Soot and Cassandra Read online

  Because wolf-boy was not human either, he had no trouble believing her. I could see his neck muscles tense. Next thing there’d be fur sprouting. He looked at the three of us, doubtfully. “What are you going to do about it? Is this why you lured me in here? To…”

  “Don’t be any more foolish than you have to be,” Cassandra snapped. “It’s not you we’re interested in, unless you try to open the way.”

  “It’s millions more of your kind that we don’t want,” I added.

  “Millions?” he echoed.

  “Are you a half-wolf or a half-parrot?” asked Cassandra, with signs of fraying patience. “There is a way from here to otherwhere. It’s closed. We keep it that way. There are other portals, but few as easy as this one. Periodically, they attempt to open it again. It can only be opened from this side, so they send emissaries to try. If you’re one, I’ll kill you,” said Cassandra, raising her power, her bound hair flying loose and forming a nimbus around her head.

  “Personally I’m in favor of letting them in again. They’re good eating,” said the troll. “What do you think, cat?”

  “No,” I shook my head. “Even transformed into a mouse, the last one had a fay taint to it.”

  Wolfie-boy was nothing if not determined. “But you are also magical creatures. Why do you want to keep magic out?” he asked.

  “Oh Boy!” said Cassandra, exasperation warring with her normal tolerance. “Fantasy writers have something to answer for. Listen, Wolf-boy. For starters they’re not all sweetness-and-light and just misunderstood. Back when the way was open, humans found out that the fay regard them as lower lifeforms. A few of them are nice to the lower lifeforms. And some of them are like the troll. They think of us as sport or dinner. Anyway, none of us are fey.”

  “I’m the indigenous inhabitant,” said Oogh. “You and this witch's kind—modern humans —calling them Homo sapiens is undue flattery, invaded later. Her kind from Africa, you lot from the ways.” I stared unblinkingly at him. “Cats have also been around for a while,” he admitted.

  I jumped up onto Cassandra’s lap. “And we find Homo sapiens make better staff than Neanderthals like him did. The fey and us reached a misunderstanding quite quickly.”

  “So Wolf-boy, back off and find another place to be. The troll and I have some business to discuss,” said Cassandra, stroking me.

  He went. Looking appropriately chastened. She can be scary at times.

  “It didn’t work,” said Cassandra, when he was out of earshot. “I feel that he is still going to be involved.”

  The Neander-troll grunted. “You could have told him that he was a half-thing too. Or what they plan to use her for.”

  “I could have,” said Cassandra, evenly. When she speaks in that tone I go and find shelter behind her fragile, precious glassware. She doesn’t like to be told her business, even by those who know better, like me. “But I wanted to keep him away from the priest. We don’t need any were-killings, if we can help it. So what are you going to do about it, troll?”

  “Nothing,” said Oogh. He was lying, but there was no point in arguing with him.

  So we too went on our way.

  Mine was not the same Cassandra’s. Cats do not walk with people. We just sometimes happen to be going the same way. My way this time happened to be to where Wolfie-boy was hanging out behind the oleanders. I had an idea Cassandra wouldn’t approve of. “You might try skulking up to Leanne’s window tonight,” I said quietly, as I walked past.

  Days and nights of watching had paid off. We knew who Pillman’s assistants were and a little eavesdropping had given us the night it was planned for.

  The Neander-troll was watching too, although he pretended that he wasn’t. I had spotted him popping out of a manhole in the church parking lot. He was better at the subterranean stuff than me. He knew the Victorian era sewers well… and therein lay our clue. We should have spotted it earlier. He wasn’t only using them to spy. He was following the conspirators. I’d seen the thirteen of them arrive in dribs and drabs. Saw the girl dropped off, protesting that she didn’t want to be there. Heard Mrs Syrus’s assurance that it would do her good. Saw her walk sulkily to the door, and turn to sneak off the moment that her mother’s Volvo had pulled away… but a hand came out and dragged her inside.

  Then I waited. They would surely leave soon for wherever they planned to hold the rite. It couldn’t be here: it was too far from the way. I waited. Cats wait well, which is odd because we’re also very impatient. We also hear small sounds, sounds that humans, dogs—and even mice—don’t realize that they are making. That’s how we can do that patient-appearing wait by a rat-hole.

  And right now the human rats weren’t making any sounds. I decided to risk triggering the alarms. I swayed down the catwalk-branch of an old oak, under the spotlight of a full moon, and leapt onto the scabby old roof-tiles next to the steeple. Then I balanced along the rotting stonework gable, and up through a narrow window. I slipped, silently as a shadow, into the darkness of the belfry, and then along cobwebbed, dusty beams to where I could look down into the church hall.

  It was empty.

  The long bar of moonlight from the tall leaded windows spilled across the pews and onto the aisle. There it was broken by a square of blackness.

  A hole.

  I growled to myself. Damned troll might have told me, even if he didn’t trust Cassandra. I’d better get back to her, fast. It must be the house itself they planned to attack, from underneath.

  Their timing was just perfect. I had to cross the High street. The snarl of traffic as the tired and impatient commuters heading back from the city on a winter evening was in full cry. Not easy for a cat, and I’d swear they had been be-spelled to be extra vicious. Oh, for that preservation order. But with a Jaguar spearing me on its headlights and missing my tail by a whisker, I made the security of the gutter. Only to almost jump back into the road again, because of the hell-hound. Well. Doberman. I dived under an illegally parked Lancia, too low for a Doberman. But there was no chain of cars. I was trapped. Time was running out. The dog snarled and barked. And a little yipping noise said the Doberman had called in the Daschhund sappers. Hiss!

  “Get lost, dog,” she said. There was a yelp.

  I emerged. Cassandra’s prescient powers may be spotty, but when they work they’re great. She scooped me up. Very undignified, but under the circumstances I was glad of it. “I was coming to fetch you, Soot. They’re coming at us from underneath.”

  “Why do I bother spending cold nights spying when you can see all this?” I asked grumpily. “You’d better hurry. They’re on their way already. I was coming to tell you.”

  “I didn’t foresee it,” she said. “I got a note. Addressed to you.”

  “Oh. Who from?” Maybe I had misjudged Oogh.

  “It didn’t say. Just ‘watch out for moles’.”

  “They must be in the old Victorian sewer-system,” I explained. “They have an entry into them from inside the church. I spotted Oogh popping out of a manhole.”

  “He must be right at home,” she said sardonically. “And love the bouquet. Well. I have my Wellies on. We’d better get down there.” She opened a manhole. Don’t be fooled. Cassandra might be slight, but she’s able to call on exceptional strength. We climbed down the iron staples. It was dark. Even for me.

  I really don’t like sewers. Besides the dark and the smell, there are few places to climb, and running is quite limited.

  “Can you see, Soot?” she asked.

  It was blacker than pitch down there. “No. You’ll have to make us a light.“

  She made a ball of Hekate’s glow in her left hand. The sewer was red-brick lined and, lucky us, had a channel and a walkway above it. It was obviously a main line, intended for storm-water too. I sniffed… not something that a cat wanted to do down here, but needs must when the Unseelie court drives. Cats too have keen noses. Oogh… and something more worrying were down that passage. “Left,” I said.

 
We followed the main line for a distance, and then a branch, and then there was… new construction. A roughly hewed tunnel, with some inadequate pit-props. We could hear the chanting, and there was no other way to approach it. The moles must have got very close to the house. The watchtower.

  Most people don’t know that inverse square law affects magic as much as it does radiation or magnetism. Whoever had raised this little pack of nasties had positioned them carefully. I could feel the force of the ley-lines from here. They’d break a window right into that power and open the way, if they could channel enough magic out of their ritual. Cassandra dowsed the glow in her hand. Put me down. We walked forward into the baleful, flickering red light.

  Cassandra began to raise her will. She didn’t look like a funny fake witch any more.

  There is a time for disguise.

  This was not that time.

  It was also not the time for two slatted garage roller doors—one before and one behind us—to suddenly clatter down. The slats were wooden. I didn’t need second sight to know that they’d be rowan, toxic to magic users and impervious to their spells. The walls were paneled with it too. The doors were clever carpentry, with a gap of an inch or so between planks, and no way out. Yet we could see the priest, complete with his strap-on horns, his hooded hench-idiots, and the victim tied to the altar. Well, to a slab of slate on a mound of earth.

  “Ah. We have the witch. If the first plan does not work we’ll use her,” said Father Clint.

  “Why not use her first?” asked one of the acolytes. Humans might be fooled by a mask. But I recognized the voice. I thought I’d smelled wolf-boy.

  “The witch may resist,” said the renegade priest. “The spilling of virgin fay blood is still the best method.”

  If I had not been so angry, I would have sniggered.

  I had removed some guardian silver from Leanne’s window, and, with her eager co-operation, Wolfie-boy had wrecked part of their sacrifice plan. I wondered how he would explain that to his master. Cats are not worried by silver and are far less affected by curses and cantrips than werewolves, half-fey or even humans. Wolfie-boy had paid his girlfriend a visit and, with her eager co-operation, had made sure that she was no longer their ideal sacrifice. I wondered—seeing as the were-wolf was, after all, one of the renegade priest's followers—how he was going to explain that. But right now I was too busy yowling.

  Besides letting them know that the first one to try and touch my witch was going to need stitches, I was telling the troll that I was here. He just might help.

  I was also scratching a few hieroglyphs on the floor. I’m a temple cat from Bubastis in Lower Egypt. I’ve been around a long time, and learned a few things. I wasn’t affected by rowan like Cassandra was. To me, it was just a cage. Bast still owed me some favors. Her original aspect had been the sweet warmth of the sun. She could strip the heat out of their brands. And in her hand was the sistrum - the rattle… I asked her for some shake, rattle and roll.

  I have to reluctantly admit that cats, especially angry ones, can be rather stupid. The flames of their sacred fires shrank…

  And then we all fell down. So did a few pieces of the roof. Causing an earthquake while you are underground is not clever. Everything rattled. Us too. Screaming and chaos reigned. But Father Clint was not going to be stopped. It was almost dark, but I saw him raise the long knife to plunge into Leanne… and Wolfie-boy was frantically wrestling with him over the white body of the fey-girl. He was still a young wolf—and his opponent was fighting with manic strength.

  Then, as the flames flared briefly, the altar stone itself lifted, and the drugged girl, the wolf and Father Clint rolled off… as a dark shape with long reaching fingers lurched up and free of the earth mound, to more screams of horror from Father Clint’s coven. The wolf wasn’t as strong as he would be, but Oogh, hidden under that sheet of stone, disguised with earth, was ancient and very strong indeed. Even the hysterical strength of the priest was no match for those throttling Neander-troll hands.

  In the meantime I had wriggled my way through a broken slat, into their makeshift temple, and had at last managed to scratch someone. Wolfie-boy was struggling toward the tunnel-mouth under the weight of his girlfriend, when someone started shooting.

  Ricochets could kill all of us except Wolfie-boy, unless they were using silver bullets.

  There is a time for courage. And a time to yowl: “Oogh. Get us out of here.”

  Oogh flung the stone slab at the rowan trap. Some of the wood had broken anyway in the earth-quake. He half dragged wolf-boy and his burden along with him, and through into the cage. And then he attacked the other side, breaking rowan slats… Cassandra was weak, but we got her out too, as one of the coven behind us found a flashlight.

  Another shot went off.

  Wolfie grunted, but we staggered on.

  They came behind us, frantic and eager to shoot and to kill. They had flashlights and guns. We dared not show any light.

  But Cassandra was rapidly recovering from the rowan.

  She turned, made a glow of Hekate’s fire on her hand.

  “Enough,” she hissed at the advancing minions. “Stop or you will die!”

  They were close, armed and ready to commit murder.

  They were human, and she was Cassandra, whom the God Apollo had cursed with true vision of the future, and yet to never be believed by men.

  They did not believe her foretelling.

  People are stupid like that.

  But never twice.

  The troll gave the wounded wolf-boy a hand with the girl. It was only lead, so he’d live. “It may cause some ructions, twelve of the respected local citizens disappearing,” said Cassandra regretfully, holding up the Hekate glow.

  “Thirteen,” said Wolf-boy. “They came down here in single file. I killed the last one in the line and stole his mask.”

  “I was unsure about you, Von Rachen,” said Cassandra.

  He hung his head. “You were right. I had come to open the way. There was a letter about it with the will… But I changed my mind when I found out what was involved. See, I went back to the troll. He explained and recruited me. I think he really is a Neanderthal, you know.”

  Oogh grinned, big blunt meat-eating teeth gleaming. “Of course. That’s what trolls were. We stopped the first Fey invasion. But it left us too weak to deal with Cro-Magnon man.”

  Cassandra’s no better than a cat at admitting she was wrong. But she swallowed her pride this time. “I owe you,” she said to Oogh.

  He shrugged. “The cat and I get on. And humans are still better than fay, for what is left of my kind. Although some of them are not too bad.” He wave a trollish arm, backwards.” We’ll need to come and permanently shut that way up. I can do the manual labor, but you’ll need to do the magic, Cassandra. “He gestured at Leanne, who was beginning to stir in the Were’s arms. “You’d better see she’s not a suitable sacrifice, soon-ish, wolf-boy.”

  The wolf-boy blushed. Looked at me. “Too late,” he said.

  Cassandra and Oogh looked at each other. Shook their heads in unison.

  “Cats,” they said together.

  We immortals still watch the way. And still no-one believes Cassandra’s foretelling. Oogh visits sometimes. Cassandra’s coffee is nearly as bad as his tea.

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  Soot and Cassandra

 

 

  Dave Freer, Soot and Cassandra

 

 

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