Category Archives: Fiction

Bits and pieces and outtakes and stuff. Maybe poetry. I dunno.

Please Nominate Tribe of Tiger!

28 Wednesday Feb 2018

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If you like me, my writing, or even the abstract cause of Good Writing in general, please consider this!

Because I won NaNoWriMo last year, I got the chance to have an actual human being at Kindle look at my book and give me editorial feedback. To get this, I had to enter Tribe of Tiger (the most recent kitty book) in their Kindle Scout reader nomination program, and that’s why I’m pestering you today: PLEASE, go to this link and nominate my book. It’s just a few clicks. All told, it took my sister less than three minutes, and that was with me on the phone as she did it, which slowed things down.

Here’s the link. It includes the first two and a half chapters of the story–enjoy! (Story reading optional; you can download it onto your Kindle.)

There is a chance that this may actually get me professionally e-published, with an advance ($$$!) and everything. I’m crossing my crossable digits.

 

St. John’s Eve

12 Friday Jan 2018

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Being a short short story, a couple of weeks late:

The ruen spread his feathered wings as taut as they would go and began his long glide down from the steeple of the fractured church. He landed with a soft thud in the deepest snow and ran a few steps to stabilize himself. He lifted first one claw, then another in distaste, and decided to manifest his talons as booted humanoid feet. He furled his wings into a tidy sleekness and covered himself with a handy piece of shadow, which he gnawed off with his beak.

The resulting hooded, booted figure would not have blended into any crowd save Halloween or a costume con, but the ruen would be avoiding crowds that evening. He strode off, shifting his heavy leather-bound book to one shoulder, where his wing would shelter it from the snow.

Max was also avoiding crowds as such that evening, because he knew the ruen would be too. He had put more thought into his costume, and as a result could have mixed in with any temporary tribe of street person. Max had spent a week getting to know this little grouping, and they made him sad: John and Riva, covered with tattoos and begging from rich tourists before going back to Riva’s parents’ basement and getting high with their take, Mollah the toothless old woman, who could have come from any country but America, and who surrounded herself with bags as if by a shield, Tony “Help a vet” from Idaho, who sat on his lower legs in a very deep and dirty pillow on his wheelchair, and Gunny Ricky, who really was a vet, worn thin and scared and violent by the shadows which pursued him.

Of a variety of ethnicities, ages, and backgrounds, they all had smells which would differ only to a perceptive connoisseur, but would drive most people away from close quarters. (Max had given a fastidious shudder and put together a simple spell that would brand him as another outcast while protecting him from the animal whiff of the others. He had his limits.)

But the grubber who had crept into Max’s heart might have been Max himself thirty years ago. Like Max, Roach wasn’t quite what most people would define as human (although they were all one and the same to the ruen); their people called themselves Th’nashi, which just meant “The People” in their tongue. They had a few differences here and there: most of them had fangs, a few of them had tentacles which they kept well-hidden, and fewer still had sorcery, which was the true secret the Th’nashi sheltered close in pride and fear.

Roach had begun to be a sorcerer, until his masters had burrowed into his brain and left an inhibition there. “Sober as a sorcerer,” was the saying, and Roach was far from sober anymore. The world of nine street-corners was all he knew.

Roach knew Max was Th’nashi too, could just barely sense that with what was left to him to hunt with, but he did not realize the wiry man with the Asianish face was a sorcerer himself, in fact the District Sorcerer of Nova Terra, the most talented sorcerer on the Eastern Seaboard. All Max would admit to was “having had something once upon a time” and then he would pass back the bottle he had pretended to drink from, so that Roach could drink deep and drown himself in that doubtful security.

Max had once been a drunk himself; it was how he had known how to play the part. And back when Max was on the beach, twenty-two and half sunblind, he had once seen a smaller ne’er-do-well get taken away by a ruen. Once sober, he had kept it to himself, but read and studied and talked to taciturn folk who worked with herbs and blood; he had left some of his own in payment for what he had learned.

Tonight was December 26, the Eve of the Feast of St. John the Evangelist. Until the sun rose upon the shattered old church, lit the torturous friezes of the cathedrals, and touched the household shrines of the elderly and devout, the ruen might step down from their pedestals, uncurl themselves from their interweavings, slip loose their plastic moorings, and spread their eagle wings.

If a ruen failed to consume a human soul before the dawn of the Feast of St. John, it would be frozen in the form of a statue forever and would never fly again. They focused on those whose souls were deep buried beneath the snow and ice of life—drugs, alcohol, and the sort of madness which stems from the guilt of unforgiveable sin. Unless, like Max, one actually saw a ruen’s dark-feathered swoop, its claws close around a heart, and its plunge back into the sky trailing a something, one would never believe it or miss the victim.

Not all depictions of the Evangelist were ruens, although many famous ones had been before they had been stilled at last. Nobody knew exactly what they were: Matthew, Mark, and Luke stayed stoic on their perches.

Max once again said to Roach, “You can give it a shot. Works for some.” Worked for me. But his attention wasn’t on the boy’s whining tonight. He was listening for softness and the rustle of feathers.

The sun was long gone, and the urban sky a mass of holiday lights through the heavy snow. John and Riva, realizing that the sort of naïve generosity on which they depended had gone home, went down into the subway; Mollah and her bags had long since shuffled and rustled onto a small van heading for a women’s night shelter. Now Tony rolled onto a surreptitious side street, and hustled into the warmth of his wife’s BMW while she folded his wheelchair, and Gunny Ricky shouldered his duffle bag and headed off to Kensington Street, where there were benches on which to spread his tarp.

“Tomorrow, men. Sleep warm.” He reached with pleading eyes for the bottle.

Roach gave him a thumbs up and watched him drink. “Semper fi, Ricky.” He offered the bottle to Max, who played his charade, and then zipped it back into the top layer of hoodies he was wearing.

Max didn’t want to leave either man alone that night. He had made the human mistake of getting attached to these two, but he decided that a combat-crazed former Marine might, just might, give the ruen a wrassle for its money, giving him time to sprint over from the spot he shared with Roach, which was a broad doorway facing the churchyard. The two of them headed there now. Max had a battered Army/Navy surplus duffle, but all Roach had was a couple of retail bags from Save-Mart with a blanket spilling out of the hole in the bottom.

Max’s sleeping bag was a minor work of art, in that he had worked hard to get it to look like a piece of trash. Instead, it was rated to -40 degrees and made this patch of sleeping rough more like a camping vacation. Not that he would sleep tonight, but he set down his peripheral spells anyway. Ordinary human monsters looking for a bum to set on fire wouldn’t notice them tonight; nor would the cops.

A ruen had superhuman strength, hampered only by its disorientation at being in a motile body, which slowed it down. Max was an eighth-dan black belt in karate and was himself superhumanly strong, although nowhere near as much so as a being whose mortal form still mostly consisted of stone. Points, ruen, but not many, seeing as they didn’t know how to fight—they swooped upon their prey with the expectation of pigeon, not wildcat. More annoying to Max, they were immune to sorcery, and that was his home base, as it were.

That was why he had gone seeking those who knew the more esoteric magicks of the world. Sorcery followed the rules of physics, by and large—but magick had rules of its own. He hoped they worked. He wished he had shared this task, told somebody where he was, what he was doing. Too late for that now.

Much too late. He heard the whistle of huge feathers and for one frozen second, thought the ruen had come for him, still somehow able to smell a year and a half in the sun and the booze. Within that second, it all flashed before him: This was his nightmare, unrecalled in the daytime, but which had sent him on his quest. Not knowledge, nor a noble desire to do the world good by ridding it of a true monster—just fear of feeling the icy claws in his own chest.

But it was Roach, as Max had calculated, Roach who had already tossed ten years into the bottle and was well willing to waste ten more. The ruen had landed on his chest with its boots, and clacked some ancient and alien words of self-abuse. It manifested its talons, and gained the air again for a second strike.

I hope this works. It’s probably such a young language for it, Max thought. Let’s get the show on the road, and if this doesn’t work, there are always fireballs.

“In principio erat Verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Verbum!” he cried, and reached into his vest for his grandfather’s flask, heavy and ornate Victorian silver. He had the Latin Vulgate at heart in places, and few were as dear to him as this: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . He uncorked it with one hand and began tossing out a grainy red and white powder. “Hoc erat in principio apud Deum. Omnia per ipsum facta sunt; et sine ipso factum est nihil quod factum est!”

The powder had broken Max’s heart, in a way; it had been a non-conformist Bible with rubrications, even older than Grandfather Narmer’s flask. He had cut out all the words of Jesus, still red after all those decades, and snipped them as fine as scissors could snip, before running the whole thing through a mortar and pestle. Now, however, it was taking the promised effect.

“In ipso vita erat, et vita erat lux hominum,” Max chanted. As the old conjuh woman had promised, at the first words the ruen had ceased its attack and fumbled for its book in a frenzy, opening it to the beginning, which Max was quoting at it. But then the powder began hitting it in spits, mixed with the driving snow, and it screamed in agony as the pulverized scripture began hitting its body, dissolving it away like acid.

Roach had crawled away wide-eyed. Left alone, he would pass it off in the morning as a DT-fed hallucination. Young Max would have done the same, but he had been a finer sorcerer before his fall, and fascinated with old tales and whispers.

Max had chosen a church Bible to use—some would say desecrate—but he needed as much of the powder as one Bible would hold. Even so, he was running out. “Et lux in tenebris lucet et tenebrae eam non conprehenderunt!” he screamed. He blinked away tears. After his sobering, Max had joined the Lions of Mercy, and those words were engraved on all their chapels: And the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not.

Max had sworn himself to the light.

The ruen crumbled. Whatever unfathomable magicks had caused it to embody itself as poor St. John, they had decreed that the ruen play by the rules binding its impersonation.

Max drew a long, shaky breath, then flashed his fangs at Roach. “Pretty fly for a vampire,” he joked. The Th’nashi were only the sources of the stories; they needed blood on a regular basis but did no lasting harm to the human “donors,” nothing more than that and the sorcery.

“What was that thing, man?” Roach gasped. “What are you?”

Max sighed. “That was a monster. They’re called ruen, and they come for your life after you’ve made a decision to throw it away. I’m a recovering drunk, and you might say I’ve come for your life to give it one more chance.”

Roach blinked, looking at the flask in Max’s hand, which was still dribbling grayish powder flecked with red. He had no words.

Max seized the advantage. “Come with me. Just for a little bit. We’ll talk about sorcery and what not, and if it doesn’t take, all of your misery will be refunded.” He gestured to the subway, then caught himself. “Unless gating makes you sick?”

Roach shook his head. The two men shimmered and were gone.

Down the street, Gunny Ricky tightened his grip on his St. John medal, and smiled in his sleep.

 

 

 

Cats and Mages 2 (Things that Go Bump in the Night) is born!

21 Wednesday Jun 2017

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This is the sequel to Long Leggedy Beasties. Go check it out–check ’em both out–and PLEASE, please: I don’t have a GoFundMe or a Patreon, but I do have two really cool, reasonably priced books that need reviews on Amazon. Thanks for following–I appreciate the energy!

 

https://books.pronoun.com/things-that-go-bump-in-the-night/

Alphabetical Acrostic

19 Tuesday Apr 2016

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(This surprised me by taking under ten minutes. I think I’ll do another prompt today because I feel like I’ve been let out of school early.)

Another writing prompt, another day—

Bizarre or quotidian: Who knows?

Challenging my creativity

Despite initial doubt,

Every day my fingers surprise me.

Frightful or frivolous,

Good or mediocre; when I

Hear my words as

I read them aloud, it

Just gives me a quiver that

Kills my insecurity, my feelings of

Lameness, if only for a

Moment.

Nature, it seems, has given me this talent

Of being a wordsmith. My ground-in Christianity

Perennially brings me to the Talents parable.

Queer, in such an agnostic adrift, I know.

Reason, however,

Still brings me

To Gibbs’ Rule #5: Don’t waste good.

Unless I can come up with some other

Very good thing to do,

Writing is my thing, whether

Xanthic or fertile, it holds me accountable.

Yesterday and tomorrow, I must cry forth my One, else be a

Zero.

 

Long-Leggedy Beasties: 2015 WriMo Winner

02 Tuesday Feb 2016

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After ruminating a bit, I decided to put this up here instead of sheeping around with self-pubbing it, which I don’t have energy for. I’ve done little editing, but am pretty pleased with it. My self-inflicted prompt: Use a different set of characters. The Lions have a couple of minor walk-ons, as this is still my universe, but this is an entirely different corner. Hope you like it!

I pubbed it! Don’t worry, it’s still affordable at $2.99. Check Amazon and the other e-book sites. Woot!

Squirrel the Printer 1

28 Sunday Jun 2015

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I made myself start writing something that had nothing to do with the sheeping Th’nashi. Here’s the first chapter of . . . sumthin. . .:

Squirrel was afraid of the baby. Her baby. Oh, Duncan’s baby too, of course—well, not really. His sperm had activated her gene plasm, but that had been it. She had dutifully gone to doctors in the Community, who had supplied her with the necessary ultrasound photos and very particular prenatal vitamins, but in truth she was about to give birth to a crudely humanoid lump of green Play-doh.

“But at least it’s healthy Play-Doh,” she said to the air freshener hanging from her rear-view mirror. Plum Blossom, it was. Little Camber Stichson had adored fruity, floral scents, so Squirrel did too, even though she had matured (wearing Camber’s print) past the age when she should have changed over to liking muskier odors.

But that was how it went. Sometimes prints were like snapshots. Despite the age on her driver’s license (26), Squirrel still wanted to play hopscotch, yearned for every new doll on TV, and regularly made herself sick from too much candy and ice cream. Too much sugar was very bad for Printers—Squirrel was considered to have a Problem, and was at risk of becoming Mushy, parts dissolving into a disgusting mass of green Play-doh streaked with blood.

She had been careful about what she ate during her marriage, and more so during the pregnancy. Squirrel was pretending she was going to have an ordinary human baby, because the green Play-doh gave her nightmares, as she carried within her the undeniable proof that the alien existed. She would cling to Duncan in the sweaty sheets, always grateful that Camber had been a sneeze past an early puberty when she’d been printed, so Squirrel was able to get horny and have a satisfying relationship with Duncan. For days and weeks on end, Squirrel was the Camber-print: human in almost every detail.

Now, she started the car, hoping she’d make it through the freeway traffic before the frozen veggies in her grocery bags thawed and refroze into an unforgiving lump. She had shopped hastily and would have to make a sketchy dinner for Duncan, because she had spent the afternoon touring Bryson Cryogenics, which was run by the Community as a source for emergency prints. Like babies.

Squirrel blinked and froze. A strange man had gotten into the front seat with her; an equally strange woman had barreled into the back seat, pushing the grocery bags over to make room with a savage swear.

“What . . . the?” Squirrel managed to croak before the muzzle of a gun was jammed into her ribs.

“Drive, lady, if you and the baby wanna live,” the man snarled.

“Oh shit, Jude, she’s pregnant?” the woman in the back wailed.

“Shut up, Suzanne!” he barked. Squirrel flinched as a reflex. That happened to be the name on her driver’s license. Nobody called her that except her boss and her father-in-law. The muzzle of the gun slid down an inch, making her wince with pain. It was now digging into the area of her liver, which the baby was fond of pounding from the other side, exercising its protolimbs with a vigor Squirrel found dismaying. It added to the nightmares.

But right now it had penetrated that strangers and gun meant carjacking, and Squirrel, going on 13, was terrified.

“Drive!” he urged her, and Squirrel did, not knowing how this adventure would end.

For about twenty minutes, Jude directed and Squirrel obeyed, while from the back seat Suzanne would interject an occasional comment: “C’mon, Jude, she’s pregnant.” “I told you this was fucking stupid.” And at last, “Shit! Is she almost out of gas, or what?”

Jude half-turned to backhand her then, as being the bearer of bad tidings, and Squirrel thought of going for the gun, but she was even more unsure of how that adventure would end. But Suzanne was right; in fact Squirrel was cursing herself for this just on general principles. She had no idea what Jude would do—and she plain hated running out of gas. She did it a lot—it was one of the reasons her nickname still stuck.

Jude made her ask the GPS where the nearest station was, and Squirrel’s heart leapt. She knew it—it was off the beaten trail, run by a nice old widower who was a shade-tree mechanic with a single rusty pump. He had been a Marine in ‘Nam, and the staties had once had a hard time explaining to him why he couldn’t keep a junkie’s head as a trophy, after the kid had played a 9mm, and discovered that old Mr. Bubba had double barrels in the hole.

Squirrel pulled into the gravel driveway under the huge live oak without a word, her heart pounding.

“Go on, get out and pump the gas,” Jude said, gesturing at the placard reading “Self-Serve.” Squirrel got out of the car, her knees a little wobbly, but as she turned to the ancient pump, a ribbon of agony tore through her, and she cried out, clutching at the car for support. It was time. The one thing Printer and human births had in common was that they couldn’t be argued with.

Suzanne yelled through the window, “Your water break? Jude, I think her water just broke. We gotta get outta here!”

“Not without gas,” he gritted, and leapt out of the car, gun waving in all directions like a malicious iron wasp.

Squirrel sank down to the ground, tugging her gauzy maternity top out of the way so she could burrow a thumb inside her body. It hurt, but not like the spasms now racking her entire circulatory system. She felt resistance; then the bubble of amniotic fluid cascaded over her lap in verisimilitude of a human’s water breaking. She kept her hand clutched to her belly, while the other tried and failed to pin her long honey-blonde hair behind her ears so it wouldn’t blend with the sweat pouring into her eyes.

Suzanne also had gotten out of the car, ignoring Jude’s barking. As he pumped the gas, swearing at the rusty contraption while still holding the gun on Squirrel as best he could, Suzanne knelt beside her and took her hand. This unexpected kindness in the middle of the surreality of the last hour undid Squirrel, and she burst into tears.

Jude’s head exploded, raining blood and brains over the two women. Mr. Bubba, thought Squirrel in vindication as Suzanne screamed and flattened herself on the ground. Squirrel felt that everything was happening in slow motion as she tugged at the hole she had made, keening like an animal hit by a car. She pulled forth the squirming green mass and, pushing up Suzanne’s jean leg, applied it to her bare unbloodied skin.

The carjacker was in too much terror to notice, and Mr. Bubba had lost a leg in the jungle, so by the time he and his M-16 peeked around the hood of the car, the print took hold, and pink replaced green with a rapidity that made even Squirrel blink with surprise.

Mr. Bubba limped over, and, forcing Jude’s body out of the way with his cane, peered down at them. Squirrel had turned away, and was sheltering the baby as best she could as it busily thrust forth fingers and toes. She heard Suzanne babble for her life; heard Mr. Bubba tell her to stay just as she was.

“Squirrel?” The old man put a gentle hand on her head. She looked up, and only then realized she was still sobbing. Thank God I’m wearing Aunt Dorothy’s hideous maternity skirt today, she thought somewhere in the back. I never could have pulled this off in jeans.

Then they all looked up, as a huge greyish wedge hurtled over their heads, followed by another, and then another. There was a massive rush of air, but no sound.

I’m dreaming, sighed Squirrel. The Community had records. The ships which had dropped them off in 1642 looked much like this. Dreaming. She relaxed into Mr. Bubba’s arms in a drowsy relief. Dreaming. None of it real.

Duct-Tape: The Fifth Force of the Universe

25 Saturday Apr 2015

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The silence in the car was punctuated by Allie’s sniffles and Desiree’s snores. You’d have thought one would have cancelled out the other, peaceful baby making happy mommy and all, and after about five miles, I tried logic.

“It’s not like they hurt her,” I said. I knew I sounded defensive. “And we did spring her on them at the last minute. And they had all the couch pillows underneath–”

“Shut up, Henry!” Allie yowled. Desi woke up and began to cry. I couldn’t blame Desiree. She’d been a good sport. But when Alison walked down the stairs and saw our five-month-old duct-taped to a wall of my best friend’s man-cave, something changed in our marriage, and not for the better. Before tonight, I’d always thought that “good sport” described my wife as well. Guess not.

Maybe it was genetic. We’d spent the night bailing my pouty and ungrateful mother-in-law out of jail after a drunken spree with her four best buddies. They had all won motorcycles on a trip to a game show in New York. Instead of selling them to cover the taxes, they had named themselves the Hogettes, and proceeded to act like it.

So when we got the call, we thought we were making the right decision when we dropped Desi off with “Uncle” Jaffe and his poker game instead of hauling her to Night Court with a gaggle of septuagenarian biker chicks.

Jaffe ran the town’s auto body shop and tutored the high school kids in physics in his spare time. He had a theory that duct tape could do anything, and I was willing to admit it did just fine as a baby wall-chair. He’d even noosed Mr. Daddles next to her without so much as damaging his plush. It made sense, as there was no space in Jaffeland that could even remotely be called “child-safe.”

But when I pulled up to the house, Allie snatched Desi out of her car seat as if she’d rescued her from ravening wolves pursuing the chaise. “You can sleep on the couch tonight, Mr. Thinks It’s Funny! Maybe you can make yourself a blanket out of duct tape.” We have a door at the top of the steps to the bedrooms and all, a leftover from when her mom used to live in the house, and it slammed and clicked. Lucky there was a powder room downstairs, I guess.

So I went on the Internet and then back to Jaffe’s, seeing as the hardware stores were closed, and he fixed me up. Can’t say it didn’t take me a while, but I made me my blanket out of duct tape. All different colors, too. Man, it pissed Allie off that next day.

What’s a fella to do?

In Words of One Syllable

04 Wednesday Mar 2015

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Cat was a small dark man of spare flesh; his long black hair fell to his waist.

“Keys Made Here,” said the sign on the door. Cat could beat a lock or a safe in a trice; rust and age meant not a bit. But those who knew Cat best knew the keys were the thing. For the odd man off the street, the small brass toys would be clean and smooth, from the first time to the last. But for those with the right word and right wink, Cat’s keys could fit in the lock of Time.

It took more than just the key, of course. A square in chalk, a stalk of grass, a stuffed mouse made from felt–and the Eight Great Words. Cat would stand back in the dark, a grim smile on his face, as the poor fools took their first steps into a When that was not Now.

“Y’all come back now, hear?” Cat would drawl. But he knew that they would not, for his keys were one-way, just that.

He kept the mice for his cat (who was named Man), and rubbed out the chalk. He left the grass for the wind, and went on his way home to Man and his wife.

Eureka: Chapter Twenty-Two — Valentine’s Day

20 Tuesday Jan 2015

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January snow spun into February slush, but on the 13th a freak storm powdered all the grayish brown white again. I heard Lynn pass the house on her way to church that morning–Dante was preaching–and was all fluffed up against the windowseat back when they returned a couple hours later. The snow was good for snowballs and the like, and they were playing in it like children. Aww. I still had my doubts about the Lynn and Dante thing. He always struck me as having secrets–but then, she hadn’t let out a peep about her fling with Pascal until she had her nose rubbed in it, so what did I know? Despite Terry’s new proclamation about no more Grail slavery in Nova Terra, she had chosen to stay with the Order anyway, and was happy enough at it. But it hadn’t been very long, she was in love, and honeymoons all end.

Geeze. I caught myself thinking these things and gave myself a good shake. What was my deal? I wasn’t hungry, I had caught my first mouse only the night before–a triumph of patient stalking ending in a frenzy of batting-about that had horrified the squeamish Terry into taking it away and putting it outside, where the red-tail hawk that lived in the neighborhood made quicker work of it three minutes later. Okay, that was annoying, but I was over it.

There had been a six-car pile-up on Memorial Drive that morning, the result of an actual car chase on the icy streets. So Sasha had gone off to supervise, leaving Terry in bed. He was only getting up now, or at least stirring. I ran upstairs and bounced onto the bed, getting him square in the bladder. This made him cry out and call me a couple of things I probably deserved, and he got up. He still hadn’t forgiven me when he came out of the bathroom, and told me I should beat it if I knew what was good for me. I retreated to the doorway, but he went so far as to look for something to chuck at me. Even something as fluffy as a pillow would be annoying, so off I went, feeling abused. “What’s with him this morning, I ask you?” I asked no-one, as I continued back downstairs. He didn’t have any business being in bed until noon, anyway.

Devon was training a new kid, so they weren’t watching TV or playing games, and I already knew most of the gossip he was passing along, so after nosing around in the guard room for a few minutes and getting petted a little, which helped, but not much, I went back to the kitchen. Nibbled some kibble; camped for a few minutes in front of the sink listening for any telltale sounds that the caulking had been defeated. Nope. On down to the basement–where I stopped dead on the third stair, hunkering down my outer soul to nearly nothing, and being glad my dark blue fur blended me into shadows.

Steffi and Pharaoh were making out in the hot tub.

I knew they were friendly, but I hadn’t seen this coming! How serious was this? Where was Hans? She never went anywhere without him. But then I figured it out. She had gone to visit Pharaoh at his home in Jamaica Plain, and Hans was no doubt visiting with Tuck, Hiroshi’s springer spaniel, whom I’d never met. And Pharaoh had gated them over here to enjoy the sprawl of the 12-human hot tub. I realized my tail was twitching and I made it stop. Or tried. It had a mind of its own, which meant I was aggravated. But why?

Steffi was giggling and pretending to try to make him stop, but her outer soul was wildly happy. His was a mix of smug satisfaction and yes, a slice of pure animal hope, vow of chastity be damned. Lion Quartermain would be losing an inch of hair in chapter that week if he had anything to say about it. It should have been cute. I was very fond of both these people. What was wrong with me?

Things didn’t seem to be progressing to anything I could call educational, so I trudged back upstairs, running into Devon in the kitchen, who was making lunch for himself and the new kid. He laughed.

“Get a surprise down there? I can’t tell through the ping baffles he threw up. All I know is I’m supposed to sing out when either Terry or Sasha or Dante show up. She’s a nice lady. I hope it works out.” He ruffled my fur and offered me a sliver of hot dog, which I gobbled. I wondered what would happen if he bit her. He had the native Toxin K, being Knightsblood, but her Toxin F would coax his body into rapid decomposition. This stung my soul. Oh no! Would he be careful! Did this canoodle require intervention? My happy morsel of hot dog turned to greasy rock in my stomach.

I went back to doze in front of the window, my new worry threading through my dreams. I kept telling myself that Pharaoh was a big boy, a smart boy, and that all the Lions carried antivenin, just in case–but he had inched his way into my heart, until I loved him as much as I did Sasha and Terry. I was ecstatic when Sasha’s elderly Volvo pulled into the driveway. Now there’d be a stop to this!

With Sasha was his Lion partner and office flunky, Taillefer Araimfres; and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Not at seeing the friendly ginger doctor for his own sake, but because I now recalled Pharaoh telling me that the two of them had grown up together. Taillefer was the crossbreed type Knightsblood-Firenzi, and during their so’fir’aa, when Taillefer’s deadly venom was just starting to develop, Pharaoh’s father had him chew Pharaoh and his brothers raw, so they would get a natural resistance to it. This had worked so well that Pharaoh secreted tiny amounts of it himself. Steffi held no harm for him–except maybe in the romantic department, but even I knew that they were both on their own there.

I came out to greet my small blond daddy and his tall muscular friend. Sasha was cheerful, which meant he had gone through the morning’s gore without finding any dead children for a change.

“Hey Eureka, Lazybones up yet?”

“I tried,” I told him. “He’s sulking upstairs.” Sasha sighed as if he had understood me–or at least my plaintive tone–and told Taillefer to make himself at home.

“You may as well head on down to the tub. I’ll catch you there in a few.”

Uh-oh. Devon was upstairs talking to Terry, and the new kid was tinkering with some addition to the game system they had just bought. I ran ahead of the doctor and down the stairs.

Things still seemed to be in a holding pattern in terms of where hands, etc. were, but I took no chances.

“Sasha!” I yowled. Pharaoh gratified me by jumping two feet. The former Kaiserin laughed in delight.

“Oh my, Kätzchen, it sounded just like you said your papa’s name.” To Pharaoh: “I love it when animals do that. We should put Eureka on YouTube.”

Pharaoh choked with laughter. “You put Eureka on YouTube. I value my nubbly bits too much to brave such a thing. Sasha has both a gun and access to scalpels.” He sent forth his outer soul in a spell that arrowed through the house. Steffi and I were both impressed when the data came back in the form of a little wireframe of the house, with glowing dots indicating people. As we all watched, one of the dots came down the basement stairs in the form of Taillefer Araimfres.

Pharaoh turned the jets of the tub on in ostensible politeness to his friend, but I suspect it might have been more because he had what Terry referred to as a “happy lap.”

Taillefer wasn’t stupid, and he paused, unwilling to interrupt a tete-a-tete, but the other two humans had cuddled themselves into a giddy happiness and urged him to come on in. Pharaoh gave Steffi a teasing whack on the arm as she watched Taillefer get undressed. I was pleased that she was ogling the poor guy, him being a mass of freckle and fur. But underneath it all, he had fighting master muscles, which showed her good taste. Taillefer himself, unused to being admired, completed the picture by blushing deep rose all over his body, but all the humans pretended he wasn’t. Our dai’yadi worked a little overtime to be nice to Taillefer, because he did work for Sasha, after all.

After a while, Sasha came on downstairs, his good mood blunted–by Terry, I presumed. Sheesh. All it had been was one playful pounce. I went upstairs to see if I could wheedle my way back into his affections and get him out of the grouchies.

Terry was sitting at his desk in a bathrobe and sweats, which signified that he was prepared to go on down to the tub and be social, but email had caught him first. With caution, I tiptoed over to him and rubbed my ears on his calves in apology, mrring my most appealing I’m-sorry.  (What I actually said was, “I don’t believe a word of it. Pull the other one,” because it sounds heart-rending in Cat to the untutored human ear.)

He grinned. “It’s ok, sweetheart. Daddy’s over it. I still love you.” He patted his lap and I watched him check e-mail, amusing myself by practicing my reading. Pharaoh had once evaluated it as being on about a third-grade level, so I didn’t get very far. But I did see the words “Vai’ada Statute,” this being the kill-the-accidental-humani-who-tumbles-to-us bit, and I could appreciate his bleak mood. Was this what I was picking up?

But no; he went downstairs and made merry enough, leaving me still depressed. Maybe I need Prozac, I wondered, and turned on the remote to a self-help show. The theme was Valentine’s Day–a little early, but what the hell–and that’s when I figured it out.

It was Valentine’s Day, and we had now two couples around doing the dating thing–hell, three, if Joel’s girlfriend counted. Sean and Eamon had been at the house last night, going over their plans: They were meeting for afternoon high tea at the Plaza Hotel tomorrow afternoon, and they had already arranged to have their daughter Fiona, who was 12, sleep over with Rita Monday night, so as to get their romance on.

But my daddies weren’t making any plans; were edgy around the whole subject. They didn’t do romance, and it was depressing me. And as for me–well, if Steffi was going to frolic in our tub, the least she could do would be to bring Hans, so I’d have somebody to talk to. I sighed. It wasn’t just the daddies. It wasn’t just the romance. I was yet another single person, and we were coming up on the day of the year when it is least cool to be alone.

Later on that night, I watched Terry take his usual hit of Sashan O+, trying to discern–what? Tenderness? Appreciation? Or did he just take it for granted? I curled up in my spot, but couldn’t purr for Sasha, which disappointed him I think, but I was just ready to sleep as much of the next day through as I could.

And I tried, but of course next morning they both got up nice and early and did their morning routine in their usual choreography of stay-out-of-his-way. It was a teaching day for Terry, so it was down to me, Matt, and the mice. Matt had to study for an Economics exam, and the mice in the basement had some hidden tunnel system to the outdoors that made me insane. I decided to practice pronouncing “Prozac” to let Pharaoh know that maybe a trip to Hiroshi was in order.

Both daddies were late, which made the everlasting day longer and grayer. But when Devon and Terry came home, they were carrying odd bags.

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Terry sighed.

“Dude, it’s Valentine’s Day. I mean sir.” Devon opened the first of the bags, which smelled like some human perfume that would make me sneeze. “Special stuff for the tub, check.” He rattled the other bags, which I realized contained flowers. “Bouquet of roses, check. And . . .” He reached into another florist’s bundle, and scattered a handful of petals all over the entryway. “Path of rose petals, check. Now you go upstairs and put on the satin sheets.”

“I really can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Terry groaned. But he drew his thumb down the center of his chest, which was the Lion gesture that meant “Obedience,” and up he went.

I helped Devon get an even distribution of the rose petals, which were reasonably tasty. Then he told the new kid that they were ordering pizza and not poking their noses out for the rest of the night.

“It’s Valentine’s Day. Give ‘em some privacy.”

Terry came down into the kitchen and rattled around, making good smells. I could feel his outer soul argue with itself: Would the often-grumpy Sasha go along with this piece of schlocky almost-very-married romance? We hoped so.

But six and then seven o’clock came, and no Sasha. His phone was refusing calls, which meant he was in the middle of something he considered more important than people. Terry put the dinner (orange chicken! At least I got some!) away and went down to mope in the tub, forgetting the new bubble bath on the dining room table.

At ten o’clock, he decided to just go to bed early. “At least I like satin sheets,” he said to me. “I shouldn’t be bummed. He’s a doctor, and a Lion. But . . . This was going to be It, Eureka. I was gonna say the scary words. Did you know we’ve never done that?” My eyes widened. Sure, I’d never actually heard them say it, but never? My heart hardened against Sasha. Unromantic fink.

Finally, at eleven o’clock, we heard the downstairs door and pinged Sasha’s shock as he froze, contemplating the rose petals inviting him upstairs. Then up he came, Terry trying to find something to do with his face that was better than “shit-eating grin” but failing.

Sasha came into the doorway and their eyes met. Terry lost the grin and looked and pinged a rare vulnerability. My heart was pounding.

Sasha didn’t take off his outer coat. Instead, he reached into the long, classy alpaca and took something out of his pocket.

“This little guy was born in the alley behind the morgue. Off-season. Hiroshi’s had him for a week, doing the worming thing and whatnot. Thought you might like him. Happy Valentine’s Day,” he said, almost as an afterthought.

He handed Terry a squirming gray tabby kitten, no more than five or six weeks old. He’d still be getting his kibble soaked in milk.

Terry’s face glowed. After a moment, “I think I’ll name this tiny lion Mercy. It’s traditional.” Then, “I love you, Sasha.” All of creation went silent. I was on my way over the blankets to meet the kitten, but I froze.

Sasha’s face went through a number of expressions. If he says he’s just the Grail Consort, I’ll piss on his shorts, I thought.

He walked over to Terry, looking down on him, face and ping still unreadable. Then he reached out and put his hand on the nape of Terry’s neck, and pulled his face up into the fiercest kiss I’d ever seen.

“I love you too, Terr’.” The kiss lengthened, until Mercy yipped, “Gotta pee!”

Oh Bast. I shot in there and scruffed him, dragging him down the stairs, wending my way among the rose petals. All I needed was to slip on the damn things and go ass over teakettle down the steps. Break the little bugger’s neck probably.

His bladder had given him just enough notice for him to comply with me muttering, “Hold it, kid!” as best I could until we made the litter pan in the study. I could hear the daddies coming down behind me–Where the frip was I taking the kitten?–I could ping their concern. They could thank me later.

And they did. We all stood around and watched Mercy scratch — “Don’t kick the litter outside of the box,” I warned–and Terry wondered aloud, “How did she know?”

“Eureka’s a genius. Natural mother. Had no worries at all,” Sasha bragged. He was lying–his outer soul had reached out to me with a plea of panic as soon as he’d entered the bedroom.

Mother. Feh. This was going to be a pain in the ass. I was only eleven months old myself–I knew what kittens were! But I was already making a list in my head of all the things Fred had done to me that I wouldn’t–and, yeah, a few that I would. Old bastard hadn’t been all bad, not by a long chalk.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” Terry said softly, arms around Sasha.

“Back at ya, hombre.” They kissed. I sighed. Mercy came up to me and headbutted me. With persistence. I realized that the poor little bastard was looking for a nipple. Oh, Bast.

“Come on, short stuff. Let’s show you around.” I headbutted Sasha, passing on Mercy’s persistence, until he paid attention. I led the way to the kitchen. En route, Mercy tried for my tail. Yep, literal pain in the ass.

But as Terry reheated Sasha’s dinner and Mercy gobbled down his moist kitten chow with his tail spiraling like a helicopter, I realized I wasn’t depressed anymore. I didn’t have time! I also started making a list of the things Devon taught the younger cubs. Busy, busy, busy.

Sasha scooped me up for one of his rare hugs. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” he whispered, and for a second I felt a stab of guilt, as I realized Mercy hadn’t entirely been meant for Terry. But only for a second. We were Th’nashi, and this was our now enlarged dai’yadi. We shared.

Besides, I was now senior cat! Who’da thunk it?

THE END