No Kitten Around Read online

  Had I known Kitten, Destroyer of Worlds meant to bring ruin through biological warfare, I would have dumped her evil ass on the wall and left without looking back. She used her litter box willingly enough, but it didn’t spare me from the horrors she excreted. The stench burned my eyes, peeled the paint off the walls, and filled the air with fumes so toxic I gagged—and fled to my bedroom on the far end of my small house.

  It didn’t help.

  Breathing out of my mouth only made it worse. To escape, I ultimately cracked open the window, stuck my head outside, and questioned every decision I’d ever made in my life. When my stomach settled enough to face the horrors my kitten had wrought in her litter box, I’d discovered the second truth of cats.

  Cats were assholes.

  In her effort to erase the evidence of her misdeed, she had managed to fling litter everywhere, leaving a ditch in her box, as though she too had feared what she’d produced. Pinching my nose closed, I grabbed the little scoop I’d purchased with the box and did the work for her.

  The mastermind behind the bio-terrorism attack waited by the bag of toys I’d purchased for her, standing on her hind paws and stretching in her desperation to reach the feathers dangling down. I retrieved the toy and shook it for her, somehow losing an entire hour to her and her wicked ways.

  She picked my shoes as a place to nap, ignoring the fifty dollar bed I’d purchased for her. Taking advantage of the peace and quiet, I valiantly attempted to resume my routine, which involved a top to bottom cleaning of my five-room home, a cheap purchase I’d made when there’d been a few residents still left in Gypsum Creek, a played out mine that’d never produced much of anything.

  I’d spent less than ten thousand dollars on the five acre property, which included a water mill, an abandoned barn, and the tiny farmhouse I’d restored enough to classify as habitable. If any of my co-workers discovered I’d become a carpenter, electrician, mason, and general handyman outside of office hours, I’d probably be laughed out of the building.

  Contract negotiators were supposed to be above manual labor.

  My first order of business was to check the water wheel, which generated the little electricity I used. Installing the solar panels on the mill’s roof had been a last-ditch effort to fill up a lot of hours, although to keep from frying myself to a crisp, I’d gotten a real electrician to link it into the grid so the utility company had to pay me for supplying them with power.

  Once satisfied everything was in working order, I went to work chopping wood. Without any neighbors to care if I pillaged their deadfall, I wasted time stashing logs in the decaying barn. Some I’d carve into misshapen blobs I’d pretend were supposed to look like something while the rest would heat my house in the winter months. At a rough estimate, I had enough wood to last me at least twenty years.

  Night fell by the time I returned, my suit filthy and my feet sore from wandering around the woods without my shoes. One day, I’d get around to buying clothes meant for working outdoors. One day.

  Kitten, Destroyer of Worlds howled at me the instant I opened the door, scampering across the floor to collide with my legs. She pawed at my pants and howled some more until I stooped and picked her up. In the time I’d been out, she’d left another present in her litter box, scattered more litter across my floor, and had somehow relocated one of my shoes halfway across the living room.

  “You are an asshole,” I informed her, carrying her to her dishes and doing my sacred duty as her slave to feed her and offer a bowl of milk for her enjoyment.

  This time, I was prepared for her bio-terrorism attack, breathing through my sleeve while she finished her business. I made a show of burying it so she would hopefully learn. I doubted she would. I wouldn’t put it past the two pound source of evil to know exactly what she did, doing it to spite me for some sin or another.

  She probably blamed me for being stranded on my car’s hood.

  That night, instead of venturing out to some bar for a random hookup, I slept in my own bed and woke to a mouthful of kitten fur. Once again questioning my decision to welcome a murderous kitten into my home, I did the last thing a sane man would under the circumstances.

  I texted my boss and asked if I could bring my rescue to work. If I had to suffer, so did my co-workers, and I suspected she was truly too cute to kill, which made her the ultimate vessel for some office revenge. When he replied with his approval, I smiled.

  As though somehow sensing she was about to expand her kingdom, Kitten, Destroyer of Worlds cooperated with my efforts to get her and her things packed into my car for the Monday morning commute. I regretted the hour and a half long drive, a choice I’d inflicted on myself for the sake of privacy. When I told people I lived near Cataract, they thought I was crazy for living so far away from work.

  It kept them from trying to get too close, since most people limited their adventures to a convenient twenty minutes.

  Gypsum Creek was near Cataract, if one drove out to the middle of nowhere where a pair of ruts as often as not served as roads. With an official residency of one, two if I counted my kitten, no one bothered with the place. As far as ghost towns went, it wasn’t even an interesting one, as it lacked a single rumor of ghosts to lure the curious.

  It had rocks, but not the good ones collectors favored.

  Ten minutes ahead of schedule, I lugged my kitten to the elevator along with her food, milk, a fresh bag of litter, and a new litter box tucked under one arm. I drew the attention of everyone in the lobby, which I ignored as always.

  “Reed?” I recognized the voice of one of my co-workers, a woman who wanted wealth above all else in her life. Dani disliked me because I refused to show favoritism and cherry pick the best of my new contracts for her, but she couldn’t get enough dirt on me to knock me from my boss’s good graces.

  “Morning, Dani.” I kept staring at the closed elevator door, glancing every now and then at the light marking its progress.

  “Is that a cat?”

  Did it make me evil if I contemplated giving my kitten to Dani for the morning so she might enjoy the tiny tabby at her worst? Probably. I’d initially thought of my boss as the best target, as he loved cats, but Dani would do—her office was close enough to his. “It is a cat of diminutive size, which I have been informed is traditionally called a kitten. This one is six to eight weeks old. I found her Saturday morning. Somehow, it seems I have ended up with this cat of diminutive size on a permanent basis.”

  “And why did you bring it to work?”

  “Because Mr. Palandry said I could.” If my boss’s approval didn’t pass muster with her, she could take it up with him.

  “What’s its name?”

  “Her name is Kitten, Destroyer of Worlds—or that’s what I told the vet, swearing I wouldn’t be taking a kitten home with me. It seems I was wrong.”

  Laughter broke out around me, and I was grateful when the elevator doors swished open, allowing me to escape their mirth for a grand total of ten seconds until everyone joined me. I managed to stab the button for the sixteenth floor before I ended up shunted in the corner, my kitten’s carrier resting between my feet.

  “You don’t seem like the kitten kind,” Dani said, wiggling her way through the crowd to stand beside me. “Can I hold her?”

  I chuckled. “I’ll even let you take her back to your office if you keep her out of trouble and make sure she’s fed.”

  If Dani wanted to play with the tiny tabby terror, she’d learn soon enough to fear the fluffy beast. Since Dani worked in an office with four other people as vindictive as her, I figured they could all suffer for a while.

  “Really? Thanks, Reed. We’ll take good care of her, promise.”

  “Just make sure she doesn’t get out of your office. Stack a couple of filing boxes in front of the door if you want to keep it open. That should keep her in—and make sure she doesn’t chew on any cables.”

  When we finally reached the sixteenth floor, I detoured to Dani’s workspace, set
ting my kitten on her desk. I gave instructions on how to feed her and left Dani with a few toys I expected would see a lot of use during long, dull phone conversations. Before the woman could question my willingness and generosity, I beat a hasty retreat to my office, left the door open, and watched the clock.

  Twenty minutes later, I heard the sweet sound of dismayed, horrified cries from down the hall—and I couldn’t smell a thing.

  When my phone rang, I smothered my smile and answered, “Reed Matthews.”

  “Reed,” my boss murmured in my ear, and I detected the faint hint of his laughter. “I think I need to give you a raise. I haven’t seen such a well-executed office revenge tactic in years, and that’s saying a lot. You even followed every rule. That said, that is the vilest thing I’ve ever smelled in my life.”

  “That’s funny, sir. I don’t smell anything at all.”

  “Well played, Reed. Well played.” My boss hung up on me.

  I returned the phone to its hook, allowing myself a soft chuckle. The knock at my door promised trouble, but instead of Dani, I got an angel. Three of them visited the office often, much to my dismay, and at least once a week, they popped in to visit me, checking in on me as part of my long-term rehabilitation from solitary confinement.

  Not only could angels see the secrets and desires of the heart, they could tell truth from lies, making them the vessels of justice—justice that only worked if the entire truth was told, something I had failed to do so long ago.

  My entire body tensed, and I identified the angel by the blue and gold striping on her wings. She called herself Luna, although it wasn’t her real name. Angels had biblical names, and Luna wasn’t one of them. When I had realized I wouldn’t be ditching my unwanted angelic visitors anytime soon, I’d made a point of reading up on them.

  “Luna,” I greeted, determined to be polite when I really wanted to ask her to leave me alone. Whenever I looked at her, I remembered, and I hated the memories almost as much as her presence in my life.

  She stepped into my office and closed the door behind her, a silent signal she meant to stay a while. And without fail, my schedule would be mysterious cleared for however long she needed. Without invitation, she sat down on one of the two chairs on the other side of my desk and made herself comfortable.

  At least I didn’t have to worry about seeing into her heart; beings without heads lacked eyes, which was the only silver lining in the storm cloud of her presence in my office.

  “You threw out your mail again.”

  Why did an angel always come to see me whenever I tossed out mail originating from Mississippi? If I wanted to make myself miserable dwelling on the past, I’d go buy a bottle of vodka and earn a hangover at the same time. “As I have at a minimum of once a month for the past three years of my life. Surprise, surprise.”

  “What if I told you that letter could change your life?”

  I paused long enough to do the math. “What if I told you we’ve had this conversation fifty-six times already? Having it again isn’t going to change the outcome.”

  “Yet here we are, having the conversation yet again. You would make this much easier on yourself if you would open the letter instead of throwing it away.”

  “If you’re gambling on human curiosity to get me to look at it, you’re going to be waiting a long time. The answer was no twice last month, three the month before. The answer is no this month. I have made my home here. I even adopted a kitten. She’s currently in Dani’s office making her life miserable.”

  “I have seen your… kitten.”

  “The vet assured me Kitten, Destroyer of Worlds is indeed a kitten. So she’s a little nasty when she uses the litter box, but that’s hardly her fault.”

  “A little?”

  I held my hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Did you really come all the way to the sixteenth floor to bother me about that letter? Is there something else you wanted to discuss?”

  “Your progress following your imprisonment, of course. Pesky things, those ethic laws dedicated to the protection of humans—even humans with angelic and demonic blood, such as yourself.”

  I clenched my teeth. Maybe if I hadn’t been estranged from my parents, I’d criticize them for having had me in the first place. If I hadn’t been born, well, I wouldn’t have had any worries over the Mississippi judiciary system’s reluctance to lose track of me. “I have a job. I go to work every day, except when I get sick, which is rare enough my boss suggests I should at least fake it so the other employees feel better about themselves. I get along with my co-workers. Despite popular belief, I have not snapped and gone on a murderous rampage. I’m a functional member of society.”

  I knew better to ask the question Luna expected. If I gave her a single opportunity, she’d spend the next two hours lecturing me about the differences between living and survival, and I’d done a whole lot of surviving without really living in her opinion.

  Fucking angels.

  “You make good money you hardly spend, you have no real friends in or outside of the office, and you spend your weekends whoring yourself out to the first woman looking for someone who can make her feel good for just a night. You have a surprising list of charity cases, including the nice couple who lives in the home you bought for them but refuse to visit unless necessary. I hardly consider that functional.”

  Damn it. I pinched the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes. “What do you want from me, Luna?”

  “Answers.”

  “If I give you answers, will you leave me the hell alone?”

  If angels had heads or faces, I suspected Luna would have glared at me for that one. “Negotiable.”

  Since we’d already left safe, civil waters, I flipped my middle finger at the angel. “This is my opinion of your answer.”

  The first time I’d heard an angel laugh, the sound had worked its way into my bones, easing the tension plaguing me from the day I’d been incarcerated for murder and had lost everything good in my life. Luna’s laughter still touched that deep, broken place within, but it didn’t soothe me for long. I remembered too much.

  Luna’s laughter sounded a lot like my mother’s. My mother had never liked me much to begin with, and my crimes had given her the excuse she needed to take a hike, and because my father’s heart longed only for her, he’d gone with her. My mother’s heart desired life with my father before I’d been born.

  I really didn’t want to remember the rest, although I had no doubt Luna saw right through my silence.

  While imperfect, my sight was a lot like theirs, courtesy of having two parents who were the children of angels and the humans they had loved. Neither were burdened with an angel’s gifts—if I could call my cursed sight a gift. Swallowing, I released my resentment on a sighed breath. “Ask your questions, but I make no promises I will answer.”

  I blamed my kitten. Instead of a flat-out no, as our conversations had gone so many times before, I’d said something a little closer to a yes.

  “Why did you lie to the judge, Reed? You could have avoided those years alone in the dark and quiet if you had simply told the truth.”

  I leaned back in my chair, shaking my head. Of course the angel would want to know that. “Why do you think?”

  “What I think is not the same as what you know. I could look.” Luna hesitated. “I’ve been asked to, but I won’t. Why did you stay silent? Why didn’t you tell the police the man you’d killed was raping a girl? Why didn’t you tell them his death was an accident? You would have walked out of court that day with little more than a slap on the wrist had you only spoken the truth.”

  Our conversation had changed again. Never before had the angel spoken of what had actually transpired. Before, she had only asked why I killed a man, implying she believed his death an accident. Someone had told my secret, a secret she’d probably already known by looking into my heart and seeing its dark scars forever staining my soul.

  I’d looked for the blight in the mirror, but my sight ne
ver worked on my own eyes.

  “Who told you?”

  I heard Luna rise, although I didn’t move, not even when she came up behind my chair and stretched around me so she could reach my keyboard. “Here. Look. This was from this morning. There are several dismayed judges and cops in Mississippi right now. They asked for me to speak with you. Upon seeing this, I agreed.”

  Since the angel wouldn’t leave me alone until I looked, I grunted, leaned forward, and opened my eyes. Luna had pulled up a news article, and I recognized the photograph of the woman in the picture, although she’d been much younger five years ago. In silence, I read her testimony, telling the world everything I hadn’t, including how I’d pulled her rapist off her and into the wall.

  Others had stepped forward, too, and the women formed a wall of solidarity breaking the years of silence, two of which I’d spent in prison for the man’s death.

  I clenched my teeth, inhaling through my nose and exhaling in a slow, steady rhythm. It didn’t help.

  I remembered waiting for the days to go by, the lights turned out whenever the guards came to my cell so I couldn’t influence them with my talent, with my cursed, hated sight. I remembered the footsteps, straining to hear even a single whisper to convince me I wasn’t actually alone in the dark.

  “Every last one of them gave their testimonies before a jury with an angel and a succubus in attendance, making truth of their words known. Why did you lie?”

  “I didn’t lie.”

  “But you didn’t speak the truth.”

  I shook my head. “Every word was true, confirmed by an angel. Every word, Luna. Written, recorded, and confirmed by an angel.”

  “If you had simply said you had killed in defense of another, you would have not suffered.”

  “And if I had, she would have suffered,” I spat. “There. Does that make you happy?”