I made the next shingle roof and paused to snatch my breath and plan my route ahead.
“Daughter!” Father hissed, reaching the end of the awning and seeing he was facing an impossible leap to reach me; he’d have to jump down instead, and find another way up.
“Last life, Father?”
“I only need one,” he snarled, with a testiness that made me think he just might be on his last one, “to take all of yours!”
I turned away without another word, and ran. This was going to be a long night. I hoped.
And so it was. Time and again Father almost caught me, and I just eluded him, until we were on streets I knew well and could stay more than a whisker ahead of him.
Not that Father seemed to be tiring. I was, but he seemed as quick as ever. Which is how he caught me.
I’d been running along a lighted marquee, one of the huge sidewalk-overhanging pulsating signs that so few movie theaters still had these days, but every second store seemed to have gained. I hadn’t seen Father fade through the wall of a building to ride a wire to the building that had the marquee-so I got a nasty shock when he faded right out of the wall ahead, to crash down on the marquee facing me, his fanged smile as big as ever.
Luckily for me, that’s exactly what he did- crash down.
Through the glass panel, into the humming heart of dozens of flourescent tubes, some of which shattered and made his hair stand on end. He clawed his way along them anyway, dislodging some from their mounts so they went dark. So they were no longer alive and threatening to cook him, but they were now on a slant. And as smooth as ever. His claws shrieked as they scrabbled, but he couldn’t climb toward me.
I turned and headed elsewhere, fast.
Trapped and knowing it, Father let himself fall through a tangle of tinkling tubes-their shards must have been razor-sharp, but pain had never bothered Father-to reach a metal frame beneath them, in the bright white heart of the marquee. He raced along it until he was under the end of the marquee where I was gathering myself for a difficult jump, and he punched his head upward, hard.
Much glass shattered, the end of the marquee fell in and my behind with it, and Father ended up pinned under my weight and the ends of about two dozen tubes. He snarled and shifted furiously, seeking to get his jaws or a claw on me, but he was covered in a shifting layer of sharp glass shards, and all that happened was that his bloodied shoulder touched my bloodied left hind leg for a moment.
And our minds met.
I had always known Father was insane, but plunging through the dark, swirling storm of his mind was still… an experience. He loved to kill, as well as loving all the other things tomcats do, and truly thought he had been touched and favored by his namesake, Montu, the god of war. He was addicted to the taste of human blood. Not a vampire; he was more like an alcoholic who had to taste strong drink as often as he could. So he clawed or bit every human who came within reach.
He’d been working with AnkhesenAkana for years.
Her, I mean. The Lady, Jethana Throneshuld, though that was just the body she was currently using.
Full working partners. She was some sort of ancient Egyptian undead spirit that he knew no name for, who went on living-I know that’s not the right word, but let it pass-by possessing one living human body after another. Her current body, the unfortunate Jethana, was starting to wear out. The condo scheme had been meant to bring new host bodies within easy reach, but it wasn’t going to work in time. So AnkhesenAkana had decided the body of someone else-my Steve!-would have to do.
I had to get away from Father, to get back to The Coachlight, and I had to do it fast!
Now there was irony, if you wanted it: the failing, hungry-for-life undead, and the cat who has taken so many lives already and has blood afire with life. Yet surely AnkhesenAkana would long ago have wrung his neck and taken the energy within him if it could use that energy. So the lives of cats evidently helped sustain undeath not at all…
It had been AnkhesenAkana who got Father his magic. She had no skill for it herself, but from her, er, first life knew where ancient texts were hidden and remembered some details seen when watching others cast spells.
He was a slow learner, it seemed; he kept undoing the incorporeal thing by indulging in his bloodlust. Contact with blood-any sort of blood-turned him corporeal even if he didn’t want to become solid.
Which gave me an idea. I had to get to a place I’d visited only once, a place any cat would hate fervently for its noise and perils and overwhelming smells. The city’s recycling sorting plant.
I used my best spell again, to get myself out of the damned marquee and away from Father. Steve couldn’t wait much longer.
I’d never much appreciated the pale gray beginnings of dawn, and they didn’t look very entrancing now. With me exhausted, Father close behind, and the rotten stink of the recycling plant-humans just throw things out; they don’t see any need to wash much-hammering my nose like… like…
No, nothing can describe this smell. It was like being blinded.
For a moment I feared Father would turn back, but no prey had ever eluded him before, and having found me after so long, he wasn’t going to let me manage to be the first.
Good. I knew exactly where I wanted to be and got there.
The place was full of rats, who sneered at me as they waited for me to fall afoul of one of the many murderous pieces of machinery that were crushing, spinning, stamping, and spewing endless streams of cardboard, plastic, and glass. When I was broken or dead, they’d feast.
I raced past my umpteenth rat-and then whirled around and bit its neck, clamping my own jaws down hard. It died.
Rat in mouth, I turned to face Father.
He’d been following me rather gingerly, and no wonder: I’d reached that rat by running along a pipe high above the cardboard shredder. Which consisted of endless belts carrying waste cardboard to the open top of a large metal chute that dropped into a metal box. Rows of robotic metal knives, each the size of a surfboard, pierced that box repeatedly, amid endless, high-pitched screaming.
So we couldn’t hear each other, couldn’t smell each other, and were poised above one of the deadliest butchering contraptions I’d ever seen. Luckily, Father’s reluctance told me he’d never been here before, which meant my desperate plan just might work.
There was a weight-sorting mechanism at the head end of this, to keep contaminants out. If it worked, I’d live. If not…
“Sorry, Steve,” I mumbled, around the rat. It didn’t taste any too good, but I didn’t plan to have it in my mouth for much longer. Putting my head down, I ran right at Father.
He reared to swipe at me with his claws, but I stopped just out of reach-and he obligingly doomed himself, lunging forward to really get his claws into me.
I slammed into him and drove us both off the pipe, scrabbling at it just long enough so that we fell separately into the waiting chute.
The secret was staying still.
I landed on a good big piece of cardboard and sat there like a stone. Which made the cardboard too heavy, tripped a sensor, and the metal “lifts” rose between the knives to thrust up my cardboard from underneath and shunt it sideways, out of the chute, for hand sorting.
At the last moment, I spat out the rat, and watched it tumble down in front of Father. Who had seen his peril and struggled furiously, churning the cardboard until he could turn incorporeal.
As I got put onto the sorting belt, he was grinning furiously at me, a translucent ghost caged in metal but unharmed by the knives slamming through him.
Until the rat struck the knives right beside him, its blood spattered in all directions, drenching him-and the knives got him.