I took a right and headed toward Millertown Pike, and then Rutledge Pike, also known as Highway 11 West. As I drove, I thought about Benjamin and what would have happened had he been in Occam’s place. He’d have asked me to bring him a cup of coffee and maybe have a good dinner waiting for him when he got back. The likelihood of him even thinking about me going on any mission was low to none. A woman’s presence on such a mission would have been considered valueless. Occam just forgot about me. Or his cat did.
Men. Dang ’em all. My hands tightened on the wheel and I followed the cell phone’s directions out of Knoxville.
• • •
DNAKeys’ research facility was out of town, down a narrow, privately maintained, paved road on the far side of House Mountain State Natural Area. There were no streetlights this far out of town and no visible security measures, but there was also no gated entrance, so the lack of obvious security measures was likely occult—not meaning paranormal, meaning hidden. Occam’s fancy car—a 2015 Ford Mustang two-door Fastback GT with all the bells and whistles—was parked in the dark off the side of the road and down a little-used driveway with an overgrown For Sale sign in the weeds, about a mile from the turnoff to the facility. I pulled in behind it, turned off the engine and the lights, and closed my eyes, letting them adapt to night vision. As I waited, I set my comms earbud in my ear, adjusted the mic, and hooked the comms system at my waistband. When my vision was more attuned to the night, I got out, carrying my flash, which I didn’t turn on, and walked around the fancy car.
The men were nowhere to be seen, which meant they were changing shape or were already hunting. They hadn’t been that far ahead of me so I was betting on shape-shifting somewhere out in the dark. I sniffed and listened to the night, taking in the smells and the sounds. A little exhaust. My coffee. Something musky. The wereleopards, most likely. I heard no sounds except what might be the far-off hum of cars. In the distance were city lights. Closer were security lights, which I assumed would be DNAKeys’.
I returned to my truck and sat, engine and lights still off, in the growing cold, sipping coffee from my insulated mug, strong and black. The caffeine was a drug, too bitter to be a froufrou drink, too strong to be my “regular.” I waited, my senses straining into the dark, kneading my rooty middle, literally putting my fingers on my non-humanness. The cold seeped into me, and I pulled the pink blanket over me. I had rescued it from the truck bed and it no longer felt like maggots.
If this had been Soulwood I could have put my hands in the earth and discovered the cats’ location easily. Out here, so far from home, the land wouldn’t even know I was alive, especially in the dormant season. Trying to read the land would be harder. A lot harder. And I’d grow leaves that I would then have to prune. I shoulda brought me a good book.
The first indication that the men had shifted was a thump that rocked the truck and Occam’s cat face pressed against the windshield, staring at me, lips pulled back, showing me his fangs. He hissed. My only reaction was to grip my cup so hard I feared I might bend the metal handle. I wanted to jump or squeal, or both, which I presumed he had intended. Occam’s cat was mischievous. I narrowed my eyes at him, knowing he could see me clearly in the dark. His lips lowered to cover his teeth and he stared at me, white whiskers touching the windshield.
Occam was a pretty cat, all gold and dark brown, his golden eyes lined with black like an Egyptian king’s with kohl. Deliberately, I sipped my coffee and stared back at him, giving as good as I got. Maybe better. He snorted, blowing twin spots of condensation on the glass. He lay down, belly on the warm hood, his huge, dappled body vanishing in the night, his face close to the glass.
He didn’t shift his gaze away.
I was being hunted. I scowled at the cat and set my coffee in the mug holder, pulled on the headgear, drew my service weapon, and set it on the dash. Occam now appeared as a greenish spotted killer, haunches and tail hanging off the truck. “Take that, you dang ol’ cat,” I muttered. Occam blinked. Looked at the gun on the dash. At me. And turned away, giving me the back of his head. He flopped his head down flat on the hood. In cat-speak, it was a complete dismissal and a refusal to consider me anything but a bore, and certainly not a threat. It made me want to laugh or shoot him, or both, but I refrained. “Tit for tat,” I said, knowing he could hear me through the windows. “Don’t push it, pussycat.”
Occam chuffed and started purring. I could feel the vibration through the truck body. He was having fun. The grindylow joined him, and started grooming Occam’s fur, her long, improbable steel claws combing and probably trimming as she worked.
About ten minutes later, there was a second thump and a black big-cat joined him, a comms unit strapped around his neck, but otherwise hard to see in the night. My hood bowed, so I tapped on the window and waved them away. They ignored me. I tapped my mic to turn on the recorder and said, “Night op.” I gave the date and the location by address and GPS coordinates. “Time is three twenty-six a.m. Occam and Rick LaFleur at recon. Nell Ingram as backup.” Without glancing my way, Rick nudged Occam. The two cats, with the grindy riding on Occam’s back, slid to the ground and vanished, leaving the truck rocking and the hood returning to normal. Dang cats.
I adjusted the mic into a more comfortable position and holstered my weapon. Drank down most of the coffee. When the cold started to creep in, I got out of the truck, crossed the road to a tree I had seen when I reconnoitered Occam’s car, and sat on the low branch. I adjusted the fit and the gear until I could see and hear and talk with ease and played with the headgear, switching back and forth from IR to low light.
I identified a small herd of deer moving along the hillside, their bodies reddish on IR, heated against the colder earth, and when I flipped the knob to low light, greenish. Later, two large dogs raced down the road, well fed and enjoying a night of freedom, possibly escapees from chains or small pens, from the way they played and loped and chased each other. They never saw or smelled the deer. Or me. An owl flowed over the ground, silent as death, and dropped on a rabbit. Its squeal of pain and fear was quickly cut off as the owl carried it to a branch and started eating.
Feral cats hunted, small spots of color depending on which visual spectrum I used. Minutes passed. The excitement of playing with the new night oculars wore thin. The cold deepened. I prepared to be frozen and bored. One thing the long wait gave me was time to think and I realized that being left in HQ’s parking lot wasn’t a gender thing. It was totally a cat thing. If Tandy had been their backup, he would have been left standing there too. As slights went it was small, and only seemed big to me because, as T. Laine would say, it had pushed my buttons.
• • •
Ninety minutes after the cats departed, the sun was starting to gray the eastern sky and low clouds were dropping, fog rolling down the hillside like an avalanche and along the road like a vaporous flood. A car rolled past. Then another heading the other way. A school bus rumbled and squeaked on a parallel road beyond the trees. The human world was starting to wake up and head to work and school. We needed to be out of here.
I tapped the mic three times, taps Rick would be able to hear even with the comms hanging around his neck. The taps stood for: LaFleur, report back to origination and insert point, ASAP. It was a reminder that they needed to become human again, that there was work to do. I three-tapped again. There was no reply because Rick had turned off his mic. And because his cat didn’t have opposable thumbs to turn it back on. And because his cat didn’t speak English. There were a lot of reasons why he didn’t respond, most of them amusing.
Moments later, on the hillside, I caught a hint of movement, red in the infrared range. Two slinky cat shapes were working their way down toward the road, strides lazy, in no hurry. I made my way to my truck and started the engine, waiting for them to shift back. I wanted to leave them as they had left me, but weres in the midst of shifting were vulnerable, and I knew better.
But that didn’t mean I had to wait till they got dressed. The moment I saw a human shape in the low-light goggles, still naked and steaming in a greenish haze, I drove off, stopping once for fresh bakery bread and a bear claw that tempted me like a sweet devil. The claw was greasy, nowhere near as good as Mama’s, and I was able to eat only part of it, but the to-go coffee was surprisingly tasty, much better than the burned sludge I expected.
I picked up a second coffee—my regular in the coffee shop—along with an egg and bacon on flatbread, which was wonderful. Upstairs, I checked in with HQ, where Tandy was turning everything over to JoJo, who had gotten up from a nap in the back room. T. Laine was typing up a report so fast the keys clacking sounded like castanets. Soul was in the break room making coffee, looking gorgeous and curvy and sophisticated, her teal and aqua gauzy skirts moving with the air from the heater vents. Or from her magic. Shape-shifting magic was different for each shifter species and arcenciel magic was the least understood of all.
I was eating and inputting my report when Rick and Occam came in. Rick went to his office. Occam stopped at my cubicle, and I could see him reflected in the window where my plants grew, his body dark and indistinct against the rising sun.
“Nell, sugar?” he asked, sounding very Texan, the way he often did after a shift to his cat.
I hit enter and saved my report. Picked up my coffee and spun in my chair to face him. His blondish hair hung long. His beard was a postshift two-day growth and scruffy. His eyes were more-than-human golden. He was wearing jeans low on his hips and his T-shirt was faded and too tight, showing abs and biceps and deltoids. His arms were up, hands on the cubicle walls, balanced. “You still mad? We shouldn’ta left you.”
“Not mad. Actually it kinda makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.” His eyebrows lifted, wrinkling his forehead in confusion. “Makes me feel like I’m really and truly part of Unit Eighteen,” I explained.
“I’m not following you, Nell, sugar.”
“If I’d been T. Laine or Tandy or JoJo, you’d still have forgotten me. You were being cats, already focused on the hunt. It’s the human’s and witch’s and empath’s job to look after the werecats when you get focused on werecat issues. So forgetting me made me one of the team. You didn’t think you needed to babysit the probie. Or the woman. I apologize for hanging up on you. I hadn’t thought it through at the time.”
“Day-um, woman.” Occam looked half-impressed, half-fearful. “Just when I think I got you figured out you go and do something unexpected. So you ain’t gonna be getting us back for forgetting you?”
“Oh, there’ll be payback.” I sipped and spun back to my laptop. “That’s Unit Eighteen’s way.”
Occam snorted a laugh, all cat. A little intrigued. And I realized that I had, maybe, just flirted with the cat-man. A plant-woman flirting with a wereleopard. I felt a blush race up my throat into my face.