Reserved for the Cat (49 page)

If the magic before had made an air-quake, this made a kind of reality-quake. Ninette closed her eyes, tried to make herself one with the wall behind her, as the world took itself apart and put itself back together again, all in a moment. And then did it all over again. And again.

She was finding it hard to breathe, Whatever was going on in there, it was like nothing she had ever experienced before.

Terror closed in all around her. She went, hot, then cold, and she wanted nothing more to do than to flee in a panic. Death was all around her, and she could feel it breathing down her neck. She had never, in all her life, been so certain that in the next moment, she might very well die.

She fought the terror, and slowly, with infinite care, pulled the gun from her pocket and cocked the trigger. Thomas was counting on her. She could not let him down.

Finally, with a
whuff
of displaced air, it stopped. The air cleared a trifle. Ninette sucked in the first full breath in several minutes.

I told you,
a new mental voice said, smugly.

And at that moment, Ninette knew what Thomas had been trying for. Yes, he had wanted the woman to become a mouse, if she could. He had thought he could trick her, then kill her.

But she, even in her anger, had called him “cat.”

She had
not
forgotten what he was!

Ninette stifled the warning shriek in her throat and whipped around the corner of the door, shoving it open with her shoulder, revolver at the ready as she had been taught.

She saw Thomas in mid-leap on what seemed to be a helpless mouse.

Except the mouse wasn’t so helpless. And whatever it
really
was had been expecting him to do just that.

There was another silent explosion of energies, and Thomas was caught by the neck by something strange, dough-like, smelling of rotting loam.

And Ninette did not even think. As she had been taught, she squeezed off the trigger in quick succession, aiming for the center of—whatever it was.

Six explosions shattered the air in the room. Six bullets, just as she and Ailse had loaded them.
Blessed Lead. Cold Iron. Silver.

The gun bucked in her hand, but she brought it back to the target each time, each bullet impacting the thing in front of her, a mere eight feet from her, with a force that drove it back a little. Six bullets.
Blessed Lead. Cold Iron. Silver.

It dropped Thomas, who wheezed as he scrambled out of the way, and then scuttled behind her. And—whatever it was—began to scream and dissolve. She couldn’t tell which of her bullets had that effect, but when the gun was empty, she backed up as far as she could, and fumbled more bullets out of her pocket, inserting them into the mechanism without taking her eyes off the thing. The reek of gunpowder filled the room, and a waft of smoke made her eyes water.

It was trying to change shape, only it couldn’t settle on one—horribly, the mass was producing an arm, three legs, half a woman’s face in one spot, a man’s eyes in another. And several mouths, all of them open, all of them
screaming
—

Keep shooting!
Thomas shrieked, terror filling him, filling her—as if she wasn’t panicked enough on her own! But her hands knew what to do, even if her mind was gibbering in inchoate fear. She got the bullets into the chamber, dropping two. She raised the gun. She took aim and squeezed the trigger, and six more explosions shattered the gurgling screams.
Blessed Lead. Cold Iron. Silver.

“Where’s the head?” she screamed herself, as her hands fumbled more bullets into the hot chambers.
“Where’s the heart?”

There—there!
Thomas exclaimed, somehow forcing her to see where he was looking. The spot was between two of the mouths, where the dirt-colored skin seemed thicker and smoother. She took aim. Fired.

Five of the six hit; the sixth went wild as the thing convulsed, and the room somehow rocked without moving at all. A thick wave of fetid air hit her in the chest, and knocked her backwards through the door and into the wall of the hallway, Thomas with her. The thing somehow—

The mind couldn’t grasp what it
became
—it was simultaneously twenty, thirty, maybe fifty different people and animals, and at the same time, it was a towering mud-doll that
was
all malice, all malignance, all hatred. She cried out and brought up her arm to shield her face, then flung herself sideways, somehow scooping up Thomas and taking him with her.

The wall where she had been was caved in by the force of the silent explosion, channeled through the doorway.

For one moment, it became very, very quiet.

Then—the howling, the mindless, wordless baying began.

She rolled over, dazed. “What . . .”

Get up! Get up!
Thomas shrieked in her mind, his words like ice-picks jabbed into her brain.
It’s not over yet! Its servants are loose, and without the Troll to control them, all they want is prey!

Prey—
and we’re the prey!
She struggled to her feet and lurched down the hall after Thomas.

She stopped at the foot of the stairs as he scrambled upwards.
But—

They have us cut off from going down! Up!
he urged. She followed after him, revolver still clutched in her hand, the other feeling in her pocket for more cartridges. “Will bullets do any good?” she shouted after him, as from below, she heard the howling come nearer and felt the staircase shake under the pounding of feet.

They’d better,
came the grim reply.

They reached the top floor, where the servants would have slept—if the servants had been human and needed sleep. Dust was half an inch thick here, and rose in clouds as they ran for the farthest room. They darted inside the door. The howling continued from the stairwell.

The bedstead!
Thomas shouted.
Make a barricade across the door!

Fear gave her strength she hadn’t realized that she had. She slammed the door shut, then dragged the iron bedframe across the tiny room. jamming it in place across the door.

The howling was on their floor now, and the floor itself shook with the pounding of feet.

She reloaded the gun.
Please tell me you sent for help,
Thomas begged.

“I sent for help. I just hope the young man Ailse is seeing is not very fascinating.”

Then there was no time. They were at the door.

Without any preamble, they began pounding on it, trying to break it down. The sturdy old oak resisted their efforts for a long time, and Ninette resisted the temptation to either fire through the door, or burst into tears and throw the gun away. Finally, with a splintering sound, a great fist crashed through a door panel.

Ninette began firing, her back to the window.

It’s too high,
Thomas said in despair behind her.
It’s straight down to the street. I can’t make a drop like that—

If he couldn’t, neither could she.

She fired and reloaded, fired and reloaded. There seemed no end to the things, or else her bullets were having no effect other than to make them angry. Then her hand closed on the last two bullets.

She swore and loaded them, took careful aim, feeling a helpless despair that made
her
want to howl. This was it; this was—

There was a human shout from the hall, some incomprehensible tangle of syllables.

As Ninette was again knocked off her feet, something
opened
in front of her on the other side of what was left of the door.

It was a good thing that she was on the floor, because otherwise she would have been sucked into the yawning black vortex rimmed with fire that pulled in what was left of the door, pulled in the splintered fragments from the floor, tore the ragged curtains from the window, and created a hurricane in the room as it devoured the very air. Thomas yowled like a common cat, claws gouging the floor as the vortex sucked at him too. She grabbed him before he lost his grip, and rolled over with him tucked into the hollow of her stomach, curled around him, covered her head with her arms and waited for it all to end.

She thought it would
never
end, that she would go mad, or all the air would be sucked out of the world, or that they would both die.

And then . . . it ended.

There was . . . silence.

“Ninette!
Ninette!”
She rolled over in time to see Jonathon vaulting the iron bedstead, running for her.

“I’m—we’re—all right—” she said, dazed. She looked around for the gun, but it was gone, gone into the void. “I lost the gun.”

Jonathon said something unrepeatable about the gun, and scooped her up, and Thomas with her. “If you
ever
run off like that again,” he threatened, Nigel and Alan shoving the bedstead out of the way so he could get through the door, “I will—I will
spank
you! I swear it!”

She began to giggle, first weakly, then hysterically. She hid her head in the folds of his jacket to smother her giggles as he glared down at her.

“. . . and so Thomas leapt on the mouse and killed it,” she finished. “Only that let loose all of the things that pursued us, though I am not sure how.”

Once again, she was tucked up on the chaise longue in Nigel’s office, with a blanket around her feet, and a glass of brandy and water in her hand. Once again, they were all gathered around her, listening to her narrative. And once again, now that the terror was drained out of her, so was the energy. All she really wanted to do was to close her eyes.

This is all conjecture on my part—
Thomas began, wearily.

“Conjecture away,” Nigel replied, as Ninette rubbed her aching head and wished her ears would stop popping.

That creature was an Earth Elemental. A Troll. Now I know for a fact it looked like Nina Tchereslavsky, and it was able to take on the shapes of at least a dozen other people as well. I
think
that it must have been summoned by—and destroyed—an incompetent Elemental Mage. Once it was loose in the world, it decided that it liked living here. It began killing and absorbing people, and with every new person it absorbed, it got a little smarter.

The others all nodded. “The rest follows from that,” Nigel agreed, and swore. “But why we never thought to connect all three ‘enemies’ and realize they were a single one—”

It had gotten very clever, Nigel,
the cat said wearily.
Clever enough that it almost outwitted me. You are hardly to be faulted.

The men continued to discuss and dissect what had happened, as Ninette leaned her head against the cushions, closed her eyes, and just wished they would leave. Finally they all stopped. She opened her eyes. They were looking at her.

“I just need some rest,” she said faintly. They took the hint, awkwardly apologizing, getting up, and scuttling out the door. Jonathon was the last to leave, with a single meaningful look deep into her eyes.

Finally, blessed silence—or as silent as it ever got in a theater—reigned.

She sighed and closed her eyes.

But she was not going to get any peace quite yet.

Why did you tell them that I was the one that killed the Troll?
Thomas demanded.

She opened her eyes to see Thomas’s yellow ones staring at her with accusation.

She groaned. “Killing that—
thing
—demanded good aim, steady nerves, and a lot of courage. No?” she asked.

True,
Thomas agreed.
But—

“What knight in shining armor likes to turn up to discover the princess has rescued herself and slain the dragon?” she asked.

“Nearly does not count,” she replied and closed her eyes again. “Besides, it was a good plan. It should have worked. It might just as well have. And I wish Monsieur Jonathon to continue to look at me as if I were La Augustine, and
not
as if I were Jeanne D’Arc.
N’cest pas
?” She yawned. “Therefore . . . I have . . . lost my sword.”

For now,
she barely heard Thomas say.
For now.

 

 

 

 

T
he production of
Escape from the Harem
was an enormous success. Tickets were sold out for the next two months, and it appeared very much as if they would continue to be sold out well into the next season. The little dancer around whom the production had been staged seemed to have a magical way with her audience; even grown men wept at her solo of despair, and were more than half in love with her as she entreated the wicked sorcerer to help her and melted his heart. No one left the theater without a smile.

Therefore it was with extreme disappointment that two of Blackpool’s leading lights, the very wealthy financier Bascombe Devons and his—well, she was
not
his wife, but no one was likely to tell his wife that she was with him—
companion
then, discovered that they were to be crowded into a box with three other couples, none of whom they knew, or particularly wanted to know.