By the time I’m finished looking around my eyes have adjusted to the light. The one thing I don’t see is a cat.
“You want to try calling her?” I ask.
Luisa shakes her head. “I can feel her. She is hiding in there.” She points to one of the mystery doors. “In the storage room.”
I let her go ahead of me, following after. Better the cat see her first than my ugly mug.
We’re halfway across the room when someone speaks from behind us.
<I knew you would return,> a man’s voice says, speaking in Spanish. <And look what you have brought me. A peace offering.>
I turn slowly, not letting on that I know what he’s said. I picked up a lot of Spanish on the street, more in jail. So I just look surprised, which isn’t a stretch. I can’t believe I didn’t feel him approach. When I’m creeping a joint I carry a sixth sense inside me that stretches out throughout the place, letting me know when there’s a change in the air.
Hell, I should at least have heard him on the stairs.
“I have brought you nothing,” Luisa says, speaking English for my benefit, I guess.
<And yet I will have you and your champion. I will make you watch as I strip away his flesh and sharpen my claws on his bones.>
“Please. I ask only for our freedom.”
<You can never be free from me.>
I have to admit he’s a handsome devil. Same dark hair and complexion as Luisa, but there’s no warmth in his eyes.
Oh, I know what Luisa said. Don’t look in his eyes. But the thing is, I don’t play that game. You learn pretty quickly when you’re inside that the one thing you don’t do is back down. Show even a hint of weakness and your fellow inmates will be on you like piranha.
So I just put a hand in the pocket of my jacket and look him straight in the eye, give him my best convict stare.
He smiles. “You are a big one, aren’t you?” he says. “But your size means nothing in this game we will play.”
You ever get into a staring contest? I can see that starting up here, except dark eyes figures he’s going to mesmerize me in seconds, he’s so confident. The funny thing is, I can feel a pull in that gaze of his. His pupils seem to completely fill my sight. I hear a strange whispering in the back of my head and can feel that thousand-yard stare of mine already starting to fray at the edges.
So maybe he’s got some kind of magical power. I don’t know and I don’t care. I take my hand out of my pocket and I’m holding a handful of that diatomaceous earth I picked up earlier in the nursery.
Truth is, I never thought I’d use it. I picked it up as a back-up, nothing more. Like insurance just in case, crazy as it sounded, Luisa really knew what she was talking about. I mean, you hear stories about every damn thing you can think of. I never believed most of what I heard, but a computer’s like magic to someone who’s never seen one before—you know what I’m saying? The world’s big enough and strange enough that pretty much anything can be out there in it, somewhere.
So I’ve got that diatomaceous earth in my hand and I throw it right in his face, because I’m panicking a little at the way those eyes of his are getting right into my head and starting to shut me down inside.
You know anything about that stuff? It’s made of ground up shells and bones that are sharp as glass. Gardeners use it to make barriers for various kinds of insects. The bug crawls over it and gets cut to pieces. It’s incredibly fine—so much so that it doesn’t come through the latex of my gloves—but eyes don’t have that kind of protection.
Imagine what it would do if it got in them.
Tall, dark and broody over there doesn’t have to use his imagination. He lifts his hand as the cloud comes at him, but he’s too late. Too late to wave it away. Too late to close his eyes like I’ve done as I back away from any contact with the stuff.
His eyelids instinctively do what they’re supposed to do in a situation like this—they blink rapidly and the pressure cuts his eyes all to hell and back again.
It doesn’t help when he reaches up with his hands to try to wipe the crap away.
He starts to make this horrible mewling sound and falls to his knees.
I’m over by the wall now, well out of range of the rapidly settling cloud. Looking at him I start to feel a little queasy, thinking I did an overkill on this. I don’t know what went on between him and Luisa—how bad it got, what kind of punishment he deserves—but I think maybe I crossed a line here that I really shouldn’t have.
He lifts his bloodied face, sightless eyes pointed in our direction, and manages to say something else. This time he’s talking in some language I never heard before, ending with some Spanish that I do understand.
<Be so forever,> he cries.
I’m turning to Luisa just then, so I see what happens.
Well, I see it, but it doesn’t register as real. One moment there’s this beautiful dark-haired woman standing there, then she vanishes and there’s only the heap of her clothes left lying on the carpet. I’m still staring slack-jawed when the clothing moves and a sleek black cat wriggles out from under the overalls and darts into the room where Luisa said her cat was.
As I take a step after her, the man starts in with something else in that unrecognizable language. I don’t know if it’s still aimed at Luisa, or if he’s planning to turn me into something, too—hell, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool believer at this point—but I don’t take any chances. I take a few quick steps in his direction and give him a kick in the side of the head. When that doesn’t completely stop him, I give him a couple more.
He finally goes down and stays down.
I turn back to go after Luisa, but before I can, that black cat comes soft-stepping out of the room once more, this time carrying a kitten in its mouth.
“Luisa?” I find myself saying.
I swear, even with that kitten in its mouth, the cat nods. But I don’t even need to see that. I only have to look into her eyes. The cat has Luisa’s eyes, there’s no question in my mind about that.
“Is this… permanent?” I ask.
The cat’s response is to trot by me, giving her unconscious ex’s body a wide berth as she heads for the stairs.
I stand there, looking at the damage I’ve done to her ex for a long, unhappy moment, then I follow her up the stairs. She’s sitting by the door with the kitten, but I can’t leave it like this. I look around the kitchen, not ready to leave yet.
The cat makes a querulous sound, but I ask her to wait and go prowling through the house. I don’t know what I’m looking for, something to justify what I did downstairs, I guess. I don’t find anything, not really. There are spooky masks and icons and other weird magical-looking artifacts scattered throughout the house, but he’s not going to be the first guy that likes to collect that kind of thing. Nothing explains why he needed to have this hold over Luisa and her—I’m not thinking of the kitten as a cat anymore. After what I saw downstairs, I’m sure it’s her kid.
I go upstairs and poke through his office, his bedroom. Still nothing. But then it’s often like that. Too often the guy you’d never suspect of having a bad thought turns out to beating on his family, or goes postal where he works, or some damn crazy thing.
It really makes you wonder—especially with a guy like Luisa’s ex. You find yourself with power like he’s got, why wouldn’t you use it to put something good into the world?
I know, I know. Look who’s talking. But I’m telling you straight, I might have robbed a lot of people, but I never hurt them. Not intentionally. And never a woman or a kid.
I go back downstairs and find the cat still waiting by the kitchen door for me. She’s got a paw on the kitten, holding it in place.