moved there, only the cloud shadows slipping across and the little bats jittering and darting on the fitful wind.

But then as they padded along the rail, stepping around the outside of the tower's four pillars on a narrow row of bricks, something stirred below them.

In the sea of darkness an inky patch shifted suddenly and slunk out of the shadows.

He stood staring up at them, black and bold among the rooftops. A huge beast. Black as sin. The biggest tomcat Joe had ever seen—broad of shoulder, wide of head, solid as a panther. He moved with the grace of a panther, swaggering across the roof directly below them, belligerent and predaceous and staring up narrow-eyed, intently watching them, his slitted, amber eyes flashing fire—and his gaze was fully on Dulcie, keen with speculation.