Exsanguination and Other Love Stories

IX. The Final Night

Further exploration did not bring any happier discoveries. In the old sewing room, Akasha lay in a stiff heap below her window sill, her eyes clouded and glassy, her throat roughly opened. The window screen had been knocked in. Momow had to have climbed the maple outside and jumped at least six feet to get in.

Downstairs, he had torn up most of the furniture in the parlor, and urinated all over my laptop. When I tried to boot it up, the keyboard no longer worked. The door to the west wing was covered in claw marks.

I went inside and fed the remaining cats. A change had come over them all: they seemed to sense fully now that something was amiss. Drusilla had ensconced herself between her climbing tree and the wall, and hissed at me dark-eyed when I came in. Very few of them took much interest in breakfast.

I weighed my options. I couldn't leave them all here. Besides, for all I knew, Florian was still in the garden, and would spring upon me as I ran for the gate. All things considered, Momow was the threat I had experience with.

I put Akasha in the freezer with Selene, and dug out ten cat carriers from the attic. The cats did not take being moved well. As night fell again, they complained bitterly from every box. I did my best to ignore it, and chewed industriously on the clove of raw garlic which I'd dug out of the back of the fridge. I'd pushed a bookcase in front of the door. The floor of the room was nearly impassible, with cat carriers, and the window was hung with a makeshift crucifix which made Florian wince upon arrival.

"Bill," he said, his voice muffled from the other side of the window, "Don't you think that's all a little much? I can't find the old bag anywhere. For all you know, he's gone hunting off the property. Just let me in, for heaven's sake, there's no need for such a bother!"

"No," I said, sharpening the ends of what had once been my aunt's nicest set of wooden knitting needles with a box cutter. "You must think I'm stupid or something."

"Not stupid," said Florian. "I would never call anyone stupid, much less a descendant of Helena's. But this – home-grown effort - does seem very ill-advised – and to be honest, a bit trop. There is a certain element of the lady doth protest too much to all this, if you really must know – "

"Shhh!" I hissed. The cats had fallen silent all of a sudden. In the nearest carrier, Drusilla hunched like a very small and orange porcupine, every hair on end.

"What? I don't hear anything. And I assure you, Bill, my hearing is much better than yours. If there was something to hear, I would have – "

Moooooomoow.

This sound came from very close by. Closer than Florian's voice, by far, and unmuffled by any door.

I stiffened on the bed. The box cutter slipped from my nerveless fingers.

"Oh, dear."

Florian's eyes met mine for a long moment, wide and grave. My fingers tightened around my makeshift stake.

"Bill," he said, "you'd better open this window right now. I think he's underneath the bed."

And so, I realized belatedly, he must have been, all that time. All today – as I went about all my busy preparations, in-out, in-out of the bedroom, thinking it was my fortress, the safest place in the house, bringing the cats in so I could keep them all safe – Momow had just been waiting, playing with me all along.

A dark shape slithered out from beneath the lace skirt, and darted like a shadow behind Drusilla's carrier. It moved so quickly I wasn't sure I'd seen it at first, wasn't sure at all it hadn't just been a trick of the light.

Momow, came the voice again, with an edge of mockery to it that was unmistakable.

Inside her box, Drusilla swelled to an enormous size. "Nownonononow," she complained, arching her back against the back of her carrier in an impossible curve, and then broke off into silence, as though terror had taken the voice from her.

"He isn't just a cat anymore," said Florian, rapping harshly on the window pane. "You've got to understand that, Bill. Look at me! You can't handle him with a pair of knitting needles, and Cordelia would never have wanted you to – "

"I don't care what Cordelia would have wanted!" I shrieked. "I barely knew her, and whatever she may have been to you or to them, she was a terrible relation to me. Shut up!"

"Bill, do you want to die?"

I didn't answer. I snatched up a handful of sharpened crochet hooks from the bedspread, and stood up, back against the ornate headboard, feet spread, waiting. He would come at me sooner, or later, wouldn't he? I wouldn't go down without a fight.

"Fine, do you want to be like me? Because if he only bites you, that's what you'll be."

"He won't just bite me," I snapped. "He hates me. He's always hated me. Just like I've always hated him."

It felt good to say it, finally. And as I did, as though the truth had summoned him, Momow sauntered fluidly out into the incandescent light.

With serpentine grace, like a model on a runway, he leaped up slowly, lazily, and seated himself on the foot of the bed.

His cadaverous face and tendon-traced limbs were animated with a tireless energy. His huge blue eyes burned, blank, expressionless, in the relentless way of cats. He was no longer a sad spiteful bag of bones, I realized, but something else: something that might perfectly well wait six hours before tearing my throat out, or do it in the next moment, too, on a whim.

I backed up against the headboard, stakes clenched tightly in both hands. I didn't have the energy to wait out those hours. And – despite everything – I really didn't want to die.

"Fine," I said, almost surprised at myself, "Come in, then."