Jaguar Read online

  Jaguar

  Guessing Tales

  Kate Krake

  Copyright 2016

  Smashwords Edition

  The Jaguar Hunts Alone

  Contents

  1 – Cat's Eye View

  2 – Jones

  3 – Instincts

  4 – Dreams and Curses

  5 – Thel

  6 – Trance

  7 – Kin

  8 – Vele

  9 – Meeting

  10 – Together

  11 – First Date

  12 – Home Invasion

  13 – Beside Manner

  14 – Good As New

  15 – Nahual

  16 – Mark of the Shaman

  17 – Question and Answer

  18 – Friends and Enemies

  19 – Revelations

  20 – True Face

  21 – Convalescence

  22 – More Human

  23 – Into the Den

  24 – A New Weapon

  25 – Missing

  26 – Murder

  27 – The Test

  28 – Human

  29 – Jaguar

  Chapter 1

  Cat's Eye View

  It can never get properly dark in a city the size of Guessing, but that night it was darker than usual. Another power station must have gone out. It always happened during storm season. The wind was up, a welcome rest from the sticky heat of the day. I expected it to rain any minute. I was looking forward to a good downpour, so long as I was not still standing on that window ledge when it hit.

  I was in the part of town they call The Remnants. It was where all the trash that was too bad for Chinatown and not dead enough for hell went to stagnate. Most people didn't go there unless they had to. What kind of girl am I that I seemed to find myself there at least on a weekly basis? Just a lucky one I guess. Jones had messaged that afternoon saying she got a lead a den of dogs in an old club from some spell or other that she was working on. She said that they might have been connected to the recent disappearances of kids at the primary school. Ultimately, I didn't really care what they were connected too. They were dogs. Werewolves. And it was my job to kill them.

  Perched two floors above the street, I got a clear whiff of their sweat and greasy hair and I knew I had the right place. I couldn't see too well through the grimy window, but I could make out three large figures moving below. My tail twitched. I edged my feet along the ledge, trying to get a better view. The ledge was narrow and would have been hard to get a good footing even if there hadn't been a wind. My claws extended. It was nerves, but it helped my grip. I heard laughter, a deep, growling chuckle from the room below. Something told me I was not going to find whatever it was they were laughing at all that amusing.

  Some folk will say that you need silver to kill a werewolf. They were usually the same folk who might suggest that werewolves will only change on a full moon. I have never owned a real silver anything and I've killed werewolves all nights, and sometimes days, of the month. That's folklore for you. There had been something strange about the dogs in Guessing lately. Not only did there seem to be more of the things, they all seemed to be agitated, almost scared. I would have liked to have thought that it was me, that word of Fil: Mysterious Feline Warrior of the Night had them quivering in their paws. For the record, I don't actually going around referring to myself as "Mysterious Feline Warrior of the Night." Just Fil.

  I checked my knives, two in my boots, the Good Hunter sheathed at my side, a switch down each sleeve, and I took a deep breath, ready for the pounce.

  I crashed through the window and landed lightly on my feet in a litter of broken glass below. It was a long room, with a narrow stage that had probably once been used for strip shows, running down the middle. Three werewolves froze and I knew surprise was on my side. The biggest one rushed and I downed it in a flash, sliding the Hunter right through its hairy neck. Hot blood spluttered up the side of my leg as it fell. Damn. Another good pair of custom jeans ruined.

  The other two were circling me, their wary growls sounding like gravel in their throats. The second one sprang. I jumped but not quite fast enough to stop its dirty great claw clipping the tip of my tail. It stung like hell.

  There was a dark pile of something against the opposite wall and I wondered if it was a body. The dog, taking advantage of my momentary distraction, leaped and knocked me flat to the floor. My Hunter skidded along the dusty floorboards. So much for feline grace. I scrambled to my feet and edged to the wall to regroup, ready myself for the change.

  Sometimes it came easier than other times, but it always took a lot of concentration. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. When I opened them again, the colours in the room were dulled yet everything appeared infinitely more detailed. The second wolf faltered, just for a second as it noticed the difference in my eyes. It was enough time for me to spring. With the cat's eyes I could see every movement, every muscle twitch, every breath and react to motion almost before it was made. In no time I had its neck locked under my boot and my Hunter back in hand, running smoothly through its belly. Two down.

  There is never anything attractive about a werewolf, but this last brute was particularly horrid. It had a look in its small eyes like it knew that I was about to slice it through, but the slathering, grinning snarl across its stumpy snout suggested that it did not care. Or at least that it wasn't going down without a fight.

  "C'mon then puppy," I teased.

  It lunged with terrifying speed and I was pinned against the wall by its hulking hairy frame. I felt my skin pop as its teeth sank into my shoulder, my t-shirt offering about as much protection against the monster as a snowflake against a brushfire. I screamed in its ear, hoping the shrillness will put it off its game but the sound only seemed to drive its bloodlust. Time to fight dirty.

  I lifted my leg and crunched my boot deep into its nads. It tumbled backwards, yelping in that way that all dogs do. I threw my knife. It could have been a bad throw, or maybe the dog was just lucky. The knife hurtled across the room and stuck into the wall opposite. The wolf looked back and forth between me and the knife wobbling in the wall. It might have been almost comical if it wasn't for the whole fighting to the death thing we were doing. Blood from the mess it had made of my shoulder was still wet on its hairy chin. It turned and bolted out of the club.

  Something was wrong. Werewolves don't run unless it was from something much bigger than them, especially when they had just had a mouth full of tasty human flesh. Well, part human at least.

  I didn't want to know what I was going to find in that shadowy mass on the other side of the room. In some ways what I found was worse than the bodies I was expecting. A couple of school bags, a pile of clothes and shoes, boy's and girl's school uniforms, shredded, the little bodies once in them long since devoured.

  Outside, thunder rolled across the city and I made for home just as the rain started.

  Chapter 2

  Jones

  Home was near the river, a tiny flat on the top floor of a building that should probably have been condemned decades ago. So long as the breeze was going the other way and taking the toxic, briny stagnant stench of the river with it, it was a good spot to see the night lights of the city. That was about all it had going for it. I shared the place with Jones.

  Jones was slothing on the couch with a giant bag of corn chips, watching some trashy cop show on TV.

  "That looks wholesome," I said, referring to both the show and the food.

  "I was going to make nachos, but this is as far as I got."

  "You were right about the kids," I said, remembering the ghoulish sight of the tiny shredded uniforms. "There was school stuff in their den."

  She asked me if I was going to call the police or try to inform the p
arents. I told her that she could do what she liked.

  Jones was friends with a cop, Lori, who worked on these kind of things where most Guessing cops looked the other way, their vision obscured by cash, fear or simple disbelief. Sometimes all three. I liked Lori, and I worked with her sometimes when dogs were involved. I suspected she and Jones were a little more than just friends, but that had nothing to do with me.

  I didn't feel like getting involved with the bureaucracy that night. My part of the job was over and all I wanted to do then was wash that damn dog blood off me and sleep. I turned to leave Jones to her so called dinner, but she stopped me.

  "What happened to your shoulder?"

  "It's nothing," I lied. It was still killing me and I was starting to find it hard to move my arm.

  "It might be nothing in the you're-gonna-turn-into-a-werewolf kind of way," she said. "But it can still go septic."

  I might have been immune to the transformative powers of a werewolf bite, but infections could still have their nasty way with me so I let Jones play nurse and dress my shoulder.

  "OK, but just iodine or whatever. No magic."

  "No magic," she agreed.

  Jones and I had been friends for about five years. She was new in town, down on her luck as so many Guessing newcomers are, hoping to find a place for themselves in a city where everyone else's problems might be able to distract you from your own.

  I was on a prowl one night, following the scent of a dog. I tracked it to a pus box motel. It had a girl, Jones, pinned down on the bug ridden mattress. She was terrified, screaming and it seemed to be getting off on it. I tore it off her. It was young and easy to kill.

  "Shit. Thanks," she said. "I didn't know it was gonna turn like that."

  "Just be more careful."

  I started to leave, but she kept on talking, pulling herself off the bed and straightening her outfit. I looked her up and down. She was poured into clothes that were just begging for trouble. She had an unruly tumble of black hair piled loosely on top of her head and a look in her eye that suggested she was prepared to take on anything.

  "Usually I can tell," she said. "They've got that yellow look to their eye, before they turn"

  "I know."

  "I could've zapped it down if I was ready, but things got out of hand."

  "You're a witch?" I didn't really care and wasn't sure why I was making conversation with her.

  "Warlock," she said.

  "Well, whatever you're into, you'd best find a safer way of supplementing your income."

  "I'm not a whore, if that's what you mean." She looked hurt and I was surprised to find I cared.

  She told me her deal of luring a guy in, posing as a prostitute, putting the magic on him, ripping off his wallet and then running. When the guy came to hours later he would remember a whore, see that he had lost a lot of money and put it all together in his magic befuddled mind. She thought it was a thing of beauty, and said any guy low enough to hire a prostitute deserved to get ripped off.

  I started to like Jones as she was telling me this story, not for her wiles or moral stance on prostitution, but for the fact that she had obviously noticed that I was half cat, and it did not bother her in the slightest.

  A bit later, she started working at Thel's, a magic shop posing as a green grocers in the Downtown. Beneath all the lettuces and melons, Thel sold all sorts of occult bits and pieces—all cheap neon signs and crystal balls promising fortunes for anyone who would pay enough for a hazy glimpse into a possible future. That was another front, of a kind. Behind that, there was something darker, some real power going on underneath. Something I really did not want to get involved with. For Jones, reading fortunes and selling charms offered a different type of paid chicanery but one that was a lot less likely to get her raped and ripped apart by a werewolf.

  "You staying in for the rest of the night, or you gonna go find the one that got away?" Jones asked, returning to her bag of chips. I did not want to tell her that my arm was still burning after she'd fixed it up. Knowing that dog had got away was killing me too, but the arm was winning.

  "Just going to turn in," I said. "'Night."

  Call it instinct, but there were things that just weren't right. The dogs were rattled and running away. Something was stirring and every corner of Guessing seemed to be on edge. Could Jones feel it too or was it just me being skittish and paranoid, too long in the job maybe? Whatever had the city jittering would have to wait until morning. I curled into bed and listened to the summer storm rattling the city.

  Chapter 3

  Instincts

  The next morning, Jones had gone into work early and I was glad to have the place to myself. I fried up a steak for breakfast, something I didn't tend to do when Jones was home thanks to her loudly voiced moral vegetarianism. I'd tried to explain to her that this new, cheap meat they were stocking the shelves with probably hadn't even seen a real animal let alone ever been one, but a girl had to have her principles. A vicious cycle of fractured and frenzied dreams the night before had left me missing sleep and edgy. I was looking forward to spending the day napping on the sofa.

  Come dark, I headed back into the streets. I was hoping to find that dog that got away, but any fight would have done. My shoulder was still raw, but I was not about to let it keep me from a hunt.

  It was another sticky night and I sweltered in a heavy raincoat. The storms were still lingering and the threat of rain remained, but the coat was more to keep my tail out of sight than to protect from the weather. Maybe it was to keep a low profile. Maybe it was to keep from being stared at, whispered about – look at the freaky girl with a cat's tail! Of all the monstrous shit going on under the night in Guessing, I was sure I was the least of it. Not everyone thought that way though.

  I was walking, head down, eyes forward, through the neon strips of Downtown, headed to The Remnants when I heard a woman scream. Instinctively I sniffed the air for dogs, but in Guessing not all the nasties are monsters. A young guy, maybe nineteen was bolting towards me. He wore a black tracksuit and a baseball cap, a handbag was tucked tightly under his arm. A middle-aged woman screeched for someone to stop him. People in the street stepped aside and let him go. As he passed me, I pounced, landing heavily on his back and knocking the wind out of him. My knee was pressed between his shoulder blades and my hand in an iron grip on the back of his neck, pushing his face into the gum and slag spotted concrete. My claws punctured his skin just enough to sting without any real damage.

  "Doesn't go with your outfit," I said, pulling the woman's bag from his arm.

  He thrashed about, hurling profanities at me. I let him up and he ran without looking back. The woman was standing behind me. I held the bag out towards her and waited for gratitude. But she was just staring at me, horrified. In the scuffle, my coat had ridden up above my tail. Clearly, it was too much for some folk to cope with. Snatching the bag from my clawed hand, she left without so much of a thank you.

  "You're welcome," I yelled after her.

  There were hardly any people out in The Remnants after dark, with good reason. The old club was empty, but I picked up on a scent of dog in the street. I followed it to the wharves at the end of the block. It was quiet, only the sound of a few boats and ferries out on the harbour and the water lapping against the pylons. I tracked the smell through a labyrinth of shipping containers.

  What is it about wharves and shipping yards that always seem to attract the nastiest nasties? Is it a sailor thing? Whatever it was, I'd spent so many nights tracking bad things down to the dark water's edge it was long past the point of cliché but the bad guys didn't seem to care.

  Footsteps. I stopped. No one or nothing was about as far as I could see, although in this maze it was impossible to tell. I moved on and heard nothing else.

  The wolf scent took me to a dilapidated crate, well away from the others. I swung open the door. A den alright. It smelled like blood and piss. Broken whiskey bottles and old bones that I unrealistically hop
ed were not human, littered the floor. There was an old yellow bit of foam that might have served as a bed. The walls were smeared with what looked like shit. Classic werewolf chic. The dog was not home.

  I prowled along the wharf. The footsteps were gone, but something lingered. A feeling. I knew I was being watched. Stalking was not altogether unnatural for werewolves, but they usually opted for the fast, graceless onslaught. This was a new thing entirely.

  The wind picked up and I caught a fleeting whiff. It was not human, but not dog either. An organic smell, like rich earth, almost sweet. I shifted into my cat's eyes and peered into the darkness. Nothing moved. I was not usually so edgy but something about that scene was all kinds of wrong and I wanted to get away from there fast. Trust your instincts. It's the first step of staying alive, especially in a place like Guessing. Without a kill, I headed for home knowing I was followed.

  Chapter 4

  Dreams and Curses

  I had a recurring dream that may have also been a memory and it was only after I woke that I thought of it as a nightmare.

  I am with my mother and she is telling me a story. We are beside a lake and I am throwing stones into the water, watching the glass-like surface erupt before settling back into calm rings, and then smoothing again. I throw another stone. I am about five years old. My mother wears a heavy amulet around her neck, a piece of twisted grey rock, carved and polished and inset with a small shining black circle. I put my hand up to touch it and it feels cold.

  "In the darkest part of the night," she says. "The jaguars called the names of chosen warriors. The warriors would walk into the jungle to meet the jaguar and then beast and man became one, fusing flesh with flesh. Only the deadliest of fighters were chosen, and in their jaguar form, none could survive them.

  "One night, a jaguar chose a man and then she refused to let him return. The man lived the rest of his days in the form of both. He was the mightiest of warriors and he came to be revered as a god."