Two

2nd chapter, again still a work in progress, I'm looking at spelling / grammatical errors here any help appreciated

As I stood at the striking black and white front porch a familiar purring arose behind me. A beautiful large cat rubbed its face and body against the back of my legs and I smiled “Hello there little cat” I said sweetly scratching her behind the ears “feel like letting me in?”

Sally jumped onto the wall in front of the house and down the other side, almost ten feet, without hesitation and casually strolled to the back of the house.

After a couple of minutes an effortlessly beautiful young woman opened the door.

“Long time since you came up here” she said as she hugged me, rubbing her cheek against mine filling me with her sweet and comforting scent “but I’m glad you did, we need to talk”.

Sally is five feet four inches tall, has flawless pale skin and long ginger hair often pulled high into a pony tail. I love her style; very post war chic. That day she was in a pair of three quarter length jeans, red polka dot wedges and a red t shirt, not bad to say she’d just got dressed in a hurry.

 

“What’s up Sally?” I said, she looked tired and a little stressed. We moved into the hall and I shut the door. She looked at me tentatively.

“I was out all night at the castle and at about eleven I picked up a really strange scent.” she paused before saying “It was another tiger Billi”

“I know” I said, Sally looked surprised by this “His name was Jack. He’s the reason I’m here too.” I saw Sally begin to look exited “No, no, no.” I said “do not look at me like that! It’s really not what you’re thinking, believe me.” I sat down on the hard cool seat of a reclaimed church pew and breathed deeply before saying “He played me like a fool Sally, I did everything he wanted. It was a trap; he worked for them” I looked at Sally for reassurance before I could continue “for the vampires”

To say that Sally was surprised is an understatement. You see when Sally had caught Jacks scent she would have assumed that he was looking for me, to try to mate or maybe to take my territory. The fact that he was working for the vampires shocked her to her core. Cats simply don’t mix with vampires; there’s just too much bad blood.

Sally sat down beside me and took my hand.

“What happened?” she asked “Are you ok? Please tell me you’ve scared him off!” Sally was aware that as a smaller cat she would be very vulnerable to an attack from a fully grown male tiger. I suppose she was worried he might come after her.

“You could say that” I said, as I squeezed her hand “you’ll be ok Sally, I promise.” I had to pause before I could bring myself to utter the next part.

“I killed him”

Sally jolted upright, still holding my hand with a look of shock on her face.

“You’re crying Billi” Sally said “you never do that.” she gently wiped a tear from my cheek “You actually killed him, another cat? Christ Kiddo, that can’t have been easy.”

Sally understood my anguish, killing another of our kind went against everything we had ever been taught. She knelt in front of me and placed a hand on each of my cheeks and gently pulled my face level to hers “You did the right thing honey, I’m sure you did.” She kissed me on the forehead and hugged me tightly once again filling me with that comforting scent.

“What is it?” I asked as she held me for longer than I had anticipated.

“Come with me” She said, taking my hand and leading me through the house, past the main sitting and dining rooms, dust sheets covering the antique furniture.

“Why don’t you live in the house, you know I wouldn’t mind?” I said

“It’s too big for me on my own, I did try it for a while, but I’m much happier in the flat.”

“That makes sense I guess, but now I’m moving in you might change your mind”

Sally stopped in her tracks “You’re moving in!” she said, grinning as she squeezed my hand hard.

“Ouch” I said smiling “I need a new base, somewhere they don’t know about yet.” I also began to realise how much I missed my friend and was looking forward to some company for a change.

“Well they know do about me” Sally said still beaming at me “but I don’t think they’d ever expect to find you mixing with a domestic, I’m really not a threat!”

As we walked through the house I started to remember why I’d brought it. It was incredibly beautiful in a typically Victorian way. It still had the original black and white floor tiles throughout the hallway and parquet floors in the living and dining areas along with wooden panelling everywhere all painted white.

“I can’t wait for some company” Sally said “don’t get me wrong I love it here, but I’ll be happier knowing I don’t have to be the only one cleaning it.”

 

Sally led me down a wide stair case into the large white shaker style kitchen and into a utility room the size of the kitchen in my apartment. On the far wall of the utility room there was a door, Sally opened it and we descended into the dark cellar. 

The cellar is quite large with four chambers, two rooms on either side of a central corridor. All have bare brick walls, large flagstone floors and vaulted ceilings.

One was used for storage, two were complete with most of the original wine shelves, and at the entrance to another we had installed strong iron bars with a small door and a very large padlock and chain. This was for the sole purpose of holding anything that may be dangerous and possibly useful to us; there was a pile of blankets in there and a smell I couldn’t quite place.

Opposite the holding cell was the storage room, packed full of heavy wooden crates and the obligatory half used paint tins, old bike and other such items that people tend to collect over the years. I knew the boxes contained quite a lot of interesting and expensive items; even an original Picasso that dad had acquired in Paris was safely tucked away somewhere in there.

The room next to the holding cell had been set up as an office among the wine racks; it appeared that Sally had made this her base for all things werecat. She had old looking texts and scrolls rolled up and stored in the wracks, she’d compiled quite the library, she had a bench type table and beautifully hand drawn subterranean maps pinned to the walls, she had also managed to cram an old  and comfy looking high backed chesterfield arm chair and a side table into one corner.

It was an area that I instantly liked; I started to study the maps, tracing well walked paths with my fingers and spotting a few new ones. The bare bulb hanging in the corridor started to fizz and flicker so Sally turned on a desk lamp. “Just in case” she said “the electrics down here can be little sketchy at times”

“Where did all of this come from?” I asked a little astounded that she’d compiled so much as I collapsed heavily into the comfortable chair.

“Oh here and there” she said as she rummaged through the shelves eventually pulling out a very old looking leather bound book.

“I’ve thought it strange for a while now that I am able to find so many books in Nottingham; some are important texts that our elders believe to be lost. And I have come up with a theory, and I think this attack on you could prove me right. What if he’s here Billi, in Nottingham?” Sally was obviously excited by this but I just didn’t follow.

“Who?” I asked confused.

“Eldred” she said boldly.

 

I really wasn’t expecting that, stories of Eldred had frightened me as a child; he was more myth than man. I suppose that if he was in Nottingham then it’s plausible that I could be making him uneasy, but uneasy enough to try and have me killed. I doubted it.

“Ok, let’s say you’re right.” I said “Why would he be here, I mean there are some good caves but nothing like you’d have in a bigger city. London basically has another city underneath it. What would keep him here, also?” I went on “how do we know he’s even alive?”

None of our kind had reported seeing him in centuries, so we weren’t to know if he still existed. But there had always been rumours among the vampires that he was alive.

Sally had been flipping through the pages of the ancient book and finally came to the page she was looking for; it showed an etching that depicted a huge black cat, probably a Jaguar, fighting an equally impressive looking man with huge fangs.

Sally read the text round the picture. “Death of a King and Queen, that’s what this drawing’s called. The vampire is supposed to be Eldred and the cat is a Jaguar queen called Gyovana. This is from the last war; they’re fighting at the mouth of a cave that holds the source of evil that engulfed the world. It says they both entered the cave, soon after there was a large explosion and both were lost, although the evil seemed to have been defeated.” She read some more to herself “I’d only briefly looked at this before but I knew I remembered it for a reason. Look” she pointed to the words “Nottingham; Tigguo Cobauc” under the picture.

“Yfel came here Billi. I’ve often wondered why we see so many vamps in such a small city, maybe they’re drawn to some residual energy, or they work for Eldred, either way I think we may be getting close to something important”

 

As I exhaustedly tried to process new this information I caught that oddly recognisable scent again.

“What is that smell Sally?” I asked; it had such a familiar tone.

“Well that’s actually the other reason I brought you down here. Aside from rogue tigers and possible ancient evils we’ve got a lot to talk about” her tone was serious but I sensed a nervousness too “I don’t know how you are going to take this but I have a friend who is in need of this room once a month” she walked over to the holding cell and I sniffed the freshly agitated air.

“Wolf” I said finally placing the musky male scent “he’s a wolf!” I looked at Sally unconvinced. “Aren’t you scared?” In all honestly, wolves really aren’t that bad, they are usually scared and ashamed of their monthly change. It’s not something that they choose and the sensible ones try to lock themselves away when the moon is full. I’ve only ever had to deal with those that were unable to control themselves. But my worry with Sally is her size, at least if I lived here and the wolf escaped I could pin it down easily, but Sally is just too small.

“Not as much as he is” Sally said sounding empathetic “he’s a friend from work. He was attacked by a wolf on holiday in the Canadian Rockies about three months ago. When he told me the story and I saw the bite I knew what had happened, at the time he thought he was lucky to be alive, now I think sometimes he’d rather have died. The first time he changed I’d invited him over for dinner as I knew what was going to happen, I bribed him down here to look at you art collection, he’s a curator at the museum you see, and I tricked him into the cell and locked him in. Just in time as it turns out too, he changed about two minutes later after complaining of chronic stomach pains and cramps. He was so terrified Billi, the morning after I didn’t know what to say or how to calm him down, he shouted and blamed me. I think he thought I’d drugged him or something and made him hallucinate. I tried to talk about werewolves and werecats but he didn’t believe me, so I showed him, I changed.” she looked at me waiting for the disapproval that didn’t come “To say he was surprised is an understatement, but at least finally he believed me. So for the past few months he’s been coming here to use the cell as his own personal prison so he doesn’t hurt anyone. It works quite well actually”

As astonished as I was by the risk Sally taking having him here, I wasn’t that surprised that she wanted to help him, Sally has always been the compassionate one, and I had a feeling that maybe there was more to their relationship than just a safe place to hide.

“Ok then, well next time he’s here I’d like to meet him” I said

“You have to be nice Billi he’s scared, but as it happens he’ll be here in a couple of days”

Sally looked at me “I’ll show you this later” she said pointing at all the texts and maps “right now we need a cup of tea and you need to tell me everything that happened last night.

Author's Note

again still a work in progress, I'm looking at spelling / grammatical errors here any help appreciated