Eventually, I fell asleep, with visions of Miguel’s mutilated face dancing in my head like Tchaikovsky’s sugarplum fairies. But even after such sweet dreams, I woke to the same dismal basement I’d first seen nearly twenty-four hours earlier. Outside, the first rays of sunlight struggled to penetrate the filthy windows, but their efforts were as futile as my own quest for a key. If not for the overhead bulb, I’d have woken up to daylight too weak and murky to do anything more than outline vague shapes in the dark.
Thank goodness for that lightbulb, I thought, determined to start off the new day with a dose of optimism. Without it, I’d have to Shift just to be able to see.
Wait, maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. Surely the sedative had cleared from my system.
Excited now, I sat up and turned to face Abby, who was just waking. “Hey, Ab, you want to hear my brilliant new plan?” It wouldn’t get us out of our cages, but it just might throw a wrench in Miguel’s plans. If he couldn’t get close to us, he couldn’t sedate us. And they’d have to be crazy to try to load two fully conscious, pissed-off tabbies into the back of a van.
Abby rubbed sleep from her eyes and pushed herself into a sitting position. “I guess.”
“Shift.”
“Shift?” Her forehead wrinkled in confusion.
“Yeah.” I smiled. “Shift.”
“That’s it?”
“Yup. That’s it. Brilliant in its simplicity, if I do say so myself. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.” I thought she’d laugh, or at least crack a smile. But instead, she burst into tears.
I came as close to her as my cage would allow, wishing more than anything that I could give her a hug. “If we have claws and canines, I don’t think they’ll try anything. There’s no way Miguel can take my cat form in his human form. And if he Shifts first, he can’t get into the cage. If he’s stupid enough to come in as a human, then try to Shift, I’ll have plenty of time to take him out before he finishes.”Abby sobbed harder and threw herself facedown onto the mattress.
I frowned. “Okay, maybe it’s not exactly a brilliant plan, but it’s no reason to cry.”
She sat up, curls clinging to one damp, splotchy cheek. “I can’t do it.”
“Sure you can.”
“No, I can’t. I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I tried to Shift, just to have something to do. But I couldn’t do it. I’m too upset, or tired, or something.” She glanced away in embarrassment. “It’s happened a couple of times before. I get nervous, or upset, and I can’t Shift.”
Well, shit. She couldn’t Shift and I couldn’t snatch a key. Together we’d ruled out both of my escape plans. I closed my eyes, desperately searching my brain for a third brilliant idea. I came up blank. So much for the third time being charmed. So…back to plan number two. She’d just have to work through her problem.
“Don’t worry about it, Abby. All you need to do is calm down and concentrate. Can you do that for me?”
She nodded, but her face showed no conviction. Her forehead was lined in fear, her expression pure despair. She hadn’t smiled since recounting Sara’s murder, and I saw in her tear-damp eyes that she expected to die the same way.
I took a deep breath, trying to relax in hopes that if I did, she would too. “Clear your mind completely, and try to think about nothing but the process of Shifting.”
“Okay.” After a moment’s hesitation and a nervous glance at the stairs, she took off her clothes, carefully folding them on one corner of her mattress. On hands and knees, she glanced up at me, tension warping her features into a mask of fear and dread.
I sighed. This wouldn’t work unless she could loosen up. “How ’bout if I do it with you?”
“Thanks.” She nodded gratefully, obviously trying to relax.
“No problem.” I stripped and tossed my clothes aside, trying not to let pity show in my expression. The last thing she needed was a reason to be embarrassed, as well as tired, hungry, and scared. And probably dehydrated. I know my mouth was dry. “You ready?” I asked, lowering myself carefully onto all fours. My left shoulder screamed in protest, refusing to bear any of my weight. I winced, shifting to support myself with my right arm.
Abby nodded, but I wasn’t convinced. She still looked pretty nervous.
“Okay, now I want you to start at your toes and work your way up, relaxing each body part as you come to it. Okay?”
She nodded again.
“Relax your toes, then your ankles, and so on. Do your feet feel relaxed?”
“I think so.”
Shit. If she wasn’t sure, they weren’t relaxed.
I smiled, trying to encourage her. “Now move onto your legs. Relax your calves and thighs.” I spoke slowly, keeping my voice even and smooth. “Can you feel your muscles loosening up?”
“Yes,” she said, but her posture betrayed the lie. I considered stopping, since the exercise obviously wasn’t helping her, but I was afraid that admitting failure would upset her even more.
“When your whole body is relaxed, start to visualize your Shift. Instead of dreading the pain, welcome it because it’s—” I couldn’t speak anymore. My Shift had begun. My routine was so ingrained, so automatic, that my body did what it was told, even though my brain hadn’t meant for it to. I could have stopped it, but that would hurt worse than just letting it happen. So I did my best to let go and let my body take over for a while.
Unfortunately, that was easier said than done. I’d never Shifted with a serious injury and had no idea how badly it would hurt. The first stages were agony like I’d never experienced. My body was literally tearing itself apart, ligament by ligament and joint by joint. That was one thing for my healthy joints and ligaments, but something else entirely for my wounded shoulder. It was on fire, my injury inflamed by the physical changes forced on it.
The pain eased as the last stages of my Shift came and went, the various parts of my body settling into place. By the time it was over, my shoulder throbbed with the dull pain of an old injury.
I stretched, testing my new configuration of muscles and bones. To my amazement, my shoulder felt much better. It was far from healed, but I could now bear my own weight. Marc had mentioned something similar happening to him once, but I hadn’t thought about it much since. His theory was that since muscles and bones change during a Shift, they began to heal automatically as they were reattached in new positions.
Cool, I thought pleased by my discovery. I should have Shifted earlier.
Now dressed, Abby watched me, her expression a mixture of envy and awe. “You make that look so easy, like it doesn’t even hurt.”
I huffed air through my nose, knowing she would understand. It hurt plenty, no matter how it looked.
Flexing my muzzle, I arched my whiskers forward, then back to lie flat against my face. Then I extended my forepaws as far out as they would go, my rump in the air. After my stretch, I glanced around at my surroundings, seeing the basement for the first time on four paws.
I usually loved the first few minutes in cat form, because every sight and smell I knew by heart as a human felt so novel, so new and different to my cat’s senses. But this time my feline body felt awkward and out of place in the basement, where nothing stirred and nothing grew. No rodents scurried across my field of vision. No twigs or rocks poked at my paws, and no burrs caught in the soft fur over my belly. There was no breeze, not even the artificial cool of an air conditioner. And though I could hear sounds of civilization coming from the house above me, compared to Daddy’s woodland preserve, my underground prison was eerily quiet, and wrong, as only a man-made habitat could be.
Experienced as a cat, the basement was a concrete-lined pit, fouled by everything human. It was an assault on my senses. The floor was harsh against my paws, like walking on rough-grit sandpaper. From overhead came the sound of canned laughter; someone was up, watching TV. The bars surrounding me stank of metal, and the personal scent of everyone who had recently touched them. But the predominant smell was blood.
It was Sara’s, and it came from the empty cell to my right. No amount of scrubbing could disguise the scent of blood from a cat, and what frightened me most was knowing that the majority of what was spilled had been disposed of along with the mattress. What I smelled was only a fraction of what Sara had lost, along with her life.There were other smells, of course, like the disturbing combination of Marc and Miguel. I smelled them both, no matter which way I turned, because their personal scents were on me, and wouldn’t completely fade until my next shower.
Abby smelled like baby powder—scented deodorant, surely several days old now, and something young and feminine, and all her own. But pervading her scent was the distinctive, sour odor of fear.
Miguel had said he liked the smell of fear, which told me more than I ever needed to know about him.
Cats stalk and hunt for several reasons, including practice, leisure and as an excuse to socialize. But we only kill for food or in self-defense. The smell of fear does nothing to improve our appetites, nor is it an aphrodisiac.
Miguel’s fear fetish belonged to his human half, not his feline half. It was something he had in common with countless prison inmates all over the world, but not a single zoo cat. He was a human monster, whom some clumsy idiot had armed with lethal teeth and claws.