Claws (9780545469678) (16 page)

“I can't!” Emma cried. Her cats were circling the troll now, but it was still coming toward her.

Fat Leon licked his lips as if he'd been anticipating this. “You won't have to do it alone. I can help. Focus on the troll. You're a Pride-Heart. Tell your eyes what to see, tell your nose what to smell. That's not a troll, just a stone. A big, broken stone.”

Emma tried. She saw the world with the double vision of a human and a cat. She concentrated as hard as she could, in an effort to force out the magic inside her. Beside her she could feel the weight of Fat Leon's magic steadying her and guiding her, reaching out for the troll with her. The rumble of the troll's heartbeat began to slow.

Nothing but stone.

Slower . . .

She pushed the magic out at the troll, and the cats around her joined Fat Leon and did the same.

Nothing but stone.

Slower and slower . . .

This was the pride. All of them working together. This was what their power really meant.

The heartbeat stopped.

Emma fell to her knees. She felt suddenly numb. Beside her, Fat Leon was panting. “Well done,” he said. “You'll feel better soon, don't worry.”

“Is it . . . dead?” Emma asked.

“As dead as stone,” Fat Leon said. “Unless you want to change it back.”

“Hey, Pride-Heart, that was awesome!” the Toe-Chewer cried out.

Emma breathed a sigh of relief. He was okay. One of the other cats — a leopard — sat next to him, Cricket hanging from its jaws. Cricket had become a small ginger cat again. She was hissing and swiping at the leopard's throat. The leopard shook her until she stopped struggling.

The grin on the Toe-Chewer's fox face made him look slightly terrifying. “It's so much fun having magic!” he added. “Maybe I could turn into a harpy next, or even a dragon. A dragon would be
amazing
!”

“We'll see,” Emma said. Then she remembered and spun around. “Where's Jack? Jack!”

“You worry too much,” Jack said.

He was sitting near where he'd been thrown, calmly licking his paw. “You can handle this yourself,” Jack purred, looking at Cricket. “Now that you're finally a true Pride-Heart.”

Emma rubbed her face. She still felt numb from turning the troll into stone. Its head and arms had already broken off, the sapling lying on the ground. The cat that had died lay nearby, trampled and bloody, its empty eyes staring off into the forest. “Let me guess. You want me to kill her, right?”

“Unless you have a better idea for how to keep her from coming after you again, not to mention your dad,” Jack said.

Emma's heart skipped a beat. “Dad!” She looked around desperately. How could she have forgotten about him? What if he was lying unconscious somewhere, or worse? Why hadn't she sent one of the cats to find him and make sure he didn't get trampled? “Dad, are you all right? Dad!”

Then she heard his voice. “Emma, I'm okay! I'm right here.”

Emma's dad sat propped against the wall of the Red Caboose. She ran over and knelt beside him. His breath came in short, painful gasps.

“Dad, are you hurt?” Emma asked. His hand was still bleeding, and she could see bits of glass embedded in his skin.

“I'll be fine.” He smiled crookedly and put his good hand on her arm. “I thought I told you to stay at home. But . . . I guess I'm glad you didn't. I saw what you did over there. You're not just my little Emma anymore, are you?” Then the smile fell from his face and he let Emma go. “Helena. Where's Helena?”

“Dad, she's not here. It was a trick.”

But he wasn't listening. Clutching his hand to his chest, he dragged himself to his feet and took heavy, limping steps toward the Red Caboose. “Helena? Where are you?”

“You're bleeding,” Emma said. “We have to get you home or to the hospital.”

“She's here. She has to be here.” Gritting his teeth against the pain, he walked into the diner. Emma followed him.

Inside, the Red Caboose had somehow avoided being impaled by trees, but the forest had managed to creep in all the same. Broken ketchup bottles sprouted strange, small flowers. Thin vines ran along the floor and up the cracked walls.

Her dad called Helena's name as he searched the booths, the burned-out kitchen, the ruined bathrooms. Then he returned to the table where the fake Helena had been sitting, where the bundle of twigs still sat on the booth's upholstery, the golden ribbon fluttering.

“Helena?” he whispered. Hesitantly, he picked up a shard of glass and held it up in front of his face. He started as if he could see her inside it, then brought the glass closer. He stared at the twigs.

“It was just some kind of trick,” Emma said again. “Though how Cricket did it, I don't know. But I've found out something. An address where she used a phone: 500 Ocean Avenue in New Downtown.”

Her dad shook his head. “No, she has to be here. I saw her. You have to look through the glass.”

Emma snatched the bundle of twigs off the seat. He grabbed her with his injured hand without thinking, then cried out as she easily pulled free of his grasp.

“Emma! What are you doing?”

“I miss her, too, Dad. You're not the only one that lost her. Go home and let me keep looking for her, or this was all for nothing.”

She extended her claws. Her dad's eyes grew wide, but before he could take another step Emma sliced through the golden ribbon. The twigs fell on the ground and she stomped on them.

Crack!
They were all thin, dry, and brittle.
Crack! Crack!

Soon the bundle was nothing but a small pile of crushed wood.

“I'm going to have one of my cats guide you home,” Emma said softly. “Mom should be there soon. She can take you to the hospital. I'm going after Helena.”

“Emma, you know I can't let you do that. It's dangerous. All this cat stuff has to stop. You saved my life, but you could've been killed yourself. I couldn't stand losing you, too.”

“Dad, you can't stop me from going.”

“You're just like your grandfather, you know,” he said. “He gave up everything to get me and my mother out of Vietnam after the war. When Helena disappeared, I thought, how can I do any less? How can I risk less than he did for me?” He looked down at Emma and smiled sadly. “I'm sorry this happened to you. I would have done the same thing if you'd been the one to disappear like that. And . . . I'm proud of you.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Emma said, her voice only a little hoarse.

“If your mom asks, I yelled at you about going, all right?” he said. “I was very strict and authoritarian, but you just wouldn't listen.”

Emma grinned, and blinked the tears out of her eyes. “Nope. I didn't listen at all.”

CRAG FACT OF THE DAY:

“It's estimated that only one in a thousand trees is awake enough to have a real dryad, or tree spirit. A law passed in 1976 requires anyone wishing to chop down a tree to knock three times before cutting, and ask it if it is awake.”

CragWiki.org

O
nce her dad had gone, his arm over the back of a tortoiseshell cat, Emma turned back to her pride. The cats were sprawled around the stone troll, licking their wounds. The Toe-Chewer stood to one side. He seemed not to know what to do with himself.

“So what are you going to do with the dead cat?” Chloe asked. “Do they eat it, or what?”

“No!” Emma said. “No one's going to eat it. We'll bury it. Him.”

“What for?” Fat Leon asked. “He's dead. Might as well just leave him there.”

“Because he was part of my pride,” Emma said.
Because I felt him die for me.
She shivered as she remembered the part of her that had faded as the troll had squeezed the life out of the cat.

The leopard broke her thoughts. “I'm tired of holding her,” she said, pinning Cricket under her huge paws. “It's no fun if you can't eat them once they stop squirming.” The comment was delivered in the usual I-don't-really-care manner that all the cats except the Toe-Chewer seemed to have, but Emma realized they were waiting to see what she would do.

Cricket hissed weakly as Emma walked up to her. “You're a fool for trusting Jack. He probably knows where your sister is. He's probably known this whole time.”

“Lies,” Jack replied nonchalantly. “But even if I had known, you weren't ready to go after her, were you, Emma? Now that you have your magic, it's a different story.”

“You think he's your friend,” Cricket spat. “But cats don't have friends. They have a pride, or they have nothing.”

“You know, I was a little disappointed your first kill wasn't one of the ratters. But I think killing Cricket is better,” Jack purred. “More fitting.”

“You forgot the troll,” Emma murmured, extracting her claws and staring at them thoughtfully. She knew what the wild Pride-Heart wanted to do. But what did she want?

“It doesn't count if there wasn't any blood,” Jack said.

“Hurry up. I'm sick of the sound of his voice,” Cricket said. She sounded tired. Defeated. “They're waiting. Go ahead and show them you're a real cat now.”

“But I'm not,” Emma said. “Not exactly. I'm human, too.”

She shut her eyes and felt the connection between herself and Cricket, that thread binding them together. Slowly, gently, she let the magic flow into the ginger cat again. Cricket looked up at her, puzzled. Then she turned into the mountain lion once more.

“Stop her!” Jack yelled. He sounded furious.

The others cats didn't move. They all watched Emma.

Cricket looked around as if she wanted to run, but she stayed where she was. “I won't be hunted just to amuse you,” she growled.

“I don't want to hunt you,” Emma said. “I want you by my side. You're no Heart-Killer. Not really. Like Jack said, you don't have it in you.”

“I'm hoping for your sake that I was right,” said Jack. “What do you think you're doing?”

“If she admits that I'm a real Pride-Heart — her Pride-Heart — that's good enough. I think she'll be loyal.” She turned to Cricket. “I'm a human, but it's better than me killing you, isn't it?”

Cricket glared at her. “You've managed to control the Heart's Blood. You're giving me magic. You even managed to beat a troll.” Her tail flicked back and forth. She looked as though she was thinking. “I suppose I can always take the Heart's Blood when you get yourself killed off on whatever crazy scheme Jack's convinced you of.”

Slowly, she lowered her eyes and lay on the ground, tail tucked between her legs and ears flat against her head. Then she rolled over onto her back, exposing a belly and throat covered in soft white fur. This time, Emma did exactly what the Pride-Heart inside her wanted. She placed her hands on Cricket's belly, claws extended, and gently bit the massive cat's throat.

As she pulled back, Cricket shrank, turning into a small ginger cat again, thin and somewhat bloodied. She began to clean herself methodically. “Well, what next?” she said, as if nothing had happened.

Around her, the other cats began to purr softly.

“All right,” Emma said. “Before we go, I want to know about that illusion. Helena in the window. What kind of magic is that? It's not cat magic, I know that for sure. I could see it was wrong.”

“It looked like faerie magic to me,” said Fat Leon, looking at Cricket, “though I didn't have enough magic to see through it at the time.”

Cricket nodded. “You're right. A little borrowed faerie enchantment. They didn't like the idea of a human Pride-Heart any more than I did. I told them I'd take care of it.”

Jack growled unhappily at this, but his eyes were bright.

“Why don't they like the idea of a human Pride-Heart?” Emma asked.

“Maybe they just don't like humans having magic at all,” Cricket said. “Who knows with faeries? I didn't ask. I wanted the Heart's Blood; they wanted a cat to have it instead of a human.” She shrugged. “It was a fair swap. I didn't really think you counted as a Pride-Heart, you understand. Now that you do, well, I suppose we can work together. For now.”

“So the faeries used Cricket to — what?” She looked at Jack. “Kill me? Why? Why would the faeries want me dead?”

“You're becoming more powerful than you realize,” Jack murmured in a self-satisfied tone. “Word gets around.”

“We need to go to New Downtown to find out,” Emma said. “To 500 Ocean Avenue. Maybe it's a faerie place. Helena loved faeries. She was always reading about them.”

Chloe flapped her wings in consternation. “I can't go with you if you're going to New Downtown to find faeries. You're not allowed to fly there if you're a crag. There are laws about it. You have to have a Self-Propelled Sentient Flyer license and a radio and stuff.”

Emma thought for a moment. “Well, I guess I could turn you into something —”