Double Blind (23 page)

Lightstone shook his head. "Not really. I just remind myself that I'll fare a lot better if I cut the cards and count my change. And if somebody like the Sage offers to sell me a genuine good-luck charm made from a genuine mythical beast, I probably wouldn't pay top dollar."

"Yet you claim to maintain an open mind about things you don't understand?"

"I try."

The woman hesitated for a moment. "Do you need to leave now, too?"

The question caught Lightstone off guard, but he recovered immediately.

He smiled easily. "Like I said, I'm between jobs. My friends expect me home for dinner. Beyond that . . ." He shrugged.

The woman stood, the top of her sun-streaked hair rising to the level of his chin as she motioned toward the interior door. "Then come with me."

They walked into the restaurant portion of the house, the woman leading and Lightstone cautiously trailing slightly behind, sensing a certain tension in her walk and trying to ignore the curved and yet slender outlines of her body as her lush, firm thighs, hips, breasts, and shoulders alternately strained against the soft, thin cloth of her tunic . . . a moving vision that embodied, from Henry Lightstone's point of view, the definitive model of sleek and sensual grace.

After following a long narrow corridor lined with smooth logs, they went through a swinging door, turned right, then though another door — this one bolted and bearing a large PRIVATE DO NOT ENTER sign — and then, almost immediately, a second, double-bolted door.

Suddenly, Henry Lightstone found himself in a darkened room that would have been large and cavernous except for the presence of an enormous, ancient black oak growing up through the floor.

As they approached the huge tree, Lightstone realized that the trunk measured at least eight feet in diameter at the base, and its thick branches, beginning just above his head, extended outward and upward in all directions. The only illumination in the room came from a small shaded lamp that directed a small circle of light on a low table surrounded by three cushions, all arranged beneath one of the mammoth lower branches. Looking up, Lightstone realized that he couldn't see the ceiling — it simply disappeared into the tangle of branches extending some fifteen feet above his head.

For some inexplicable reason, that darkness overhead, like the woman, made him distinctly uneasy.

"Sit down." She motioned toward one of the cushions.

Lightstone glanced up at the dark void one last time, and then joined her, sitting cross-legged on the opposite side of the small table, noticing as he did so that the diffused light from the lamp, and the resulting shadows, seemed to enhance the erotic features of her now only vaguely tomboyish face. Once he settled himself, she opened a wooden chest on the table and removed something from it.

The object she placed in the circle of light between them looked like a crudely sawn-off chunk of fence post. On closer examination, Henry Lightstone observed what looked like a tuft of hair caught in a splintered portion of the wood.

"Do you see that?" she asked softly.

"You mean the hair?"

"Yes."

Lightstone paused.

"Are you going to tell me —?"

"That your mythical beast might not be so mythical after all?" she asked in her soft, husky voice.

Henry Lightstone examined the tuft more closely and noticed the distinct reddish cast to the forty-odd twisted and crinkled hairs.

"How do you know —?" he started to ask, but the woman had leaned forward to take something else from the chest.

Ignoring his question, she carefully plucked two of the hairs out of the tuft with a pair of forceps, and placed each one in separate small glassine envelopes. She then pressed one of the envelopes into the palm of his hand such that the warmth of her hand seemed to radiate up his arm, and then slipped the second envelope down inside her tunic between her breasts.

"I hate to even ask," he ventured after a long moment.

"Some say that the hair of a Sasquatch protects the one who holds it from the evil ones . . . but only if that person possesses a cat spirit and believes that it is so," she added meaningfully.

"And the other one that you —" he gestured in the general direction of her blouse.

She smiled. "Oh, that's just something that we witches do."

"Ah."

"Did you know," she added before Lightstone could comment further, "that the Sage truly believes that the Sasquatch — the creature who left his hair in that fence post—is his pet?"

"I guess he's not the type to settle for a dog, is he?"

A serious expression replaced her smile. "Now that you mention it, you don't strike me as the type who would settle for a dog either."

"Why not?"

"Fortune-teller's intuition."

"Ah."

"Ah, meaning you don't believe in fortune-telling?"

"Ah, meaning I'm always curious to find out how things work. Don't fortune-tellers read palms, or tarot cards, something like that?"

"Sometimes the paranormal takes many forms. I just sense the way things are," she explained seriously. "You look at a person and you know, for example, that they aren't the type to tie themselves down with a spouse, kids, dogs —all of whom require constant attention."

She smiled faintly. "You aren't, are you?"

It was a statement far more than a question.

"No wife or kids," Lightstone agreed, subliminally aware of those warning bells again.

"Of course not," she spoke confidently, as if confirming a well-known fact. "And surely no dogs either?"

Lightstone shrugged. "I grew up with them, and they were okay, I guess. I mean, they were affectionate enough. But they always seemed so dependent — like they didn't have a life of their own."

"So you never got a dog of your own when you left home?"

"Never felt any need to . . . especially since I never seem to stay put in one place for very long."

She nodded her head in apparent amusement, and he felt himself relax . . . only to be jerked back into alertness by her next question.

"Were you ever afraid of them?"

"Of what? Dogs?" Lightstone grinned, but his mind continued to analyze her critically. "Of course not."

"Even big scary ones?" A touch of disbelief edged her sensuous voice.

'You mean Dobermans, German shepherds, ones like that?"

"Or Rottweilers and Pit Bulls. Dogs bred for strength and aggressive behavior."

"No, not really," Henry informed her after considering the matter briefly. "I see it as a matter of self-confidence more than anything else. Dogs can sense if you're afraid of them. In my experience, if you're not, they usually back off."

"And if they don't?"

"I don't know, use brute force, I guess." Henry Lightstone shrugged. "I've never had that problem."

"What about cats?"

Lightstone cocked his head curiously. "You're asking if I'm afraid of cats?"

She nodded, her gold-flecked green eyes suddenly sparkling with what Henry Lightstone could only define as humor —a vision that effectively distracted him from the persistent uneasiness he'd felt since entering the strange room.

"I guess the truthful answer is that I've never seen one big enough to —" he began. But then a soft (but at the same time very heavy) thump behind his back caused him to whirl his head and shoulders and instinctively bring his hands up into a defensive position — then freeze when he found himself staring into a pair of half-lidded yellow eyes with tightly focused dot-like pupils set terribly far apart hovering in midair.

"— scare me," he finished in a hoarse whisper, as his own pupils dilated from adrenaline-induced shock when he realized why those incredibly hypnotic eyes appeared to hover.

"Don't move," she warned in an amazingly calm and soothing voice.

"Don't worry, I won't," he promised, but he did anyway, slowly, incrementally, relaxing his hands and bringing them down to rest flat on his crossed legs, because that seemed like the right thing to do.

"What is it," he whispered, truly amazed that he could form the words with his fear-numbed vocal cords.

"You'll see . . ."

Slowly his eyes grew accustomed to the dimness and he did see — the low forehead and partially flattened ears, the whitish orange whiskers that bristled on either side of the thick velvety muzzle . . . but most of all, the huge, muscular, silver-tinged blackness.

Oh my God.

Panther.

For a brief moment, Henry Lightstone believed that he was about to die a horrible death. His heart pounded in his chest, and some primitive portion of his mind screamed at him to run, fight, cover up, do something, before it was too late. But then, for some reason that he didn't comprehend at all, he sensed that the only partially flattened ears might be significant.

Don't move. No matter what, don't move.

He had no idea if he thought that, or someone — the woman? — actually said it.

But then, in a motion really too fast to see, the cat suddenly moved forward — lunged, actually— and heavy, leathery pads pinned Lightstone's hands to his legs, terribly sharp claws lightly dug into his wrists, and long whiskers brushed against his throat before the huge cat suddenly emitted a deep rumble and rubbed her forehead against his chin.

"Are you all right?" she asked sometime later — moments, hours, Lightstone had no idea — in that same calm, reassuring voice.

"I have a feeling that's completely up to him," Lightstone replied in a very quiet strangled voice.

"Her," the woman corrected him softly.

"Sorry, I didn't notice," Lightstone grimaced when the wickedly sharp claws dug deep into the backs of his hands each time the purring animal flexed her huge paws contentedly.

"That's all right, she did," the woman replied with an underlying edge of sarcasm that — to her amazement — bordered on bitchiness.

"Is it all right if I try to pet . . . her?" Lightstone asked, not at all certain he wanted to do anything whatsoever to disturb the cat's presumably benign behavior, but at the same time, very much aware of his extremely vulnerable position. He knew that at some point, if this cat were like every other cat he'd played with as a kid, it would suddenly and unpredictably do something different — which, he assumed, could easily include biting or clawing. He tried not to think about the impact of those terribly sharp claws on his soft and vulnerable skin.

The truly amazing part, Lightstone realized, was that he didn't feel afraid — at least not in the trembling, whimpering, bowel-voiding sense. If anything, he felt deeply and intensely intrigued. By both the cat, and the woman who apparently owned her.

"I think she'll let you" — the woman's voice carried a barely discernible edge that Lightstone picked up on immediately — "but take it slow. We're in unexplored territory here."

"What exactly does 'unexplored territory' mean?" he asked hesitantly.

"She's never done this before . . . with a stranger," the woman almost grudgingly admitted.

"Is that good, or bad?"

"I don't know. She's usually very predictable. That's why I'm concerned."

The woman grew silent, keeping her own hands firmly on her lap, watching the big cat rapturously rub her face over Lightstone's.

"Your left hand," she suggested softly to her guest. "Can you pull it free?"

"I don't think so."

Not unless I want to lose it
, Lightstone thought as the powerful claws continued digging in to the point of not quite breaking through the skin on the backs of his hands.

"When I tell you," the woman directed in an almost hypnotizing voice, "raise your hand — the left one, not the right," she emphasized, "very gently, very slowly, but firmly . . . stay relaxed and maintain contact," she instructed him in that same smoothing voice, "then turn your hand and gently rub the pad of her paw with your thumb. Don't jerk away or make any other rapid movement, no matter how she reacts. Do you think you can do that?"

Henry felt himself relax in response to her voice.

"Yes."

"Then go ahead," she ordered calmly.

"Any suggestions what I should do if she doesn't like it?" Lightstone asked.

"Whatever you do, do not make any sudden movements," the woman repeated in that same calm and gentle voice. "She's perfectly capable of killing either one of us in a matter of seconds, if she wants to. But I imagine you already guessed that."

"Oh yeah, first thing," Lightstone whispered hoarsely.

"I have a control collar — a device that I can use to track or sedate her remotely if necessary — which she wears when I take her out in public. But as you've probably noticed, we're not out in public, so she's not wearing it right now."

"So how do you control her, if you have to?" Lightstone asked, having a good idea that he already knew the answer to that question.

"If it turns out that I can't control her with my voice, which is unlikely but certainly not impossible, there's a tranquilizing gun on the table about ten feet to your left. It's armed and auto-loading, and the safety's off. One dart will calm her down very quickly, two will put her to sleep, three will kill her. However, you must remember something very important: there isn't a chance in the world that you could get to that gun before she could get to you; and in any case, I don't want her to die unless it's absolutely necessary."

And if she does die, so will you, whoever you are,
the woman thought. "Does that answer your question?"

"I . . . don't think we're going to need to worry about the tranquilizer gun," Lightstone responded with a sense of confidence he prayed had resulted from some degree of sanity.

"Just remember, slowly and firmly. Don't forget, she's extremely strong, and very quick."

"I don't think I'll forget that," Henry murmured grimly as he began lifting his hand — and immediately felt the claws digging deeper into the back of it. But he continued to raise his hand until he sensed it supported the cat's paw a couple inches above his thigh, aware that the cat had stopped rubbing him, but still rumbled contentedly.

Maintaining pressure as directed, he slowly rotated his hand and began to rub the soft leathery pad with his fingertips.