7. Henley
HENLEY
I was going to end up dying because I’d gotten smothered in murder kitty fur. “Blade, I have to breathe. He’s a park ranger. He’s here to help.”
I really hoped he was going to help.
If not, I was going to have to find a place to bury him after my murder kitty finished handling the situation.
Wait.
“You’re a person, Blade?” Murder kitty was a shifter? Like the raccoons I’d met at the flea market? Would he be as flakey as they’d been? As excitable as the squirrels near that one park? “I have so many questions, but you’re going to have to get off me.”
No.
He was not.
The damned cat sat on me and growled at the ranger who was smart and had stopped reaching for his phone. From what I could see, it wasn’t on the same side of his body as his gun, but I wasn’t sure Blade could process things in that much detail.
“I’m lying on my backpack, Blade. I’m uncomfortable.” That didn’t help either but it seemed to make the ranger want to laugh. “He’s never going to take me seriously if you keep this up.”
Blade wasn’t worried about that either.
“Um, if I’m reading the situation right, he’s not going to move while he thinks his…friend…is in danger.” The ranger was finding this entirely too funny for my taste. “No one is ever going to believe this.”
“I’m not worried about other people, just my new friend here.” He wouldn’t eat the ranger, would he? Killing him would be self-defense but what would eating fall under? “He’s very smart but I’m not sure how much of the situation he’s comprehending.”
Even the best button cats didn’t understand everything…it was just a matter of perception, not their intelligence.
Petting Blade’s sides since that was what I could reach, I ignored the nearly giggling ranger. “I’m safe. Rangers don’t hurt humans. They just get mad at us for doing stupid things.”
Ugh.
He knew that word.
The way Blade turned his head and looked at me like I was an idiot had the ranger nearly shaking with laughter. “That’s rude. You can’t hold one problem over me forever. Partners just don’t do that. It’s not nice.”
“Oh, gods above. You.” Coughing through his laugher, the ranger shook his head. “That’s what happened. You called him your partner.”
Most of the nonhuman people I’d met were generally very polite but whatever he was seemed to not follow the everyone has manners rule.
“I wanted him to understand that I wasn’t going to leave him on his own anymore. If I’m his partner, he can’t kill me in my sleep and eat me. Duh.” Great. Now I sounded like I was a kid again. “He seemed to agree with me because he stopped looking at me like I was lunch.”
That had Blade turning to me again. “It was understandable. I wasn’t offended.”
“You just. He.” Shaking his head, the ranger finally took a deep breath and got his odd sense of humor under control. “Okay. We can figure this out so no one gets hurt.”
Besides my ribs.
Ugh.
“Blade.” I gave up being sweet to the pain in the ass and tried to push him off me but all it got me was strained muscles and a huff from my murder kitty. “This is not dignified.”
“He’s not going to move until he thinks you’re not in danger any longer.” The ranger paused and nodded as Blade growled but seemed to be less angry. “That’s right. You know that much at least. You’re going to keep your mate safe.”
Mate?
No. One weird problem at a time.
“Why does he think I’m not safe?” Yes. That was a much better question. “What did you threaten him with?”
I knew more about the Bigfoot community than I did whatever he was.
They were incredibly chatty and could explain things much easier than the ranger seemed to be able to.
Hell, the raccoons that’d been high as kites made more sense.
“Nothing but it might not sound that way to him.” The ranger let out a breath slowly and seemed to be doing his best not to project anything that would upset Blade.
“When he was originally…changed, they hypothesized he might not know who he was any longer and would just be operating like a regular animal.”
Well, that explained his dietary habits.
“He’s very smart, though.” He hadn’t killed me and he’d gotten me out of that stupid tree. “We just need to find the right explanation.”
It would be like finding the right combination of buttons.
“He’s been feral for longer than you’ve been alive.” The ranger’s arms came down but were still held out from his body. “You are the only thing that’s affected him in seventy years. He understands keeping you safe. Other than that, we can only guess.”
No.
I was not going to ask any questions.
It wasn’t the time to look stupid.
“He understood words like backpack, so he’s not just operating on pure instinct.” That wouldn’t explain all his behavior. “We just need to use simple ideas.”
The deputy’s sigh said what he thought of my plan or just the situation in general, but Blade didn’t mind the drama, so I ignored it. “Blade, don’t you want to help me?”
He needed to be my focus because breathing was important and so was his future as a person.
“I know this is confusing but you can help me by letting the deputy call his friends.” I wasn’t even going to test Blade’s patience with the word coven. “Being able to talk to me would be nice, wouldn’t it?”
Hmm.
“But you don’t have to if you don’t want to.” Now I had to ignore the deputy’s groan, but I wasn’t going to force Blade to do anything he didn’t want to. It might not actually be safe. “You’re my partner, remember. That’s what’s important.”
Something must’ve gotten through to my stubborn murder kitty because he shifted so most of his weight was beside me and just the front of his body was resting on mine.
He still looked ready to spring at the deputy if he so much as wiggled wrong, but I was hoping it wasn’t going to come down to that.
“That’s not the only important issue here. He’s been lost from us for nearly seventy years and this is the closest we’ve ever come to finding him.” The deputy’s drama was ridiculous considering the situation.
“Then a bit longer isn’t going to hurt anything.” That seemed obvious and he couldn’t push back against it, so he just huffed. “That’s what I thought.”
“This is probably the most insane thing I’ve delt with at work and you’re not taking it seriously enough.” If it weren’t for the whole murder kitty issue, the deputy would’ve definitely been pacing and throwing up his arms.
“Then you haven’t traveled enough.” The US was filled with a lot crazier things than a murder kitty and a monster hunter. I knew that because I’d hung out with several over coffee. “I’ve met magic people much stranger than either of us.”
And that was just the people I knew about…I had a long list of weird things that I was still trying to figure out like that wolf thing that might not have been a wolf when I was searching for Mothman and that weird magic guy who kept talking about meeting serial killers.
Some people were just strange.
Like Mothman.
Someone claiming to be him was on the Monster Network, but finding him in person hadn’t worked at all.
I was actually starting to wonder if he was human and faking it too, but I didn’t have anything concrete to go on with that theory.
“How?”
Ignoring the ranger’s question, I focused on Blade. “If you’re actually supposed to have a human side too, he might be helpful. From my research, his timeline sounds plausible. You’re a pretty murder kitty, but I bet you’d be a handsome human.”
The deputy needed to get his sound effects under control.
Besides, Blade couldn’t be any uglier as a human.
“You could talk to me and could help me easier if you had hands.” Petting his back, I smiled when he shifted low enough on my legs that I could actually sit up. That was progress. “Good boy, Blade.”
I could breathe, but my back was never going to recover.
Taking off my pack, I set it beside us and kept running my hands over him as I chatted.
“We could go to dinner and you could tell me what you wanted to eat. You’d probably like cooked food again.
You’d probably like being able to talk to me or at least to be able to tell me to shut up once in a while. ”
“I can guarantee he’ll never be that rude to you.” The deputy was confident about random things, so I just ignored him.
“It sounds like you’ve been trapped for a long time.” Was he understanding enough of our conversation? Pushing his head into my hand and rolling his eyes at the deputy wasn’t giving me enough information. “We’re just going to take this one step at a time and we’ll figure it out.”
Somehow.
I might just need to do some research on the paranormal internet servers I’d found. Pretending to be a Bigfoot on the monster one was rude, but they were all nice, and whoever Mothman was, they sold jewelry online that my mother would love.
If they basically had an Etsy store, they couldn’t be all bad.
Oh, I needed to remember to message him back.
“What if we—”
Panicked.
A dart suddenly appeared in Blade’s side when he turned to grumble about my idea, and as his eyes went wide, I panicked.
My own instincts had me reaching in the front pocket of my backpack for the small little balls the weird magic guy had given me, and I threw a handful of the tiny marbles before I’d even thought about it.
Oops.
Yep, basically flashbangs.
Being nice to people paid off, and at some point, I was going to remind the deputy of that fact.
After he regained consciousness.
So not quite a magical flashbang?
The flash of light and magical something that was designed to knock out anything smaller than a dinosaur had been supposed to stay focused on whatever I considered a threat, and I was glad to see I hadn’t accidentally killed myself.
Blade.
One of us must’ve somehow knocked the dart out, but even though he didn’t seem to have gotten a full dose, he wobbled unsteadily as he rose. “Good boy. We’re going to stay relaxed and get the hell out of here.”
Smartest murder kitty ever, no matter what else he was.
He hadn’t eaten me or blamed me for the new chaos even though he was growling and grumbling and clearly not feeling like himself.
“Let’s go.” And keep our fingers crossed that we didn’t run into anyone else who decided to be helpful. “He’ll be fine. I’m not worried about being arrested because he’ll never be able to explain this to real cops.”
As I stood up, I rested my hand on his head and slipped my bag on backward so I could reach anything else I needed to keep Blade safe. “Let’s go this way.”
It was time to get off the trail.
The sand-grass problem was now mixed with bushes that seemed designed to try to hold people hostage, but it was technically very pretty and part of me wished I could’ve shown Blade the small lake we were near.
He’d have liked that. Well. He’d have liked it if he was processing everything at full speed instead of being slightly drugged.
He was doing great, though, and needed an even bigger reward later than I’d already been planning.
“We’re doing wonderful.” Weaving our way through the unmaintained part of the park with Blade barely hanging on made everything take twice as long, but luckily for us, we weren’t far from my truck and managed to get in before anyone else noticed us.
Or before the deputy woke up.
Or before Blade passed out.
He climbed in before we got to that point, and thankfully moved to stretch out on the small bench seat in the back without arguing with me. I wasn’t sure how much he understood but he was almost out as I started the truck.
“We’re safe, kitty. You did such a good job keeping me safe.” Rambling about being safe in a quiet voice, I kept it up until we made it to the front of the park and my murder kitty had passed out or had fallen asleep. “Yes. We’re safe and I’m going to figure out what we’re doing next.”
It wasn’t the most stressful situation I’d found myself in lately, but it was the most confusing and I didn’t have anyone else to ask their opinion on.
My immediate family was out of the question.
The local nonhuman population seemed to have been the ones to do this to Blade, and they were impulsive at the very least.
“Research. Yes. I’m going to get us back to the trailer and then I’ll do more research.” At the very least I had a new starting point for where Blade had come from. “Newspaper archives and that server. I’ll start there and we’ll just stay in the trailer until I figure out what we’re doing next.”
Being at the back of the RV park should help because I was tucked in the trees and couldn’t be seen from the main road.
I had food for two weeks, at the very least. I’d paid for the next week up front.
We weren’t far from the bathroom. Yes. We were going to be fine until I could figure out what to do with my unconscious murder kitty who might be a shifter and who could possibly be my mate and who was probably going to be even more pissed at magic users after this.
I was never going to be able to say the word coven without him losing his mind.