The Catswold Portal

He passed the house of the Great Dane without disturbing the beast. In the shadows he changed to cat again, his broad stripes sharply defined by the street light. He leaped, and flowed up the thick vine onto the apartment house roof.

He stared across six feet of space to the next apartment building, to the three dormers with their open windows. Inside, the rooms were dark. He leaped the six-foot span to the center dormer, and clung there on the ledge and pressed against a dusty-smelling screen, looking in.

The couple slept in an iron-footed, rumpled bed. The Catswold girl’s pale hair spilled across the prince’s shoulder. She was long, supple. The sheet clung to her, thrown back so McCabe could see that she slept raw. He admired the curves of her arm and shoulder and, beneath the sheet, the curve of her breast. He wanted to touch her, wanted to slash the screen and go in. She slept deeply, innocent of him. He wanted to wake her, touch her; he wanted to say the changing spell for her and slip away with her across the rooftops, to be with her in the secret night.

Melissa, watching McCabe in the mirror, knew his feelings as if they were her own. Gripped by the desire he felt, her own passions awoke in a way that shocked her.

McCabe watched Timorell a long time. He would have stayed near her all night, but suddenly in the silence he heard the brush of a hand across a window screen. He leaped from the dormer across the chasm onto the neighboring roof, then turned to look back.

The screen of the next window was pushed out. A child looked out. For one chilling moment McCabe saw her eyes. For one moment he stared into deep, complete evil.

The child drew back and closed the screen. McCabe sped across the roof and down the vine. He hit the sidewalk as the little girl came out the front door carrying a heavy lamp. Heart pounding, he pressed into the shadows. He changed to man as young Siddonie reached him, holding the lamp like a club.

He grabbed her arm, and threw the lamp to the street. It shattered. He held her wrists as she kicked and bit him, and he shook her until she became still.

“You were going to injure the cat—kill it.”

“Catswold,” she hissed. “Get away from me! Leave the girl alone!”

“What do you fear?” McCabe looked her over, laughing. “That I will despoil your brother’s wife?” He saw the child blanch. “Why have you come up from the Netherworld?”

“What business is it of yours?”

“Tell me.” He twisted her arm, enjoying her pain, caring nothing that she was a child; she was evil, coldly evil. “Tell me what happened in Xendenton. Tell me, or I will kill you.”

“You dare not kill me.”

“The laws say only that I would endanger my immortal soul; that is my choice. Gladly would I do so to see you die, Princess!”

“If you know so much, why do you ask questions?”

He twisted her arm harder. “Who is the Catswold woman?”

“A traitor,” she hissed. “A bitch—a traitor. And she will pay for her deeds—you all will.”

“You are curiously indignant, for one whose kin has murdered thousands of Catswold.” McCabe looked closely at her. “You are like a hard, sinewy little bat, Princess. Brittle and blood-hungry.”

The child stared at McCabe, expressionless as glass, then touched her tongue to her lips with a dark, twisted laugh.

“Go back in the house, little girl. But know this: if you harm the Catswold woman in any way, you will know pain by my claws as you have never imagined pain.” McCabe grasped her hair for a moment, hard. “Have you ever seen the guts torn out of a mouse so the creature, still alive, stares at its own offal, frozen with terror?”

She blanched, did not move. McCabe stared at her until she turned at last and went into the house, her back straight and ungiving.

The scene vanished, the mirror went smoky. Melissa stared, confused, into the blackness around her.

“You are in the cellars of Affandar Palace,” the Harpy said softly.

Melissa brought a spell-light and reached to touch the bars, but she was still adrift between the two worlds. She was surprised to see the rebel prisoners crowded around her, silent, watching her. She was clutching the mirror so hard that when she dropped it in her pocket its mark was struck deep into her palm. When the Harpy reached through the bars toward the pocket, she backed away. She had started to speak when footsteps scuffed on the stair and she doused her spell-light.

A spell-light blazed above them, moving down the stair. The rebels fled. Halek grabbed Melissa and pulled her to a stack of barrels and down behind them.

Chapter 17

The spell-light came quickly down the stair striking across barrels and pillars and lighting King Efil’s face. His voice struck sharp through the silence. “Melissa? Surely you are here. Melissa, guards are posted everywhere, but I can get you out. Come quickly.”