Familiar Spirit

“No,” Sarah said hoarsely as disgust and self-hatred rose up in her. She opened her numbed fingers, letting the jade figure drop away from her. Pleasure was just another trap, far more dangerous than pain. But she could still think, she could still make decisions, no matter what her flesh wanted. She turned her self-loathing instead against Jade. It was Jade she hated, and always had. Jade was her enemy. She made the decision to save herself.

“Give me the hammer,” she said to Valerie. “I won’t be his slave.”

A low, eerie howl close by froze them both.

“The cat,” said Valerie. “It’s him.” She put the hammer in Sarah’s hand and strode towards the front door.

“No,” said Sarah, suddenly alarmed. “Valerie, don’t!”

But she was too late. Valerie had the front door open, and something came flying in. Something moving so fast it was scarcely more than a blur, aimed straight at Valerie’s head.

Valerie screamed. Lines of blood streaked her face. A black cat hit the ground, recovered itself immediately, and again launched itself at Valerie, this time trying to claw its way up her leg.

“Kill it! Get it off me!” Valerie shrieked. She kicked her legs wildly, trying to dislodge the animal, and began to bash at it with her heavy purse.

Sarah hesitated. There was something wrong here, she thought. Was it only another distraction, to keep them from destroying the figure? But if the cat was Jade’s other form, then here was the chance they had hoped for.

Wishing for gloves or a blanket to protect herself but aware that she had no time to get anything, Sarah dropped the hammer and jammed the stone figure into a pocket of her jeans and stepped forward. She grabbed hold of the animal by the scruff of its neck and the bony ridge of its back and, although it twisted and writhed in her grasp, it could not reach her, and she was able to dislodge it from Valerie’s thigh.

“Get me something,” Sarah said. “A blanket or something—I don’t know how long I can hold it.”

The cat was possessed, howling again and writhing madly.

Valerie dug into her purse. The blood flowed freely down her face, staining her blouse with bright red flowers. She looked up, tossing her head back in an impatient movement to clear both blood and hair from her eyes. She withdrew a curved, shining knife from her purse. The sight of it made Sarah’s stomach lurch and she almost thought she remembered the knife from some other time, or perhaps a dream. A dream of blood and carnage. Holding the knife seemed to calm Valerie. She smiled, and the mad, tense face relaxed beneath the stripes of blood.

“This time he won’t get away,” Valerie said.

Sarah looked down at the cat, realizing that it had stopped struggling and was silent. When she looked down at it, it twisted its head within her grasp to look up at her, and Sarah saw that familiar golden stare again.

As those golden eyes burned into hers, she felt her nostrils stop up, her mouth become sealed, and she realized that she had stopped breathing. She couldn’t remember how to breathe.

“Don’t look at it; you idiot,” Valerie said harshly.

With a gasp, Sarah broke away.

“I thought you knew so much,” Valerie said contemptuously. “I thought you were being so careful. He’s got you, doesn’t he? You’d never have been able to break away or smash the statue if I hadn’t come over. You’d be helpless by yourself. You still have the stone?”

Sarah nodded, staring at Valerie.

With the hand not holding the knife, Valerie caught hold of the cat’s throat. The tips of her fingers met the tips of Sarah’s through the smooth fur. She was smiling.

“Shall we make it watch while we smash the stone?” Valerie asked, her voice heavily playful. “Teach it about impending doom. Let Jade know we’ve won—that he’s trapped inside one very scrawny cat until we decide to end all his lives with this very sharp blade.”

The cat lay as still in their shared grasp as if already dead. Sarah longed to look at it, to look at its eyes and see if Jade was still there, but she controlled herself. That would be foolish. He could still destroy her, if she let him. But all the same, she could not shake the disturbing thought that Jade might have fled this limp body for a safer one.

“Do you want to hold him while I kill him?” Valerie asked. “Or do you want me to do it all? A little more blood won’t make any difference to my clothes.”

Sarah did not like the idea of holding the cat while it was slaughtered, but she did not relinquish her grasp. “Valerie,” she said urgently. “We need to think this through. There’s something wrong here. Why did he come to us? He must have known what we were planning, so why did he come running straight into a trap? We should wait—”

“You wait,” said Valerie. The hand that had encircled the cat’s neck pulled away; the hand that held the knife swung in close. The sharp blade bit into the furred throat and there was a sudden, thick rush of blood—bright and oddly beautiful against the sleek blackness.