Fable
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That same evening, with a storm rolling in over the ridge, the cat appears from nowhere.
One moment I’m standing in Orion’s living room, wrapped in an alpaca blanket that costs more than my rent, processing the fact that wolves apparently howl outside his windows on a regular basis.
The next moment, there’s a streak of orange fur launching itself at my legs, and I’m being climbed, apparently mistaken for a tree, by the angriest cat I’ve ever encountered.
“What the…”
Claws dig into my sweatpants, then my sweater, then my shoulder as the creature scales me with the single-minded determination of a mountaineer on a deadline. He’s enormous, not fat, just big, with copper-penny eyes and fur the color of a sunset filtered through smog.
He reaches my neck and settles there, a living scarf, rumbling with what might be a purr or might be a threat.
“Oh my god,” I whisper, freezing in place. “Oh my god, you’re perfect.”
Orion is staring at us, and I can’t parse the look on his face. It might be betrayal. It might be resignation. It’s definitely something.
“That’s Mario,” he says.
“Mario,” I repeat, reaching up carefully to scratch behind an orange ear. The rumbling intensifies. “Hi, Mario. I love you. You’re the best thing that’s happened to me all week.”
“I rescued him,” Orion continues, and now I can definitely hear betrayal in his voice. “From a storm drain. He was dying. I nursed him back to health with an eyedropper. Weeks of my life. Weeks of bottle-feeding and veterinary bills and…”
Mario turns his head, looks directly at Orion, and yowls.
It’s not a meow. It’s not a cry for attention. It’s a full-throated sound of pure theatrical betrayal, like Orion has personally wronged him in ways too numerous to list.
“…and that’s the thanks I get,” Orion finishes flatly.
“He doesn’t like you?”
“He tolerates my presence.” The words are dry, measured. “That’s his thank-you. That’s all I get.”
I look at the cat on my shoulder. The cat looks back at me with copper-penny eyes that seem to hold a low opinion of the entire species of human.
“You hate him?” I ask Mario.
He yowls again, directly at Orion.
“I think that’s a yes.”
“He’s dramatic.” Orion crosses his arms, and I swear he’s sulking. Actually sulking, a very tall man personally betrayed by a cat half the size of his head. “He follows me around the house screaming at me and then acts offended when I try to pet him.”
“Maybe he has his reasons.”
“His reasons are that I saved his life and he’s ungrateful.”
“Or maybe you smell wrong.”
Orion pauses. “What?”
“Cats are smell-oriented. Maybe you smell like something he doesn’t like. Dogs, or, I don’t know, other animals.”
Emotion crosses his face. There and gone, too fast to read.
“I don’t have any other animals.”
“Then maybe you just have bad vibes.”
“I have excellent vibes.”
“Says the man whose own cat hates him.”
Mario chooses this moment to knead his claws into my shoulder in a way that’s definitely painful but also definitely affectionate, and I decide I would die for him instantly. No questions asked.
“You’re my favorite,” I tell him. “Don’t let him hear, but you’re my favorite thing in this entire murder cabin.”
“It’s not a murder cabin.”
“Says the serial killer.”
“You’re holding my cat.”
“Your cat chose me. There’s a difference.”
Orion makes a sound that’s half sigh, half growl, and I feel Mario tense on my shoulder, just for a second, before settling back into his furry scarf configuration.
Interesting. He reacted to that sound. Like he recognized it. Like he didn’t like it.
One more entry for the collection. I’m going to need multiple folders at this point.
The storm starts around seven-thirty, rolling in from the mountain like something angry.
I’m still on the couch, Mario now migrated from my shoulder to my lap and curled into an orange circle of feline superiority, when the first crack of thunder shakes the windows.
Rain follows almost immediately, not gradual but sudden, sheets of water hammering against the glass like they’re trying to get in.
“That’s… a lot of weather,” I observe.
“October storms.” Orion is in the kitchen, doing something with candles that suggests he was expecting this. “They come in fast up here. Usually blow through in a few hours.”
“Usually?”
“Sometimes they stick around.”
The lights flicker.
I grip the blanket tighter, and Mario makes a small sound of complaint at the disturbance.
“Please tell me you have a generator.”
“I have a generator.”
“That you know how to use?”
“That I know how to use.”
The lights flicker again, and then go out entirely, plunging the house into darkness.
7:43 p.m., says my brain, which has apparently been tracking the time without my permission. The power went out at exactly 7:43 p.m.
“Orion?”
“I’m here.” His voice comes from somewhere to my left, calm and steady. “Don’t move. I’ll bring light.”
I don’t move. Mario doesn’t move either, though I feel him tense on my lap, his head turning toward the windows like he’s tracking something I can’t see.
A match strikes in the darkness, small flare of orange, then warm candlelight spreading across the room as Orion lights a candelabra that looks like it costs more than my bookstore’s monthly revenue.
“You have a candelabra,” I say.
“Inherited.”
“From who, Count Dracula?”
“Great-aunt. Similar aesthetic.”
He moves through the room lighting more candles, and I watch him with the kind of attention I usually reserve for books, cataloging details, filing away observations.
The way he navigates the dark without hesitation.
The way his movements are precise, economical, like he’s done this a hundred times before.
The way the candlelight catches his features and makes his jaw look even sharper, his eyes even grayer.
The way it finds his throat when he tilts his head, the long line of it, the slow shift of tendon as he swallows, and I have to look at the fire instead, because apparently I’ve reached the stage of whatever this is where a man’s throat is a problem for me.
It’s the storm. Ambience-induced insanity. It will pass.
It does not pass.
He looks like a character from one of my books. Gothic romance. Mysterious lord of the manor. Secrets hidden in every shadow.
“You’re very calm about this,” I observe as he lights the last candle. “The storm. The power outage. The whole situation.”
“I like storms.”
“That’s ominous.”
“Is it?”
“Yes. Normal people don’t like storms. Normal people tolerate storms at best.”
He sets down the matches and turns to look at me, and in the candlelight his eyes look different. Warmer, maybe. Or just more visible, more present, without the artificial overhead lights washing everything out.
“I’ve never claimed to be normal.”
No. No, you definitely have not.
The thunder cracks again, closer this time, and a gust of wind shakes the windows. Mario’s head snaps toward the sound, and I feel his claws extend slightly into my leg, not painful, just alert.
“He doesn’t like storms either?” I ask.
“He doesn’t like a lot of things.” Orion sits in the armchair across from me, folding himself into it with a grace that shouldn’t be possible for someone his size. “Storms. Dogs. The sound the refrigerator makes when it cycles. My face.”
“Your face specifically?”
“He looks at me like I’ve personally offended him. Every day. For two years.”
“Maybe you have.”
“I saved him.”
“Cats don’t understand gratitude. They only understand hierarchy.”
“And where does that put me in the hierarchy?”
“Below him, obviously.” I scratch behind Mario’s ears. “He tolerates you because you provide food and shelter. But you haven’t earned his respect.”
“And you have? After an hour?”
“I have an approachable energy.”
“You called my house a murder cabin.”
“Cats appreciate honesty.”
He laughs at that, an actual laugh, low and surprised, and the sound does something to my chest that I’m absolutely not going to examine.
The knock comes out of nowhere.
Three sharp raps against the front door, barely audible over the storm but clear enough to make Mario’s head snap around. Clear enough to make Orion go very, very still.
This stillness is different from his usual control. Sharper. Predatory. His head tilts toward the door, and I see his nostrils flare, like he’s smelling something, and then his whole body shifts into a posture I’ve never seen before.
Alert. Predatory. Dangerous.
“Stay behind me,” he says, and his voice is different now. Lower. Rougher.
“What? Why…”
“Fable.” His eyes meet mine, and I swear they’re lighter than they were a moment ago. Almost gold at the edges. “Stay. Behind. Me.”
He moves toward the door before I can argue, and I clutch Mario to my chest, my furry orange shield.
This is bad. This feels bad. Something is wrong.
Orion opens the door.
A man stands on the porch, soaked through, shivering. He’s maybe forty, with the kind of face that looks trustworthy at first glance, worn, tired, a little desperate.
“Please,” he says, and his voice cracks with cold. “My car broke down. I just need to use a phone, get out of the storm…”
I don’t even think about it. I just nod when Orion glances back at me, because what kind of person says no to a stranded traveler in a storm? What kind of monster leaves someone outside to freeze?
Orion steps back. The man steps inside.
The man pulls out a gun.
“Wallets. Phones. Now.” His voice isn’t cracking anymore. His hands aren’t shaking. The desperation was an act, a mask, and underneath it runs a cold, calculating current. “Don’t try anything stupid.”
My heart is hammering. My breath is coming too fast. The gun is pointed at Orion’s chest, and I can see the man’s finger on the trigger, and this is bad, this is so bad, this is…
“Put the gun down.” Orion’s voice is steady. Calm. Like someone’s pointing a finger at him instead of a weapon. “You don’t want to do this.”
“Shut up.” The man swings the gun between Orion and me, and I feel my whole body seize up with fear. “I said wallets. Phones. Now.”
“There’s cash in the kitchen.” I’m surprised I can speak, surprised my voice works at all. “In a drawer by the stove. Just take it and…”
“You.” The man levels the gun at me. “You come with me. Show me where.”
“No.” Orion’s voice has changed. Lower. Rougher. Almost a growl. “She stays where she is.”
“I said…”
Orion moves.
I don’t see what happens, it’s too fast, too sudden, just a blur of motion, but suddenly the gun is swinging toward me, the barrel dark and terrible, and I hear the shot before I see what stops it.
What stops it is impossible.
What stops it is Orion, except it’s not Orion, not the man I’ve spent four days with. Something else. A shape covered in dark fur, massive, wolf-shaped but wrong, too big, too intelligent, launching through the space between us with a sound that isn’t a growl but a promise.
The bullet hits the creature in the shoulder.
It doesn’t stop.
The man screams, a high, thin sound of pure terror, and drops the gun, scrambling backward toward the door.
The creature, the wolf, the thing that was Orion, snarls at him with teeth that gleam white in the candlelight, and the man bolts into the storm, screaming something about monsters, about demons, about the devil himself.
The front door swings shut behind him.
Silence.
Mario is shaking in my arms. Or maybe I’m shaking. I can’t tell anymore.
The creature turns to look at me, and its eyes are gray, storm-gray, impossibly familiar, and I can see where the bullet hit, a dark patch of blood matting the fur on its left shoulder.
Those are his eyes. That’s, that thing has his eyes.
The shift happens in reverse.
It’s not like the movies. It’s not dramatic or drawn-out. It’s just, one moment there’s a massive wolf standing in the middle of the room, and the next moment there’s Orion. Naked. Bleeding. Looking at me with a face caught between apologetic and resigned.
“Huh,” he says, like this is mildly inconvenient. Like he just spilled coffee instead of transformed into a literal monster. “I can explain.”
I open my mouth to respond.
Nothing comes out.
Mario screams.